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Winners Announced!
Congratulations to the Winners of the Baltimore Single Stair Competition and Thank You to Everyone that Attended the Panel
On a sweltering Saturday evening in Downtown Baltimore, around thirty built environment enthusiasts gathered for an event dedicated to building code reform -- the awards ceremony of the Baltimore Single-Stair Design Competition.
Large color print-outs of nine submissions were pinned up on the walls of The Center for Architecture and Design, a space run by AIA Baltimore on the ground floor of Mies van der Rohe's One Charles Center. Attendees began filing in promptly at 6:00 pm, picking up a brochure and a sticker at the front table before making a beeline to the submissions.
CNU Mid-Atlantic had put out a call for submissions in early March 2025, inviting architects to "design a mid-rise single-stair residential building on a small infill lot of their choice in Baltimore City." Entries had to adhere to accessibility requirements and address sustainability, but the requirements were otherwise loose. Teams could choose any underutilized lot in Baltimore City, resulting in building designs in a wide variety of contexts and locations.
And just a week before the May 17th awards event, Baltimore City Councilmember Ryan Dorsey had introduced his own single-stair reform bill (25-0062) as part of a larger pro-housing package backed by Mayor Brandon Scott. Modeled off of Seattle's single-stair code section, Dorsey's bill would change Baltimore's code to allow single-stair buildings up to six stories with enhanced fire safety measures. Dorsey's presence at the event allowed for a productive exchange between the often siloed worlds of design and policy. Councilmember Zac Blanchard, who represents Baltimore's downtown and waterfront areas, stopped by towards the beginning of the event with his young kids to review the submissions. On his way home afterwards, Dorsey dropped off packets of print-outs at City Hall.
In addition to Councilman Dorsey, the expert jury -- which deliberated for several hours before doors opened to the public at 6pm -- was composed Farr Associates Founder Doug Farr, PI.KL Studio Principal & Co-Founder Pavlina Ilieva, Torti Gallas + Partners Associate and CNU Mid-Atlantic board member Michaela Mahon, Pure Architects Studio Director Marques King, TG+P President Murphy Antoine, and small-scale development expert John Anderson.
After welcoming remarks from CNU Mid-Atlantic President Dhiru Thadani and board member Julian Frost, as well as a recounting by Councilmember Dorsey of the genesis of his single-stair bill, the jury sat for a panel discussion moderated by Michaela Mahon. The conversation touched on fire safety, stairwell design, unit configuration, single-stair's inherent efficiency, development finance reform, embodied carbon, and the implications of single-stair reform for project feasibility, among other topics.
During the panel, the jury members repeatedly emphasized the practical value of the contestants' efforts -- namely, providing compelling visualizations of the single-stair building typology in the context of Baltimore's urban fabric.
As juror Marques King noted, single-stair can serve as a kind of community engagement tool by offering a new urban form that is more visually appealing, humane, and incremental than the massive, monolithic structures encouraged by current model codes.
The Winners:
First Place: The Eutaw Street Lofts
$3,000.00 Grand Prize
Daniel Morales (Morales Architects)
The site in the Loft Historic District North consists of the two conditions typically found in infill projects, the mid-block and corner lot. The mid-block building is subsidized and intended for families while the corner lot is market rate. Together they form a landscaped courtyard for the tenants of both buildings.
Located at the base of Eutaw Street, a traditional main street lined with historic buildings, the Loft Historic District North has the potential to be a pivotal neighborhood in Downtown Baltimore. With the Inner Harbor to the east, Camden Yards to the south, the University of Maryland to the west, and Lexington market to the north, this project is intended to be a catalyst for development in this pivotal neighborhood while meeting the various demands of the local housing market.
The subsidized building is intended to be economical, with 5 stories of frame construction on a slab and no elevator. To mitigate the walk-up, the fourth floor units are configured as duplex units, allowing for multiple bedrooms accessed by an internal staircase. There’s a roof top garden for the use of tenants. The facade is a brick veneer wall on a composite brick and CMU wall.
The market rate building includes two retail spaces and an elevator. The construction is six stories of cross-laminated timber frame faced with brick and CMU self-supporting walls. This type of construction is resilient by providing passive heating and cooling, using less concrete, and requiring less maintenance.
The smaller footprints of these building types help them blend into the fine grained streetscapes while the use of similar materials and compositional patterns show that the coherence of the street is greater than the sum of its buildings. This approach also helps speed up the approvals process by building on the neighborhood’s 19th century warehouse character.
Second Place: 204 E. Gittings St.
$2,000.00 Prize
Jeremy Sommer, Natalie Bowback, Sabrina Rugg (Sommer Design Studios)
This eleven-unit, four-story walk up single stair building with incubator retail on the ground floor uses a tight core in order to minimize circulation space and maximize unit sizes. The use of the single stair allows the units to have
windows on multiple sides, feeling light and airy as well as allowing for cross ventilation. The units are a mix of one-, two-, and three- bedroom apartments, including a ground floor ADA unit with both street and parking lot access. The
site plan incorporates one parking space for each unit; a code exception would allow an increase in the amount of ground floor commercial space. The building also provides a communal roof top terrace off of the upper floor. The
design utilizes bay projections, allowing for the living space of each unit to feel larger and add interest to the exterior elevations. The elevations pull details from the neighboring architecture to allow it to fit into the rhythm of the street.
