The AIA versus Tax Reform

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by Deane

That mammoth tax bill will have repercussions for years to come, but how will it affect architects? That’s the question I was asked to tackle for a recent piece in Architectural Record, specifically looking at what role the AIA’s lobbying arm played in securing policies friendly to architects, and how successful it was in those efforts:

In the aftermath of last year’s election—in which AIA CEO Robert Ivy quickly committed to work with the President-elect on behalf of the entire AIA member body, then just as quickly issued several apologies—the AIA learned how polarized and how vocal its membership was. When strategizing positions related to tax reform, the AIA recognized that its members were as varied in their views as the country’s population, representing every shade on the political spectrum. Thus the AIA chose to focus on three issues that would have ramifications for all architects, regardless of their party affiliation: fair treatment for architects under the new tax laws; protection of the Federal Historic Tax Credit; and the preservation of another tax credit, known as 179D, for efficient building. “The bill at large had the ability to impact all architects in different ways,” says Cindy Schwartz, a senior director for advocacy within the AIA. “We’ve limited our communications and our work to these specific issues.”

I also had the distinct pleasure of speaking with architect Marsha Maytum of Leddy Maytum Stacy Architects about historic credits, which her firm has leveraged in several Bay Area projects to achieve successful outcomes that would have been impossible without them:

Without those tax credits, some projects simply wouldn’t happen, according to Marsha Maytum, FAIA, a principal with Leddy Maytum Stacy Architects in San Francisco as well as the incoming chair of the AIA’s Committee on the Environment. “Oftentimes, a landmarked building will have a lot of restrictions on what can and can’t be done to it, and if it’s not financially viable to rehabilitate it, it will just continue to decay,” Maytum says. “The tax credits provide some additional financial support to the organization trying to preserve the landmarked building.”

Read the full story at Architectural Record.

NMAAHC Wins 2018 Contract Magazine Interiors Award

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by Deane

The filigreed screen of the NMAAHC’s exterior reappears in the museum’s Oprah Winfrey Theater.

Contract Magazine announced the winners of its Interiors Awards for 2018 at a breakfast held in New York on January 26. The winners are featured online in the February print issue of Contract.

Among the winners is the National Museum of African American History and Culture (NMAAHC), by the design team of Freelon Adjaye Bond/SmithGroupJJR, which won recognition in the Civic/Public category. An excerpt from Contract of text I wrote about the NMAAHC is below:

Since opening more than a year ago, the National Museum of African American History and Culture (NMAAHC) has cemented its position as a cultural landmark in Washington, D.C. Located steps away from the White House and the Washington Monument on the edge of the National Mall, the museum, which is part of the Smithsonian Institution, connects to its greater context as it focuses on themes of resilience, movement, and memory.

The design team of Freelon Adjaye Bond / SmithGroupJJR conceived the multilevel museum in a restrained, monochromatic palette of metals, woods, and monolithic elements. The ground-floor Heritage Hall—surrounded by 15-foot-tall floor-toceiling windows on each side—serves as both a physical and emotional transition between the lower-level history galleries and the upper-level culture and community exhibitions. At the top of a grand stair, visitors can take in an uninterrupted view of the interior’s 160-foot height. “You want to welcome people in. It needs to be open and light, in terms of perceived weight and with regard to natural light coming in,” explains Phil Freelon, who was the lead architect. Perkins+Will has since acquired Freelon’s practice, and he is now design director for the firm’s North Carolina office.

Read the full story at Contract Magazine. 

Hirshhorn Lobby Updates Underway

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by Deane

A new café, operated by Dolcezza, features a bronze counter and overlapping tin shingles on sliding wall panels.

Renovations are in full swing in the lobby of the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, which was designed by Gordon Bunshaft of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (SOM). The Hirshhorn announced its lobby refresh by Hirsoshi Sugimoto in December 2017.

The lobby, which will see its first major redesign in the Hirshhorn’s 42-year history, will gain an outpost of local coffee and gelato purveyor Dolcezza as well as lounge seating by Sugimoto’s firm,New Material Research Laboratory (NMRL). A light installation by Olafur Eliasson will also be on display.

 

Olafur Eliasson’s “Your oceanic view” will hang in the Hirshhorn lobby.

Exploring the History of DC’s Alleyways

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by Deane

For local news site DCist, I wrote a three-part series on alleyways. The first piece in the series talks about how these informal, secondary streets found their way onto the L’Enfant grid. The second piece maps out some particularly fun alleyways. And the third article is its own brand of fun, dealing with alley disputes. This series was prompted by conversations I had with Elizabeth Emerson and Mark Lawrence of EL Studio, whose Washington Alley Project is a great example of architects diving into the fine-grain of the cities they’re in to effect hyper-local change with outsized community benefits. An excerpt of the first piece is below.

