From today’s Wall Street Journal: In the Nation’s Capital, an Uninviting Addition:

Stylistically, the architectural design by the Washington office of RTKL Associates is a banal exercise in modernistic, ersatz classicism.
…
…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.

(The spacious Congressional Auditorium and its nicely scaled, double-height lobby — which boasts four statues and actually receives natural light through a window — are the only spaces I encountered where RTKL managed to convey a sense of institutional decorum. Unfortunately, they are not open to the public.)

Yep.