Dwight D. Eisenhower Memorial

Dwight D. Eisenhower Memorial’s Changing Appearance

Located within a four-acre urban park at the base of Capitol Hill in Washington, DC, the Eisenhower Memorial honors Dwight D. Eisenhower, the 34th President of the United States. Designed by the world’s most celebrated architect Frank Gehry, the memorial will target educational messaging to K-12 students through the e-memorial. Doka was chosen by Clark Construction due to their full scope of formwork. The most prominent feature of the memorial is a transparent stainless-steel woven tapestry that frames the entire memorial. Mounted on six 90-ft. tall round columns, the tapestry is designed to change dramatically throughout the day and night, as natural and artificial lighting bounce on the metal image. Six of the eight 9-ft. diameter columns are hollow with an inside diameter of 6 ft. Doka’s solution features custom steel exterior formwork mounted on Xclimb60 formwork platforms and custom steel interior formwork supported on a custom shaft platform. Clark specified that the columns be poured in 15-ft. lifts with the formwork designed to be tieless and with the inside formwork capable of being stripped without the need for workers to access the inside of the form. Doka’s solution for the interior formwork features a center mast with horizontal arms that brace the formwork to resist the pour pressure. The design of the horizontal arms includes a lever mechanism to strip the interior formwork by raising the center mast with the crane. This project not only features a wide range of Doka products, but also highlights Doka’s market-leading engineering capability to supply unique technical solutions to satisfy our customers’ challenging requirements. To develop and design the unique custom solutions for this project, Doka’s mid-Atlantic office was also supported by the national engineering offices in both Little Ferry and Chicago.

The Challenge:
One of the challenges is that eight of the 9-ft. diameter columns are hollow with an inside diameter of 6 ft. Clark specified that the columns be poured in 15-ft. lifts with the formwork designed to be tieless and with the inside formwork capable of being stripped without the need for workers to access the inside of the form.

The Solution:
Doka’s solution features custom steel exterior formwork mounted on Xclimb 60 formwork platforms and custom steel interior formwork supported on a custom shaft platform. Additionally, the solution for the interior formwork features a center mast with horizontal arms that brace the formwork to resist the pour pressure.