Don't Let Them Fool You . . .

Contrary to what you might hear, boxy buildings are okay. Even relatively big ones. What is not okay, however, is anti-box propaganda founded upon misrepresentation. There was a time, we are told, that there were no boxy buildings, that buildings were neither massive nor unarticulated, and that in order to have new buildings be good urban neighbors, they need to acknowledge this pre-box precedent. Living in a world of make believe, these Tinkerbells of design (to include architects, Design Review Boards, developers, and concerned citizens) spread their anti-box fairy dust, hoping to achieve the kinder, gentler architecture which existed before big, boxy (i.e. modern) buildings desecrated Neverland.  The fact is many (most?) of Capitol Hill's best heritage buildings are boxes, with barely a change in massing or material, and elevations that remain remarkably the same from one corner to another. These best buildings are in fact, about as boxy as a box can be. Despite ample, recent built examples to the contrary, the Tinkerbells continue to believe that the modulation of a building’s mass, both horizontally and vertically, and composing it of as many distinct materials and colors as possible, leads to good design. This has not worked, and it is definitely not precedent-based. What this modulation and material mayhem is, is design by check-list. As long as each box is checked, the final result seems to be irrelevant. What is lost in this paint-by-numbers approach is the detail -- literally. For it was (and is) in the details of a window opening or in a material transition that human scale and texture of our heritage (and modern) buildings was achieved. In was (and is) those elements of a building that can be held in one's hand, that can be understood at eye level while passing by, that add scale and 'humanity'. Not design approaches that, due to their grand gestures, can only be comprehended from across the street or down the block. While it is true that color, material differentiation, and expressive massing can add interest to a building, it is no substitute for the richness added by detail and craft. In fact, I would be more than happy to see buildings such as the one below (designed by pb elemental, on 12th Ave and John) that have some nice detail and are volumetrically and materially expressive. But let's stick to basics first before we venture into more adventurous design, and have a look at a range of Capitol Hill boxes.

[caption id="attachment_1343" align="alignnone" width="700" caption="12th Avenue and John Street"][/caption]

[caption id="attachment_1309" align="alignnone" width="700" caption="Broadway and John"][/caption]

Above, one of the few heritage buildings on Broadway that is of suitable scale for the street's importance to the neighborhood, and a fine, anonymous urban building. The terracotta surrounded residential entrance is on John, and is the only part of the building that strongly asserts itself against the predominantly brick exterior.  The ground floor and top floor are expressed by only contiguous lines of terracotta. There are, I believe, only two types of windows, and for all intents and purposes, one material and one mass. Small medallions are located at floor lines of the third, fourth, and fifth floors to add a little sparkle. The building's John and Broadway corner is unapologetically non-celebratory, nicely matching the rest of the building.

[caption id="attachment_1307" align="alignnone" width="700" caption="Belmont and E Howell"][/caption]

[caption id="attachment_1306" align="alignnone" width="700" caption="Belmont and E Howell Entry"][/caption]

Exhibiting greater boxiness, as well as greater size, than the Broadway and John building, The Granada at Belmont and E Howell is among the largest apartments on Capitol Hill and reminds me of similar apartment buildings in other large American cities. It is a time tested typology. And though I would not want an entire neighborhood of them, its very restrain adds to its grandeur, making it a robust urban building. Sadly, though, I need not have that concern; for, based on current zoning it is too large for our neighborhood in height (per zoning), and its unarticulated breadth is relentlessly long (per design guidelines). As above, the base and top are distinguished only by lines of terracotta, while the upper floor windows (of only two sizes) have an terracotta header, and those at the ground floor have a keystone set within a brick jack arch. The entrance is perhaps a bit diminutive given the building's heft, but there is no denying that it handsome and well executed -- a result of concentrating resources to where they had the greatest impact. Note the fine lamps. This building is indeed a big, flat -- yet classy -- box.

