Time Schedule:
Nicole Huber
ARCH 503
Seattle Campus
Advanced architectural studios in general architectural design, in special projects examining particular architectural determinants, and in architectural research. Focus and format vary with instructor. Prerequisite: ARCH 502.
Class description
Global Practices and Local Sites: Re-connecting the Seattle Center
Since the rise of world's fairs, exhibitions such as those in St. Louis, London, Paris, Chicago, and New York have been represented as icons of economic, scientific and social progress. In this sense, Seattle's world's fair in 1962 has been dedicated to the "21st century," its goal was to "search out promises of the new age — the years ahead." However, whereas the Seattle Center's fair grounds displayed a "welcome to the future," it more recently reflects a memory of the past. The grounds' former network of "worlds of tomorrow" has turned into a patchwork of insular institutions which on the one hand use media to address a global audience. Here, the Space Needle serves as an icon on maps, guides and websites, and as a stage set in movies such as It Happened at the World's Fair (1962), Parallax View (1974) or Agent Cody Banks (2003). Additional institutions include the Experience Music Project, KCTS Television and, adjacent to the Center, the Gates Foundation. On the other hand institutions such as the Childrens' Theater, the Fisher Pavilion and the Center House cater to the local community. Thus, the Seattle Center represents and accommodates the separate worlds of global players and local users, of tourists and residents. In this context, it is the studio's assignment to transform the centrally located Center House into a media and mediating center of the Center: an informational nexus interceding between global and local interests, a social nexus serving education and integration, a spatial nexus linking the heterogeneous institutions, and an infrastructural nexus connecting the Center to its neighborhood and Downtown.
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