WIDELY REVIEWED: NORMAN FOSTER’S NEW COURTYARD CANOPY AT SMITHSONIAN

Last week, Norman Foster’s new undulating glass canopy over the Smithsonian’s Old Patent Office Building opened to the public. Washington Post staff writer Philip Kennicott sums up the largely positive response from critics and the difficulty of the larger, seven-year renovation process of which it is a part: “The city has a very fine new public space, and in retrospect, what’s remarkable is how close it came to being derailed. . . . With the canopy in place, and the courtyard resplendent with large ficus trees and a captivating water ‘scrim’—a fountain so shallow you can walk through it without mussing your shoes—the argument is over. Foster’s canopy is distinguished, and it converts a courtyard that was once a spring-and-fall attraction into a year-round, compelling and peaceful public space.” Writing in the New York Times, architecture critic Nicolai Ouroussoff concurs—“Capped by an undulating glass-and-steel roof, the courtyard is inserted into the existing building with striking delicacy. The project shows how an architect can respect the past without dressing it up in historicist frippery”—and rightly notes that the project is a riff on Foster’s Great Court for the British Museum in London, completed in 2000. In the New York Sun, Paula Deitz describes the Washington courtyard as a “poetic social space,” and Laurence Arnold, writing for Bloomberg, catalogues details: It is a “$63 million wavy roof composed of 862 panes of glass specially treated to keep out the summer heat.”