KUBE Hits the Links, Designs Golf Hole

This summer, the National Building Museum will bring back its popular indoor Mini Golf exhibition. The expanded attraction will feature two 9-hole course options, with all new holes designed and built by leading Washington-area architects, landscape architects, and contractors.  The courses will explore the architects’ and designers’ visions of “Building the Future,” with twists and turns sure to challenge golfers young and old. Visitors to the Museum will be able to play this one-of-a-kind course, designed for ages 4 and up, in air-conditioned comfort during Museum hours from Memorial Day, May 27, 2013 to Labor Day, September 2, 2013.  KUBE Architecture is participating by designing "Urban Pinball," a joint collaboration with sponsor Evonik Cyro, and builders Madden Corporation and Mersoa Woodwork & Design LLC.  Urban Pinball explores uncertainty—after all, as the science fiction writer Ursula K. LeGuin noted, “the only thing that makes life possible is permanent, intolerable, uncertainty: not knowing what comes next." Take aim and try to control your destiny—but you may end up in a place you never imagined. Travel through the time tunnels, and emerge in the unraveling future, where your path becomes complex and unpredictable. In many ways, life is just a game of chance—relax and enjoy the ride.

Examiner Coverage on 5th Street Project!

DC architecture firm takes on narrow Capitol Hill rowhouse

Charlotte Safavi

Special to The Washington Examiner

The task of seamlessly remodeling a narrow, cramped and poorly lit historic rowhouse is never easy, but Richard Loosle, of Kube Architecture, managed just that in the Capitol Hill neighborhood of the District.

"Our ground floor was dark and choppy, with a formal dining room in front we rarely used and a staircase and wall separating that from the kitchen and backroom, which we used a lot," said Vince Willmore, who shares the two-bedroom home with Orie Snider.

The small kitchen also was parallel to the stairs, a minus, while the backroom opened onto the patio, a plus. Loosle saw that replacing the old French doors with an entire glass wall and sliding doors would immediately increase the light flow and open up the overall space. The bigger challenge remained the bulky staircase.

"It was clear the whole stair-and-kitchen wall had to go," Loosle said. "Problem was because the rowhouse is so narrow, there wasn't enough room to move the staircase."

Knowing the homeowners were keen on one-room living, Loosle came up with a creative solution. He couldn't move the physical location of the stairs, but he could make them visually lighter with the right material and good design.

"I got rid of everything surrounding it and then remade the staircase in steel, which is a strong material that allows you to work with narrower stringers and related elements than usual," Loosle said.

He also added slim pale-wood stair treads and barely-there horizontal steel pickets to make the overall staircase as thin and transparent as possible.

The kitchen then was reoriented against a sidewall, with gray-white laminate cabinets. An eat-in island was added. The island has a lower profile than average, so as not to impede the front-to-back flow.

"Though we wanted the space to be modern, we also wanted our home to have warmth and be uncluttered," Willmore said.

To add that warmth, Loosle worked with natural and stained ash for built-ins and the island, which has a cedar-stone breakfast bar and counter that wraps around its base on the entry side, blending beautifully with the bamboo floors.

The clean-lined walls and ceilings are softened up with variations of gray-blue paint hues. Loosle also developed modular storage throughout; the largest unit includes a frosted, glass-door powder room, as well as a utility/mechanical closet.

"We kept the original tin ceiling in the old dining room," Loosle said, "but we cleaned it up and painted it to tie in better."

The fireplace, which was nonfunctional, also in the front space, was clad and serves as a separator between a built-in desk unit and new dining-area storage. Eventually, a dining table and chairs will be placed there at a 90-degree angle.

"The home really suits our lifestyle now," Willmore said. "It's one big and bright, yet warm, integrated room, with a great connection between the indoor and outdoor spaces."

To see more images of the 5th Street Residence, click here.  

Award of Excellence

We are proud to announce that KUBE architecture design associate Andrew Baldwin has received an Award of Excellence from the  DC chapter of the AIA. "Unbuilt Awards 2013". Andrew's submission, "Lacrosse as Sacred Iroquois Tradition: The Architecture of Cultural Expression."  is the title of his Masters of Architecture thesis design project.

