It’s crucial for foreign architects to have offices in China with staffs that include younger, innovative Chinese designers, says Gary Larson, a senior principal with MulvannyG2 Architecture, in the firm’s “Design at Work” newsletter. According to Larson, here’s why:

The growing sophistication of Chinese designers

Western design thinking has become more seamlessly dovetailed with Chinese cultural underpinnings

Fujian Provincial Electric and Power Co., Fuzhou, China, MulvannyG2 Architecture. Courtesy of MulvannyG2.

China’s more discerning reception of architecture

In China’s building boom of the past 20 years, the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing represents both a high point and a turning point in China’s fascination with Western design. Foreign architects designed the Olympic Games’ major athletic structures and important civic and public buildings. These designs resonate in the collective memory of the Olympics as much, if not more, than the games and athletes do. Yet, post-Olympics, not all Western work is applauded and accepted, as before, without criticism. Today, the Chinese want to see their rich culture and heritage expressed in major new work, and that desire cues a new level of collaboration with foreign architects. MulvannyG2 has experienced that in creating Fujian Power and Electric Co.’s headquarters and the China Construction Bank, Larson says.

Higher expectations for client service and project delivery

While plentiful opportunities for that collaboration exist, competition among foreign architects is keen. That competition makes the foreign architect’s local office in China even more important because, as fees become more competitive, the ability to serve clients more completely, locally, grows in importance.  And as the general level of expectation of quality from the consumer rises and delivery of quality by the construction industry increases, the need to have design and technical design expertise on the ground becomes imperative.

More influence on China’s sustainable future

A new level of collaboration among Chinese and foreign architects promises a steadily improving design environment, one that would benefit a project with sustainable goals. Characteristic Chinese determination can bring this new design excellence to bear on the country’s issues of growth and resource consumption. Indeed, nationally announced plans for sustainability and the ambitions of foreign architects and young Chinese designers will hopefully allow China to leapfrog the sustainable progress of today’s developed and developing nations.

Seattle Department of Neighborhoods is offering six free van tours of the city’s P-Patch community gardens from 1 to 3 p.m. on Saturdays this month and next. They depart from DoN’s Neighborhood Service Centers.

They will be hosted by DoN’s P-Patch Community Gardening staff and volunteers, and offer opportunities to meet the gardeners.

They tours are:

SOUTHEAST TOUR: September 18, 1-3 p.m.
Cascade P-Patch. Courtesy Seattle Department of Neighborhoods.

Meet at Southeast Neighborhood Service Center, 3815 S. Othello St.
Tour includes: New Holly, Thistle, Hillman City, Colman & Bradner P-Patches

Picardo Farm P-Patch. Photo courtesy of Seattle Department of Neighborhoods.

SOUTHWEST TOUR: September 25, 1-3 p.m.
Meet at Delridge Neighborhood Service Center, 5405 Delridge Way SW
Tour includes: High Point, Delridge, West Genesee, Roxhill and Lincoln Park P-Patches

LAKE UNION AREA TOUR: October 2, 1-3 p.m.
Meet at Fremont Neighborhood Service Center, 908 N. 34th St.
Tour includes: Cascade, Belltown, Queen Pea, Interbay and Eastlake P-Patches

CENTRAL TOUR: October 9, 1-3 p.m.
Meet at Central Neighborhood Service Center, 2301 S. Jackson St.
Tour includes: Judkins, Hawkins, Spring St., Squire Park and Howell P-Patches

NORTHEAST TOUR: October 16, 1-3 p.m.
Meet at University Neighborhood Service Center, 4534 University Way NE

Cascade P-Patch. Photo courtesy of Seattle Department of Neighborhoods.

NORTHWEST TOUR: October 23, 1-3 p.m.
Meet at Greenwood Neighborhood Service Center, 8515 Greenwood Ave. N
Tour includes: Good Shepherd, Fremont, Hazel Heights, Greg’s, and Ballard P-Patches

Space is limited and reservations are required.  To register, go seattle.gov/neighborhoods/ppatch/tour.htm, or call (206) 386-4123.

