Two new bridges designed by Seattle-based LMN Architects are giving back to the Washington state communities of Spokane and Tukwila. The simple, soaring white structures span automobiles and railways bridge gaps between neighborhoods, reclaiming the pedestrian experience in both the historically underserved region of the Sprague and along the bucolic Green River trail.  The Tukwila Urban Center Bridge was a key component of the city’s 20-year expansion plan. The 220-foot-long bridge is located at a major regional crossroads just outside of Seattle that's poised for expansion. The project was conceptualized with boldness in mind, resulting in a statement piece accentuated by built-in LED lighting that, when activated, climbs up the cables to offer a “subtle web effect” and flashes a colorful light show that plays off the white metallic elements.  Its form was also inspired by the region’s history, taking cues from Pacific Northwest's tribal canoes, and designed with sensitivity to the river’s large migratory salmon population. Metal grills on either side of the bridge add structural support while also allowing for sunlight to permeate down to the water, keeping it warm and fast-moving for the river life. All the while, the highly visible 45-foot-high bowstring arch acts as a local landmark for the people of Tukwila to easily navigate between the commercial western bank of the city and the more residential east side, previously unnavigable to pedestrians and cyclists. The overall effect, according to LMN, is “Simplicity, clarity, and lightness.”  The University District Gateway Bridge was unveiled side-by-side, with its prominent 120-foot-tall arch rising sharply into the Spokane skyline and visible for miles around the low neighborhoods of the University District and the emerging South University area. The Gateway Bridge is anchored by organically sloping ramps and greenery, while stair options allow cyclists and pedestrians to safely cross a route formerly bisected by a BNSF freight rail and an arterial highway,  The 458-foot-long bridge seems to grow harmoniously out of the landscape on either side of the thoroughfare, opening new opportunities for economic and social growth for both neighborhoods: expanded access to housing and retail for the University and its students, and long-awaited economic sparks for South residents.  “One of the great things about public infrastructure projects is that they benefit the entire public,” said LMN principal Howard Fitzpatrick in a statement. “The Gateway Bridge will make a real difference in the lives of many people in Spokane, and the enthusiastic public reception of the project has been very rewarding for the design team.” While both bridges only span a few hundred feet each, their dimensions are less important than the impact on the communities they connect and carefree transport. While industry and vehicles have a long and well-recorded history of interrupting the traditional human-scaled urban fabric of 21st-century cities, these simple structures are small incisions with a goal for lasting impact. 

Thanks to LMN Architects, Seattle has a new space for making experimental music. The recently opened Octave 9: Raisbeck Music Center performance and educational music facility brings new state-of-the-art sound experience capabilities right to the city’s Benaroya Hall symphony complex, which was also designed by LMN 20 years ago.

The new music center is spectacularly technical in terms of its offerings, and includes a custom-designed acoustically absorptive ceiling and 13 curving screens hung on circular tracks that can create nearly-360-degree immersive and interactive projections. The facility's speakers, microphones, projectors, lighting, and HVAC are all integrated into the absorptive ceiling while a professional-quality Meyer Constellation digital acoustic system is sophisticated enough to allow musicians who use the space to engage in cross-genre performances.

According to the architects, the sound system enables a “spatial sound” experience, created when individual speakers across the room play selective sounds to create the impression of movement.

Octave 9: Raisbeck Music Center at Benaroya Hall 200 University Street Seattle, Washington Architect: LMN Architects

