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Its $650 million rebuilding project called for a new 11-acre plaza over the Potomac Freeway — offering better access between the center and the National Mall in Washington — and buildings for a new education center and rehearsal space designed by the architect Rafael Viñoly.

But in 2005 Congress balked, omitting from a transportation bill some $400 million earmarked for the project.

Now, eight years later, the center has unveiled a more modest $100 million plan, designed by Steven Holl, that will give the institution the rehearsal and education space. The money is being raised privately, and half has been donated by the center's chairman, David M. Rubenstein.

"When you're the chairman of something, you have the obligation to be a leader," Mr. Rubenstein said. "I am very much interested in promoting the idea that the federal government can't do all of the things that it used to be able to do."

The center plans to break ground in 2016 and complete the project in 2018.

Although the Kennedy Center has 1.5 million square feet of space, it opened to the public in 1971 without rehearsal or classroom space and with only one office. "We educate 11 million children a year and we don't have a classroom," said Michael M. Kaiser, the center's president.

The Kennedy Center also needs work space for its training of arts managers (Mr. Kaiser founded its DeVos Institute of Arts Management in 2001) and it needs large rehearsal space for opera and ballet.

Just as Lincoln Center's redevelopment opened its campus with new, inviting public areas, the Kennedy Center hopes to lure audiences with an outdoor stage and gardens where people can see a free performance, eat at a new restaurant or picnic by the Potomac. Mr. Holl and Chris McVoy, a senior partner at Steven Holl Architects, were unanimously selected by the Kennedy Center board after a search that started with 21 architects. The search was led by a 10-member architect selection committee, directed by Mr. Rubenstein and Fred Eychaner, a Chicago financier. Jean Kennedy Smith and Victoria Reggie Kennedy were committee members.

"We wanted to make an artistic statement," Mr. Kaiser said. "We weren't just looking for a mini version of what we had."

Mr. Holl's initial concept — a formal design will be created in the coming months — features three connected pavilions south of the existing building, amounting to 60,000 square feet.

The board was particularly taken by the design's orientation to the Potomac, since President Kennedy had expressed a strong affinity for water. Mr. Holl said this was deliberate. "My first sketch was to make a connection to the river," he said. "The original Edward Durrell Stone design was connected to the river."

One pavilion will float on the Potomac and include an outdoor stage. The exteriors will use translucent Okalux, an insulating glass that diffuses light. "It glows like a Japanese lantern," Mr. Holl said of the material. He also used the same Italian Carrara marble that cloaks the original building.

To avoid interrupting the current center's silhouette, the new structure will connect to it underground and via the main plaza.

"The idea was to fuse the addition with the landscape, rather than try to add an object on," Mr. Holl said.

Mr. Rubenstein's gift — among the largest ever given to a federally supported nonprofit organization — begins the Kennedy Center's $125 million fund-raising campaign. The institution plans to raise $50 million more for the expansion and an additional $25 million for future major programming.

Mr. Rubenstein has given more than $75 million to the center to date, making him the most generous benefactor in its history. He has also donated major gifts to the National Archives, the Washington Monument, Lincoln Center and the Smithsonian Institution.

Last June a bill that authorized the center to construct an expansion at the south end of its grounds was approved by both houses of Congress and signed into law by President Obama.

The expansion will be part of Mr. Kaiser's legacy to the center; he steps down at the end of 2014 after what will have been nearly 14 years in the job. He then will stay on for three more years running the DeVos Institute.

Mr. Holl said he felt inspired adding to a complex that honors President Kennedy. "Kennedy was so important for me," Mr. Holl said. "I was 13 years old when he was inaugurated, and they brought a television into my junior high."

Because the center is known as "a living memorial," and Kennedy's statements about the arts are carved into its facade, Mr. Holl did the same with his new buildings, using Kennedy's statements about water.

"We are tied to the ocean," Kennedy said in one of them. "And when we go back to the sea — whether it is to sail or to watch it — we are going back from whence we came."