The Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington DC is the only American cultural institution with a museum and an art college co-existing under one roof. Since it’s founding in the late 19th Century, both the museum and the art college have outgrown their original spaces in the historic building designed by Beaux Arts architect Ernst Flagg. An important goal of the international competition was to explore architectural opportunities to expand and maximize the buildable areas within the restrictive existing site at the nation’s capital.
The site for the Corcoran was located at the intersection of 17th Street and New York Avenue, just a block away from the south lawn of White House. The prestigious and demanding context limited the room for the expansion within the vacant lot along New York Ave, as supposed to adding to the historic front on 17th Street.
For the competition, we decided to prioritize our effort to address two problems facing the Corcoran: 1) How to create new exhibition spaces as a continuation of the classical sequence of galleries from the original building; and 2) How to better integrate the art school with the museum to create the best synergy.
Working with color program blocks, we arrived at an organization that would put the new exhibition spaces (in yellow) in the vacant lot, completing the gallery loop that started from the Beaux-Arts building. In this scheme, the art school (in red) would occupy the upper levels to maximize natural light for the art studios.
This organization was further studied in a larger scale (1:1/4 in) interior model, with the new exhibition spaces shown as two towers.
This massing was quickly developed into a presentation model (1:1/8 in) for the competition submission. The presentation model has intentionally left the materiality of the design unspecified. In our minds, the white marble commonly used in the monuments of Washington DC was a possibility.
After winning the competition, we were finally able to engage in a prolonged dialogue with the museum’s curatorial team, leading to critical re-evaluation of our initial proposal. We began the re-design process from the inside out, focusing on the development of a new central atrium space that would connect the original building with the proposed new gallery wing.
A new “temple” of galleries for American Art, situated on axis with the gallery sequence from the original beaux-arts museum, would anchor the atrium space. This “temple” would also incorporate sculptural terraces, under a vaulted ceiling supported by a network of exposed lightweight steel trusses.
This new central atrium would be the meeting place between the original entry from 17th Street a new group entry along New York Ave with upgraded visitor services. This New York Ave entry would also be the entry to the art college, which has been relocated to below grade to better connect with the museum support spaces. Two large skylights on each side of the New York Ave entry would provide natural light to the teaching studios and give the art college street presence.
The design development also allowed the design team to reconsider the exterior design. Returning to the massing blocks, we studied different ways to organize the new gallery spaces; finally favoring a three-tower configuration (image on upper right) instead of the two-tower scheme from the competition.
The three tower massing led the design team to re-considered the sculptural articulation of the scheme, arriving at a design with three curved surfaces, like monumental sails along New York Ave.
These animated volumes, when viewed diagonally from a distance, would compliment the rotunda at the corner of the original Beaux-Arts Building. And instead of the white marble (as we initially considered for the exterior material), these rounded volumes would be clad with stainless steel to distinguish the addition from the original, and enhance the street-scape with a sense of lightness.
When approached from the opposite side of New York Ave, the new animated exterior of the Corcoran Addition would mediate the scale and architectural styles between the neighboring office building (which was also the headquarter of the American Institute of Architects) and the original Corcoran.
The design was then translated into the computer to further develop the structure as well as the connection to the underground spaces for the art school. The geometries of the sail-like forms were optimized with all straight structural members.
Despite our effort, the project was cancelled shortly after the Presidential Election in 2000. However, the close collaboration between the design team and the Corcoran team during the design development phase has led to a final design that exceeded the original competition submission. As it was evident from the two phases of the design, having a collaborative dialogue with the client made all the difference!
The projects in this section were designed and executed during my time at Gehry Partners LLP (the office). I am grateful to Mr. Gehry and the team at the office for their generosity and support over the years. All intellectual property rights of these projects continue to be owned by the office unless otherwise mentioned. The narrative texts on the projects are entirely personal, they do not represent the views or opinions of the office, its clients or any other third party or organization.