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Liquid Asset
Liquid Asset DC Water headquarters as seen from the boardwalk

along the Anacostia River. A portion of Nationals Park
is visible in the left background.

All photos ©
DC Water’s Headquarters Beautifully Alan Karchmer / OTTO
Embodies the Utility’s Focus

on Sustainability by Ronald O’Rourke

If water is life, and architecture is frozen music, what do you get that it’s walking the walk on sustainability, a core value for the
when you put those two notions together? utility that is reflected in its motto: “Water is Life.”
You get a building like DC Water’s new headquarters DC Water’s administrative offices were previously scattered
facility—a sinuous, glass- and metal-clad office building on across several locations, some of them leased, with the Central
the Anacostia River waterfront designed by SmithGroup, an Operations Facility at the Blue Plains Advanced Wastewater
architecture and design firm with offices in Washington, 13 Treatment Plant serving as the utility’s de facto headquarters.
other U.S. cities, and Shanghai. That building had reached capacity, and it was occupying
For an agency usually associated with utilitarian valuable space that the utility wanted to free up for potential
construction projects—repairing broken water mains, replacing future improvements to the plant’s water-treatment capabilities.
neighborhood lead pipes, and excavating gigantic underground After examining potential strategies and surveying its
storm water tunnels—the elegantly sculpted, almost-iridescent properties, DC Water decided that its best option was to use the
DC Water headquarters building can come as a pleasant shock, riverfront site of its O Street Pumping Station as the location
particularly to those who discover it as they amble along the for a new, consolidated headquarters facility that would
boardwalk of the Anacostia Riverwalk Trail, about half-way more effectively house its administrative staff and reduce
between The Yards and the Washington Nationals ballpark. annual building maintenance and leasing costs. The utility
But the merits of the $55 million building include more than solicited proposals from design-build teams, then selected the
just good looks—its design is a carefully crafted response to a SmithGroup team and its concept design for the project.
site that offered an unusual set of constraints and opportunities. The site’s principal constraint was the O Street Pumping
And with energy- and water-saving features that exceed the Station itself—a drab, 1960s-era brick box that could serve as
requirements for LEED Platinum certification, the six-story, the textbook definition of nondescript. The almost-windowless
150,000-square-foot structure is helping DC Water demonstrate structure was plopped more or less in the middle of the site,

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