art

1916 I Street, NW

From a press release (All photos copyright Anice Hoachlander courtesy Studio 27 Architecture):

Be Civilized – Be Urban
Installation and Exhibit at Filter Coffeehouse, Washington DC, through September 2013
Architect: Studio Twenty Seven Architecture
Design Team: John Burke, Jon Grinham, Todd Ray, Sophia Zelov
Location: Filter Coffeehouse, 1916 I Street, NW, Washington DC.

Taking Dr. Spiro Kostof’s dictum “To be civilized is to be urban” as inspiration, Studio Twenty Seven Architecture has launched the first in a series of installations and exhibits with which it hopes to challenge urban norms and encourage non-standard thinking and discourse on our city and beyond. Be Civilized – Be Urban is on display at Filter Coffeehouse at 1916 I Street, NW through the end of September, 2013.

This installation focuses on Studio Twenty Seven’s research concerning Washington DC’s most urbanistically fraught administrative quadrant, Southwest.  A neighborhood in its own right, Southwest is markedly different from the rest of Washington DC, a difference that can be attributed almost completely to the rise of the District’s commuter culture.

Southwest is bound by federal and civic infrastructure and the Eisenhower era highways that were built to provide easy access to the core for the 20^th Century’s newly suburbanized workers. Isolated in this way, the quadrant was further marked by one of the nation’s most concerted federal efforts at urban renewal. National policies that encouraged suburbanization also spurred urban divestment, and the built result of this cycle, along with decades of attempted remediation, are writ large in Southwest. (more…)