Thesis Committee: Stanley Hallet, FAIA, Vyt Gureckas, AIA, Miriam Gusevich, AIA

Andrew received his Bachelor of Science in Architecture degree from the Catholic University of America in 2010. While attending Catholic, he studied abroad in Paris, France and participated in a design-build project in Nepal, which received the AIA DC Award for Excellence in Architecture. Andrew joined KUBE in the summer of 2008 when he was a sophmore, and after working every summer, became a full time employee in December of 2012.

Thesis Excerpt / Summary 

The thesis covers the Onondaga Nation, one of six Native American nations that are part of the Iroquois Confederacy which resides 5 miles south of Syracuse, New York. The nation is small, numbering about 500 people, but it is rich in culture that is passed on from generation to generation.  This project proposes the importance of renewing the specificity of a culture and place through the examination of the living Iroquoian tradition of lacrosse.  

The Iroquoian ceremony of lacrosse can be used as a vehicle to inspire potential architectural form, function, as well as flourish contemporary cultural identity within the Native American community. The traditional Iroquois architecture, which is still alive, is defined by the Longhouse.  With current architectural as well as social/technological trends pushing toward global uniformity, I believe the Onondaga Nation is at risk from cultural entropy, further minimizing the diversity of place. 

Capitalizing on Native values regarding the natural environment along with the exploration of past Native American Longhouse architecture, landscape and cultural traditions, the creation of a lacrosse camp provides new architectural identity, specific to the people of Onondaga Nation.

-Andrew Baldwin 

 Game Field Seating Bleacher seating extends off the main circulation axis hiding other program elements behind the game field seating. The arched wood and fabric canopy above is representative of the process of making a traditional wooden lacrosse stick; steaming planks of wood, bending them to form a crook (u-shape) and tying the wood back to hold the arched form. .

Hawks Nest: Air Clan Pavilion  Meditative space for air clan members of the Onondaga. Lifted off the ground different levels of platforms allow a visitor to reach several heights within the tree, experiencing a bird’s point of view.

Barbecue Pavilion  Lacrosse games will last all day, the barbecue pavilion consist of open wooden structural elements, light and airy, allowing cross circulation of air as smoke rises from the barbecue pits. 

Classroom   The classroom off the main axis opens to the surrounding landscape, allowing the exterior of the structure to become a part of the classroom experience, with lacrosse goals outside to practice shooting drills.

Hall of Lacrosse   Interior entrance main axis, custom wooden award shelves float on both sides of the path making the overall space less ‘hallway-like’, with program elements hidden behind each side; locker rooms and team store. Lacrosse sticks hung from the ceiling of past legendary players with long sky lights allowing light to penetrate the space below. 

Ceremonial Fire   Locally foraged blue limestone is cut into six benches representing the six nations within the Iroquois Confederacy. A central fire pit sits in front of a stage for pow-wow performances. 

Turtles Alcove: Water Clan Pavilion   A Pavilion representative of the water clans within Onondaga with a deck over the river for fishing/swimming. The pavilion host individual showers to cleanse the body and/or fish caught from the river. 

Bears Lair: Earth Clan Pavilion  Meditative space for earth clan members of the Onondaga. Recessed into earth representative of bears need to hibernate within earth. Surrounded by linear wood slates representative of wolfs vision when honing in on its prey; crouched within earth focused on a single point still with awareness of his surroundings.

DC Focus

Why classical architecture makes little sense for today’s Washington

By Roger K. Lewis

The nation’s capital is the only American metropolis where debates still break out periodically between architectural traditionalists and architectural modernists. Why does this debate — once dubbed “battle of the styles” — persist in Washington? Why is modern design in this city still a hard sell at times?

Today almost all practicing architects in the United States are, in the broadest sense, modernists. Just ask the thousands of architects in town this week attending the 2012 American Institute of Architects national convention. Their talents and aesthetic tastes vary widely, but few design buildings replicating architecture of the past or buildings festooned with historic motifs and ornamentation borrowed from previous centuries.

The latest debate in Washington concerns Frank Gehry’s controversial, non-traditional design forthe Eisenhower Memorial. The design has attracted much criticism from many quarters, and for many different reasons. But it has been especially condemned by those who assert that classicismis the only appropriate design language for creating a national memorial or monument in Washington.

