Project Description |

A Mono-Point Support Structure Integrated into the Design of This Cable-Strut Glass Canopy in Tension on All Sides and Centered Within a White Granite Proscenium | Directed the Design While Design Director at GGA | Modernization of 1990 K St in Washington DC | Recipient of AIA-DC Chapter Award of Excellence

The exterior renovation of 199o K Street, a 1960s commercial building in downtown Washington, DC, was the latter part of a two-phase renovation. The firm originally completed the interior renovation of the first two floors of retail lobbies and a concourse. Phase two involved the exterior renovation of the entire building skin. The client stipulations for this phase involved the creation of well-defined entrances on both the K and 2oth Street facades, as well as the incorporation of ever-changing retail signage into the design of the new skin. 

The interior design challenges included creating well-defined entrance lobbies for the offices and retail floors, incorporating a new and dramatic lighting concept that entices visitors, and including new materials to balance the highly polished and reflective materials of the existing floor and ceiling. 

A series of overlapping grid systems were developed to create abstract layers of facades that vacillate between solid and void, interior and exterior, and building and street. These layers help create depth through lamination.  This reiterative dual-grid syntax, though essentially an organizational tool, allows for singular expression at the entrances - a floating canopy at the K Street entrance, and a “plugged” canopy at the 2Oth Street one. Though suspended from a single column, the K Street canopy never touches the building, levering out to the street and intimating a connection.

Photographs | Courtesy of and with permission from Group Goetz Architects (d. 2o11).