Acer House at 23rd & Cherry
an afrofuturist response to Seattle’s first anti-racist development

In collaboration with Donald King, Schemata Workshop is designing this mixed-use project as the City’s first "anti-racist private development”*. The building includes 107 units of affordable housing, locally-owned small retail shops, a Black-owned café/restaurant, and a childcare center. Located at 23rd and Cherry, a very prominent corner in Seattle’s diverse Central Area that hasn’t been gentrified, Acer House will incorporate Afrofuturist design principles and be a proper reflection of the community.

Afrofuturism is a philosophy rooted in science and culture but also draws upon the African diaspora and history. The Afrocentric cultural aesthetic is most readily found in fashion, film, and pop culture to describe a future where Black people are fully present and thriving (think Black Panther). The architectural concepts for massing, modulation, and cladding draw from African fractals, kente stoles, West African-painted mud buildings, and familial relationships. Afrofuturist principles are a rare sighting in the Pacific Northwest as most designs are designed in Africa or with African-like climates, not the wet climate found here. Besides climate, we are also applying these principles to a project type that is notoriously a balancing act between construction costs and associated rents. The resulting building offers open spaces to meet neighbors, interact intergenerational, and connect to familiar nature, yet with an Afrocentric twist.

Learn more here.

*The developer’s goals for anti-racist development include strategies to address privately-funded affordable housing; community-focused amenities; sustainability; BIPOC-led consultants; and broad-based wealth creation.