Urban Design

Project Update: Acer House Passed Design Review

 

Acer House, a mixed-used project in Seattle’s Central District, recently passed its Design Recommendations Meeting with the Central Area Design Review Board. The intersection is a cultural and community hub with the Garfield Community Center, NOVA at the Horace Mann School, Garfield High School, Medgar Evers Pool, Quincy Jones Performing Arts Center, and the Eritrean Community Center. The design team includes Schemata Workshop and Donald King, were also the authors of the Central Area Design Guidelines, and therefore Acer House embodies the community values for what development should look like. In a true expression of community voice, both the programming and design of the project has been shaped by community input.

The project is Seattle’s first anti-racist private development project and hopes to be the benchmark for future development around the city. Acer House will be the first project in Seattle to apply Afrofuturist design principles to a mixed-use project - not from the standpoint of high-tech materials, but in the spirit of creating a place where the Black community can see themselves in the past, present and future of the Central Area.

The design faced challenges associated to the scale of the building under current zoning and neighborhood context. To address this, our team, which includes design lead Donald King, collaborated with the Central Area Land Use Review Committee (LURC) to find the right balance of massing and design. Working collaboratively, the team accomplished a solution that fits within the existing environment. The final design solution was approved by the Design Review Board with no critiques. This stamp of approval validates months of hard work the team put into a designing a building that honors the history of the Central District and realizes the vision of what it could be.

Cohousing Patterns: Ceiling Height Variety

“A building in which the ceiling heights are all the same is virtually incapable of making people comfortable.”

It is all too often that the Common House is designed and built with the least funds (many communities prioritize the money for individual units) and therefore, the overall enclosure of the Common House is constructed with the idea that a future mezzanine or second floor will be added later. The resulting spaces for dining, conversation, and meal preparation all occur under a single ceiling.

Provide a variety of ceiling heights that are appropriate for the functions. The dining room may want to be a grand space with high ceilings, however, the kitchen will be more functional with lower ceilings. In addition, smaller seating groups for conversation are not inviting if they are located in a cavernous room with the same ceiling height as the dining room.

Bakken, a cohousing community in Northern Denmark, is comprised of duplexes, triplexes and a large common house. In the common house, the dining and seating area all occur under the same ceiling. The seating area is not welcoming and did not encourage residents to linger and talk. However, over half of the dining room floor framing had been installed with the idea that the second-floor mezzanine would be extended. While the project was never completed, the major framing elements were left in place creating an implied ceiling. The tables under this “lower” ceiling felt more intimate.

The height of a ceiling can also determine the intimacy of a space. The ceiling must be proportionate to the size of the room - a small room with a tall ceiling will feel equally uncomfortable as a large room with a low ceiling. The original pattern describes rules of thumb for ideal width-to-height ratios. The acoustics of any room are affected by the ceiling height and room proportion and should be given specific attention during design.

Cohousing: A New American Dream

Grace Kim takes the virtual stage at the Seoul Cohousing Symposium to discuss the new American dream home, cohousing.

As loneliness becomes a growing health concern across the globe, people are looking for creative solutions to solve this often overlooked issue. A common cause in America is the lack of community that comes along with the “American Dream Home”. We see this happen in suburbs where, despite proximity, it can be rare for people to get to know their neighbors. Cohousing is centered around community; a place where residents feel support from family and friends, belonging, security, and a sense of wellbeing. Sounds pretty nice, right?