Computer software giant Microsoft is moving along in its efforts to replace and expand its longtime corporate headquarters campus in Redmond, Washington, east of Seattle.  According to Geekwire, Microsoft recently announced the architecture and contracting teams for the transformational project, which aims to replace nine existing two-story office clusters with 18 four- and five-story office blocks. On the design side, LMN, NBBJ, WRNS Studio, and ZGF Architects are on board for the 3 million-square-foot project; Berger Partnership will act as lead landscape architect with OLIN partnering on the project as well. Microsoft has also selected Skanska, Balfour Beatty, GLY, and Sellen as general contractors for the re-do, which will affect roughly 72 acres on Microsoft’s 500-acre campus. The project will demolish all of the of the site’s original 'X-Wing'-style, 1980s-era office buildings, replacing those facilities and then adding a net 1.8 million-square-feet of space on top of what is existing. The new offices will be clustered into “distinct villages,” according to a Microsoft statement, with the core section aiming to be “more open and less formal” than the current campus. A rendering unveiled by Microsoft depicts glass-wrapped office buildings laid out along a skewed grid surrounding a central green containing playing fields and a bosque.  The project comes as Redmond begins to densify ahead of forthcoming transit investments that will link the city with Seattle in coming years. The first phase of the city’s Overlake Village—a 170-acre mixed-use district that will eventually house 40,000 residents—is underway and will bring 1.2 million square feet of offices, 1,400 housing units, 25,000 square feet of retail uses, a hotel, and a conference center to the town. Microsoft aims to begin work on its $250 million campus expansion later this year with an eye toward completing the project by 2022. 

[Editor’s Note: This the second in a three-part series documenting the winners of the AIA 2018 Honor Awards, which are broken down into three categories: architecture, interior architecture, and urban design. This list covers the interior architecture awards, but additional segments spotlight winners in architecture and urban design.] The American Institute of Architects announced its 2018 recipients of the Institute Honor Awards January 12. The 17 winners were pulled from approximately 500 submissions from across the globe and five interior architecture projects took home the prize. The designs range from a high-end New York loft to a middle school in Missouri, with unique approaches to lighting, spatial volume, and material palette. The five-person jury that selected this year’s AIA Interior Architecture Honor Award winners included:

• Brian Caldwell, THINKTANK Design Group;
• Joshua Aidlin, Aidlin Darling Design;
• Kiyomi Kurooka, DWL Architects + Planners Inc.;
• John Paquin, Statesville;
• William T. Ruhl, RUHL WALKER Architects.

Chicago Public Library, Chinatown Branch Skidmore, Owings & Merrill Chicago From the jury: “The conscious approach for the building’s ideals for interior decisions are evident in the artistic expression of the history of the cultural identity of the community." Photographer's Loft Desai Chia Architecture New York City From the jury: "This is exquisitely detailed and crafted so much so that it appears one would be living in artwork." Reeds Spring Middle School Dake Wells Architecture Reeds Spring, Missouri From the jury: "Such a clear concept organized the program around elements found in the Ozark landscape led to beautiful execution. Buried in a hill, yet bursting full of daylight is praiseworthy.” Sound Transit University of Washington Station LMN Architects Seattle From the jury: "An aesthetically inspiring jewel that doubles as fantastic public art." Square, Inc. Headquarters Bohlin Cywinski Jackson San Francisco From the jury: "The company’s ethos is reflected in every detail of their software and hardware products, with a crisp, minimalist design that is both intuitive and elegant."

 

