When crews tore down the East Wing of the White House in October to build President Trump’s new ballroom, many people were stunned and confused by the scope and speed of the work.
What would the new structure look like? Would it blend in? Was there even a design or approval process?
Reporters and editors for The New York Times wanted answers to these questions. So they gathered plans, interviewed officials and set out to show rather than tell.
Haeyoun Park, a deputy editor in The Times’s Graphics department, and Junho Lee, a trained architect and graphics editor who focuses on 3-D modeling and visualization, have spent months digging into the president’s construction projects.
Their work, in collaboration with other colleagues, produced a string of stories revealing the evolving ballroom plans with clarity. They also contributed to similar reporting on President Trump’s proposal for a giant triumphal arch at one end of the Arlington Memorial Bridge.
I recently asked them about their efforts. These are edited excerpts from our conversation.
Let’s start with your goal in producing visual reports about the ballroom.
HAEYOUN PARK: When President Trump first announced his ballroom plan in July, we knew we had to show readers what it would look like. We have trained architects on our team who know how to read building plans and create 3-D models from scratch, and we were able to take advantage of that expertise in this coverage.
JUNHO LEE: Because most people won’t be able to go into the space and see it themselves, I wanted to provide that experience. Showing the process of the ballroom planning was also part of my goal, since buildings with this historical significance and scale would typically take much longer to design and build.
Where do you start? What documents do you seek? How do you use them?
LEE: I usually start by watching recordings of the meetings of the National Capital Planning Commission, which are public. I download the drawings and renderings presented. We compare them with other sources, since there were cases when the designs shown were inconsistent or wrong. For example, a 3-D-printed model placed in the Oval Office once clashed with a drawing Trump was holding, and the number of columns on the West Wing colonnade was wrong in one of the drawings submitted to the commission. Once I’ve verified the drawings, I begin building a digital 3-D model.
What kind of reporting does it take to develop a visual piece?
PARK: As a visual reporter, you’re often asking questions that can be different from those of other reporters. We need a certain level of specificity and visual reference that allows us to create a precise diagram, chart a precise number or map a precise location. We seek and analyze visual reference materials, like building plans, satellite images and photos. And sometimes we talk to experts like structural engineers or architects to help us understand them better.
LEE: We might want to show the subject from an angle that hasn’t been shown yet. Synthesizing multiple sources enables us to build a precise model from which to create a graphical story. This becomes especially vital when sources are inconsistent.
The Trump administration reacted swiftly to your work, taking to social media to push back. Then the design changed on the fly. How do you keep up with the evolving plans?
LEE: Keeping up with those design changes felt natural because I’ve spent the last several months following the ballroom design and have registered the latest design in my head.
PARK: Junho has spent months following every design change that the president has released. And he has meticulously created a detailed 3-D model of the old East Wing as well as the latest design. This has allowed The Times to do many visual stories around the East Wing news.
LEE: At one point, I saw a picture of Trump in the Oval Office showing off a floor plan of the new ballroom, and I realized it was different from the designs that had been released. With help from Luke Broadwater, one of our reporters covering the administration, I was able to verify that it was, in fact, the latest design — which wasn’t supposed to be shown to the public — and that became a story.
How does a visual presentation change an audience’s understanding of news?
PARK: As visual journalists, we synthesize raw drawings or plans and help readers understand key visual features or show spatial relationships, while using words to supplement the images. For our story on the arch, we created a 3-D model of the proposed structure and overlaid it onto carefully choreographed videos and photos to show its impact on key D.C. sightlines.
LEE: People usually see the design of a building only from the views presented by the architects. Those renderings are purposefully chosen for many reasons — they might want to highlight some design features or hide the size of a building. I believe showing the building in views that are not set up by the architect gives the audience a better understanding of its scale and relationship with the surroundings.
Junho, can you talk about your training as an architect? Why did you switch to journalism?
LEE: Before joining The Times, I worked at architecture firms in New York City where I learned how buildings are constructed and how design decisions are made. I decided to pursue journalism because I wanted to understand society better and tell graphical stories. There is a lot in common between architecture and journalism, including the late hours.
Haeyoun, what is involved with editing this work?
PARK: I think the best visual stories are centered around a strong visual concept and have harmony between the visuals and text, so that they are woven together to supplement one another. When I’m editing a story, that is always the goal.
