A Rare Concrete Roof

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THE DISTRICT'S newest historic landmark, Uline Arena, located next to the Union Station railyards, is one of the city's more peculiar buildings, one with a steep past that involves the Beatles, Joe Louis and D.C.'s history with segregation. Architectecturally speaking, the arena's roof is something of a rarity. It was constructed using a thin-shell concrete-construction technique called Zeiss-Dywidag, which allows the creation of large indoor spaces without column support. That's why when you go by the structure on the Red Line, Amtrak or MARC trains and peer in through the ventilation portals, all you see is a giant interior space.

The construction method is somewhat rare in the United States — Chicago's Adler Planetarium and MIT's Kresge Auditorium use Zeiss-Dywidag — and as a Penn State architectural backgrounder says, such thin-shell construction faces "aesthetic obsolescence: the very designs that looked so modern and progressive in the 1960s seem dated a few decades later."

As one Zeiss-Dywidag example gets protection here, another one is threatened overseas. The Financial Times' Ralph Atkins wrote this past weekend that officials with the European Central Bank in Frankfurt, Germany, are being accused by the family of Martin Elsaesser — one of the greatest Weimar-era architects — of unnecessary "wanton destruction" if the ECB goes through with its current plans to build its new headquarters on the site of the 1920s Grossmarkthalle.

In the case of Uline Arena, its current owner, developer Douglas Jemal, has said he has no problem with the building being given landmark status. What use Jemal will find for the aging arena is another question all together.

» "Uline Arena Landmarked" [Rebuilding Place in the Urban Space]
» "Arena Football" [City Paper]
» "Thin Shells: Case Studies" [Penn State]
» "ECB Frankfurt Plan Causes Architectural Dispute" [FT]

Photo by Michael Grass/Express