Page 79 - Summer_2019

ArchDC Summer 2019.qxp_Spring 2019 5/22/19 3:02 PM Page 77

Pavilion at the Twin Oaks Community Garden. Photo © Dan Snook Photography

Twin Oaks Community Garden “We never start off with the solutions,” said ISTUDIO principal
Rick Harlan Schneider, AIA, APA, LEED AP. “We always start
The Twin Oaks Community Garden in Northwest DC had occupied off by listening to the site as well as to the client and what the
a plot on the property of Powell Elementary School, but as the programmatic needs are.”
school expanded (as documented in another article in this issue), ISTUDIO’s response to the site conditions and
room for the garden decreased. ISTUDIO Architects, which led programmatic requirements for the community garden ended up
the Powell expansion, found a new home for the longstanding involving a substantial landscape architecture component, in the
community garden on the opposite side of the school, within a DC form of angled terraces housed within concrete retaining walls with
Department of Parks and Recreation property that is also home to a zigzagging ramp to connect them. The ramp passes among
baseball and soccer fields.
The new site, however, presented its own collection of Project: Twin Oaks Community Garden,
challenges: Set on a south-facing hillside, it was overgrown with Upshur Park, 4300 Arkansas Avenue, NW, Washington, DC
non-native kudzu, beneath which was an extensive rat colony.
Clearing out those species also meant reestablishing controls to Architects: ISTUDIO Architects
MEP/F Engineers: Setty & Associates, Ltd.
prevent hillside erosion, and, as part of a public park, that slope
Civil Engineers: AMT, LLC
also had to be accessible and ADA compliant. Geotechnical/Hazmat Consultants: ECS Corporate Services, LLC
Contractor: MCN Build

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