The announcement that architect Steven Holl has been selected to lead a modest, pragmatic and surgical addition to the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts is the best news in a generation for those who feel the legendary marble box of culture needs to be a better neighbor. Long isolated from the city by a warren of highways, and disconnected from the Potomac River by a cantilevered balcony that limits access to Washington’s most splendid natural asset, the Kennedy Center has been a study in urban isolation since its opening in 1971.
But that could change if Holl’s design — which would place a floating pavilion in the Potomac River and reconnect the arts campus to a pathway that links Rock Creek Park and the Mall — comes to fruition. It won’t solve all the center’s problems, but it will start to chisel away at some.
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The Kennedy Center expansion, designed by Steven Holl architects, will be constructed south of the existing facility, and will include rehearsal, classroom and public access space.
Holl’s proposal, which would cost $100 million and add a modest 60,000 square feet of space, is small compared with a plan that was announced 10 years ago. In 2003, with the economy booming, the Kennedy Center dared to think big, hiring architect Rafael Viñoly to spearhead an ambitious $650 million, 400,000-square-foot plan to reconnect its isolated campus to the rest of Washington, with a deck built over nearby highway lanes, a long promenade extending E Street NW directly to the front of the arts center, and two new glass-and-steel buildings framing views of the center and adding much-needed rehearsal and office space. The center sought $400 million of federal funding for the effort, but by the summer of 2005, the hope of federal funding was dashed and the plan was shelved.
Today, the center is back with a consolation prize, and there is substantial consolation in the plan, even if it doesn’t come close to solving the center’s architectural and urban design woes. Holl is a major architect with a record of designing elegant and harmonious additions to cultural facilities. Holl’s success in 2007 with a major expansion to the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City, Mo., bodes well for his ability to integrate new facilities into the Kennedy Center campus.
The plans announced Tuesday are preliminary. Rather than a single, large addition— which might compete with the visual impact of the existing building — Holl proposed a set of three pavilion structures to be connected underground or by pathways and built on what is underused space south of the center.
One pavilion would float on the Potomac and might be used for outdoor performances. Another, dubbed the “glissando” pavilion, would include rehearsal space for the Washington National Opera, which is forced to rehearse in a facility in Takoma Park when it doesn’t have access to the Kennedy Center Opera House stage. One wall of the glissando structure — so named because its curvaceous form suggests a visual analogy to the rapid swoosh of tones that is a familiar trick of the harp or piano — would be used as an outdoor projection screen, possibly allowing for live simulcasts to al fresco audiences. A third pavilion is conceived as an entry structure, providing access for visitors arriving by bus.
Preview of “Eveningland,” a collaborative work by D.C.-based contemporary dance company Christopher K. Morgan & Artists and New York’s Skybetter and Associates.
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