We are thrilled that our recent work at Powell Elementary has been featured as the cover article for Architecture DC! Twin Oak’s Community Garden was also featured in the magazine along with other great public and institutional projects around our city.
You can read the articles using the links below:
Powell Elementary School won the AIA DC Design Excellence and Sustainability awards by telling students to “Abre Las Ventanas” (open the windows). Our renovation and addition to this dual language school showcases solar chimneys and operable windows as passive design strategies. To make the learning environment more comfortable and energy efficient, passive design harnesses the powerful effects of nature… forces like hot air rises and nature abhors a vacuum[1].
Solar chimneys utilize the natural flows of air current to provide non-mechanical cooling + ventilation. They’re something we don’t see every day, but the concept has been around forever. In fact, the original historic structure included a solar chimney when it was constructed in 1929. This was a time before the use of mechanical air conditioning… a time almost forgotten when schools had operable windows.
We discovered something fascinating when we surveyed the historic building: every classroom had an odd metal grille on the corridor side wall. Each one connected to a duct in the hollow wall that led to the open attic. In spring or fall, when a room got too hot, these vents moved hot stale air out of the classroom and into the attic plenum as students opened the windows. Hot air rises – nature abhors a vacuum. Open a window to let in fresh air: free cooling and ventilation.
So how do you get all that hot stale air out of the attic? The cupola was not just for looks - it functioned as a vent for the attic. Louvers let the hot air out and windows use the sun to heat the space up and speed up the process somewhat.
For the new classroom wing at Powell, we took a lesson from history – we replicated this function and modified it to improve efficiency. Now each classroom has a duct to a solar chimney. When conditions are right - temperature, wind speed + direction, humidity – a green light goes on in the classroom telling the students “Abre las ventanas”. In this day + age we have to encourage our kids to open a window.
The natural ventilation provided by the Solar Chimneys in the addition results in an additional 5.2% savings on energy above the already high baseline for a LEED-S Gold school. The passive strategies in this one wing alone provide cost savings of 2% to the overall project. The solar chimneys provide cool fresh air without the use of non-renewable energy. It’s a concept that is thousands of years old and it’s chock full of STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Art, + Music) teaching moments.
That’s why the folks at DC Sustainable Energy Utility gave us funding for signage in the hallways to educate students on how they work. The STEAM message is levelled for different age groups. It helps explain the concept by comparing it to a fire place chimney within their own homes. However, rather than exhausting smoke, the solar chimney exhausts hot, stale air. It’s a timeless lesson in saving money and energy, promoting healthy buildings, and educating all ages on resource stewardship.
Citation
[1] Nature abhors a vacuum (horror vacui); this idiom and theory by Aristotle posits that empty space does not want to be empty space. When it comes to passive design, this theory is applied in a myriad of ways. Powell Elementary uses the solar chimney and operable windows to create a vacuum. As temperatures warm throughout the year, the vents at the top of the solar chimney can be opened to release the hot air. As the hot air is removed, the empty space left wants to be filled. When used in combination with the operable windows, new fresh air is pulled in to fill the space creating a naturally occurring and desirable draft.
We are excited and honored to announce that three of our projects have won four AIA DC Design Awards. Powell Elementary is recognized for Design Excellence and Sustainability, Twin Oaks Pavilion earned the Universal Design award, and Marvin Gaye Recreation Center is also honored for Sustainability. A big thanks to all the many collaborators who contributed to achieve these beautiful projects and helped further our mission of creating communities of artful, sustainable design. Thank you to AIA DC for these prestigious awards.
Powell Elementary
AIA DC Design Excellence & Sustainability Awards
Twin Oaks Pavilion
AIA DC Universal Design Award
Marvin Gaye Recreation Center
AIA DC Sustainability Award
We’ve grown! As the work has grown and project types expanded we’ve teamed up with JP2 Architects our partners in Baltimore. Together we offer planning, architecture, and interior design services for a range of Commercial and Civic project types. Our portfolio includes Multi-family, Mixed-Use, Retail, Hospitality, Entertainment, Office, Civic, Institutional, Educational, Industrial, Infrastructure, and some High-end Residential work as well. Our team of 30 architects, designers, and planners has many talents. We’ve got stories.
