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Convertible Living
Convertible Living

Adapting Commercial Buildings

into Apartments and Live/Work Units

by Ronald O’Rourke

Converting older buildings to new uses can help cities correct past
urban planning mistakes and keep pace with shifting living and
working patterns. Long known as adaptive reuse, but now simply
called adaptive use (the “re” is considered redundant), converting
an existing building is sometimes more cost-effective than building
a completely new one, and can support sustainability goals by
leveraging the energy and resources embedded in the bones of
the older building.
Adaptive use projects have been common in the Washington
area for decades, including some that turned nonresidential buildings
such as schools and commercial structures into hotels, condominium
and rental apartment buildings, transitional housing, and single-
family residences. Over the years, some of these conversions have
been covered in these pages—see for example, the House of
Lebanon (Summer 2016 issue of ARCHITECTUREDC) or the Parker
Flats at Gage School (Spring 2009 issue).
The two adaptive use projects featured here—the Leo and Lex
apartment buildings in Southwest Washington, and the e-lofts
building in Alexandria—converted office towers into buildings
with living units. In doing so, they addressed two current local
real estate problems: an excess of office space and a shortage of
housing. The two projects differ, however, in their conversion
approaches and the types of residences they created.
Leo and Lex at Waterfront Station

The Leo and Lex at Waterfront Station, designed by Wiencek +
Associates (W+A), working with RD Jones & Associates on
aspects of the interior design, converted a pair of early-1970s office
towers into luxury apartment buildings. The towers were originally
designed by Chloethiel Woodard Smith (1910-1992), a prominent
Washington-area architect and urban planner who at one point ran

View of the SkyHouse, now known as the
Leo and Lex at Waterfront Station.

80 CONVERTIBLE LIVING