Capitol Visitor Center

The reviews are in:

The "truth to power" side of the Capitol, the East face, has been demolished by the new Visitor Center, a tragically misconceived and overscale addition, which opens today. The East face has become something entirely new, with a false and slick pomposity created by an impressive promenade over an imposing bridge, which seems to cross a kind of moat. It is a historical and aesthetic jumble, a nonsensical place and a gross disfigurement of one of this country's most important and iconic buildings.

I can't wait to see what kind of cars these guys design.

Update: The Wall Street Journal weighs in calling it an "uninviting addition":

Even with its 14 statues, Emancipation Hall could almost pass for a sunken lobby in an upscale chain hotel, starting with a couple of tacky granite water fountains, fronted by bench walls, at the foot of the stairs from the upper lobby. The leitmotif, here as elsewhere in the complex, is ungraceful pairs of tall rectilinear columns, with a couple of protruding bands at the top taking the place of fully wrought capitals. Inside the CVC, fine materials, akin to those used in the Capitol itself, abound -- sandstone, limestone, marble. But the masonry work comes across as theme-park veneer.

Ouch.