We’re grateful for our mission-driven clients and honored at the recognition our work has received. This past year alone we criss-crossed the country at the invitation of the Gehl Institute, CitiesAlive, and the American Horticultural Society. We engaged in resilient community sessions at the SXSW Cities conference in Spring and showcased new ideas for outdoor education spaces at Cornell in the Summer. By the Fall we had presented project case studies at Public X Design in Detroit, CitiesAlive in Brooklyn, and DesignDC in Washington DC. We closed out the year with a showcase of Marvin Gaye Recreation Center at ECON, the DC Mayor Bowser’s annual Economic Partnership meeting. The Center also won a Presidential Citation for Sustainable Design at this years AIA|DC design awards. You can see more plus a list of published projects in our Story.
We celebrated our birthday in September - 18 years of civic, cultural, and community-based work! We began with a dedication to the design of artful, sustainable communities and we’re amazed at the people and projects that have crossed our path. Thinking back, our first project was community process and planning for the Girard Street Playground in 2000. Three years later we designed light-filled offices for community developer Jair Lynch and won awards for our Smart Wall. 2005 found us developing an art-based public school for Washington Very Special Arts. We developed a Vision Plan for the National Mall and presented it to Congressional Representatives in 2008. That same year we designed a solar-powered City Council chamber for the City of Takoma Park. We travelled overseas quite a bit with the US Forest Service from 2010 to 2012 designing sustainable tourism centers in Africa. Since then we’ve watched civic projects come to life and grow into award-winning green schools, recreation centers, municipal offices, and civic infrastructure. We just completed Washington DC’s first Infrastructure Academy. Here’s to another 18.
This is a question asked frequently in the design community. The community design process is not an easy fit with the way that many design firms operate. ISTUDIO contends that developing mechanisms that provide communities with design services is both a crucial development in our culture’s response to the crises affecting our urban neighborhoods, and a crucial development in the maturing process of the design profession. All professions have made organized, broad-based efforts to provide services to under-served communities.
This practice of offering services based on the greatest need, rather than the greatest availability of resources, has created great organizations such as the American Civil Liberties Union, and Doctors Without Borders. This brings us to a crucial point; if designers truly believe that their services are indispensable to creating healthy communities, they must find ways to extend those benefits to communities in need. This focus re-imagines the design process as, first and foremost, a method of caring for others.
Since design is a process, it is useful to establish some benchmarks in the process, and some general guidelines. First, community design must be a two-way street in order to be effective. Designers must be willing to learn from communities and vice versa.
Further, good interpersonal relationships will be crucial to creating a smooth process. Therefore, designers must be intentional and focused on developing connections, both professional and personal, with people and organizations in the community. Failure to accomplish these ends results in a lost opportunity for designers to learn. Diminished trust means community members will be less invested in the final product, less likely to provide the necessary support for completing the project.
- Designers learn which issues community members care about, and how residents think about the space, its use, its purpose, and each other. Designers gain insight into the specific language each community uses to talk about itself. This local language is influenced by culture (and the mix of cultures), class, race, religion. All of these form the basis for our aspirations for the future, and for people’s understanding of changes as positive or negative.
- Designers can clearly define their role as community advocates. They should recognize a possible need to take on roles outside or beyond their roles as defined in standard practice. Professionals should figure out what the project needs, rather than limiting themselves to what designers are “supposed” to do.
- Designers can develop long-term connections with communities interested in reinventing themselves, and help build community capacity to manage those changes.
- Stakeholders can develop a unified vision for a community, and document that vision in a way that is easily understood.
- The design process can build a constituency to a create change. That base group, once formed, can work on other issues, solidifying community involvement.
- New relationships can develop between existing community members and organizations during the process.
- The workshop structure allows communities to access expertise from organizations or individuals in a regularized fashion. Communities gain a new method for group problem solving. The workshop process can be applied to other community problems, and function as a “safe place” in which to discuss group problems and propose solutions.
