United States Coast Guard Headquarters - Washington, DC

The headquarters of the United States Coast Guard (USCG) is part of the St. Elizabeths Campus, a national historic landmark located in Southeast Washington, DC. Within the campus, the 1.2 million- square-foot office complex traces a steep embankment of the Anacostia River.

This construction project extends a legacy of visionary leadership that dates to 1855 when, upon Congress’ establishment of St. Elizabeths Hospital, the federal government used the facility to care for mental illness through pioneering techniques. The design of the campus counted among these treatment methods, as its weaving of revivalist architecture and park-like landscape was considered emotionally restorative and boldly forward-thinking for the time. 

Beginning in 1987 health services were consolidated to the east end of the St. Elizabeths Campus, and GSA took possession of the vacated western portion of the property in 2004. Since then the agency has been redeveloping that site to consolidate the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS’s) Washington, DC–based workplaces. As the first new building of the effort, USCG headquarters permitted the relocation of 3,200 Coast Guard members and civilian workers to the government-owned building in October 2013. 

The 2016 GSA Design Awards jury commended the wider redevelopment. Selection of the site promises to have positive economic impact on the Southeast quadrant of the nation’s capital, and GSA has demonstrated utmost respect for the campus’s existing buildings through preservation. Focusing on USCG headquarters itself, panelists noted how GSA’s sensitivity to the landmark campus directly informed planning of the new building.

Indeed, its massing and configuration harmonizes with the smaller scale of the historic structures nearby.

USCG headquarters is distributed into linked quadrangles hugging the 115-foot slope and, at the lower level of the site, the 10-story building scales down further, into finger-like volumes whose footprints interlace with a water feature. Landscaping camouflages the facility’s remaining visual impact, with vegetation sweeping over 400,000 square feet of rooftop the third largest green roof in the world—and through the quadrangles’ various courtyards. 

Jurors were particularly impressed by the care with which the courtyards were designed. Stepped in accordance with the site, they represent the region’s physiographic transition from the Blue Ridge Mountains and Piedmont Region to the lowlands of the coastal plain. The vignettes’ different plantings shade south-facing windows and pavers to mitigate air-conditioning loads and urban heat island effect, respectively, and to draw building occupants outdoors. The courtyards further enhance the workplace experience, by offering complementary functions like gathering space for casual meetings and events, as well as carefully oriented views to the Anacostia River. Yet perhaps their greatest benefit manifests beyond the property line: Because runoff is most responsible for the Anacostia River’s pollution, the courtyards work in tandem with the green rooftops and other stormwater retention techniques to reduce discharge into the waterway by 47 percent. 

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