AIA DC: Tour of Milken Institute School of Public Health

Today the AIA DC Active Design Committee presents a tour of Milken Institute School of Public Health at the George Washington University led by PAYETTE’s Peter Vieira. The tour covers healthy design features and impact on occupant health as well as the sustainable features incorporated into the facility.

The building utilizes low energy HVAC systems, including a dedicated outdoor air system, active chilled beams and underfloor displacement ventilation in the auditorium spaces. Together with other sustainable features — such as LED illumination, grey water reuse, a rainscreen façade, bi-level lamp switching, CO2-based ventilation control, high-efficiency chillers, a green roof, bamboo wall paneling and the use of slag concrete additives — the project achieved LEED v3 Platinum certification.

While today’s tour is sold out, the building’s highly visible location, just blocks from the White House, invites passersby to enjoy the building’s most visible design elements. The triangular site sits on Washington Circle, one of Washington DC’s iconic public spaces. The site is also bounded by New Hampshire Avenue and K Street, both grand boulevards in L’Enfant’s 1791 urban plan for the Capital, as well as 24th Street, which marks the site’s transition into the historic Foggy Bottom district. The site’s southern tip was preserved to expand and improve an existing neighborhood park.

An unusual double-curved glass wall faces Washington Circle Park. Half of its length follows a shallow concave arc generated by the radial form of the Circle itself, mirroring a precedent set by other buildings that ring its periphery. The other half, however, is convex in shape and bends outwards towards the K Street corridor.

The overscaled window facing the University’s medical center responds to the scale and volume of this very large structure.

Once residential in character, Washington Circle has become progressively more commercial and institutional in nature. With its wood clad classrooms and stacked student study spaces visible through a transparent façade, this building creates an entirely new kind of academic presence on the Circle.

A new landscaped plaza along New Hampshire Avenue, across from the University’s medical center, frames the building’s main entrance. At the site’s southern tip, an existing neighborhood park has been expanded around a large oak tree. An aluminum sunscreen provides additional shading for the south-facing façade.

Along 24th Street, the scale and repetition of vertical punched windows, coupled with a planted setback zone from the street, mark the site’s transition into a quiet residential neighborhood.

The building’s terracotta rainscreen façade, installed on a unitized curtainwall system, is composed of tall vertical tiles which feature a customized pattern of projecting ribs. Depending upon sun position, variations in the shadows created by these ribs subtly alter the building’s appearance over the course of the day, enriching the experience of repetitive encounters with it.