Bunshaft's circular design will offer a certain relief to the planar facade of Federal office buildings lining Independence Avenue, and it will, I believe, be a rather elegant and handsome addition to the row of museums on the Mall. The top three floors of the building-two for exhibitions and one for officeswill be supported at ground level by massive and elegantly curved stilts. The open interior court with its circular fountain pool, the space around the 14foot-high columns, and the paved rectangular plaza surrounding the building will make a lovely display area for some of the sculpture.

ALTERATIONS ALREADY

Of course, much of the final effect, the "livability" of the building, will depend on details, what stones are used, and in what pattern to pave the courtyard, how trees and benches and sculpture are placed, how surface textures are matched, et cetera. There already have been cost-induced alterations in the design, most prominent among them being the substitution of exposed reinforced concrete for marble as the material for the facade. One hopes that in this all-important matter of design details the architect has managed to find viable solutions in spite of the cost inflation.

On the inside the design represents a sort of grand galerie going in a circle, and this is an improvement over the endless stretch of paintings one gets in the conventional elongated exhibition hall, the kind that so often induces a dreary sense of sameness in the viewer's imagination no matter what masterpieces line the walls.

Still, the Hirshhorn design shares many of the drawbacks of the grand galerie concept-the lack of flexibility, the difficulty in displaying smaller pictures-and one or two drawbacks unique to the circular concept. The convex wall on the inside of the circle, for example, will limit the size of paintings that can be hung there.

All this, however, is something that Abram Lerner the Hirshhorn curator who will become director of the museum, can deal with by the imaginative use of partitions and a feeling for what is visually proper. The paintings will look good there, and that, after all, is the primary thing.

The architectural excitement of the Hirshhorn will have to come from externals, from the play between the sculpture, the building, the fountain and the surrounding space. This surrounding space. This brings us to the principal architectural issue, the sculpture garden.

Congressional critics of the garden's design stress that it will interrupt the grand sweep of the Mall from the Capitol to the Washington Monument.

Actually this is a relatively minor complaint; the fact is that it won't interfere all that much. Bunshaft designed a clean, sharp, rectilinear space 142 feet wide and 586 feet long. It will sink a total of 10 feet, with walls extending 3 feet above ground level, leaving 7 feet below ground level. A reflecting pool, 60 feet wide and 506 feet long, will punctuate this space like a long, emphatic dash right down the middle.

This cross axis no doubt will interfere with the grassy center slice of the Mall, especially since it cuts off both Washington and Adams Drives, but one ought to keep things in perspective of the truly grand distances involved. The Mall is also "interfered" with at present by Third Street, Fourth Street, Seventh Street, an unnamed drive, 14th Street and 15th Street. The visual "sweep" of the Mall is strong enough to accommodate the streets and the sculpture garden.

A TRICKY PROBLEM

The real design defect of the garden, ironically, probably was caused by the Mall itself. Bunshaft apparently was worrying so much about that grand vista and its rigidly rational, symetrical patterns (and, perhaps, looking over his shoulder at congressional protectors of the hallowed ground) that he did not think too carefully about the true function of the space: to make a good background for the display of modern sculpture.

This is a tricky problem, especially when one is dealing with as many pieces of sculpture as in the Hirshhorn collection. A stone-walled courtyard two football fields long, unrelieved by any visual accents except the sculpture itself, is the least imaginative solution I can think of.

Not incidentally, whereby is this sunken stone mini-Mall a "garden"? Where is the grass, where are the trees, where are the visual and physical accents that would make the space inviting to walk through and, perchance, to stop and dream a bit?

The architect--or whoever is responsible for the original idea of the transverse sculpture court-might have taken valuable lessons from almost any source, not the least of which could have been the Joseph H. Hirshhorn home in Greenwich, Conn. There, surrounding the Greenwich Tudor mansion on that tree-scaped little hill, is one of the loveliest, most comfortable and most impressive sculpture gardens in the entire world.

