Beyer Blinder Belle Architects & Planners LLP won yesterday’s City of the Future design challenge to imagine what Washington would look like in the year 2108. The winning team went green, envisioning a self-sustaining city with soaring towers built on the sites of former forts that once defended Washington, transforming them into centers for wind and solar energy production, hydroponic farming and defensive security systems. In this environmentally friendly city, cars have no place. Metro…

What will Washington look like in 100 years? Will the White House of 2108 be heated by pocket-sized cold fusion reactors? Will Potomac tidal currents light the Capitol? Or will the entire city be underwater, forcing the creation of a virtual capital to run our nation’s government? A design competition tomorrow at Union Station – City of the Future: A Design and Engineering Challenge – poses these questions. Eight design teams, most from the…

They say the terrorist attacks of 2001 on the United States was the first time a foreign force had struck inside the Continental U.S. since the War of 1812 (though there was a Japanese attack on Santa Barbara, Calif., in 1942.). So what of the War of 1812? The History Channel on Sunday is showing a special on “Mr. Madison’s War” including the burning of Washington. In 1814, British forces landed on the Patuxent River…