"President Trump slapped his name on the US Institute of Peace headquarters yesterday, where it stands as a perfect monument to both the President's megalomania and one of the silliest-looking buildings in Washington, DC. The building is a hulking pile of nonsense near the National Mall and features a roof meant to invoke the wings of a dove. That's a symbol of peace, in case your grasp of the incredibly obvious has dimmed."
"In that sense, the building is a "duck," as the architects Robert Venturi, Denise Scott Brown, and Steven Izenour called structures that are a symbol for what they contain. Think the Longaberger Basket Building in Ohio, or the Dog Bark Park Inn in Idaho. It's as if the saying "A bit too on the nose" had splendid conference rooms and a fabulous view of the Lincoln Memorial."
"Although the institute will have public areas, where museum exhibits would justify and explain the work of the institute, the building feels closed off from the city. The executive offices, which also face the Lincoln Memorial, are down a long corridor, Versailles-like, making them remote from general circulation. The boardroom is exquisite, high-end everything, and opens on to the Mall-view patio."
President Trump affixed his name to the US Institute of Peace headquarters, a large building near the National Mall with a roof shaped to invoke a dove's wings. The structure functions as a literal 'duck'—a building whose form signals its purpose—echoing examples like the Longaberger Basket Building and the Dog Bark Park Inn. The building contains long corridors of executive offices facing the Lincoln Memorial, an opulent boardroom opening onto a Mall-view patio, and public spaces confined to the ground floor and basement. The exhibition space is slated to expand only after additional funding. The site once hosted a fistfight between Ryan Grim and Jesse Watters.
Read at Washingtonian - The website that Washington lives by.
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