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ArchitectureDC

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.

880 P Street in ArchitectureDC Summer Issue

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by Deane

880 P Street

I was pleased to contribute two articles to ArchitectureDC Magazine’s annual residential design issue (Summer 2018), looking at housing from both the single-family and multifamily perspectives. On the single-family front, it was David Jameson’s Hull House in Alexandria, which is a contemporary take on the gabled-roof silhouette so prevalent in that neighborhood. The multifamily project was 880 P Street by Shalom Baranes, the last piece of a multi-block development puzzle in the heart of Shaw centered around the historic market at O Street. An excerpt from the article follows. 

Lobby

Fifty years ago this spring, as the nation recoiled from the assassination of Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., its capital descended into four days of that left whole swaths of Washington in smoking rubble. A quarter century later, the Victorian-styled O Street Market—which had served continuously as the Shaw neighborhood’s public marketplace since its 1881 completion, but was slow to re-emerge from that post-riot rubble—was again the site of turmoil as gun violence erupted, injuring eight people and killing one, 15-year-old Duwan A’Vant.

In the two decades that followed the 1994 shooting, O Street Market fell into disrepair. A grocery chain, Giant, opened and paved over the rest of the two blocks bounded by O Street, NW, to the south, P Street to the north, and 7th and 9th streets to the east and west, respectively. Now, thanks to a forward-thinking re-investment initiated by Roadside Development in 2001, the O Street Market is restored, and the two blocks are filled with a hotel, various restaurants, and new mid-rise residential buildings that bring density and housing into a historic district that needs both. The last piece of that puzzle, designed by Shalom Baranes Associates (SBA), is 880 P Street.

“I think the building is an example of how you can do contemporary design in historic neighborhoods, and it’s going to be OK,” said Robert Sponseller, AIA, who is a design principal at SBA, and who led the master plan. “You can put modern and old together, and there’s a synergy you get when you do that that’s more powerful than just recreating the old.”

Read the full story at ArchitectureDC.

Southward view from the 880 P Street rooftop

Rooftop amenities include a swimming pool, a grilling deck, an outdoor shower, and this lounge with shuffleboard table

The 880 P Street project occupies the L-shaped northwest corner of the site, and completes the second phase of the overall City Market at O master plan, which was also designed by SBA. The site development restores the 8th Street right-of-way that had been eliminated in the mid-1970s, realigning it with the L’Enfant Plan, and resurrects the O Street Market with the insertion of the Giant within its shell (the building was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1995).

Phase one of the project also included the Hodge—an apartment tower of 90 affordable units aimed at seniors, to fulfill requirements of Washington’s inclusionary zoning laws—as well as two, 10-story market-rate condominium towers and the 182-room Cambria Hotel at the southwest corner of the site. While residents of the Hodge must meet income thresholds—18 units are set aside for people who earn less than 50 percent of area median income (AMI), with the other 72 for those at or below 60 percent AMI—the other three market-rate towers, including 880 P Street, have no such restrictions.

The 880 P Street building and its two sibling apartment complexes aim squarely at a higher-income demographic, with one-bedroom units starting upwards of $2,400 per month (rents at the Hodge, by contrast, are $964 to $1,169). Billed as luxury living, the units themselves are compact, but outfitted with finishes such as Italian cabinetry and Corian countertops. Floor-to-ceiling windows and private balconies afford broad views outward and daylight penetration within. In two-bedroom units, Raydoor fixed and sliding partitions take advantage of the abundance of daylight to cast a diffuse glow in the secondary bedroom.

Read the full story at ArchitectureDC.

Hull House in ArchitectureDC Summer Issue

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by Deane

David Jameson’s Hull House

I was pleased to contribute two articles to ArchitectureDC Magazine’s annual residential design issue (Summer 2018), looking at housing from both the single-family and multifamily perspectives. The multifamily project was 880 P Street, the last piece of a development puzzle in the heart of Shaw. On the single-family front, it was David Jameson’s Hull House in Alexandria, which is a contemporary take on the gabled-roof silhouette so prevalent in that neighborhood. It’s a straightforward parti with a complex, folded roof that prompts Jameson to talk about origami when mentioned. An excerpt from the article follows. 

The entry—a notch carved into the south-facing stone wall—is obscured from eastbound traffic

The popularity of gabled rooflines isn’t unique to Alexandria, Virginia—that angled silhouette has served as a signifier of “house” from the earliest ages, assembled easily in children’s drawings or blocks by placing a triangle atop a square. Although pitched roofs are so standard as to be written into Alexandria’s historic district design guidelines, for David Jameson, FAIA’s, latest project in the city, everything beneath that traditional roofline is decidedly unconventional.

Hull House, which is sited along a busy cut-through between one of Alexandria’s main drags and its Old Town neighborhood, cuts a jagged profile as viewed from the street, with a narrow central volume flanked by two larger, unequal wings (“We call it Hull House because it’s like you’re living in the hull of a boat,” Jameson said). But beyond the flash of copper roofing and a glint of glass beneath its pointed prows, the true nature of the house lies hidden behind a 60-foot-long stone wall, with its entrance carved at an angle invisible from eastbound traffic. That wall doubles back to define an eight-foot-deep service core of restrooms and closets—recalling the “servant spaces” in the designs of seminal modernist architect Louis I. Kahn—and acts as a physical and acoustical barrier between occupants and passing traffic.

Read the full story at ArchitectureDC.

Large roof overhangs allow ample daylight while mediating solar gain

The rock wall gives way to Hull House’s entrance

Winter Winners: A Pair of Washington Museums in ArchitectureDC

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by Deane

The Winter 2017 issue of ArchitectureDC Magazine

The Winter 2017 issue of ArchitectureDC–the quarterly publication of the Washington, D.C., chapter of the American Institute of Architects (AIA|DC)–features winners of its 2017 Design Awards. It was my honor to write about two projects that earned Awards of Excellence from AIA|DC: The Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture (NMAAHC) and the Smithsonian National Gallery East Building Renovation and Expansion. Both are projects that have been enormously influential in challenging the status of architecture in Washington.

The Winter 2017 issue of ArchitectureDC Magazine

Excerpts on each winning project are below, but be sure to pick up a copy of the ArchitectureDC Winter Issue at the District Architecture Center, which will host its 2017 Awards Show from Dec. 11-Jan. 26.

National Gallery of Art East Building Renovation and Expansion:

Restoring internationally acclaimed architecture–and expanding it from within–is no easy task, but that’s exactly the assignment Hartman-Cox Architects received from the National Gallery of Art for its 1978 East Building. Read the full story at ArchitectureDC. 

NMAAHC:

Occupying what may be the last buildable site on Washington’s Mall, the new Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture (NMAAHC) mediates the ground between museums and memorials by itself serving both purposes through a program that celebrates culture while recalling the painful history of slavery. Read the full story at ArchitectureDC.