2011 AIA Potomac Valley Design Awards Citation Award Winner
Broadhurst Architects
The Crib at Strathmore
Built, Interiors
Washington, DC

The Crib at Strathmore is an efficient 250 square foot prototype building which can serve as a weekend retreat, as an art or yoga studio, as a backyard home office, or in multiples as cabins at an eco-resort. It is currently installed as a temporary habitable architectural sculpture in the sculpture garden of Montgomery County’s premier concert and arts center. The Crib is comprised of sustainable and recyclable materials that are fabricated off site then transported and quickly assembled where desired. It takes its basic form from traditional American corn cribs, however here the form is realized as a more sophisticated kit of parts. The main structure consists of two shop-fabricated galvanized steel bents that combine the concept of traditional wood timber framing with the structural simplicity of common scaffolding systems. The floor and roof consist of structural insulated panels (SIPs) which are supported by engineered wood and steel beams that span between the bents. Prefabricated wall panels made of unpainted heat-treated poplar and recyclable translucent insulating multi-layer polycarbonate sheets are clipped into the framework.

The environmentally responsible features of The Crib include the following:

• very small and efficient floor plans
• minimal site disturbance
• efficient shop fabrication process and quick on-site assembly process
• high insulation values using Structural Insulated Panels, insulated glass, and multilayer polycarbonate panels
• efficient propane fireplace
• high recycled-content materials including the steel structure, aluminum door and storefront and rubber floor tiles
• recyclable materials including steel, aluminum, fiberglass, rubber, and polycarbonate
• Earth-friendly non-finished heat-treated poplar for siding and limited interior finishes
• rain water collection system for gardening
• energy efficient LED and CFL light sources
• energy efficient ceiling fan “air conditioner”
• the entire building is recyclable in that it can be dismantled and relocated to another site

]]> http://www.aiapv.org/2011designawards/2011/11/08/broadhurst-architects-crib-at-strathmore/feed/ 0 http://www.aiapv.org/2011designawards/2011/11/08/mcinturff-architects-kit-of-parts/ http://www.aiapv.org/2011designawards/2011/11/08/mcinturff-architects-kit-of-parts/#comments Tue, 08 Nov 2011 19:45:47 +0000 admin http://www.aiapv.org/2011designawards/?p=238 Continue reading →]]>

2011 AIA Potomac Valley Design Awards Citation Award Winner
McInturff Architects
Kit of Parts
Built, Interiors
Washington, DC

It is the proposition of this project that a house can be transformed through select, delicate and adaptable interventions rather than wholesale renovation. An existing 1920’s bungalow has been transformed through a series of strategic, non-structural interventions, each designed to accommodate domestic functions within the  unchanged framework of the house.

A “kit of parts” made of steel angles, aluminum sheets, glass and wood is transformed from place to place to house a fireplace, a television, bookshelves, CD storage, a desk, bench, stair railing and credenza.

Select windows have been modified to adapt the exterior to the revised interior through clear, sandblasted or louvered glass.

Through the addition of these pieces, and by extending them throughout the house as needed, the use and experience of the house has been transformed in an economical and responsible way.

2011 AIA Potomac Valley Design Awards Citation Award Winner
Hickok Cole Architects
Association
Built, Interiors
Alexandria, Virginia

As an advocate for the visual and graphic communications industry, this client wanted a space that would showcase the constituency it represents. Graphic communication and the fl ow of information are paramount to this trade association and they desired an office that would reflect this idea. The client selected a location with a barbell-shaped floor plan that provided a challenge to their goal of enhancing communication within the organization.

The sleek, modern design is based on the concept of neon and the flow of light it creates, expressing the client’s mission of graphic communication. The space plan reinforces the idea of flow with a main circulation corridor extending from one end of the space to the other to enhance communication.

Neon lighting, an integral part of signage graphics, identifies specific areas using the RGB spectrum typically found in the digital imaging process.

• Green – gathering
• Blue – greeting
• Magenta – wayfinding

Pictograms and international signage symbols identify shared support functions such as conferencing, pantry and reception. Undulating forms are used throughout the Architecture to convey and reinforce the idea of visual flow. These forms imbue the personality of the client and the creative companies they represent.

Translucent graphics adhered to the glass-front offices, allow natural lighting into the interior and create a visual flow throughout the space. Designers addressed the  requirement for privacy within offices by varying the height of the graphics, providing  privacy to seated occupants and allowing vision into the corridors only when occupants are standing.

To facilitate employee collaboration and provide the opportunity for incidental contact in  the long, narrow space, designers centralized all common areas, encouraging staff  from both ends of the floor to meet in the middle.

