Page 18 - ArchDC_Summer2021

SBA “worked judiciously to integrate the site’s 19
historic buildings in a meaningful way, collaborating The complex as seen from the corner
of 7th and L streets, NW.
closely with regulatory agencies and stakeholders to
develop an appropriate plan that would go beyond
filling in gaps on the site,” the architects said. The
older structures “provide critical evidence of New
York Avenue’s industrial-to-commercial evolution,”
they added. “Notably, the project’s 7th Street frontage
features one of the larger intact ensembles of 1800s
commercial buildings in Washington, DC.”
The area around Mount Vernon Square features
a number of new office buildings whose glazed,
crystalline forms seem to take their design cues from
the glassy, angular façade of the Convention Center.
The 11-story office tower at the center of 655 New York
Avenue, however, departs from that pattern to some
degree by combining angular, straight-sided elements
with boldly curving forms.
The tower’s curved elements “contrast with
and soften rectilinear forms both old and new,” the
architects said. “On the 7th Street side of the central
volume, an undulating form steps down from the main
building height in deference to the historic buildings
below. Meticulous spacing of its [flat] glass panes
achieves the vision of a curved curtainwall. The form
cantilevers over existing structures to create a secluded
urban portico below. A complementary curvilinear
volume at the corner of New York Avenue and 6th
Street accentuates the verticality of the composition
when approaching DC’s downtown core from the east.”
The curvilinear forms “began as a response to the
row of historic buildings along 7th Street,” said Patrick
Burkhart, AIA, a design principal at SBA. “Initially, we
investigated a rectilinear setback along that street, but
the visual effect was more hard-edged and somewhat
confrontational. The curved form softened the effect.
A second curved element was added at the east side of
the project to reduce the visual bulk of the project at the
intersection of New York Avenue and 6th Street, which
as an obtuse angle would visually broaden the bulk of
the building with a rectilinear geometry of façade planes.
In the case of the western curved element, its form was
sculpted to respond to the expansive viewsheds at the
southwest and northwest corners of the site, where the
taller historic structures exist. At the eastern end, the
curvilinear form is more of a bay that eases the corner and
responds to yet another expansive view to the southeast.”
Setbacks combined with changes in window patterns
and materials divide the straight-sided parts of the tower
into smaller, interlocking rectangular segments, helping
to reduce the building’s apparent size in relation to the
smaller historic buildings. Modern terra cotta panels—
a feature seen in other SBA-designed office buildings—
help connect the tower materially to the masonry-clad
historic buildings. Vertical aluminum fins mounted
in front of the glass curtain wall are painted and
textured to resemble the terra cotta panels, reinforcing
that connection and subtly change the curtain wall’s
appearance as one passes by the building.

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