Design

Deciding the year’s most excellent designs

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All of us at Montgomery Planning are excited to once again celebrate the best architecture, landscape, and/or urban designs in Montgomery County this fall. The 2025 Design Excellence Awards presentation on Thursday, October 16, 2025, will be held in conjunction with the AIA Potomac Chapter’s Celebrate Design event in Bethesda at the Marriott International Hotels Headquarters (a 2023 Design Excellence Merit winner).

One award will be the newly named Gwen Marcus Wright Design Excellence Award in Architectural, Urban Design, and Landscape design. The second award, Exceptional Housing, will honor multi-family residential projects built in the county over the past ten years. Award submissions are being accepted through Monday evening, July 21, 2025.

For each Design Excellence Awards celebration, Montgomery … Continue reading

Design excellence helps Montgomery County thrive

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The physical design of our neighborhoods and centers within Montgomery County will help guide the quality and shared use of our communities for generations.  When done right, architecture and landscape define these places in a way that fosters their use, their beauty, and their overall prosperity. When incorrectly done, formless architecture that caters to the automobile and is self-referential can be socially isolating and environmentally and economically draining to the entire county.

One of the primary tenants of the new Thrive Montgomery 2050 General Plan is the importance of arts, culture, and design within Complete Communities that support all facets of our daily lives. It is through design that the best aspects of our society and the most positive … Continue reading

Spotlight on Wheaton’s Black History

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As you travel east on University Boulevard from downtown Wheaton, past the commercial strips and gas stations, you’ll encounter a Georgian Revival brick house with imposing chimneys. This simple but elegant home, with its symmetrical design and matching bay windows, stands in stark contrast to the modernist Art Deco WSJV Transmitter across the street and the post-WWII Ranch and Split-Level houses scattered throughout the nearby neighborhoods. The historic house was the home of Romeo and Elsie Horad. Built on Elsie’s ancestral land, the house stands as a testament to the achievements of the Websters, Sewells, and Horads who worked tirelessly to improve conditions for African American residents throughout Montgomery County and Washington, DC.

The Montgomery County Historic Preservation Commission … Continue reading

Attainable Housing Strategies is not a new concept

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With its endorsement of Montgomery Planning’s Attainable Housing Strategies (AHS) in June 2024, the Montgomery County Planning Board has recommended the county adjust its residential zoning to allow property owners the opportunity to build multi-unit houses in neighborhoods that currently only allow single-family houses. The recommended zoning change aims to meet the county’s growing demand for housing at different price points and with different house types, like those offered in most residential neighborhoods throughout the first half of the 20th century and earlier.

The power of placemaking

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Making happier, healthier, and more connected communities

By Montgomery Planning staff

The town of Damascus, in upper Montgomery County, recently saw its Main Street morph into a vibrant pedestrian mall with food trucks, dance performances, and small businesses offering locally produced beverages and other treats. 

The Damascus Placemaking Festival, held Oct. 19-20, helped residents and business owners envision a livelier downtown that would bring people together – all while embracing the area’s small-town country charm.  

But Montgomery Planning’s approach to placemaking goes far beyond a weekend event. It’s part of our people-centered approach to planning and helps make areas like Damascus happier, healthier, and better connected. We have developed a Placemaking Strategic Plan that includes key goals and … Continue reading

Environmental Resilience at Home: The Story of a Rain Garden

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By Artie Harris, Chair, Montgomery County Planning Board

This is the story of my rain garden adventure in the front yard of my family’s Takoma Park home.

Every time there was a big rain, water rushed down our driveway into the street, joining with runoff from other houses in a fast-flowing gush along the curb. Since our house is on a hill, stormwater has never caused us any problems, but we knew our downstream neighbors suffered from flooded basements. We also knew the result of all this cumulative discharge was harmful to the beloved Chesapeake Bay.

Many Montgomery County homes have a similar problem, but in our case, it was especially obvious because we had a gravel driveway. … Continue reading

Give everyone a chance to call Montgomery County home

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By Artie Harris, Montgomery County Planning Board Chair and Jason K. Sartori, Montgomery Planning Director

This blog is also published in Greater Greater Washington as a guest opinion column.

Bold action by governments to tackle the country’s housing crisis has been scarce for far too long. The Biden administration is fed up too, calling for federal policies that would incentivize local governments to end discriminatory single-family home zoning.

The Montgomery County Planning Board believes it is about time Montgomery County joined a national movement to break free from outdated laws that constrain housing supply and prices too many people out of the market.

On June 13, the Planning Board voted to recommend that the Montgomery County Council relax … Continue reading

Design Makes a Difference: Good Hope Neighborhood Recreation Center – Silver Spring

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This is the fifth and final in a series of Third Place blogs taking a closer look at the winners of Montgomery Planning’s 2023 Design Excellence Awards.

Great and complete neighborhoods are focused on parks and public spaces, which foster health, recreation, and socialization. Civic buildings are often associated with these public spaces to encourage greater use of both. When we build connections through our civic facilities on public parks, we dramatically strengthen community. It is an investment in community that fosters tremendous social returns. The Design, Arts and Culture chapter of the Thrive Montgomery 2050 General Plan update speaks to the importance of these qualities incorporated into our civic buildings and all architecture. Our civic buildings should promote … Continue reading

Design Makes a Difference: Pike and Rose

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This is part of a series of Third Place blogs taking a closer look at the winners of Montgomery Planning’s 2023 Design Excellence Awards.

As stated in the Thrive Montgomery 2050 General Plan, communities should be compact, mixed-use and pedestrian-friendly to allow independence for those who do not drive, especially the elderly and the young. Transit, pedestrian, and bike systems should link communities to maximize mobility throughout the region and to further reduce vehicle dependence. The primary task of the architecture and landscape in these communities is physically defining streets and public spaces that people share. These spaces are the public realm, which we often pay a lot of money to visit on vacations around the world.

People of … Continue reading

Herstory: Celebrating M-NCPPC Leaders

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In honor of Women’s History Month, three Maryland-National Capital Park and Planning Commission leaders tell their inspiring stories of how they reached the top echelons of the planning profession and offer advice for other women looking to be trailblazers of their own. We spoke with Montgomery County Planning Board Commissioner Mitra Pedoeem, Montgomery Parks Director Miti Figueredo, and Prince George’s County Planning Director Lakisha Hull.

 

“As a young girl in Tehran, I dreamed of being a civil engineer despite all the odds for a woman to have an engineering career in Iran. I had to study hard to compete in a male-dominated society that generally provided a much more inferior education for females. With focus, determination, and hard … Continue reading