Washington: The Latest Architecture and News

With a 3-2 vote, Seattle’s Downtown Design Review Board has voted in favor of Amazon’s plans for a three-block, high-rise complex in the Denny Triangle. The board voted after conducting five, comprehensive meetings over the last six months to review Amazon’s evolving NBBJ-designed proposal. Although this design review approval is simply a recommendation to the city’s Department of Planning and Development, it is still a milestone for the ambitious project.

The five acre site, roughly located between Sixth Avenue, Blanchard Street and Westlake Avenue, is currently occupied by expansive parking lots, the Sixth Avenue Inn and the King Cat Theater. Continue after the break to learn more.

NBBJ’s design for the Amazon’s new headquarters in downtown Seattle, Washington, promises to consolidate the companies currently scattered buildings into a 3-block development that includes high-rise towers, a variety of open spaces, and landscaped plazas. The 3.3 million square foot design was presented to the city’s Design Review Board (DRB) in great detail outlining the division of the each of the buildings, their integration into the downtown urban fabric and the synthesis of the currently underdeveloped Denny’s Triangle.

The annual Seattle Design Festival, created by Design in Public, is an event that encourages all to ‘engage our world’ by offering the public an opportunity to better understand design and how it adds value to our lives, our city, and our region. This fun-filled weekend, which takes place September 20-23, is a collaboration among ten nonprofit partners that created an ambitious set of offerings: more than 35 events, including tours, films, speakers, exhibits, installations, and family programs—all aimed at a public audience. For more detailed information, including a complete list of events going on that weekend, please visit here.

Earlier we shared with you these rough clips of the recently completed CCTV Headquarters in Beijing, filmed by Tomas Koolhaas as part of a feature length documentary film that he currently making about his father, Rem Koolhaas. In this short clip, Tomas Koolhaas interviews a homeless man inside the Seattle Central Library as an attempt to capture his unique experience within the glass and steel mesh walls of the famous public library.

Tomas Koolhaas studied at the Los Angeles Film School. Upon graduating, he spend ten years working as a cinematographer and has recently switched his focused more towards directing and writing. The documentary film, REM, is set to debut in 2013. Watch for updates here on the REM Facebook page.

RETHINK REUSE, an independent group whose goal is to inspire discourse on the topic of reuse is inviting all to participate in their Transforming Seattle’s 520 Floating Bridge 2012 International Design Ideas Competition. The goal is to envision new, innovative reuse strategies. The 520 bridge will be decommissioned in 2014 due to high maintenance costs, damage, and the need for additional lanes. The Washington State Department of Transportation is requiring of the new bridge’s design-build team that it be reused or recycled in a sustainable fashion; current trends for the reuse of pontoons have been floating docks, breakwaters and piers, but what else could be done with such a feat of engineering? More information on the competition after the break.

With a challenge to make a series of random ephemeral public spaces using a simple structure in the Seattle Center, the intervention by Hoshino Architects proposes areas of such spaces to be transformed to voids and purely leave the circulation spaces on the ground level. In contrast, the public contents circles are randomly scattered on the field level. As normal urban spaces, the circulation spaces sometimes change to unexpected functions, such as a viewing gallery for the event staged at the field level. This dual layer structure intertwines and creates the complex ‘Porous-scape’. More images and architects’ description after the break.

A jury of internationally recognized design professionals and Seattle civic leaders has declared a winner among three semi-finalists in Urban Intervention: The Howard S. Wright Design Ideas Competition for Public Space. The winner is ABF, of Paris, France, for its design, In-Closure, which envisions an interactive wall around a forested landscape that is both flexible and dynamic, embracing social life in the city at multiple scales.

The ABF team consists of Etienne Feher, architect; Paul Azzopardi, urban engineer; and Noé Basch, climate engineer. Continue reading after the break for more details.

Tomorrow, Amazon representatives are scheduled to present their design for a three-block proposal that will introduce three new towers to the Seattle skyline and add 3.3 million square feet of office space to the downtown area. Quite possibly the largest development ever proposed downtown, the complex will consume five acres in the Denny Triangle Urban Village that is currently being used for parking, the Sixth Avenue Inn and the King Cat Theater.

Continue reading for more information on the Denny Triangle project.

The public space proposal for the Urban Intervention competition creates a new way of creating a dialog between the park and the city. Designed by PRAUD, each solid and void creates its own topography, and thus the topography of the solid provides different experiences for pedestrians and joggers, while topography of the voids provide different types of functions and landscape fields. More images and architects’ description after the break.

The American Institute of Architecture Students (AIAS) chapter at Washington State University will proudly host the Spring 2012 West Quad Regional Conference in Spokane at the end of March 2012. The conference will take place March 29th – April 1st on the WSU Spokane campus under the theme of “Preserving Identities,” welcoming in attendees from across the Western United States. More images and information on the event after the break.

The upcoming Tour of Architects in the Puget Sound region of Washington State sponsored by AIA Seattle will take place from March 17-25. Four separate tours will take place over the two weekends, with architects on site to meet with tour guests in addition to conducting tours. The projects featured on the tour are primarily residential, encompassing a wide variety of styles ranging from modern, universally design urban lofts, to remodeled min-century ramblers. Some of the other typologies featured include a memorial project dedicated to the memory of Japanese Americans interned during WWII, an equestrian facility and an award winning Fire Station.

The tickets are priced at $20 per tour, $35 for a weekend pass, and $50 for both weekends.Visit the official site for more information here. See more photos of some of the featured projects after the break.

In this interview published by Seattle Met, Lawrence W. Cheek speaks with Tom Kundig, principal at Olson Kundig Architects. Kundig has defined his career for designing homes that are flexible and considerate in their materials, functions, response to site and the way that the human body interacts with the space and mechanics of the environment. This interview is excellent at revealing Kundig’s inspiration and priorities when it comes to designing homes and he mentions some great examples and strategies that he has taken over the years.

Here is just a list of the variety, but consistency, representative of Kundig’s work:

• Art Stable; Seattle, WA; 2010.
• 1111 E. Pike; Seattle, WA; 2008.
• Rolling Huts; Mazama, WA; 2008.
• Montecito Residence; Montecito, CA; 2008.

On January 25th at 6pm, Tom Kundig will be speaking with Mark Rozzo at the New York Public Library about Tom Kundig: Houses 2. More information on that event coming soon.

Follow us after the break for the full interview, courtesy of SeattleMET, ”Q&A with Architect Tom Kundig” by Lawrence W. Cheek.