ALLIED ARTS :: WATERFRONT

Waterfront Design Collaborative: Introduction

David Yeaworth
President, Allied Arts of Seattle

reprinted from Arcade magazine

"Be careful what you wish for!î That's what Brian Steinburg from Action: Better City told me when I pitched him the idea of doing a charrette on the Seattle waterfront sans viaduct. "There are architects and designers who have been drooling to take on the waterfront„and they'll come up with some of the most amazing ideas Seattle's ever seen,î he told me.

Well, Brian was right. On a sunny October Saturday, seven teams of architects, landscape architects, planners, designers, artists and historians presented a month's worth of work to each other and Allied Arts of Seattle. Not only are the results amazing in their creativity and style, they are overwhelming in their inspiration and quantity.

Allied Arts chose to sponsor a "collaborativeî instead of a "charretteî because our goal is to promote a discussion that will lead our community toward a waterfront for all, not just a tourist site on a transportation corridor. The collaborative wasn't a contest, rather, it was a collection of visions, intended to inspire the public and our decision-makers.

The design teams of the Allied Arts Waterfront Design Collaborative made up a cross-section of the Seattle design community. Some of the participants like Lee Copeland and Dennis Haskell have preached the "I have a Dream„for the Waterfrontî sermon for decades. Their leadership, along with that of opinion-leaders like Lesley Bain, Barbara Swift and Jerry Earnst, laid a solid foundation for the group. Cary Moon and Davidya Kasperzyk lead teams that stretched the imagination and made the impossible seem doable. Roger Gula and Joel Egan's teams wowed the collaborative, not only for the creativity of their ideas, but also for the context in which they posed their designs and how they were presented. Susan Jones led a team of a dozen UW architecture students who proved that any lack of experience that youth might have, it could easily be made up through inspiration, daring and hard work.

The principles we used to guide the design teams' focus were intentionally simple and prioritized the waterfront as a destination over a transportation corridor:

• The Alaskan Way Viaduct will be removed
• All pass-through-Seattle traffic will travel below the surface
• Pedestrian experience will take priority over vehicular activity on the surface of the waterfront

Thanks to an enlightening presentation by People for Puget Sound Executive Director Kathy Fletcher at the kickoff meeting in September, several of the teams also addressed many of the ecological concerns facing the waterfront.

The collaborative was hosted by Mithun architects+planners+designers at their office on Pier 56. Each of the design teams also received critique from John Rahaim, City of Seattle planning director, Chris Rogers, Seattle Art Museum director of capital projects and Philip Wohlstetter, immediate past president of Allied Arts.

If you'd like information about other forums to see more of the results of the collaborative contact Allied Arts at 206/624-0433 or aarts@speakeasy.net.