Jelly Bean is a manufactured cloud hovering over the cultural campus of Seattle Center. One of three finalists in Seattle’s Urban Intervention design ideas competition, it’s the work of Boston-based PRAUD (Dongwoo Kim and Rafael Luna), together with Cheng-Yang Lee (with Machado & Silvetti Associates), a team whose intentions are deliberately iconic. Their renderings show how a balloon, 10 storeys up in the air, will challenge and complement Seattle’s sky-bound symbol, the 605-foot-high Space Needle that opened in 1962, and the more earthbound forms of the Gehry Associates’ Experience Music Project (EMP), opened in 2000. Jelly Bean situates itself in design history while it mediates between the lofty heights of the needle—the saucer-shaped restaurant, at 500 feet, it is just 20 feet under the highest hill in the city–and the EMP on the ground. It’s designed for visibility and impact, conceptually and literally, in its connection to the Center, neighborhood, and city.
“Park” team: Koning Eizenberg and Arup
In response to the design brief for Urban Intervention, a design ideas competition being hosted Seattle Center and AIA Seattle, “Park”, one of the three finalists proposes just what its name implies: a park-like setting that addresses the 9 acre Memorial Stadium site and provides a new organization for the many disparate parts of the larger, 75 acre Seattle Center campus into a singular, unified solution. The proposal is much more complex than a simple park, though, and the more you dig into it the more you discover how thoughtful and appropriate the solution is.
“The [in]-closure project goes far beyond a plain “public space”…it is the place where urban micro-events happen…conveying a social and interdependent economy based on time – a new type of commodity money to chat, debate, help ideas to germinate, be involved in community service, help, learn, play, relax, stroll, improve…” (ABF narrative)
What is the nature of public space in the coming century? How does that space function socially, economically, ecologically? Those are questions raised by the URBAN INTERVENTION ideas competition at Seattle Center, which recently completed its first phase. Three finalists were selected by a six person jury, with an additional seven commendations from a field of 107 international submissions. The finalists and all submissions can be seen here.
2012 is the 50th anniversary of Seattle World’s Fair, which created the iconic Space Needle and a 74-acre civic campus called Seattle Center. The Center – home to theaters, museums, a film festival, and multiple cultural festivals throughout the year – has been undergoing a revitalization, with an updated master plan and new tenant groups. The city is also engaged in other significant public space development, notably a new waterfront master plan led by James Corner Field Operations.
