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Recentered
Recentered UDC Student Center, as seen from across Connecticut Avenue.

The exterior staircase at right leads to a quadrangle that connects
to public sidewalks and neighborhoods beyond.
UDC Project Creates

New Face for Campus

by G. Martin Moeller, Jr., Assoc. AIA

The main campus of the University of the District of Columbia and Van Ness Street, adjacent to a Metro station entrance. From a
(UDC) in the Van Ness neighborhood of Northwest Washington purely institutional standpoint, the idea of placing a student center
was initially developed between the 1960s and very early 1980s, at one extreme corner of the campus might seem surprising, but
an era in which institutional architecture tended to be monumental, the design team recognized that this site offered an unmatched
often at the expense of cohesive streetscapes and inviting open opportunity both to enhance the university’s identity and to
spaces. Consisting mostly of blocky, concrete-clad buildings with strengthen its ties to its urban context.
relatively few windows, the university has long lacked a distinct “It was a whole new paradigm,” said Michael Marshall, AIA,
architectural identity. Furthermore, the substantial setbacks of the NOMA, design director and principal of Marshall Moya. “University
buildings closest to Connecticut Avenue, the busy thoroughfare centers have traditionally been at the centers of their campuses,
lining one edge of the campus, isolated the institution from the because they were solely student-focused. [Instead,] we created a
surrounding community. new gateway—a new face for the campus—breaking down the
The architects of the new Student Center at UDC recognized town/gown divide.”
immediately that the project was fundamentally an urban design The site was previously an aesthetically barren plaza, though
problem. The team of CannonDesign and Marshall Moya Design, one that provided a popular shortcut for pedestrians walking
who won the commission through a design competition, explored between the Metro and either the International Center, an enclave
three different possible sites for the new facility before settling on a of foreign embassies adjacent to the campus, or residential areas to
roughly triangular sliver of land at the corner of Connecticut Avenue the west. Beneath the northeastern portion of the plaza was a large

RECENTERED 39