KGP design studio

FIRM PROFILE
For over ten years, KGP Design Studio, LLC has collaborated with our clients to transform their specific needs into design solutions that positively affect individuals, communities and cities. With offices in Washington, Honolulu and Manila, the firm benefits from a diverse multidisciplinary design team, sharing resources, globally, to provide the best possible support for our clients and craft a unique strategy of development for every project. Providing a diverse but largely interdependent range of design services including: Architectural; Urban Design; Planning and Transportation Design, the benefit to the client is enhanced exponentially. An integrated design approach, based on innovation and proficiency of all disciplines, coupled with the personal engagement of the principals, ensures that all possibilities are considered in every project.
DESIGN APPROACH
While each project is unique, KGP utilizes certain core strategies in the development of each project, all grounded in a process informed by the following:
An Integrated Design Approach optimizes outcome
Benefiting at the outset from a comprehensive evaluation of all impacts affecting a particular project, our team can reframe and directly address the critical issues. Familiar with maneuvering the multiple scales that a project impacts the user, from the urban to the personal, our diverse team of urban designers, architects and industrial designers pursues a collaborative approach leaving no aspects unexplored.
Effective ideas originate with clearly defined conditions
Based on the premise that a successful design strategy inherently inhabits the problems we set out to solve and reveals itself largely upon transcending individual preconceptions, an interactive collaborative process is initiated by encouraging diverse opinions in a collaborative effort including: client, users, stakeholders, and the design team.
Design is measured by the quality of life and well being of the user
KGP is committed to a process that considers architecture a means to an end only, where the project's success is determined by a comprehensive understanding of specific social, cultural, and behavioral influences.
The architecture mediates between the user and the environment
As the physical context, whether urban or natural, and climate are incorporated or mediated in the design, sustainable practices provide an opportunity to optimize lifecycle costs and impact on the environment, but equally importantly often serve a deeper role , a connection or "window" to the natural the cycles that surround us.
SERVICES
KGP's overall design strategy as well as studio structure is based on the premise that architecture is not perceived as an isolated event but is a continuous experience inclusive of the "places in between"; that the public realm: civic architecture, transportation networks, streets, and so on are dynamic interfaces and equally critical aspects to include as design professionals. Our design teams are composed of integrated disciplines focused on multiple aspects and scales of a project, consequently, the lines are erased for example between architecture and industrial design or transit design and urban design. As a result, the culmination of the design process is a product attuned to the complexities of the real world.
Architecture
The principals and staff of KGP Design Studio share years of experience involved in a range of architectural project types including institutional, hospitality, residential, and commercial as well as transit. Most recently, KGP has provided an innovative design for the first bicycle transit center on the east coast, located at Union Station. The glazed, arched structure, relating to the historic Burnham train station, offers bicycle parking, rental, repairs and retail services. Working closely with stakeholders, KGP produced a state of the art facility inserted into its historically challenging context that will endure as a visible reminder of the city's commitment to alternative transportation. The Kennedy Center connection to the Potomac River is another project currently in design. A pair of monumental glass stairways and elevators will link the existing River Terrace down to a new plaza at water level. This major urban gesture will have a profound impact by turning the city's orientation back to the river and reconnecting currently disparate districts.

The recently completed American Foreign Policy Council building is an innovative retrofit and expansion of their office facility reflecting the character of the staid Capitol Hill context while providing an exhilarating – practical work environment. A central light-core delineates new and old while extending natural light to the offices' interior. Currently in final development, Axumite Village is a multi-family housing development, an innovative adaptation of a local townhouse model wrapping a shared courtyard. Demonstrating KGP's emphasis on sustainable design, an alternating system of metal clad, glazed bays optimize natural ventilation and day-lighting as well as "personalize" living units.

Also currently in design, located adjacent to a sensitive wetlands habitat in Fairfax VA, the MTPD Police Training Facility exemplifies KGP's range of expertise. The complex, utilizing state of the art day-lighting and solar shading technologies will be LEED Silver certified. Similarly, WMATA Greenbelt Commissioning Facility, located in Greenbelt MD, and also in development, will enclose 60,000 sf of assembly area and offices. To be LEED Silver certified, the working environment comfort, quality, and performance are prime drivers in the facility's design. Day-lighting and solar gain will be modulated with automated vertical perforated louvers. Natural gravity ventilation devices will dramatically reduce need for mechanical cooling.

