600 Fifth
Washington, D.C
Merit Award
Sent by: WSP USA
Owner: Rockefeller Group
Main design company: Pickard Chilton
Mechanical and Electrical Engineer and Sustainable Design: WSP USA
General contractor: Clark Construction
Architect of record: Kendall/Heaton Associates
Structural Engineer: Thornton Tomasetti
Subcontractors: Associates R. Bratti; Clark Concrete; PerLectric, Inc.; ArchKey/Mona Electric; Lach tile and marble; The Justin Company; Precision wall technology
The adaptive reuse project transformed a vacant federal-era headquarters into an all-electric office development that supported the revitalization of downtown Washington, DC. Once occupied by the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority, the full-block building was selectively deconstructed down to its structural frame. The team preserved roughly more than half of the existing structure while expanding the floor plates and adding new levels, an attic, and modern building systems.
The completed Class A office building contains over 400,000 square meters of flexible workplaces, ground floor retail and public access plazas. The strategy reduced embodied carbon and material waste while activating the urban landscape and improving pedestrian connections.
Presented amid uncertainty over office demand, it demonstrates continued investment in workplaces designed around flexibility, health, connectivity and long-term urban resilience in the country’s evolving urban core.
