Peabody Architects

Rooms with a View

Our clients had hired a design-build firm to combine and renovate two penthouse units, comprising one fourth of the top of Alexandria’s only high rise apartment building. The project had not gone well. In fact, it had not gone at all, and our clients were left with a gutted space with no design and nothing built. We inherited the original construction deadline. There was no choice but to tackle this rather intricate project on a fast-track basis. Construction began one month after we were hired, and throughout the rest of the project we stayed one room ahead of the contractor.

The challenge of the project was to produce a design that incorporated and made sense of a forest of columns, mechanical vents and waste stacks that had been laid out for two separate apartments, and that met our client’s very strict requirements for placement of paintings and sculpture — all on the fast-track schedule. With the help of a contractor with superb management skills, a very decisive and hands-on client, and some excellent craftsmen, we succeeded.

The design places the living room and master bedroom in the two tall spaces at either end of the penthouse, with kitchen, den, guest room and library arrayed between. All living spaces open out onto a long north balcony, with views toward the Capitol and monuments. Bathroom, dressing, and other service spaces are placed on the interior of the building. The one double height space was given a new skylit roof and became the library, with a spiral stair and glass bridge leading to a small reading loft/hideaway for grandchildren.

The project was done on a cost-plus basis, and completed on time and under the original design-build firm’s budget.