Seen in this way, the workshop process provides three products. First is the design proposal, a solution to the specified problem and a plan for implementing the solution. Second is a community-building effort that organizes existing individual and group assets of for change. Third is the workshop process itself; a structured, familiar mechanism to address future problems.
Michael Hill, ASLA
Notebook Japan 98 So when does a city start to belong to a person? Is it a matter of time, or of experience? Maybe when the lights coming on in the evening bring a sense of familiarity. When I have a place to go as some kind of regular. When I decide I’ll go home this way instead of that because the subway is cheaper than a train + bus, even if I have to walk a little more. When I feel a strange sense of kindred with folks on the street I’ll never even meet – complete stranger. When I don’t stop at each corner to check my direction + location.
I’ve come to Motomachi only the 4th time or so and I spend the afternoon strolling streets and the early evening drinking coffee at an outside table in the fall air and I take possession of the city a little. Like a beachhead, like a first long kiss + a touch. Like taking it for a test drive. At that point it’s a little bit mine now. Walking through doesn’t count, a peck on the cheek doesn’t either. But lingering, that’s when the exchange begins whether one knows it or not. And returning builds the bond one silk thread after another. Finally the living is what really seals it. The prolonged occupation, “marrying a native”. Sleeping together, or better yet waking up together. Taking it in for alignment and getting the brakes checked. When I’m buying bread, saying hello to the owners and thinking about how there’s too many new people these days… it’s mine.
We are excited to be a part of DC Design Week, a city-wide celebration of all things design in DC hosted by AIGA DC. Come join us for a creative lunch at Marvin Gaye Recreation Center, where we will be talking about the design process and the importance of art in communities. Tuesday 10/23 @ 12pm. Click here or the link below for more information.
We are renovating a building from the late 1800s, which involves sanding and refinishing a pine floor that’s older than any person alive on Earth. Particles of wood dust in the air, set free after what could have been over a century of entrapment under layers of oil, met my nostrils. My nerves interpreted the chemical compounds and transferred the information for my brain to process, causing me to feel something.Some say that they will never forget the smell of their mother’s favorite perfume—smells can be imprinted on us with deep emotions and memories. Smells can also be pleasant or offensive—and we tend to know it right away. It varies with each smeller, though many would agree that there are certain smells that evoke a universal reaction. Every object contains a smell, whether it’s as pungent as a lemon-scented Lysol or as pleasant as the near-non-smellness of a public building. As designers, we are often limited to catalogues that smell like heavily processed paper and without any scratch-and-sniff to get a sense of the product’s smell. Often we do not even receive such catalogues. We stare down at the pixels of the computer screen wondering, “what would this look like in-person?” without even a trigger to arouse wonder about the product’s smell (as Google once convinced of the American public-at-large of its newest technology).In the age of online shopping, are we capable of desensitizing ourselves from the materials we specify for our projects?
Most of us can remember the smell of a fresh-painted room or an old log cabin, even though the color of the walls or the species of the wood are forgotten. Nonetheless we often specify architectural materials and finishes based on their aesthetic and physical properties, often ignoring its effect on our sense of smell.
Perhaps more oddly, there was a phase during architecture school when I insisted on tasting the site—the blades of the grass and the leaves of the trees. This part perhaps seems less romantic than the smell of freshly-sanded pine, since we smell our lawn and flowers more often than taste them. Maybe our chalky plaster walls and chunky terrazzo floors aren’t meant to be tasted after all. But could the perception of our buildings change based on whether our walls taste less like paint and more like Italian coffee; our floors less like bleach and more like zucchini? I’m sure our dogs could tell us the answer.Perhaps taste is stretching the boundaries of the scope of our profession as architects, but architecture does evoke all five basic senses—sight, sound, touch, smell, and taste—and additional senses such as heat and balance, which are sometimes more important to the building’s inhabitants.
I recall the smell of pine floors, freshly sanded. I remind myself that the smell is now entrapped again under layers of sealers and finishes—to which I’d like to say—smell ya later!
