From spaghetti maze to grande allée

The area around the Kennedy Center is surely one of DC’s greatest failures of urban planning. Earlier this decade the Kennedy Center attempted to fix the situation with a new plaza, until its funding was blocked in 2005. But the idea is still a great one.

Today, DC Metrocentric found a concept study by architects Ehrenkrantz Eckstut and Kuhn, which takes the idea even further by decking over the entire “spaghetti maze” from the Lincoln Memorial to the Kennedy Center, creating usable space and a grande allée between the two.

The Mall is becoming crowded with memorials, and there is a now a moratorium on building new memorials on the Mall itself. NCPC and NPS are planning for the future of the Mall, trying to balance recreation, public assembly, and the demands for more memorials from veterans’ groups, ethnic groups, and others. Meanwhile, there’s prime real estate that’s also an eyesore right now, just begging to be decked over. It’ll just take a couple billion dollars.