Two Quiet Residential Projects Speak Volumes

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by Deane

ArchitectureDC Magazine devoted its Spring 2019 issue to residential architecture, and I was delighted to cover two small projects: The Not-So-Bungalow, by Wakako Tokunaga Architecture, and an Artist’s Retreat, by Teass\Warren Architects with landscape architect Moody Graham.

Wakako Tokunaga’s project reconfigures a Takoma Park bungalow into a more livable arrangement with a modern addition. Will Teass and Charles Warren worked with Moody Graham to convert an existing garage into an art gallery Excerpts from each article are below.

Not-So-Bungalow

A Modest House Breaks Out of its Shell
by Deane Madsen, Assoc. AIA

For Wakako Tokunaga, AIA, LEED AP, an architect who trained with Japanese alternative-materials guru Shigeru Ban, Hon. FAIA, and Washington’s own residential powerhouse, Suzane Reatig, FAIA, the renovation of a Takoma Park bungalow was a welcome opportunity to merge distinct architectural eras, and to fuse her Japanese and American influences. From the street, the house still appears to be a typical 1920s structure. Inside, old gives way to new, culminating in a decidedly contemporary addition that transforms the house, in Tokunaga’s mind, into a “not-so-bungalow.”

Tokunaga, who runs Wakako Tokunaga Architecture out of her home office, met her clients at their children’s pre-school. They had bought the house based on the charm of its nearly century-old base building, but quickly found that an earlier addition constructed by the previous owner was both too cramped and too dark for their needs. And one of the main assets of the property, a shaded rear yard downhill of the street level, was blocked from view by the addition’s walls.

Read the full Not-So-Bungalow story at ArchitectureDC.

Artist’s (Re)Treat

Humble Outbuilding Becomes the Gem of the Lot
by Deane Madsen, Assoc. AIA

At the very edge of the District, where a spur of the Pinehurst Trail meets one of the city’s original boundary stones, the regular grid of the L’Enfant Plan crashes against the border, resulting in an awkward, non-rectilinear lot. The main house upon that Barnaby Woods lot is aligned with the east-west orientation of the facing street, while the long edge of the property line runs northwest to southeast. The resulting residual space, which also slopes downward in that direction, provides an opportunity for landscape and architecture to work in tandem to transform the backyard into a garden sanctuary, anchored by a new artist’s retreat.

The clients, who were looking to make the property as cohesive as possible while balancing built elements of a neo-colonial house with a modern addition and a forgettable garage outbuilding, first turned to landscape architects Moody Graham to unify the multi-level backyard connecting them. “We looked at [the yard] and immediately said that there’s an opportunity to simplify this, to tie in a lawn space with this garage, which we saw potential for as more of a destination,” recalled Ryan Moody, ASLA. “We proposed some initial concepts to them, and they got excited about the idea. It was obviously a little bit broader of a project than they originally anticipated, but they saw value in redoing the small structure they had and making it visually more interesting.”

That’s when they and the clients engaged Teass\Warren Architects with the goal of transforming the little-used garage into a studio that would also become the garden’s focal point when seen from the glassy, modern addition. Through conversations with the clients and the landscape team, Teass\Warren began to explore the notion of a sanctuary space that could play host equally to a painter and a yogi, which formed the basis for the artist’s retreat.

Read the full Artist’s Retreat story at ArchitectureDC.

Hip Hop Architecture Camp Lands in DC

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by Deane

For Architectural Digest, I had the wonderful opportunity to attend a day of the Hip Hop Architecture Camp’s visit to Washington, DC. This edition of the camp brought 10 middle school students to AIA|DC’s District Architecture Center, where, with guidance from the camp’s founder, Michael Ford, they explored architectural concepts through physical and digital modeling. The students also developed verses reflecting their experiences in the built environment, with a rap battle yielding four finalists who then recorded a DC-specific track. An excerpt of that article is below.

Michael Ford speaks to his Hip Hop Architecture Camp participants

How Hip-Hop Can Help Solve Design’s Diversity Problem

The Hip Hop Architecture Camp is introducing underrepresented kids to the design profession, one lyric at a time.

by Deane Madsen

On a mild afternoon in Washington, D.C., a makeshift stage has formed in the entryway of the District Architecture Center. Middle-schooler Iyana Benjamin adjusts the arms of her gold-rimmed, circular glasses from beneath a gray beanie and smiles as she looks up from her notebook and out to a few rows of folding chairs, accommodating nine other kids and a few adults. A beat emanating from a nearby laptop breaks the silence, and Benjamin begins to rap. She raps in a matter-of-fact yet firm tone on topics that are well beyond her years, from the swift gentrification of her neighborhood to the overshadowed African American architects who first built it.

