American Society of Landscape Architects ASLA 2007 Professional Awards
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(Photo: Benjamin Benschneider)

(Photo: Benjamin Benschneider)

(Photo: Benjamin Benschneider)

(Photo: Weiss/Manfredi)

(Photo: Weiss/Manfredi)

(Photo: Paul Warchol)

(Photo: Paul Warchol)

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GENERAL DESIGN HONOR AWARD

Olympic Sculpture Park, Seattle, Washington
Lead Designer: Weiss/Manfredi
Architecture/Landscape/Urbanism
, New York, New York
Landscape Architect: Charles Anderson Landscape Architecture
client: Seattle Art Museum


"A brilliant move. It's fantastic and not easily accomplished. The design team showed great restraint."

— 2007 Professional Awards Jury Comments

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.

Project Resources

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

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

 

(Photo: Weiss/Manfredi)

(Photo: Benjamin Benschneider)

(Photo: Lara Swimmer)

(Photo: Weiss/Manfredi)

(Photo: Benjamin Benschneider)

(Photo: Benjamin Benschneider)

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