Carolyn Geise of Geise Architects is one of the women featured

The Seattle Chapter of the American Institute of Architects’ Diversity Roundtable, in partnership with the Association for Women in Architecture, is holding a celebration and program honoring women in the field of architecture tonight at the UW.

The free event is open to all within the architectural community and will highlight the work of Seattle women architects on nearly 60 projects from about 35 different firms. It runs from 5 p.m. to 8 p.m. tonight at the UW’s College of Built Environments at Gould Hall at 3949 15th Ave. N.E. No reservations are required.

The program will also honor Jan Gleason, who recently retired from her role as executive director of Environmental Works. Gleason will speak at the informal gathering, which will include work by women architects on display and representatives from government agencies interested in helping women and minority-owned businesses succeed.

Work from architectural professionals from all over the region will be included in a presentation made at the program.  Participating firms include:  4D Architects, Arellano - Christofides Architects, atelierjones, Bassetti Architects, Belt Collins, Boxwood, Christina Pizana, CLARK DESIGN GROUP, DKA, DLR Group, Dr. Sharon E. Sutton, FAIA, FORTE ARCHITECTS, Geise Architects, Hewitt, Hutteball & Oremus, Irwin-Pancake Architects, Johnston Architects, Julie Kreig Architect, Kennan-Meyer Architecture, MAGELLAN ARCHITECTS, Mahlum, McNELIS ARCHITECTS, Mulvanny G2, NBBJ, Olson Sundberg Kundig Allen, PATANO+HAFERMANN, Perkins + Will, Rolluda Architects, Schacht|Aslani Architects, schemata workshop, VIA ARCHITECTURE, and ZDS Architects.

Eds Note: Having a hard time joining this conversation?? AIA’s Facebook page for this event can no longer be found by just  searching for it. See updated instructions below to join in.

Next week, from April 13 to 19, AIA will be holding its annual National Architecture Week conversation– but this year it will be on Facebook.

The Virtual National Architecture Week group Facebook page will be used to release information and resources throughout the week.  AIA wants local chapters and individuals to use the social networking site to post information about firms, awards, videos, or local advocacy and public outreach initiatives.

Facebook members: Log in to FB and search for “The American Institute of Architects” in the search bar on the right. Click on the AIA’s group and then look under “Events” on the AIA Group page. The Virtual National Architecture Week should be the first one listed. Click on it.  (If you’re not a member, go make friends with your firm’s intern architect and they’ll tell you what to do, but they might Twitter or even Flutter about how out of it you are). You can view the resources, add resources and comment.

AIA has this schedule for each day’s specific focus: April 13 - Community Revitalization, April 14 - School Construction,  April 15- Affordable Housing,  April 16 - Sustainability, April 17 - Inclusiveness, April 18 - Historic Preservation and April 19 - The Future of the Profession.

If you’re taking a stroll up lively Pike Street sometime, take a right at Seventh Avenue and proceed along that block’s western side.  If you haven’t been there already in the past year and a half, you’re in for a shock.

The Sheraton hotel’s two-tower complex uses Seventh Avenue as its alley, with a block-long blank facade, punctuated only by a metal man-door where you’re likely to find hotel catering staff hanging out on their smoke breaks.  The only good thing about walking on this side of Seventh Avenue between Pike and Union Streets is that you get a great view of the landmark former Eagles Temple.

An April 1983 Time magazine article mentioned the then-new first Sheraton hotel tower as an example of nation’s “worst offenders” among modern buildings that present blank facades to the streetscape and deaden city center street life.  Any of us urbanistas who care about Downtown’s streetscape waited 25 years for something to improve that situation: a remodel, an addition, an improvement scheme - anything.  Well, “anything” came in 2007 when the second Sheraton tower opened, but the the 25-year wait was in vain because things just got worse, as you’ll see on your stroll along Seventh Avenue.

The real question we’re left with is: how was this possible?  Don’t we have regulations against such things?  Isn’t there a Design Review process? Shouldn’t have 25 years of lessons-learned informed the decision-makers this time around? A longer editorial on what went wrong ran in today’s DJC (no subscription needed to check it out).

