2: Architecture Culture of Seattle Today with Cassie Blair, JoAnn Hindmarsh Wilcox and Tim Richey

““All urban development comes with uncomfort.””

Cassie Blair (AIA Seattle), JoAnn Hindmarsh Wilcox (Mahlum Architects) and Tim Richey (SRG) are part of the committee putting on the Seattle AIA 2017 Honor Awards. We discuss trends in local architecture in terms of materials, scale, and emerging ideas about urban living as the city undergoes densification in its current phase of intense growth. The conversation identifies a Seattle characteristic of connectivity between nature, people, and experiences in the built environment, and questions how diversity and holding the “third place” can be better incorporated as the city grows into a global city.

Timestamp Outline

4:26 “Designers’ ability to do more with less.”: bringing out beauty in economy
7:12 Seattle rhythms: intense growth / slowness / intense growth...
8:30 Periods of slowness = more experimentation, more “design nutrients”
9:26 L-shaped, broad, parapet, patio, infill housing. “Split-level of the 2010s.”
10:20 4’x8’ cement panels as the dominant material: speed, economy, codes to break down scale of the architectural body.
11:53 What does it mean to break down scale in a way that creates architecture that is responsive to the urban environment as well as the human body?
15:49 Beyond a binary of single family value system OR microhousing
20:38 “the third place”
23:29 Unique Seattle interior-exterior connectivity: not just vistas and nature, but also people and experiences
26:50 “How do you behave when it’s dark and rainy?”
27:01 Larger historical context of public spaces, food, connection to earth, nature, music, activism.
27:51 The Seattle Freeze
33:09 “All urban development comes with uncomfort.”
34:41 How to build for diversity
36:32 How to take risks
37:22 Design thinking outside of architecture: health.
40:48 Who is the disruptor?
44:34 3D modeling tools in design and fabrication of architecture
45:36 Data-driven design: both scary and exciting.
46:35 Policy: bring voices and money into the same room