Please join ISTUDIO’s Marisa Brown and Rick Harlan Schneider at DesignDC 2018 this Wednesday. Marisa + Rick will be speaking on the conference theme of Constructing an Equitable Future along with Sally Parker, District of Columbia Public Schools (DCPS) Sustainability Liason. “Hosted by the Washington DC AIA, this year’s DesignDC conference theme is Constructing an Equitable Future. The conference will analyze the role of architects, interior designers, engineers, contractors, planners, landscape architects, and developers in creating working, playing, and living spaces open to all regardless of ability, income-level, or age.”
“Washington DC has an equity problem: the city’s poorest neighborhoods have no ready access to healthy foods found in neighborhood grocery stores. DCPS + DC OSSE have built a robust school garden program throughout the city. The school gardens promote healthy living + stronger neighborhoods while providing access to healthy foods. ISTUDIO architects has designed inspirational places that support these programs as the new civic infrastructure. Spaces include rooftop gardens, curriculum gardens, outdoor classrooms, natural playgrounds, and teaching kitchens.
The presentation Garden Classrooms: Creating Access to a Healthier Future will take place on Wednesday, October 3 at 2:15PM in the Walter E. Washington Convention Center. See the AIA|DC website for info on registration.
Principal Rick Schneider, AIA, LEED AP, presents case studies in design for outdoor education at CitiesAlive 2018 in Brooklyn, NY. He is joined by co-presenters Sally Parker, DCPS Sustainability Liaison and Sam Ullery, School Gardens Coordinator with DC OSSE. “Cities around the country expect architects to design the schools of the future. Plans for 21st century schools don’t often look like the plans of the past – they are healthy, green, and resilient.
DC Public Schools and the Office of the State Superintendent of Education are creating outdoor learning environments to expand learning beyond the 'data dump' of traditional classroom instruction. School gardens and green spaces are a key component, reflecting both the school community and surrounding community. These spaces ensure all students, including those with special needs, have opportunities to learn outdoors and connect with nature.
Curriculum gardens paired with outdoor classrooms and teaching kitchens offer a unique Field to Table learning opportunity. Students grow and prepare their own food, learning about personal health and environmental stewardship. These places promote healthy living and stronger neighborhoods – the building blocks of a healthy city.
In this session Rick, Sally, + Sam talk about garden classrooms that are actively integrated into the curriculum and the part sustainable facilities play in equitable design, community resilience, and green infrastructure.”
The presentation titled Garden Classrooms: Field to Table in School, with DC-based case studies including the Tubman Garden project, will be on Wednesday the 26th.
Architects + Engineers in the Mid-Atlantic are on stand-by with the North Carolina American Institute of Architects (AIA) ready to help with Hurricane Florence Disaster Assistance. Architects can be certified to provide evaluations of facilities and buildings in the aftermath of a disaster. As a volunteer with the AIA Post-Disaster Safety Assessment Program (SAP), ISTUDIO’s Marisa Brown monitors daily updates on the current relief efforts.
When a disaster strikes, AIA and SEA (Structural Engineers Association) are resources for local authorities to utilize in the safety assessments of affected buildings and communities. Depending on the need, state authorities may request help from out of state organizations to help with the relief effort. Professionals like Marisa volunteer their time to help communities recover and rebuild as quickly as possible.
To learn more about the Safety Assessment Program, including upcoming training sessions, visit the website: https://www.aia.org/resources/9271-the-safety-assessment-program
Certified Post-Disaster Building Safety Assessment Volunteers can sign-up to assist in the effort here: http://www.aianc.org/florence-assistance-volunteers
ISTUDIO Architects has been selected to present at Public x Design, the annual conference hosted by the Gehl Institute for Public Life. This year’s conference focuses on inclusion and equity in our public spaces. ISTUDIO is working with Washington DC to build the schools of the future. These 21st Century learning environments expand beyond the traditional classroom. Principal Rick Harlan Schneider will present recent successes in design for outdoor education and discuss equitable design, community resilience, and green infrastructure. Case studies include the Tubman ES Outdoor Kitchen and Garden, Powell ES outdoor learning spaces, Marvin Gaye Recreation Center, and Twin Oaks Community Garden.
Public x Design will be held in Detroit from Monday, September 23rd to 25th.
