Tour historic 5 Logan Circle, NW, a 5-story circa 1883 brick residence designed by noted architect Emil Frederich for US Trade Diplomat and noted violin collector Dwight Partello. This tour is led by Bill Bonstra, FAIA, LEED AP, and Penny Karas and will explore the distinctive architectural details of this modernized 2-year renovation full of history and contemporary charm.

The unique floor plan with octagonal rooms features a skylit atrium with a connecting glass and steel bridge that allows daylight into the center of the house and showcases the residence’s original preserved cherry millwork, heart pine floors, and a restored three-story hand-carved cherry stair. Meander through the two-story main residence and three accessory dwelling units that provide market-rate housing and short-term lodging to the historic neighborhood. The historic townhome features original violin images and period drawings from notable architects in its stylings, original German leaded glass windows and skylights, 9-foot-tall pocket doors, and 9 original fireplaces. This project is a contributing resource to the Logan Circle Historic District, which was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1972.

Learning Objectives:

• Discuss the history of L’Enfant’s Plan for Washington, DC, Logan Circle, and notable architect Emil Frederich.
• Discover opportunities for implementing accessory dwelling units into single-family and historic residences in the Nation’s Capital.
• Understand the process of applying for and receiving historic tax credits, as well as the challenges of preserving historic buildings.
• Discover unique ways to strengthen historic contexts through modern design with the challenges faced by the design team.

Presented by:

Bill Bonstra, FAIA, LEED AP, Partner, Bonstra | Haresign ARCHITECTS
 

The new Department of Housing and Community Development (DCHD) headquarters stands as a gateway to Anacostia, exemplifying how thoughtful urban design can drive neighborhood revitalization. This public-private partnership balances historic preservation with modern functionality, integrating office space with ground-floor retail to stimulate local economic growth. The building’s dual-frontage design—an articulated brick façade along Martin Luther King Jr. Avenue and a river-facing side with expansive views—enhances both the neighborhood’s character and the broader cityscape.

Attendees will explore how the project overcame site challenges, including fragmented parcels and lot-line restrictions, through a creative barbell-shaped layout that fosters collaboration and interaction. Sustainability is a key highlight, with the building achieving a 70% reduction in Energy Use Intensity (EUI) through innovative features like a windowless south façade that doubles as a canvas for public art. This tour will provide insights into how urban development can integrate historic context, sustainability, and economic activation to create a lasting community impact.

Learning Objectives:

• Analyze how site constraints influence architectural design and urban development strategies.
• Evaluate the role of public-private partnerships in fostering economic revitalization and community engagement.
• Assess how architectural interventions can preserve and enhance historic urban fabric while integrating modern programmatic needs.
• Identify sustainable design strategies that reduce energy consumption and enhance building performance.

Presented by:

Ashton Allan, AIA, LEED AP

In Washington, DC school modernization projects are required to resolve the challenge of renovating and adding to existing outdated structures. One step in this resolution includes a public approvals process from the State Historic Preservation Office and the Congressionally appointed US Commission of Fine Arts.  

The Adams Education Campus, located within the Washington Heights historic district, exemplifies the ways in which historic buildings require precise intervention and treatment of prominent features that must be coordinated with local officials and review boards. Properly considered, Adams models the opportunity to take a sustainable approach toward preserving important cultural landmarks and maintaining their relevance going forward by adapting them to new flexible styles of learning. This design process focuses heavily on striking the proper balance between renovated and newly built learning spaces while fostering interconnectivity of design and the community for the adaptive reuse of outdated spaces. These modernization efforts may also facilitate new connections not only to the outdoors, where more learning is increasingly taking place, but also to the neighborhood through shared community spaces and reimagined site amenities. Public art interventions coordinated as part of the community engagement process may also be used to enhance the understanding of the cultural context and bring new life to outdated portions of existing structures. 

Through a guided tour of the Adams Education Campus, visitors will learn the vital role collaboration with DGS and DCPS plays in creating a successful school that adapts to evolving learning styles and ensures the campus meets the diverse needs of its student body.  The tour will also explore how the unique design build, fast-track delivery method at Adams Education Campus promotes design excellence. By exploring an efficient modernization that respects the city’s historical and urban context, visitors will witness how this approach fosters seamless collaboration, accelerates project timelines, and ensures high-quality, context-sensitive designs that balance innovation with preservation.

Learning Objectives:

• Identify how architects provide equitable opportunities for a range of students by navigating DC approvals to sensitively combine rehabilitated historic structures with contemporary additions.
• Understand ways to arrange educational program elements between historic and new structures to ensure equal access to educational resources and shared community program.
• Analyze methods to implement sustainable strategies supporting LEED and Net Zero standards in an historic structure to improve comfort, reduce environmental impacts, and showcase innovation.
• Identify constructability hurdles of adding to an historic structure on a tight, vertical urban site with limited access and staging area.

