Top Moments of 2025

What a year! 2025 was definitely one for the books. Let’s hit rewind and review the highlights that made this year unforgettable.

In no particular order, we present our top 15 moments of 2025:

1. Art Night 2K25: Decked out in Y2K fashion, our 25th annual Art Night event was a smashing success! We raised a record-breaking $164,960 to support the Washington Project for the Arts (WPA) and the local artist community, while also celebrating WPA’s 50th anniversary.

2. Adaptive Reuse Galore: Office-to-residential has become our bread and butter, with over five different projects either delivered or in the works across our architecture, interior design, and Creative studios. The projects include Seraph, Balsa, CityHouse Old Town, 1125 15th Street NW, and 4420 Fairfax Drive.

3. Fellow Status: We celebrated Mike Johnson II, Associate Principal and Director of Interiors, for being admitted into the International Interior Design Association (IIDA) College of Fellows.

4. Moving Up: This spring, we celebrated three well-deserved promotions across the firm, including elevating Rebecca Kelly to Experiential Design Director and Guilherme Almeida to Design Director.

5. Well-Rooted Design: Two of our resident mass timber experts, Todd Martin and Jason Wright, hosted, attended, and presented at several conferences and events, including Timber Connections featuring our 3300 Whitehaven Street NW project, the International Mass Timber Conference in Portland, OR, and DC Climate Week.

6. Intern Alert: For the third summer in a row, we welcomed an intern into our DC office. Anne Michelle Sandjol from the University of Maryland assisted both our architecture and interior design studios.

7. Tracking Towers: One Rosslyn, a new high-rise residential building, was featured in the Washington Business Journal as one of 10 major northern Virginia development projects to keep an eye on.

8. NAIOP Award Wins: In DC and Northern Virginia, three of our projects were recognized with NAIOP awards! At the 2025 Best of NAIOP Northern Virginia Awards, the Innovation District Pump Station won the Community Enrichment Award of Excellence, and The Reserve at Clarendon Centre received the Amenity Space Award of Merit. For the 2025 NAIOP DC|MD Awards of Excellence, Balsa took home Best Renovation – Adaptive Reuse.

9. Inclusivity Awaits: The DC LGBTQ+ Community Center opened its doors, offering free services, outreach programs, public community space, and private offices.

10. Exploration Continues: Construction of the National Geographic Museum of Exploration continued, and behind-the-scenes sneak peeks of the pavilion’s skylight were revealed.

11. [solidcore] Shines: The Best New Workplace Solution Award (Less than 25,000 RSF) was given to [solidcore] headquarters at the 2025 CoreNet Global Mid-Atlantic Awards of Excellence.

12. A Furever Home: Our Richmond office participated in ASID VA’s Barkitecture 2025 event by designing and hand-building a custom dog house that was auctioned off to support Richmond Animal Care and Control.

13. Create, Create, Create: Our Creative studio delivered a whopping 21 projects this year, including Oro Ballanyne and Revv Hollywood.

14. Winning Interiors: Reverb brought home a Multi-Family Award at the 2025 IIDA MAC Premiere Design Awards for interiors.

15. Architect of the Year: Our very own Yolanda Cole was named Architect of the Year by the DC Council of Engineering and Architectural Societies (DCCEAS).

Happy holidays from all of us at Hickok Cole!

Want to go way back? Check out our Top 10 Moments of 2024.