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.

Afrofuturism is a philosophy rooted in science and technology but also drawing upon the African diaspora. It is an Afrocentric cultural aesthetic that most readily translates to fashion and film, and describes a future where Black people are fully present and thriving.  (Think Black Panther.)  In architecture, that is harder to define as most Architects designing with Afrofuturist principles have designed buildings on the African continent or in climates zones very different than the wet Pacific Northwest. We are also applying these principles to a project type that is notoriously a balancing act between construction costs and associated rents.  The architectural concepts for massing, modulation, and cladding draw from African fractals, kente stoles, West African painted mud buildings, and even familial relationships. The resulting building offers open spaces to meet neighbors, interact intergenerationally and connect to nature that is familiar, yet with an Afrocentric twist.

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