2011 AIA Potomac Valley Design Awards Citation Award Winner
Quinn Evans Architects
Eastern Market
Built, Commercial Under 50K SF
Washington, DC

Eastern Market is a thriving center of economic and social activity. It is a critical  component of life on Capitol Hill, playing a central role in the lives of residents much  the same as a town square. This historic Romanesque Revival style market is a  designated local landmark and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. In  2005 a $3 million rehabilitation effort commenced to address the degradation of the  structure and provide updated utilities. However, in the spring of 2007 before  construction began, the market was devastated by a fire requiring replacement of the  roof and all vendor equipment. The fire presented the opportunity to not only repair the fire damage, but to implement a more aggressive and comprehensive rehabilitation

The roof assembly was replaced, keeping 50% of the historic iron trusses, and  re-introducing a missing historic skylight and ridge vent system. The severity of the fire exposed an existing first floor structure that was beyond repair. Thus, for the South  Hall, an entirely new floor assembly was introduced. This provided the opportunity to conceal HVAC and electrical distribution in the basement. All new HVAC, fire alarm,  telephone, data, and lighting systems were installed.

Fire protection and air conditioning were added to the building for the first time in its  history. The building was made accessible with improved amenities for the employees and the public. Many sustainable design features were integrated into the project including storm water filtration, high efficiency HVAC systems, low wattage lighting, and increased building envelope thermal resistance.

The rehabilitation retained the original function and character of the market while  providing a modernized and refreshed environment for market operations and  community use. The beloved landmark re-opened on 26 June 2009 to much applause and public acclaim.

2011 AIA Potomac Valley Design Awards Merit Award Winner
Gardner Mohr Architects
Gilmer House
Built, Single Family Residential
Bethesda, Maryland

This project, consisting of a renovation and addition to a 1920’s era bungalow, required the stewardship of an existing resource from a state of disrepair to solidity and from wasteful to efficient. The transformation of the bungalow resulted in a “second life” for the home, blending traditional and modern character and technologies.

The existing house, situated on a limited site with many trees, was in need of major structural remediation. The roof was under-structured and leaking. The second floor structural elements were similarly significantly undersized, resulting not only in sagging structural elements, but also a cascade of subsequent incremental failures such as leaking window heads, rotted sheathing, and walls out-of-plumb.

The client sought to preserve and extend the original intimate character of the house, and to create a transition to an addition that would be modern yet harmonious with the original bungalow character. The overall strategy makes the most of the tight rear yard — a sequence of rooms from front to garden dining terrace is organized along a series of cross axes.

The front of the house alludes to of the previous bungalow character, and hints at the  modern transformation that is apparent on the garden side and in the landscape  design. The roof and second fl oor rooms were removed; the second fl oor structure reinforced or rebuilt; and a garden addition and an entirely new second fl oor were tucked under a new roof form.

Rooms on the garden side of the house connect to a new ledgestone wall-terraced landscape, via a veranda, screen porch, and a balcony. The screen porch and veranda extend the spaces into the garden. Boulders, stone monoliths, and gravel paths shape the ground into useable spaces on this tight site. The rooms on the garden have ten foot tall sliding doors, designed to be remniscent of shoji screens. The material palette, including reclaimed oak floors and casing, enhances the connection to the outdoors.

The kitchen is an integral part of the room on the garden, connecting to dining, veranda, and screen porch. A dining table is on wheels, allowing it to be tucked away or moved to the center of the room. Hidden cabinets underneath the stair have doors
that match the cabinets across the space: open-knot cherry, in this case glazed with translucent resin with an interlayer of pressed ferns. The stair materials include ebonized oak treads, orbital-sanded copperfaced risers and oak balusters with steel  channels at the edges. Upstairs, top fl oor rooms are tucked under the roof. Skylights illuminate the structural elements that form the rooms. Bathroom materials bring a sense of the out-of-doors into the room. with bathroom fixtures that share the daylit space. Carefully planned overhangs and skylights illuminate the spaces, yet shade rooms from direct sunlight.

Colors have an important role in the sequence from front to the more open, asian-inspired garden rooms–a rich paint color palette in the “original” bungalow yields to a natural material palette of wood, backpainted glass, and stone. Careful choices about shading, orientation, and daylighting guided the planning of the project from the outset. Sustainable, recycled, renewable, and reclaimed materials as well as  energy-efficient lighting and hvac systems are central to the second life of the house

2011 AIA Potomac Valley Design Awards Merit Award Winner
McInturff Architects
Butman Lee House
Built, Single Family Residential
Cabin John, Maryland

Sited on a bluff overlooking both the C&O canal and the Potomac River, this house is about resolving the conflict between the orientation towards an extraordinary southwest view and the need to control sunlight, glare and heat gain generated by that orientation.

