Frye Art Museum

   During my day of touring around Seattle, I visited the Frye Art Museum. It is also located on Capitol Hill in Seattle. From the outside, the museum look rather ordinary, but once you reach the entrance, is when you see the beautiful architecture begin.

   The entrance is a series of arches, or an archade, made of bare concrete. The simplicity of the material fits perfectly with the honest straightforward design. Rick Sundberg, the architect that did the design, was there and talked about how he wanted the entrance to be an experience. His vision was to prepare visitors to see the art in the museum. He spoke of how we all come to buildings equally, and how the arches were set up in a sequence with the water pool to create a sense of calm before entering the structure.

   Inside, the rotunda is the star of the building. It has a domed ceiling that is a perfect sphere. The rotunda, the sphere, and the entire building are based on the golden section. Even the pavers are based on this geometric theme.  Mr. Sundberg also talked of the buildings theme on light, and how it is used to move people through the space. The light enters through windows a s well as shafts that stream light into the space. It was definitely am inspiring space, with many great ways of playing with light in an interior space.

Sketch Crawl

Saturday morning, I got up, grabbed some coffee, and was headed to Seattle Center. I was going on a sketch-crawl! It was a meet-up of sorts with the local Urban Sketchers group. Now, I wasn’t quite sure what to expect. Were we going to crawl or lie on the ground to sketch? Would we all sketch the same thing?

   It turns out neither of those things happened. I met them in the Seattle Center food court, got acquainted and saw some of their amazing, inspiring work, and headed out to sketch, with a plan of getting back together after an hour.

   First, I will tell you a bit about the Urban Sketchers organization. They are a group that meets about once a month to sketch. They feel strongly that there is an educational, storytelling aspect to location drawing. Their aim is to tell a story of their surroundings and to record the time and place. Urban Sketchers have a network of blogs, and a Flickr group to share their work with others.

   I choose for my sketch to do the newly installed “sonic bloom”. Sonic Bloom is a motion-activated set of giant flowers that create noise when there is motion nearby. The set of five flowers are solar-powered, and they bask colored light over the Seattle center at night. While I was there in the daylight, it was still a fun and unusual thing to sketch.

The Chapel of Saint Ignatius

   The Chapel of Saint Ignatuis is located on the top of Seattle’s Capitol Hill area, on the campus of Seattle University.  It is the main chapel on the Catholic University’s campus. I was there to study and enjoy the creation by architect Steven Holl. He based his design on the Catholic worship story of “seven bottles in a stone box”. Light passes through various colored glass windows into each “bottle”, defining each space through light and color. It is not difficult to see, and even feel the building’s theme of bringing light to life. It is so masterfully done, with direct light, reflected light, indirect light, shade and shadow.

   The interior walls are almost entirely made of white plaster, tooled with a 12” serrated trowel. Even this most basic material is brought to life through the light. The designers of this space felt this white light was a metaphor for the collective students at Seattle University coming together.

   There were many aspects of this building that caught my attention. First, the door and its beautiful bronze handle. Architect Jim Graham spoke of the handle as being “the handshake of the building” It is the feature most often touched by anyone who enters, and may be the only thing they touch. It is therefore important that the handle be beautiful and comfortable to touch.

   A second detail that caught my eye, were the bronze pieces on the building exterior. I took time to sketch one, but could not figure out what their purpose might be. Mr. Graham was kind enough to explain them, and the story was fascinating. He told how the concrete walls were poured into slabs, but they wanted the top of the slab to face the building’s exterior, which is not the norm. For this reason, they needed to place metal hooks into the concrete, so they could hoist the slabs into their vertical position. Instead of just using rebar, or something just totally utilitarian, they made the pieces part of the design. The pieces are cast bronze, sculpted from a cast of an old Japanese fishing float. One can even see the wood grain from the float in the bronze. It was very inspiring to see beauty and function working together in harmony. That is how I felt about the entire space, beauty, function and inspiration all working together. Exactly what a Chapel or Church should be.

325 Westlake

In Seattle, I was fortunate enough to be able to visit a construction job site, located at 325 Westlake in Seattle. The building was right in the middle of the construction phase. This is a remodel of an existing building plus an addition “the tower”. The tower is a five story apartment complex with twelve 700 to 800 square foot apartments, and a fifth floor penthouse suite with a large outdoor area. The existing first floor and loft space are to house an art facility for local artists and an office space in the loft.

   I donned my hardhat and toured the space with Leann, an architect from the Graham Baba firm. Leann mentioned the design was based on a raw, clean aesthetic. Instead of covering the buildings infrastructure, they wanted people to see what is behind the design. They tried to avoid layering sheetrock over functional elements, and instead left most of the original structure exposed. This translated to brick and pipes exposed in a beautiful, simple, industrial manner.

