DAN RUBINSTEIN

These White House redesigns call for transparency and transfiguration of the nation’s highest office,
mentally and physically

As we go to press, the level of political rhetoric in the presidential race has reached a crescendo. While both sides agree on the need for change, the direction our country will go remains as elusive as ever. Perfectly timed with the election, New York’s Storefront for Art and Architecture (in association with technology services firm Control Group) has released the winners of White House Redux, an international open competition to redesign arguably the most iconic — and politically charged — piece of American architecture.

The jury consisted of seven of the top minds around, including Liz Diller, MIT Media Lab’s John Maeda, Princeton’s Beatriz Colomina, Columbia’s Mark Wigley and Surface‘s former Editorial Director Laetitia Wolff. More than 500 submissions were received, and highlights of nearly 200 of them are now on display in conjunction with the opening of Storefront’s newly renovated Soho space. The winning ideas ranged from the conceptually intriguing to the delightfully absurd. Seeing as the actual White House was itself the result of a competition, the spirit of this event becomes all the more compelling. Consider this the ultimate October surprise.

First Place: Revenge of the Lawn
by JP Maruszczak and Roger Connah with Ryan Manning
The first-place entry takes the term “eco-friendly” to a new level. Instead of a glass tower or other reality-friendly format, the presidential residence is envisioned as a sprawling garden, described by the theoretically minded practitioners as a “modern architectural folk tale.” In addition to renderings, a video was submitted (available on YouTube, along with others from the competition), illustrating how helicopters could be replaced with bees and how the Oval Office could be transformed into the so-called Pretty Office, a lawn that sits above a massive underground complex. With stepped construction, it houses all the White House’s myriad functions. Spaces and their corresponding departments are renamed at the pleasure of the President, constantly evolving like a wild patch of land, instead of the entrenched fortress it is today. “The White House lawn is an emblematic space, both accessible yet forbidden. It operates as the site of the ‘other,’ where the President addresses the press, where his helicopter lands and where moments of informality with his spouse and/or dog can occur,” Connah says. “Yet as a site, it possesses none of the usual attributes of a lawn: no frisbee throwing, no hastily erected badminton net. The natural world has and will continue to shrink until the simulation of it becomes the new lawn.”

Second Place: 12 Cautionary Tales for the New World Order
by David Iseri, Laura Sperry, Justin Kruse and Jefferson Frost
Inspired by the conceptual 1960s firm Superstudio and its imaginary body of work “Twelve Cautionary Tales for Christmas: Premonitions of the Mystical Rebirth of Urbanism,” Iseri and his collaborators decided to predict Washington’s future. Since the competition only allowed for the submission of 12, 11″x17″ panels, they turned each into a page of a trippy sci-fi novel, each telling its own narrative of how the White House could evolve. In one yarn, the White House becomes nothing but a gigantic billboard. In another, titled “Bio Engine,” the green movement is taken to the extreme, where sustainability is the paramount virtue in society and energy the sole status symbol. Or, perhaps a dig at our current economic state, Chapter 11 is titled “Vote 27 Red,” where America abandons its current tax system for one where gambling and prostitution become the primary ways the government collects revenue. “Completely fictional responses to competitions like this afford the most freedom and flexibility,” Iseri explains. “It’s not that any of us don’t like pragmatics, but we’re all working to become licensed architects and get enough of that stuff on a day-to-day basis. Fiction is important because it’s a much easier and open-ended way to communicate. Not to mention, it’s much more fun. Sometimes people in our profession get too serious.”

Third-Place Tie: The White House: An Architecture of Possible Collectives
by Grant Gibson and Chris-Annmarie Spencer

Putting the powerful in their place was a key element in many submissions, as aptly illustrated by this idea that tied for third place. Similar to “Revenge of the Lawn,” administrative functions are built completely underground. Placed at the bottom of an inverted pyramidal void, the Oval Office and situation room sit exposed for all to see. Public grounds are placed at surface level, and the complex is capped with a floating, flat structure with cantilevered edges used to house the executive residence, which strives to be anything but iconic. Instead, its many internal, distinct volumes, each colored a different shade of gray, create a cumulative effect akin to modern camouflage. More like a stoic memorial than a symbol of power, it aims to leave audiences keenly aware of the inherent distances between them and those in charge. “The US presidency is a fundamentally complex arrangement, where a citizen presides over his or her fellow citizens, but is still an equal,” Gibson says. “It demands straight-forward honesty and at times complete secrecy, both for the common good. This was the underlying paradox we were interested in. How do you highlight each of these extremes without losing the degrees of gray that happen in between?”

Third-Place Tie: White House 2.0
by Wayne Congar and Arrielle Assouline-Lichten
If there’s one ideological movement that’s gained the most ground in this election cycle, it’s populism. Expressing themselves in many ways — from concerns over immigration to trade policies — “average Americans” feel left out of the decision-making process that happens inside the Beltway. This joint third-place submission turns the tables on government’s old boys’ club. It envisions the White House as an “input-output machine, not just a storage device,” explains Congar. People from around the world can go online and register their comments, complaints or ideas. Servers inside 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue then process that information and proportionately display people’s gripes on video screens through the building’s hallowed halls, which also guide the circulatory flow of the President’s workday through various departments. “White House 2.0 strips the government of its perceived right to push its own agenda,” Congar says. “This is a total reversal from something like the Patriot Act. It’s where the public can track the government and affect their daily lives.”