Housed within a bar parallel to the ridge and perpendicular to the view, the metal-clad main living spaces are elevated to the second story to look over and through the treetops. Bedrooms below at the first floor level share concrete masonry-walled private courtyards.

The large single-room living space opens to the view through a glass-walled loggia that is protected by roof overhangs and a fixed sunshade above door level. Operable computer controlled exterior blinds protect the interior from harsh direct afternoon sun, and enclose the loggia as a shaded buffer space.

Above the garage, guest rooms are housed in a separately zoned wing as part of an overall energy strategy that includes geothermal heat pumps, radiant heat, natural ventilation, active shading systems and foam insulation.

2011 AIA Potomac Valley Design Awards Merit Award & Sustainability Award  Winner
Grimm + Parker Architects
Knight Hall
Built, Institutional
College Park, Maryland

Knight Hall is the new 53,000 sf home for the Philip Merrill College of Journalism at the University of Maryland. The building was designed to be “Of its Time and Of its Place”: the building blends with the context of its site within a traditional campus, yet also communicates a message of an institution at the forefront of the journalism profession in the 21st Century.

Knight Hall provides a balance of instructional spaces, faculty offices and professional outreach centers organized around a daylit, two-story Great Hall public space.  Instructional spaces include 4 news labs, 2 seminar rooms, a 70-seat broadcast theater, a multifunctional studio/editing lab and a 24/7 multimedia open lab space. The third-floor houses professional training centers which are epicenters of media study and national advocacy. A variety of public spaces encourage frequent interactions between students, faculty and journalism professionals. Throughout the building, Knight Hall demonstrates transparency as one of the core fundamentals of
journalism by offering views into spaces and revealing and sharing their various functions.

The building responds to the University’s masterplan by holding the edges of its corner site and creating a courtyard space adjacent to the Great Hall. The interior public spaces become the campus conduit that connects the adjacent parking to the campus core, where visitors can get the news of the day as they make their way
on campus.

Built on a former parking lot, Knight Hall embodies the University’s commitment to
sustainability by becoming the campus’ first University-owned LEED building — achieving LEED-Gold Certification. Daylighting and exterior views are provided to nearly all occupied spaces, reinforcing the design principle of transparency.

2011 AIA Potomac Valley Design Awards Honor Award Winner
McInturff Architects
Dogtrot House
Built, Single Family Residential
Little Washington, Virginia

Our clients asked for their weekend house near the Blue Ridge Mountains to be in two parts —one for themselves and one for guests — with connecting common spaces, both indoors and out. It occurred to us that two such buildings with a covered open porch was a 21st-century dogtrot house.

The guests occupy a three-story tower that can be conditioned separately from the owners’ wing, which can operate as a one bedroom house when the owners are at the property alone. A 2nd floor media room above the porch bridges the two wings and provides an interior connection between them. Parallel window walls frame views to mountains on one side and foothills on the other.

Beneath the bridge, roll screens can drop from each end of the dogtrot ceiling, transforming the open passage into a  screened porch.

2011 AIA Potomac Valley Design Awards Honor Award Winner
McInturff Architects
House on Walloon Lake
Built, Single Family Residential
Boyne City, Michigan

Sited on a gentle open meadow sloping to a lake, this getaway house is designed for an extended family whose connections to the site span several generations.

Entry begins on a boardwalk passing between a pair of garages, crosses the meadow, then goes through the house to become an extended bridge projecting toward the lake. Above an open first floor plan dedicated to communal life — kitchen, dining and living — a second floor of bedroom suites can sleep an entire family  reunion.

2011 AIA Potomac Valley Design Awards Honor Award Winner
Muse Architects
Riverside Barbecue Pavilion
Built, Single Family Residential
Big Timber, Montana

Built, Residential -Single Family

Yellowstone Bend Ranch is a 3,600 acre ranch in south-central Montana. In response to unsightly subdivisions on nearby sites, the owners of YBR established a permanent conservation of more than 85% of the ranch and partnered with local ranchers who sustainably graze cattle on much of the land. These actions maintain open space, enhance native grass production, and promote local agriculture and ranching.

On the balance of the ranch, twenty-two building sites and other common areas have been proposed. The Riverside Barbeque Pavilion is an outbuilding that offers residents a place in the landscape while offering shelter, also offers long views to the mountains, river, and wildlife nearby. The materials and shapes of the structure recall local ranch vernacular. Sliding barn type doors provide protection from strong winds as well as security when the building is not in use. Locally resourced materials, including corrugated tin roofing and timber, were used in construction.