Industrial DesignCreating A Loft Space
The Brown family originally hales from Ohio. He’s a DC political animal who’s worked for Tony Williams, Bill Clinton and John Glenn. She’s a stay-at-home mom who works with two boys. A few years back, the family had just finished a kitchen renovation in their house in Georgetown and the housing market was still on the up-tick. Katie spied another row house for sale nearby that she liked even better than their current digs and talked to Max about cashing in and moving down the street. They toured the house and then came back home where Max revealed pictures of his true dream house – a loft in Tribeca. “I told him that’s not going to happen,” says Katie, “so let’s bring Tribeca here.” Loft spaces are typically carved from commercial buildings that date from the industrial revolution. Since DC manufactures policy and paper there aren’t any genuine loft centric buildings in town. But the Browns found something they thought might work – the former headquarters of the DC Lung Association on H street, just west of Chinatown. They asked friends for artistic architectural recommendations and found their way to Robert Gurney based in Alexandria. Gurney surveyed the site and weighed the challenges. “It was the darkest building I’ve ever been in,” he says, “three floors of generic, claustrophobic space. Because the building takes up the whole lot, there was no place to store materials, no parking and no staging area.”
The Browns met with Gurney and laid out their program. They needed three bedrooms, two and half baths. The couple showed Gurney some pictures of spaces they liked, which the architect avoided. “I try not to look at pictures because you don’t want to recreate the picture,” he says. The building itself is 100 feet deep, 18 feet wide, dates from 1906 and is in an area zoned for commercial. Max, who’s a founding partner of communications firm 360JMG, made it possible for the family to live there by doing a “condo conversion” which he claims is a real estate piece of cake. “It’s easy to go from commercial to residential, much harder to go the other way around,” he says. With the legalities sorted out and the architect onboard the design process began and then quickly ended in less than six months. “This was basically the first design and it was right on the money,” says Katie. Max originally planned to set up his company’s office on the ground floor but as construction got underway his firm began expanding, making the downstairs space too small. He now walks to work three blocks away. A search is on to find the right tenant for the store front space on the ground floor while the Browns occupy the second, third and the roof-top deck. A separate doorway on the front of the building leads visitors up a flight of diamond pattern plate steel steps to the main level of the house. Although the beginnings of an art collection are starting to show up on the walls, the industrial leanings of the floors, walls and ceilings make a statement of their own.
The floor is a vibrant cobalt blue. The Brown’s take credit for the color choice and Gurney tapped a Dutch connection by using a seamless, epoxy- based resin to make it all work. Exposed brick interior walls were painted white, exposed cinder block was coated with lime green then covered over with panels of galvanized steel held off the wall by a series of furring strips. The living room area incorporates a fireplace framed with rectangles of cement board and sheltered by a corrugated steel ceiling. There’s more corrugated steel – finished in a dark chocolate that creates a wall between the kitchen and the family room. The designated family hang-out space features minimal furnishings including a flat screen and a floating credenza. The once dark space now glows with light which is good news for the homeowners. “I was very concerned about the light,” says Katie, “but even during the design phase Bob was building us models that showed light levels,” she says. Illuminating the space with natural daylight was accomplished by peeling off two major chunks of the roof and replacing it with skylights. Light floods three stories down an open stair case unimpeded by floors or ceilings. Hanging pendent light fixtures make the most of the drop by adding drama.
Illuminating the space with natural daylight was accomplished by peeling off two major chunks of the roof and replacing it with skylights. Light floods three stories down an open stair case unimpeded by floors or ceilings. Hanging pendent light fixtures make the most of the drop by adding drama.
The second level holds the kids rooms, a minimized office area and the master suite which is accessed via a custom-fabricated, open-grid cat walk. “You have to take a bridge to get to the bedroom,” says Gurney. Keeping large volumes of open space and eliminating interior walls also encourages play time. “The open plan gives them some room for the kids to run around,” says Gurney. More space for adult entertaining is available on the roof deck which is accessed through two large garage style doors outfitted with glass panels. The roof deck is the one area where the design took a sight detour from a decree by the homeowner. “We told Bob we didn’t want any wood in the house but we kind of compromised because the deck is wood,” says Katie. The finished house works as a work of art by itself but both homeowners have some fresh ideas about taking things just a bit farther. Max would like to use the expanse of white brick wall on the main level as a canvas for some graffiti artists that he knows. Katie sees the same area as a great place to set up a screen for video projections or movie nights.
Everybody who worked on the project is more than knocked out by how it came out. Max enjoys walking home for lunch or strolling to the Verizon Center to catch a ball game. Gurney likes the element of surprise created by the space. “When you walk up those stairs, right from the start it’s very active and dynamic, we took the standard row house renovation and transformed into something very unexpected.” Katie Brown says, “I can’t believe I live in a house like this, it always puts me in a good mood, it’s great for entertaining and I love walking out feeling like I’m in a city. I always feel safe because there’s always someone around.”
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