[caption id="attachment_1311" align="alignnone" width="700" caption="Bellevue between Pike and Pine"][/caption]

A favorite medium sized apartment building tucked mid-block on Bellevue, along the Pike-Pine Corridor. While at first glance it appears to be little different from the above two examples, this building employs a slightly different design strategy. Here, the windows are of uniform size and placement, and the middle floors have no distinguishing elements. Whatsoever.  Instead, the architect decided to focus efforts on a luxurious base and sumptuous roof parapet. As in the previous examples, the facade is essentially dead flat (but none the worse because of it) save for some slightly projecting trim at the second and third floor lines (why distract from the gorgeous base?). A carefully selected brick color nicely completes the material palette, and a well detailed canopy marks the building's entrance. One of the better examples on the Hill for the much coveted 'base-middle-top' design approach. And a box to its bones.

[caption id="attachment_1303" align="alignnone" width="700" caption="12th Avenue and Madison"][/caption]

A handsome edifice, indeed. The heritage portion of the Trace Lofts (the tan brick base) takes the above examples to a next logical stage: greater articulation of the facades (but wait, here's the crazy part), while maintaining material integrity and uniformity! Not prone to exuberance, the designers wanted something a little different, which is great. What is equally great is that they found it not going hog wild with garish colors and monstrous modulations, but with subtle detail and nuance of the overall design approach. Major structural elements are expressed as bays, with a secondary reading afforded by a subdivision of said bays into three more sub-bays. The cornice is more pronounced than in the previous examples, and there is a pre-cursor to the structural bay/ infill approach occurring on the ground floor, and advanced in the next two examples. Why not change materials you ask, why not a more pronounced modulation? Because it was not needed.  And by keeping the material the same, the changes stay calm and quiet -- not screaming, not annoying. And kudos to the architects (Johnson Architects, I believe) of the top floor addition. It is black, it steps back, and it disappears allowing the real focus of our attention -- the original building -- to remain at center stage. And just look at that corner. What confidence!

[caption id="attachment_1301" align="alignnone" width="700" caption="Union and 11th"][/caption]

[caption id="attachment_1310" align="alignnone" width="700" caption="Union and 10th Avenue"][/caption]

A street of buildings built like the two above would be just fine with me. A robust, concrete frame, with brick infill and large windows (almost always a winning approach) mark these two buildings as a transitional typology; one that was based on based on a rationalized constructional process optimized for an industrial economy. All bays of the buildings are essentially identical. This repetition works, though, because there is an understandable progression from the largest elements (the bays), their subsequent division and expression into individual floors (not two floors pretending to be one), to the texture within each bay; a texture created by a clearly expressing the structure verses the infill. The windows and their structure introducing yet another scale, and one arrives at a clearly understandable intermixing of materials, scales, and textures. It gets my heart racing.

At Olive and Summit we have a building, the Biltmore, which defies easy categorization, so I won't try. Suffice it to say, there is quite a bit going on here: funky corner, hyper active parapet, bay windows, and some major changes in massing. Yet despite these potential identity rending moves, it still reads as one building. What's wrong with that? It is one big building, and it is just fine that it is not trying to look like two (or more) buildings. The stepping back of the mass, of course, helps to mitigate its size; yet notice, the materials and details do not change. The stepping back was enough, and I suspect that all of the visual gymnastics of the terra-cotta, bay windows, and crenulations weren't for the purpose of making a large building to  appear to be two or three smaller buildings at all (wink, wink), but merely an architect’s eclectic vision of a single building. No remorsefulness here. And probably, no design review board, either.

[caption id="attachment_1304" align="alignnone" width="700" caption="Trace Lofts"][/caption]

Fast forward to current development. The (new) Trace Lofts is a good example of an understanding of the precedent set by the previous examples. The massing is simple, and where it steps back from the street, it does it in a bold way that creates a pleasant space for an adjacent restaurant to utilize (not a private, gated courtyard). A clear, structural frame orders both the ground floors, as well as the upper, and huge windows (with nice, shinny aluminum frames) continue the breakdown of scale while contrasting with the dark grey metal panels. Because they are floor to ceiling, the windows require guardrails, whose finish matches that of the windows and adds more (perhaps,too much?) visual interest. And finally, the metal siding. Hurray for actually designing the metal siding's profile, instead of taking it off the shelf. The bold horizontal lines succeed at reducing the buildings mass, and their strong profile adds shadow lines to the metal siding. And hey, since building codes require the building's base to be made of concrete (for fire issues), why just not leave it be? Good choice. Johnson Architects.

