OMA + OLIN have been announced as the chosen architects for Washington DC's new 11st Street Bridge Park project. Illustration: OMA + OLIN
OMA + OLIN have been announced as the chosen architects for Washington DC's new 11st Street Bridge Park project.
Illustration: OMA + OLIN
The two firm's joint proposal beat out ideas from three other teams. Illustration: OMA + OLIN
The two firm's joint proposal beat out ideas from three other teams.
Illustration: OMA + OLIN
Like other elevated parks, the 11st Street Bridge Park project will be built on out-of-use infrastructure; in this case it’s an aging freeway that stretches over the Anacostia River. Illustration: OMA + OLIN
Like other elevated parks, the 11st Street Bridge Park project will be built on out-of-use infrastructure; in this case it’s an aging freeway that stretches over the Anacostia River.
Illustration: OMA + OLIN
The bridge connects two very different neighborhoods—the more affluent, developed Navy Yards on one side, and the more neglected Anacostia on the other. Here, what the bridge might look like during the winter months. Illustration: OMA + OLIN
The bridge connects two very different neighborhoods—the more affluent, developed Navy Yards on one side, and the more neglected Anacostia on the other. Here, what the bridge might look like during the winter months.
Illustration: OMA + OLIN
OMA + OLIN's intention is to make the 11st Street Bridge Park a community hub, rather than a pedestrian thoroughfare. Illustration: OMA + OLIN
OMA + OLIN's intention is to make the 11st Street Bridge Park a community hub, rather than a pedestrian thoroughfare.
Illustration: OMA + OLIN
To do that, OMA + OLIN designed “spaces that are really hardwired into the bridge.” Illustration: OMA + OLIN
To do that, OMA + OLIN designed “spaces that are really hardwired into the bridge.”
Illustration: OMA + OLIN
Permanent spaces are possible because the two teams fashioned an X-shaped structure that’s cantilevered up in the center to allow boats passage. Illustration: OMA + OLIN
Permanent spaces are possible because the two teams fashioned an X-shaped structure that’s cantilevered up in the center to allow boats passage.
Illustration: OMA + OLIN
This creates carved out spaces, and rooftops, allowing for cafes... Illustration: OMA + OLIN
This creates carved out spaces, and rooftops, allowing for cafes...
Illustration: OMA + OLIN
...and performance centers. Illustration: OMA + OLIN
...and performance centers.
Illustration: OMA + OLIN
OMA + OLIN imagine that X-shape joining the rest of the capitol's landmarks. Illustration: OMA + OLIN
OMA + OLIN imagine that X-shape joining the rest of the capitol's landmarks.
Illustration: OMA + OLIN
The Anacostia River is horribly polluted, so environmental education plays a big role in the design. Waterfalls on both ends of the bridge will demonstrate how plants naturally clean water. Illustration: OMA + OLIN
The Anacostia River is horribly polluted, so environmental education plays a big role in the design. Waterfalls on both ends of the bridge will demonstrate how plants naturally clean water.
Illustration: OMA + OLIN
The goal is to have a river that Washington DC's residents can swim and fish in by 2025. Illustration: OMA + OLIN
The goal is to have a river that Washington DC's residents can swim and fish in by 2025.
Illustration: OMA + OLIN
Converting abandoned infrastructure into thoughtful, pedestrian park space has been all the rage since the High Line opened to visitors in 2009. It only makes sense that Washington DC would do the same with a bridge that had hit its safety expiration date, and last week the judging committee for the 11st Street Bridge Park announced that OMA + OLIN would be the chosen architects for the city’s project. Their proposal for an angular, multi-use park (complete with waterfalls on both ends) beat out ideas from three other firms.
Like other elevated parks, the 11st Street Bridge Park project will be built on out-of-use infrastructure; in this case it’s an aging freeway that stretches over the Anacostia River. The bridge was built to last 50 years, and now that it’s expiration date is up the city can flip it into its first elevated public park. But, as OMA partner-in-charge Jason Long points out, the High Line and other elevated parks are “basically a path you walk down. You’re generally always in motion.”
The 11st Street Bridge needs to be a destination rather than a thoroughfare. The bridge connects two very different neighborhoods—the more affluent, developed Navy Yards on one side, and the more neglected Anacostia on the other—that have historically had very little interaction or shared space. If this new design can create that for the first time, it could help revitalize the Anacostia neighborhood’s economy and local amenities.
One of the proposed outdoor cafe spaces. : OMA + OLIN
To make it clear to visitors that the 11st Street Bridge Park is a place to linger, not power walk through, OMA + OLIN designed what Long calls “spaces that are really hardwired into the bridge.” Permanent spaces are possible because the two teams fashioned an X-shaped structure that’s cantilevered up in the center to allow boats passage: “We designed this X form, and there’s several things that fall out of that form,” Long says. “It creates multiple layers so there’s multiple levels you can occupy, and they form roofs over buildings, which creates spaces for programs.” This contrasts heavily with the landscape language of the High Line, which uses long floorboards in their walkway to create something like a visual current going downstream. As of now these structures in the 11th Street Bridge will include cafes, performance spaces, and environmental education centers, as well as a rotating program of local artists and artists who work with water.
Water, in general, plays a hefty role in the new design. The Anacostia River that flows beneath the bridge catches a ton of industrial, storm runoff, and sewage pollution, making it generally unusable for any of Washington’s DC’s citizens. “The goal is to have a river you can swim and fish in by 2025,” says OLIN partner Hallie Boyce, who led this project. To do that, the 11st Street Bridge Park will have to be part education center, part water treatment center. The latter will happen at the waterfalls, which act like large scale visualizations displaying how plants clean water, and in a series of floating wetlands near the shore.
Boyce also says the environmental education center could include features like digital displays that map in real time the progress of the river’s health. Kayak and canoe rentals offshore, while not exactly educational tools, will be set up to give residents more access to the river. The idea, Boyce says, is to encourage a new generation of stewardship over the local environment.
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