Take a video tour of the Kennedy Center’s upcoming REACH expansion

When the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts’s REACH Expansion project opens to the public next year, you’ll be able to walk through a grove of 35 ginkgo trees, watch a free outdoor simulcast performance projected on a wall in a public park, or look out at the Potomac from a river pavilion cafe.

DCist just took a construction tour with the project’s lead architect Steven Holl, who described how the REACH expansion will transform the Kennedy Center’s campus. A new video with renderings is also a great virtual walk-through, with narration by Holl and Kennedy Center President Deborah Rutter.

“The Kennedy Center has nine formal performance spaces. The REACH has nine informal performance spaces,” Rutter says in the video, explaining that the new additions are on more of a “human-scale” then the Kennedy Center’s grand halls. The new project integrates the surrounding landscape as well. “The connection to the river edge, the activation of the landscape as a total experience: it reaches out into the community,” Holl states in the video.

• The Kennedy Center Is Adding 7,200 Square Feet, Three Pavilions, And 35 Ginkgo Trees [DCist]
• Kennedy Center’s expansion progress, revealed in two photos [Curbed DC]
• What to Expect from the Kennedy Center’s $100M Expansion [Curbed DC]