[caption id="attachment_1300" align="alignnone" width="700" caption="The Pearl"][/caption]

Although not as well executed as their commendable Agnes Street Lofts (nor with the same budget I would imagine), Weinstein A/U's Pearl Apartments advance some of the strategies of Agnes and is worth a look, none the less. With the frenzy surrounding modulating facades, and a typical solution being bay windows, the strategy here is relatively novel and definitely worth supporting: subtractive bay expression. Subtractive bays you say? Yes, in so much that the mass of the building remains intact, but smaller voids are introduced between them, creating bays. Although not employed by the historic examples noted above, it is of the same lineage: it relies on (dimensionally) smaller expressions to achieve its ends of breaking down mass. Similar (superficially, at least), to the rusticated base on the Granada Apartments, above, where recessed bricks add a subtle dimensionality.  The integrity of the building is maintained, while (many) smaller scaled interventions add (a great deal of) texture. A nice progression from large to small, and a very modern approach. Let's see some more -- subtraction!

The Survival Guide to Architectural Internship & Career Development

[caption id="attachment_1294" align="aligncenter" width="700" caption="The Survival Guide to Architectural Internship and Career Development"][/caption] In 2006, I published a book…or more aptly, Wiley & Sons published a book I had written the year prior.  It is entitled The Survival Guide to Internship and Career Development.  At the time, I was in the throes of establishing our fledgling practice and balancing AIA National committee work with marriage and maintaining friendships back at home…the last thing on my mind was creating more travel opportunities with a book tour.  Nor was I as hip to the social media scene at the time to know how to tweet, blog, or crosspost articles to promote the book.  (Oh if I only knew then what I know now….)

As the economy ramped up into the frenzy we saw just a few years ago, I wondered if the text had lost relevance.  And with the short attention spans spawned by the internet and now the book being almost 6 years old, I questioned if people would feel it relevant enough to purchase.  So I’d gone down a road of complacency about promoting the book. 

Until…Just recently I was approached by AIA San Francisco to kick off their mentorship program, an annual program that is based on a group mentoring model that I initiated in Seattle 8 years ago and have presented at AIA conferences around the country.  It was also a mentoring model I highlighted in my book.  Well, it turns out that San Francisco is not the only chapter that used my model and book to develop mentoring practices for their chapter.  (I'm headed down to San Fran today to do a keynote for their meeting.)

And last month, I received this message via Linked In: 

Grace, We met briefly at an IDP Coordinators conference in Chicago where you were the keynote speaker. For the past 4 years I have run a mandatory IDP Registration course at Wentworth Institute in Boston. We register approximately 160 interns a year and coordinate the course with a cooperative work experience. The rest of the faculty has been trained using NCARB materials and under funding from an NCARB grant I purchased cases of your book to give to faculty as the standard for mentoring. I just wanted to say thank you for the book. Keep Smiling! Charlie

Indeed his email made me smile.  Huh…who knew?  Perhaps I should reconsider my apathy in blogging about the book...so here I am.

As the economy improves for architects (we’ve hit bottom now, haven’t we?) I do believe many of the topics have a renewed relevance…as well as many topics being age-old questions that interns have never known where to seek answers – the premise of the book was to document the “no duh” advice that a seasoned architect could provide…but without the embarrassment of having to ask the “dumb questions.”

And while many architects think, "oh, this book is just for interns"...the irony of writing this book is that it coincided with Mike and I establishing our firm (because that's when you have the most free time, right?).  So the last chapter is actually devoted on how to start a design firm, and it was quite literally written as we were setting up Schemata Workshop.  A pretty useful chapter for the non-intern, mid-career professional who has been laid of during the recession and trying to figure out how to make a go of it on their own.

If you are interested in getting your very own copy of the book you can search on amazon or better yet, follow this link.  http://www.wiley.com/WileyCDA/WileyTitle/productCd-0471692638.html

And if you already have a copy of the book and would like to share your comments, I would love to hear them!

