All cities bear scars, evidence of past planning decisions, made with the best of intentions, that affect urban space in negative ways over the following decades. For more than 40 years, Washington, D.C.’s northwest quadrant has suffered a particularly prominent one where the District’s downtown meets the Capitol Hill neighborhood to the east: A three-block-long, 200-foot-wide opening above the depressed Center Leg Freeway (I-395), which runs beneath the nation’s capital from New York Avenue down to the Southeast Freeway (I-695).
Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (SOM)—which developed the master plan for Capitol Crossing, is managing the deck construction, and will provide construction administration services until the project is complete—has been at the center of it all… “There was both an art and a science to calibrating the plan,” says Kristopher Takács, director of SOM’s D.C. office.