This week, the Trust for the National Mall opened the exhibition featuring the twelve final design concepts of the National Mall Design Competition in Washington, D.C. [...]

The submissions, created by ten of the country’s design heavy hitters, re-envision three prominent National Mall locations: Union Square, Sylvan Theater on the Washington Monument Grounds, and Constitution Gardens. — bustler.net

When the Museum of African American History and Culture opens on the National Mall in 2015, it will be "not just a record of tragedy, but a celebration of life," as President Obama said during the ground breaking ceremony on the site today. — whitehouse.gov

President Obama will speak at the official groundbreaking next week for the Smithsonian's new African American history museum in Washington, museum officials announced.

The National Museum of African American History and Culture will be situated on the National Mall and is expected to be completed by 2015 at an estimated price cost of $500 million, half of which is expected to be paid by the government. — latimesblogs.latimes.com

The design shows Eisenhower as a youth gazing out at images of his adult accomplishments against a backdrop of the Kansas plains. But the Eisenhower family objects to the design and is attempting to delay approval of the project in a dispute that has pitted a leading American family against one of the country’s most recognized architects. The family says Mr. Gehry should portray Eisenhower as a man in the fullness of his achievements, not as a callow rustic who made good. — nytimes.com

The exhibit also has models of grandiose never-built projects, like converting more than 62 acres of what's now Foggy Bottom into "The National Galleries of History and Art".

"Nothing in the built environment is inevitable," commented Moeller, senior vice president of the National Building Museum. "It's very unpredictable. There are some accidents. Often as not, things don't go according to plan." — examiner.com

“It’s a clear, simple and concise concept,” says Thomas Corrato, project architect with Hickok Cole, the Washington firm that created the design. “The idea was about how to make the space a connection between architecture and the person on the street.”

The design also aims at changing how people perceive the profession. “We’re viewed as possibly compared to lawyers, and that’s a low hurdle,” says Michael Hickok, partner in Hickok Cole. — washingtonpost.com

While the drawbacks of the Brutalist building, dedicated in 1975, have been known for years, two options mentioned in the GAO report, beyond modernizing the existing structure, could spell big changes for the building and downtown. The first: "[D]emolish the Hoover Building and construct a new headquarters on the existing site." And the second: "[A]cquire a new headquarters on a new site." — huffingtonpost.com

Architects innovate through design, but developers also innovate by selecting architects and making decisions to invest in new neighborhoods or provide housing forms that they think other developers are neglecting. Although what developers do is not as obvious as architecture, that doesn’t mean there aren’t consequences to liming competition among them. — forbes.com

The National Mall has been loved to death. It is our country’s most visited national park, with more than 25 million annual visitors and 3,000 annual permitted events. This 700-acre park was not built to withstand this level of use and has not received adequate resources to be restored and maintained to a level befitting its role as an irreplaceable piece of our American fabric. — nationalmall.org