Blagden Alley, in Northwest, now boasts a coffee shop, a Michelin-starred restaurant, and the DC Alley Museum.

In most of D.C., the alleyways tucked behind rows of houses serve only as trash collection points or access to parking spots. But a few are home to hidden surprises—enclaves of artists’ workshops or community parks. So how exactly did these alleys come to be?

Laid out by Pierre L’Enfant in 1791, Washington’s city grid divides land into rectangular blocks, interrupted by diagonal avenues that intersect at small parks. Long and short blocks were overlaid on the grid, resulting in an almost Tartan pattern with oversized lots ripe for subdivision.

These alleys, unlike so much of D.C., were not meticulously planned. During the 1850s, and again following the Civil War, D.C. struggled to house its surging population and alley lots presented a free-for-all for developers. Historian James Borchert described in his 1980 book, Alley Life in Washington: Family, Community, Religion, and Folklife in the City, 1850-1970, how developers built settlements for poor residents in alleys at the same time that they constructed grand townhouses for wealthier residents along the city’s thoroughfares.

“Their implicit assumption seemed to be that the middle classes would live on the streets, while working-class people would reside in the alleys,” Borchert wrote.

For a time, this system did meet the housing demand, though unequally. Alley dwellings ranged from ramshackle to robust. And while these areas of high density produced tightly knit communities of working-class people from similar backgrounds, alleys could also be home to disease, drunken debauchery, and violent crime. Most alleyways, however, were centers of domestic life and shared community, where children could play without fear of traffic, and neighbors in close proximity to each other frequently interacted.

Alley structures could formerly only be used as garages or studios, but a 2016 update to zoning legislation affords new possibilities for accessory dwelling units to be added to properties. Now, ADUs can have their own kitchens, baths, and entrances separate from the main house on a property, subject to limitations on square footage based on size relative to the main house. ADUs are currently limited to a maximum of three occupants, but still provide potential for increased density. In addition to providing rental opportunities to offset costs of living for homeowners, these supplementary buildings can allow multigenerational living situations, such as a granny flat, where an older family member can live in her or his own space, yet still be close enough to offer or receive family assistance.

D.C., it seems, could see a resurgence of alley dwellings. As Washington grows once again, developers are seeking new opportunities to build. With an upper height limit in place, many are looking to the centers of oversized blocks as opportunities to add density. The District’s loosening of alley structure use restrictions will allow dwellings by right, where previously only studios or garages were permissible. Additionally, the updated alley guidelines will allow dwellings in 24-foot-wide alleys and some 15-foot-wide alleys, where earlier codes restricted alley dwellings to 30-foot-wide alleys only.

Meanwhile, businesses have taken advantage of industrial-scaled alleyway leftover spaces that translate well into dining rooms and cafés. Blagden Alley, for example, now boasts a coffee shop and a Michelin-starred restaurant. The thriving art community is also on view there, with murals that are themselves a tourist draw, according to Elizabeth Emerson, an architect with a studio on nearby Naylor Court who is currently studying Washington’s alleyways.

Read the full story at DCist. Or look at a map of notable alleys. Or pick an alley fight.

Interview with AIA Gold Medal Winner James Polshek

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by Deane

James Polshek, winner of the 2018 AIA Gold Medal, served as design director for The Newseum in Washington, D.C.

“I thought it was a robocall,” James Polshek says about answering the phone to news that he’d won the 2018 American Institute of Architects (AIA) Gold Medal. “It was a chilly day, and I was walking up 6th Avenue after leaving a chronologically required hearing test, when the phone rang.” Polshek is 87, but could hear the news just fine: “At that point, I kind of lost my breath,” he says. “I was laughing and sobbing simultaneously, with enjoyment, pleasure, and some disbelief.”

A 1955 M.Arch. graduate of Yale University, Polshek founded his eponymous firm in 1963, which evolved through the years to become Ennead Architects in 2010, five years after his retirement. He spoke with RECORD by phone after learning about the AIA award.

Architectural Record: Which projects are you proudest of, and why?

James Polshek: You know the saying, “If you have many children . . .” The most obvious one is perhaps the most nationally prestigious: the Clinton Library. But my two favorites came in succession in 1969 and 1972 and gave me the confidence to pursue the way I wanted to practice. The first was the New York State Bar Association in Albany, which won the 1972 AIA Honor Award for merging a historic building in a historic district with a modernist interpretation. The second is called the Five County Consulting Center in Columbus, Indiana, which solved environmental and ecological problems, as the building is a bridge over a creek that flooded severely. We used some of the foundation budget to stop the Army Corps of Engineers from simply widening the creek. Those two together—and the various themes that connect to later projects—were seminal.

For more about Polshek’s advice for young architects, his firm’s evolution, and ethical codes embedded in his work, read the full story at Architectural Record. 

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