This is pretty interesting
Here's why the new White House ballroom project is not real. (The demo is obviously real.) Some background - I am a licensed Architect with 20+ years of experience. I have worked on multiple Federal projects with sensitive building programs that required background checks.
1. With a projected size of 90,000sf and a newly revised budget of $300M, the cost per square foot would be $3,333. No building costs anywhere near that. $1,000/sf is astronomical.
2. Let's assume, since we are drawing in the classical, style, that the proportions of the building adhere to the Golden Ratio. A 90,000sf would be a building with a footprint roughly 380' x 235'. Longer than a football field and 1.5x as wide.
2. The building is projected to accommodate 999 people. 15sf/person is required for a banquet area; 20sf/person is pretty comfortable. What you see in the rendering below is closer to 20sf/person. That's only 20,000sf, or a space that is 200'x100'. It's supposed to be a ballroom, so let's be extraordinarily generous and provide 10,000sf for the ballroom support functions, and another 10,000sf for pre-function. Extraordinarily generous. That's STILL only 40,000sf, not even half of the supposed building.
3. There are no drawings for the building. The renderings are poorly coordinated - exterior views do not match the interior views. See below - the White House is 70 feet tall, to the roof. The interior renderings show a room that is roughly 100' x 200', with a ~20 foot ceiling. The exterior renderings show a building footprint of 4.5x that amount.
Those are renderings that could be produced by young staff in a week or two, at most. Nothing else exists.
Andrew Kerr, AIA
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