DC Metrocentric

Everyone has an opinion on architecture, what’s yours?

By Spencer Lepler

Friday I went down to the National Mall to take a look at the Solar Decathlon houses. I guess the most shocking thing I observed was how normal each of the houses were. On a related note, I was impressed with how “un-student like” they were. None of them looked like student studio projects, i.e. amateur.

With the exceptions of the entries from Cornell (pictured) and Spain which were more like architectural follies than real small footprint houses, any one of them could have been featured on the pages of a mainstream architecture magazine; Cornell and Spain’s entries could be found within the pages of any avant-garde architecture magazine.

This year, it was evident that most of the houses were designed with mainstream marketability in mind. Most of the houses were designed around a contemporary aesthetic and open plan arrangement, while others like the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and University of Louisiana Lafayette referred to localized American Vernacular styles. The forms of the houses were primarily long thin rectangles, some had courts, while others had breezeways, but in total they were designed according to market standards for handicap accessibility and for mass production. This plan of public accessibility and marketability was definitely working. The grounds were extremely crowded and the lines to enter the winning houses wound down the main walk. Inside, the houses were obviously over maximum occupancy, and the crowds were really excited by what they saw. I overheard endless questions about fixtures and furniture from the most unlikely guests. As far as engineering performance goes, each house had its own gimmick…

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Everyone has an opinion on architecture, what’s yours?

By Spencer Lepler

To call The Promenade at L’Enfant Plaza a mall is insulting to such high class institutions as Crystal City Mall and the former SW Waterfront Mall. This pseudo-subterranean plaza is little more than an access corridor filled with federal works rushing between federal buildings, a hotel and the metro. 

The architecture might have once been somewhat pleasant, with its gleaming metal band running above the storefronts and decorative marble floors throughout.  This was obviously a step up from the white featureless corridors of most government office buildings. 

Now the Promenade is just depressing and foreboding; the low ceilings create a dark cramped space which is only opened up in one of the two areas of any architectural interest inside the whole complex, the pyramid (pictured).  This large glass skylight is the only place where natural light is brought into the system save for the exterior exits and as such it is one of the few places people linger. 

Yet this is a missed opportunity…

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Everyone has an opinion on architecture, what’s yours?

By Spencer Lepler

In light of the news that Monument Realty will be resuming the sale of condos at Potomac Place Tower on 4th street SW between G and I streets, I took a walk through the surrounding neighborhood of Capitol Park and was pleasantly surprised to find a tranquil garden community nestled within the increasingly busy Southwest Waterfront neighborhood.

This development of well maintained modern townhouses featuring lovely brickwork and handsome human scale proportions, designed by Architect Chloethiel Woodard Smith and Landscape Architect Dan Kiley and managed by two different community organizations, is unique amongst the massive urban renewal projects of the 1960s. While projects like Tiber Island created livable communities of Tower blocks with supplemental infill low rise buildings, this community is a sea of three story pedestrian friendly townhouses with super block towers on the perimeter. In addition, these townhouse condos are clustered around a series of well planted courtyards and open quadrangles that are only accessible by pedestrians and bicyclists. This combination of dense urban development along with a very pedestrian centric design makes this community feel much more like an organic neighborhood, like Capitol Hill or Georgetown, than any of the other modernist developments in southwest.

If not for the lack of commercial development, Capitol Park creates one of the most pedestrian friendly spaces in all of DC. While I was standing in one of the sheltered courtyards I was reminded of the urban pocket parks of Paris. In most of DC, the public green spaces are aligned with major avenues and transportation routes. In Paris there are also major parks along major axes, but there are countless pocket parks and courtyards that are nestled within the winding medieval streets. There, the minor parks are created by the medieval urban fabric resisting the overlaid Baroque city plan, while in DC Capitol Park is unique in that it creates minor green spaces by overlaying a modernist interpretation of a medieval neighborhood plan on a Baroque city. These parks provide a much different respite than at the Mall or any of the Squares or Circles…

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Everyone has an opinion on architecture, what’s yours?

By Spencer Lepler

On Friday, August 8, I went to a reception in Crystal City Water Park for a series of bamboo sculptures by an architect and artist who had previously exhibited at Artomatic, Sergio Martinez. The sculptures are interesting explorations of delineations of space and are worth the trip to Crystal City to see. So are the fountains at the Water Park; it is a calming oasis of human scale landscape architecture nestled within a modernist super block city. It lies just across Crystal Drive from the Shops at Crystal City.

