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Washington, DC
And I am finally seeing that I was the one worth leaving
After attending successful AIA Conventions in Los Angeles (where I got to see John Lautner Houses), Boston (where I got to go to the Exeter Library), San Francisco (where I learned all about and saw base isolators), Miami (where I visited private houses designed by Arquitectonica and Morris Lapidus) and New Orleans (where I learned my fate), it’s off to Washington, DC and the 2012 AIA Convention.
As for the picture, if it looks a little like you’re looking at a scale model of the Lincoln Memorial, that’s done on purpose. This is a real photo of the real Lincoln Memorial that has been manipulated using a method called tilt shift to make it look like you’re looking at a scale model of the Lincoln Memorial.
If there was something that fought against this year’s AIA Convention being especially special, it was that I already had a base familiarity with Washington and most of its five star sites. It’s an easy three hour train trip from New York or a hellish five hour drive away, and it’s a rare year that I don’t find myself in DC at least once or twice a year. With that familiarity already a known factor, I went out of my way to try and hunt down tours that either gave me a deeper understanding of something I thought I already understood or, ideally, took me somewhere I haven’t been yet. This is one of those tours.
ET109 (“ET” at the AIA means educational tour, as opposed to extraterrestrial, embryo transfer, execution time or Entertainment Tonight) was the first tour I took, and it brought me to the United States Peace Institute, a fine building designed by Moshe Safdie at a great location- just north of (and within direct view of) the Lincoln Memorial. The Institute features an open atrium with a roof that is supposed to feel like a giant, translucent headless dove has landed on it, which it kind of does. The building houses the United States Peace Institute, which advances advance peacebuilding through expanded public education, training, and convening.” Hopefully all that convening one day actually works, I think we could all use some peace.
This is a good example of a tour that could give me a deeper understanding of something I thought I already understood. ET125 was called Washington Illuminated: Monumental Lighting Design, and it did just what it said, taking us to three different memorials where the (always) soft spoken lighting designers attempted to explain their work to a large unruly group of architects. The three memorials were the Air Force Memorial, the World War Two Memorial and the Washington Monument, and at all three I learned more than I expected about both the designer’s goals and the practical issues involved in lighting such iconic locations.
Here is somewhere that I definitely had not been before. ET124 took me to see the Embassy of Sweden, or as they like to call it, the House of Sweden, a new building on the waterfront at the edge of Georgetown, just past the Watergate. Designed by Gert Wingardh and Tomas Hansen, it had all sorts of nice moments including a rooftop terrace with a translucent wood pattern on the glass.
I had been here before, many, many times before, and will likely be here many, many times again. This is one of my favorite buildings and definitely my favorite building in Washington, IM Pei’s East Wing of the National Gallery. Unfortunately the building was covered in scaffolding and for good reason. The exterior walls consist of massive, 500 pound panels that are apparently failing and starting to fall off. Pei had designed the system with rubber gaskets to avoid expansion joints- a good idea in 1978 but, over time, one that it causing just a little trouble here in 2012. Each of the panels needs to be replaced and, when you start to think about it, that’s a lot of panels.
Even with a busy schedule, I still had some time to myself in the city. For this trip I decided to stay somewhere inconvenient, primarily to save hundreds and hundreds of dollars, which is always a good thing. I ended up at a hotwire hotel in Alexandria, Virginia (a very nice Westin Hotel, thanks hotwire), but it was a ten minute walk to the King Street Metro Station and a twenty five minute ride to the convention center, meaning that I wasn’t going to go back to my hotel during the day unless I had a lot of extra time. Luckily the Washington, DC Convention Center was pretty close to all of the action and only a ten minute walk away from the National Portrait Gallery and its Norman Foster designed courtyard roof, a great place to hang out between tours and possibly one of the best collections of all of the Smithsonians.
There are a lot of things to do at an AIA Convention. There are educational tours (by now you just have to realize that I’m all about the educational tours), but there are also meetings and receptions and classes and keynotes. And there is also one big AIA party, although usually I could care less about that one. I usually get to meet colleagues at all of the other events, and the party is an additional overpriced ticket that normally seems like a waste of money and, more importantly, time.
What changed my mind this time was the venue. The AIA party was held at the Newseum, a building designed by Ennead and your party ticket included free reign inside all of the galleries and exhibits. So while all of these architects enjoy some food and drinks and talking to the same people they always talk to under a news helicopter and purple lights, I had the whole museum and all of its galleries and exhibits almost completely to myself.
The Newseum certainly has interesting galleries and exhibits although, since almost anything can be considered news, almost anything can be considered an exhibit. It also has a terrific location and the views that such a location can afford. Directly across Pennsylvania Avenue from the National Gallery of Art, you have views of the Capitol Building (not pictured) and all the way down to the not visible White House.