Laddership - a group mentoring model

[caption id="attachment_1290" align="aligncenter" width="700" caption="Laddership"][/caption] 8 years ago, I started a mentoring group for 5 Seattle-area architectural interns.  It was based on a model of facilitated peer mentoring and professional development – and thusly named by one participant as “Laddership” – in hindsight, a hybrid name from laddered mentoring and leadership.  The group was intentionally comprised of interns at various experience levels – from straight out of school to ready to take their registration exams.  I solicited candidates for the mentor group from the local Young Architects Forum list serve and had an informal application process.  We met monthly rotating responsibilities for selecting location and topics.

Fast forward to present day.  The group has gone through various iterations of participants (with interns rotating off as they moved away, got licensed, or had increased responsibilities at work/home) – the current makeup has been fairly consistent for the past 2-3 years, with one intern having been with me the whole time.  We are less formal now, we don’t worry about selecting a topic – years of familiarity have allowed us to meet and simply check in with everyone on current status, and seeing where the conversation takes us.  We also have stopped rotating around and have been meeting at the same pizza place on the same day/time each month – we’re “regulars”.

My group is very diverse…not only in their experience level, but also in their personalities (introverts and extroverts), professionally savvy (with those very well networked and those who are not as much), and values (strong beliefs about sustainability, bottom line, ethics, contribution to society).  Having been with these individuals for so long, I know that despite differences, there is a general respect and collegiality that the participants have for one another.  While I don’t think anyone in this group would be likely to have met each other professionally if not for this group, I do think that they would consider each other friends and value our monthly interactions.

I have seen their perspectives open up, their lives shared (many babies and marriages have occurred over the course of years), and professional advancements made.  I have great pride for each one of them – and appreciate all that they’ve taught me.  While I would like to believe that I’m still a “young” architect, I realize that it’s been a long time since I’ve been in their shoes - listening to their daily struggles informs me of the same challenges that my employees are likely to experience…and provides me with the wisdom and insight to best mentor my own.  While I’ve mentored one-on-one in the past, the Laddership model has brought me significantly more satisfaction and reward – so much so that I continue to prioritize and look forward to the monthly meetings.

During the first 5 years, I had enough interest that I recruited mentors and initiated four additional groups.  A few years ago, AIA Seattle took over the administration of the “Laddership” program as a chapter wide event, expanding the program to over a dozen groups.  Over the past 5 years, I have presented this mentorship model several times at the national AIA conference as well as at regional and state conferences across the country. 

This week I fly to San Francisco to kick off the AIA SF Mentorship Program.  It is based on my Laddership model and I’m excited to learn more about how they have adapted the concept to suit the needs of the chapter.  If you know any architects (young or old) in San Francisco, please encourage them to attend.  The model works best when participants represent a continuum of experience levels – it can’t be a bunch of old timers with the newbies straight of school. 

Details and RSVP info about the event can be found at http://2011mentorshipprogram.eventbrite.com/

A Welcoming Patina -- an Opening Salvo to Preserve Our Interior Environment

While much effort in architectural design -- and its evaluation -- revolves around the exterior of buildings, it is the interiors that have the most intimate impact on our lives. This dichotomy is understandable, as the exteriors of buildings, and their surrounding streetscape and landscape are fully within the public gaze. We must not, however, forget the interiors behind the facades, especially those that have the special characteristic of a  'welcoming patina', a quality resulting from age and/or use that make one feel especially comfortable within them. In addition to qualities of age and use, I would add  vernacular design, the resourcefulness of the interior's designer's ability (professional or otherwise) to assemble disparate, often overlooked elements in successful and unique ways. Driven by a lack of resources (and, perhaps with a conscious eye to resisting the corporate, sterile design that pervades our society), these artisans craft a pleasing aesthetic experience from materials that may have otherwise been discarded by others. They resist the impulse to make something 'better' by giving it a fresh coat of paint, a shiny polish, or, by replacing it with something new, and instead revel in incorporating (or letting be) worn paint, mis-matched furnishings, and unfinished walls. Art figures in as well, be it oil on canvas or discarded bottle caps.