Presented by:

Marquisha Powell, AIA, LEED AP, NOMA, Senior Associate, StudioMB
Chandler Householder, Staff Designer
Frances Prado, Staff Designer
David Bagnoli, Principal in Charge, AIA, LEED BD+C

Once a neglected urban lot, this vibrant development has transformed into a dynamic hub for the community. Designed to inspire, it offers a welcoming space where residents, artists, and entrepreneurs can shop for fresh food and locally made products, enjoy a meal, stay active, listen to live music, or simply connect with others.

The Retail Village at Sycamore & Oak is home to local businesses, diverse eateries, a fitness gym, and a performance space. Guided by extensive community input, the project team created a sustainable and adaptable gathering place that fosters health, wellness, and a strong sense of belonging.

The Sycamore & Oak Retail Village demonstrates the versatility of mass timber, showcasing its role in promoting both environmental and economic sustainability. This innovative project also highlights how wood can be a catalyst for inclusive development, creating a welcoming space that nurtures a true "community within a community."

Learning Objectives:

• Learn about mass timber designed using a Type V Construction featuring glulam beams and columns, dowel laminated timber (DLT), nail-laminated timber (NLT) and CLT walls.
• Learn about design details and components used for a temporary building that can be de-assembled and re-assembled at a future site.
• Learn about the sustainability considerations for design such as mass timber, solar panels, rainwater, and re-use for irrigation.
• Learn about the unique building codes associated with the design of large canopied space.

Presented by:

Leejung Hong, LEED AP, Principal, Winstanley Architects & Planners. 

Michael Winstanley, AIA, AICP, Design Director, Winstanley Architects & Planers

Breakfast & Learn

Arclinea invites you to a Breakfast & Learn event at the @B&B Italia DC Showroom.

This tour will showcase Margarite, a sophisticated, design-focused apartment building near the booming Union Market. The tour will include multiple outdoor spaces, including Neal Place Park, curated lobby and amenity spaces, as well as residences, including a 2-story penthouse with custom staircase and an expansive private roof terrace.

Situated within the transformative Union Market neighborhood of Washington, D.C., Margarite is designed in response to its surrounding urban conditions. This is most clearly manifest in its carefully considered facade which conceptually references an oyster - the soft, elegant pearl surrounded by a tougher and harder shell. Facing the serene Neal Place Park and the bustling historic Union Market the building presents its “pearl façade” as primarily glass. Conversely, the “shell façade” protects the building from the congested New York Avenue and active train tracks just steps away in the other direction. This masonry shell utilizes a dynamic pattern of solid and void to mimic the active nature of the highway, while providing residents with ample natural light and outdoor spaces. The striking masonry and glass structure with an integrated pocket park creates a refined, urban reprieve in the otherwise bustling Union Market neighborhood. Thoughtfully crafted, luxury apartments, in combination with tailored interior and exterior community spaces, enhance the daily living experience and comfort of each resident.

Learning Objectives:

• Understand the creation process of a new construction, design-focused residential building.
• Understand how thoughtful design can play a role in aiding mental health and comfort.
• Learn how high-quality details and craft, typically reserved for custom homes, are adapted and executed across 260 residences.
• Learn how a building can respond to challenging urban context and enhance the neighborhood.

Presented by:

Brad Fowler, AIA 
Founding Partner
ParkFowler Plus

Facades+ Returns to Washington DC on March 12th

Facades+ returns with an all-new program featuring the latest developments in building enclosure design and technology. This symposium features everything from high-performance facades to new iconic projects across the city and region, and strategies for increasing climate resilience and energy performance. Some of the themes that will be explored are:

• The use of natural, low-carbon cladding materials
• New high-performance systems including BIPV and Mass Timber
• The latest projects transforming D.C.’s built environment
• Unique Specifications such as Marble and Copper

Attend the Symposium for a full day of stimulating presentations and panels, with topics such as:

• A High-Performance Building for a High-Performance Brand: Under Armour’s New Global HQ
• Materiality & Urban Scale: The T. Rowe Price Headquarters
• Fabrication Futures: Advances in Materials for Building Envelope Excellence
• Bio-Based Materials and Low Carbon Solutions

Organized by:

The Architect's Newspaper

Come tour this exclusive modern house built by architect Travis Price who constructed this 3,500 square-foot house so that it does not touch the ground. It is a fantastical treetop floating house overlooking Rock Creek Park. The house is situated on a cliff at the edge of the park and appears to be hanging off the cliff, held up by the two steel columns that are bolted to concrete footers underground and anchored by steel rods. 

Featured in numerous books and articles since its AIA Award-winning year in 2001, attendees will learn the story behind this "Tree House", built with super conservation techniques, passive solar, and much more. 