The firm also has extensive experience with the renovation and adaptive reuse of existing facilities including office, residential and retail. Furthermore, KGP has provided on-call services to a range of clients through prime, consultant and independent roles in the following areas:

Site and building evaluations feasibility assessment
Facilities programming and planning
Conceptual design/pre-design
Architectural design
Construction administration
Urban Design / Master Planning
With over 30 years of partner-led experience in urban design and planning, particularly in T.O.D. related projects including the Washington Metro, the firm's efforts have focused on urban places and people from its inception. During the past few years, KGP (in prime, consultant and independent experience roles) developed urban designs and master plans for urban communities in the United States and abroad, ranging from Washington to Honolulu to Manila. Major urban planning and design projects include international experience performing design services for a "new town - transit oriented" design in Manila, Philippines. The firm designed a 24-hectare site with over two million square meters of mixed-use development located adjacent to a transit station, also designed by the firm. The master plan enhanced the business district's role as a vital urban center and transportation hub; re-established the area as an important market district by diversifying its existing retail component; and by adding housing created the framework for a vibrant, pedestrian-focused mixed-use development. Local master planning projects include Peoples Community Baptist Church 2121 Plan, Norwood MD; a major planned development including an intergenerational center, independent senior housing, K-8 school cluster, and 1200 seat conference center. Integrated into a rural/suburban context, the planned community represents a rational alternative to the surrounding low density development. In contrast, Pioneer Master Plan in Salem, NJ focuses on the integration of residential units into an existing residential neighborhood. A range of prototypes ranging from 1,500 sf. to 2,400 sf., for thirty parcels, were developed. Compatibility with the existing vernacular context as well as responding to the current market demands resulted in a dramatic transformation of the neighborhood's livability. The principals of the firm have participated in numerous other urban design projects: the design of a 10,000 SM transit-oriented development on three levels above a station on Manila's EDSA Line III Transit System; a new town center in at Clark Air Force Base in the Philippines; a mixed-use development master plan in Newark, NJ.; and the design of waterfront projects in Springfield, Massachusetts and along the Hudson River in New York, Exemplary of the firm's proactive stance on sustainable planning, KGP's principals are actively involved in regional planning issues. Of note, they formed an independent group including: educators, developers and economic specialists to spur debate on ways to create a Tysons Corner that offers a pedestrian friendly, tightly interconnected and lively 24-hour community with easy access to regional transit and all local needs without having to use a car. This effort has become known as Taming Tysons.
Transit Design
KGP has actively been involved in transit systems and transit planning locally, nationally and internationally with experience ranging over the past 30 years. Currently the firm serves as the architectural consultant to WMATA and MTA (Baltimore) completing the planning and development of all the stations of the EIS documents for the Dulles Corridor Rapid Transit Project and in the EIS process for the Purple Line and Red Line in Baltimore. KGP as a joint venture partner with Dr. Sauer and ARUP completed Preliminary Engineering for Tysons Tunnel, four underground stations in a 3.2-mile stretch under this urban center. These efforts also involved joint development and urban design proposals for station sites in Tysons Corner and along the Dulles Corridor. In addition KGP has developed sixteen new station entrances and underground pedestrian connections for WMATA and numerous facility buildings including a police station and office building, a train assembly building, bus garages, the revenue collection building and the operations control center. Outside the region, KGP led the architectural design-build team for a 17 km system in Manila, Philippines, including all station designs, joint development and urban planning around the station sites. This system was designed and began operation within a four year period and now carries 600,000 passengers a day. In Israel, KGP played a similar role in the design of Tel Aviv's Red Line, which is now out for bid. In Honolulu, the partners at KGP were on the design teams of six stations, conducted station area planning for all 21 station sites, and ran the public outreach efforts for the proposed rail transit system in the 1990's. KGP also created the prototype stations for the 2009 Honolulu system. In Seattle the firm was called-upon to create prototype stations for the expansion of the monorail system to reduce costs and keep the project on track.
SUSTAINABILITY
All projects are thought through as sustainable from the location, orientation and landscape to the mechanical systems, lighting and finish materials. Consideration is given to the long-term benefits created by the sustainability of the project. A cost-benefit analysis determines the LEED level desired and even if LEED is not pursued, the design is made as sustainable as possible.
RESOURCES
As Marshall McLuhan once said, "Our tools shape us". KGP is committed to being part of the leading edge in design technologies because it offers a notable advantage not only in quality but the range of services available to the client. Not only does building integrated modeling (BIM) allow a seamless integration of disciplines and phases, avoiding potential conflicts, but specialized analytical tools can inform ongoing decisions throughout the design process. For example, planning or building layout decisions benefiting natural ventilation, solar gain or structural integrity can be informed early in the design process with computational fluid dynamic or structural analysis as opposed to simply being mitigated later on without the cohesive integration of disciplines. In a similar way BIM can inform the client of critical data affecting building performance, efficiency and costs on an as needed basis throughout the design process. Equally critical is the ability to communicate a convincing representation of the project to the client and stakeholders. Forming the backbone of KGP's illustration capabilities, 3D modeling provides the basis of producing a range of sophisticated representations, both still and video, of projects that enable a greater understanding of the work while in progress. Both as a design and communicative tool, manual rendering also plays an important part in the design process in the studio. The design intent infused in a gestural sketch or watercolor can offer an implicit means of communicating an idea before proceeding to the specifics of a design. As digital tools advance, the line between manual and computer illustration is progressively blurred, straddling this division and expanding our ability to articulate a convincing vision to the client. Because the capacity to develop a full palette of tools is so critical, KGP places a high priority on the constant evolution of these skills and resources available to the client.