`Visual engineer' building a record of Seattle construction

BY CLAIR ENLOW
Journal A/E editor

John Stamets has gotten used to hauling lots of equipment around to construction sites -- levels, hard hat, large camera case. "People on the bus guess I'm a surveyor and people on the site think I'm from OSHA."

At the Pacific Place site, where Stamets can be seen regularly in the off-hours, some people still think he's a security guy. He is, in fact, a photographer who takes large-format pictures of buildings under construction. But that still doesn't really explain what he does.

"I'm a visual engineer," said Stamets.

He has tried to explain it to marketers and managers. But this is the age of pre-leasing, digital imagery and enormous liability claims. Most construction photography is intended to ward off lawsuits. And only images of finished buildings are good for design approval or leasing. It's almost as if Stamets is speaking a foreign language.

A view from the second level of the Pacific Place atrium. Steel framing was used to accommodate multiple uses - retail, cinemas and restaurants.

In fact, Stamets' work is part of an American tradition. It can be seen in the photographs of Asahel Curtis. In Seattle's Museum of History and Industry, old photographs show the Smith Tower rising heroically, its bare framework captured forever on film.

Now Pacific Place, the Starwood Hotel and the Expeditors Building -- three of Stamets' subjects -- will have the same kind of immortality.

With some very important refinements, Stamets uses the same equipment and methods as Asahel Curtis. Four-by-five-inch negatives provide a degree of sharpness, clarity and depth impossible to get with 35 millimeter photography, computer images or hand renderings. Perspective is controlled by keeping the picture plane perfectly vertical.

Stamets is now working with a $5,000 faculty development grant from the University of Washington to create an historic archive called the Historic Construction Record, chronicling the progress of construction on Pacific Place, the Starwood Hotel and the Expeditors Building.

His concept for the record is based on two important models: the Historic American Buildings Survey and Historic American Engineering Record. These two projects are funded by federal grants and provide photographic records of significant historic structures. Stamets found that there was no room for construction photos within the mission of those organizations.

His initial project will cover construction activity underway in Seattle in 1997 and 1998.

Stamets became interested in construction photography as a photojournalist. His photographs showing the collapse of the Husky stadium grandstand and the fall of "Hammering Man" as it was being installed at Seattle Art Museum won him local fame.

His interest in construction was confirmed as he recorded the progress of the Henry Gallery addition, just a few steps from his office at the UW Department of Architecture and Urban Design. Stamets teaches a photography class at the UW and his Henry photographs were the subject of a special UW exhibit.

Pacific Place, the Starwood Hotel and the Expeditors Building will each be represented in the Historic Construction Record archive by four to six photos, including one "whole building" image during construction. For Stamets, the advantage of this approach is that he can focus his effort on the most significant moments in each building's construction.

The grant money will last until June and is producing a growing pile of black and white prints showing strange, wonderful and never-to-be-repeated views of these buildings. At the Starwood, Stamets captured the "rat cage," the vast grids of re-bar that are tied into place before the foundation slab is poured.

Moment framing provides seismic resistance without affecting the architectural appearance of the Pine Street side of Pacific Place.

"This is like a research project," said Stamets. "I don't have all the answers. I'm discovering the possibilities -- where this method works well and where it doesn't work. One place it really works well is with structure. How am I going to explain the electrical system? I have no idea."

Stamets has made it his mission to "follow the load" with his photographs. He has assembled a stack of prints of Pacific Place, taken from the same point on each floor plate, with the camera pointed in the same direction. He has used a blue hi-liter to trace the load down through the unusual "bent" columns that make way for the larger spaces in the building.

"We can really appreciate what he's trying to do," said Ken Dahl, project manager at Skilling Ward Magnusson Barkshire for the structural systems at Pacific Place. "We don't ordinarily get to have our work showcased as art."

"It's nice to see the art of the structure," said Dahl. "But technically, I can see more -- a column holding up a floor plate, a brace frame holding up a building. ... By encompassing the whole area, (the photograph) shows what the structure is being used for. And you'll never see it again."

"The structural engineer's job is to make reality of architects' dreams," said Dahl. He is gratified that Stamets is now making visible the reality of the engineer's work.

"Most people really don't have the chance to see the guts of a construction project," said Jane Lewis of Pine Street Development, developer of Pacific Place. Computer-driven images show the structure of a building, "but they don't have the mystique or the ability to draw in the view that plain old black and white does. His work really is art."

"I'm enormously interested in what he's doing," said Meredith Clausen, a professor at the University of Washington. "As an architectural historian, I find myself going back to construction photographs." Clausen is currently researching an article for Casa Bella magazine using construction photographs and she used record photographs in writing an article on structural problems in the Portland Building, designed by Michael Graves.

A ``room'' at the Starwood Hotel which few people have seen. It has since been filled with 500 truckloads of concrete. Photos by John Stamets

As project manager for Ellis-Don Construction, Dale Stenning oversaw the construction of the Henry Art Gallery addition. He said construction workers are used to laboring unseen for months until the building is built. Then the site is groomed and sanitized for "the glamour shot that everyone wants to take."

For the Henry though, five framed photos hang in the conference room, art works that are themselves a record of a work-in-progress.

Stamets, who called the Henry his obsession, checked frequently with Stenning during construction about what would happen next, always looking at weather and lighting so he could grab the best possible shot.

His photos show buildings in a new light, Stenning said, "how strong they are, how many different systems."

"When you look at photographs from 100 years ago -- buildings (or) tall ships -- you see the technology of the time, the historic context," Stenning said. "We're creating history ourselves. That really does need to get documented."

"I feel like an architectural historian -- I'm just 50 years early," said Stamets.

In addition to documenting history, Stamets is using his camera to answer the question: How do rooms form?

As soon as crews got the deck on for each of the new cinemas at Pacific Place, Stamets arrived, located his "seat" and pointed the camera in the direction of the "screen." He comes back to each theater several times, setting up and aiming the camera from his "seat" as the structure and the walls take shape.

"It will end in a movie," said Stamets. "That's a fun one."

Copyright © 1998 Seattle Daily Journal of Commerce.