After the reception I decided to venture within the shops in search of some food, and I was at once reminded of the first time I had come to Crystal City when I moved to Alexandria in 2005 and why I had never returned. When you first emerge from the Metro station, the name “Crystal City” evokes the idea of an open and airy place which should be light filled and enjoyable; in short, you are expecting The Fashion Center at Pentagon City. Instead you encounter a maze of low ceilinged dark “streets” with little sunlight and a deserted ghost town feel.

In addition, the mall keeps odd hours, it is only open Monday through Saturday and closes shortly after the workday ends; the shops inside cater not to casual shoppers but office workers looking for a quick bite or hurrying to accomplish an errand. It is as if this underground city is intended to be foreboding towards tourists and instead act as a respite for the government workers above.

The mall, which opened in 1976 and was touted as the a mall of the future, was set up as an urban streets-cape, complete with fake cobblestone streets and building facades. The only remnants of this “Victorian main street” concept are the cobblestone pavers and the storefronts that are vacant or have marginal retail establishments. There has been no strategic enforcement of this original Victorian concept, so the place ends up looking like a motley of different design styles. Furthermore, this design scheme only occurs in the main shopping nodes, each of which consists of a relatively small area in the grand scheme of Crystal City linked to each other through a series of tunnels much like a hamster terrarium…

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Last week the National Building Museum held their next lecture in the Spotlight on Design series; this lecture coincided with the start of the 25th anniversary annual leadership conference for the AIAS, American Institute of Architecture Students, and was cosponsored by this organization.  As such, the packed audience was composed of more students than practicing professionals.  Tom Kundig of the Seattle-based firm Olson Sundberg Kundig Allen Architects presented an overview of some of his more defining professional works in his 30 year long career.  Mr Kundig’s lecture was geared more towards the students than the professionals, but there his advice was valuable for all in attendance.

Mr. Kundig, who has become known for his craftsman like integration of operable architecture, green design, and senses of place and scale, stressed the importance of architects finding their individual voices and letting their life experiences guide their design choices.  He also discussed the importance of working with craftsmen, who are usually much more familiar with their particular building material, and allowing happy accidents to inform the design process.  Furthermore, he encouraged the students in the audience that architecture is “a marathon, not a sprint” and that he believed that everyone gets at least one “special client” who can help define their career; it is just a matter of encountering them at a period where professional experience and drive are both in sync.

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Everyone has an opinion on architecture, what’s yours?

By Spencer Lepler 

With the recent article about the restoration of the Corcoran’s roof here on DC Metrocentric, I’ve been thinking a lot lately about scaffolding and how often it is an afterthought of the construction process.

As urban residents we are used to dealing with scaffolds on a regular basis, whether it is covering a building during construction or repair, or protecting the sidewalk from the remediation work above. As a whole scaffolding tends to take the form of rather boxy outline of whatever building it is covering, but that does not have to be the case.

An excellent example of scaffolding being used as an architectural medium was the restoration of the Washington Monument from 1999 through 2000. This scaffolding, designed by Michael Graves, was designed to convey the idea of the building beneath while screening some of the restoration activities from easy view. The elevation of the scaffolding was designers such that it looked like a series of white masonry blocks that followed the building shape and tapered at the top into point just like the monument within. The horizontals and verticals of the scaffolding system resembled mortar joints and the monument beyond provided the white base for the blocks. While many complained that his was an ugly solution it was definitely more attractive than a standard scaffold and tent which would have removed the building from the public view for almost 3 years; instead this design preserved the iconography and symbolism of both the monument and mitigated the possible changes to the views of The Mall as a whole.

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Everyone has an opinion on architecture, what’s yours?

By Spencer Lepler

Artomatic ends this Sunday, July 5, 2009. If you haven’t been yet, go. It is a rare chance to see scores of artists from all over the metro area in one place and at one time for free, and its also an amazing architectural experience.

The new high rise office building that houses Artomatic, designed by Davis Carter Scott, is a shell without any tenant fit outs, which would normally be an unusual situation but since this past fall has become an increasingly common sight as the recession to slows and stalls growth within our city. The area of Navy Yard has been hit especially hard, with many of the projects having been put on hold or cancelled due to lack of financial support and potential commercial tenants. 55 M Street SE is in the heart of the Navy Yard development right above the metro station and at first glance seems unaffected by the economic slowdown.

When you enter the building from M Street at first glance it seems as if you are in a normal high end office building. The lobby is fully finished with white ceramic tile with stainless steel flush reveals and frosted glass accents. Yet there are small signs even here that something is amiss. The entry doors are missing handles on the inside, and there are no signs for any tenants. Yet, this is easy to miss on your way through the lobby to the elevators, whose tile floors and stainless steel accents are still gleaming. Once the elevator doors open you on any of the second through ninth floors you instantly understand that this building is completely empty. You step out of the elevator on to raw concrete subfloors and gaze at unpainted wall board, exposed ductwork and bare curtain-wall windows.