The P-Patch Community Gardening Program, in conjunction with the P-Patch Trust, a nonprofit organization, oversees 73 P-Patches distributed throughout the city, according to the Department of Neighborhoods.  Neighbors plan, plant and maintain the gardens.  Much of the produce harvested is donated to local food banks and feeding programs.  In 2009 alone, gardeners contributed over 18,500 hours and donated about 12.4 tons of food, according to the department.

How you view homes – as a luxury good or a staple – should affect your perception of where where you think

Photobucket.com.

It’s time to declare Link Light Rail “basically on target” for ridership. July’s weekday ridership averaged 24,145 vs. a December projection (page 17) of 26,600 for by mid-2010, and it’s done so during a downturn in both jobs and travel. It’s hard to guess how quickly ridership will rise from here, but it seems plausible that numbers might hit the 26,600 weekday figure by year-end.

Link Light Rail. Photo courtesy of Sound Transit.

It’s a fairly impressive figure, in context. Many rail lines start with more riders, but they usually have higher densities around them, or park-n-rides, or connecting rail lines, or bigger feeder bus systems, or all of the above. Central Link has neither parking (except Tukwila) nor density, and a moderate amount of connecting transit. It doesn’t even get many in-Downtown trips, because it competes with free tunnel buses.

To be honest, I’m relieved. The projections made sense, including the upward trend as the drivers of ridership came into place, like the connecting bus lines. But it was far from certain. Kudos to Sound Transit for being realistic with your ridership projections, much as you’ve been conservative (in the last decade) about project cost projections.

Now my worry isn’t ridership, but limited capacity. Trains can only be two cars long until 2015 (page 96), when use of the stub tunnel on Pine is no longer limited by construction of University Link. Meanwhile, trains can’t run more often at peak times, due to required separation between trains and buses in the Transit Tunnel. There may be no way to grow capacity until 2015.

Anecdotally, I’ve seen peak-time Link trains so full that riders can’t even board. By 2012 or so, we might need measures to decrease ridership a little, like restoring a couple bus routes into Downtown. Or maybe Sound Transit can negotiate some closer proximities between buses and trains with the feds. Or maybe it would help to move some tunnel bus routes to the street, though the bus riders are important too.

Long term, capacity is a huge advantage with rail. Link is built for trains up to four cars long, which by itself would double capacity. Once the buses are out of the tunnel (presumably 2016, when University Link opens), frequencies can be much better. Of course, when University Link opens, the system will also have a lot more turnover on each trip, i.e. a lot of people who go from the ends to Downtown and vice versa, but not as many who travel the whole length. Capacity will be multiples of today’s in 2016, and much higher still in the early 20s when the line hits Lynnwood, Redmond, and Federal Way.

We’ll need that capacity. I’ll skip the half-pager for now, but in brief, this region continues to grow, a lot of jobs and residents are projected to be added around the new and planned Link stations, and it seems unlikely that voters would pass any major increase in road capacity.

On a side note, Link seems to be doing very well as an airport shuttle. When I ride on weekends, it seems like 30-50% of the passengers have luggage. What an improvement in quality of life for tourists! That might strike some people as unimportant, but given that tourists spend billions in Seattle every year, it seems pretty important to me.

Related to that, here’s some constructive criticism about Westlake Station, for the benefit of both tourists and locals: (a) It’s easy to be confused about how to pay. There are several ways to get to the train platform without walking past a ticket machine, and the signage is woefully inadequate, so improve the signage and think about adding ticket machines on the platforms (can anyone explain that one?). (b) The ORCA card readers are only on the mezzanines, not on the platforms, meaning for example that a bus-to-rail transfer requires going upstairs and back down, which again the signage doesn’t adequately explain (and which doesn’t seem to make sense to begin with). (c) Exiting the station is very confusing, as evidenced by the tourists I continually run into asking how to get to the street, sometimes around the elevator in the center of the mezzanine. A few sign poles in the mezzanine, with maps, would solve this problem. (d) There’s no drinking fountain, and no concession. Give us something to drink!