The Architect’s Newspaper will be hosting its Facades+AM conference in Seattle on December 8th at the Motif Seattle Hotel. The latest installment in AN’s ongoing conference series, Facades+AM will bring a total of three sessions and nine speakers to Emerald City–based Architecture Engineering and Construction industry professionals. The conference is co-chaired by Stephen Van Dyck, partner at LMN Architects (LMN), and will feature a bevy of Seattle-specific discussions led by some of the region’s best-known architects, designers, and engineers, including Van Dyck, Maurya McClintock of McClintock Facade Consulting, and Jim Graham of Graham Baba Architects. The morning’s panel presentations will cover three topics: cross-industry innovation, facade design for the Washington State Convention Center Addition project, and the role of historic preservation in Seattle’s ongoing construction boom. The first panel will be moderated by Van Dyck, who explained to AN that the discussion will center around the way in which Seattle’s tech-heavy economy is resulting in a collection of emerging architecture industry–adjacent technologies. The discussion will include presentations from Dan Belcher, developer with McNeel, Andry Bridge, Director of R&D with Janicki, and Choong Ng, co-founder of Vertex.AI, and will delve into synergistic technological developments coming of out the city’s most fruitful architecture and technology partnerships, like new advances in digitally-guided tooling and fabrication methodologies. The morning’s second panel discussion will zero-in on the Washington State Convention Center Addition project, for which LMN is serving as associate architect. The 1.5 million-square-foot addition to the Washington State Convention Center will usher in one of the world's first vertically-organized convention centers. One of the major challenges for the design team on the project will be to integrate the sprawling 15-story structure into surrounding areas while also promoting energy efficiency and social incubation, according to Van Dyck, who will also moderate this discussion. He will be joined by various members of the project team discussing each speaker's respective role in the project. Panelists for the discussion will be Peter Alspach, principal at ARUP, Maurya McClintock, founder of McClintock Facade Consulting, and Kate Rufe, architect at LMN. The morning’s final discussion will highlight Seattle’s ongoing growth dilemma, which is pitting high-rise residential growth and the city’s urban renewal against historic preservation efforts, many of which are aimed toward adaptive reuse, like Olson Kundig's renovations to the Seattle Space Needle. From the ongoing issues over changes coming to Lawrence Halprin’s Freeway Park, to plans for reusing the city’s iconic Key Arena and LMN’s own renovation and expansion to the Asian Art Museum, Seattle is packed with controversial, inspiring, and thoughtful historic preservation approaches alike. The adaptive reuse-focused panel—moderated by Jessica Miller, principal at LMN—will feature presentations from Blair Payson, principal at Olson Kundig, Michael Aoki-Kramer, managing principal at RDH Building Science, Inc., and Jim Graham, co-founder of Graham Baba Architects who will discuss their own firms’ preservation-related projects. For more information on Seattle’s Facades+AM conference, see the conference website.

Seattle-based LMN Architects has released new renderings depicting the firm’s planned 50,000-square-foot addition to the Seattle Aquarium complex. LMN’s $100 million design focuses on adding a new wing adjacent to the existing aquarium to boost capacity at the 40-year-old institution, which has been operating near capacity in recent years. The so-called Ocean Pavilion will house new exhibits focused on tropical and reef ecosystems and will include a 350,000-gallon warm-water tank that can house larger aquatic specimens such as sharks. The shark tank will come outfitted with several viewing platforms and will be located within a larger, flexible gathering space that can hold up to 200 people in a variety of configurations. The new addition will also include smaller “jewel” tanks that will highlight rare species with the help of new interpretive technologies. This space will also include smaller, more intimate gathering spots for “hands-on educational activities and interpretation,” according to a statement from the architects. In the statement, Bob Davidson, CEO of the Seattle Aquarium said, "LMN Architects brings a rich history and commitment to community-focused civic projects, combined with a strong design approach that connects public-focused building programs with the crafting of urban space and experience.” Mark Reddington, partner at LMN Architects, said, "The Seattle Aquarium is a leader in education and advocacy for the health of the world's oceans. For the City of Seattle, this project will create a prominent civic presence for the Aquarium and form the primary public connection between the new waterfront promenade to Pike Place Market." The proposed addition comes as work on the Seattle waterfront redevelopment plan by James Corner Field Operations (JCFO) progresses toward construction. JCFO’s plan would bring a network of pedestrian trails, streets improvements, and plaza spaces to an area currently occupied by the Alaskan Way Viaduct, a section of Interstate-5 that is in the process of being buried below the proposed improvements. Once the new tunnel is completed, the expanded aquarium complex will sit at the end of a generous pedestrian plaza and will have direct access to the improved waterfront areas and the newly reconnected downtown. The aquarium expansion is due to finish construction in 2023.

On September 30, LMN Architects revealed renderings for a planned $49 million expansion and renovation to the Seattle Art Museum’s (SAM) Asian Art Museum, the first time in the 83-year-old institution’s history that its flagship art moderne structure will be renovated.

