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Project: Architectural Studio Space,
Washington, DC

Architect: Studio Twenty Seven Architecture
Structural Engineer: Ahart Structural Engineering
MEP Engineer: Engenium Group
General Contractor: FreeState Electrical Construction Co.

Lofty Ambitions
Lofty Ambitions Open-plan workstations in the offices
of Studio Twenty Seven Architecture.

All photos © Anice Hoachlander/
Studio HDP, except as noted

An Architecture Firm’s Own Studio

Celebrates Raw Structure and Space

by Steven K. Dickens, AIA, LEED AP

It’s always interesting to see what happens when a multiple- of the redoubtable architect Daniel Burnham in the heart of
award-winning design firm turns its attention inward. Studio downtown DC. The building is U-shaped, with the available
Twenty Seven Architecture has a broad portfolio including fourth-floor suite occupying the entirety of one leg.
charter schools, private residences, and the Aya, the transitional Pre-modern office buildings are distinctly different from
shelter for homeless families that won the Grand Award in last modern ones. Most notably, before air conditioning, the need
year’s AIA|DC Chapter Awards Program. The firm’s work has a for cross-ventilation forced floor plates to be shallower and
certain consistency as an inventive, friendly, and interactive strain operable windows to be numerous. Before the concrete frame
of modernism, but the particulars vary from project to project. was perfected, hybrid structural systems of concrete, steel, and
“We had not outgrown our previous space, which was in load-bearing masonry were common. Before modern computing
a building a few blocks away,” said Allyson Klinner, AIA, capabilities, the term “structural grid” had much more resonance:
project architect for Studio Twenty Seven’s new offices. But, it was difficult to calculate forces and stresses in irregular
approaching the end of the lease, they were looking for a systems, so structural grids needed to be simple and consistent.
“refresh”—although they were unsure as to exactly what form At the Southern Building, Studio Twenty Seven was
that might take. The answer came when they were shown an sold on the windows wrapping the space, with the bonus of
appropriately-sized space in the Southern Building, a 1914 work a Washington Monument view from the front corner. The

22 LOFTY AMBITIONS