Capitol Mis-Steps: Security Strikes DesignBy Jane Holtz Kay "America's Welcome Mat," they described the elegant tree-lined walkway that carried generations towards the peak of the nation's Capitol. Its designer, Frederick Law Olmsted, might be unknown to map-carrying visitors, but its landscape was the enduring image that defined Washington and the workings of democracy for generations. For all the evocative vision of the place and for all our flag-waving since 9/11, this seemingly sacred space may soon vanish. The bulldozers and backhoes are poised to scoop these once-sacred grounds and vista into oblivion. Out will come the century-old promenade and environs of the Capitol leading to the Olympian heights of the capitol dome beneath the statue of freedom. Down will come their artfully limned trees. Talk about your evil axes. In their stead will come a ramp leading to an enormously bloated underground Visitors Center, a subterranean monument to the urge to aggrandize and fortify the nation. Three stories deep and ten football fields large, the project excavated beneath the capitol will alter the way we witness and absorb our past and our leaders pursuing our much-vaunted democracy in action. So much for history and landscape In fact, the banishing of this historic and aesthetic space to re-shape the Capitol in the name of national security was hatched before the terrorist attacks. But the legitimate apprehension after the shooting of two Capitol guards in 1998, swollen now by post terrorist priorities and public relations, is producing a bunkeresque entrenchment packed with Disney-esque displays and pushed with extra vigor in the name of safety. Such fears couched in the name of national security have expanded the scope and advanced the $265 million overblown Congressional concoction. The money has been budgeted. Just when workers will begin the plunge 3 stories down, far below the earth to create this gray elephant, is unknown. Conceived for practical and safety reasons as well as edifice complex urges, this space will, admittedly, supply more room for visitors now forced to wait outside to gain access. It may - may - enhance security. Yet, in the name of surveillance, this tourist-oriented, 588,000-square foot structure (two-thirds the size of the capitol itself) will delve down deep in spaces so large and numerous that they remain unassigned. Bearing names of dubious distinction and specification - beyond such uncertain monikers as orientation theater, center for interactive elements, auditorium, and educational arenas with their pseudo-view of Congress' inside workings, they will destroy the art of the founding father of landscape architecture.
As the grand city library of the 19th century was called "the people's palace," so this historic path to the capitol's east front was the processional to its democracy. The landscape architect's design welcomed the visiting public through a double allee of trees flanked by gracious grounds and terraces. It offered a view of the domed building that shelters the workings of our democratic system that was the model for the world. That whole flank will vanish. Despite the sham rendering released by the architect of the capitol that hides the damage to come to the exterior (www.aoc.gov), the building planned will create a gaping hole to totally subvert the historic ceremonial processional and space. Today, the walks, the drives - the 1874-1891 plan Olmsted executed after finishing Central Park - endure. The paths and terraces remain. Its procession of harmonious spaces embrace the Capitol building. Not if this succeeds. The pathway, the terraces, the trees on the visitor center's route will disappear. The Capitol's ill-treatment is just one instance of how the urge to hunker down is threatening our every day, livable landscapes. A legion of off-putting aluminum and concrete obstacles from the Champs Elysee to Boston's vast City Hall plaza to Washington, D.C., rope off public space, with and without credible cause, turning benign places where people congregate into harsh environments of steel and concrete-strewn badlands. "The new status symbol," says one insider. The trend to fortify steel more deeply progresses, as a parallel underground Visitor Center-cum-excavation by Laurie Olin moves ahead post haste to sink under the Washington Monument. The unasked question here is: will such replacement spaces be more or less secure? In the case of the capitol, the Visitor Center will multiply the number of today's 5000 people meandering outside shifting them into the underground space beneath congress. Is that safer? Add to that the extra staff, the trucks with goods for restaurants and gift shops (plenty of space for bombs here), the librarians, historians, media folk, cleaning staff ... you name it ... and one wonders how this can do anything but decrease security. We have yet to pause to determine the risk involved in all these ancillary vehicles and personnel. RTKL, the architects chosen by the committee to make the place shipshape states, that they were "humbled and gratified," to be the architects of the Pentagon. That humility does not appear in their design. Experienced in fortifying besieged foreign and embassy clients, they are conditioned to advance the new priorities to buttress, trench and re-treat as their most important produce, one supposes. But what of the role of