The project was developed by the team lead by Steven Holl Architects with BNIM. The REACH is a Kennedy Center expansion comprising of three interconnected, geometric pavilions, adding some 6,690 square-meter of rehearsal, education, and flexible indoor and outdoor spaces to allow the Center to provide artistic and cultural opportunities and events to visitors.
Steven Holl created windows in each pavilion are positioned to provide amazing views and visions.
Steven Holl created windows in each pavilion are positioned to provide amazing views and visions.
“Through etching the glass, and sandwiching translucent white films between layers, luminous surfaces diffuse light deep into the interior, and glow outward at night.”
Steven Holl Architects
Outside, Steven Holl Architects designed a landscape providing large and intimate spaces with 35 gingko trees, transforming into a more inviting landscape open to the surrounding city, with a new pedestrian bridge that “floats” over the park way providing easy access to and from Rock Creek Trail and the Georgetown waterfront.
Project description by Steven Holl Architects
As a “living memorial” for President John F. Kennedy, the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts takes an active position among the great presidential monuments in Washington, D.C. Through public events and stimulating art, the Kennedy Center offers a place where the community can engage and interact with artists across the full spectrum of the creative process. The REACH expansion, designed by Steven Holl Architects, adds much-needed rehearsal, education, and a range of flexible indoor and outdoor spaces to allow the Kennedy Center to continue to play a leadership role in providing artistic, cultural, and enrichment opportunities.
The design for The REACH merges architecture with the landscape to expand the dimensions of a living memorial. The landscape design includes a narrative reflection on the life of President Kennedy: a grove of 35 gingko trees, which will drop their golden autumn leaves in late November, acknowledges John F. Kennedy’s position as the 35th President of the United States; and a reflecting pool and mahogany landscape deck are built in the same dimensions and mahogany boards of Kennedy’s WWII boat, the PT109.
In complementary/contrast to the monumental original Kennedy Center building by Edward Durell Stone, The REACH’s three pavilions are fused with the landscape. They shape outdoor spaces between them, and frame views to the Washington Monument, Lincoln Memorial and Potomac riverfront. The three pavilions are interconnected below green roofs to expand the Kennedy Center’s interior space with 72,000 sf of open studios, rehearsal and performance spaces, and dedicated arts learning spaces. Embedding much of the expansion under a public landscape offers maximum green space to the community and gives landscape views from the interior spaces.
The open landscape provides both large and intimate spaces to gather and visit at all times of the day. Simulcast projections of live performances from within the Kennedy Center will be projected onto the north wall of the largest pavilion in front of a broad lawn. The landscape serves as a green roof over the interior spaces below, the largest in Washington, D.C. at approximately 69,000 sf. The varied gardens will provide opportunities for casual performances and events and other flexible locations for enhanced engagement, further positioning the Center as a nexus of arts, learning, and culture in the years ahead.
