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 Steven Holl Architects

THE REACH, THE KENNEDY CENTER FOR THE PERFORMING ARTS

Washington D.C., United States. 2019

Description +

PROGRAM: rehearsal space, classroom space, event and pre-function space, meeting room, 144-seat multipurpose space, landscape gardens, performance space, production office, River Pavilion Cafe, catering kitchen, perennial gardens, bus parking

CLIENT: John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts

SIZE: landscape area 130,000 sq ft , interior 72,000 sq ft

STATUS: complete

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.

The titanium white board-formed concrete pavilions engage with the landscape, gently curving to catch natural light for the interior. The concrete finish is made up of 4” tongue and groove Douglas fir boards that lined CNC plywood forms. From a distance the concrete appears monolithic and seamless but when examined up close has the scale of wooden boards that relate to the body and hand, while simultaneously showing an imprint of the building process.

While all different in form, resisting any defined geometric description, the three pavilions are connected through their ruled-surface geometry. This strategy creates a language of forms, from conical sections to hyperbolic paraboloids, a visual acoustics echoing across the pavilions, cupping space between them, and dispersing sound on the inside.

Inside the building, a newly developed crinkled concrete texture lines the walls of rehearsal and performance spaces, integrating acoustical qualities directly within the structural cast-in-place concrete walls.

Natural light is given to all spaces via translucent, clear and curved glass. Through etching the glass, and sandwiching translucent white films between layers, luminous surfaces diffuse light deep into the interior, and glow outward at night. Windows are positioned to provide views through the full depth of the interior, from the entry lobby though rehearsal and event spaces to the river and landscape beyond, encouraging creative curiosity and dynamic interaction.

With The REACH, the Kennedy Center’s direct connection to the Potomac River is finally achieved, more than 50 years after it was lost in Stone’s initial design. A new pedestrian bridge, which appears to float over the park way, allows easy access to and from the Rock Creek Trail and the Georgetown waterfront.

The newly expanded campus positions the Kennedy Center as a 21st century, future-oriented arts institution, and celebrates President Kennedy and his significant contribution to the arts and American culture.

Ecological Innovation +

Certified LEED Gold

– Geothermal heating and cooling (27 wells)
– Largest green roof in Washington, D.C.
– Active slab conditioning with displacement air ventilation
– Transparent glass cavity wall
– Active slab insulating with natural ventilation
– High performance clear and translucent glazing provides extensive daylight
– Stable below-critical thermal mass construction reduces energy use

Videos +

  • CBC Sunday Morning, The "luminist architecture" of Steven Holl
  • The REACH at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts

Credits +

  • architect

    - Steven Holl Architects

    Steven Holl (design architect, principal)

    Chris McVoy (senior partner in charge)

    Garrick Ambrose (project architect, senior associate)

    Magdalena I. Naydekova (assistant project architect)

    Bell Ying Yi Cai, Kimberly Chew, J. Leehong Kim, Martin Kropac, Elise Riley, Yun Shi, Dominik Sigg, JongSeo Lee, Alfonso Simelio (project team)

  • associate architects

    - BNIM Architects

  • project manager

    - Paratus Group

  • structural engineer

    - Silman

  • MEP engineer

    - ARUP

  • civil engineer

    - Langan Engineering & Environmental Services

  • climate engineer

    - Transsolar

  • lighting consultant

    - L'Observatoire International

  • cost estimator

    - Stuart-Lynn Company

  • code consultant

    - Protection Engineering Group

  • facade consultant

    - Thornton Tomasetti

  • landscape architect

    - Edmund D Hollander Landscape Architects Design

  • traffic and parking

    - Gorove Slade Associates

  • food service consultant

    - JGL Food Service Consultants

  • regulatory consultant

    - Stantec

  • acoustic/AV/IT/security consultant

    - Harvey Marshall Berling Associates

  • pre construction manager

    - James G. Davis Construction Corporation

  • vertical transportation consultant

    - Vertran

  • concrete consultant

    - Reg Hough Associates

Quotes +

  • Barry Bergdoll "A transformation that marks nothing less than a new threshold in the work of one of the country’s most creative architects and a milestone in the evolving concept of the relationship of the performing arts to the public.”
  • Kriston Capps, CityLab - The Atlantic, September 6, 2019 “The REACH is open, with porous barriers to distinguish passageways from performance spaces. It’s light, with apertures that reach even below-grade areas. And it’s fluid, with unexpected twists at every turn."
  • Philip Kennicott, The Washington Post, August 30, 2019 “The internal spaces of the Reach have no clear geometry, but lots of appealing oddities, gentle angles, curious notches and walls that arc up gently from the ground. […] The new lecture hall, with its crinkle concrete walls (an acoustical detail that is lovely to look at) and warm wood, is an inviting space, and if programmed with substantial arts content will be a welcome addition to the larger Kennedy Center. The educational spaces, some of them with good views of the river, will expand the center’s potential impact on young audiences.”
  • Justin Davidson, New York Magazine, August 20, 2019 “It is warm and subtle, full of gentle arcs, startling reveals, and lively shadows. More importantly, it’s an example of how long-simmering architecture can seem suddenly urgent when, at last, it’s done.”
  • David M. Rubenstein, Chairman of the Board, Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts "The REACH expands the life of this institution even wider, reaching out to invite the community to come experience the arts in hands-on, informal ways. . . Designed for experimentation, the REACH is truly a place where the artist - and audience - can be free to explore new horizons in the arts. . . Indeed, it really is poetry in geometric form.”
  • Katie Gerfen, Architect Magazine, October 2019 “The combination of porosity and informality is part of an effort to democratize all varieties of the performing arts - and to make them more accessible to a broader, younger audience.”

News +

Awards +

  • 2022 Barrier-Free America Award
  • 2021 International Urban Project Awards, Shortlist
  • 2020 Dezeen Awards, Shortlist for Cultural Building of the Year
  • 2020 Surface Design Awards, Light & Surface Interior Shortlist
  • 2020 American Concrete Institute Award, First Prize
  • 2020 Architect's Newspaper Best of Design Award, Winner of cultural Category
  • 2020 AIA NY Design Award, Honor Award
  • 2019 ASLA Illinois, Merit Award
  • 2019 Fast Company, Innovation by Design Award, Finalist - Crinkle Concrete
  • 2019 Lambda Alpha International, Outstanding Project Award
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