The tale of two staircases begins in 1799 at the corner of New York Avenue and 18th Street in Washington, D.C. From this wedge-shaped parcel, a rich story of architectural heritage and the forming of our nation’s capital unfolds.

It was a time when the budding Washington, D.C., was referred to as “the city of streets without houses.” Growth was slower going than George Washington and city planner Pierre “Peter” Charles L’Enfant would have liked, but a wealthy Virginia planter, Colonel John Tayloe III, and architect Dr. William Thornton (the first ‘Architect of the Capitol’) would soon change that.

In the late 1790s, as the capital city was just taking shape, Tayloe began looking for a place to build a winter home. At the urging of George Washington, a family acquaintance, Tayloe decided investing in Washington, D.C. would demonstrate his patriotism.

He purchased Lot 8 in Square 170––the wedge-shaped parcel—just half a mile from the President’s House. It was a highly desirable location, but the acute angle formed by the intersection of New York Avenue and 18th Street presented a design challenge.

The Octagon is born

Tayloe sought designs from two of the region’s top architects: Benjamin Henry Latrobe and Dr. William Thornton. Both proposed Federal-style designs, but Thornton’s concept was better suited to the site. Where Latrobe favored the symmetrical design popular among elite homes of the era, Thornton worked with the unique angles of the lot. The resulting three-story building came to be known as The Octagon, though it’s actually a hexagon formed by two rectangles joined together by a semicircle and triangle.

Construction completed in 1801, and for the next 14 years, the Tayloes spent half of their year at The Octagon. But in 1814, after British forces invaded Washington, D.C. and set fire to many of the buildings, including the President’s House and the Capitol, John Tayloe offered The Octagon to then-President James Madison and first lady Dolley Madison as a temporary residence. And it was from the second-floor parlor that President Madison signed the ratification of the Treaty of Ghent, ending the War of 1812.

The AIA moves to Washington

Over the next eight decades, The Octagon hosted several other residents and by 1898, it had fallen into disrepair. Luckily, that was also the year the American Institute of Architects (AIA) decided to move its national headquarters from New York City to Washington, D.C., and The Octagon presented an opportunity to align physically and symbolically with American architectural heritage.

After leasing the building for several years, the AIA formally purchased the property in 1902 and began a comprehensive rehabilitation of the century-old building, making it one of the earliest major historic preservation projects in the US.

By the 1960s, the AIA had outgrown The Octagon. So, in 1964, they held a design competition for a purpose-built headquarters. By the late 60s, TAC (The Architects Collaborative) had been selected to design the new headquarters. Completed in 1973, the Brutalist-influenced modernist building sits just beyond The Octagon, almost embracing the historic building in its concrete arms. It’s a visual example of the historic and modernist identities of architecture coming together.

But with time comes change. Behaviors change. Needs change. Aesthetic preferences change. And in this case, environmental changes brought about the need to evolve the modernist building into a more carbon-conscious, living campus—one that aligned with the values of the AIA’s 2030 Commitment. So, the AIA engaged Quinn Evans to develop a basis of design. In 2019, the board approved the proposed scope, budget, priorities and goals identified in the documents. And one of the major goals was for the project to achieve net-zero energy and meet the AIA 2030 targets with the ability to phase in a fully decarbonized building.

The path to net zero

True to form, the AIA once again turned to the member community. After considering more than 60 architectural firms, 11 were invited to compete for the adaptive reuse project. EHDD was selected and work on what would become the “AIA Global Campus for Architecture & Design” kicked off in 2020.

How did EHDD win over the selection committee? It turns out, they have a decarbonization superpower. The team deftly identified a cost-conscious path to zero operational carbon on day one with a strategy to address the remaining embodied emissions.

“It was determined at that time that it wouldn’t fit within the project budget to be a zero-carbon building right away,” said Rebecca Sharkey, partner at EHDD and the project’s design lead. “So the goal was to set the design up to be able to do that in the future. But that was one thing our team brought to the project––a design strategy to be fully decarbonized on day one and within the project budget. That was one of our winning strategies for the design and a solution that differentiated us."

And that’s where one of the staircases comes into the picture. It’s one of the visible decarbonization strategies in the building. But more on this (and the other staircase) in the next newsletter.

Interesting bits...

• The AIA first attempted a comprehensive renovation around 2008, but the economic downturn put the brakes on the endeavor.
• Part of EHDD’s decarbonization superpower comes from the in-house software tool they incubated––an early-phase carbon assessment tool now known as C.Scale.

Stay tuned for part two and the video story!

​​​​