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Morris Adjmi Architects (MA) with DC-based Eric Colbert &
Atlantic Plumbing building, with theaters Associates as architects of record, and built by Hitt Contracting,
and Haikan restaurant at the base.
Atlantic Plumbing includes a ten-story (plus penthouse), 310-unit
luxury apartment building on the north side of V Street, and a seven-
story, 62-unit high-end condominium building on the south side.
Most of MA’s work is located in historic, industrial, and
transitioning parts of New York, including the rapidly developing
Meatpacking District in lower Manhattan—the area through which
New York’s popular High Line elevated linear park now runs.
Morris Adjmi, FAIA, MA’s founder and principal, describes his
firm as specializing in creating buildings for such areas “that are
contextual but unmistakably contemporary—buildings that may
not feel like they’ve always been there, but feel like they should
have always been there.” The firm’s work, he says, puts MA “at
the vanguard of revitalizing post-industrial neighborhoods and
historic districts with an architecture that bridges the past and the
present without reverting to historicism or relying on nostalgia.”
James Nozar of JBG Companies hired MA for the Atlantic
Plumbing project after admiring the firm’s New York work.
In developing his design for Atlantic Plumbing, Adjmi sought
to capture some of the feeling of buildings in Brooklyn (to which
parts of Shaw are now sometimes compared) and the Meatpacking
District. The Atlantic Plumbing site, he says, reminded him of the
Williamsburg part of Brooklyn. Adjmi also wanted to avoid the
alternating, projecting bays used in many Washington residential
buildings—a feature, he says, that gives those buildings a vertically
striped look that in his view has become too repetitive here.
Additional design inspirations, Adjmi says, were buildings
overgrown with vines that he saw out the window while riding
the train between New York and Washington, which influenced the
planting schemes for the two buildings’ rooftops and the western
side of the rental building, as well as the photography of Bernd
and Hilla Becher, a married pair of German conceptual artists
Photo © Alan Karchmer and photographers who were best known for their pictures of
industrial buildings.
neighborhood church that has been an active developer in the area— Working off these cues, Adjmi conceived the Atlantic Plumbing
are intended to provide affordable housing options. Other new buildings as rectangular residential volumes cantilevered over
buildings, however, have introduced large numbers of high-priced street-level commercial bases, with proportions and industrial-style
luxury living units and upscale retail stores into the neighborhood. detailing emphasizing the buildings’ horizontal dimensions more
As a result, an area historically populated by residents of than their height.
modest incomes and famous as a center of African American culture The larger rental apartment building, which is visible from
and performing arts has in more recent years experienced an influx blocks away, is framed in a visually arresting steel truss with huge,
of higher-income professionals. The change has frequently put X-shaped braces—a feature, Adjmi says, that gives the building
Shaw at the center of local debates over gentrification and housing both scale and a relationship to industrial structures. (It also suggests
affordability. But it has also permitted architects to take on interesting buildings one might see in a seismically active city such as Los
urban design challenges and stretch their architectural wings. Angeles or San Francisco.) The truss is fashioned out of COR-TEN
Over the years, these pages have featured a number of new steel—a material that over time will develop a desired rust-colored
and renovated building projects in Shaw. This article updates our patina. The combination of an exterior steel frame over a glass box
coverage by reviewing several recently completed and planned set on a masonry base makes the building a kissing cousin to 837
projects that are contributing to the area’s ongoing evolution. Washington, an MA-designed building in the Meatpacking District
that can be viewed up close from the High Line.
Atlantic Plumbing and Haikan The commercial spaces in the Atlantic Plumbing rental building
include a 10,000-square foot movie theater and about 9,000 square
Among recently completed projects in Shaw, arguably none is feet of additional space, including seven subsidized artist studios
more emblematic of the area’s evolving character than the Atlantic that are open to the public. The residential lobby incorporates
Plumbing development, a two-building mixed-use residential signs, bricks, and steel recovered from the site’s derelict buildings.
project in Shaw’s northern end, at 8th and V streets, NW, that is The condominium building is called AP 2030, in reference to
named for the plumbing supply warehouse that previously occupied its address on 8th Street. Instead of making it a smaller repeat of
the two-parcel site. Designed by the New York-based firm the apartment building, Adjmi gave AP 2030 its own design

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