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Everyone has an opinion on architecture, what’s yours?

By Spencer Lepler

This past weekend I was up in the Dupont Circle area neighborhood during Capital Pride and came across something that really got me thinking about temporary architecture and its effect on the urban environment.

Like most festivals, there were official temporary structures: tents, booths, and the performance stage; what sparked my interest was not these official event creations, but instead the neighborhood response. Along 17th street many of the business had strung fabric bunting from their buildings and along their fences. Along with adding color to the urban landscape and showing support for the event, they also created new architectural dynamics along the street.

There were two different kinds of space that were created and defined. The first, which to me is the more obvious, was the fabric that ran from the building facades to the ground plane. This was seen in front of some of the cafes and while these strips of fabric created a tent of sorts they provided no shelter. What they did though was capturing space and adding it to the building’s semi-private zone. In essence, they created a temporary fabric arbor over the outside seating.

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Everyone has an opinion on architecture, what’s yours?

By Spencer Lepler

I was driving along the Southwest waterfront last night and I was struck by the form of the partially completed arena stage. I know that a few weeks ago we published a rendering by Bing Thom Architects of the proposed completed building, but seeing the skeletal canopy and the un-clad walls I started to wonder how the building would be received if instead of covering over the massive structure it was celebrated.

The building as designed will have a curving glass wall with a large heavy cornice reaching out towards the street. The intention is that the light from the public spaces will fill the street beckoning people to come in. Right now, there is no glass curtain-wall and the heavy metal paneled cornice is a light truss frame evocative of the old space frame metro canopies such as the one at the Ballston Metro entrance. The sculptural aspect of this structural element seems to me to be akin to the Lady Liberty’s crown, if left exposed the ends of this frame would continue to reach out towards the river like fingers drawing people in to the performances.

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Everyone has an opinion on architecture, what’s yours?

By Spencer Lepler

Like many Americans, I decided to take a trip for Memorial Day; In my case, I drove to Atlanta, Georgia.  Like most people, I tend to be a “grass is greener” kind of guy, and usually spend most of my vacations dreaming about living in the city I am visiting.  Which is why my conclusions were so shocking to me. In spite of trying to see myself living in Atlanta, I kept finding reasons why I preferred DC.

As most people are aware, DC is a planned city.  The L’Enfant plan creates an ordered grid and overlaid on a spoke and hub system which imprints a sense of order and logic to the landscape. There area very few places where this is not true, for the most part the natural terrain is either overlaid with a grid or worked into the series of skewed avenues.  Much of this is owed to long term vision.

DC was planned to be a city of half a million people long before the first senator came to town.  This vision was not achieved until public health advances allowed for a year round occupation of the former swamp and until the New Deal brought a demand for more Federal workers in the early twentieth century. While only half a century younger, Atlanta seems to have no sense of planning or order to the street layouts.  Much of this is due to its start as a railroad town with no major geographic features to anchor its location.  In addition, while the destruction of the city during the civil war and extended rebuilding through the later half of the nineteenth century provided an organic identity, it was not until the mid twentieth century and the industrial Boom of World War II that Atlanta truly boomed

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Everyone has an opinion on architecture, what’s yours?

By Spencer Lepler

I have lived in the DC Metro area for the past 4 years, and it wasn’t until this past sunday that I made my first trip to what I affectionally call “the forgotten quarter”, South West. I had worked in South East for a year and driven on South Capitol street before, but I never had a reason to head into the mostly residential and not very tourist focused southwest water district. I was pleasantly surprised when I went to pick a friend up from the Tiber Island Community on 4th and N Streets SW (pictured) and suddenly found myself transported out of the three DC’s I had known into a completely new and, although foreign, wonderful town.

For me, DC has always spanned three different cities. It is a city of brick townhouses where both the wealthy and poor live, sometimes on the same block, a city of glass and steel towers that would love to scrape the sky, but are hamstrung by the width of their avenues, and a city of concrete and stone neo-classical monuments and buildings always evoking the grandeur of our government. What I found on the other side of M street blew me away. This was a thoroughly “Modern” city, direct from the drawings of Le Corbusier, and unlike most other urban renewal projects of the 1960s which tore out low rise housing to put in tower blocks, this development seemed to be not only working, but thriving.

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Everyone has an opinion on architecture, what’s yours?

By Spencer Lepler

This week I want to shift gears a bit and focus on less monumental architecture, as in previous weeks, and instead focus on the objects that stand out in our city, looking at the field that defines Washington, DC – specifically the row houses of Capitol Hill. While the official historic district of Capitol Hill is one of the largest in the country, a large portion of the neighborhood lies outside of the historic district.  These areas provide some interesting opportunities for new construction to interact with the historic housing stock.

