Page 56 - ArchDC_Fall 2020

Washingtonian Residential Design Award

Waterview Condominium
Arlington, VA

Robert M. Gurney, FAIA, Architect
Interior Designer: Baron Gurney Interiors
Structural Engineers: Tadjer-Cohen-Edelson & Associates Inc.
General Contractor: Peterson and Collins Inc.

The Waterfront Condominium project, designed by Robert M.
Gurney, FAIA, comprehensively renovated a very large (almost
5,000-square-foot) apartment on the 30th floor of the Waterview,
a high-rise apartment building in Rosslyn designed by Pei Cobb
Freed & Partners and built in 2008. The building offers units
with spectacular views of Washington’s monumental core and
the surrounding area. Gurney’s renovation created an elegantly
modern apartment residence with living and dining rooms
facing the million-dollar view of the city, a folded-plane ceiling,
and a rich combination of finishes.
“The project is designed with rigor and clarity to provide
an environment that is simultaneously spare, sophisticated,
and sublime, allowing views of Washington to become a
unifying tapestry weaving throughout the spaces,” Gurney
said. “Materials employed throughout the project are carefully
considered and selected, ultimately producing a palette of
materials that are rich and refined, juxtaposed to others that are
raw and austere.”
The apartment’s spaces “are typically defined with wood
volumes constructed of wenge or rift-sawn white oak, with the
intention of modulating the generally open floor plan,” Gurney
added. “The defining, central utility core is armored with steel
panels. Concrete columns remain exposed, intended to read
as objects in space, not objects that block space. The floating,
folded-plane [ceiling] never engages the walls, columns, or
millwork components.”
In the living room, a 180 million-year-old ichthyosaur fossil
is integrated into a four-inch-thick, cleft-slate wall, anchoring View from hallway of the Waterfront Condominium,
through the master bedroom, to the cityscape beyond.
that end of space. In the spa room, “honed absolute black granite
and vertical grain western red cedar walls combine with flamed Photo © Anice Hoachlander/Hoachlander Davis Photography
impala black flooring to provide a calm, quiet backdrop to the
city views beyond.” A fossil of a crinoid—a marine animal that
looks somewhat like a plant—is incorporated into the space.
The jurors admired the project’s carefully considered materials
and technical skill. The project, they said, is restrained with
certain rigorousness, producing a result that is “really lovely.”
The project was previously reviewed in the Summer 2018 issue
of ARCHITECTUREDC.

Living and dining area. Note the folded-plane ceiling
and the framed fossil on the slate wall in the background.
Photo © Anice Hoachlander/Hoachlander Davis Photography
54 APARTMENT HUNTING