For a more urban-oriented solution, one could have looked carefully at the sculpture court of the Museum of Modern Art in Manhattan, which, with its trees, wandering stream, steps, tiers, enclosures, etc., is a remarkable urban park. In both places the setting vastly enhances one's enjoyment and understanding of the art.

The real shame of it all is that there is indeed-or at least there was-an alternative solution right at hand, one that would silence the protectors of the Mall and provided a better place to enjoy the sculpture.

OUTSIDE PANELS

The Mall in cross section is divided into five panels. All of the museum buildings, Hirshhorn included, sit on the outside panels. These are succeeded by two "tree" panels, and the Versailles sweep of which our solons are so jealous is primarily defined by one panel-the grassy one in the middle.

The Hirshhorn sculpture court now forms the stem of a "T" to which the building site is the cross member. What would happen if one were to swing that stem 90 degrees to the south, thus placing it in the tree panel immediately to the north of the building?

The answer is it would change the shape some, but it would fit. As designed, the sculpture court measures 83,200 square feet, 30,300 square feet of which are taken up by the reflecting pool. This leaves 52,900 square feet of dry exhibition space.

The tree panel defined by Jefferson and Adams Drives measures a total of 100,700 square feet. This high figure is somewhat misleading, because any use of the plot as a sculpture court would no doubt involve a cutback to the width of the plot on which the building stands. The building site, as indicated on our map, is set in quite a bit from Seventh Street to accommodate a service roadway. Even allowing for this, the tree panel would measure 67,450 square feet-not so much of a cutback, considering the benefits that would encrue.

In this position the design no longer would be inhibited by the need to keep the Mall's center strip free of vertical interruptions such as sculpture, walls, partitions or trees. The design potential of such a solution would be enormous: Trees, pools echoing the circular design of the building and its central fountain, benches, walk-up plateaus, etc.-all the intimate touches so remarkably lacking in the Bunshaft design.

Such a desirable new design could become a reality in 2 or 3 years if all parties to the compact were agreeable. But that would mean a voluntary turnabout on the part of the architect, the Smithsonian, and Hirshhorn himself. This seems highly unlikely, and that's a shame.

[From the Washington Evening Star, April 1, 1971]

HIRSHHORN GARDEN PLAN IS VASTLY IMPROVED

(By Benjamin Forgey)

Architect Gordon Bunshaft said a lot of good things yesterday but perhaps the best was his remarks that a lovely giant oak tree on the Mall is "the best piece of sculpture here."

Bunshaft was talking about one of the world's finest collections of modern sculpture the Joseph H. Hirshhorn gift to the Nation-but he may be forgiven the hyperbole of the comparison.

The tree in question stands majestically in the southwest corner of the plot of ground in which the architect chose to locate his new design for the Hirshhorn sculpture garden.

TREE PRESERVED

Bunshaft went to the trouble to preserve that tree in his new version of the sunken sculpture court, and that simple gesture speaks volumes about the superiority of the new design to the original one.

The architect unveiled a cardboard model and scale drawings of the revised concept for four members of a committee of the National Capital Planning Commission, which must approve the design before the garden can be built. Neither the Commission Members nor the staff appeared to be overly impressed, but they should have been.

Referring to his original inspiration of a severely elegant sunken rectangle slicing across the Mall, on a north-south axis, Bunshaft remarked that it would have been appropriate for the display of sculpted "Roman gladiators and senators" but not for the exhibition of modern sculpture.

Hence the significance of that grand oak tree. The new design is fit for habitation by people, nature and sculpture in a way that the first design was not. It will be visually more interesting, artistically more satisfying, and altogether a more pleasant place to visit.

In addition, it has the advantage of responding to the objections of congressmen strongly opposed to the original proposal on the grounds that it would have interrupted the visual sweep of the Mall from the Capitol to the Washington Monument.

These objections, which reached such a point in January that Representative Frank Thompson, Democrat-New Jersey, introduced a bill to forbid construction of the sculpture garden, were sufficient to overturn the commission's approval of the first plan and send the architect back to the drawing board.

