BY BRADFORD MCKEE
The storefront gallery. Image courtesy of LAM.
First, our thanks to the many members and supporters of ASLA who gave their pledges, time, and enthusiasm to help build a new home for us all, the Center for Landscape Architecture. We are holding its public opening this week. What?s especially nice is that the center is our beloved old home, our sweet, four-story, 12,000-square-foot brick box in Chinatown, D.C. It is beautiful.
Sixteen months ago, all 50 of us moved over to Metro Center, into half our usual footage (nobody died, though it?s boring over there). Back home on Eye Street, Coakley & Williams Construction blew out all the gypsum walls that cut up the insides of our building, pulled out half a puzzling scissor stair that, we?re told, wouldn?t meet code today, and found a lot of daylight in the three-story atrium it leaves behind. The building was redesigned by Gensler. Our lower-level garden is by Oehme, van Sweden. We had such fun bringing it together. It went fast; the hard part to believe is that we began the project in 2014. The process was always focused on embodying the mission and vision of ASLA. We already had the ASLA Green Roof, by Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates, which opened in 2006 and looks better than ever. It was the second or third green roof in the District of Columbia, which now has more than 300 green roofs that combined cover more than 2.7 million square feet, or about 63 acres.
The ASLA Green Roof, by Michael Van Valkenb...