by William Lebovich
The New York architecture firm Kohn Pedersen Fox has recently produced two jewel-like structures in Washington, D.C. and its northern Virginia suburb, Tyson's Corner. This pair of medium-rise buildings by principals William Pedersen and James von Klemperer evoke the unbuilt glass skyscrapers of the early 1920s by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe.
For the newspaper USA Today and its parent, Gannett Company, Inc., Pedersen conceived a new headquarters on a 25-acre (10-hectare) parcel. The site is defined on the east by Route 495, the "Beltway," which encircles metropolitan Washington, and on the north by the highway that leads to the Dulles International Airport by Eero Saarinen.
Traveling at night on either motorway offers a startling vision of the two elevator towers of Gannett/ USA Today appearing as multicolored glass beacons isolated in the night sky.
>>>
