Folks use all types of metaphors to explain buildings. Le Corbusier mentioned a home was a machine for dwelling in. Some wag as soon as joked that the Kennedy Heart was the field the Lincoln Memorial got here in. After seeing two new downtown workplace buildings, I’ve began pondering of 1 because the grown-up model of the opposite.
Washington, D.C
Perspective | There’s a new copper canyon in downtown Washington
The newborn constructing is the brand new Australian Embassy at sixteenth Road and Massachusetts Avenue NW. I think about that when it grows up, it should seem like Midtown Heart, which was accomplished in 2018 three blocks away at fifteenth and L streets NW.
What strikes me about each of those buildings are the vertical copper accents. On the Australian Embassy, the vertical ribs are the russet shade of latest copper, simply aborning. On Midtown Heart, the a number of panels are inexperienced, like copper that’s aged after publicity to the weather.
It’s possible you’ll not care for his or her fashionable design, however I feel you’ll agree they’re related. That’s common. Like musicians who develop up listening to the identical standard songs or turn out to be excited by a brand new instrument — the synthesizer! Auto-Tune! — and incorporate these types and instruments into their very own music, so architects dip into related swimming pools of inspiration.
That’s very true with Classical buildings, of which Washington has loads.
“There are an excessive amount of guidelines,” mentioned Eric Jenkins, an architect and visiting lecturer on the College of Maryland and the Maryland Institute Faculty of Artwork.
“It’s nearly a grammar,” Jenkins mentioned. “You must comply with the grammar. When you don’t comply with the grammar you’ll be able to inform. Most architects in Washington, D.C. — most Classical architects — comply with the foundations very clearly. They know find out how to adapt them to completely different conditions.”
Over the a long time, architects in Washington have paid homage to a number of the world’s best-known buildings, including a number of tweaks of their very own.
“Apparently, the portico of the Nationwide Portrait Gallery is a elevate of the Parthenon of Athens,” Jenkins mentioned. “The entrance of the Supreme Courtroom constructing is the Maison carrée in Nîmes, France, enlarged.”
Critically, Google it. The resemblance is superb.
A Classical constructing telegraphs its intentions fairly clearly: Here’s a critical place, a spot of refined tradition or sober jurisprudence.
“There’s an concept that it goes again to one thing that unites us all,” Jenkins mentioned. “It’s not only a type. It’s about sustaining a cultural heritage.”
In fact, these two new buildings are fairly removed from the Supreme Courtroom or Nationwide Gallery of their designs. And that’s the place advances in development strategies and supplies are available in. The fashionable workplace constructing can have one thing each Midtown Heart and the Australian Embassy share: skinny, taut glass exterior partitions which can be hung like curtains. This permits architects to create as a lot flooring house as potential — thick partitions eat up house — and in a height-restricted metropolis like D.C., house is at a premium.
Then there’s the copper.
“We’re seeing extra copper as of late,” mentioned architect Mike Hickok of D.C. agency Hickok Cole.
He ought to know. His agency did 1701 Rhode Island Ave. NW, which options shiny copper horizontal and vertical accents that remind me of lizard pores and skin.
Whereas copper has lengthy been used for roofs — the Library of Congress Jefferson Constructing has an exquisite copper dome — it isn’t the simplest materials to work with for facades. It will possibly corrode when in touch with different metals. And over time, copper develops a patina, that verdigris shade you might or might not like.
The copper on Midtown Heart has been pre-patinated. The 14-story constructing was designed by ShoP architects. The copper facade, ShoP associate Gregg Pasquarelli informed the Arch20 web site, is “a refined, twenty first century interpretation of a cloth related to the nice architectural heritage of D.C.”
It’s actually the identical shade as Washington’s many statues.
Hickok mentioned architects are at all times pondering symbolically, even when that isn’t at all times obvious to the individuals who see their buildings. His agency designed the NPR headquarters on North Capitol Road. That constructing additionally has vertical accents: fins product of coloured glass spaced at completely different intervals. Hickok mentioned they characterize a diagram of a sound wave, the best way it compresses and expands.
The Australian Embassy was designed by Aussie agency Bates Good, with affiliate architect KCCT of Washington. Bates Good director Kristen Whittle wrote on the corporate’s web site that these copper ribs — which have been handled to remain that shade — assist to evoke the sunshine and desert panorama of Australia.
All good structure has a considerate purpose behind it, mentioned Hickok.
“It could not at all times be evident, but it surely doesn’t must be,” he mentioned. “It’s like a piece of contemporary artwork. You prefer it otherwise you don’t prefer it with out essentially realizing what the artist thought.”
I like these two buildings.