The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts has served as an iconic, living memorial to President Kennedy since its completion in 1971. Building on this legacy, the REACH represents a 21st century complement to the monumental Kennedy Center structure and offers a new model for civic engagement in the arts.

To support the Kennedy Center’s mission of “…increasing opportunities for all people to participate in and understand the arts,” the new REACH expansion adds much-needed accommodations for rehearsal, education, modern programming, and technology. The design for The REACH cleverly integrates building and landscape, tucking much of the 72,000 square feet of studio, rehearsal, performance, and learning spaces below ground. This enables the dramatic rise of three sculptural concrete pavilions from a grassy, 69,000-square-foot green roof, one of the largest green roofs in Washington D.C.

Above ground, the three pavilions provide flexible indoor and outdoor spaces for arts programming, serve as a backdrop for digital projection, frame views to surrounding monuments, and draw daylight deep into the spaces beneath. Below ground, the pavilions connect to one another and to the original Kennedy Center building in a seamless flow of soaring atria and flexible spaces for programming, some of which look directly out the Potomac River. 

BNIM served as Associate Architect for the expansion, in collaboration with Designer Steven Holl Architects.