(continued)

Bassetti and his long-time and new friends assembled at a long table in a private room at the Olympic Four Seasons Hotel. Together, they asked the question that Bassetti has been answering, in his own way, for these four decades: how does an architect serve his home town?

One idea: spot underdeveloped sites in significant locations and bring resources—public or private—together with good design. Several voices called for renewed commitment among architects to tackle the problems of homelessness, problems that continue in boom times.

Others said it is up to architects to take the long view of the built environment, to look outside the circle of the consultant-client relationship.

They can look to their own circle for mutual support and guidance, with Bassetti as a lifetime example. They can also look to "Action: Better City" and Roger Gula.

Gula leads the revived activist group that Bassetti founded over 30 years ago during the post-Worlds Fair push for progress. Gula was at the table, urging architects to come together and find new agendas for a desired future in Seattle.

In Pioneer Square, Bassetti Architects hosted an office full of schoolchildren for one afternoon of Architecture Week. The younger ones colored in plans of their own schools and then made puzzles out of them.

The older ones had several activities to choose from, including envisioning a new school based on a collection of photos and their own drawings. Students got to try the newest CAD programs and see how sample boards are put together. Many wrote on special boards, proclaiming their visions of the ideal city. AIA Seattle will present the boards to the mayor.

Modeling New Environmental Paradigms

Out on Pier 56 is the new home of one of several large design firms that has strained the seams of its existing office in the last few years and set out in search of space.

For Mithun Partners, the move to the waterfront was the second in a decade, having earlier moved from the suburbs to downtown Seattle, bringing along a refocused set of values at each step. Now employing over 100 people, the firm fills most of the pier in an open plan with good views of the bay and the Olympic Mountains.

With a new home over the water, sustainable design gets top billing. The firm has had a chance to stretch the definition of the word in a handful of REI flagship stores, beginning here in Seattle. For Architecture Week, Mithun CEO Burt Gregory presented a seminar on new standards for building with the lowest possible impact on the environment.

His case in point: the Puget Sound Environmental Learning Center across the bay on Bainbridge Island, the project of Debbi Brainerd and her husband Paul, inventor of desktop publishing.

The 255-acre PSELC campus will sit lightly on a tract of undeveloped land that includes a large pond and ample wetlands, immersing students of many levels in environmental education.

The project, to be completed in 2003, is designed to link ecology, education, and the arts. It includes the "living machine," a tertiary wastewater treatment system displaying the natural purification process.

In his seminar, Gregory covered the concepts of erosion and sediment control, embodied energy versus used energy, integrated energy management systems, and the ABCs of indoor air quality. Attendees were introduced to the LEED standards (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) now used to certify levels of environmental responsibility in large construction projects.

In the new office of Mithun Partners, model-making has taken precedence, with a large room dedicated to the production of scale models for study and presentation. This emphasis on the use of physical models represents and interesting trend among design-oriented firms who are also cultivating the latest technology.

This trend is reflected in "Ideas in Form4," this year's installment of an annual exhibit of scale models at the office of the Seattle Architectural Foundation in Rainier Square, for Architecture Week. This year, visitors were able to survey models of the city's new justice center and the new federal courthouse, both by NBBJ.

In the meantime, working models of Seattle's new Experience Music Project, designed by Frank Gehry, were on display at the Henry Art Gallery at the edge of the University of Washington campus, along with an exhibit called "Frank Gehry Studio." Directions for the Future

All of these, along with this year's awards program, reflect an ever greater interest in the process of making architecture.

An audience of 800 filled Benaroya Hall for the awards event. The turnout and the sense of enthusiasm brought to the program reflects a town still very serious about a sense of purpose and achievement in architecture.

This presents a fine contrast to similar programs in other urban centers, where design architects are more focused on publishing than on peer recognition.

This year's awards truly brought the program into the 21st century, with all submittals made and displayed on the Web. AIA Seattle's Web site got a record 100,000 hits on the first day they were posted.

The design awards themselves were divided into three categories. In addition to the usual crop of built works, there were two awards for not-yet-built projects: the new downtown Seattle library, designed by OMA (Rem Koolhaas) with LMN Architects; and an addition to the Reno-Sparks Convention Center, also by LMN.

The Bellevue (Washington) Art Museum, by Steven Holl Architects, was described by the awards jury as offering "wonderful surprises of form." Photo: Steven Holl Architects The Reno-Sparks (Nevada) Convention Center Addition & Renovation, by LMN Architects, "a tactical design, using a billboard as an appropriate strategy for dealing with a blocky existing structure." Image: LMN Architects The Pine Forest Cabin (Winthrop, Washington), by James Cutler Architects, "an unpretentious cedar cigar box lighted in the landscape." Photo: Art Grice Gosline Residence (Seattle), by Bohlin Cywinski Jackson, "a celebration of craft." Photo: Fred Housel The Roddy-Bale Residence (Bellevue), by The Miller/Hull Partnership, with a "subtle suggestion of Asian influence." David Owen Good Samaritan Hospital, Dr. Donald & Beret Mott Children's Center (Puyallup, Washington), Zimmer Gunsul Frasca Partnership, "a Noah's ark of a facility for its young visitors." Photo: Eckert &Eckert The Reebok World Headquarters (Canton, Massachusetts), by NBBJ, is, according to the jury, "all about shapes and strenuous structure." Photo: Assassi Productions   Click on thumbnail images to view full-size pictures.