ISTUDIO Projects Win AIA NOVA Design Awards

We are excited to share that three of our projects win 2020 AIA Northern Virginia Design Awards.

Powell Elementary School win Award of Merit in Institutional Architecture; Tubman Elementary School win Award of Excellence in Institutional Architecture; and Marvin Gaye Recreation Center win Award of Merit in Institutional Architecture.

We are grateful for our mission-driven clients and honored at the recognition our work has received.

In the jury’s words, “Powell Elementary School stood out for its clever use of simple materials… bring the issue of sustainability and wellness to the forefront.. with a tight budget that public schools tend to have.”

In the jury’s words, “transformational is the word that i would have to use to describe Tubman, on all levels for equity, inclusion, sustainability… it hit all the different criteria for contextuality for functionality for serving the community it hit on all those levels.”

In the jury’s words, “For Marvin Gaye Recreation Center, We admired the architect’s skill in... design that is sustainable, resilient, and one that becomes a real asset to the community.”

Studio Wellness in the Face of Covid-19 Pandemic

Socially-distant meet-up at Dupont Circle

We had another team talk recently about life and work in times of pandemic. Our colleagues brought up the added stresses we face now that the weather is changing and days are getting shorter. Everyone agreed that it’s too easy to just keep going, but far better to acknowledge and address it directly.

Here are some of our takeaways:

We’ are our greatest asset. By far our greatest project is our studio itself. We’ve worked hard with intention to create a healthy and creative culture, forming bonds that allow us to do good work and to shore each other up.

Our expertise can help us through. It makes sense, after all it’s part of our training as architects to identify challenges and come up with creative solutions.

Our plan includes communication, in-person meet-ups, and virtual mentoring sessions where interns can gather around a Revit model. The image above is a collage of photos from a recent socially-distant meet-up in the park at Dupont Circle.

Studio Salon 02 – Designing with Water

“Do not build any homes below this point.” “High dwellings are the peace and harmony of our descendants. Remember the calamity of the great tsunamis.” 

 Tsunami Stones – these ancient markers warned builders in coastal Japan where not to build, even as they memorialized past disasters. Jane Withers shared the story in our latest studio salon and the conversation turned to climate crisis: What will it take to bring people together to address increased flooding and sea level rise in Washington DC?

 Jane began the evening with images from her curated exhibit of projects that reconnect people with urban water. Riverine swimming pools and stepwells are the nexus of human interaction with waterways. But much is needed to improve water quality before people will consider immersing their bodies in contaminated waters. Cities like Washington have done much to improve water quality in the last 40 years with initiatives like daylighting streams, increasing pervious surfaces, and requiring better stormwater management.

 Public access to water defines Michael’s vision for waterfront development in Old Town Alexandria. We see our waterfronts differently now, not just as the industrial access points they once were – but opportunities for revisiting the past with an eye to the future. It takes a multi-valent approach, considering economic inclusion, transportation planning, and smart floodwater infrastructure.

Steven emphasized the need to engage with at-risk communities as critical to the process of planning and building. Data and modeling are powerful tools that do not yet measure less-tangible things like human suffering. It may be time to reconsider our metrics. A recent article in Vice “Our Infrastructure Is Being Built for a Climate That’s Already Gone” outlines the risk of continuing to use the past as a guide. In times of deep uncertainty we can no longer put our trust in stationarity – a constant unchanging world.

The good news for architects, planners, and developers is that we’ve trained ourselves to tackle wicked problems like non-stationarity, design for reducing human suffering, and rising waters. Design thinking is our approach, and it will require many voices with different expertise to do so.

Many thanks to our panelists.

• Jane Withers, Design Consultant + Writer

• Michael Winstanley, Principal of Winstanley Architects + Planners

• Steven Stichter, Director of Resilience America Program with National Academy of Sciences

Here are links for further reading:

Jane in Domus 

Jane on Urban Plunge 

Vice article on Infrastructure

Washington Post on Resilience

Forbes on Tsunami Stones

ISTUDIO Principal Rick Schneider testifies before the Washington DC City Council

ISTUDIO Principal Rick Schneider testified before the Washington DC City Council in the days before Coronavirus became the news.

Rick lauded the DC Department of General Services (DGS) for their commitment to “build, maintain, and sustain” green in testimony before the DC City Council. Each year the agency responsible for building green schools, rec centers - and a host of others - goes before the council for a performance review.

