We’re honored to finish out on a high note after an otherwise trying year – with two major design awards recognizing our commercial and residential practice areas, both of which emphasize their connection to the outdoors.
AIA Virginia
2020 Design Awards
Honorable Mention: Capital Yacht Club
“The jury appreciated this project’s relationship to a maritime motif. The designers did a good job of incorporating the exterior existing fabric into the design.”
Architects Lee Quill, FAIA, CNU; Nandor Mitroczak, AIA; and Ana Baker, AIA, were tasked with designing a building with disparate goals: A solid urban presence that speaks to its busy streetscape, but which also transports the club’s members and their guests into the soaring, weightless air above the Washington Channel off The Wharf redevelopment in Washington, DC. The result is a revitalized presence for the yacht club – its third iteration on the channel since it was founded in 1922. The locally quarried bluestone façade takes up where The Wharf’s cobblestone promenade leaves off, but a central glass portal previews what’s on the other side with direct sightlines to the water. As they did to complement the street-facing elevation, the architects used cladding materials related to ships and seafaring on the channel sides, including pre-patinated blue-grey zinc– a reference to the 19th-century copper sheathing of British ship hulls – and wood soffits and window louvers that invoke a boat’s trim and decking. Read more about this project here.
Fairfax County Department of Planning and Development
2020 James M. Scott Exceptional Design Awards Recipients
Merit Award: Divine House, McLean, Virginia
“Intimate in scale, the livable spaces of the Divine House flow from one room to another and stretch beyond the exterior walls, giving each space deliberate views and connection to living spaces outside.”
“A breath of fresh air” takes on new meaning in this project, where architects Ralph Cunningham, FAIA; Maria Casarella, AIA; and Angela Yu, AIA, executed a design that seeks to redefine our prevailing notions of the suburban home. The team broke up its typically single, solid mass, branching out secondary spaces as independent volumes that surround a large central living area. That approach creates an opportunity for more windows and walls of glass, thus inviting the outdoors in. Multiple outdoor living and recreation areas are accessible from nearly every first-floor space as a result, and natural wood and stone materials flow from the outside in to make those connections seamless. The design also banished the ubiquitously prominent suburban garage, tucking it almost invisibly under a front porch off the dining room. The plans likewise eschewed the common asphalt driveway, calling for a tar-and-chip courtyard instead that doubles as sports and play space. Read more about this project here.
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