  I learned a lot from this visit. Just listening to Leann speaks of the building in design terms, how they designed with beauty and livability in mind. I hope I will be able to visit again once the project is complete to see the entire vision come to fruition.

New Horizons Shelter and Street Bean Espresso

   While in Seattle, one of the most inspiring places I visited was the New Horizons Teen Shelter and Street Bean Espresso. The tour began with the teen shelter, and the re-purposed loading dock they now use for an entrance. The teens can wait in this small area out of the cold and rain before the shelter opens.

   I was then led into the facility and upstairs to a meeting room. Street Bean is a faith-based non-profit shelter. They provide food, shelter, clothing, laundry and showers to homeless teens in Seattle. They average 30-40 teens as walk-in each night. They would like to have some semi-permanent rooms for the teens that are regular users of the facility and have proven to be working toward a better life.

  From a design standpoint, the space was nothing special. Street Bean needs the space to be welcoming, safe and efficient. They also need a place for the kids to feel safe, and be able to decompress from the streets. The space they have takes a lot of abuse, so durability is definitely a factor. Safety is, of course, the main concern. Therefore, the space needs to be open, so monitoring the kids can be done easily and constantly. They also need a flexible and adaptable space, as there are many different activities that take place there.

   Street Bean’s biggest concern is to get the teens ready for work. The teens that are provided with food and shelter are asked to work in the Espresso Shop located across the street. The coffee shop provides on the job training for the teens, as well as a source of income for the shelter. Truly Street Bean provides more than beds, food, and job training for homeless Seattle teens. Street Bean provides hope. Hope for a better future and a better life. Hopefully some good design implemented into their space can help provide an even brighter outlook for these teens.

Ride, Don't Walk

The start of my ride!!

I recently experienced a one hour ride in a wheelchair. Some of it was really fun, some difficult and some downright frustrating.

  I began by wheeling into the elevator, which sounds quite easy, but took a few minutes to get the ability to steer, move forward, and fit within the confines of the door coordinated. Once in the elevator the ability to turn completely around took a minute too, so clearly I wasn't going to get anywhere too quickly.

  The difficult part was trying to get through a doorway that did not have a handicapped accessibility automatic opener. Trying to open the door, hold it open and negotiate through it all at once was hard. I did manage to accomplish the task, but it wasn't graceful. I should say that the building I was in was an accessible building, but definitely only parts were truly accessible.

Bathrooms were a point in case. Some of the accessible bathrooms were fine, and I could tell that using  it and turning around to get out would not be a problem. Others, that were supposedly accessible, were unusable. I could not even get the wheelchair into the stall, let alone turn myself around.
The fun part came going out of the building to the next building. There is an incline between the buildings, which was really fun to roll down. Good thing for brakes, that is all I am saying.

The frustrating part was again door related. This building is an accessible building, and has the automatic openers at the exterior doors. They are located close enough to the doors, and at a good height, but the first is on the left side, and the second on the right. This means that if there are others using the doorway, the wheelchair person has to cross the line of traffic to operate the doors. I feel that this is a design flaw. I think all designers of the built environment should spend some time in a wheelchair. Maybe an oversight like this could be avoided in the future.

Habitat for Humanity Build

 

 My volunteer day began at Starbucks, with coffee and a bite to eat, where I met a couple of my colleagues. Once everyone arrived, we hopped into my car and drove the short distance from Pullman to Albion, where the Habitat for Humanity house was located.  We unloaded, had a brief safety talk, got signed in, and then Bob, one of the Habitat regulars told us a bit about the Habitat for Humanity organization in general, the particular house were  working on, and the family that would occupy the home. It was fun to hear about the family, as it brought it to a personal level for all of the volunteers.

Bob, our fearless leader, in the trenches.

The first task we were assigned was to level out 6" to 8 " out from the foundation base so that a drainage pipe could be put into place. This meant picking up the chunks of concrete, some of which had to be broken away, and removing it from the foundation area. Then the pipe could be placed.

 



The pipe after placement



After the drainage pipe was laid, the foundation was "painted" with a coat of tar. This, I learned would create a moisture barrier, so the foundation would not mildew or warp due to moisture. Once the tar was on, we added a layer of gravel. I learned we were using 2" gravel because it was better for drainage, and would not pack down easily.

Sometime during this process we broke for a quick lunch and water break. After our

 re-fueling, we went right back to working on drainage for the foundation and eventually another layer of pipe for the roof drains. This meant more gravel, and more shoveling for me. I did spread tar for a little while, but for most of the day I shoveled and hauled gravel.

It was a day of hard work, teamwork and getting things done. I learned a lot, met some very nice people, and I felt good about what we had accomplished for a very deserving organization.