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October 28, 2021

Reimagined precinct brings back World’s Fair magic

  • The project makes the western edge of Seattle Center whole again, with sloped planes offering multiple paths through generous plazas and gardens.
  • By BARBARA SWIFT and GARETH LOVERIDGE
    Swift Company

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    Swift

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    Loveridge

    The transformation of Climate Pledge Arena embodies the very best of stewardship and civic commitment to the community. Seattle and Oak View Group have acted and implemented a vision! The 1962 Seattle World’s Fair landmark is transformed as an 18,100-person venue under its great parabolic roof.

    The magic of the World’s Fair is back with plazas wrapping the restored glass walls of the arena. You, too, can take pleasure in seeing in and through the arena facade, leaving your mark with a nose print! The northern glass wall lets you view both — in from the plaza above, and out from the seating bowl to the landscape beyond — a true reimagining of Paul Thiry’s arena in the classic Northwest tradition.

    Seattle’s community “heart,” the Seattle Center campus, has more space for the over 1,400 events it hosts per year. The arena plazas create a multitude of gathering spaces for events, people watching, and the celebration of community life — including the Seattle Storm and the new home team, the Kraken. The surrounding communities of Queen Anne, Belltown and South Lake Union, with their commitment to increased density, now have generous plazas and gardens of all sizes for the intimate moments of daily life.<

    Photos by Gareth Loveridge [enlarge]
    Plazas wrap the restored glass walls of the arena.

    This western precinct of Seattle Center is reimagined, extending the campus grounds to the streets and sidewalks. The design recaptures the full site for public use — replacing the loading and service areas with public spaces full of trees, seating, leaning walls and areas to linger.

    In Seattle, topography can be a barrier and a central objective of maximizing ease of access. This drove a core design strategy, creating a level platform at the arena entry level. The reimagined site ties into the surrounding city and center with sloped planes offering multiple paths through generous plazas and gardens, allowing people to easily find their way and wander as they like.

    This objective maximizes the site for intuitive circulation and gathering, instead of losing precious space to stairs and ramps. Where stairs and walls occur, they’re used to create overlooks for people watching and gathering nooks. With careful grade manipulation, ADA access is ubiquitous, and barriers are removed. Places that are easy to use and where you can focus on people and activities instead of where to move your feet make for a more generous place. This is good for the full community, creating comfortable places to stop and linger with a commitment to leveling the playing field for all.

    Legacy Plane trees from the 1960s will be joined with over 170 new trees to eventually double the site’s tree canopy.

    The arena precinct is a place of magic and memory comprised of the great legacy Plane trees that envelop the site, the reimagined DuPen Fountain (opening in 2022), the Northwest Rooms with their collection of critical community organizations (like KEXP, VERA and SIFF), and the arena itself, with many new publicly accessible art installations. Each is part of a larger composition and integrated into the site design with the goal of treating each piece with equal importance and as part of a larger whole. This is what good design should do.

    When you visit — stop and relax — you should feel as if the whole place was designed as one with seamless transitions between old and new. This is the challenge of transforming legacy civic spaces, and the project embraced the challenge of making this western edge of Seattle Center whole again. The result is what makes Seattle Center Seattle’s heart. The design creates the stage for the daily life of the city, and a central meeting place of celebration and ritual — a place of demonstration and protest. This is what stewarding the past for the future is all about.

    How does this happen? It requires vision, commitment, conviction and dogged hard work. It takes a nimble team committed to a vision with the will to make it real.

    It takes a team committed to building smart green strategies and optimizing the opportunity of a project of this scale. The subtle use of rainwater sheeting into tree wells and gardens captures and optimizes what will be precious water in the future. Approximately 50% of the 1-acre plantings are on structure and the capture of rainwater in garden areas puts the water to great use. This is a high impact and low-cost move.

    The rigorous protection and maintenance of the spectacular legacy Plane trees from the 1960s coupled with the addition of over 170 new trees will double the long-term tree canopy of the site. This will mitigate the heat island effect, increase air moisture, support habitat and sequester carbon. Using the street for multiple activities including festivals means the streets (29% of the city) serve more than just cars. These simple big and small moves are critical for our future.

    Working in a place which is sacred to the city and its history requires careful work. The consistent and thoughtful attention to historic landmarks and working with the city of Seattle Department of Neighborhoods Landmark Preservation Board and Design Commission means that the integrity of the arena, the DuPen Fountain and the overall site is retained and upgraded.

    Public spaces have seating, leaning walls and areas to linger.

    For the DuPen Fountain, it means Everett DuPen’s original intention of creating a touchable place that speaks to the importance of science and the source of life carries forward in the future. It means that the 1962 experience of walking up to the windows of the arena for direct human access is recreated. It means that the artwork panels by Paul Thiry are preserved and integrated and that the great tree alignments designed by Richard Haag continue as part of Seattle’s urban forest.

    Equally, the future is brought to play, continuing Seattle’s groundbreaking tradition of integrating public art into our civic spaces, each speaking with a different voice, reflecting the diversity of the community.

    In the end, the experience should feel so logical and apparent as to seem natural and whole. When you walk through the Seattle Center grounds in the evening, the arena is a beacon with people strolling, gathering for pregame events, listening to buskers, all in a precinct with an open feeling creating a place of generosity in the city.

    On a summer afternoon, the great legacy trees and their younger partners will offer shade and respite. Children will continue the 60-year-old tradition of leaping in DuPen Fountain. Music will pour out of KEXP and evening SIFF movies will occur on the plaza. On winter mornings, frost will gather on the DuPen sculptures and light will glisten on wet paving. The constant changing events of Seattle Center will invite you to join your larger community and enjoy the spectacular events in the arena. This is the vision of the reimagined Climate Pledge Arena in Seattle Center — the making of community.

    Barbara Swift, FASLA, Hon. AIA, is the founder of Swift Company and has built a practice focused on the public realm and the development of civic spaces serving community. She is the principal-in-charge and lead landscape designer for Climate Pledge Arena. Gareth Loveridge is the project manager and lead for landscape design for the arena, and has 22 years of experience in landscape architecture and urban design.


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