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Condo Building Above the Old Sears Throws Landmark a Beautiful CurveIt's the big curve that does it - the dramatic architectural gesture, the break from the norm.
How else to explain the grace, the fittingness, the beauty of the rather large new building constructed on the roof of the old Sears store at 4500 Wisconsin Ave. NW, a building that in itself once had - and still has, in fact - its own particular charms.
The curve begins in the north, on River Road, and sweeps more than 300 feet all the way to Albemarle Street.
At once elegant and surprising, the curve attracts your eye and keeps it moving.
Its proportions are just right.
The new building seems about twice the height of the old, a satisfying ratio.
Not too big, not too small.
Because it is set atop columns on the roof, most of which you do not see from the ground, the building almost seems to float, despite its size.
And though you might think the facade materials would clash, they don't.
Above, furrowed panels of silvery industrial metal.
Below, rectangles of board-formed concrete, set in an elongated checkerboard pattern.
The textures and colors are different but in the same spectrum of expression.
They complement each other.
These aesthetic decisions by the Washington architecture firm Shalom Baranes Associates were made in the cause of an urban cliche whose time has come again: living
more: www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/con... (88)
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23/9/2005 | Viewed 7,775 time(s)
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