Our studio has been planning and designing public projects in Washington DC for 20 years, and we’ve seen incredible progress. In that time ISTUDIO has worked with DGS to build the first resilient hub (Marvin Gaye Rec in Ward 7), the first infrastructure academy (DCIA in Ward 8), and the first public school with solar chimneys (Powell ES in Ward 1). We’ve made great progress but there is still a lot to do…

The last time Rick addressed the DC City Council was to advocate for the Green Building Ordinance in 2006. This year he advocated for a Waterfront Resilience Plan. We face our greatest challenge in climate change with intensive storm events, increased flooding, and rising sea levels. Now is the time to develop a vision for resilience, equity, and sustainability along the waterfronts of the National Capitol Region. For more on this topic check out our past efforts with the Third Century Mall and the City of the Future.

Dogon Eco-tourism Center and Trail Wins Rethinking the Future Award

We are honored to receive the Rethinking the Future 2020 Award for the Dogon Eco-tourism Center and Trail.  ISTUDIO developed this vision for eco-tourism in East Africa with inspiration from Dogon vernacular architecture and the cultural landscape of a region defined by water scarcity.

 The eco-tourism center for this UNESCO world-heritage site is part green design, part urban planning – incorporating a vision of tree-lined streets, green space, and a visitor center that will be a model for sustainable community-building. Site sensitive landscape interventions provide visitor information at the entrance to surrounding villages along an interpretive trail. The team worked with the US Forest Service and Solimar International to coordinate site selection, assess local/regional capacity, and develop this vision with city leaders.

Project Information: Dogon Eco-tourism Center and Trail

Marvin Gaye Recreation Center Wins AISC Award

We are excited to announce that Marvin Gaye Recreation Center won the 2020 Innovative Design in Engineering and Architecture Award (IDEAS²) Merit Award.  Thank you to the American Institute of Steel Construction for recognizing our project for the national award.  The IDEAS² Award are the US structural steel industry’s highest honor to recognize creativity and skill in using steel.  We appreciate all of our collaborators hard work and coordination in constructing Marvin Gaye to be a successful, award winning building.

More about the award: https://www.aisc.org/ideas2/

Project Information: https://www.istudioarchitects.com/marvin-gaye-recreation-center-and-trails

We're Hiring: Staff Architect/Emerging Project Architect

Description: We are an award-winning, collaborative firm focused on sustainable, artful, community-minded projects.  We see design as serving the greater good.  We value ‘small studio’ culture: collaborative; supportive; curious; creative; and rigorous – in both work and play.  We provide a full benefits package, PTO, comp time, support for LEED accreditation and professional licensure, good teammates and opportunity to grow with a group of like-minded people.

You are an emerging project architect, most likely on the path to licensure with a professional degree in architecture and 2-5 years of experience (similar to the AIA Architecture Staff Level 1 or Recent Graduate). You are working on becoming a well-rounded architectural designer who can work on both sides of the wall (interior and exterior) and in all phases of a project – from high design schematics to tight CDs.  You are interested in working on our small, collaborative, and growing team to provide exceptional service for civic, cultural, and commercial clients.  You are proficient in Revit, Office 365, Adobe Suite, and Sketchup..

Responsibilities:

• Work closely with the project principal, project designer and project manager in each phase of the project delivery process.

• Work directly with an experienced PA to develop yourself as a Project Architect.

• Contribute to all aspects and phases of the architectural design process.

• Assist in creating project schedules and budgets.

• Attend project meetings.

• Maintain and organize project files.

• Travel to and from project and client meetings as required.

Requirements:

• Bachelor of Architecture or Master of Architecture (accredited degree program required).

• Minimum of Two years of experience. The ideal candidate will have relevant built work experience.

• LEED accreditation required within 12 months.

• Experience with civic, cultural or higher education projects will be considered a plus.

• Ability to work well in a team environment as well as independently.

• Proficiency in documenting all phases of the design process.

• Excellent graphic and verbal communication skills.

• Exceptional client service orientation and relationship building skills.

If this sounds like a good fit for you, please send a PDF of your resume + work samples to careers@ISTUDIOarchitects.com

FAB Public Program Series - Resilient Cities

Join us as ISTUDIO Principal Rick Schneider presents case studies in design for resilience. Susan Piedmont-Palladino, Director of the WAAC of the CAUS-VT moderates, with panelists Kevin Bush, Chief Resilience Officer for Washington, DC and Keith Anderson, Director of the DC Department of General Services. The four will speak on their areas of expertise before engaging in a dynamic conversation to examine the issues, challenges, and possibilities of a Resilient City.

