"A amphitheater at the base of the Washington Monument. A glass-enclosed restaurant overlooking the Constitution Gardens pond—and a winter-time ice-skating rink where the pond currently sits. A lively new Union Square, with streams of water arching into the Capitol Reflecting Pool.
Those are among the ideas that architects and designers have floated for redesigning and reviving three sites on the National Mall..."
— dcist.com
Updated photos of the schemes to redesign parts of the Mall in Washington DC. Includes proposals from snohetta; Diller Scofidio + Renfro, Ken Smith, Rogers Marvel, Peter Walker, etc.
design by Weiss Manfredi and OLIN
11 Comments
It is really deplorable when all the renderings are depicting entertained crowds and happy go around shopping mall like experiences. The National Mall is much more meaningful when it houses "people" voicing something in masses. These ideas have no such purpose in them but watered down commercial thinking. Goddammit! Enough candy assing already...
In the eighties architecture merged with fashion, now it is merging with the entertainment industry.
In the eighties architecture merged with fashion, now it is merging with the entertainment industry.
And, crowd and thought control.
Dead on critique Orhan!
hear hear orhan!
orhan,
i couldn't agree more. what caught me off guard (and prompted the post) was the fact that barrels of ink have been spilled over the eisenhower memorial and i'd argue it pales in overall significance to any of these three sites in terms of prominence or their contribution to the public realm. and yet, this is the first post and are the first images i've even seen. the process so far is has been soooo quiet.... i mean, why isn't this front page on the nytimes or washington post? why isn't there more discussion about the programmes, the aims or objectives? it's really sad in that regard....
going to see them first hand thursday. public comments for just a short week? the african american presentations were around for a couple of weeks and were crowded. doubt the same here...sadly. of course half of the mail is under construction until inauguration! they keep complaining that people are trampling the grass!
Orhan & Gregory I agree 100%
Trampling the grass....haha democracy is messy. This should have been an open national competition. America the land of opportunity, smh...
jl - it was an open process (meaning an open rfp that firms could (and did) respond to. however, now that they're doing actual schemes...why aren't they being talked about with the fervor of the eisenhower memorial?
"firms" why not just make it an open to all competition like the Vietnam memorial? Maya Lin was 20 years old. Oh yeah I forgot we need to finish IDP before we can claim to be able to design stuff.
I think the news media doubt that anything will be actually done due to the tight fisted congress, but any plan that fails to accommodate mass protest will fail. Can you imagine the Supreme Court ruling that this project impinges on the freedom of speech?
they don't want mass protest especially the neo-cons
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