Seattle Design Charette

Recently I went down to Seattle to understand space at an urban scale for my spatial design class. We toured the city looking at changes between neighbourhoods and abandoned publis spaces. The Olympic Sculpture Park, Pike Place, Seattle Public Library, and Knoll’s new showroom were some of the places we visited. While there we had to come up with a design for a derelict site under and near the Alaskan Way Viaduct. This was a three day design charette and most of us didn’t get any sleep the second night. I worked with 11 other people on the project. Half of them I’ve never worked with before.

Our theme was originally “continous dynamic space” which means to create a space where there is always something going on in different lighting, weather, and seasonal conditions. Ultimately the idea was too ambitious to do in such a short time but we were able to think of some smaller ideas which do this. One such example is the movable square tables which we hope people will push together and move to different locations or even make a stage out of them.

We had one week to refine the concept and I spent a great deal making a 3D model and designing as I went along. The facades beside the pedestrian street is where I spent most of my time. Two other people helped me with the model so this is not all my work. It is the most complicated 3D model I’ve ever worked on. We weren’t able to model everything we wanted to.

A ramp leading up to the Viaduct.

The facades on the top were individually designed or modelled after the existing facade.