In Anacostia

Conceived in response to the Glass House, the Grass House is a healthy and contextual accessory structure at the foot of the Frederick Douglass House. LEED-Platinum and the first code-compliant bamboo building on the East Coast, the Grass House considers the ethical and material dimensions of transparency.

Read more about it on ArchDaily and DC Urban Turf, in the Washingtonian and AN Interiors, and in the book Bamboo Contemporary.

The Queen Anne Victorian house in front of the Grass House is old enough that Frederick Douglass would have watched its construction from his front porch in the early 1890’s. With its own front porch, back porch, second-floor balcony, two internal stairs, and even a turret, this dollhouse-like structure attempts to have it all—even if that means it’s at 4:5 scale. A 2015 renovation connected a multitude of small ground-floor spaces and borrowed a color palette from its neighbors.

A pair of stick frame houses punctuates a row of 1920’s brick row houses in the Anacostia Historic District. Located opposite the Frederick Douglass House, BLDUS worked with the developer to purchase and develop the parcels to ensure compatibility with the historic context.

A large vacant site with a view of downtown DC. One house that looks like two, or two houses? Neighborhood advocacy groups navigate programmatic and historic sensitivity with the developer.

To subsidize the extensive rehabilitation of a dilapidated and fire-damaged nineteenth-century wood house, a developer builds a new historically contextual house next door.

The back of the neighborhood is the front of the neighborhood, the front of the neighborhood is the back of the neighborhood. There lurks the potential for the tallest mass grass building in the country.