[...] a new Smithsonian administration has jettisoned the eye-popping elements of the $2 billion design by Danish architect Bjarke Ingels, opting instead for a dramatically downsized version. Set to be presented publicly for the first time this week, the scaled-back plan focuses on the renovation and restoration of the James Renwick-designed Castle and the adjacent Arts and Industries Building (AIB), another National Historic Landmark designed by Adolf Cluss and Paul Schulze. — The Washington Post
First presented in 2014, hotly debated in the following years, revised in 2018, and expected to start construction this year, some elements inside the Bjarke Ingels Group-designed $2 billion Smithsonian South Mall Campus redevelopment have been scaled back by the institution's new administration in favor of a downsized plan, according to The Washington Post.
"Instead, the revised project calls for interior and exterior restoration of the Castle, interior and underground work on the AIB and a new central underground utility plant serving those structures and, eventually, the Freer and the underground Quadrangle building," reports the paper.
Update Jan 14, 2021: A previous version of the article gave the impression that the master plan had been completely dropped. We have corrected it, following feedback we have received from Aran Coakley, Associate and Project Manager, BIG-Bjarke Ingels Group. BIG developed the South Mall Campus Master Plan, approved in 2018, however the firm is not the architect for the historic renovation of Castle or the Arts and Industries Building.
5 Comments
Hooray! The proposal was a stupid design.
Sometimes doing nothing is the best option
IM Pei's Louvre still the best museum campus redesign.
Learning from LACMA?
How much design fee (tax payer $?) was paid out to reach a self-evident conclusion?
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