L’Enfant Plaza, Washington, DC. 2008.Among the numerous “nowhere places” created by architects in th
L’Enfant Plaza, Washington, DC. 2008.Among the numerous “nowhere places” created by architects in the past 50 years, one of the most sterile, uninviting, and on all too many days of the year (when it is steamy hot or windy and cold) outright uncomfortable is the L’Enfant Plaza area just south of the Mall in Washington, DC. Vast paved surfaces open to the elements are combined with some of the most banal architecture imaginable. Virtually all of the office space above ground is occupied by one Federal agency or another, while shops, restaurants, and services have been buried in a subsurface “maul.” Most workers access their jobs by Metro’s underground lines or through underground parking garages directly connected to the office buildings, and thus there is little street life even at rush hours. When the Federal workers have gone home, usually by 6 pm, the area is all but abandoned, left both creepy and demonstrably dangerous. The L’Enfant Metro station, one of the busiest and most important in that system, also has one of the highest crime rates. But I am sure the elegant ground plan, presented in an eloquent maquette,was most impressive before the horror was actually constructed. -- source link
#architecture#planning#office buildings#l'enfant plaza#washington dc#2008