by Daniel J. Feil, FAIA Emeritus, Terminal Design Project Manager
The design scope of work (SOW) for the New Terminal at then-named Washington National Airport was developed in 1998, two years before the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) was passed. But the Uniform Federal Accessibility Standards (UFAS) had been in place for years and did apply, as federal funds were to be used. So the SOW stated that UFAS accessibility requirements had to be met. But the airport’s owner and operator, the Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority (MWAA) went much further, requiring universal access – both in public and service spaces, and in all tenant leased areas as well. In effect, all 1.2M square-feet were to be accessible. The requirement was fully embraced by the design architect, Cesar Pelli, and his studio, now Pelli Clarke Pelli.
Each year, members of AIA Virginia’s Emerging Leaders in Architecture class are tasked with examining and responding to a design problem facing a Virginia community. The 2020 cohort was challenged with creating innovative, equitable, and resilient solutions for transforming City of Portsmouth into a thriving downtown area.
As designers, we often find that the best ideas emerge through our conversations with clients early in the planning process. Whether we’re informally reviewing space requirements or engaging in formal surveys, planning sessions, or design charrettes, thoughtful suggestions from clients are the key ingredients that inform our design concepts and lead to successful projects.
It’s one year and counting since the Covid-19 pandemic sent us scurrying from our offices, doors shuttered, colleagues scattered. The emotional toll of the imposed isolation of working-from-home has not yet been measured, but it is real.
The Arlington National Cemetery Millennium Project is an $85 million initiative to expand the revered burial grounds by 27 acres for an additional 56,000 interments, while also preserving the site’s integrity and tranquility. Jacobs, the cemetery planner and designer, architect and landscape architect designer of record and the engineering designer of record, teamed up with structural engineer Ammann & Whitney (now part of Louis Berger), general contractor Forrester Construction, historic architecture/architectural design consultation, Beyer Blinder Belle Architects & Planners, landscape designer Sasaki Associates, stream restoration and wetland consultant Wetland Studies and Solutions Inc., and surveyor Rice Associates to bring the five-year project to life. The expansion balanced the urgent need for greater capacity with environmental concerns including water management, erosion control, native flora, and viewsheds.
Cemeteries are familiar to all of us in their programmatic elements like columbaria, crypts, and gravesites. Iconography, architecture, and liturgy come together to comfort the bereaved and mark a life transition. But there is still room for innovation on behalf of our hallowed rituals.
The new outdoor columbaria at Arlington National Cemetery arcs gently in plan along a central corridor and is anchored by a cast in-place-concrete and cedar-clad committal shelter at the center for pre-burial memorial ceremonies. The columbarium is, by definition, a series of niches, and this one is also a series of outdoor rooms. In the context of the larger, 27-acre addition, it is a sculptural counterpoint to wide open spaces associated with this historic cemetery, in operation since the Civil War.
“When you think of Arlington, you think of white tombstones marching along in a beautiful park-like setting. This project involved reconnecting a stream to its floodplain and the natural contour of the site,” says Stephen Wakeman, AIA, Design Principal for Jacobs, and a member of the Board of Directors for AIA Virginia. “It’s a respectful ground where we bury our soldiers. It’s landscape architecture; it’s architecture-as-object; and it’s a restoration project centered on a natural stream. “But, all that said, the design brief was simple: fit a series of columbaria into nature and do it in a quiet way.”
The next phase of the cemetery’s expansion, slated for completion by 2025, is a 37-acre expansion to the south of Arlington National Cemetery on the site of the former Navy Annex building. Learn more about the columbarium at jacobs.com.
Site Plan image courtesy of Jacobs.
About the Project Team
Owner: Arlington National Cemetery, U.S. Department of the Army Design and Construction Manager: U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Norfolk District Joint Venture: Jacobs/Ammann & Whitney, JV Jacobs: Cemetery Planning and Design Designer of Record for Architecture Designer of Record for Landscape Architecture Designer of Record for Civil Engineering Designer of Record for Electrical Engineering Amman & Whitney (Louis Berger): Designer of Record for Structural Engineering Landscape Designer: Sasaki Associates Inc. Historic Architecture/Architectural Design Consultation: Beyer Blinder Belle Architects & Planners Stream Restoration and Wetland Consultant: Wetland Studies and Solutions Inc. Surveys: Rice Associates General Contractor: Forrester Construction
About the Author William Richards is a writer and editorial consultant based in Washington, D.C. From 2007 to 2011, he was the Editor-in-Chief of Inform Magazine.
Virginia’s first railroad, connecting Petersburg south of Richmond with Garysburg, North Carolina, on the eastern side of the Commonwealth dates to 1830. That general direction and course would define most of Virginia’s commercial and passenger railroad activity, even as it sprawled into the sizable network of lines today. But the western lines are arguably more beloved for their scenic beauty, and the ones running in the shadow of the Blue Ridge Mountains have been a vital link for communities like Abington, Bristol, and Radford, well beyond the historic end of the line in Lynchburg. Some of them have been transformed, like the Abington Branch of the Norfolk and Western, disused since 1977, which has become the Virginia Creep rail-trail. Others remain active, such as the old line first started by the Virginia and Tennessee Railroad Companies in the 1850s, which still runs through Radford, where Virginia Tech architecture students completed the New River Train Observation Tower in November 2019.
George Floyd and Breonna Taylor’s murders were clarion calls for Dayton Schroeter, AIA, and Julian Arrington at SmithGroup, and their travelling exhibit, “Society’s Cage,” was their response to three related questions: what is the value of Black life, what is the nature of power in this country, and what is the relationship of Black people to power structures in our country? The experience of visiting Society’s Cage centers on entering a 15’x15’ cube comprised of steel rods of varying lengths suspended within a series of rods that form a four-sided curtain. Visitors don’t move through the curtain so much as they contend with it. Our view in, out, or through the cube is fractured, striated, and ultimately governed by an unremitting and unforgiving structure. The metaphor is obvious, and that’s the point. Schroeter and Arrington wanted visitors to its first installment on the National Mall last summer to visualize power and understand how it contorts vision, body, and movement.
