Marisa and Rick gave a thorough and descriptive tour of the soon-to-be-open Marvin Gaye Recreation Center. Some talking points included the building's passive and active sustainable features, designing in a 100-year floodplain, and working with local community involvement.
Thanks to AIA|DC!
Starting in March of 2018, DC residents can attend the DC Infrastructure Academy to pursue infrastructure jobs with public utility companies in the city. This program will be used as a bridge between job-searching DC residents and in-demand jobs for companies such as Pepco/Exelon and Washington Gas.
We are proud to be a part of this mayor-initiated project with the team led by Broughton Construction and look forward to following the growth and success of the DC Infrastructure Academy!
Featured Links:
DCW: DC Infrastructure Academy open for business, readies job force for in-demand jobs
DC DOES: "Stop by and say hi! DCIA Address: 2330 Pomeroy Road, SE. #DCIA"
Around noon, the sun casts the smallest shadow from my feet onto the stone pavement. To my left, oversized trucks crowd the one-way road — to my right, walls are colored golden yellow, pale brown, and mature red. Hand-made doorknobs and dusty windows offer glimpses of life inside these houses. Where I walk, the house is separated by only the 30-centimeters of the walls. My fingertips can’t help but touch. My eyes trace the imperfect lines of these walls that border the sky.
I am embraced at each turn and slope of San Miguel streets.
Having been around the Virginian suburbs and gone to university in the Appalachians, the density of urban communities often receive a negative connotation: tall towers and their long shadows, constant traffic and noise, not enough space. Many have sought out for space by extending into more space — setbacks and front yards connected by miles of asphalt.
Compared to San Miguel, I wonder if there is a cityscape that was as unfamiliar to me. Yet — where once an old woman greeted me and once a young businessman asked me about my home — on these streets I felt a sense of belonging.
Marvin Gaye didn’t sing “Love The One You’re With” — that would be Stephen Stills. But the line seems appropriate when we talk about biophilia and urban green field sites. While these sites are often overused, there is still much of the natural environment to love. Here is a little lyric about the site in Northeast Washington DC where Marvin Gaye grew up. There is a path in a park and a recreation center that bears Marvin’s name. The park is entered from a neighborhood street of brick rowhouses + duplexes on the north end of the site. The path moves south through a grove of majestic willow oaks. Folks play basketball beneath towering specimen trees planted in rows over a hundred years ago.
A footbridge crosses a wandering stream — a riparian zone working to regenerate itself with some help from the Army Corps of Engineers. Pass through a belt of trees that line both sides of the small ravine. Fields open up to the south — football, baseball, soccer, anything can be played here on a carpet of green.
The treeline forms a backdrop for the outfield. Here the recreation center is raised on berms above the floodplain. The path rises on a ramp to a high plaza and passes into the lobby. The building can be felt taking a breath. Fresh air is drawn in through louvers above windows and exhaled through high fans on the roof — natural ventilation.
Daylight pours in through high clerestory windows, draws visitors to the gallery on the second floor. The ramp leads to stairs; stairs lead out over the fields up into the boughs of the trees cantilevered above the stream. A point of prospect from within provides a view out over the fields. A perforated sunscreen filters light like the canopy of leaves on either side.
Step out onto the balcony and the building disappears — replaced by the sense of being in the trees beneath blue skies with the sound of water coursing through the stream bed three stories below.
We are better than telephone poles disguised as trees. We don’t need plastic flowers and wallpapered bricks. We need sunlight and the change of seasons. We need the wind and the rain and seeing a fern gently arch towards the sunlight. We need gardens that go dormant in winter and plants that die in a drought, only to be rebirthed with the rainy season. We need the rough texture of slate and the sound of gurgling water easing our thoughts. We can build buildings that are perfectly plumb and streets that align to a grid.
Consistent, logical, expected. But to bring in nature, to allow the regimented design of 90 degree angles be interrupted and forced to co-exist with the constant changes of nature; that is where the secret lies. To have places that celebrate this, embrace the unregimented neighbor and, dare I say, be informed by the earthly forms and knowledge that the natural world provides, now that is a place worth inhabiting.
