GGLO
Specialty: Parks, streetscapes, civic spaces, mixed-use housing
Management: Kent Scott, principal, manager of Landscape Architecture and Planning & Urban Design groups
Founded: 1986 (2001 for the Landscape Architecture group)
Headquarters: Seattle
Projects: Seattle University courtyard, bookstore and student housing; new Fremont park for Seattle Parks Department; street and roadway improvements in historic district of Parkland adjacent to Pacific Lutheran University
It is GGLO’s 20th anniversary this year, and the design, planning and landscape architecture firm brought Brazilian green guru Jaime Lerner to Seattle to mark the occasion.
Image courtesy GGLO GGLO is designing this streetscape, called “Caffeine,” for a South Lake Union development. The theme blends the area’s biotech industry with Seattle’s coffee culture, resulting in eight carbon, 10 hydrogen, four nitrogen and two oxygen elements — the chemical makeup of caffeine.
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The Landscape Architecture and Planning & Urban Design groups at GGLO are 13 percent of GGLO’s business, $1 million a year.
Imbued with ideas
Kent Scott, who manages the groups, is pushing “not just do good work, but work imbued with ideas.” A park in Fremont GGLO is designing, for example, takes its inspiration from the Theseus myth.
“It’s a half-acre site with a spectacular view west,” Scott said. “We wanted the site to unfold, street-side through woodland to a 180-degree view.”
In the Theseus myth, the minotaur goes into the labyrinth carrying a silver thread. Soat, the park’s entryway, will have a spool of thread, a sculpture designed by Laura Haddad.
“The silver thread will find its way through the path and through the trees,” he said. “It leads you out to the view.”
Art in the landscape
Many of GGLO’s projects involve art, Scott pointed out. Alden Mason mosaics went into the Sixth Avenue Northwest Pocket Park in Greenwood. Site-specific art for parks and trails was created by four artists for Greenbridge, a 90-acre King County Housing Authority project near White Center. Ellen Sollod has been hired to develop an art master plan for the park at Burien Town Square, where GGLO is doing a public plaza (as well as some housing and retail) for a new 10-acre urban village downtown.
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Scott said that GGLO is also working on a 27-acre park in Fairfield, Calif. He attributes GGLO’s multidisciplinary strength for beating out San Francisco design firms for Bay Area jobs. “We can do everything in house in a much more robust way,” he said.
Green projects
The firm has “a ton” of sustainable projects on deck, Scott said. “Everything from collecting roof runoff into cisterns and using it for irrigation, to a lot of green roofs.”
Two green roofs in Portland’s Pearl District designed by GGLO total about 120,000 square feet. One tops a Safeway store, the other a mixed-use apartment building.
“I think we have almost 20 LEED projects under way,” said Scott. “It’s pretty shocking about how many of the developers feel if it’s not LEED, they can’t move it.”