September 6, 2023

Building a legacy across the region

Photo by Danielle Barnum [enlarge]

Bob Tiscareno

Every entrepreneur knows that the secret to success is staying agile to shifting economic and cultural winds. But in the Puget Sound region, the pace of change can feel more like a hurricane. Since launching Tiscareno in 2002, my colleagues and I have watched a number of forces transform the greater Seattle area—forces which have touched nearly every aspect of the built environments we create.

Here's a look back at the primary lessons the last two decades have taught my colleagues and me about building this region that we love.

Transit-oriented design (TOD) is the future

The reason is clear: building housing near mass transit is the sustainable thing to do. When I launched Tiscareno, construction on Sound Transit's Link Light Rail was still a year out. Kent Station, a mixed-use project at one of Sound Transit's major terminals, became our client and one of the first TOD projects in the area.

Since then, as we began to specialize in multi-family/mixed-use developments, our client list has traced the rise of TOD in the region. Riverpark, Milehouse, Modera, the Triangle, Redmond Square, and the Spark—just to name our projects in Redmond—joined a critical mass of multifamily housing developments clustering near transit hubs across the region.

Photos by Moris Moreno [enlarge]

Bob Tiscareno expects to see more transit-oriented developments in the region’s future. His firm’s TOD in Redmond, Modera, is pictured.

Fast-forward to today, and those developments are proving that mixed-use TOD can be sound investments. Even if the projects are finished before the transit systems are, as has been the case with those projects near the coming Link Light Rail station in Redmond (now projected 2025), phaseable development offering parking until transit gets going has proven workable.

Pay attention to the ground-floor experience

Because TOD seeks to dial up public engagement with built environments, the architect's increasing task is designing with pedestrians top-of-mind. One way we do that is with woonerfs, the Dutch concept of pedestrian-priority streets, which can bring a human scale to large multi-use developments and dial up street-level engagement.

Woonerfs show up in an increasing number of our TOD projects. These woonerfs not only create fertile retail and restaurant environments, they bring the foot traffic that translates to eyes-on-the-street security and the sense of community so essential for residential settings.

But retail isn't the only ground-floor presence that can engage pedestrians. If the pandemic taught us anything, it's that retail comes…and goes. In recent years we've learned that multi-family projects offering ground-floor live/work units — spaces with both commercial space and living quarters — can also activate pedestrian environments. The market appears to love these live/works, and we're including them in more and more of our projects.

[enlarge]

For the Beam apartments in Little Saigon, Tiscareno worked in concert with the community to ensure the building felt culturally appropriate and respectfully reflected the history of the neighborhood.

Nature is part of the design

Biophilic design — an architectural approach bringing nature into the built environment — has been around for decades, but in recent years multi-family architects are dialing it up. Perhaps as a counterpoint to increasing density in urban areas we're seeing more interest in rooftop gardens, more square footage given to courtyards, more importance accorded to views. Conversely, where mass transit is making greenbelt-adjacent suburbs more accessible, a project's existing natural surroundings are right there to be integrated into the design.

Such was the case at The Spark, a Redmond multi-family project situated near a stand of mature trees. Inspired, we ran an “urban forest” of dense and lofty plantings right through the middle of The Spark's two buildings, working with our landscape architects to create outdoor gathering areas, even a pedestrian skybridge, to enhance outdoor connections for residents.

Finally, we gave it a “front porch”: a deep deck along The Spark's retail and restaurant spaces to provide the kind of outdoor seating the entire planet learned to value over the last three years.

visionary cities make great partners

In our experience, municipalities are increasingly looking for developments with unique design elements and high-quality materials — particularly TOD which are deemed high-visibility gateways to cities. For that reason, cities like Renton and Redmond have allowed us the kind of creative freedom architects dream about, at times even writing into zoning codes a level of design innovation that rejects bland-box design in favor of eclectic visual interest.

As noted above, our most frequent municipal collaborator is Redmond — and it's been a fruitful partnership. That familiarity has enabled our thorough understanding of their codes translating to fluidity in the permitting process — a benefit not just to us and to our clients, but to the entire city. Citizens reap the aesthetic benefits when architects enjoy relationships of familiarity and trust with a city's design gatekeepers, and can design according to the city's big picture.

“Suburban” and “urban” developments are blurring

Because density is increasingly valued as the key to sustainable development, dense mixed-use projects are straying beyond their traditional home in the urban core.

Take Solera, a masterplan community in the suburb of Renton combining mixed-income housing with mixed-use commercial. On the one hand our recent design of 590 apartment units in two buildings presents a clear suburban identity, with plentiful parking, a location in a bedroom community with nearby open space, and a strong family orientation. On the other hand, its location on a state route in a recently upzoned neighborhood offers proximity to mass transit, walkable shopping, and a public library across the street—attributes which along with Solera's multi-income status bring a definite urban flavor.

This kind of hybrid development will become more widespread as tech firms continue their investment in the growing density of the suburbs. Seattle's urban core is amply stocked with multifamily units for singles or roommates — but painfully low on affordable units for larger families. Developments like Solera provide one blueprint for a solution.

Multi-family developments are communities

As Solera exemplifies, we are increasingly designing projects scaled more like small towns than multi-family developments. The reason? Firms are finding that larger projects (over 200 units) more readily attract investors.

From an architect's viewpoint, projects of all sizes involve numerous design considerations. But these super-sized multi-family projects take us beyond design and into consideration of the holistic needs of an entire community.

Green design can pencil out

Sustainable living is becoming the new normal. Once-rare LEED Platinum designations are now almost mainstream — a welcome development for our cities and our planet.

But a pricey one, with up-front costs of green finishes and fittings creating sticker shock for designer and client alike. For this reason, we've been working hard to find ways to make green design pencil out.

Consider our multi-family project in Capitol Hill's Pike/Pine district, The Cove, which eight years ago was the first LEED Platinum project Tiscareno worked on. We began with a stripped-down design parti — a simple mass on a highly transparent base — making this the only actual box in our portfolio. Visual interest came with the skin: a unique articulated façade of variegated panels and metal “fins” that lent the surface an undulating quality. This, along with sustainable design features — greenery-planted awnings, wood windows, solar panels doubling as sun shades — brought a bold articulation to the “simple box.”

It's all about respecting the community

Whether in a city or at the edge of a wilderness, a new development is only as successful as the respect it embodies for the community it joins.

For some projects, like The Spark in Redmond, that means finding a way to naturally integrate the neighboring forest into the project (as mentioned above). For others, like The Beam and Modera International District in the heart of Little Saigon in Seattle's Chinatown/International District (CID), it means developing an historic site with deep respect for its cultural heritage. After several neighborhood meetings and layers of review, the Beam became a multi-use multifamily development whose apartments and retail reflect design that's culturally appropriate for Little Saigon, boasting a unique “marketplace” passageway supporting the small mom ‘n' pop shops the CID was built on.

The lesson for us? Listening and hearing may be the most important skills an architect can bring.

Bob Tiscareno is the design director, principal and founder of Tiscareno.