Washington DC, USA
John K. Burke and Jake Marzolf from Studio Twenty Seven Architecture, along with architect Leo A. Daly create for the Department of General Services a new affordable residential project built by the District of Columbia.
Constructed for approximately twenty-one million dollars, the AYA provides “wrap-around” services for the resident families in addition to supplying space for a federally qualified health center (non-profit) that serves residents of the greater neighborhood.
The project has been awarded a 2021 International Architecture Award from The European Center for Architecture Art Design and Urban Studies and The Chicago Athenaeum: Museum of Architecture and Design for its inclusivity and social impact.
The AYA is one of the City’s eight new short-term family housing facilities constructed to collectively battle homelessness. One facility was placed in each of the District of Columbia’s eight wards.
Of all the new short-term family housing projects, only the design of the AYA received a letter of unanimous support from the local Advisory Neighborhood Council. We believe this testifies to the quality of the design and the success of the public engagement process.
The building program requested seven to ten housing units per level with community rooms, laundry facilities, monitoring stations, and private and family bathrooms on each floor.
The designers added outdoor play areas on each level to avoid children having to travel on elevators to reach outdoor play below. The ground floor includes a dining area, computer room, exam room, and administrative areas.
The sub-level below the ground floor houses the clinic. The building is seven stories tall constructed on a post tensioned concrete structure to avoid placing columns in the corner of the ziggurat shaped massing.
The building’s design responses to three important contextual concerns; (1) a site situated on one of DC’s original arterial streets as determined by Pierre L’Enfant (2) dignifying private and public interactions for families occupying small dwelling units and (3) addressing the requests of the local neighborhood shareholders who’s support was needed to procure a zoning variance, a public entitlement.
The concept is a building that has no front or back and responds to the arterial street viewshed thru a ziggurat form that preserves the existing tree canopies and allows for maximum daylighting views to each of the small dwelling units.
Each elevation of the building is uniquely different; the glassy North façade contains community rooms on each floor that look out towards Capitol, the dynamic South façade frames the entrance to the health clinic, and the calm East façade contains screened outdoor play spaces on each floor.
The small green roofs at the terrace along the stepped West façade imply a “front lawn” for each unit.
The boundaries of the new building stay within the existing buildings footprint, preserving the open land that occupies the north of the site, that was originally owned by the National Park Service.
The new building yields in height to both the future housing development to the east and the Capitol Park Plaza Apartment building to the west.
Care has been taken to organize separate entrances to the health clinic and short-term family housing on different faces of the building.
The building is intended to complement the developing skyline of southwest Washington DC while creating an optimal living experience for the tenants.
The timeline of this project begins in 2001 when DC General Hospital, the only public hospital in the District of Columbia was closed and converted to a homeless shelter for 270 families.
With a classic doubled loaded corridor design from the nineteenth century, the building was never equipped to meet this new purpose and was continually plagued with management and security problems.
Two hundred and seventy families in one location is undesirable and can create the stigma of a “city poorhouse.”
In 2016, Mayor Muriel Bowser announced a plan to close DC General by creating eight (8) new short-term family housing facilities, one in each ward of City.
The new facilities would house no more than 50 families each and would be designed to avoid the problems that plagued families at the old DC General site.
Project: The Aya Housing
Architects: Studio Twenty Seven Architecture
Joint Venture Architects: Leo A. Daly
Architects in Charge: John K. Burke and Jake Marzolf
Client: Department of General Services Administration
Contractor: Blueskye Construction
Photographers: Hoachlander Davis Photography
