Project Update: Acer House Passed Design Review

Acer House, a mixed-used project in Seattle’s Central District, recently passed its Design Recommendations Meeting with the Central Area Design Review Board. The intersection is a cultural and community hub with the Garfield Community Center, NOVA at the Horace Mann School, Garfield High School, Medgar Evers Pool, Quincy Jones Performing Arts Center, and the Eritrean Community Center. The design team includes Schemata Workshop and Donald King, were also the authors of the Central Area Design Guidelines, and therefore Acer House embodies the community values for what development should look like. In a true expression of community voice, both the programming and design of the project has been shaped by community input.

The project is Seattle’s first anti-racist private development project and hopes to be the benchmark for future development around the city. Acer House will be the first project in Seattle to apply Afrofuturist design principles to a mixed-use project - not from the standpoint of high-tech materials, but in the spirit of creating a place where the Black community can see themselves in the past, present and future of the Central Area.

The design faced challenges associated to the scale of the building under current zoning and neighborhood context. To address this, our team, which includes design lead Donald King, collaborated with the Central Area Land Use Review Committee (LURC) to find the right balance of massing and design. Working collaboratively, the team accomplished a solution that fits within the existing environment. The final design solution was approved by the Design Review Board with no critiques. This stamp of approval validates months of hard work the team put into a designing a building that honors the history of the Central District and realizes the vision of what it could be.

The AMP: AIDS Memorial Pathway

Planning of the AIDS Memorial Pathway (AMP) officially began in 2016, but its catalyst came far before in the 80s and 90s when protests broke out in Seattle during the height of the AIDS epidemic. During his last term, Seattle City Councilman Tom Rasmussen, reflecting on that time and its impact on the community, raised the idea to use public funding to create an AIDS Memorial. It would provide a physical public space for people to reflect and connect with their community. To prepare the 2.8-million-dollar project,  MOHAI was enlisted to conduct a planning study involving community members, artists, and other professionals. Cal Anderson Park, in the heart of Capitol Hill and neighboring the Light Rail Capitol Hill Station, was selected as the installation location.

The AMP’s Celebration

Four installations were planned, and Seattle’s Office of Arts and Culture oversaw the selection of commissioned artists for the four pieces:

Horatio Hung-Yan Law, a public art and installation artist from Portland, created the AMP’s Master Art Plan, and Rosette Royale, an award-winning writer, began collecting stories surrounding the AIDS epidemic and the effects it had on the LGBTQI+ community.

“We’re Already Here” by Civilization

Christopher Paul Jordan, Civilization (a design practice), Horatio Hung-Yan Law, and Storme Webber were commissioned to create the four installations, and the public funding was allocated covered half of the AMP’s budget.

The AMP is scheduled to be completed in 2021.

If you want to read more, follow the links below:

Schemata Workshop and The Berger Partnership helped the AMP founders envision the potential memorial through several community workshops. The resulting documentation helped inform the art master plan. Both firms were involved in the artist selection process.

Seattle Times articles:

Seattle’s AIDS Memorial Pathway becomes one of few memorials honoring those lost to the epidemic

Artists tell the stories behind 4 art installations that will anchor Seattle’s AIDS Memorial Pathway

Leadership Tomorrow – Geoff's Reflections on Challenge Day 5: Education

Schemata Workshop is excited to announce that Principal Geoff Anderson has been selected as a participant in the Leadership Tomorrow (LT) class of 2021.

LT is an intensive civic leadership program focused on interconnections between elements of Seattle Foundation’s “Healthy Community” framework. The program helps participants further develop their leadership skills and practices, focusing on the goal of creating a healthy, just, and inclusive Puget Sound region. In particular, the program has been actively evolving its approach to racial equity, supporting participants’ development as antiracist civic leaders.

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Geoff’s Reflection on Challenge Day 4: Arts + Culture

One of the goals I set for myself at the beginning of this Leadership Tomorrow (LT) year was to become more mindful of the privileges I am afforded as a white male that others, especially in the BIPOC community are not privy to.

March’s Leadership Tomorrow sessions presented  poignant and personally-challenging experiences at a level that I had not experienced yet in this program The first of these  came on Education Challenge Day.

Education Challenge Day

As a jumping-off point, we began our work on this topic by viewing “I Sued the School System”, a viral video in which the artist criticizes the traditional school system for “killing creativity, individuality, and being intellectually abusive” (more here) ”

This Leadership Tomorrow Challenge Day was eye-opening and challenging. For our prework, we delved into the history of Indian Boarding Schools and other racist education policies. Although heartbreaking, this is a part of our country’s violent history and something everyone should all have a better understanding of. We also studied current racial biases in education, and more about the School to Prison Pipeline (See Challenge Day 3)

Beginning the process of understanding the full extent of the privileges I had growing up in a wealthy, predominantly white suburb was challenging. I understood that my family chose where we lived growing up because of the “good schools” but I was ignorant to what this meant for many of our cohorts who were not afforded this privilege. I appreciated the benefits I had due to this privilege, but it was jarring to realize how utterly rare it is to have the resources and teachers I did. I cannot believe how much I took for granted. I wish that everyone could have the same access to great schools with long-term, dedicated teachers, extra-curricular activities, and even the unique programs that are provided by well-intentioned PTSA Boards at schools in wealthy districts.

LT program participants are given the opportunity to meet and interview area leaders in small team groups. My small team met with Michelle Merriweather, President & CEO of the Urban League of Metropolitan Seattle, to learn about her background and the journey that she took to arrive at this point in her career. Our conversation centered on leadership styles and the work that the Urban League does in the Seattle area. The most impactful moment of the interview, for me at least, occurred as we were winding down our talk, and Michelle was asked how she handles being a black woman in leadership, and the challenges inherent in that specific experience.

Michelle described how she uses ‘code-switching’ in professional situations such as conversations with funders or doing advocacy work. She continued by saying that about eight months ago, amidst BLM protests, she made a deliberate decision to no longer code-switch but has a fear of paying for this decision later – “on the other side,” as she put it. As a white man, I never have had to even consider code-switching, or the repercussions thereof, and this was something that I had never realized was a privilege.