DESCRIPTION

Located on the southern tip of South Lake Union, our senior capstone project consisted a combination of retail, office, and restaurant space. With this project came a unique set of constructs and client specification. The client came to us with a list of specialized problems they needed solved for the building. These design challenges included a method for the building to engage the sidewalk below, a modest restaurant on the roof, a logical connection between the building and the garden across the street; and finally, a unique and site-specific façade.

Our solution encompasses these problems by the design of our façade. The façade skin offsets from the building face by anywhere from 3-10 feet at different points on the building. This façade is constructed from an HSS steel super structure, five foot by ten-foot steel frames attached to the HSS filled with COR-TEN expanded metal mesh sheets and shading fins. This is then rectified into the building structure. Using this detached façade as a tool, it begins to establish a physical connection to the garden through a sky-bridge, opens to create clear points of interaction on the store front, creates a pavilion for gathering on the roof that covers part of the restaurant, provides optimal shading on the south and south-east of the building, establishes an iconic form for an area with a lack of clear identity, and finally where the skin opens up, the floor plates on the office level bump out to foster optimal views of the lake.