D.C.’s largest mass timber project is coming to the new Bridge District

In August of 2021, Washington, D.C. developer Redbrick LMD announced the Bridge District, a new development east of the Anacostia River named for the nearby Frederick Douglass Memorial Bridge. Located in a historically Black part of the city that has faced disinvestment and redlining, the project has a tall order: to bring housing and resources to the area without displacing or disenfranchising its current residents.  

The project’s second phase is in development now. Two mixed-use residential buildings with ground-floor retail, designed by New York-based ODA Architecture, will include approximately 825 residential units, 151 lodging units and about 24,400 square feet of retail. One of the structures utilizes mass timber – the first residential structure of its kind in the D.C. area. Among other benefits, mass timber allows for lower embodied carbon than other structural materials. The building was designed to net-zero standards.  

We chatted with ODA founder and principal Eran Chen, AIA, about ODA’s approach to mass timber designs and designing for equity in the Anacostia neighborhood. The conversation has been edited for clarity.  

Did the decision to pursue a mass timber project come from your firm, or from the developer?  

ODA has carried an inclusive mission of sustainability for a while, which calls for social, economic and environmental sustainability in our projects. This is important because there are many factors for, say, a developer in making decisions about sustainability.  

As architects, of course, we are at the forefront of helping educate our clients, but also making sure that these projects come to fruition. In the beginning of every project we discuss sustainable aspects and [the] ambition of every project. This particular client had a very high threshold of expectation for sustainable practices, which is amazing. It’s always great to have a collaborator like this.  

The first two Bridge District buildings, which we were not involved in designing, were already under construction. They were designed to LEED Platinum specifications, and the ambition was to go higher.  

[The developer] reached out to us and asked what we could do. We talked about a Net Zero certification – what's called an IFLI certification. We started discussing, “What are the ways to get there?” And timber, of course, came to the discussion. Eventually, we collectively found a way to execute timber, which is quite rare for residential buildings.  

From what I understand, it’s going to be the largest mass timber project in D.C.  

It’s going to be the largest mass timber project in D.C., and it’s going to be one of the largest residential mass timber [projects] in the nation. It is definitely a super ambitious goal. And I think it’s important to point out that timber has been used more frequently for commercial [purposes], office buildings, et cetera, because of how you efficiently use timber. Mostly it has to do with the fact that it needs to be a very regimented and repetitive modular system to be, you know, economically viable. Office buildings tend to be large open spaces with very small interceptions. That’s why we’ve seen a lot more commercial buildings being done in timber. But a residential building is much more complex because it has different typologies of apartments – small apartments, large apartments. They’re not as simple in terms of, you know, the floor plan.  

How long have you been designing mass timber structures?  

ODA started studying mass timber many years ago. It became more common in Europe, and we began to look into it. It was hard to find information – technical information especially – but also understand what’s available to us. Timber must be locally sourced, or there’s no point in it. 

Canada is the one place in North America that you’ll find two or three large providers for that. We had to understand the technical aspects, the transport abilities, the sizes, and so on. It took a series of studies. We’ve done only a few applications on a much smaller scale, and not necessarily for residential buildings. For example, we’re currently designing an educational pavilion at Bard College that is done in mass timber, but that is much easier to do.  

So, for us, this was really the first [design] in that scale for that typology. But we came in equipped with prior studies and prior knowledge, and of course we expanded that knowledge throughout the process.  

Can you talk about how the context of the Bridge District shaped this building’s design?  

The Bridge District is a new district on the other side of the Anacostia River. It’s not in the traditional boundaries of D.C. neighborhoods. And as such, there were a few very important elements to consider.  

The first one is that we are surrounded by a neighborhood that has been there for a long time, with existing communities. We wanted to make sure that we were adding more to their context than just a new density of people. [Our aim was] for the buildings to create a contribution to the public realm and become additional amenities to everyone that surrounds the building. That was a huge point of conversation.  

We did it by expanding the public realm and turning the sidewalks into plazas within our buildings. Landscape and hardscape create porosity in the building structure, and there are visual connections between gardens at different levels. We made sure the ground floor program serves the local community and creates local jobs. That was one major aspect.  

The goal for the Bridge District is for it to become a live-work-play environment, and that’s very important because although it’s a residential structure, we wanted to make sure that people can spend their entire day in the area and have all their needs met in a walkable distance.  

The Bridge District has a critical mass of buildings that also provide all the urban amenities that people might need, with the addition of the gardens, the landscape, the bike lanes and the walkable areas. All of those things make for a fuller life experience as well as the retail, the beer garden, the supermarket, and other urban amenities that one might night.  

Lastly, I would say the fact that it’s one of the biggest newly constructed neighborhoods on the other side of the bridge, and we carry a level of novelty and inspiration that doesn’t exist perhaps in an already existing neighborhood. That’s partially why the opportunity to build a large, huge-scale timber structure was so attractive to everyone.  

Can you talk about the affordability component of the building?  

We have an affordability component woven into the building structure. About 12% of the units are affordable units.  

All of them are large family units, three bedrooms and up, which is important because it allows for families that are in the neighborhood to potentially upgrade or come in and become part of that development. That was very important. We talked about the connection between indoor and outdoor. That was something that ODA started developing way before COVID, but we really pressed on that point – that 50% or more of apartments in residential buildings would have outdoor spaces. All the other building amenities are placed and arranged in direct connections with landscape gardens, as well.  

I would say that kind of porosity also blurs the line between private and public. And again, if we are thinking in the context of D.C., it has a lot of big parcels of buildings and there’s a clear delineation between sidewalk, building lobby, and the rest. By creating this porosity – the big openings in the building, the three plazas that we’ve created, the steps that allow people to come up to the second-floor garden – all these elements are blurring the line between public, private and semi-private. I think that’s the way of the future.  

When you do a zero-carbon building, it needs to be thought through its lifetime from an operational point of view. A lot of this requires a commitment from the future tenant. When you’re in a timber building and you’re exposed to that 24/7 in your apartment, in your public spaces, we believe that there’s a bigger awareness of the elements of sustainability, which helps to make the tenant a steward of sustainability over time.