In fact, some classicism advocates do not limit their critique to memorials or monuments. Dismissing much modern architecture, they believe that new buildings, particularly in Washington, should be clones or derivations of Greek, Roman and Renaissance antecedents.

Members of the Washington-based National Civic Art Society are among the most outspoken critics of the proposed memorial, and of modernism in general. The society is “dedicated to the traditional, humanistic practice of architecture, urban design and the fine arts, advocating the humanist tradition as the unrivaled source of artistic forms and conventions.”

The “humanist tradition” cited by the society refers to the classicism of antiquity rediscovered and reinterpreted by Renaissance, post-Renaissance and Beaux Arts architects and scholars. Humanism was the rational antidote to anti-humanistic deism and mysticism of the Middle Ages and Gothicism.

But the society’s exclusivist credo tolerates no deviation, asserting that humanist tradition is “unrivaled.” Clearly, “unrivaled” means that non-traditional concepts for creating art and architecture are inferior and must be rejected.

Classicists predicate their argument on notions of familiarity, tradition, nostalgia and meaning. Universally recognized classical motifs and ornament have been around for more than 2,000 years. People presumably associate classicism with stability, permanence, authority, elegance and grandeur. National Civic Art Society members believe that modern architecture is devoid of these attributes.

Thus, the society argues that Washington has been and should continue to be a city of classicallyinspired architecture. They support their argument by pointing to countless classically styled government and civic edifices such as the U.S. Capitol and White House; the Supreme Court; Union Station; the National Gallery of Art West Building; the Lincoln and Jefferson memorials; and the Federal Triangle. All were built in the 19th and early 20th centuries, as were thousands of traditionally ornamented residential and commercial buildings.

But these arguments are fallacious.

Classicism in America was an 18th- and 19th-century European import, embraced here because, before and after independence from Britain, Americans admired and emulated European culture and architecture. After all, colonial America lacked indigenous architectural traditions. Does this reasoning still hold?

Greek and Roman classical form and ornament evolved as manifestations of how buildings were constructed, a reflection of limited structural options, building materials and standardized decoration. This design language endured because, until the 19th-century Industrial Revolution, construction technology remained relatively unchanged.

In the 20th century, architecture underwent dramatic transformation. Innovative materials, machines and construction methods appeared. Unprecedented functional needs and building types emerged. New technologies and building systems were devised, enabling architects and engineers to address new physical, environmental, social and economic challenges unknown in past centuries. This is why so-called modernism encompasses so many styles, and why formulaic, one-size-fits-all classicism makes little sense and has less meaning today.

Most Americans, including architects, appreciate historic architecture and are committed to its preservation. But I doubt that many want or expect 21st-century architecture to look like it was transplanted from the past.

AIA convention-goers probably won’t be aware of any strident discourse about traditional versus modern design. What they will be aware of is Washington’s increasingly diverse styles of architecture, including very modern works, perhaps unexpected in a city known for its conservative aesthetic tendencies.

And they will see courtyards, colonnades and layered facades; buildings with columns, beams, arches, domes and vaults; and architecture visually exploiting symmetry, asymmetry, axiality, transparency, rhythm and repetition. This will remind them that timeless elements of geometric composition are classic, not classical. Independent of style, these elements never go out of fashion.

Roger K. Lewis is a practicing architect and a professor emeritus of architecture at the University of Maryland. This piece originally appeared in The Washington Post, May 19, 2012. 

Projects: Greenvale

KUBE is working with a young family in Bethesda to reconfigure a 1960’s era rambler into an open, light-filled, modern space. The oddly-configured, three bedroom home is being transformed through the addition of two “wings” that will create an open courtyard in the back.  This is a major renovation project that includes the removal of interior walls and the ceiling over the front living room.

The previously divided kitchen, dining room and living room are being transformed into an open floor plan with large windows and doors to the new rear courtyard from Western Window systems. The clients are from Central America and love the idea of minimal finishes with lots of texture, including walls of concrete block, stained concrete floors, viroc, and exposed steel.  An outside deck made of ipe connects to the kitchen and kids' play room, with the material running from outside to inside. Completion is scheduled for this spring or early summer –  more updates soon!

