Location
Washington, D.C.
Status
Design Completed 2012
Client
Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority
Cost
$19.6 Million
The Foggy Bottom-GWU metro station ranks as the eighth-busiest station in the Metrorail system, yet accommodates all passengers through a single entrance mezzanine. Strained by this existing passenger traffic, future passenger growth projects would further strain the access, efficiency, and safety of the station. As architectural designers on an architectural-engineering team, KGP participated in the evaluation, analysis, and conceptual design of a new second entrance and mezzanine to alleviate these issues for this important station.
The project creates a separate entrance/exit at the east end of the station, allowing direct access to and from the eastern edge of GWU’s campus and adjacent downtown office buildings for the first time. A new stair and escalator array, as well as two handicap accessible elevators on the southeast corner of 22nd and Eye Streets NW, will lead to an entry mezzanine situated outside the existing station envelope. The creation of this external mezzanine serves as a key component in providing the needed level of access at the east end of the platform. Additionally, the arrangement of the surface level elements (stair, escalators, and elevators) conforms to typical column bay structure in order to allow for future development over these entry elements.
Besides housing all the fare gates, fare card vendors, station-attendant kiosk, and service rooms associated with the operation of a station entry, the proposed design also introduces a new structural form for the mezzanine interior. An off-center “spine” provides an arched transition between the mezzanine entry and the fare area, while also creating room for existing utilities to pass overhead. The structural “rib” beams emanating from the spine provide a bay structure that accommodates acoustic panels, lighting, speakers, and heating/cooling vents. A passageway emanating from the northwest corner of the new mezzanine leads through space borrowed from reconfigured existing service rooms within the station envelope and to a new internal mezzanine and stair down to the platform level.