On Capitol Hill we are blessed not only with a fine urban (exterior) street-scape, but also with many patinad/vernacular interiors that were not necessarily designed by architects or interior designers, but perhaps by the owners, tenants, artists, and patrons of the space themselves. Interiors by happenstance, as it were.  Thus formed, our shops, restaurants, cafes, and theaters reveal the brush strokes of their many creators, including that most ineffable of characteristics, the patina of time. As Capitol Hill prepares for its next round of development, it is precisely these slightly worn and dusty places that are the types of spaces that we will pine for the most should we lose them, as they are the most difficult to re-create.

Bauhaus Cafe is as fine an example of a welcoming patina and vernacular design as one could find on the Hill. In February 2002, when I was in Seattle for a job interview, Bauhaus cafe was the first Capitol Hill business I entered, and I remember it well. It not only sold me on Seattle, but especially on Capitol Hill, for any neighborhood that could support such a vibrant, gorgeous, interior was certainly where I wanted to live. Three weeks later I left Manhattan for Seattle.

There was obviously design intent and careful consideration in Bauhaus's layout, yet it feels as if it evolved over time, and has a great Northwest vernacular; it is as if it were shaped by the customers and baristas within, with their collective energy somehow contributing to a space that was meant to be.

In addition to its patina and vernacular, Bauhaus Cafe also has a nice variety of spatial types. From the large, main cafe space with its large windows fronting Pine Street, to the more intimate mezzanine and the still more cozy western sliver of a space that looks west, over Melrose Avenue. Finding space where available and making it work, is I suppose another quality of this kind of space. Divorced from planning done by remote corporate headquarters, such spaces adapt to the eddies and flows of their environment, grounding them to their site in a manner impossible to achieve without recognizing the potential in eccentric space.

There is a fine array of materials defining Bauhaus's spaces. The most robust is the wood of the grand bookshelf, which even includes one of those cool rolling ladders. The size of the wall provides an excellent and generous space from which to display the art work that hangs against it. The language of the bookcase nicely morphs into that of the staircase that leads to the mezzanine, which has a classic, load bearing masonry wall on its southern end, and a guard rail/wall affording one a prospect from which to look out over the main cafe space. And though there is an amazing amount of variety within a relatively compact space, the tones and materials blend together in a way so as not complete with each other or for attention. The dark floors, walls, and furniture, emphasize their contrast with the large bright windows. Glare, usually a nuisance and detractor from a space, here heightens one's awareness of the textures and spatial variety.  So complete is the Bauhaus experience, that even it fading exterior sign and crooked storefront proudly proclaim its patina to all who pass.

Although relatively new in its present location, Bimbo's Cantina has many of the above said qualities, yet in a more festive, polychromatic display. Here the interior is an apt reflection of Bimbo's eclectic and tasty offerings. No muted browns and blacks, as at Bauhaus, but vibrant and bright colors reflecting both the food and patrons (who are always a fixture around its welcoming bar). Empty fruit cases, dime-store piñatas, and (every color of the rainbow) sombreros adorn the interior, with an understanding of execution and display of creativity that no suburban, theme-restaurant could ever hope to achieve. And perhaps that is because at Bimbo's, it is not a theme at all, but an exuberant expression of those who created it -- an earnest expression of the people who both own it and work it  -- no a foreign expression of one who does not live the themes display.

Of particular fancy are the bottle-caps, re-purposed in as many ways as there are colors of the caps themselves. I will need to take note over my upcoming visits if these are a dynamic work whose breadth expands with each emptying cerveza. It is more than the objects themselves that are interesting, in fact one could argue that taken singly, they have no real interest in all and would actually be akin to the aforementioned suburban thematic restaurant. What differentiates Bimbo's and other like establishments on the Hill in their use of objet trouvé is in their compositional arrangement, where either through their repetition or assemblage (into forms far divorced from their original), they take on a new and visually pleasing appearance. Such insight into the latent potential of fruit cases is certainly beyond the grasp of an Applebees or Chili's.