Right now, a drill rig is outside on First Avenue, testing soil conditions for the deep bore tunnel.  The plan is far from certain obviously, but progress of any kind is exciting! Meanwhile it’s working its way through the legislature. This is a good time to hit some key points and dispel some misconceptions.

The tunnel would have more capacity than the current tunnel, not less. The same two lanes each way, plus breakdown lanes that avoid backups. The missing third lane is replaced by people exiting before Downtown rather than in Downtown.

It might save money vs. the alternatives despite costing more. What’s the price of several years of massive disruption with the aerial or shallow-cut alternatives? How many stores would fail, offices would move away, residents wouldn’t move in, and tourists wouldn’t come? (not to mention the effect of being next to another eyesore for another lifetime)

It’s realistic about traffic. The surface-option supporters have great motives. But they’re mistaken. Better transit would reduce trips somewhat, and many drivers might simply move. But tens of thousands of cars per day would be added to surface streets. Political concessions to the driving public would turn Downtown streets into highways focused on throughput rather than those who work, live, or shop here. For example, the PI instantly suggested fewer pedestrian crossings when the original surface option was shortlisted.

A tunnel helps Downtown function. Downtown Seattle is the dominant economic engine of our region, and plays an important role for most locals, whether working here, attending events, or just getting through. It’s tough to concentrate so much activity in a narrow area, but we do pretty well because of tunnels, including the BN tunnel, the transit tunnel, the existing 99 tunnel, and even the covered part of I-5. Downtown is growing. Putting 99 underground gets the through traffic through (without encouraging more driving) while allowing Downtown to be what it can be.

It avoids another 50-year mistake. Cities that succeed in the coming decades will have quality of life (as well as functionality; see above). The central waterfront and our surface streets are essential parts of that.

I think it’ll pass. The plan mixes best-case attributes and lacks strong anti constituencies. The ”view while driving” crowd seems numerous but they ought to watch the road and will look foolish if the initiative goes anywhere. Through-drivers get their freeway (without more lanes to encourage more driving), Interbay gets a wider Alaskan Way and non-jammed streets, transit users end up with more transit (even if indirectly), Downtown people get our great waterfront and hold on to our walkability, and locals shoulder the difference in cost, which is a manageable figure.

PS, did everyone notice that Sound Transit just bid two two tunnel sections for massively less than projected?  They came in 23 percent and 34 percent under Sound Transit’s estimates, at a combined $329 million rather than $425 million. This is encouraging for the deep bore 99!

Looking for a p-patch in Magnolia?

Let’s say you’re in Queen Anne and you need to find the closest off-leash dog park. Maybe you’re wondering if there’s a basketball court near your sister’s house in West Seattle. Or you want to know if there are any heritage trees or landmark buildings on your Columbia City street.

I stumbled across a new resource that gives you the answer in seconds. And it’s not Google Earth.

The city of Seattle has completely revamped its neighborhood map and it now includes searchable neighborhood level and street-level maps (using Microsoft’s Virtual Earth). You can customize your map to show local services like p-patches, food banks, farmers markets, cemeteries, hospitals and many more.

The site also shows fires, accidents and other dispatch incidents in real time (updated every 30 seconds), and has searchable street-level crime statistics (using 2007 numbers).

By SUSAN JONES, atelierjones

Eds. Note: Jones, the founding principal of atelierjones, lives with her husband and two children in a condo near Pike Place Market. She works a few blocks away.

More cool Seattle shots by Michael Nalley at DDB

Seattle’s livability is about the vibrancy of its people: Walk any ten blocks three times over in Seattle’s downtown – stop to say hello to an old friend, walk over to check on your construction site at 1st and Union, stop by a press conference heralding the opening of Seattle’s new Green Lab, run into a client there and set up a meeting for their renovation of their condominium further south on 1st Avenue later in the day, stop at the Creamery at the Pike Place Market to buy fresh milk for breakfast, drop it off at home, then up to the WAC for a swim, walk back to the office for a quick meeting about a new downtown green roof project, then off to meet your client at their home to go over the design of their carbon fiber dining table, stop back home to pick up your daughter for her piano lesson - and you’ve walked 2 miles, half of them straight up hills, swam a  half mile, supported your local market, developed three design projects, seen four friends, and helped this city grow more and more livable with every footstep.