Southern Sudan plans to rebuild cities in the region in the shapes of animals and fruit, according to this BBC News report. SeattleScape blogger Mark Hinshaw sees potential there. Here’s what he has to say:

The World Institute for Anthropomorphic Town Planning announced last week that Washington State will be the recipient of six grants to counties for free-standing urban development.  Each county would be required

Courtesy of photobucket.com.

“We are excited about this prospect because we know that many legislators have been wanting get rid of the Growth Management Act,” said Keefer Bakelite, Palouse County Commissioner. “Who could possibly object to towns shaped like animals?”

Says Professor William “Willy” Grant of CWU’s urban planning school, “Few people know it, but animals make the ideal shape for communities. Civic uses fit nicely in the head, industry fits in the stomach, housing in the legs. Waste disposal systems go, um, well… near the tail.”

A number of counties are vying for the grant, having already selected the Bighorn Sheep, the Black Bear, the Salmon, and the Geoduck for their own submissions. Palin T. McHall, Executive Director  of the WIATP remarked, “Other counties will have to be extra creative as some of the best animal shapes are already taken.”  “Insects are also eligible,” he adds.

For their part, Futurewise and the Sierra Club are in a political quandary. “We hate free-standing communities. But we all love animals. It’s a true dilemma,” one close source who chose not be identified said.

Personally, I think it would be swell to have a town in look like a cicindela tranqebarica.

My bus crosses the Aurora Bridge with its wonderful public view of Mount Rainier, the city, the ship canal, the Olympics and Cascades. Since we’re destined to lose our grand aerial view from the Alaskan Way Viaduct, the pending loss of the view from the Aurora Bridge is even more aggravating.

Aurora Bridge lit up. Enhanced photo by Kenji Tachibana

So we’re spending $4.6 million, forcing residents of Fremont and Queen Anne to endure months of daytime irritation and sleepless nights while the construction crews drill and rivet and corrupt our bridge so we can possibly deter a small subset of suicide attempts.  But we’re not going to solve the problem of suicide this way and we’re not going to eliminate every hazard to our physical and mental health by such clumsy methods.  If the goal is to spend gas tax dollars to prevent loss of life, there are hundreds of unfunded highway safety projects, railroad grade separations, and drunken driving enforcement actions that would be more effective.

As reported in yesterday’s DJC, the Sheraton Hotel is finally going to improve the dreadful blank wall along the western side of 7th Avenue between Pike and Union Streets created by its first and second towers.

While I’m thrilled to hear that this long-awaited improvement scheme has not fallen through the cracks and is scheduled to start next week, it’s taking all my patience not to be cynical about this interesting state of affairs.

As I commented in an opinion piece I wrote on the subject for the DJC on 4/6/09, the big blank wall along 7th Avenue (and parts of both Pike and Union Streets as well) should not have occurred in the first place.  The City’s Downtown zoning code would otherwise require street-level uses and “transparency” (doors and windows that allow both visual and physical access to those activities) along 7th Avenue.  Somehow the Downtown Design Review Board approved a departure from those standards in exchange for wall treatment

Mirrors will be added to the blank wall of the Sheraton to make the streetscape more inviting. Image courtesy of Gustafson Guthrie Nichol.

To my mind, there is no more naturally interesting phenomenon as one walks down a city street than interacting – both visually and physically – with a variety of shops, cafés, and other establishments that organically inhabit street-level tenant spaces over the years.

I commend Gustafson Guthrie Nichol for their bold, innovative and, yes, probably very engaging “garden walk.”  In my article, I made a rather glib reference to such an applied treatment being akin to lipstick on a certain porcine animal.  And, as with any maquillage, I fear it will require an inordinate amount of maintenance and continual primping to remain the engaging and interesting street-side phenomenon that they intend.

