5 AAPI Architects and Designers You Need to Know

In honor of Asian American Pacific Islander Heritage Month, Schemata wants to shed light on a few architects and designers of the AAPI community that have contributed to the architectural history of America as well as those who continue to push the boundaries of architecture and design today.

Minoru Yamasaki

Minoru Yamasaki is a first-generation Japanese American master architect born in Seattle, WA. During his time studying architecture at the University of Washington, he was also working in an Alaskan cannery to pay for his tuition. Working alongside fellow Asian coworkers, many of whom were poor, inspired Yamaski to invest in his talents and use them in a way that would make his life meaningful to both himself and those around him.

While Yamasaki is best known for being the mastermind behind the design of the World Trade Center, his work can be found in the skylines of many cities across the U.S.. In Seattle specifically, he is to credit the for the designs of the IBM building, Rainier Tower, and the Pacific Science Center- a current Schemata project.

Isamu Noguchi (1904 – 1988)

Isamu Noguchi is a half Japanese half Irish artist and designer born in Los Angeles, California. While he is best known for his sleek and organic furniture designs, Noguchi also created sculptures, gardens, lighting designs, ceramics, architecture and set designs; drawing inspiration from the places he traveled and lived throughout his life. His work simultaneously subtle and bold, traditional and modern, set a new standard for the reintegration of the arts.

Today, you can find one of his many public sculptures “Black Sun” at Capitol Hill’s very own Volunteer Park!

To learn more about Isamu Noguchi, visit https://www.noguchi.org/

Annie Han and Daniel Mihalyo

Annie Han and Daniel Mihalyo are a Seattle-based duo who founded Lead Pencil Studio- a firm that contains both an architectural practice that specializes in residential and commercial buildings and an art practice that focuses on site-specific pieces that reimagine the conditions of architecture at full scale. Han, who was born in South Korean and Mihalyo, a Washington native, joined forces as undergraduate students at the University of Oregon where they won a design competition as well as the State of Oregon Development of the Year Award. Almost a decade after graduating, they opened their firm in 2002. Since then, the couple’s work has been featured in several museums and galleries throughout the US and they have continued to receive grants, awards, and residencies, thus, creating the blueprint to successfully bridge the gap between art and architecture.

To view their current projects, visit https://www.leadpencilstudio.org/

John Belford- Lelaulu

Driven by the idea of social design, Belford- Lelaulu has collaborated with nonprofit organizations across the globe such as Habitat for Humanity to design spaces that cater to the specific needs of communities battling various hardships.

In an interview with Architecture Now, he describes how his Samoan background influences his approach to his work:

“There’s a (Samoan) proverb which is ‘O le ala i le pule o le tautua’, meaning, ‘The path to authority is through service, in order to do anything in Samoa, you need to be serving. You can’t just become an architect or a chief. You have to be helping different members of the community. For me, I ask myself how I can serve the most vulnerable people in our communities.”

Through this work, he also developed a new perspective on architecture and its societal impact. This realization then sparked a desire to create more opportunities for young Pasifika people, like himself, to explore humanitarian and social architecture. As a result, he established MAU Studio – providing educational opportunities and experiences that allows New Zealand’s youth to connect with their culture and engage with their community through meaningful architecture.

To learn more about John Belford-Lelaulu, check out this article

Suchi Reddy

Suchi Reddy is an Indian-American architect, artist, and founder of Reddymade- a design firm based in New York. The firm’s portfolio offers a wide variety of projects ranging from single family homes to public sculptures, all embodying Reddy’s cutting edge approach to art and design. Reddy’s Work has been featured in places such as Time square and The Smithsonian where it welcomes societal engagement and generates dialogue around topics of both local and global relevance.

One of her recent pieces, “me+you” is an interactive installation that debuted at the Smithsonian back in November of 2021. The sculpture combines elements of both architecture and artificial intelligence by inviting audience members to speak their “future vision” into one of the many designated points of the cloud base and, in response, the piece uses AI to translate the meaning, tone and sentiment of their words to then be reflected in a unique combination of color & light.  According to Reddy, the piece serves almost as an “Interactive mandala”- a spiritual Icon of South Asian religious art.

For more information about Suchi Reddy and her approach to design, check out this article recently featured in W Magazine.

Cohousing During the Pandemic: An Interview with KSER 90.7 FM

Woods:
So I have to ask you, um, what brought you to, you're obviously enthusiastic in talking about this. I know it's your job. I know it's your company, but, but what brought you to being so involved and supportive beyond that of co-housing?

Grace Kim: (02:39)
So I, um, learned about co-housing in the early nineties when I was in architecture school. And I thought at the time, um, we were, we were studying in London and, and my husband, who at the time I was dating, we thought it was just another type of housing that you know, of the various housing types. We were learning about that this was one, and it was only about 15 years later that we realized that was when it was first being introduced outside of Denmark, where cohousing started. And so we, it was sort of an, an innovative, alternative housing style that was being shared with us at the time, but it captured our imagination because we saw that there was so much wrong about everyone living in their nuclear households, in their single family houses, in, you know, the suburbs and, and re really relying on the automobile to get us around.

Grace Kim: (03:24)
And all of those things were isolating people. And we just liked the idea that you would know your neighbors, you would invest in your community and you would invest in your, your neighborhood and really put down roots and look out for one another. And that's very much sort of the way that I was raised. My I'm Korean, um, American and my culture is very much about community and about, um, intergenerational and about, you know, living, to supporting people in the community mm-hmm . Um, and so that was just something that we aspired to. And as we moved back to Seattle in early 2000, my husband and I kind of made a commitment that we would try to figure out how do we move towards living in a, in a more intentional community focused way. Uh, we thought it would be with his family actually as living in a family compound, that was sort of an early, early idea. Um, and then it just morphed into that helping us solidify, you know, the urban location we wanted to live in and, um, a very interconnected and, and intergenerational way to live in a very urban environment. But cohousing, doesn't always, it's usually not in an urban environment like Sunnyside village, uh, which schema workshop my company is, the architect of, um, Sunnyside is very much in a suburban slash rural setting. And so that is the more typical, uh, setting for co-housing in the us.