Part of the FAB Public Programs Series hosted by the Virginia Tech Washington Alexandria Architecture Center.

FREE, Tuesday 12 November 7PM at 601 Prince Street, Alexandria VA

See link for details: https://archdesign.caus.vt.edu/events/panel-discussion-this-building-breathes/

ISTUDIO Delivers Awards to DC Department of General Services

It’s been an award-winning year! Principal Rick Schneider and the ISTUDIO team delivered a bevy of design awards to Director Anderson and the team at DC Department of General Services. Great, award-winning projects like these come from great clients. We are grateful for the recognition from NAIOP and AIA and remain committed to building resilience and equity in our neighborhoods.

• NAIOP, Best Institutional Facility

• AIA|DC Design Excellence + Sustainable Design.Marvin Gaye Recreation Center

• AIA|DC Sustainable Design

• Architizer A+.Twin Oaks Community Garden

• AIA|DC Universal Design

NAIOP Awards of Excellence - Best Institutional Facility

Powell Elementary School has been awarded an Award of Excellence, Best Institutional Facility by NAIOP DC|MD. We are very grateful for the recognition that this project has received and for the opportunity to showcase the excellent work that is being built in our region.

Award Anouncement: https://naiopawards.com/15.php

More about the project: https://www.istudioarchitects.com/powell

Architizer A+ Awards Special Mention

We are pleased to announce that Marvin Gaye Recreation Center won an Architizer A+ Awards Special Mention in the category of Concepts-Plus-Architecture + Climate Change! This international award recognizes projects that respond to contemporary challenges facing our environment. MGR is our city's first rec center with integrated natural ventilation and is designed to be resilient against natural disasters.

ISTUDIO x DesignDC 2019

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Principal Rick Schneider presents recent case studies in civic architecture that emulate powerful forces of nature to build community resilience.

Washington, DC is leading the way as a member of the 100 Resilient Cities Network. The DC Department of General Services (DGS) is working with agencies like the DC Department of Parks and Recreation (DPR) to build the civic infrastructure of the future. New DPR projects fulfill the agency’s mission to promote wellness, conserve the environment and provide universal access. Members of the 100 Resilient Cities Network, along with DC’s Chief Resilience Officer and the Director of DGS, will talk about citywide efforts to plan for and build resilient facilities. The panel discusses the part sustainable facilities play in equitable design, community resilience, and green infrastructure. Case studies include Marvin Gaye Recreation Center, the first center with integrated natural ventilation. The center was designed on biophilic principles as a resilient hub to withstand floods and power outages.  

“This Building Breathes: Tales of a Resilient City”

with:

Keith A. Anderson, Director - DC Department of General Services

Susan Piedmont-Palladino, Director - VA Tech WAAC

Kevin Bush, DC Chief Resilience Officer

Rick Schneider, AIA, LEED - Principal, ISTUDIO Architects

Two Projects Published in Architecture DC

We are thrilled that our recent work at Powell Elementary has been featured as the cover article for Architecture DC! Twin Oak’s Community Garden was also featured in the magazine along with other great public and institutional projects around our city.

You can read the articles using the links below:

Powell Elementary School

Twin Oaks Community Garden

Abre Las Ventanas

Powell Elementary School won the AIA DC Design Excellence and Sustainability awards by telling students to “Abre Las Ventanas” (open the windows). Our renovation and addition to this dual language school showcases solar chimneys and operable windows as passive design strategies.  To make the learning environment more comfortable and energy efficient, passive design harnesses the powerful effects of nature… forces like hot air rises and nature abhors a vacuum[1].

 Solar chimneys utilize the natural flows of air current to provide non-mechanical cooling + ventilation. They’re something we don’t see every day, but the concept has been around forever. In fact, the original historic structure included a solar chimney when it was constructed in 1929.  This was a time before the use of mechanical air conditioning… a time almost forgotten when schools had operable windows.

We discovered something fascinating when we surveyed the historic building: every classroom had an odd metal grille on the corridor side wall. Each one connected to a duct in the hollow wall that led to the open attic. In spring or fall, when a room got too hot, these vents moved hot stale air out of the classroom and into the attic plenum as students opened the windows. Hot air rises – nature abhors a vacuum.   Open a window to let in fresh air: free cooling and ventilation.