The sun was barely up as we leave the Yellow House, eyes red from the flight and sneakers tightened in anticipation; ready to explore the streets of Kathmandu. We turn left, running along the thick concrete wall holding back the leaves and flowers hungrily growing on the other side. A quick left and then a right leads us down a hill towards the Bagmati River - a contrast to the stone streets, the concrete houses, the lines of motorbikes. We find ourselves in an easy rhythm, steps falling mechanically on the pavement. Past jagged streets, the windows and doors sagging with age. Balconies and thresholds filled with the beginning of morning - dhaal baat dished on plates, spirit shrines flickering with sleepy candles, old men sitting with tea. Street sweepers look up as we pass, “Namaste”; old women bent with children look up, “Namaste”; children with toothy grins and white polos fall in step and then race past, “Namaste”. Hands to heart center, eyes connected, head slightly bowed, “Namaste”; acknowledging the spirit within. Connection on the street. Connections that happen when life is lived necessarily close - breakfast and laundry and worship all within inches of the door step. The phone map guides us, distant and factual in its direction [turn right at the next intersection]. Our reality is more supple, a wide right - avoiding the sacred cow that has chosen the middle of the street as a needed place to rest. [Turn left, then left again] Turn left past the man feeding the street dogs, observe the goat tied to the doorway, then left into an alley. Our map does not dictate whether this is a street or a series of backyards strung together, the dampness of life uncomfortably close. Continue forward as the women in the backyards seem to find no fault in us moving past their cooking fires, scuttling their chickens, intriguing their children. “Namaste”. [Continue straight] when straight appears to be an after-thought of a tunnel built in between two buildings, steps crooked and worn, the mossy walls clinging to us on either side, pushing onward and upward, pushing us to the release of the streets. We continue in this push and pull, contract and release; one step brushing past the routine of life, the next gliding past the routine of eternity: shrines and Stuppas. When privacy is a commodity, communion of the typical and the holy is shared.
Then gradually, beyond in the distance, a hill arises, golden with the rays of the morning light: Swayambhu Stuppa [Continue straight]. A gaggle of children and street dogs follow us, eager for a break from their routine. My lungs burn, my feet ache under the repetition; yet I am beckoned on - by the Monkey Temple and the colors floating through the streets. The street finally ends, buildings give way to trees and stones, masking the temple above the canopy. Maps are no longer needed. Follow the grey stone path, continue moving upward, past the monkeys; sacred or not; lounging in the shade. The monkeys sit, confident of their position, knowing that we are the temporary visitors, abiding by the rules of their temple. The steps steepen and become short, my toe angled against the worn stone, stepping lightly. Deliberately. 365 steps. 365 decisions to continue upward.But the top! The summit! Feet shuffling and prayer flags rising to blend with the wind. The white dome of the Stuppa lifts gracefully skyward. The golden tip and steady eyes glistening with the sun. Brick walls house shrines and prayer wheels, tin shanties and tarps house merchants and makers. Everything is masked with a hushed undertone, as though I am walking around with ear muffs on. Only the chimes and the heavy turning of the prayer wheels appear in full volume, marking my observation in a convoluted melody of serenity. The view beckons us to the edge. Gasp, words are useless. The fog settling in the valley is lifting, the sun’s rays growing stronger, the Himalayas steadfast in the distance. The mountains are confident in their place. Knowing, like the monkeys, that they are the rules. We are the temporary visitors. Monks shuffle past, continuing in their prayer walk. Prayer wheels are turned. Candles are lit. Monkeys scurry by, immune to the sacred. The top is a place of pause. A place away from the closeness of everyday routines. Intention. I will pause, I remind myself, accept the everyday routine and the push and pull of life. I will pause to remember the tea and open fires and the laundry hanging on the balcony. The colors that reflect on the Bagmati and the concrete walls. The dogs that do not care for an owner, but for a meal. And I will pause when I return home; for the coffee and the whistle of the breeze. For monuments and the shifting of clouds. For friend’s stories and benches in parks. For fat squirrels that prefer Sweet Green to acorns.