Learning Objectives:

• Describe the unique attributes of the house that contribute positively to the local environment and neighborhood.
• Conceptualize how to design a building that optimizes the use of the natural environment around it, and how the natural environment can positively impact a building's features.
• Identify the design elements that maximize the building's sustainability efforts.
• Analyze the positive impact of the unusual building design on the health and well-being of its residents, mentally and physically.

Presented by:

Travis Price, FAIA
Travis Price Architects

We will explore the iconic National Museum of Women in the Arts (NMWA), which is the first museum in the world solely dedicated to championing women through the arts.  NMWA is housed in a historic 1908 Masonic temple.  In 2023, NMWA completed a transformative renovation.  Project stakeholders collaborated on innovative solutions to expand galleries, enhance accessibility, and replace multiple building systems without adding to the footprint.  These systems seamlessly work together to protect collections, preserve historic elements, and improve sustainability. This will be an interactive discussion of the big spatial moves and the small details that made this renovation successful. 

The National Museum of Women in the Arts is an iconic institution in an iconic historic building.  As this is open to the public, we hope that the attendees visit the Museum again to see how the spaces adapt to changing exhibitions and multiple occupancy scenarios. The greatest takeaway from this project is how regular, in-depth discussions with project stakeholders generate innovative solutions that support the Museum’s mission and the goals of the renovation.

Learning Objectives:

• Understand that the Design Team started the design process with the NMWA's mission at heart and that all of the renovation's goals supported or advanced their mission.
• Understand the importance of engaging multiple stakeholders early in the design process to develop clear goals for the renovation and to assist with creative solutions when hidden conditions arise, which are inevitable in a 100+-year-old building.
• Understand the importance of carefully integrating multiple building systems so that they work together to maximize sustainability, efficiency, and aesthetics.
• take advantage of the opportunities when working with a historic structure by highlighting the unique characteristics of the building.

Presented by:

Gordon Umbarger: Director of Operations, National Museum of Women in the Arts

Sandra Parsons Vicchio, AIA, LEED AP, NCARB: Lead Architect, Sandra Vicchio & Associates

Cara Versace, AIA, NCARB, LEED AP BD+C: Project Manager for the Architect of Record, Marshall Craft Associates

The Westerly is a landmark building providing better than market quality for a mixed-use, mixed-income, affordable housing development program in the heart of the Southwest Waterfront neighborhood of Washington DC. As a vibrant transit oriented development (TOD), the Westerly is located one block from Waterfront Station on the Metro’s Green Line and is the latest component of the District’s Waterfront Station Planned Unit Development (PUD). That PUD delivers the urban repair of the Urban Renewal era Waterside Mall development of the 1960’s and includes mixed-use municipal office, a large format grocer (Safeway), neighborhood scale retail, and mixed-income residential. 

The Westerly inhabits, shapes, and defines a unique urban site.  The geometry of the building responds to the predominant grid of the District’s Southwest quadrant and to the shifted alignment of 4th Street SW, a two-sided public retail street  To the north, a private drive creates a mid-block, east-west connection linking to the existing church to the north.  This private drive is designed as a woonerf, a shared space for pedestrians and cars that does not give primacy to the automobile but fosters a safe and secure mix of cars and people when vehicle access is necessary and can otherwise be closed off to create a purely pedestrian experience.  The retail program includes an exciting all-day restaurant concept at the corner of 4th and the pedestrian walkway.  The main residential entrance and early education center with playground also face the pedestrian walkway. AppleTree Public Charter School is a pre-kindergarten education staple of the Southwest neighborhood and a dedicated cultural space for the Westerly and the community. The play area serves the pre-school during school hours, while outside of school hours it is accessible to children from the larger community. These programming elements activate the urban public spaces and provide a seamless pedestrian experience for the mid-block connection and 4th Street.   Loading and parking are collected at the west, next to an already active loading zone for the building to the south, keeping the pedestrian and retail experience intact and clear of vehicular conflict.

The Westerly is a true TOD, mixed-use, mixed-income, mixed-finance affordable housing building of the highest quality.

Learning Objectives: 

• Describe the unique attributes of the urban site of the building and how it responds to the grid of DC's Southwest quadrant as well as the shifted alignment of 4th Street SW.
• Identify the effects of the Urban Renewal era on the Waterside Mall development of the 1960’s and efforts to repair damage from that era.
• Analyze the programming elements that activate the urban space and design decisions that impact the pedestrian experience and contribute to the well being of the community.
• Explore the use of balconies as a principal element of the Project’s architecture, function, and post-pandemic marketability.

Presented by:

Sarah Alexander
Senior Principal
Torti Gallas + Partners

Nesli Dogrusoz
Associate Principal
Torti Gallas + Partners