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Summary
The main goal of this project is to create a park/structure that
provides multiple accessibilities and diverse programs for the Pike
Place/Aquarium Redevelopment Area in Central Waterfront of downtown
Seattle. I focused on creating a new landform that unifies the Pike
Place by responding to the topographical site condition as well
as the surrounding superposition of natural and cultural layers.
Because of my architectural background, I primarily wished to design
an urban public space that strongly associates with the building
structures. My design reshapes the existing ground and constructs
a new landscape together with architectural volumes to provide new
connections, destinations and accessibilities between downtown and
the waterfront. This enables pedestrian to flexibly interweave on
the landscape surface, but at the same time, people can walk under,
over or across the ground planes into interior volumes. Throughout
the design process, I explored an urban design strategy for creating
urban public open space by combining the strength of the interdisciplinary
manners of architecture and landscape architecture.
Project Location
The site that I focus on is from the Victor Steinbrueck Park that
sits just north of the Pike Place Market towards the Seattle Aquarium
located on pier 59, which the City of Seattle calls as the Pike
Place / Aquarium Redevelopment Area.
Project Scope and Size
This project explores a new urban design strategy for assimilating
a new kind of park that is hybrid in its system and incorporates
multiple aspects that the park is composed of - public opens paces,
architectural functionality, and infrastructure as a new transportation
system – in order to revitalize the Pike Place Area in Seattle
Central Waterfront.
The approximate size of the park/structure is 27 acres.
Site and Context
The Pike Place / Aquarium Redevelopment Area is one of the main
hubs that are unique and have strong vitality as the city’s
points of interest. It provides different types of activities as
a recreational corridor for the city: visitors can enjoy staying
along the waterfront by shopping, eating, sightseeing, and taking
ferry trips from the piers. For the office workers in downtown
area, it offers a valuable opportunity to get away from the artificial
and dense bustle of the city.
As one of the main transportation system in
the city today, the Viaduct (SR99) continues to be a main north-south
route through the city that carries traffics traveling through downtown. It does
serve an important function, but the structure of the viaduct
restricts potentials to connect the city to the waterfront. Since the Nisqually
earthquake struck Seattle in 2001, the Alaskan Way Viaduct along
the waterfront was irreparably damaged and thus it needs to be
replaced. The city has decided to take the tunnel alternative option for
the replacement of SR99, and the city is now continuing their
tasks on the project according to this option for the new vision of the
waterfront design. With the viaduct gone, views and accessibilities
to and from the waterfront, which currently obstructed by the
viaduct, would be dramatically opened up for the first time since the early
1950’s.
By taking the highest advantage of this tunnel
alternative for the viaduct’s replacement, the main design
strategy that I take is to create a park/structure that offers
multiple accessibilities that connect the waterfront with the city, and programming diverse
activities and events that provides users with multiple reasons
to visit, use, and stay. By taking the physical, cultural and
functional contexts of the site, the new park/structure design challenges
to convert them into a set of new programs for creating a vital
hub
for the new Pike Place District.
Design Programs and Strategies
Form: Continuous Tilted Planes
-Craft a landscape form with continuous planes that provides pedestrian
with multiple connections between the two levels of Pike Place and
the waterfront
Functionality
-Create cross-functional park/structure that allows both active
and passive activities and events to happen simultaneously in one
convergence, rather than separating or isolating them spatially
-Maximize the spatial volumes underneath the park surface, and above
the tunnel, in order to make good use of architectural strength
that contributes to cross-functionalism
Accessibility and Destination
-Multiply the destinations and accessibilities throughout the park/structure
so that the visitors could not only take different routes to walk
through the site but also could have multiple reasons to come to
the park and stay
Pedestrian, Vehicular and Water Flow
-Improve the circulations of the three main flows: pedestrian, vehicular,
and water
-Allow pedestrian to have multiple ways to get down from the Pike
Place to the waterfront in a safe way
-Provide the adequate amount of parking lots underneath the landscape
surface, and create organized vehicular access points from both
Alaskan Way and Western Avenue.
-Generate water circulation and retention system for delaying the
surface water flow
-Reveal the movements of water as a recreational and educational
tool
Architecture/Landscape
-Blur the edge of interior and exterior volumes, with combining
strategic design approaches of architecture and landscape architecture
in order to create a series of cross-functional spaces
Ecological Issues
-Provide a continuous vegetated landscape surface that could serve
important function as an urban green park/structure in downtown
Seattle
-Create diversity of vegetation in different zones and elevations
to provide a series of different experiences of interacting with
nature-Generate a chain of water circulations and water retention
system for delaying the surface water flow in order to prevent
the frequent combined surface overflow (CSO) events.
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