A federal design panel gave preliminary approval yesterday to a planned underground visitors center and exhibit space that will accompany the Vietnam Veterans Memorial on the Mall.
The 35,000-square-foot Vietnam Veterans Memorial Center is slated for a grassy patch of the Mall located between the long, sloped wall of the Vietnam memorial and the Lincoln Memorial.
It will be almost entirely underground and largely invisible from afar, an attempt to avoid overshadowing the nearby wall and to reflect the simplicity of the memorial with its more than 58,000 names of those killed in the war etched in polished black granite.
“It must convey to all who enter or all who pass by a solemn and meaningful experience that reinforces the monument’s poetic impact,” said James Polshek, a New York architect who presented his firm’s design to the U.S. Commission of Fine Arts.
The panel, an independent body of architects and designers that gives advice on memorials and other public projects in the District, approved the underground design concept yesterday. It will vote later on the specifics of the center. The vote is advisory, although the commission has considerable influence over the outcome of projects.
Construction was approved by Congress in 2003, and the proposal has been vetted by the National Capital Planning Commission. The role of the fine arts commission is to make recommendations on the structure’s design to the National Park Service and the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund, the entities behind the center.
The commission’s action comes just a few weeks before the Vietnam memorial reaches its 25th anniversary.
The plan for the museum calls for visitors to descend into the center and pass along ramps that take them deeper underground, reaching 31 feet down at the lowest point. The shaft of an underground courtyard will let in natural light.
As they descend, visitors will pass by exhibits that include items left behind at the nearby memorial to remember those who died and photos of service members who died. There will also be a timeline of the Vietnam conflict.
Planners expect about 1.5 million people to visit the center each year. It is projected to cost up to $100 million, with a groundbreaking planned for 2010.
Commission members generally lauded the design, but some worried that it may prove too large despite the fact that it is underground. Others speculated that the series of subterranean walls bearing exhibits will too closely mirror the memorial itself.
Veterans groups largely support the project. Ann Sherman Wolcott, who lost a son in Vietnam and is past president of a group for mothers of killed troops called Gold Star Mothers, said the center was a fitting accompaniment to the wall.
“I will be honored to know that some of my son’s pictures, baby clothes and military items will be there as a reminder that he was really a person,” she said.
But there are critics of the project. A group called the National Coalition to Save Our Mall has sharply criticized the National Park Service, which will have authority over the center, for not providing enough time for public comments on the project.
The group’s chairwoman, Judy Scott Feldman, told the commission yesterday that issues such as traffic and possible flooding in the underground facility had not been seriously considered. And she said the center is emblematic of overbuilding on a Mall already crowded with monuments and memorials.
“The designers have had to carve up the historical landscape of the national Mall,” she said.
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