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Interior Motives
Interior Motives Grand Stair in the Stewart Lee Udall Photo © Ulf E. Wallin
Department of the Interior Building.

Generation-Long Project

Modernizes Cabinet Department

by Steven K. Dickens, AIA, LEED AP

It’s not unusual for an architectural project to take several years To be sure, there were substantial periods of inaction due
from the beginning of the design phase through completion of to funding hold-ups and other issues. Construction of Phase 1,
construction, and few architecture firms can match the depth in fact, did not begin until 2002, a sufficiently long gap that the
of experience that the architecture firm of Shalom Baranes original design documents, completed in 1997, had to undergo
Associates (SBA) has with large, multi-phased, institutional significant updates to meet new code requirements. There
rehabilitation/restoration projects. But even by SBA’s standards, was another “hold” period from 2012 to 2014. Nevertheless,
the modernization of the Washington headquarters of the the project had some 16 active years, and even during the hold
Department of the Interior (DOI) is superlative. The firm’s work periods, work seldom dropped to nothing: for this kind of
on Phase 1 started in 1994, and Phase 6—the final phase—was project, there’s always another little study to perform, form to
completed in 2017. That’s 23 years from start to finish. fill out, or conference call to join.

60 INTERIOR MOTIVES