Page 50 - Winter_2020

The Boating Party
The Boating Party

Winstanley Architects Designs a New

Clubhouse for the Old Dominion Boat Club

by Ronald O’Rourke

North façade of the Old Dominion Boat Club.

The Old Dominion Boat Club (ODBC), founded in 1880 Michael Winstanley, AIA, AICP, was the
to support Alexandrians in their pursuit of water- project’s design principal and lead designer. Leejung
related activities, particularly rowing and sailing, Hong, LEED AP, was the team leader, and George
is Virginia’s second-oldest boat club. But its new Eisenberger, AIA, LEED AP, was the project’s technical
clubhouse, designed by Winstanley Architects & principal. Hong and Eisenberger were responsible for
Planners of Alexandria and Miami, is decidedly the sustainability and resilience features.
21st-century in its approach to sustainable design. In designing the three-story, 14,800-square-foot
Located at the base of Prince Street on Alexandria’s building, the architects’ parti—meaning their primary
waterfront—or, as the ODBC helpfully notes for its concept or organizing idea—was to emulate the form
mariner membership, at latitude 38 48’ 10.4” of the historic but derelict Beachcombers restaurant
o
o
North, longitude 77 2’ 21.8” West—the clubhouse building that previously stood on the site. The resulting
is environmentally friendly not just because of the design, sheathed in western red cedar on its upper
architecture itself, but also thanks to the project’s role floors, is one story higher and almost twice as long as
in remediating its site. the 3,595-square-foot restaurant building, but it follows
48 THE BOATING PARTY