Nestled Performances
Performance Arts Center within the DC Armory
Washington, DC
Designing for Performance, not Time
DC Armory, Washington DC“The project finds itself in Washington DC, the home of many Jazz, R&B, Go Go and Punk musicians before their eventual rise to fame elsewhere in the US. The DC Armory is accessible to the less arts funded wards of DC. Founding a music center focused on substantiating local music growth will help permeate musical evolution throughout the city. Removing and replacing the National Guard offices can help reintegrate the monumental mass with the rest of the urban fabric, as well as the pending RFK Campus sports redevelopment.”
In a time where access to art is at national risk, the project suggests a trio of performance-supporting buildings within the drill field of the DC Armory.
These buildings, in order from left to right, provide the following resources:
- Flexible spaces for practice, teaching, and the cross pollination of musical ideas.
- Intimate zones for exhibition, which can display works of either historical or artistic matter, but with complementary spaces dedicated for listening.
- Large, multi-use performance spaces for modularly expansive and reductive performances, depending on artistic intention.
These three buildings are intersected by “streets”, with spaces for presentation and performance, creating a mini musical city within the re-used drill field dome.
Designed through precedent analysis, iteration, and detailed refining of the wide variety of public and back-of-house spaces.
The inclusion of a catwalk system promotes variable levels of interaction within the structure, as well as freedom to explore.
Access to these open and welcoming spaces help promote creative developments in places where it may have been previously subdued.
Developed between September 2024
Thesis Advising led by Professor Lucia Phinney, along with advice from Professor Peter Stec and Elgin Cleckley