L'Enfant Plaza (Washington, D.C.)

USA / District of Columbia / Washington / Washington, D.C.
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The L'Enfant Plaza complex is an early work of I.M. Pei, later to become the heralded architect of the $1B renovation of the Louvre Museum in Paris. Though it too features glass pyramids, L'Enfant Plaza is not aesthetically successful. Its long promenade was originally intended to provide an unobstructed view of the original Smithsonian Museum. Unfortunately, later plans placed the looming Forrestal Building directly in the line-of-sight. In other areas --the side near 395-- the "public" spaces lead to dead ends. Remarkable for what it didn't predict about the trajectory of I.M. Pei's career.
Wikipedia article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L'Enfant_Plaza
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Coordinates:   38°53'4"N   77°1'32"W
This article was last modified 14 years ago