KUBE in the News: The Washington Post

Kube Architecture: Modernists in a city of tradition

The "See Through House" was named
for the glass floor panels that channel
sunshine from skylights through
the center of the home. 

By Deborah K. Dietsch, Published: March 15

Plastic window sheeting flapped in the cold breeze as architects Janet Bloomberg and Richard Loosle-Ortega unrolled drawings to consult with the owners of a Chevy Chase rambler, now gutted to expose rafters and floor joists.

Lawyer Patricio Grane, 39, and radiologist Alexia Egloff, 35, listened to Bloomberg’s ideas before weighing in on the placement of lighting fixtures within the open floor plan. They already had agreed to bare cinder-block walls, concrete floors and huge expanses of glass.

“We wanted something different, not the same old brick and drywall,” says Grane, who estimates that he and his wife will spend $410,000 on the construction. “We picked these architects because they specialize in contemporary design. That’s all they do.”

Bloomberg, 47, and Loosle-Ortega, 58, specialize in offering edgy alternatives to the standard residential remodeling of crown moldings and Shaker cabinets. Their eight-year-old firm, Kube Architecture, is known for transforming urban rowhouses and suburban split-levels into flowing spaces defined by bright finishes and hard-edged details.

“We call ourselves the warm modernists,” says Loosle-Ortega. “We are different from other architects who do contemporary work in our use of colors and textures.”

Janet Bloomberg, Richard Loosle-Ortega,
with homeowners Brigitte and
Gaines Mimms.

During a tour of Kube’s most recent renovations, the architects pointed out a tangerine acrylic countertop, red cement-board paneling, cork floors and multi-hued mood lighting to prove that minimalist design need not be cold or austere. They use such vivid elements to animate clean-lined interiors as open as lofts.

Few people strolling past their remodeled rowhouses would guess that behind the historic facades are sleek spaces in which most everything is new. “They take very traditional housing and slice it up in ways to create a different experience inside,” says Stanley Hallet, professor emeritus and former dean of Catholic University’s architecture school, where Bloomberg and Loosle-Ortega have taught. “Both of them come out of an academic tradition, and it’s been interesting to see them apply ideas about materials and transparency to their work.”

Read the entire article... 

DC Focus

Roger K. Lewis

Fairfax County’s Hollin Hills is a happy experiment in modernity

By Roger K. Lewis 

In coming decades, the character of metropolitan Washington’s growth will be mostly urban, not suburban. Even in traditionally suburban Maryland and Virginia counties, redevelopment will be transit-oriented with pedestrian-friendly, grid-like street patterns, relatively high density and mixed rather than single uses.

Virtually all new housing in future smart-growth communities will be multi-family apartment buildings and attached dwellings rather than single-family homes. But existing subdivisions aren’t disappearing. Many suburban developments have aged and evolved positively, among them Hollin Hills in Fairfax County, an award-winning residential community of 450 homes about two miles south of Alexandria and the Capital Beltway, between Fort Hunt Road and U.S. Route 1.

Planned in the late 1940s, architecturally unique Hollin Hills was built in the early 1950s during the post-World War II housing boom. Architect Charles Goodman and landscape architect Dan Kiley designed the project for developer Robert C. Davenport, who wanted to build attractive but modestly sized, affordable homes for America’s middle class.

According to Goodman, architect for the original Washington National Airport terminal, the goal at Hollin Hills was to provide “ideal country living for urban people.” And in 1950, the Hollin Hills area of Fairfax County was still “country.”

Hollin Hills is aptly named. The wooded site is extremely hilly and, as Goodman observed 60 years ago, it was a complex parcel of land that most builders would hesitate trying to develop. Yet it was the site’s dramatic topography that inspired not only the subdivision’s road and lot layout (lots were at least one-third acre), but also the unprecedented contemporary architecture Goodman created to fit the site.

The site planning and architectural strategies are immediately apparent. The twisting contours of steep hills and meandering valleys dictated the labyrinthian road network. Likewise, each house was carefully wedded to the natural terrain of each lot, thereby preserving existing tree cover, providing privacy and capturing views and sunlight as much as possible.

