M.Hill and H.Howard Roles: Design Team Members while w/ I.M.Pei & Partners / Pei Cobb Freed & Partners.  Lead Designer: James Ingo Freed.

The Ronald Reagan Building and International Trade Center located in Washington, D.C. is a multi-use international office and trade center that was designed to complete and augment the 70-acre wedge of government offices known as Federal Triangle. It occupies the last open site on Pennsylvania Avenue (a former parking lot two blocks from the White House) where construction was halted by the Depression. The building was designed to complement its historic context in materials and scale yet its architectural strategy is modern. It articulates structure and creates significant public spaces while fulfilling an extraordinarily rich mixed-use program of government offices, private businesses and public amenities. At 3.1 million s/f, the RRB/ITC is second only to the Pentagon as the largest federal building ever undertaken.

The design’s pronounced diagonal geometry is a direct response to Pennsylvania Avenue, which here bends east toward the Capitol. The building meets the Avenue at 90° and hinges back from a corner Rotunda to symbolically turn the street into the site. People are invited to enter a large outdoor plaza and to continue inside where a skylit conical space and public concourse offer retail, dining and vital connections to mass transit and neighboring buildings. In the seemingly impenetrable wall of government buildings that separates downtown from ceremonial Washington, the Reagan Building emphasizes access and permeability. It is both a destination and a public link to the nation’s Mall, its monuments and museums.