The building, located in the city’s verdant Volunteer Park, was designed by Carl F. Gould of the architectural firm Bebb and Gould to house SAM’s original art collection. After SAM’s principal collection was relocated in 1991 to a downtown Seattle flagship designed by Venturi, Scott Brown and Associates, the 1933 building was rechristened as the Asian Art Museum. That move left the original Bebb and Gould building languishing, a product of a bygone era when buildings relied heavily on natural ventilation as a means of climate control and the needs of only a small portion of potential building occupants were considered. As a result, the structure lacks the sophisticated temperature and climate control systems typical for a world-class art institution and is out of compliance with Americans with Disability Act (ADA) legislation.

LMN’s renovations aim to fix those discrepancies and more by rebooting the structure through the addition of a new wing along the existing eastern side containing a 2,650-square-foot gallery for Southeast Asian art, a community meeting room, and a set of new office spaces. The renovation will also add teaching spaces and possibly an Asian art conservation studio. Importantly, the extension will be clad in expanses of glass and aims to increase the connections between the museum’s interior and its park setting.

Regarding the complicated renovation plans for the structure, Sam Miller, lead architect for the project at LMN, said, “On the renovation side, our goal is to be true to the original intent of the building and to transform the [Bebb and Gould structure] into a fully functioning, 21^st-century museum while also being entirely respectful of the historic fabric and the design quality the building represents.” He added, “In another way, our work is to make sure you would never know we were there.”

The Seattle Art Museum (SAM) has revealed renderings for LMN Architects’ expansion of the organization’s Asian Art Museum (AAM) location in the city’s Volunteer Park. The $49 million expansion and renovation will be to the historic home of the SAM, an art moderne building originally built in 1933 to house the original SAM. (The flagship SAM collection moved to a Venturi, Scott Brown-designed complex downtown in 1991). The LMN Architects-designed project will entail the first substantial renovation in the structure’s history. Historically-significant aspects of the original building, like the stone facade, will be preserved, accompanied by the wholesale addition of new programmatic components to the existing structure, originally designed by Carl F. Gould of the architectural firm Bebb and Gould. The 83-year-old building will receive crucial upgrades like Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA)-related improvements and the addition of an air conditioning and humidity control system. The building, which was not listed on the National Register of Historic Places until July of this year, will also receive a new wing along its eastern side containing a 2,650-square foot gallery, a community meeting room, and a set of new office spaces relocated from within the existing building. Aside from hosting new, dedicated educational spaces and potentially, a new, publically-visible Asian art conservation studio, the extension will aim to increase connections between the museum and its surrounding park spaces. Renderings released by LMN Architects and the museum show a straightforwardly-articulated, masonry-clad, L-shaped extension overlooking a gently sloping park. Along the top floor of a three-story expansion, a large portion of the extension’s articulated facade is clad in glass and projects out over the landscape. The floors below are more solid in their massing and surface treatments, but also feature large expanses of punched openings. The SAM is currently making preparations for the two-year renovation process, which is set to begin in the fall of 2017. The AAM will hold community meetings to discuss the project throughout the following weeks, as the project moves forward. For more information on the Asian Art Museum renovation and expansion campaign, please visit the museum’s website.

Awarded the 2016 AIA National Architecture Firm Award in December 2015, LMN Architects is having a moment. Perhaps most well known for its large urban projects—convention centers, performing arts centers and urban infrastructure—the Seattle firm has worked out of its downtown Seattle office in the 1959 international style Norton Building for the past 30 years. Founded in 1979, LMN is a one-studio firm with close to 150 employees. Its 40,000-square-foot office spans two-and-a-half floors.

“We believe the best way to comprehensively understand a space is to build physical models,” said LMN partner John Chau. “Models don’t lie...That’s why we like this building. It allows us to have spaces to do that.” The LMN office is mainly an open plan with downtown views, column-free studio spaces, model building areas, and conference rooms. A lower floor hosts LMN’s in-house digital fabrication shop. There’s a dual gantry CNC mill that LMN built about a year ago that features two cutting machines on a single cutting bed.

