It's a popular stop on ‘ugly architecture' tours. Time for it to go.
Victoria Coates, a vice president of the Heritage Foundation, served as senior policy adviser to the secretary of energy in 2020. Justin Shubow is president of the National Civic Art Society and former chairman of the U.S. Commission of Fine Arts.
The General Services Administration is apparently rethinking its hastily withdrawn list of disposable federal buildings in Washington and around the country. But let's hope they keep one structure firmly on any future list.
The massive James V. Forrestal Building, home of the Energy Department, is rightly a feature on 'ugly architecture' tours of the nation's capital. Buses full of tourists pull up in front of its hulking, stained exterior and gawk at the overpass that acts as a barrier between L'Enfant Plaza and the Smithsonian Castle, as well as the windowless concrete block addition that obscures the National Mall across the street.
The real problem with the building, though, goes well beyond architectural aesthetics. The Forrestal's decrepit systems, labyrinthine footprint and dank, cavern-like interiors are physically preventing the Energy Department from playing a critical role in the emerging U.S. confrontation with China.
Like the department itself, the building has aged poorly. It requires $500 million in must-do repairs, and bringing it up to class A office space would be even more costly. Due to its state of disrepair and low occupancy, it costs $130,000 to maintain and operate for each actual building user. By contrast, commercial office space costs $10,000 per occupant.
Last month, the Public Buildings Reform Board, which was created to shrink the federal government's real estate portfolio, indicated that the building was ripe for demolition. The National Civic Art Society and others have proposed that it would be best to use the site for two new, congressionally authorized Smithsonian museums rather than wasting taxpayer dollars on Forrestal.
The Energy Department was established by President Jimmy Carter in 1977 in response to the energy shocks of that decade, as turbulence in the Middle East exposed the vulnerability caused by U.S. reliance on energy imports to meet rapidly growing domestic demand. The department also encompassed the descendant of the World War II-era Manhattan Project that developed the atomic bomb at Los Alamos National Laboratory.
Although it is a necessary institution, the Energy Department has lacked a strategic vision and coherent purpose. Indeed, its own website refers to its nonnuclear elements as 'a loosely knit amalgamation of energy-related programs scattered throughout the Federal government.'
The selection of the Forrestal Building as its home compounded this structural problem. Built during the 1960s as an extension of the Defense Department and named for the first secretary of defense, the complex was not intended to be a technology center. It was never sufficient to support the department's needs, and subsidiary installations have been required as far afield as Germantown, Maryland.
A product of 'urban renewal' that demolished a residential neighborhood, Forrestal is a Brutalist superblock building with an unrelentingly repetitive facade — the embodiment of faceless bureaucracy. Like the department itself, the building is a loose amalgamation of parts awkwardly connected by tunnels and overpasses. It certainly gives no indication that the Energy Department now has a compelling unified mission: to be the technological and resource arm of the burgeoning new cold war between China and the United States.
There is bipartisan recognition of this incongruity in Congress. In February 2020, for example, when President Donald Trump's then-secretary of energy, Dan Brouillette, testified before the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Energy and Water Development, Chairwoman Marcy Kaptur (D-Ohio) implored him to do something about the appearance of his building to reflect the remarkable energy renaissance in the United States, as well as the vital work that went on inside it. Kaptur instinctively understood that Forrestal's form was impeding its function — to the detriment of U.S. national security.
The 21st-century Energy Department is a very different agency from what it was in 1977. In terms of energy resources, the United States has been transformed from an importing nation to a net exporter and is now one of the world's three largest producers. China, the world's largest importer, is now the energy-vulnerable party, a massive advantage that the United States needs to approach strategically.
In addition, the Manhattan Project has blossomed into a network of 17 national labs scattered across the country and housing various critical specialties. While it had been hoped that after the Cold War the labs could be incubators of scientific collaboration, even with nations such as Russia and China, it is clear that Moscow and Beijing have no interest in working for the betterment of humanity; their only aim is to filch intellectual property from these crown jewels of U.S. ingenuity.
The entire department requires a top-down reorganization to reflect its new and critical national security mission, which cannot be satisfactorily implemented in its current physical plant.
Forrestal was never a suitable home for the Energy Department, and it is now a material and unfixable barrier to maximizing the agency's potential. Constructing a brand-new, purpose-built, cutting-edge and, yes, aesthetically pleasing campus along the recommendations of Trump's 2020 executive order promoting beautiful federal civic architecture would enhance and support the department's vital modern mission as effectively as the Forrestal Building undermines it.
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