I was walking along C Street in South East the other day and within a three block area I came across two relatively new developments.  The first was at the corner of C and 15th Streets.  The new buildings seem out of place in this neighborhood; they are too modern.  While they follow a similar massing strategy as the rest of the row houses in the neighborhood, they are a story higher and use modern deconstructed facades to engage the street.  The extra height of these buildings seem to refer to the Payne Elementary School across the street.  In addition, the placement and order of the windows in these buildings seems to have no relation to the traditional row house rhythm, and the additional height serves to dwarf the neighbors.  These buildings seem like they would be suited better for a neighborhood with a decent mix of old and new buildings, like Columbia Heights, not Capitol Hill.  Here, they are in direct competition with the Elementary School as the object set against the field of the neighborhood…

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Everyone has an opinion on architecture, what’s yours?

By Spencer Lepler

I spent this past Saturday at a gallery opening in Old Town Alexandria for an Interior Designer turned Photographer.  His photographs of trails in the Shanandoah National Park are currently on display through June in the Carriage House on South Union Street, an adaptive reuse building which most people will know for housing the Old Town Tea and Coffee Shop. While observing the building and the way people occupied it, I was reminded greatly of another adaptive reuse project down the street: The Torpedo Factory.

The difference between these two buildings is incredible to me.  The Carriage house was renovated in a historically sensitive a-stylistic manner.  It provides witnesses and windows into the building’s past and structure, without letting the historic use inform the modern.  For the trained, as well as many untrained eyes, it is quite obvious that the current floor plan has been derived to best accommodate modern usage, but is in no way what a modern designer would design from scratch, nor is this the true original use of the space.  Because this adaptive reuse appears timeless and not bound by recent architectural styles, the casual observer has little expectations about what will be found inside.  This lends the second floor art gallery space a great versatility; any show that is put on in this space will seem innovative because it is unexpected.  In addition, by removing the gallery to the farthest point from the build’s entry, the occupants are provided with a sense of exclusivity which can only seem to aid the reading of the pieces displayed within.

The Torpedo Factory’s renovation on the other hand was very highly influenced by the time at which it was performed…

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Everyone has an opinion on architecture, what’s yours?

By Spencer Lepler 

I spent the Easter/Passover weekend visiting with my maternal grandparents in New York. While sitting and talking with my grandfather, I started to think about how, as a part of the dwindling Greatest Generation, World War II shaped their lives.  While they didn’t fight in the war, like many Americans, they did sacrifice for their country.

The members of the Greatest Generation, those children born in the 1910s and 1920s, are unique, they are the only people whose identity can be understood in at least two of the major monuments within the National Mall & Memorial Parks: the FDR Memorial and the World War II memorial.  These two works could not be more different.  The FDR Memorial, while dedicated to a president does not take the route of the Lincoln or Jefferson Memorial and focus on a demigod like statue who seems so removed from the visitor as to be more myth than man, nor does it leave the memory of this important man to abstract psuedo-religious iconography like the Washington Monument.  Instead it focuses on the events that happened during FDR’s presidency and its affect on the American people.  Within the monument FDR appears as one of the many human statues and, while he is slightly larger than life, he is still shown as a man – a deeply human crippled man.  In addition, the architecture of this monument is more conceptual landscape than definitive architectural form; it is composed of a series of water falls and pools with granite blocks and copper statues.  It appears that this memorial was created by the land forcing itself into these shapes and statues; a physical manifestation of the national memory.  Within this physical historical perspective World War II is treated as a period of chaos; the noise of the symbolic waterfall is deafening which bears a striking counterpoint to the near stillness of the rest of the memorial.

The World War II memorial on the other hand is everything that the FDR memorial is not….

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Everyone has an opinion on architecture, what’s yours?

By Spencer Lepler

I moved to DC after the old convention center had already been torn down, and as a result the only convention center I’ve known has been the series of buildings that start less than a block away.  But this doesn’t mean that I don’t know the old convention center; every time I go to metro center I see its ghost. Sometimes the absence of a building can have as much of an architectural influence as the original. 

In the case of the convention center, the large void left between H street NW, New York Avenue, 11th NW and 9th NW is an unmistakable scar on the landscape.  The sudden opening up of the metropolitan “canyon” into a broad “plain” of asphalt and vehicles is a jarring reminder that this space used to be filled with a purpose.  When I look at the void, I can see what the building’s shape must have been; the way the surrounding buildings address the void gives me hints as to how the old convention center must have engaged the street.  I can never really know what its form was, but I have a good idea.

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