Jiffy Lube / Day Care: Made in Seattle

Alex Tulinsky

The building sits on 25th Avenue N.E. adjacent to U Village, amid a typical American automobile-oriented “strip” landscape. Not a preconceived design, this building is an urban aggregation. At street level, a Jiffy Lube oil-change shop; underneath, a bilingual day-care preschool.

The unusual platform-like structure has an expansive parking lot on top, level with 25^th Ave. N.E., convenient for the high-traffic Jiffy Lube. Toward the east the ground falls away, so that the rear of the structure frames a one-story facade facing the opposite direction of the Jiffy Lube. This space houses the day-care center. This is aggregation at a large scale: two quite different structures and two quite different programs.

Another, smaller scale of aggregation is also present. At the Jiffy Lube, a covered work area has been added in the parking lot to the north of the building. Note the oil extraction device standing ready. At the school, a play area was carved out of the adjacent parking lot and fenced in. The fence was lined with plastic material at the eye-level of a pre-schooler, in an attractive geometric pattern, to block the distracting view out.

movement@montlake

Brian Monwai

The pace of movement in contemporary urban life at times runs quickly, at other times slowly. We spend a lot of time hurrying from place to place -- whether by car, by bicycle, or on foot. Sometimes we find ourselves standing still against a backdrop of people rushing by.

The direction of movement can travel in parallel lines as in a freeway, in the overlapping, criss-crossing layers of an overpass, or in a randomly dissipating cloud like smoke from a smokestack. People – strangers and friends -- form an aggregate by coming together intentionally or unintentionally, with similar or dissimilar destinations when they depart. Signage may attempt to direct the flow of movement, but most of the everyday urban movement remains uncontrolled.

The Montlake area of Seattle is a hub of variegated patterns of movement. Bus riders, automobiles, gymnasts and their fans, and bicyclists are a sampling of agents in motion. Not shown are the myriad float-planes, automobile exhaust plumes, buses, crows, and joggers that form the dynamic texture of Montlake.

This project was also an experiment at methods of capturing a sense of movement with still pictures. Notes: while the panhandler and speed limit/your speed pictures were not taken at Montlake, they helped illustrate the nuances of urban movement. The pictures in the photo mosaic were also taken from the expanded Seattle area. The mosaic was assembled with AndreaMosaic software.

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University Heights Center for Community

Josho Somine
LARCH 598
Winter 2009
Final Site Assessment

Site Summary
The University Heights Center for Community (UHCC) occupies a full city block north and west of NE 50th St. and University Way NE in Seattle. A large old building, formerly an elementary school, occupies the center of the block, and is surrounded by parking lots and a variety of small open spaces. The building facilities are managed by a nonprofit organization, and several other organizations rent spaces inside. Some additional rooms are available for classes and events.
The spatial and temporal uses outside the building are similarly diverse. Paved parking makes up about 2/3 of all the open space, and has multiple tenants with jurisdiction over certain sections of the lots. One large lot is turned over to the district Farmers’ Market on Saturday mornings, which is heavily attended year-round. The site also contains 2 playgrounds, one private and one public, a community garden, a small enclosed lawn, and a public entrance plaza. (See site diagram and context diagram for details of the layout.)
The Center’s stated focus is “our local community, children, arts and education, and continuing education” , and they encourage a changeable variety of tenant organizations and activities. (See current list in Appendix A) Although there is an effort to be welcoming, there is also some conflict implicit with the “seedier” aspects of the adjoining neighborhood, which is reflected in an abundance of fencing and regulatory signage all around the site.

Slideshow:

Surface: the connective tissue of our malleable city

Breanne Gearheart

The surface is being remade.
The city is in the midst of itself.
It is a reinvention and an unbiased creation.
It is a record, an accumulation.
Impressions made by a living city
pressed into its body by the pressure of time.
It is no one’s fault and no one’s genius.
It is because of us and in spite of us.

Concrete is poured, smooth walls are pieced together, metal is shaped and embedded in the ground, asphalt is scorched into place. These physical undertakings create the body of our cities. We often conceive of the urban environment as entirely designed. Decisions were made. Architects, city planners, landscape architects, neighborhood organizations, graffiti artists, and shop owners are seen as the creators of our urban surroundings. Yet, a quieter design is adding depth and richness to our cities.

Built forms are physically scarred, rubbed smooth, or momentarily altered by passing phenomenon. Physical form is activated by accidental interventions. The city becomes a physical record of intangible temporal occurrences. Time passes, people move about, rain falls, wind blows. The city is an expression of the processes that occur within it.

Through observing the changes on its surface, we can come to see the built environment as a malleable expression of the life of the city. Multiple narratives are unified and expressed in the flexible form of the city.

Bridging Gaps

Lea Anne Burke

In the process of connecting A to B, the vast network of roads and bridges are an integral part of daily life. Looking ahead to where you are going sometimes leads to overlooking where you are. While during the planning and construction phases, the spaces under bridges may not be intentionally, or intensively, planned. Nature abhors a vacuum and unplanned use quickly occurs. For this assignment, I have chosen to look at art created underneath bridges. Accessibility, visibility, square footage of unprogrammed space, and type of bridge construction can dictate types of art that can occur there. It can be sanctioned coordinated community projects, installations by individual artists, or the quick dashes of graffiti.

The University District has examples of all three types of art, all underneath University Bridge, between the Burke-Gillman trail and Campus Parkway. The sites are highly visible, easily accessible and have fair to high levels of pedestrian, bicycle and vehicle traffic. There is street graffiti, a large mural, and a sculptural installation. These pieces claim and define the character of the sites. They evoke reactions. What does it mean? Who made it? Should I be scared? Do I like it? Whatever the answers, they have served their purpose and asked the questions.

Tukwila: A River Runs Through It

Helen J. Wilson

For over 150 years, Tukwila has come of age around three themes: History, Transportation, and the Duwamish River. A panorama of the community’s past can be seen from the Interurban/Green River Bicycle Trail, which hugs the banks of the river as it loops and curves 13 miles through the heart of the city. Wayside markers, art installations, and parks commemorate successive waves of human arrival, and how they traveled through the landscape. In anticipation of its centennial in 2008, a historian was commissioned to record the city’s past for publication. On the trail with the book in hand, scene after scene comes alive with tribal legend, and stories of the early pioneers. As the inhabitants went from canoeing on the river to flying through on the interstate, different kinds of transportation modes have come and gone, leaving layers of artifacts to mark their passing. Tukwila has expended great effort to give voice to the myriad cultures that have influenced its landscape. As can be seen from the trail, it has fearlessly blended nature and industry to create a phenomenon that is part museum, part wilderness, and part art gallery. Come see landscape urbanism and historic preservation at its finest.


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