Anacostia - One of the oldest commercial buildings on Good Hope Road is back on the market. [And Now, Anacostia]
Columbia Heights - A green twist on city owned fixer uppers for potential public housing. [New Columbia Heights]
H Street - All the construction is still hurting businesses. [Frozen Tropics]
Penn Quarter - Oh Wagamama, why must you keep teasing us? [PQ Living]
Another great speaker this month in the Spotlight on Design series from the National Building Museum with with Spanish architecture firm Nieto Sobejan. Founding principals Fuensanta Nieto and Enrique Sobejano discuss their work, including the Madinat al Zahra Museum in Córdoba, Spain (pictured) which received the 2010 Aga Kahn Award for Architecture. Should be interesting.
WHERE
National Building Museum
Washington, DC 20001
(Judiciary Square Metro, Red Line)
$12 Museum; FREE Student; $20 Non-members.
To register visit www.nbm.org
WHEN
Tuesday, March 22, 2011
6:30 – 8:00 pm
The iconic architecture of our metro system has set the scene for some very interesting photos over the years, but we don’t think we’ve ever seen such colorful lighting. The prominent green fading into blues and pinks is stunning! Great shot!
Metro Walkway, originally uploaded by rpiker101.
Back in 2008 we excitedly watched as construction started on the refurbishment of the old 1920s warehouse in SE only to see construction come to as complete halt last year. Well according to the developer Forest City they are working on new HUD funding which could allow them to start back up this month!
The original four story building was at one point a hardware/pattern shop for the Navy Yard and is being redeveloped into a 170 unit apartment building (pictured center). The design includes adding two new floors on top (which had already been started) as well as an open interior courtyard and some ground floor retail. We really liked the adaptive reuse of the building, so we are happy things are back on track. [Rendering: SK&I]
Maybe it was the perspective of previously released renderings, but we never realized how much movement the new Cooper Carey designed project at Glebe Road and Wilson Boulevard has. This is one great looking building! The project is currently under construction by JBG and will include more than 400,000 square feet of office space and 36,000 square feet of retail space; 90 units of affordable housing, and 28 town homes along the back to easy the transition into the surrounding low density.
This is going to end up being a fairly original looking building what with the recreation of the old car dealership diamond facade at the corner and the waved upper curtain walls. For those who disagree… let the glass bashing begin.
[Rendering: Cooper Carey]
Finally after over a year of having an empty lot at one of the most prominent intersections of downtown (pictured), work has begun at 1000 Connecticut Ave. You may remember last year when the original anchor tenant backed out and the developer put the project on hold, well now that law firm Arent Fox has signed on, work has commenced.
The planned 395,000-square-foot building designed by Pei Cobb Freed & Partners includes an interesting three-facade look which includes an all-glass treatment at the corner, a formal frontage for K Street, and a pleated glass-and-stainless-steel facade on Connecticut Avenue. The developer plans to be done with the building by Fall 2012.
Check out this rending of what the building will look like from the K Street side.
Even though work is finally underway, a formal ground breaking schedule for next month
[Rendering: Pei Cobb Freed & Partners]
Check out these amazing new renderings we got for the new pavilion at Canal Park in SE. The cafe/pavilion is designed by STUDIOS architecture and includes a rain garden, living machine sculpture, kitchens, indoor and outdoor dinning space, and a green roof with the intention of being a “zero energy” structure.
This design has the potential to be an iconic destination, what do you think?
We love it! Another rendering and the site plan after the jump…
A bi-weekly take on the area from our friends at UrbanTurf.com
This weekend’s recommended open houses include a three-bedroom row house in Glover Park with an amazing kitchen, a “large and inexpensive” two-bedroom condo in Dupont Circle and a two-bedroom Victorian townhouse in Old Town, Alexandria.
We checked in on the progress of the new Waterfront Station project in SW and it looks like a lot has been going on since they topped out in May. As you can see the full exterior is up along with most of the windows. Something that we didn’t notice in the original Shalom Baranes renderings, but that we think is looking pretty good, is the cantilevered overhang on the West side of the closest building. Nice right?
[Photo: Lolabunee]
The WBJ brings word that the Institute for Electrical and Electronic Engineers has sold their property at 1730 Mass Ave. NW for $5.5 million to the Ritte Company. The three-story, 10,119-square-foot office townhouse in Dupont Circle has a nice French neo-classical style and we love the cast-iron double front door.
Given the astronomical prices that some other rowhomes in the area of similar or even smaller size are going for this seems like a pretty good deal to us. No word yet on who is going to be the new tenant, anyone want to rent the space out for the new DCMetrocentric HQ?
A bi-weekly take on the area from our friends at UrbanTurf.com
Will 4.5 Percent Interest Rates Soon Become a Reality?
It is now widely-known that the Treasury Department is considering a plan that would encourage banks to drop interest rates for new home loans to 4.5 percent, a full point lower than some of the lowest rates currently available for standard 30-year fixed rate mortgages. Even though the plan is in its very early stages, just the talk that rates might drop to these historically low levels (and the fact that just yesterday the Federal Reserve cut its benchmark interest rate to almost zero) has gotten the attention of prospective home buyers. But with rates that are already lower than they have been in years (under 6 percent), does it make sense to wait for something that may never come?
Well you may have heard there is an election going on today. Hopefully you were able to avoid some of the big voting lines (pictured) throughout the area and cast your ballot. The early voting lines were wrapping around the block all over town, and reports this morning are that it is the same situation today, so good luck.
Also let us not forget that a vote for President today is also a vote for who gets to actually live in that house down on Pennsylvania Ave. So for the undecided (are there any left out there?) perhapse a look at some of the candidates current homes may help some finally make that important decision.
If you have driven or walked down Vermont Ave NW between Thomas Circle and McPherson Square, there is no way you havn’t seen 1110! In a nod to the address the developers cleverly went with a binary theme that we just love! The building, designed by STUDIOS Architecture, features interactive light displays by world renown artist Meejin Yoon that also serves as the address display.
Wouldn’t it be funny if they also used it to send secret binary messages, no one would even know! [Flickr:Pinelife]
