architect David Jameson and McMillan: "Jameson’s involvement with Envision McMillan is an encouraging prospect"

We visited this Washington City Paper cover story on architect David Jameson briefly when it first came out.

Let's do a dive into this article, since David Jameson is working on the McMillan Sand Filtration site development project.

I have copied in the specific paragraphs that mention McMillan.

You can click on the link to read the entire article.

Modern Love

Architect David Jameson knows D.C.'s buildings don't have to be ugly. Now he's trying to convince the rest of the world, too.

By Kriston Capps • February 14, 2014

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Another project may go even further. Jameson’s plan for the multifamily-unit building that anchors the development for the McMillan Slow Sand Filtration Plant site may prove that condo mid-rise buildings—the 21st-century answer to the rowhouse—needn’t look like they were assembled by factories and dropped by drones all over the District.

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None of Jameson’s homes refers architecturally to the others—or to the BlackWhite Residence, or the Tea House, or the Jigsaw Residence, or the Matryoshka Residence (or to the growing roster of the firm’s projects outside the area, flung as far and wide as Southern California and Hanoi). And none of these homes is bound to resemble the McMillan project, whatever name that eventually takes.

         

“The developer wanted someone who would push the envelope,” says Anne Corbett, project director for Envision McMillan.  For the multifamily project, Jameson is collaborating with MV&A, the firm that designed the mixed-use building anchored by a Walmart at 1st and H streets NW.  “There wasn’t an architectural firm with the technical expertise who would push the envelope from a design standpoint.   Obviously, this kind of building is not in David’s normal wheelhouse. Pushing the design envelope certainly is.”
                                                                                                           

While he has yet to release detailed designs, Jameson says that he is collaborating on the façade system with Bill Zahner, the Kansas City, Mo.–based machinist who has worked with Frank Gehry to execute most of that architect’s titanium tapestries.  (That doesn’t mean he plans to drape twisted metal over the apartment building—he’d have more groups than Save McMillan Park after him if he did.)  Jameson will say that the metalwork for the façade, which appear in renderings to be a series of fins, will be a specific callout to the site’s history as a sand-filtration site.
                                                         

“He kind of took apart the DNA of the site,” Corbett says. “I think his process was good for the team as a whole, pushing the other architects to think a little bit differently about how they responded to the site.”  Jameson’s involvement on the McMillan project may not be limited to one building, she notes; phase two calls for another mixed-use building, and while the work hasn’t been contracted yet, she says there’s no reason to think Jameson won’t be involved.
                         

“We got the McMillan project because the process of the work is scalable. For many residential architects, it’s difficult to move from small to big or from inexpensive to expensive,” Jameson says. “But none of those things matter to scaling my work.”
                           

There’s still a staggering number of hurdles for Envision McMillan to overcome before the design becomes a reality.  The project cleared one by winning the approval of the Historic Preservation Review Board in October.  Envision McMillan will come before the Zoning Commission in several public hearings in late April or early May.  Then, with those recommendations appended, the plan goes before the Mayor’s Agent, who is involved because the project requires demolition to adapt the landmark.

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Nevertheless, Jameson’s involvement with Envision McMillan is an encouraging prospect—especially given that the surge in economic growth in D.C. has been met by such dreary design. Tedious condo buildings have choked 14th Street NW and other corridors in the last five years. Perhaps one new building with some design acumen will encourage developers to reconsider aesthetics as a strategy for creating investment opportunities.
                                                                                                 

There are signs that this is happening elsewhere. David Adjaye, the London star designing the National Museum of African American History and Culture on the National Mall, is converting the West Heating Plant into high-end condos for Georgetown, where the famed Mexican firm Ten Arquitectos is designing the West End Library.  What Envision McMillan will test is whether compelling design from D.C. can be brought to bear on projects nowhere near 20037.