 So how do you get all that hot stale air out of the attic? The cupola was not just for looks - it functioned as a vent for the attic. Louvers let the hot air out and windows use the sun to heat the space up and speed up the process somewhat.

For the new classroom wing at Powell, we took a lesson from history – we replicated this function and modified it to improve efficiency.  Now each classroom has a duct to a solar chimney. When conditions are right - temperature, wind speed + direction, humidity – a green light goes on in the classroom telling the students “Abre las ventanas”.  In this day + age we have to encourage our kids to open a window.

The natural ventilation provided by the Solar Chimneys in the addition results in an additional 5.2% savings on energy above the already high baseline for a LEED-S Gold school. The passive strategies in this one wing alone provide cost savings of 2% to the overall project. The solar chimneys provide cool fresh air without the use of non-renewable energy. It’s a concept that is thousands of years old and it’s chock full of STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Art, + Music) teaching moments.

That’s why the folks at DC Sustainable Energy Utility gave us funding for signage in the hallways to educate students on how they work. The STEAM message is levelled for different age groups.  It helps explain the concept by comparing it to a fire place chimney within their own homes.  However, rather than exhausting smoke, the solar chimney exhausts hot, stale air.  It’s a timeless lesson in saving money and energy, promoting healthy buildings, and educating all ages on resource stewardship.

Citation

[1]          Nature abhors a vacuum (horror vacui); this idiom and theory by Aristotle posits that empty space does not want to be empty space.  When it comes to passive design, this theory is applied in a myriad of ways.  Powell Elementary uses the solar chimney and operable windows to create a vacuum.  As temperatures warm throughout the year, the vents at the top of the solar chimney can be opened to release the hot air.  As the hot air is removed, the empty space left wants to be filled.  When used in combination with the operable windows, new fresh air is pulled in to fill the space creating a naturally occurring and desirable draft.

AIA CHAPTER AWARDS

We are excited and honored to announce that three of our projects have won four AIA DC Design Awards. Powell Elementary is recognized for Design Excellence and Sustainability, Twin Oaks Pavilion earned the Universal Design award, and Marvin Gaye Recreation Center is also honored for Sustainability. A big thanks to all the many collaborators who contributed to achieve these beautiful projects and helped further our mission of creating communities of artful, sustainable design. Thank you to AIA DC for these prestigious awards.

Powell Elementary

AIA DC Design Excellence & Sustainability Awards

Twin Oaks Pavilion

AIA DC Universal Design Award

Marvin Gaye Recreation Center

AIA DC Sustainability Award

2 CITIES

We’ve grown! As the work has grown and project types expanded we’ve teamed up with JP2 Architects our partners in Baltimore. Together we offer planning, architecture, and interior design services for a range of Commercial and Civic project types. Our portfolio includes Multi-family, Mixed-Use, Retail, Hospitality, Entertainment, Office, Civic, Institutional, Educational, Industrial, Infrastructure, and some High-end Residential work as well. Our team of 30 architects, designers, and planners has many talents. We’ve got stories.

ACCOLADES

We’re grateful for our mission-driven clients and honored at the recognition our work has received. This past year alone we criss-crossed the country at the invitation of the Gehl Institute, CitiesAlive, and the American Horticultural Society. We engaged in resilient community sessions at the SXSW Cities conference in Spring and showcased new ideas for outdoor education spaces at Cornell in the Summer. By the Fall we had presented project case studies at Public X Design in Detroit, CitiesAlive in Brooklyn, and DesignDC in Washington DC. We closed out the year with a showcase of Marvin Gaye Recreation Center at ECON, the DC Mayor Bowser’s annual Economic Partnership meeting. The Center also won a Presidential Citation for Sustainable Design at this years AIA|DC design awards. You can see more plus a list of published projects in our Story.