Thus, one, two and occasionally three-level houses were perched on hilltops or ridges, nestled into hillsides or placed on less steeply sloping valley floors. Rather than being consistently aligned, houses were deployed with greatly varying setbacks and orientations on differently shaped lots that front continuously curving streets and cul-de-sacs. The community also includes a number of public parks and interconnected trails frequented by deer; tennis and swimming facilities; and the Hollin Meadows Math and Science Focus School.

But Goodman’s late-1940s, innovative house designs, epitomizing mid-20th century modernism, are what sets Hollin Hills most distinctly apart from other single-family home subdivisions in the Washington metropolitan area.

Over the decades, the original Hollin Hills houses proved too small for evolving tastes and lifestyles. Consequently, owners enlarged and modified homes. With design review committee approval, new rooms, porches, decks and accessory structures were added. Kitchens and bathrooms were remodeled, cabinetry and finish hardware redone, mechanical and electrical systems upgraded, roofing membranes replaced, high-performance windows installed. Yet original home exteriors facing streets remain essentially unchanged.

He used a common architectural language for the modest, wood-framed homes. Inside, open floor plans spatially unify each home’s communal living, dining and kitchen areas, making each space feel larger. Outside, instead of steeply pitched, gabled roofs, flat or low-slope roofs top each house. Roof edges are visually thin with narrow facias and short overhangs. Rooftop skylights and high-wall, clerestory windows complement extensive floor-to-ceiling glazed facades that stretch across living-dining-kitchen spaces and bedrooms. Where glass stops, exterior wood cladding takes over. Brick and stone are also used for chimneys, exposed foundation and retaining walls, terraces and steps.

The most visible and dramatic change is the Hollin Hills landscape. Today broad, dense canopies of huge deciduous trees and tall evergreens surround, soar above and shade homes and streets. Flowering ornamental trees and shrubbery abound. Residents have cultivated gardens for all seasons in front, rear and side yards, many with little grass to mow. The landscape, as much as the architecture, imparts a strong, community-wide sense of unity and harmony.

Sharing feelings of stewardship and proud of the legacy, Hollin Hills homeowners have sought National Register of Historic Places designation. Former resident Michael Sorkin, an architect and well-known critic, summarized the legacy. “Hollin Hills is one of the truly happy experiments in modernity, a place that — because of the unique conjunction of style and time — remains the kind of community so many modernists dreamed of, a beautiful place of social activism, love of nature and potluck picnics.”

Roger K. Lewis is a practicing architect and a professor emeritus of architecture at the University of Maryland.

Products: NaNaWall

Walk into a house designed by KUBE Architecture and you’ll notice familiar selections from our design palette popping up on a regular basis.  One of our favorite ways to connect the home’s indoor and outdoor spaces is by using glass walls that open and function as doors. The ones we really like are made by a company called NanaWall Systems.  Located in Mill Valley, California they’ve been in business of 25 years and are partners with Solarlux in Germany.  

We love these door systems for lots of reasons, including how they allow two spaces to flow together as one. The application used at CompTIA (seen below) divides two interior spaces while allowing a visual connection. The same effect is achieved when the system is used to delineate the indoors from the outdoors. The thin frames allow for better views, they’re Energy Star rated, and they work. The single floor track is functional and low impact on the visuals.  The concealed hinges, and locking hardware makes the system function like a high-quality door should.  

CompTIA Office Renovation, Capitol Hill                   Georgetown Rowhouse Renovation 

Georgetown Rowhouse -  "Folding Doors"                 Foggy Bottom Project - "Open Doors" 

The systems have been installed in homes that experience all kinds of weather, from beach houses to ski resorts.  Their thermal performance make them an excellent fit for the hot, humid summers of DC and they seamlessly blend into the design of the space. Best of all, they use green manufacturing methods, including the use of water based stains, FSC approved wood and recyclable aluminum framing.  When we are thinking up ways to increase living space and bring the outdoors in, NanaWall is usually our first choice. 

Do you have a favorite KUBEist product?  Are you interested in movable walls of windows in your home? Want to bring the outside in or the inside out?  Use the comment section below to tell us what you think.