And thus I descend from Swayambhu. One step, one decision at a time, away from the top. Surrounded by the ephemeral bliss of a moment of pause. And then, serenity realized, peace affirmed: my assailant strikes. A water bottle is ripped from my unobserving hand, nimble fingers and a furry face look up at me. Black eyes, confident that he is now the rightful owner stares back.
The monkeys of Swayambhua are masters of finding the advantage in other’s pause.
The voice whispered,
“Is this the most monumental building from all these weeks,”
not at the Pyramid of the Sun in Teotihuacán[1], nor at the Metropolitan Cathedral[2] by the Zócalo[3], nor at the obelisk (monument) of Washington. On the last day of the trip, we arrived at the Vasconcelos Library in downtown México City (DF).The length of the building was hidden from us until we discovered a plaza to the left side of the front façade. Its louvers extended across the length of the building, stacked the whole height between the columns. There were street musicians—some sitting on the circular concrete pavers, others sitting on a low concrete wall with chamfered edges—whose upright bass player was resigned to not being heard.
I am reminded of the first paragraph of a short story titled The Library of Babel by Jorge Luis Borges:
The universe (which others call the Library) is composed of an indefinite and perhaps infinite number of hexagonal galleries, with vast air shafts between, surrounded by very low railings. From any of the hexagons one can see, interminably, the upper and lower floors [...] Also through here passes a spiral stairway, which sinks abysmally and soars upwards to remote distances. In the hallway there is a mirror which faithfully duplicates all appearances. Men usually infer from this mirror that the Library is not infinite (if it were, why this illusory duplication?); I prefer to dream that its polished surfaces represent and promise the infinite ...
Inspired by this short story in one of my semesters at the WAAC (Virginia Tech Washington-Alexandria Architecture Center), I worked on a studio project for a library. The design incorporated a central stack of books with see-through floors and reflective materials—which I was quick to deem unfeasible—“makes for pretty drawings.” Such a building based on dreams and poetics could never really be built. But it was.
During my travels through México I fell head-over-heels—enamored and googly-eyed—for the grace of Barragán’s house in DF, the charm of the doors of San Miguel, and the passion of the streets of Guanajuato. However, monuments differ from other buildings at the root of our experiences. They can surprise us, choke us, and draw tears from our chests.
Books were hung from the sky and balconies were hung from the books. They soared to the highest point and extended to what seemed like infinity. I could see the entire universe but could only comprehend the book that would be in front of me. Facing each book between all these stacks, I felt the weight of human history compressing against my ego—and imagined the stories contained within and connected by each book—all the while feeling myself drawn to-and-from each section within the web of hanging pathways.A monument of books—a monument built by humans for the knowledge within the books, much like the books themselves—written by humans for the knowledge within the universe. How wonderful it is to face a monument representing knowledge.
[1] The Pyramid of the Sun, the largest building in Teotihuacan, believed to have been constructed about 200 CE, and one of the largest in Mesoamerica At its zenith, perhaps in the first half of the 1st millennium AD, Teotihuacan was the largest city in the pre-Columbian Americas, with a population estimated at 125,000 or more, making it at least the sixth largest city in the world during its epoch. [2] The Metropolitan Cathedral is the largest cathedral in the Americas, situated atop the former Aztec sacred precinct in Downtown Mexico City. [3] The Zócalo in Mexico City is 57,600 m2 (620,000 sqft), one of the largest city squares in the world.
We track mountain gorillas today. The call came in from the Uganda Wildlife Authority while we were at dinner on the patio watching the lights in Buhoma village go out one by one. The forest camp switches off the generator for the night and we finish making our plans for the coming day by lantern light. Trackers go out before dawn to locate the gorilla family and report back. Our group of trekkers waits under a thatched canopy while our guide give us the orientation. “Stand this far away… don’t talk loudly… and definitely do not stare – especially at the silver back.” We shoulder packs and head off into the lush green of the Impenetrable Forest National Park.We cross a bridge over a stream in the steep-sided ravine, wind our way up and over the facing ridge into higher country. Mahogany trees become more plentiful here – their roots extend into the pathway tall angled boards of resonant wood. Gorillas pound them with their hands like thumping drums to send messages across the valley. The ranger puts us on notice as we traipse through a low muddy area churned up by the feet of elephants. There’s not much you can do if you run into them on the path, hemmed in on all sides by overgrowth. The German couple moves on silent and wide-eyed at the thought.We stop to eat lunch on a fallen log in a small clearing and receive a radio call – the family is near. We move through the brush in the next stream valley only to realize suddenly we are among them. A rustle in the understory, black shapes in a green on green hillside. A juvenile climbs a tree and hangs from the branches. Barrel-chested with long, long arms and legs tucked up almost like a baby.
