ROGERS PARTNERS Architects+Urban Designers

Rogers Partners' ongoing work at Constitution Gardens on the National Mall honors the clear and optimistic legacy of its 1970s design and 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. 

 

Essential in this renewal, a new pavilion amplifies the sense of threshold and operates as a nexus of activity. A roofed structure containing a restaurant, concessions, a grand stair and an outdoor lookout transitions the building from the higher terrain of the Mall down into the bowl of the Gardens with a dramatic cantilever over the lake’s path. Visitors will enjoy the Gardens from the pavilion’s 155-foot-long balcony and discover a beautiful retreat within the restaurant, the only place on the National Mall proper at this time. 

 

An equilateral grid envelope defines the pavilion as a space yet a part of the landscape. From scale to massing and materials, the pavilion is designed to integrate into the landscape, to entice and protect without obscuring. Like the landscape, it is contemporary in form and tectonics. 

 

By maintaining the Gardens as the enclave that it is and increasing that experience through landscape interventions and the simple architecture of the pavilion on its promontory, this iconic, multi-programmed public realm offers locals and visitors a welcoming place to retreat from the touristic intensity of the National Mall.