By no means are the two above examples even close to representing the depth of Capitol Hill's patinad interiors, they just happen to be the two I visited one Saturday in March. So readers, please offer me your favorite places, with an eye toward continuing this call to action, a call to conserve the best Capitol Hill has to offer.

Building from Another Capitol Hill

[caption id="attachment_1170" align="alignnone" width="700" caption="Front Elevation"][/caption] Architecture comes in all shapes and sizes, and from all periods of history. Capitol Hill is fortunate to have a fairly good representation of many historic and contemporary designs. Although most of the buildings in our neighborhood  can be loosely grouped together into any number of 'styles', there are subsets within these larger categories that may have only a few, or perhaps only one representative. The novelty of singularity may at first draw one's attention, but good design is what sustains interest after the initial infatuation has passed. Good design is indeed the case with a modest little building on 231 Summit Avenue East, mid-block between John and Thomas Streets, a building which combines an unusual design approach (for our Capitol Hill) with good design, a design more likely being found on that other Capitol Hill, the one on the Potomac.

[caption id="attachment_1180" align="alignnone" width="700" caption="Oblique Elevation"][/caption]

My education as an architect and that of the majority of my colleagues did not delve into historical 'styles' or the vernacular. The history of architecture I was taught presented a building within the cultural context and time within which it was conceived, as well the underlying environmental and technological forces key to its formation.  The teaching of 'styles' and a formal-based approach to design -- and by formal I mean divorcing a building's execution from the above mentioned narratives and emphasizing form (geometry, scale, and proportion) -- was largely dismissed. Older generations of architects, however, received an education that was style based, resulting in buildings being designed with an emphasis on principles that had been vetted through many centuries of practice; however, while oftentimes visually pleasing, such form-based design was not always grounded within its cultural-time. The teaching of styles had its roots in the European academies, especially in France at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, and exercised a tremendous impact on early American architecture that continued through the beginnings of the twentieth century, where its force was greatest on the eastern seaboard of the United States, and was slowly diluted as one headed west.

[caption id="attachment_1171" align="alignnone" width="700" caption="Exterior Corridor South"][/caption]

Two-hundred thirty-one East Summit falls within the Beaux-Arts approach. The composition of its street elevation -- and a composition indeed it is -- has a formality and understanding of proportion and decorative motifs that indicate an aesthetic rooted in the cultural influences of the East Coast, rather than in the 'pioneer' aesthetic of the Pacific Northwest. Its materials and details are further revealing, including fair-faced (and very red) brick, instead of the more rustic materials common to NW design (think of Anhalt's clinker bricks), as well as terra-cotta trim with thematic elements derived not from nature, but from a pedagogy emphasizing  geometric purity and crispness. The openings if horizontal are sub-divided by windows that have a human (vertical) proportion, or are simply vertical themselves. The exterior corridor/colonnade harkens to east coast cities such as (the other) Georgetown or colonial Boston, cities whose original densities are similar to our Capitol Hill but were built of brick instead of wood (as a means to suppress fire) in a proximity close enough to each other to lead to the development of colonnades, allowing light to penetrate deeper into the building and giving merchants greater venue within which to display their wares.

[caption id="attachment_1173" align="alignnone" width="700" caption="Exterior Corridor North"][/caption]

Built in 1925, the architects who designed this handsome little building were not doubt educated and well versed in these older traditions. The faithful and skilled execution of 231 to its guiding design principles makes it a welcomed contributor to the built quality of our neighborhood, and holds many a lesson for architects today, in a tidy, easily digestible package. And though I have both feet firmly planted in the modernist tradition, that tradition's emphasis on continual re-invention and emphasis on originality often comes at the expense of the good for the interesting. Irrespective of one's particular design preferences, we can all learn from buildings such as 231 that are first good, with a little interest added for zest. That so much thought was spent on a very small building makes it even more precious, for similar to the cottages I wrote of several weeks ago, one would be hard pressed to find such a small (or even large), well-crafted building constructed today, ranking it amongst my favorite little anomalies on our Hill.