They pull leaves down from the tall bushes to satisfy a mostly vegetarian diet. A domestic calmness permeates the experience, belies the mythology of a fierce man-eating creature. Mother shoulders a young one. Two kids tousle in the tall grass.
We spend more than an hour visiting, then the silverback moves in a way that tells everyone it’s time to move on. A few low grunts punctuate the message. The family fades into the forest and we work our way back across the ridges to the edge of the park in the late afternoon. The valleys are already collecting shadows as we hike up the red clay road to our camp with heads full and bellies not. The place we’ll make for future visitors will nestle into one side of the ravine. The departure point for the trek will be carved into the hill, a small terraced amphitheater with the intense green wall of the forest as its backdrop. It will be a gateway to the impenetrable.
Mayor Muriel Bowser toured the new recreation center with ISTUDIO Project Architect Marisa Brown, Project Manager Dan Snook, and Principal Rick Harlan Schneider. Named for its neighborhood native son, the Marvin Gaye Recreation Center is the city’s first center with integrated natural ventilation. Fresh air, daylighting, and energy efficiency are just some of the sustainable features that make this LEED Gold facility a resilient hub in Northeast Washington DC.
On hand to celebrate the ribbon cutting were Gaye’s brother Antwaun Gay, Ward 7 Council Member Vincent Gray, DC Department of Parks + Recreations (DPR) Director Keith Anderson, and DC Department of General Services (DGS) Director Greer Gillis. The recreation center and trail serve DPR’s mission to promote health, conservation, and universal access to parks.
Many thanks to the team at DC DGS and DPR, the design-build contractor MCN Build, and the communities of Ward 7!
WJLA: Ribbon-cutting ceremony held for new D.C. recreation center named after Marvin Gaye
WTOP: New DC rec center named after local Motown legend Marvin Gaye
The renovation of the courtyard at Tubman Elementary School, located in Columbia Heights, was featured in the ArchitectureDC magazine as a part of the "Hatching New Ideas" edition of Spring 2018. This fast-paced project incorporates garden beds, a teaching kitchen, and a canopy, reminiscent of a paper airplane, for modernizing this District elementary school from the early 70s.
We are proud to take part in providing healthy learning environments for students of the District of Columbia.
“Anything you can blow up in an action movie…” says Zach Schafer to begin our studio salon. Bridges, roads, dams, and airports are the traditional way we used to think of infrastructure. We now look at the soft stuff too - our green spaces manage stormwater and our civic places that shore up communities. It’s all critical to the healthy functioning of our towns + our cities. So much of it remains in the background unnoticed until it fails, and we are surprised at the cost for the upgrade or repair. It’s tough to fund the initiatives for bringing infrastructure into the 21st century since nobody schedules a ribbon-cutting for filling potholes.We continue the thought in our discussion – civic places and green spaces are infrastructure. What happens when we combine uses for efficiency and bring infrastructure into the public frame of reference? A park is a facility for filtration + stormwater management; a recreation center provides space for wellness programs and a refuge in a flood; rooftops on every neighborhood school are nodes in a solar energy grid. The green technologies of the future become better integrated with our daily lives. "The opportunity is great," says Dr. Unique Morris-Hughes. Green infrastructure means green jobs, “like the kind we’re training for now at the new DC Infrastructure Academy.” If the traditional infrastructure is the stuff that holds our built environment together, it’s the soft stuff like jobs training that knits our communities together, making them more resilient.
Special thanks to our panelists: Tommy Wells, Director, DC Department of Energy + the Environment Dr. Unique Morris-Hughes, Director, DC Department of Employment Services Zachary Schafer, Executive Director + CEO, Infrastructure Week