LMN discussed the challenges of building in the future: With less available land, sites will get smaller, necessitating building more efficiently and vertically to accommodate denser layers—more people, more infrastructure, and more ecology in the same space. “We no longer are just simply architects,” said Chau. “The need for all of us to collaborate more, communicate more, is even more critical—it’s important to know what the city council is thinking about, what its leads are. And it’s going back to being very informed citizens—we have the gift, ability, and the responsibility to help solve a lot of issues that arise.” 

Tobin Center for the Performing Arts San Antonio, TX

The performing arts center opened late 2014—an effort to reinvigorate the 1926 San Antonio Municipal Auditorium designed by architect Atlee Ayres that had become outdated. “We built a new auditorium, but rotated the geometry to create a new outdoor space and new entry to the San Antonio River Walk,” said LMN partner Mark Reddington. LMN kept the historic facade and added a new structure, clad in a textured metal veil. The shroud encloses the auditorium and filters the light in different colors and angles. The interior lobby hosts custom tiles that curve in plan and section—each row shifts, creating a negative volume.

Inside the main concert hall, a perforated wood fascia backlit with LEDs allows for an array of colorful effects. The hall can hold up to 1,738 seats and 2,100 people with a flat floor setup. The performance hall also contains the first gala floor system in the U.S. The seats sit on motorized platforms that can fold over, creating a flat floor that can be used for other types of events like rock concerts. Inside the performing arts center is a 295-seat studio theater and the outdoor plaza facing the San Antonio River can hold up to 600 seats.

University of Iowa Voxman Music Building Iowa City, IA

Opening October 2016, the new 180,000-square-foot music school for the University of Iowa will replace the previous one sited along the Iowa River that flooded in 2008. LMN moved the new building 50 feet up the hill, orienting it with the center of the college town. The mostly glass exterior building will hold a 700-seat concert hall, a recital hall with 200 seats, and rooms for pipe organs, classes, rehearsal areas, and faculty. “We wanted to create a building that was an extension of the public experience of the street, so that people could wander in, go to a performance at the music school, or students could come in and visit a professor,” said Reddington.

The building’s small footprint necessitated going vertical, stacking up to five stories of isolated music rooms. LMN developed a theatroacoustics system, a high-performance ceiling system that optimizes acoustics while hiding some of the structural elements such as speakers, microphones, fire sprinklers, and stage lights. “[The theatroacoustics system] was actually a money saving move,” said LMN partner Stephen Van Dyck. “They’re all put together in one gesture. It kind of becomes transcendent beyond any one of those individual pieces,” said Reddington.

Vancouver Convention Centre West Vancouver, BC, Canada

After a series of false starts and shifting sites, LMN knew its design for the west addition to the Vancouver Convention Centre would finally happen if Vancouver won the 2010 Olympic Winter Games bid. The project was included in the bid as the media center. When the architects saw the front page of the Vancouver Sun with the winning news, they knew they would get the green light. “That’s how we knew it was real,” said Chau. The 1.2-million–square-foot convention center addition was completed in 2009. It occupies 22 acres—14 acres on land, eight acres over the water—of what was once a brownfield site.

The convention center boasts a six-acre green roof with 240,000 bees producing honey for the convention center restaurant. The interiors feature local British Columbia wood. The project also supports the maritime harbor ecosystem. “It’s linked into the landscape, habitat, and shore system,” said Reddington. “There’s a marine habitat that goes around the edge of the building and underneath.” LMN used the concrete loading dock as the infrastructure to support a reef, said Van Dyck.

Sound Transit U Link University of Washington Station Seattle, WA

LMN designed the University of Washington light rail station and surrounding open space that opened in March 2016. The boarding platform can accommodate up to 1,600 people. “We had to link in all of this stuff—a bridge, a bicycle pathway, a head house, escalators, stairs, and then the station block underground that is 500 feet long,” said Reddington. Perhaps the most challenging, but rewarding, part of the project was designing the smoke chamber. “For fire requirements you have to create a big smoke chamber,” said Reddington. “If there is a fire somewhere, it helps isolate the fire so people can get out and not have smoke running all the way through the entire station.”

