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Exterior before renovation.
Courtesy of CORE architecture + design
Living room in one of the new condominium apartments at 2501 M. Photos © Ron Ngiam Photography, except as noted
Washingtonian Residential Design
Citation for Adaptive Reuse
2501 M

Washington, DC
CORE architecture + design
Interior Architect: HapstakDemetriou+
Landscape Architect: Oculus
Lighting Designer: Stroik Lighting Design
Structural Engineer: Rathgeber/Goss Associates
MEP Engineer: Metropolitan Engineering Inc./
Shapiro-O’Brien
Civil Engineer: Bohler
Building Envelope Engineer: Wiss, Janney,
Elstner Associates, Inc.
Acoustical Consultant: Polysonics
Sustainability Consultant: Sustainable The renovated exterior, showing the top three floors unaltered.
Design Consulting
Specifications Consultant: Rosa D. Cheney AIA, PLLC disturbing the apartments on the top three floors, which would
General Contractor: James G. Davis remain occupied during construction.
Construction Corporation Although the façades of the original residential floors
extended to the property line in most places, the office floors
Even before the COVID-19 pandemic caused a surge in remote below were inset five feet—a trendy design move when the
working, traditional offices were shrinking as hard drives building was completed in the early 1980s that now seems like
supplanted filing cabinets and increasingly sophisticated a waste of space. CORE expanded the floor slabs on the former
computer programs reduced the need for support staff. That office floors to the property line and added bays projecting an
long-term trend has led to a wave of conversions of office additional four feet over public space as allowed under DC
buildings into residential or mixed-use projects. codes. These expansions, coupled with a small addition at one
Until recently, the building at 2501 M Street, NW, was a corner, increased the building’s total floor area by almost 27,000
rare hybrid, with offices on lower floors and condominium square feet.
apartments on the upper levels. Although well located in DC’s The original concrete façades with narrow ribbon windows
West End, between downtown and Georgetown, the building were replaced by floor-to-ceiling glass and glass-railed
was outmoded and had fallen out of favor with commercial balconies. To avoid disruptions to the existing condos above,
tenants. CORE architecture + design was hired to transform all HVAC exhaust and air intake ducts for new units were
the office floors into additional residential units, unite the incorporated into the curtain wall façade system. Ducts for
existing and new condos with a single lobby, and create a large the new restaurant were concealed in the terraced landscape
new retail/restaurant space on the ground floor—all without between the building and the adjacent park.

LIVING TOGETHER 55