Breaking the Precast Mold
JBG Smith, 500 L’Enfant Plaza
Housing and Mixed Use
Rising over Washington DC's southwest waterfront, this new trophy office tower contemporizes a midcentury office complex for 21st-century use. Famous for its architectural history, L'Enfant Plaza had been equally infamous for its lack of pedestrian activity and austere, imposing aesthetic. Tasked with inserting a new Class-A addition at the plaza's Southeast corner, ZGF developed a contemporary response to the historic setting―one that achieved Commission of Fine Arts approval and overcame complicated site challenges.
Through its form and cladding, 500 L'Enfant Plaza engages in a dialogue with its neighbors—buildings designed by titans of modern architecture, I.M. Pei and Marcel Breuer. 500 L'Enfant Plaza's dynamic angular planes create a playful gesture in response to the adjacent Robert C. Weaver Federal Building’s encroaching curvilinear arms. A rhythmic façade expression of glass and metal panel provides formal echoes of the top-heavy, deep-set windows characteristic of the surrounding brutalist structures.
Location
Washington, DC
Square Feet
247,000
Completion date
2018
Project Component
Architecture services
Interior design and space planning
Urban design
Landscape services
Graphic design
Certifications
LEED Gold®
One of the first urban renewal projects in DC and the country, the L'Enfant Plaza development was originally planned by I.M. Pei and included three office buildings, a hotel, a plaza, and an underground shopping mall. When it opened in 1968, it was lauded by the Washington Post as "a triumph of good architecture over bad planning."
ZGF reconfigured the plaza drive to improve vehicular and pedestrian access to the site. Pockets of landscaping establish a more inviting environment at the street level.
Visitors approaching the building from the plaza level are greeted by a dramatic porte-cochere that provides a dignified sense of arrival.
500 L'Enfant Plaza's form reacts to the neighboring Robert C. Weaver Federal Building, completed by Marcel Breuer in 1968.
A triple-height lobby welcomes those entering from the street or the retail-promenade level.
The Class-A building offers a full amenity package, including two levels of below-grade parking, a fitness center, and an 8,000 SF landscaped roof terrace with sweeping views of the Potomac River, the Thomas Jefferson Memorial, and the Northern Virginia skyline. A typical floor plan offers 20,000 SF of space to prospective tenants with efficient, flexible 45-foot-deep floor plates. Eleven of the 12 floors are finished with high ceilings and floor-to-ceiling windows that offer panoramic views and abundant natural light.
The LEED Gold® building employs sustainable strategies, including energy-efficient mechanical systems, a high-performance envelope with glazing and sunshade strategies, and water conservation capabilities. Native plantings were selected for the landscaped roof terrace, which also integrates stormwater management systems.
A prominent environmental graphic in the promenade-level fitness center celebrates Pierre Charles L’Enfant, the architect and planner who first designed the street layout for DC and his legacy on the city’s built environment.
A lush rooftop terrace offers tenants a place of respite where they connect to nature while taking in panoramic views of DC's waterfront.
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