Watermark at Buzzard Point

Overview 

A 1970s concrete office building that formerly housed space for the General Services Administration (GSA) has been adapted into a mixed-use luxury residential building along the Anacostia River in Washington, D.C. After years of vacancy, the building now features a new curtainwall system, optimized floor plates for daylight and views and two large green spaces atop a retail podium. 

We provided structural design services to Douglas Development for the project, which was designed by Antunovich Associates. The building features approximately 453 residential units, ranging from studio to three-bedrooms, over eight levels. It includes one level of retail and two levels of below-grade parking, and a range of amenities for residents such as a rooftop infinity pool, fitness center, recreation room and coworking space.

Highlights

• The mixed-use project required fully renovating the existing, rectangular concrete office building and cutting two large sections of the building out to form a capital “E” shape where residents can enjoy beautiful outdoor terraces on the insides of the “E” on the second floor.
• The existing, nine-story concrete flat plate building does not have any shear walls and relies on the slab frame behavior between the 8” thick mild reinforced concrete slabs and the 20”x 20” concrete columns that are spaced on a 20’x 20’ grid.
• To create the “E” shape, which allows for windows for all of the apartment units and the beautiful terrace spaces on the second floor, 42 columns and two significant sections of the slab needed to be demolished. These changes had a large impact on the lateral performance of the building under wind and seismic loads.
• Through detailed analysis, utilizing both Etabs and SAFE, the team justified the remaining portions of the existing building under all lateral loads without any structural strengthening required – allowing for an open floor plan without any new shear walls or braced frames.
• In addition to cutting the two large sections out of the building, many small openings were required to be cored or cut for all new mechanical, electrical, and plumbing (MEP) for each of the many apartment units (compared to the limited MEP required for the existing office building).