If you want to do some cycling and take in some architecture after work this week, join the National Building Museum’s bike tour of Southwest DC. The tour will take place this Thursday (June 11) from 5:30 pm-7 pm.  The tour will take in the area’s mid-century modern architecture, the Wharf development on the waterfront,  historic rowhouses and new mixed-use development.

More than 50 years ago, Southwest  underwent a massive transformation, representing at the time the largest urban renewal project in U.S. history. The effort to create a “modernist Utopia” in the nation’s capital was led by the likes of Chloethiel Woodard Smith, Charles Goodman, I.M. Pei, Morris Lapidus, Keyes, Lethbridge and Condon, Marcel Breuer, Edward Durell Stone and Harry Weese. This mid-century modern redevelopment effort was even highlighted in a exhibition at the 1958 World’s Fair in Brussels.

So hop on your bike and check the modernist architecture of southwest and the new development taking place along the water.