I grew up in a place being gentrified / Raised in Chocolate City, rehabilitized / Hanging out in the streets of Eastland Gardens / Where houses were built by Lewis K and Clyde Martin

—Iyana Benjamin

Benjamin, along with the other middle school students, are part of a weeklong workshop called the Hip Hop Architecture Camp. The program, founded and administered by architectural designer Michael Ford, brings awareness of the built environment to kids who may never have considered their place of upbringing as being a formative part of it. That’s something Ford hopes to change.

For students at the camp, the workshops are opportunities to not just explore a potential career avenue but develop a whole new way of thinking about their cities. Over the course of a week, students watch a lot of hip-hop music videos, but they also reinterpret their lyrics as miniature buildings and explore design at multiple scales. With the aid of volunteers, they then write their own songs (the lyrics of which are featured throughout this piece), jotting down bars in notebooks with a goal of recording them later.

“The benefit of doing this, for architects and urban planners, is being able to communicate with other artists about their skills and bring them into architecture,” Ford says. “As architects, we’ve always been influenced by culture. The Hip Hop Architecture Camp creates some very interesting, cross-disciplinary conversations that I have not had in architecture school.”

Read the full article at Architectural Digest.

Listen to the DC track, “Find A Way,” via the Hip Hop Architecture Camp.

Iyana Benjamin records her verse in a Fort Washington, Md., studio

‘HOOPS’ Opens at the National Building Museum

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by Deane

The National Building Museum hosts an exhibition of the photographs of Bill Bamberger through through January 5, 2020. I covered the exhibition opening for Architectural Record. An excerpt of the article follows.

Bill Bamberger introduces his work at “HOOPS,” an exhibition at the National Building Museum in Washington, D.C.

For basketball fans, the excitement of a game comes down to watching the players take their shots at the hoop. But in HOOPS, a new exhibition at the National Building Museum, photographer Bill Bamberger is the one taking the shot—sans players.

Featuring 75 large-format prints, HOOPS hones in on the informal arrangements of basketball venues around the world. By cutting out the players, Bamberger removes the idea of a moment frozen in time, to instead tell the broader story of place and environment, captured in vivid color.

The absence of people is a notable departure for Bamberger, whose work prior to this series includes portraits from the Rust Belt in the mid-1980s and post-genocide Rwanda.

In the tradition of the German photographers Hilla and Bernd Becher—a mid-twentieth-century duo whose oeuvre included multiple series of tightly cropped images of water towers, coal chutes, and other industrial relics—Bamberger narrows his focus to the ubiquitous basketball backboard. But unlike the Bechers, Bamberger widens his frame to include the surrounding environments of his subjects. Visual clues such as construction materials, condition, or landscape (Douglas fir versus camel thorn trees, for instance), suggest context and geography, offering the viewer clues about the unseen community each court serves. In perhaps cheeky allusion to the Bechers, the exhibition includes an image of a basketball hoop attached to a grain silo.

Read the full story at Architectural Record.

AIA|DC Tackles Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion

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by Deane

At a panel discussion hosted by AIA|DC, Kimberly Dowdell, the president of NOMA, and William Bates, the president of the AIA, discussed their respective efforts at improving diversity and equity within the profession. It was my honor to attend and to cover the evening for Architectural Digest; an excerpt of that coverage is below.

Dr. Michelle Joan Wilkinson (left) moderates a panel discussion with
Kimberly Dowdell and William Bates.

5 Takeaways from the AIA’s Latest Discussion of Its Diversity Problem

Architects discussed the crucial steps toward building a more equitable profession, at a panel in Washington, D.C.

By Deane Madsen

It’s no secret that the architectural profession has a diversity problem. Of the AIA’s 94,000 members, just 2,270 are African American, and of those, 452 are women, according to data from the Directory of African American Architects. And, for now at least, the future doesn’t seem to be looking much brighter: Only five percent of students enrolled in architecture programs are African American, according to demographic data compiled by the National Council of Architectural Registration Boards.

Last night, a group of architects, advocates, and curators assembled at the Washington, D.C., chapter of the American Institute of Architects (AIA) to unpack and address some of these concerns. At an evening event titled “Embracing Our Differences, Changing the World,” AIA President William Bates and National Organization of Minority Architects (NOMA) President Kimberly Dowdell discussed equity, diversity, and inclusion with Michelle Joan Wilkinson, a curator of the National Museum of African American History and Culture, before a packed house. “It’s not a secret that architecture as a profession has fallen behind,” Bates conceded, adding that the percentage of black students in architecture programs is “not that different from what it was 50 years ago.”

