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EXPANSIVE DEVELOPMENTS Contributors

Bradley W. Johnson On page 14 of this issue, you’ll find an advertisement featuring a Mary Jane Bolle (“Collaboration on the
beautiful poster by Xuesheng Song for Architecture Month. You saw
Chesapeake”) is a freelance writer whose
that right—Architecture Week is becoming Architecture Month.
passion is architecture.
While it might seem like a leap for us to program a whole month of
events, the reality is that Architecture Weeks in recent years were
already spilling into second and even third weeks. Having a full Steven K. Dickens, AIA, LEED AP
(“Architectural Achievement” and
month will allow us to space things out a little more, so that you’ll
“The Business of Academics”) is senior
be able to take better advantage of the many gallery openings, tours,
associate with Eric Colbert & Associates.
and lectures without exhausting yourself.
As part of Architecture Month, I’ve been working on an
Holly Feldman-Wiencek (“An
exhibition for DAC’s SIGAL Gallery about bees and their relationship to the built envi-
Architectural Conversation”) is a graduate
ronment. Last spring, as readers of these pages know, we installed a beehive on the roof
student in public anthropology at the
of our building, and the bees have been happily producing honey. I originally thought the
American University. Both of her
exhibition would be solely about honeybees, in part because I thought that bees pretty
parents are architects.
much all lived in hives. It turns out, though, that only about 20% of bee species live in
hives, and that most pollination is done by native bee species that often are solitary or in
groups or part-time hives. The various ways that bees live reflect their differing survival Denise Liebowitz (“Making Room”
strategies and adaptations to environmental conditions. and “Aesop’s Fabulous”), formerly
with the National Capital Planning
Welcome! to ARCHITECTUREDC.
Commission, is a regular contributor
G. Martin Moeller, Jr., Assoc. AIA
(“A Dream Deferred No More” and
“Recentered”) is an independent curator
In researching the exhibition, I’ve been reading the District’s wildlife plan and having and writer, as well as senior curator at
frequent conversations with Natasha Garcia-Andersen, the District’s Fish & Wildlife biol- the National Building Museum. He is
ogist. We first met when she cited us for not having a license for our hive (we had it, but the editor of ARCHITECTUREDC.
had not posted it), and since then she’s been a huge help in answering many of my bee-
related queries. You’ll see some that research if you come visit us in April when “Bees in Ronald O’Rourke (“Shaw Builds Up”) is
the City” opens.
a regular contributor to ARCHITECTUREDC.
One of the more important things I’ve learned about bees is that the District is home
His father, Jack O'Rourke, was an
to the rusty patched bumblebee, which in January became the first bumblebee species
architect in San Francisco for more
(and the first bee of any kind in the continental United States) to be listed for protections
than four decades.
under the U.S. Endangered Species Act. That listing, made in the final days of the Obama
Administration, reportedly may be reversed by Congress. You can help this and other
threatened bee species (there are three others in the District)—as well as honeybees, who
face their own challenges, by planting native plants in your yard or on your balcony and
limiting the use of pesticides.
Along with expanding Architecture Week into Architecture Month, we’re adding to
ARCHITECTUREDC’s strategies for covering local architecture by introducing a new type
of feature that surveys projects occurring in a given part of town. The initial articles in
this new series, starting on page 68, focus on new and planned projects in the rapidly
evolving Shaw neighborhood. We hope you’ll find this new kind of coverage a compelling
addition to the magazine.
As always, we love to hear from you, so please drop me a line at mfitch@aiadc.com.

Mary Fitch, AICP, Hon. AIA
Publisher
mfitch@aiadc.com

WELCOME 5