Page 65 - ArchDC_Summer 2020

Main staircase before renovation. Courtesy of HOK
Project: HOK Washington, DC, Studio,
3223 Grace Street, NW, Washington, DC

Architects: HOK
Contractor: Peris Construction

Long before open offices became common in the
corporate world, many architecture firms operated out
of unpartitioned studios. Such open spaces not only
facilitated the exchange of ideas that has always been a
hallmark of large-scale architectural practice, but also
readily accommodated the piles of stuff—drawings,
models, material samples, and reference books—that
quickly accumulated in architecture offices before the
digital era. There’s a reason why movies and television
shows often depict architects working in renovated
warehouses or other former industrial structures.
The DC office of HOK, a global architecture,
engineering, and planning firm founded as Hellmuth,
Obata + Kassabaum in 1955, occupies just such a
structure in Georgetown. Known as Canal House, for
its location along the historic C&O Canal, the building
once served as a power house for the Capital Traction
Company, one of DC’s major streetcar operators in
the early 20th century. Before the streetcars were
electrified in the 1890s, the building—or possibly an
earlier structure that was replaced by the current one—
was used by the Washington & Georgetown Railroad
Company to mill and store feed for its horses, among
other functions.
Many Washington-area design aficionados fondly
remember Canal House as the home of Conran’s,
one of only a few U.S. branches of the British home
furnishings chain Habitat. In the 1980s, Conran’s
was the go-to store for inventive modern furniture,
housewares, and linens. Loyal customers were
heartbroken by the store’s closure in 1994.
Fortunately, the building remained in the design
family in a sense when HOK moved its DC office there
in 1996. Perhaps eager to get settled, the firm made
only limited changes to the interior at the time. A
former Conran’s customer who happened to walk into
the space as recently as a few years ago might have

All photos © Jeffrey Totaro, except as noted INDUSTRIAL CHIC 63