More Seattleites muse about livability here.

Just when I thought the MODA building (on Third near Bell Street) couldn’t possibly get worse, it did.

More pics at Apartments.com

This former “hot” condo of miniscule units now turned rental opened recently without being finished. The windows along the sidewalk have no trim or sills, leaving unpainted concrete visible by passersby.

And are these actual storefronts? Nope. They are chopped into small rectangles by multiple criss-crossing mullions that no real shop would ever want to have.

Why is it so hard for some designers to understand simple storefront design? Big panes of glass. Well-detailed kickplates. Store doors. Instead we get something that resembles a bedroom window.  And the concrete forming this “street wall” is only little more refined than the exposed wall of a basement.

But far worse are the 4″ x 4″ wood posts that have been added to support the metal balconies. Did someone look back at tenements built in Chicago in the 1800’s and try to replicate that look?

This is hip, urban housing? Hardly.

I have accepted a research associate position with the Sightline Institute. This is a wonderful opportunity for me and was made possible, in part, by writing here on SeattleScape and for the DJC’s opinion page for the past year.

It has been an amazing year for anyone watching the economy, and interested in housing, development and future growth in Seattle. I have written a fair amount here about the way we define and measure key aspects of growth in Seattle.

Time for a new dream?

The fundamental battle lines on growth were drawn 20 years ago with the passage of the Growth Management Act and the City of Seattle’s Comprehensive Plan. The decision then was to avoid sprawl by putting growth in cities, and more specifically in urban villages. Some resisted this planning effort as social engineering aimed at foisting a social agenda on single family neighborhoods.

Others argued that in order to limit and prevent further environmental degradation, enhance mass transit options and support a more sustainable approach to infrastructure, concentrating growth in the cities would be essential.

Does this sound familiar? Today we are taking a piecemeal approach to growth, arguing lot by lot, parcel by parcel, and neighborhood by neighborhood. When will we finally get on with what we decided to do 20 years ago?

More than 60 percent of Seattle is still zoned single family. And any project that increases density, even when supported by underlying zoning, faces a gauntlet.

Strolling Seattle by serakatie

Increasingly, the debate has been cast as a class conflict pitting growth management against the sacredness of the single family home, which for decades has been the organizing economic principle in America and the Northwest.

This year’s election provides the city with a huge opportunity to consciously settle this question. Will candidates for city office embrace the practices we know will reduce climate change, improve the health of the Puget Sound and support less use of the automobile? Compact communities that are safe to walk in with public open space and easy access to transit are what we must have.

The most important question for the candidates is “how will you get us there?” The question for Seattlites is “are we willing to go?”

The Crocodile filed an application with SDOT to create a side walk cafe outside the club at Second and Blanchard.

Seattle simplified its sidewalk cafe permitting last summer, reducing the costs and turnaround time for applications and housing the process within just one agency– SDOT. The city is accepting comments on Application # 89041 until April 8.

The Crocodile, the center of the music universe during the 1990s (see Singles soundtrack, Kurt Cobain, etc.) just reopened this month after a sudden closure last December.

During these tough economic times, Mayor Greg Nickels says more Seattle homeowners should have the option to build cottages in their backyards to supplement incomes or provide a loved one with housing.

Welcome to the dollhouse

Backyard cottages, smaller dwelling units unattached to single family houses but sharing their lots, are now allowed in southeast Seattle only. Seattle allows smaller attached units citywide.

Nickels said in a release Thursday he would soon be sending legislation to council to allow up to 50 more backyard cottages to be built per year across Seattle neighborhoods. The homeowner would have to live on site, lots would have to be at least 4,000-square-feet and the cottages could not exceed 800 square feet. Height and lot coverage limits would also apply.

“In these difficult times, now more than ever, people are asking for a range of good housing choices,” said Nickels in the release.

“Whether it’s for a family member, an option to downsize, or simply a financial decision that allows you to stay in your home, the backyard cottage can be a real-life solution.”

So far, 14 backyard cottages have been built in southeast Seattle. The cottages are also allowed in Portland,  Issaquah, Kirkland, Mercer Island, Shoreline, Newcastle, Redmond, Woodinville and Vancouver, B.C.