As for the intended reflection of the Eagles Temple across 7th Avenue, this is an interesting homage to that landmark.  It reminds me of the storied reflection of Trinity Church in the adjacent Hancock Tower’s wall of glass in Boston’s Back Bay. There’s something playful and creative about this approach to a response to the

The western side of Seventh Avenue between Pike and Union streets consists of one uninterrupted, blank concrete facade. Photo by DJC staff.

Again, actual street-level tenant space, with doors and windows, could last the lifetime of the building with a changing array of establishments naturally responding to their street-level location with appropriate displays and accessibility.  Yet the placement of mirrors seems so impermanent.  Does the Sheraton Hotel management really intend to maintain and likely replace those mirrors essentially ad perpetuum?

Not to be ever the naysayer, I am anxiously awaiting the unveiling of the 7th Avenue “garden walk” next Spring as it will be a vast improvement over the existing pitiful situation.  And the Gustafson Guthrie Nichol group do marvelous work, so it will be a pleasure, yet again, to interact with their work in our cityscape.

Chris Persons, executive director of Capitol Hill Housing, has some interesting things to say about what makes communities nice, in part based on a vacation his family took touring some of Washington’s cool places. Here is what he had to say in the Capitol Hill Housing newsletter:

We are late getting out the CHH monthly newsletter because I just got back from vacation.  My family travelled for the first time to the North Cascades and Eastern Washington and we took our friend Marcia along for the adventure.  The boys thoroughly enjoyed themselves and we all soaked up plenty of sunshine.   We toured Diablo lake by boat, explored Dry Falls, dug for fossils in Republic, crossed the Columbia River on Washington’s only free ferry, ate a Billie Burger in Wilbur, drove through the Palouse and drank a responsible amount of red wine in Walla Walla.  (The boys stuck with juice.)  I didn’t think about work at all.  I did think

Walla Walla's Pioneer Park. Photo courtesy of Walla Walla Visitors Bureau.

As I have mentioned previously, the Community Development Collaborative has adopted Five Principles of Sustainable Communities:
• Equitable growth without displacement
• Affordable housing for all
• Transportation equity
• Economic opportunity and viable business districts
• Supportive and diverse environments.

A viable business district is an important element of most sustainable communities.  I tend to think of business districts in the urban village context because that is where I live and work. Columbia City and Broadway in Seattle, and Andersonville in Chicago, are all great examples of vibrant business districts.  But so is downtown Walla Walla.  There are other urban Seattle commercial districts that are not so successful.  How do these urban districts compare with Republic, Winthrop and Wilbur?  What lessons can we learn not just from thriving urban districts but from thriving (and not so thriving) rural ones?

Here are three lessons I came up with. I would be interested in hearing your ideas, too.
1) There has to be a reason for people to come.  Whether it’s Old West charm, fossils, crop circles or wine, you’ve gotta get people there.
2) There has to be a reason for the people who live there to come.   Main Street, U.S.A. attracts many tourists to Disneyland, but it doesn’t build community.  Amenities and services that support day-to-day living are important to sustainability.  If they are provided by locally-owned businesses even better.  I stood in a long line with locals and tourists at the Wilbur Billie Burger.
3) Feet-friendly streets create a comfortable scale for people.  Trees.  Wide sidewalks.  Narrow streets.  Unobstructed windows.  Benches for people to sit on.  Friendly merchants.  This works as well on South Rainier as it does in Walla Walla.

Of course a glass of Washington State merlot doesn’t hurt.  Cheers!

The Washington State Transportation has posted a video simulation of what traveling across the new Evergreen Point floating bridge will be like. The video comes with some trendy music for your listening enjoyment.

Next month the Washington State Department of Transportation begins its search for a design-build team on a $700 million to $1 billion project to replace the state Route 520 bridge between Seattle and Medina.

The agency will issue a request for qualifications in August and a request for proposals in October. The project is scheduled to finish by December 2014.