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.

5 AAPI Architects and Designers You Need to Know

In honor of Asian American Pacific Islander Heritage Month, Schemata wants to shed light on a few architects and designers of the AAPI community that have contributed to the architectural history of America as well as those who continue to push the boundaries of architecture and design today.

Minoru Yamasaki

Minoru Yamasaki is a first-generation Japanese American master architect born in Seattle, WA. During his time studying architecture at the University of Washington, he was also working in an Alaskan cannery to pay for his tuition. Working alongside fellow Asian coworkers, many of whom were poor, inspired Yamaski to invest in his talents and use them in a way that would make his life meaningful to both himself and those around him.

While Yamasaki is best known for being the mastermind behind the design of the World Trade Center, his work can be found in the skylines of many cities across the U.S.. In Seattle specifically, he is to credit the for the designs of the IBM building, Rainier Tower, and the Pacific Science Center- a current Schemata project.

Isamu Noguchi (1904 – 1988)

Isamu Noguchi is a half Japanese half Irish artist and designer born in Los Angeles, California. While he is best known for his sleek and organic furniture designs, Noguchi also created sculptures, gardens, lighting designs, ceramics, architecture and set designs; drawing inspiration from the places he traveled and lived throughout his life. His work simultaneously subtle and bold, traditional and modern, set a new standard for the reintegration of the arts.

Today, you can find one of his many public sculptures “Black Sun” at Capitol Hill’s very own Volunteer Park!

To learn more about Isamu Noguchi, visit https://www.noguchi.org/

Annie Han and Daniel Mihalyo

Annie Han and Daniel Mihalyo are a Seattle-based duo who founded Lead Pencil Studio- a firm that contains both an architectural practice that specializes in residential and commercial buildings and an art practice that focuses on site-specific pieces that reimagine the conditions of architecture at full scale. Han, who was born in South Korean and Mihalyo, a Washington native, joined forces as undergraduate students at the University of Oregon where they won a design competition as well as the State of Oregon Development of the Year Award. Almost a decade after graduating, they opened their firm in 2002. Since then, the couple’s work has been featured in several museums and galleries throughout the US and they have continued to receive grants, awards, and residencies, thus, creating the blueprint to successfully bridge the gap between art and architecture.

To view their current projects, visit https://www.leadpencilstudio.org/

John Belford- Lelaulu

Driven by the idea of social design, Belford- Lelaulu has collaborated with nonprofit organizations across the globe such as Habitat for Humanity to design spaces that cater to the specific needs of communities battling various hardships.

In an interview with Architecture Now, he describes how his Samoan background influences his approach to his work:

“There’s a (Samoan) proverb which is ‘O le ala i le pule o le tautua’, meaning, ‘The path to authority is through service, in order to do anything in Samoa, you need to be serving. You can’t just become an architect or a chief. You have to be helping different members of the community. For me, I ask myself how I can serve the most vulnerable people in our communities.”

Through this work, he also developed a new perspective on architecture and its societal impact. This realization then sparked a desire to create more opportunities for young Pasifika people, like himself, to explore humanitarian and social architecture. As a result, he established MAU Studio – providing educational opportunities and experiences that allows New Zealand’s youth to connect with their culture and engage with their community through meaningful architecture.

To learn more about John Belford-Lelaulu, check out this article

Suchi Reddy

Suchi Reddy is an Indian-American architect, artist, and founder of Reddymade- a design firm based in New York. The firm’s portfolio offers a wide variety of projects ranging from single family homes to public sculptures, all embodying Reddy’s cutting edge approach to art and design. Reddy’s Work has been featured in places such as Time square and The Smithsonian where it welcomes societal engagement and generates dialogue around topics of both local and global relevance.

One of her recent pieces, “me+you” is an interactive installation that debuted at the Smithsonian back in November of 2021. The sculpture combines elements of both architecture and artificial intelligence by inviting audience members to speak their “future vision” into one of the many designated points of the cloud base and, in response, the piece uses AI to translate the meaning, tone and sentiment of their words to then be reflected in a unique combination of color & light.  According to Reddy, the piece serves almost as an “Interactive mandala”- a spiritual Icon of South Asian religious art.

For more information about Suchi Reddy and her approach to design, check out this article recently featured in W Magazine.

Architects in Schools

As volunteers in AIA Seattle’s Diversity Roundtable (DRT) Committee, we are about to embark on another adventure with our Architects in Schools program! As the 2017 - 2018 school year is now in full swing, we wanted to share a little bit about the program, the past work we’ve accomplished, and our exciting plans for the future.

First, a little bit of background. The DRT’s Architects in Schools Program is designed to expose K-8 students of underrepresented communities to architecture, and engage them in the design process. The goal is to give the youth involved an understanding of design basics through hands-on experiences and discussions, while focusing on bringing awareness of the architectural profession to children of diverse racial backgrounds. This is in support of the DRT’s overarching mission; to enrich the architectural profession by nurturing future designers who have diverse experiences, skill sets, and perspectives. Such shifts will create innovative solutions and approaches, while supporting an inclusive environment within the architectural profession.

Architects in Schools has been a part of the DRT’s agenda in the past, however last year, we rebooted the curriculum with a new pilot program at St. Edward’s Elementary School in Columbia City. DRT volunteers worked with 19 of the school’s eighth-grade students, all either female or minorities, through weekly one-hour lessons. The curriculum for the pilot was divided into quarterly groups of sessions, which introduced students to the profession, taught them the basics of the design process, and exposed them to architectural drawing techniques. The program ended with a final design project and public presentation, where the students learned SketchUp as a tool to express their designs. The broader strategy for last year was to develop the students’ creative problem-solving and computer skills, as well to help with their math and artistic development.

Sprinkled throughout our classroom sessions with the students, the University of Washington provided a guided tour of the Department of Architecture where students learned about the first steps toward becoming an architect. We also incorporated an office tour, where students heard about how a firm works, and were able to ask questions to get a sense of what it’s like to work in an architectural office.

The first two sessions for this year’s Architects in Schools kicked off a couple weeks ago at St. Edward. We’re excited to have support through the K-8 Architecture & Design Education Grant from The Architects Foundation and Armstrong World Industries Foundation this year to be able to expand what our program can offer. We will also be shifting the curriculum focus from computer based design, to honing skills around scale, model building, and transforming 2D drawings into 3D physical forms.

Looking towards the future, we are hoping to broaden our outreach to multiple schools within the next year or two. Stay tuned for more updates as we continue to grow and evolve our program!

-Marijana & Margaret