Project Statement
Envisioned as a new urban model for sculpture
parks, this project is located on Seattle’s last
undeveloped waterfront property – an industrial
brownfield site sliced by train tracks and an arterial
road. The design connects three separate sites with
an uninterrupted Z – shaped “green”
platform, descending 40 feet from the city to the water,
capitalizing on views of the skyline and Elliot Bay, and rising over existing
infrastructure to reconnect the urban core to the revitalized
waterfront.
Most large North American coastal cities
are oriented around once-active ports where streets,
roadways, and rail lines were organized to move labor
and materials efficiently. Over the past several decades,
many ports have become obsolete and industry has moved away, leaving behind an antiquated system of urban
infrastructure. Highways and rail lines that facilitated
the flow of commerce have become barriers blocking public
use of urban waterfronts. The site of the Olympic Sculpture
Park was emblematic of this condition.
Until the late 19th century, the local
shoreline was characterized by the rising slope of Denny
Hill. To accommodate growing industrial development,
the City of Seattle radically transformed its topography
by using hydrological power to level the waterfront
bluff and to create new landfill.
Used primarily for industrial purposes,
the site declined in value in the 1960’s and 1970’s.
More recently, it has become prime for residential speculation
and would have been highly developed had it not been
for the intervention of the Seattle Art Museum. Formerly
owned by Union Oil of California (Unocal), the area
was used as an oil transfer facility. Before construction
of the park, over 120,000 tons of contaminated soil
was removed. The remaining petroleum contaminated soil
is capped by a new landform with over 200,000 cubic
yards of clean fill, much of it excavated from the Seattle
Art Museum’s downtown expansion project.
Winner of an international design competition,
the design for the Olympic Sculpture Park capitalizes
on the forty-foot grade change from the top of the site
to the water’s edge. Planned as a continuous landscape
that wanders from the city to the shoreline, this Z-shaped hybrid landform provides a new pedestrian infrastructure.
Built with a system of mechanically stabilized earth,
the enhanced landform re-establishes the original topography
of the site, as it crosses the highway and train tracks
and descends to meet the
city. Layered over the existing site and infrastructure,
the scheme creates a dynamic link making the waterfront
accessible. The main pedestrian route is initiated at
an 18,000-square-foot exhibition pavilion and descends
as each leg of the path opens to radically different
views. The first stretch crosses a highway, offering
views of the Olympic Mountains; the second crosses the
train tracks, offering views of the city and port; and
the last descends to the water, opening views of the
newly created beach. This pedestrian landform now allows free movement
between the city’s urban center and the restored
beaches at the waterfront.
After winning the international
design competition, the designers worked with the client
to select a team of local consultants. A consulting
landscape architect familiar with local species worked
within the tilting landforms of the Z-shaped design
to create distinct microsettings for diverse ecological environments with plantings characteristic
of the Northwest. As the route descends from the pavilion
to the water, it links three re-created archetypal landscapes
of the northwest: a dense and temperate evergreen forest
lined with
ferns; a deciduous forest of Quaking Aspens with seasonally
changing characteristics; and a shoreline garden including
a series of new tidal terraces for salmon habitat and
saltwater vegetation. Throughout the park, landforms
and plantings collaborate to direct, collect, and cleanse
storm water as it moves through the site before being
discharged into Elliott Bay.
As a “landscape for art”,
the Olympic Sculpture park defines a new experience
for modern and contemporary art outside the museum walls.
The topographically varied park provides diverse settings
for sculpture of multiple scales. Richard Serra’s
Wake is contained in the Valley, Tony Smith’s
Stinger and Wandering Rocks are seen witin the Aspen
Grove, and Mark DiSuvero’s kinetic sculpture Shubert
Sonata is activated by the winds along the waterfront.
Deliberately open-ended, the design invites new interpretations
of art and environmental engagement, reconnecting the
fractured relationships of art, landscape, and urban
life.
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Project
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Client:
Seattle Art Museum
Lead Designer:
Site Design / Architecture
Weiss/Manfredi Architecture/Landscape/Urbanism
Landscape Architect:
Charles Anderson Landscape Architecture
Marion Weiss and Michael A. Manfredi
(Design Partners), Christopher Ballentine (Project
Manager), Todd Hoehn and Yehre Suh (Project Architects),
Patrick Armacost, Michael Blasberg, Emily Clanahan,
Lauren Crahan, Beatrice Eleazar, Kok Kian Go,
Hamilton Hadden, Mike Harshman, Mustapha Jundi,
Justin Kwok, John Peek, and Akari Takebayashi
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Consultant
Team:
Structural and Civil Engineering Consultant: Magnusson
Klemencic Associates
Landscape Architecture Consultant: Charles Anderson
Landscape Architecture
Mechanical and Electrical Engineering Consultant:
ABACUS Engineered Systems
Lighting Design Consultant: Brandston Partnership
Inc.
General Contractor: Sellen Construction, Seattle,
WA
Geotechnical Engineering Consultant: Hart Crowser,
Seattle, WA
Environmental Consultant: Aspect Consulting, Seattle,
WA
Aquatic Engineering Consultant: Anchor Environmental,
Seattle, WA
Graphics Consultant: Pentagram, New York, NY
Security and AV/IT Consultant: ARUP, New York,
NY
Catering & Food Service Consultant: Bon Appetit,
Seattle, WA
Kitchen Consultant: JLR Design, Seattle, WA
Retail Consultant: Doyle + Associates, Philadelphia,
PA
Project Management: Barrientos LLC, Seattle, WA
Architectural Site Representation: Owens Richards
Architects, pllc, Seattle, WA
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