The new sculpture garden will be confined entirely within the tree plot of the Mall immediately to the north of the Hirshhorn museum site. It, like the first version, is sunken some 10 feet below ground level, is rectangular in outline, and contains a long, narrow reflecting pool.

But in his revised design Bunshaft has managed to combine a rather severely elegant setting with an intriguingly asymmetrical push-pull of visual variety. The oak tree, for example, will be on ground level and nicely serves the aesthetic function of anchoring the court at one corner. It is counterbalanced visually on the opposite side of the courtyard with another large tree. (This one presumably will have to be planted, so we'll have to give it time to provide its welcome shade). The oak tree also will serve as a backdrop for a second pool, this one to be equipped with water-spraying jets, that is tucked into an enclosed corner.

The court as presently proposed will offer visitors any number of places to sit down and gaze at the sculpture: Under either of the big trees, on the edge of the

reflecting pool, at any point along the two 15-inch-high "steps" with which Bunshaft has defined the largest rectangular area in the design.

Visitors can descend into the sculpture court from three entrances: From a passageway that starts in the plaza surrounding Bunshaft's doughnut-shaped museum building and burrows under Jefferson Drive, or from two neatly counterpointed "stairways" made of 6-foot granite slabs, one at the west and the other at the east end of the rectangle.

Bunshaft added a further element of variety by shielding the view from the entrance tunnel with a massive stone pier, flat on one side and gracefully concave on the other.

The ground surface will be a somewhat disappointing blend of sand and gravel where a lovely pattern of stone would have been more appropriate, but this is a money-saving solution that is absolutely necessary if the project is to be built within the budget limitations already set by Congress.

In view of all this it is difficult to understand most of the objections raised yesterday by members of the planning commission and its staff.

One member, Conrad L. Wirth, appeared to want to take advantage of this revision of an already approved design to reopen the whole issue of whether the museum should have a separate sculpture garden at all. His rationale was disappointingly familiar: The hallowed sanctity of the Mall's "gamboling greensward," as he called it.

Even the staff, which endorsed the idea of removing the scultpure court from the center strip of the Mall, asked that the Smithsonian Institution "study the feasibility of developing a sculpture garden within the surface plaza level around the museum building." Translated, this means "no sculpture garden."

It is late in the day to be asking for such "studies." One of the most pleasing aspects of Bunshaft's design for the museum building is the plaza, and the building is raised 14 feet above the plaza level by four sculptural piers. It has been part of the plan all along to display some of the Hirshhorn sculpture collection on this plaza and even under the building.

As Bunshaft said yesterday, "If this museum is to fulfill its uniqueness it must have space for sculpture. . . . A sculpture garden is as essential to this museum as a surgical section is to a hospital."

The sculpture garden is not negotiable. It is part of the agreement between Hirshhorn and the Government and of the authorizing legislation.

EFFECTS OF WITHHOLDING CONSTRUCTION APPROPRIATION

Mrs. HANSEN. What would be the situation if the committee were to decide to withhold further appropriations to liquidate contract authorization until all the matters in controversy regarding this museum were resolved?

Mr. BRADLEY. Madam Chairman, the construction job would have to be slowed down and eventually stopped.

Mrs. HANSEN. How would this affect your contract with Mr. Hirshhorn?

Mr. BRADLEY. We would have to ask Mr. Kunzig about that, the Administrator of General Services. We look to him for these technical services.

Mrs. HANSEN. Would you have him give the committee an opinion? (The information follows:)

GSA OPINION ON EFFECTS ON CONSTRUCTION AND GOVERNMENT OBLIGATIONS The following request has been made to the General Services Administration. Their response will be made available to the committee.

Hon. A. F. SAMPSON,

Commissioner, Public Buildings Service,

General Services Administration,

Washington, D.C.

APRIL 8, 1971.

DEAR MR. SAMPSON: The chairman of the Subcommittee on the Department of Interior and Related Agencies of the House Committee on Appropriations has raised the following questions regarding the Joseph H. Hirshhorn Museum and

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