Page 41 - Winter_2018

ArchDC Winter 2018.qxp_Winter 2018 11/27/18 9:36 AM Page 39

Merit Award in Interior Architecture treatment, its best characteristics shine and it manages to
hold its own against much fancier neighbors, such as the
Blue Bottle—Georgetown ornate old market building that houses Dean & Deluca.
Washington, DC The design strategy is reminiscent of some of BCJ’s
Blue Bottles in San Francisco: a stripping away to reveal
Bohlin Cywinski Jackson the original space and structure, with ash-veneer and
white laminate millwork creating a luminous space that
MEP Engineers: WSP
seems simultaneously straightforward and complex.
General Contractor: Potomac Construction, Inc.
Notably, drawing cues from the original building, almost
every inserted element displays a gentle tension between
In an apocryphal origin story, coffee was introduced to
symmetry and asymmetry, creating interest through
Vienna, Austria, in 1683 by a Pole named Jerzy Franciszek
generally simple forms.
Kulczycki (also spelled Kolshitsky), who opened a café
There is a basic but effective zoned organization,
called Blaue Flasche, or Blue Bottle. The rest, as they say, is
diagrammed in the competition entry as Enter, Meet/Sit
history. A self-described “coffee lunatic” in Oakland,
(with an inviting communal table), Stand (at a raised narrow
California, 319 years later, named his fledgling coffee-
counter), and Order, with Prep, the back-of-house area,
house Blue Bottle, in Kulczycki’s honor. One can read the
obscured from the rest of the café behind a partial-height
whole story on the company’s website, but the important
wall. Built-in booths along the south wall correspond to
thing is that the new coffeehouse aspired to a high level
pre-existing windows and offer views down to the canal.
of connoisseurship as part of a complete package of taste,
A relatively large window in the front façade can be fully
service, design, and stewardship.
opened to unite the interior with sidewalk café seating on
The chain grew rapidly on the West Coast; by 2016,
the cobblestones along the canal wall.
it was seeking to expand east. The eminent architecture
Juror Karen Blanchard, AIA, opined that the design
firm Bohlin Cywinski Jackson (BCJ) had designed
is a “great exercise in constraint and craft,” and she
several of the company’s Bay Area outlets, and Blue
appreciated the integration of outside and inside.
Bottle returned to BCJ (which has a San Francisco office,
Despite being a bit removed from M Street and
but is headquartered and rooted in Pennsylvania) to
Wisconsin Avenue, Georgetown’s bustling shopping streets,
design its first East Coast store in a humble, former light-
Blue Bottle has thrived. Drawn initially by reputation, one
industrial building in Georgetown.
presumes, the crowds have returned week after week.
The building is adjacent to the C&O Canal, at the
Doubtless the specialty coffee is a big reason, but equally
dead-end of a cobblestone street. A footbridge crosses the
compelling is the space, which, despite its industrial loft
canal. The building is rather plain by standards of the
shell, manages to earn the word bespoke.
Georgetown Historic District, but under BCJ’s careful

Counter built into the historic building’s former vehicular entrance.
BUSINESS ACUMEN 39