It was announced on October 18th, 2013, that the Cunningham|Quill Architects & 1100 Architect Team was one of the 10 architectural teams selected by the D.C. Public Library to continue into the next stage in the process to select a design team for the renovation of the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Library.
Cunningham|Quill Architects is partnering with 1100 Architect, based in New York City and Frankfurt, Germany, for this effort. The Martin Luther King Jr. Library, which opened in 1972, was designed by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, and is his only library and only building in Washington, D.C. Twenty six teams responded to the city’s Request for Qualification and 10 architect teams were invited to respond with a stage two “technical proposal.” The timeline includes a selection of three final teams in December and a presentation of design concepts to the public in the spring of 2014.
Cunningham|Quill has extensive experience with this site and context by most recently completing the adjacent building to the library, the Offices at 10th and G Streets in January of 2012. CQA can trace it’s history with this area to when it completed the adaptive reuse of The Mather Building located directly across the street from the library in 2001. The Mather Building is the first conversion of a downtown office building into housing in the history of D.C. The Cunningham|Quill effort to revive The Mather Building was completed after extensive coordination with and unanimous approval by the District’s Historic Preservation Review Board, Board of Zoning Adjustment, and Advisory Neighborhood Commission.
Read more about the MLK JR Library project in the Washington City Paper here.
