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View looking beyond the tiered
courtyards toward the juncture of
the Potomac and Anacostia rivers.
All photos © James and Connor Steinkamp
Perkins+Will completed the project to a point known and requirements involved—for security, sustainability,
as “bridging documents,” at which time the project was employee quality of life, sensitivity to historic and natural
put out to bid for design-build teams. The winning team settings, the community outside the fence, and so forth—
was led by Clark Construction with the Washington are hidden in plain sight, synthesized into a seamless
office of WDG as the “executive architect.” Working whole by the rambling layout, courtyards, vistas, design
with WDG and Clark was a small army of consultants, choices, and material selections. That is to say, these
some 27 total, including, for interior design, sustainability, qualities are hidden and synthesized by the architecture.
and landscape architecture, the Washington office of HOK. The U.S. Coast Guard Headquarters is the opposite of a
Because of schedule limitations related to the use of featureless, bunkered bureaucracy; it is a highly experiential
federal stimulus funds, the team had only eight months design both for the 21st-century employees who work
to pull construction documents together. there and for visitors. Some of the cubicle farms are large,
but one is always turning the corner to experience yet
This project had a lot of cooks in the kitchen, trying another surprising view of a creatively landscaped court-
to whip up an immensely large meal very quickly— yard, the forested flanks, a historic building, another
seemingly a recipe for disaster. WDG’s project manager wing of the headquarters building, or a distant panorama.
Durwood Dixon, AIA, noted, “It might not have been This starts, in fact, at the visitor checkpoint building in
possible, really, except that we were in recession. We which, immediately adjacent to the X-ray scanner, is a
were lucky, in a way, that every consultant was in the window framing a picture-perfect view of the pond with
same shape we were [economically], so they put their the lowest wing of the building beyond.
best people on the job. That’s how we did it in such a
short time frame.” One suspects—and hopes—that this will become a
model for future large agency headquarters.
While one hopes that the particular circumstances of
the Great Recession do not recur, the resultant complex is a
wonder. The seemingly overwhelming pile of standards
HIDDEN IN PLAIN SIGHT 23