LMN worked with Seattle artist Leo Saul Berk, who created “Subterranium,” an installation made with nearly 9,000 square feet of custom deep blue metal backlit panels that wrap the smoke chamber. The panels tell the story of the site’s geology. “By integrating a lot of things into a single system, you have the capacity of one system to solve many problems—like a smoke enclosure that is now the main sculptural expression of a subway station,” said Van Dyck.

Design plans are moving ahead on the convention center expansion in downtown Seattle with a design recommendation meeting scheduled for May 3rd. The Washington State Convention Center—which runs over Interstate 5 and holds large annual regional events like the February northwest garden show and the Emerald City ComiCon—opened in the spring of 1988. The just under 415,000 square foot center has reached capacity and has hired LMN Architects to add 440,000 square feet of convention space, 5 stories above ground, with underground parking (anywhere from 600-800 vehicles). The site for the expansion is about a block northeast at 1601 9th Avenue, what is currently the Convention Place bus station that routes buses through a bus tunnel. With more light rail coming in the near future and slated to use the bus tunnel, the city will make all buses run on the street by 2021. The convention center expansion plan requires demolishing the station. The project is part of what the Seattle Department of Construction and Inspections is describing as a “planned community development component.” In 2014, the convention center also bought property on two additional blocks, with plans for mixed-use projects on each. There’s a proposal for a 29 story building with 6,000 square feet of ground floor retail space and 438 residences at 920 Olive Way (currently hosting two restaurants, a two story light rail transit facility, and parking lots). There’s also a planned 16 story office building on top of 11,000 square feet of commercial space at 1711 Boren Avenue (right now it’s a Honda dealership and car lot). Such a massive project is not without legal battles, however. The proposed construction timeline is on hold. Skanska and Hunt Construction, the hired contractor team, sued the convention center this March after the center dropped them from the project (reportedly to search for a cheaper firm). Earlier this April, the King County Superior Court issued a ruling: “King County Judge Beth Andrus on Wednesday denied Skanska-Hunt’s bid to be reinstated as the contractor, but granted the request to stop the convention center from starting to select a new contractor,” wrote the Seattle Times. “The question of whether the convention-center authority wrongly terminated Skanska-Hunt should be decided in a trial, beginning within 120 days, the judge ruled.” The total cost of the convention center project is estimated at $1.4 billion, with construction at $750 million. If the project moves beyond the lawsuit and finds a builder without delay, breaking ground could start early 2017, with an opening in 2020. On a side note, back in the fall of 2015, a Seattle firm proposed to cap a section of I-5 with a 2 mile long park that would run near the convention center expansion. At the moment, the project is just conceptual, but it would not be out of place close to Lawrence Halprin’s 1976 5.5 acre Freeway Park.

This past fall, a Reddit post leaked a Seattle design proposal draft with massings of what could have been the tallest tower on the West coast. The images depicted a 102-story tower standing 99 feet higher than the current record holder, the 1,018-foot-tall U.S. Bank Tower in Los Angeles. The proposed Seattle tower, dubbed 4/C, is slated for a parcel that is currently a parking lot in Seattle's downtown central business district at the southwest corner of Fourth Avenue and Columbia Street. The developer, Crescent Heights International Living, based in Miami, has tapped Seattle design firm, LMN Architects. The mixed-use tower would house 150 hotel rooms, 165,000 square feet of retail space and offices, and 1,200 residences. But officials at the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) aren't approving the proposal. They issued a notice saying the tower would impede business at the Boeing Field airport. They cited that the height could interfere with navigable air space and that the massive size of a construction crane to build even a slightly smaller tower could cause issues with hospital helicopter flights. The FAA is giving Crescent Heights an alternative, take-it-or-leave-it deal: max out at 965 feet. With this revised height, 4/C would miss breaking the tallest Seattle building record by just two feet, undefeated since 1985 by the 76-story Columbia Center.