18 YEARS

We celebrated our birthday in September - 18 years of civic, cultural, and community-based work! We began with a dedication to the design of artful, sustainable communities and we’re amazed at the people and projects that have crossed our path. Thinking back, our first project was community process and planning for the Girard Street Playground in 2000. Three years later we designed light-filled offices for community developer Jair Lynch and won awards for our Smart Wall. 2005 found us developing an art-based public school for Washington Very Special Arts. We developed a Vision Plan for the National Mall and presented it to Congressional Representatives in 2008. That same year we designed a solar-powered City Council chamber for the City of Takoma Park. We travelled overseas quite a bit with the US Forest Service from 2010 to 2012 designing sustainable tourism centers in Africa. Since then we’ve watched civic projects come to life and grow into award-winning green schools, recreation centers, municipal offices, and civic infrastructure. We just completed Washington DC’s first Infrastructure Academy. Here’s to another 18.

Why Do Community Design Process At All?

This is a question asked frequently in the design community. The community design process is not an easy fit with the way that many design firms operate. ISTUDIO contends that developing mechanisms that provide communities with design services is both a crucial development in our culture’s response to the crises affecting our urban neighborhoods, and a crucial development in the maturing process of the design profession. All professions have made organized, broad-based efforts to provide services to under-served communities.

This practice of offering services based on the greatest need, rather than the greatest availability of resources, has created great organizations such as the American Civil Liberties Union, and Doctors Without Borders. This brings us to a crucial point; if designers truly believe that their services are indispensable to creating healthy communities, they must find ways to extend those benefits to communities in need. This focus re-imagines the design process as, first and foremost, a method of caring for others.

Since design is a process, it is useful to establish some benchmarks in the process, and some general guidelines. First, community design must be a two-way street in order to be effective. Designers must be willing to learn from communities and vice versa.

Further, good interpersonal relationships will be crucial to creating a smooth process. Therefore, designers must be intentional and focused on developing connections, both professional and personal, with people and organizations in the community. Failure to accomplish these ends results in a lost opportunity for designers to learn. Diminished trust means community members will be less invested in the final product, less likely to provide the necessary support for completing the project.

What do designers learn through workshop process?

- Designers learn which issues community members care about, and how residents think about the space, its use, its purpose, and each other. Designers gain insight into the specific language each community uses to talk about itself. This local language is influenced by culture (and the mix of cultures), class, race, religion. All of these form the basis for our aspirations for the future, and for people’s understanding of changes as positive or negative.

- Designers can clearly define their role as community advocates. They should recognize a possible need to take on roles outside or beyond their roles as defined in standard practice. Professionals should figure out what the project needs, rather than limiting themselves to what designers are “supposed” to do.

- Designers can develop long-term connections with communities interested in reinventing themselves, and help build community capacity to manage those changes.

What do communities get from the workshop process?

- Stakeholders can develop a unified vision for a community, and document that vision in a way that is easily understood.

- The design process can build a constituency to a create change. That base group, once formed, can work on other issues, solidifying community involvement.

- New relationships can develop between existing community members and organizations during the process.

- The workshop structure allows communities to access expertise from organizations or individuals in a regularized fashion. Communities gain a new method for group problem solving. The workshop process can be applied to other community problems, and function as a “safe place” in which to discuss group problems and propose solutions.

Seen in this way, the workshop process provides three products. First is the design proposal, a solution to the specified problem and a plan for implementing the solution. Second is a community-building effort that organizes existing individual and group assets of for change. Third is the workshop process itself; a structured, familiar mechanism to address future problems.

• Michael Hill, ASLA

When Does a City Become Your Own?

Notebook Japan 98 So when does a city start to belong to a person? Is it a matter of time, or of experience? Maybe when the lights coming on in the evening bring a sense of familiarity. When I have a place to go as some kind of regular. When I decide I’ll go home this way instead of that because the subway is cheaper than a train + bus, even if I have to walk a little more. When I feel a strange sense of kindred with folks on the street I’ll never even meet – complete stranger. When I don’t stop at each corner to check my direction + location.

I’ve come to Motomachi only the 4th time or so and I spend the afternoon strolling streets and the early evening drinking coffee at an outside table in the fall air and I take possession of the city a little. Like a beachhead, like a first long kiss + a touch. Like taking it for a test drive. At that point it’s a little bit mine now. Walking through doesn’t count, a peck on the cheek doesn’t either. But lingering, that’s when the exchange begins whether one knows it or not. And returning builds the bond one silk thread after another. Finally the living is what really seals it. The prolonged occupation, “marrying a native”. Sleeping together, or better yet waking up together. Taking it in for alignment and getting the brakes checked. When I’m buying bread, saying hello to the owners and thinking about how there’s too many new people these days… it’s mine.