Woods:
Ah, okay. So of that combination kind of thing, can you describe that a little bit more? I'm from Chicago so I’m trying to understand. In the construct of rural and urban, where does that actually put cohousing?

Kim:
So, I mean, it's, it, it's usually in suburban settings in that it's, you know, oftentimes in the US cohousing is single family homes or attached duplexes, triplexes, quadplexes or something like that. And, and I say in Sunnyside’s case it's suburban slash rural because it used to be farmland. And as development has happened over time in the city as Marysville there're, you know, they're just at the end of a street that is basically a couple of subdivisions. So the area is transforming into a more suburban style of residential, single family homes, residential pattern, but it, it has very much a, a rural character on when you're on the property. And also it's a wetland, um, a stream, a Creek and, and wetland buffer. So it, it will retain a lot of that character.

To listen to the full interview, Click here

National Cohousing Open House Day

Last month, the Puget Sound Regional Cohousing Network celebrated National Cohousing Open House Day with a two-part virtual event. In the first half, Grace presented an overview entitled “Cohousing: The New American Dream,” where she spoke to the benefits of cohousing and provided insight on how members of her cohousing community, Capitol Hill Urban Cohousing, navigate their relationships on a day-to-day basis. The event was then followed by virtual tours of both completed and developing cohousing communities throughout the region including the following:

Skagit Commons

Sunnyside Village

Capitol Hill Urban Cohousing

Puget Ridge Cohousing

Quimper Village

Vashon Cohousing

Winslow Cohousing

The Tours were broken up into 15-minute segments so that each participant had the opportunity to “visit” all properties. During the sessions, each community representative presented the layout and amenities associated with their community and answered participants’ questions.

Some of the participant feedback was:

“Informative and enjoyable presentations. Thank you!”

“Thank you to everyone who helped develop, run and host this virtual open house. It is difficult to fit everything into a relatively short time. Although meeting people and seeing places in person is ideal, Zoom allows those of us not in the immediate area an opportunity to at least get a sense of a community.”

“Thanks to all who put this together. It was very helpful. I wish there were more opportunities to move into established communities!”

If you’re interested in getting involved with a forming cohousing community, Sunnyside Village is currently looking for community members. For more information, visit their website by clicking here

If you’re interested in learning more about cohousing in general, visit https://www.cohousing.org/ and note that there is a National Cohousing Conference in Madison, WI this August.

Project Spotlight: Russo Apartments

Russo Apartments is a two-story rooftop addition containing 28 new units to accommodate a growing demand of residents in the heart of Seattle’s Queen Anne / Uptown Neighborhood. The original building was constructed in 1906 and featured six street-facing commercial spaces and two stories of residential units. Throughout its history, the building has experienced several significant alterations and survived two fires.

To bring the 111-year-old building up to twenty-first century standards, improvements included a complete fire, structural, seismic, energy, and building code upgrade to the existing residential units. Re-imagining the circulation of the existing structure as an efficient interior corridor, stair and elevator systems created an opportunity for the exterior walkways to be converted into private balconies for each unit. 

The contemporary two-story rooftop addition is set back from the street and contrasts with the historical building below. The addition’s exterior is clad in a dark tone with vertical bands. Large, floor-to-ceiling windows and little ornamentation add to the minimalist aesthetic. Below, the existing building’s exterior stucco was removed and replaced with light-colored horizontal siding, reminiscent of its original lap siding. The contrast in exterior treatments nods to Russo Apartments’ history while embracing the inherent juxtaposition of old and new. At street level, the six commercial spaces continue to activate the already walkable neighborhood and provide a pedestrian-oriented anchor to the homes above. The storefronts benefit from the removal of an oversized awning that was replaced with a modern, lighter canopy.

In total, the renovations and additions to Russo Apartments provide much needed modernization to the building, the final product being contemporary, while still appropriate and contextual within the historic, vibrant, and expanding neighborhood.

Planting the SEEDS of Social Equity

Recently, we featured a few members of our staff were accredited for  SEED (Social Economic Environmental Design) is a network of design professionals interested in community-based design practice. This network provides guidelines for pursuing a design process informed by inclusivity and participation, which can lead to SEED Certification.

Recently, four Schemata staff members (below) received their SEED certification, joining Joann Ware, who has been SEED-certified for some time.

SEED Projects

Two of our current sites, PAHO and Acer House, are also currently in the process of being SEED certified Click the below for project updates.

PAHO

Acer House 23rd & Cherry

What is SEED?

Social Economic Environmental Design or SEED is a credential sought after by those in the architecture and design industry that are interested in developing community based design principles. Unlike other certification programs such as LEED, Built Green, Passion House; SEED focuses on building a design process that achieves their mission To advance the right of every person to live in a socially, economically, and environmentally healthy community.

5 SEED Principles

1. Advocate with those who have a limited voice in public life

2. Build structures for inclusion that engage stakeholders and allow communities to make decisions

3. Promote social equality through discourse that reflects a range of values and identities

4. Generate ideas that grow from place and build local capacity

5. Design to help conserve resources and minimize waste

Application Process

To apply for SEED certification, visit the SEED Homepage and select “Start SEED Evaluation Application”