Our competition-winning collaboration with PWP Landscape Architecture to redesign Constitution Gardens on the National Mall honors the clear and optimistic legacy of its 1970s design and seeks to heighten the Gardens' unusual nature, enhance the beauty of its forms, clarify its purpose, envelop all the senses.
A new pavilion creates a threshold and operates as a nexus of activity for the park whose dramatic new topography accentuates the quiet haven that is Constitution Gardens. The pavilion transitions from the higher terrain of the Mall down into the bowl of the Gardens with a cantilever over the lake’s path. An equilateral grid envelope defines the pavilion as a space yet a part of the landscape. From scale to massing and materials, the 160-foot wide, splayed pavilion is designed to integrate into the landscape, to entice and protect without obscuring. And like the landscape, it is modern in form and contemporary in tectonics.
The park will retain its original purpose as a pastoral setting, but offer new uses and events, in all seasons, day and night. The design respects and enhances the former plan, adds programmable areas for year-round activities, reconstructs the entire landscape to health, and provides a destination pavilion that is of the park yet stands strong in its individuality.
