Page 64 - Fall_2021

Kitchen and staircase, with exposed masonry wall at right.

Washingtonian Residential Design Award
Renovation 1662
Washington, DC

Robert M. Gurney, FAIA, Architect
Landscape Architect: Campion Hruby Landscape Architecture
Structural Engineer: United Structural Engineers, Inc.
General Contractor: Washington Landmark Construction

In Washington’s Georgetown neighborhood, Robert M. Gurney,
FAIA, designed a renovation for a brick-clad rowhouse that
reorganized the interior and incorporated a glass-walled
addition, maintaining the house’s historic appearance from the
street while creating a thoroughly modern living space with a
free-flowing interior, ample natural light, and a much-improved
connection to its back yard.
In the existing house, the spaces were compartmentalized
and disconnected from the property’s deep, rear garden, and
the kitchen was in the basement, one floor below the primary
living spaces. The renovation moved the kitchen up to the first
floor and created an open staircase with a skylight above that
sends daylight down into all of the house’s levels, including
the basement, while putting the house’s original stone-and-
brick party wall on display as a reminder of the structure’s
history. The first floor’s new open plan flows from the interior
of the existing house to the dramatic, box-shaped addition,
which features a rear glass wall that admits additional light
and extends sightlines into the redesigned back yard. Still more
light is admitted into the house’s interior by broad expanses of
Kalwall translucent exterior wall panels.
“Despite relatively small footprints, the [new] spatial
arrangement combined with the high ceilings and expanses of
glass render the spaces generous,” Gurney said. “Exposed brick
and stone walls, Danish Douglas fir floors, and rich cabinetry create
a warm but minimal interior aesthetic. This clean modern addition
and whole-house renovation is an honest witness to its existence
Rear of the house in today’s realm, and not a throwback replica of the past.”
before renovation.
The project was previously featured in the Fall 2020 issue
Courtesy of Robert M. of ARCHITECTUREDC as a winner of a Chapter Design Award
Gurney, FAIA, Architect
in Architecture.
Renovated rear façade and garden. Photos © Anice Hoachlander/Studio HDP,
except as noted
62 RENEWED FOR LIFE