Seizing upon guidelines for diversity and inclusion that the AIA released earlier this year, the speakers reflected upon the urgent need for more equitable representation in the profession.

Read the five takeaways in the full article at Architectural Digest

Metropolis Think Tank at Perkins Eastman Tackles DC’s Urban Planning

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by Deane

I was thrilled to be invited to attend and cover the DC edition of Metropolis Magazine’s Think Tank program. Moderated by Metropolis director of design innovation Susan Szenasy, this discussion brought together Matt Ginivan, a senior vice president of real estate development with JBG Companies; Mignon Anthony, who is chief operating officer of Alexandria City Public Schools; former D.C. mayor Anthony Williams, who currently serves as CEO and executive director of the Federal City Council; and host Barbara Mullenex, who is a managing principal with Perkins Eastman. An excerpt of Think Tank coverage follows.

The Wharf, Washington, D.C.

Like many other cities around the world, Washington, D.C., has undergone expansion and contraction tied to generational shifts in attitude toward urban living. But Washington is also a curious case in that its height restrictions limit vertical growth, which forces developers to consider alternative means of increasing density within a regimented city grid. In the 1960s, planners invoked eminent domain to transform swaths of Washington’s Southwest and Southeast quadrants, and the effects of that urban renewal linger in the forms of displaced populations fighting to regain a foothold in the capital as well as informal business districts that empty out after-hours.

Architect Barbara Mullenex likens urban renewal’s effect on the city to a forest clear-cutting, but sees policy as a vehicle toward managed restoration. “The highway administration divided cities and tore down the urban fabric,” she said recently at a Metropolis Think Tank panel discussion. Mullenex, who is a managing principal at Perkins Eastman, was involved in master-planning a massive development in the area, called the Wharf, that had prompted the talk.

Once a relatively dilapidated waterfront stretch between a fish market and a few motels and restaurants, the Wharf has been redeveloped into a busy living and dining destination that reconnects the adjacent neighborhood to the Potomac River. For Mullenex, who was onstage by thought leaders working in Washington’s metro region, the project “is kind of full circle of urban renewal.” She highlighted late “more enlightened policy making” that aimed to “develop policies that would allow for future re-growth or revitalization of those areas.”

While the federal government was re-shaping Southwest into superblocks of either agency offices or Modernist multifamily towers, another urban hub was taking shape across the Potomac, in Virginia: Crystal City. To Matt Ginivan, a senior vice president with developer JBG Smith, Crystal City once represented a Jetsons-age mentality in the way its infrastructure was designed to funnel people from homes to highways to parking garages and into office towers, connected by sky bridges. Contact with the natural elements was minimized. Now, Ginivan says his team at JBG Smith wants to change the paradigm. The question they’ve been asking lately is “How do we change it from a place where people are going in and out of it every day, to a place where people are living, and mingling, and experiencing the environment together?”The firm was also responsible for master-planning the Wharf, a busy living and dining destination in Southwest D.C. that reconnects the adjacent neighborhood to the Potomac River.C

Part of the answer has to do with strategic redevelopment that finds new uses for some of the existing stock of office blocks within Crystal City, especially now that it has been named one of the two sites for Amazon’s second headquarters (the Think Tank panel occurred just prior to Amazon’s announcement). This kind of redevelopment, where aging commercial corridors have been up-zoned to allow mixtures of retail and residential uses as well, is happening in cities across the United States. In Crystal City, a WeWork/WeLive outpost designed by Perkins Eastman has opened recently, combining shared workspaces with flexible living quarters. Another co-working space, 1776 Crystal City, rents out workplaces within its ample office tower floorplate. The area benefits from dual Metro station access and is a stone’s throw from Reagan National Airport, making it a transit-connected environment within easy reach of Washington’s traditional downtown, and beyond. Then there are the infrastructural improvements, such as the addition of a bus lane and a bike lane. “We don’t have the L’Enfant plan, the natural grid,” Ginivan said. “We have Route 1, and that’s still elevated in lots of areas. We have big superblocks. But there’s about a two-block stretch of Crystal City that feels like a vibrant, bustling business district.” And, with the advent of Amazon’s HQ2, National Landing—which is what local officials are calling the combination of parts of Crystal City, Pentagon City, and Potomac Yards—is likely to get a lot busier in the near future.

Read the full story at Metropolis Magazine

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