The building details can be dialed up or down to fit the context of the street as well as the budget of the developer.
Third Place: The Jonestown Stacks
$1,000.00 Prize
David Otieno, Brandon Clear, Rafael Gonzalez, Jo-Elisa Clarke
Our vision for the Jonestown Stacks project is to create a landmark in the Jonestown neighborhood of Baltimore that engages with its context. Located near a neighborhood's 'Gateway' on East Baltimore Avenue, the building's height will signify entry into the neighborhood. Its design, featuring red brick and weathered metal, reflects Baltimore's industrial heritage and classic townhouses, while also nodding to the nearby Phoenix Shot Tower. We are proposing 20 units in a five-story Type 3A Construction building
over 1 1-story Type 1A podium. The proposal includes a balanced mix of affordable and market-rate housing, targeting young families with affordable units aimed at 50% of the Average Median Income (AMI). All units will have access to every floor, with affordable units primarily on the second floor to ensure a diverse community. Our units are designed to Fair Housing standards, and as per the brief, we have also provided three ANSI type A units (One for each unit typology. We are considering our junior 1-bedrooms and full 1-bedrooms both as 1-bedroom types.
Thank You to All the Teams that Entered!
MINTONhouse
Evan Wivell, Ole Johnson, Mary Selsor, Ryan McCloskey
NEXUS
Matthew Ormsby, Bailee Cota, Nathan Robey, David Plent
3518 O'Donnell Street
Nathaniel Rodriguez-Fuller
CORE+
Alonzo Colon, Wadiah Akbar, Jay Ranaweera, Emily Bacher
The Hon
Katie Livingston, Curtiss Taylor, Dustin Watson, Jonathan Pett
212 W. Monument Street
Jeremy Sommer, Natalie Bowback, Sabrina Rugg
FULL SUBMISSION MATERIALS FOR ALL TEAMS CAN BE ACCESSED
HERE
Project Site Locations:
Meet Our Jury:
Ryan Dorsey
is a member of the Baltimore City Council, representing the 3rd District since 2016. He works to ensure that Baltimore is accessible, affordable, attractive and inclusive, and that its government is efficient and accountable. He is the chair of the Land Use and Transportation committee. Councilman Dorsey’s many legislative achievements include a landmark Complete Streets ordinance, a ban on source of income discrimination in housing, and the creation of an independent Office of the Inspector. In 2025 he will introduce legislation to allow single-stair construction up to six stories.
He will kick off the awards ceremony with a brief talk about his ongoing legislation efforts in Baltimore.
R. John Anderson,
CNU Fellow
started in the trades and migrated into urban design and development. Much of John's current work is supporting emerging small developers, with financial pro formas, modeling various deal structures and business models appropriate to smaller scale incremental work in folks' local neighborhoods. His development and consulting engagement show a pragmatic approach to building/rebuilding walkable urbanism and helping local folks build wealth and cultivate local small businesses.
Pavlina Ilieva, AIA
is Principal and Co-founder of PI.KL Studio – an award-winning practice engaged in architecture, design/build and micro-development. Her work spans across the urban housing, commercial hospitality and workplace scales in collaboration with non-profit organizations, private and local government entities.
An experienced educator, Pavlina is the recipient of two national ACSA Architectural Education and has published, lectured and juried nationally. She serves as Chair of the Urban Design and Architecture Advisory Panel (UDAAP) for the Baltimore City Department of Planning, which provides design review for significant projects and master plans in Baltimore City.
Doug Farr, FAIA
is the Founding Principal of Farr Associates. His outcome-oriented approach to design—beautiful, healthy, non-polluting places and buildings that strengthen the fabric of society— along with his activism have earned him an international reputation for sustainable design excellence and as one of the most influential urbanists of all time.
Murphy Antoine, FAIA, AICP
is President and a Principal at Torti Gallas + Partners, where his work focuses on the relationship between architecture, urban design, and planning in neighborhoods and communities. His efforts to implement housing policy and market response through appropriate and contextual architecture and neighborhood planning have manifested themselves nationwide in over eighty revitalization and newly developed projects during his 25+ year tenure at Torti Gallas.
Marques King
is principal of his own practice Fabric[K] Design which focuses on neighborhood urban design, small-scale housing infill and real estate development. He is also the Detroit Studio Director & Senior Architect for Pure Architects, a burgeoning Michigan based design firm with a focus on institutional projects. His desire to pursue a career in the built environment was fueled by fond experiences growing up in Detroit neighborhoods during the late 80’s & early 90’s. Throughout his career Marques has worked across the United States and various countries, contributing to projects across a variety of scales including high rise mixed-use residential-commercial buildings, comprehensive master plans, and ‘Missing Middle’ Infill Housing.
Michaela Mahon
is an architectural designer at Torti Gallas + Partners in Washington, DC. With a strong history of working on community-oriented neighborhood design and multifamily affordable housing, she is passionate about utilizing architecture to create a more equitable world. Working in the Village Segment of TG+P, Mahon specializes in Low Income Housing Tax Credit and large-scale Public Housing redevelopment planning projects that deliver high quality and accessible housing to communities throughout the US. She believes community engagement is an integral part of the design process and is always eager to connect to the people that make the places she’s working in.
Thank You to Our Generous Sponsors!
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All Print Materials Donated by:
View the Competition Brief Here: Link
