Building 115 | Pacific Northwest Magazine
Sunday September 12th 2010FutureShack 2010/Homes for a lifetime of living
We have seen the future, and it does not look good for the moving business. This bit of clairvoyance comes by way of AIA Seattle's second group of FutureShack winners, a competition that's part public debate about how we want to live and part professional recognition of innovative urban residential architecture.
[Article link: http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/pacificnw/2012783038_pacificpfuture12.html]
By Rebecca Teagarden
WE HAVE seen the future, and it does not look good for the moving business.
This bit of clairvoyance comes by way of AIA Seattle's second group of FutureShack winners, a competition that's part public debate about how we want to live and part professional recognition of innovative urban residential architecture.
This year's bunch are hardworking, compact, resourceful, social and, most notably, flexible for a lifetime.
These are not the homes (emphasis on the plural) of our parents, who typically packed up the clothes, the dishes, the furniture and the junk under the deck three times in the course of their lives: starter house to family home to empty nest. The dwellings featured here, and to be celebrated Sept. 15 at Seattle Center's Fisher Pavilion, are a limber and community-minded bunch. Equipped for life now and then. The architects offer streamlined spaces that work harder than ever. Spaces with the ability to share and to morph — from office, to guesthouse, to play room, to business or, when the need arises, to rental unit. Courtyards that extend a handshake among neighbors in town houses, communal spaces for parking and gardens.
Move in, stay put. Sustainable for the planet and a lifetime.
While reaching forward, though, these dwellings pull directly from the Northwest's rich architectural past.
"Lasting flexibility has been a common approach for Northwest architecture since we started doing Modern houses; it's part of the Modernist credo," says David Miller. "The Northwest, though, has that outdoor-indoor connection."
This is the kind of stuff Miller thinks about all the time, whether it's from behind his desk as chairman of the University of Washington's Department of Architecture or on a job as the Miller portion of the Miller/Hull Partnership. Miller/Hull made its reputation creating contemporary buildings that draw upon the heritage of Pacific Northwest architecture. The firm was the national AIA firm of the year in 2003, and this year Miller and Robert Hull received the AIA Seattle Gold Medal for lifetime achievement, the highest award AIA Seattle can confer on one of its own members.
Lending his scholarly and architecturally paternal eye to the five projects chosen this year, Miller sees our past hurtling forward.
"Starting with the early Modernist work in the region, these houses were about building rationally, simply, with a small footprint and very open plans," he says. "The small footprint and indoor-outdoor relationships were strongly a part of this regional architecture of the 1950s and '60s, and was born here. In Modern architecture's infancy there wasn't a lot of attention paid to regional climate and building patterns. You built these steel-and-glass or wood-and-glass buildings that could be anyplace. But what was unique in the Northwest, from the very beginning, was a strong tie to land and place."
Now that continuity of principles, he says, is being advanced — "green strategies that are really an outgrowth of ideas from the 1950s and '60s. But there is a clear progression of ideas that really defines this area."
Two projects chosen by the jury, Barton Street Lofts in White Center and Urban Canyon near Capitol Hill in Seattle, are modestly priced, sustainable town houses that encourage interaction and cooperation among neighbors. Wall House on Queen Anne is a remodeled single-family home responsibly expanded (keeping the original foundation) for a growing family. Building 115 is a one-stop, mixed-use structure offering one retail, one residential and two commercial spaces in high-density Fremont. And the unbuilt Beacon Hill DADU offers a vision of the possibilities for detached accessory dwelling units now that Seattle has expanded zoning for them.
What our professor particularly appreciates about these dwellings is that they play nice with others. Or as Miller puts it, "They're all increasing density without dramatically changing the scale or feel of the neighborhood. I think there's a kind of rationalism, which is alive and well in the Pacific Northwest: that is avoiding the pacemakers. With the color (on siding), there's a little bit of that, but the forms aren't too striving. They're simple, logical and rational.
"That's a good thing. They'll stand the test of time."
And in each of the projects, sustainable products and systems are vital.
Several have photovoltaic panels, Miller notes, and a lot of them feature strategies that have dramatically reduced water consumption, including harvested water for the landscaping and flushing toilets.
Several projects use systems for reducing cost and gaining efficiencies in construction, Miller says. "The Beacon Hill project, for example, uses SIPS panels. They're a composite panel, which has insulation in the core and stressed panels externally. They're ready to go. If you use them on a standard module they're quite cost-effective, and they're fast to put up. They also used some pre-manufactured systems, like pin piles, a great way to save money on construction, which I think should be used more often."
Sounds like they got an "A."
BUILDING 115
Square footage: 2,640 lot in Fremont
Entrant: Graham Baba Architects
Team credits: Architect, James E. Graham. Client, Dave Boone (Enoob, LLC). Contractor, dBoone Construction. Engineer, Swenson Say Fagét
Project address: 115 N. 36th St., Seattle
Building 115 is a mixed-use project that provides a solution for live-work and income-generating, in response to the changing housing and financial needs of the community. "The ability to live, work and shop within the same structure lessens the need for constant commuting and fossil-fuel consumption. Reduced need for motorized transport will enrich the communities that these buildings are a part of and create a pedestrian-centered experience on our streets," reads the entry for 115. "Fremont is a vibrant and pedestrian-oriented urban hub of Seattle, so the location of Building 115 is optimal to support a myriad of different commercial endeavors for years to come."
Miller called 115 the most adventurous of the FutureShack winners, both stylistically and aesthetically: "It uses channel glass, a translucent wall material, so it gives a nighttime presence on a street that has traffic 24-7. And that nighttime presence, I think, is a great contribution to Fremont. Being in a commercial zone, it maximizes use of the building. It's a great hybrid mix. I'd like to see more projects like that."