landscape architects such as Sasaki Associates engaged in this project? What does it mean to see this prominent firm so secretive? Have they simply signed on to the ethos of this era of slicing shrubbery and shifting curb heights for security? How do they feel about the dark duty of hatcheting the past of the father of their profession? What does it mean to eradicate this image of Congress in its green environs for an underground playground, you might want to ask. Don't bother. The architects decline to comment publicly on this most public of projects. Indeed hush, hush off-the-record respondents outnumber quotables ten to one. The silence goes far beyond the usual "don't quote me but..." or even a call back that "we can't respond." That note becomes ever more ominous in a public society. "I think we've got our heads in the clouds about this security stuff," says a (typically) anonymous activist to save the Capitol. Is this the world we're living in and building for? Will Al Queda be our inspiration? Will the urge to fortify America produce more of the Mussolini modern-style of the RTKL interiors here and elsewhere? How well did the firm's security-consciousness succeed in the Pentagon after all, you may ask. Can't landscape architects make sacred spaces ... secure spaces. And, secure spaces ... safe? (Wouldn't it be better to give computer lessons to the FBI, one might ask.) Certainly, designers are adept at pivoting people where they will through adroit devices, gatehouses, bollards, planters - anything other than the military fortresses that abound. Assumedly, too, they have concern with saving a masterwork of their hero. These are the times that try one's sense of place. But, ironically, as we talk of making new memorials to 9/11, we undermine older memorials now standing. Strangely, the flagwaving, Madison Avenue-esque website of the Architect of the Capitol gives testimony to the faux patriotism of the security-first selling tools used motivate this, as other constructions. Reading the hard sell website, the thought suddenly occurs that the imprimatur of former Senator John Glenn as its sponsor only substantiates the distant date of their origins those many, many months before 9/11. Worse, a bogus rendering obscures the design of the underground pit, obfuscates about the destruction of grounds underway and offers an equally mendacious text declaring that the re-do of the grounds will be a restoration "to the original plan by Frederick Law Olmsted in the 1870s." The almost comic excess of the text doesn't desist. Brunoldi, the painter of the interior, it goes on, "took only eleven months to cover the 4,664-square-foot-surface of the canopy," it applauds the painter's rapid pace. In contrast, "Michelangelo's Sistine chapel took four years." By such reasoning, the flattening of the Olmsted landscape will surely take mere months compared to the time span of slow-handed old" Uncle Fred" and his slow-growing trees The call for security uber alles seems equally duplicitous in the architect of the capitol's next image showing visitors looking upwards, from underground, towards the dome through a glass skylight ... a view that will be ravaged by their work. This subterfuge would be insulting to the intelligence if it were not so dishonorable. The presentation of the plan concludes by announcing "The Campaign for Democracy's Front Door," with a plea for funders. Anyone for opening their wallets here? And what of those who might open their wallets for Olmsted? What does the silence of landscape architects and admirers say of preserving this historic work? Though some voices for preservation now hold a seat on the National Planning Commission Task force, theirs is clearly not the commission's priority. Nor has the National Association of Olmsted Parks come out with a statement of support. In light of the "atmosphere" of the hour, one member tells me, they are awaiting an answer to objections voiced to the Architect of the Capitol in June ... last June. "Freedom without Fortresses" was the title of a November event sponsored by the AIA (American Institute of Architects) and RTKL which takes its mission "securing safe places" seriously. But if inserting the artifacts of the freeway constitutes "safe," they deny the notion of place. "If a painting or sculpture is purchased, it is safe to assume that it will be respected," he observed. "A house or landscape, however, may be brought down." So, too, may a nation's sense of place and self. A version of the above appeared in Landscape Architecture in the critic-at-large column, September 2002.
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Amazingly, there has been little public outcry concerning this threat to his most "intact landscape," in the words of Ellen Schillinglaw, project director for the Cultural Landscape Foundation. Olmsted's aim was to ground the capitol and add to its majesty and meaning. That loss receives little attention. What news reporting there is, has gone to the trees. Of all the invocations to save the landscape, "Woodman, spare that tree" has classically roused the most emotion. But not even the downing of named trees like Abigail Adams and the sixty foot, 12-ton Liberty Tree, not to mention some 68 other stalwarts, never went much beyond a few articles in the Washington Post. The meaning of the overall landscape work received little attention.