Urban Design in Washington, DC

Architecture designs buildings; urban design and planning shape everything around and between them — the streets, blocks, public spaces, and systems of movement and land use that determine how a whole place works. It operates at a larger scale and a longer time horizon than a single building, and it deals with things architecture alone can't: how people move through an area, where the parks and plazas go, how ground floors activate a street, how a district phases over decades, and how it fits the city's planning framework and serves the whole community. The two disciplines are deeply related and the best places need both done well, but they require different skills and mindsets. We specialize in the scale of streets, districts, and the public realm — the framework within which good buildings can add up to a great place.

Both, and often for all of them on the same project — which is part of the value we bring. We're engaged by private developers who need a master plan for a district, by universities and institutions planning their campuses, and by cities, BIDs, and community organizations shaping streetscapes and public spaces. Whoever holds the contract, good urban design has to serve multiple interests at once — the client's goals, the city's framework, and the public good — and reconcile them into a plan that actually works and actually gets approved. Our job is to find the design that advances our client's real objectives while creating a place that the community supports and the city will approve, because a plan that ignores any of those constituencies doesn't get built. Balancing those interests skillfully is exactly what we do.

We treat it as central to the work, because at the scale of a plan, community support isn't optional — it's the difference between a vision that gets built and one that dies in a hearing room. We design and lead inclusive engagement processes that genuinely listen to residents, businesses, and stakeholders, that surface and work through conflict rather than papering over it, and that build authentic ownership of the plan across a community. We're also deeply experienced with the formal public approvals process — the planning framework, the agencies, the boards, and the politics — and we know how to move a plan through it. Over twenty years we've learned that engagement done well doesn't just win approvals; it makes the plan itself better and more durable. It's one of the most important things we do.

By designing it to be buildable and fundable from the very start, not as an aspirational picture that ignores reality. That means grounding the plan in the real economics and phasing of development, so it can be implemented in fundable pieces over time rather than requiring everything at once; designing within the planning and zoning framework, or with a clear, achievable path to the approvals it needs; and building the community and political support that implementation requires. We also stay involved as a plan is built out over years and phases, helping steward the vision so it holds together as individual projects come forward. A beautiful plan that can't be built is worse than useless; our entire approach is oriented toward plans that are visionary and real at the same time, and that's why ours get built.

Fees for urban design and planning work vary widely with the scope and scale — a single streetscape, a campus framework, and a multi-phase district master plan are very different undertakings — so after understanding your project we provide a clear, transparent framework, typically a negotiated fee based on scope and phases. The value of good planning is enormous and long-lived: a well-conceived plan shapes the success, value, and livability of a place for generations, and getting it right is far cheaper than living with a plan that doesn't work. We're glad to frame the investment against that long-term value, and we're candid about numbers and scope from the first conversation. For the developers, institutions, and communities we serve, thoughtful planning consistently repays itself many times over.

Our studio is on the Southwest Waterfront in Washington, and we work throughout the District and the greater region — Capitol Hill, Navy Yard, NoMa, Georgetown, Anacostia, Arlington, and the surrounding jurisdictions. We work across scales, from a single corridor or public space, to a campus or institutional framework, to a large mixed-use district or a regional planning study. What our projects share is that they operate at the scale of a place rather than a single building, and that they matter to a community's future. If you're a developer, an institution, or a community with a project at the scale of streets, districts, or the public realm, we'd welcome a conversation about how we'd approach it.