WSP USA Helps citizenM Develop Efficient Approaches to Affordable Luxury

WSP USA assisted a global hotel developer with its latest development in Washington, D.C., which used a more efficient construction technique and offers guest rooms with quiet comfort and comprehensive technology functions at its bustling downtown location.

In August, citizenM opened the doors of its new location in Washington, D.C.’s NoMa neighborhood, located north of Massachusetts Avenue on First St. Northeast, and conveniently just one block from the city’s NoMa-Gallaudet U metro station.

This will be the second Greater Washington D.C. hotel for developer citizenM.

The nine-story hotel offers 296 guest rooms, as well as a fitness center, three societyM meeting rooms, a lobby living room with workspaces and 24/7 food and drinks in the hotel’s canteenM.

The work to navigate citizenM’s design standards and modular construction specifications became a rewarding endeavor for the WSP teams thanks to collaboration both on-site and globally.

“It was an exciting project to be a part of,” said Jennifer Mitarotonda, who served as the project manager for WSP on the project. “It had a very involved and sophisticated owner, as well as a very collaborative design team. The whole team really worked well together to try and execute the vision for the client.”

Based in the Netherlands, citizenM was launched in 2008 with the purpose of disrupting the traditional hotel industry to bring modern style and “affordable luxury” to the people. citizenM opened its first location at Amsterdam Schiphol Airport in 2008, and has since grown to 29 hotels in 18 cities across North America, Europe and Asia.

WSP provided mechanical-electrical-plumbing (MEP) engineering, building technology systems, acoustics, and building enclosure consulting for the project. WSP’s MEP, technology and acoustics teams were contracted by architect Gensler, while the enclosures team was contracted by general contractor Gilbane.

In addition to Mitarotonda, WSP’s design team also included Jon Gillespie, lead plumbing engineer; Patrick Green, lead mechanical engineer; Garrett McWilliams, lead building technology systems consultant; Andrew Parise, senior lead acoustic consultant; and Paul Totten, building enclosures practice leader.

Tap on arrows to view citizenM slide show. (Building exterior artwork: Circulations, 2020, Hannah Whitaker. Interior artwork: Vibrations, 2020, Hannah Whitaker)

The new D.C. hotel was built using modular construction, an off-site building method in which the structure is built in separate sections, or modules, through an assembly line process. These modules, which were constructed at Polcom, a factory in Poland, are fully fitted at the factory and then transported to the project site, where they are then stacked together to assemble the building.

This method allowed for a faster speed of construction, reduced building costs and resulted in a greener manufacturing process that generated less waste.

Using modular construction instead of site-built construction also changed the flow of the process. All submittals and show drawings for the modules’ equipment required reviews and approvals before the modular construction process could begin, so weekly coordination meetings were held with the design team, general contractor, module fabrication team and owner to make sure everything was correct prior to fabrication.

Working with an international client on a U.S. project required the WSP teams to coordinate with multiple overseas contractors and make design modifications to follow D.C. jurisdictional codes and regulations, while adhering to citizenM’s sophisticated design standards.

Additionally, since the fabrication of the modules took place under stringent COVID safety protocols, D.C. agreed to permit the use of video conferencing during construction of the building, since overseas travel was not an option under these conditions.

Those standards also extend to the presentation of the citizenM hotels themselves, which offer guests an “affordable luxury” experience in an exquisite international style, and part of the challenge in this modular construction was to ensure the building’s façade met those standards.

“When you’re looking at the hotel, it appears as if everything has been site built, when we know everything was built modularly,” Totten said.

Each guest’s experience is enhanced by the hotel’s technological integration. Guests can check in or out using citizenM’s free award-winning app or at a kiosk in the hotel lobby on arrival for a contactless experience. That same app can also be used to control the ambience of guest rooms, including temperature, blinds, lights, media and more; open doors; view menus, schedule housekeeping and find useful suggestions for where to eat, what to see and what to do in that city.

The connected guest experience at citizenM hotels relies on their converged data network, which not only allows hotel guests to access room functions and the Internet but also enables building systems and guest services to be fully integrated and cloud-managed with a low on-site IT footprint. 

Using citizenM standards, WSP helped create the construction plan that will allow for reliable data network connectivity in the hotel while adhering to D.C. code requirements.

The guest experience is further enhanced by peaceful quiet in the rooms, which is a feature made possible by WSP’s acoustics team designing the rooms to ensure they met citizenM’s strict acoustic requirements.

Part of the challenge for WSP was fitting each module together with resilient connections so that there would be less sound transmission between the guest rooms. To facilitate that goal, WSP designed the hotel’s HVAC units for quiet comfort, and coordinated with Gensler to control street noise into the guestrooms.

“It’s great to work for clients who understand that it is a big deal to have good acoustics within the hotel,” Parise said.

The hotel developer also maintains high standards for sustainable building practices and fostering a sense of community with each new citizenM hotel.

With the NoMa location, WSP helped the developer reduce its environmental impact through its goals for green buildings, including design, construction and operation.

All citizenM hotels are designed to meet the established criteria for Excellent accreditation in Building Research Establishment Environmental Assessment Method-New Construction (BREEAM-NC), as well as Gold certification in Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design for Building Design and Construction (LEED-BD+C).

The D.C. NoMa project is tracking for a Silver rating for LEED-BD+C v4, pending both the accreditation completion and the approval of the construction phase credits.

Each hotel also seeks to make a positive cultural impact in the community by featuring local art on the hotel’s interior and exterior walls, as well as in the guest rooms.

These project aspects were navigated by WSP staff locally and in conjunction with WSP’s UK personnel abroad, which conducted façade inspections of the modules at the factory site in Poland.

“It’s something that shows the breadth and depth of the WSP team,” Totten said.

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