I love to travel and visit significant buildings. As a past contributing editor to Architectural Record, I recommend these places to Seattle visitors. The list contains carpetbaggers (high-profile architects who swooped in and won high-profile projects) and some of the best local architects working in the Northwest. The list is in order of moving around the city by foot and public transit; start on Capitol Hill, head downtown toward the waterfront, and then on to Seattle Center.
01 | Chapel of St. Ignatius, Seattle University (1997)
Steven Holl | 900 Broadway
Thanks to Seattle University, one of the Top 10 buildings in the United States is in our own backyard. Bremerton-born and now world-famous architect Steven Holl translated the Jesuit priests’ religious metaphor of a “light that comes from above” into a dramatic roofscape of light scoops that emerge from an inscrutable concrete box. The exterior walls are oversized slabs of tilt-up concrete that fit together like a jigsaw puzzle with strategically placed fused glass windows where the panels come together. Inside, Day-Glo-colored glass lenses set in the light scoops cast halos of otherworldly color around the sculptural white plaster interior. The chapel rewards repeat visits with constant variations in light as clouds cross the sky and the seasons change.
02 | Bullitt Center (2013)
Miller Hull | 1501 E Madison
The Bullitt Center is the US’s first net zero office building; it has 100% onsite renewable energy, water, and waste management and designed to last 250 years. The architects started the design by figuring out how much energy could be produced by solar panels on the roof. They then calculated the energy loads of a typical office building and worked backward to reduce loads. This involved using a ground source geothermal heat exchange system, radiant heat and cooling, and an automated external blind system that rolls down to block heat before it enters the building. Composting foam flush toilets, a 56,000-gallon rainwater cistern, and rainwater filtration make the building 80% more water-efficient than a typical Seattle office building. One of the most important factors in getting to net zero was changing the behavior of the human occupants. There is no onsite parking, an “irresistible stair” discourages using the elevator, and indoor temperatures vary from the standard 68 degrees. A control panel measures and records the building’s performance to keep it on target.
03 | The Seattle Public Library (2004)
Rem Koolhaas/OMA, LMN | 1000 Fourth Ave
This may have been the golden age for Seattle architecture: hundreds of people showed up at a series of public presentations by international architects vying for the commission. Dutch architect Rem Koolhaas prevailed with his cool delivery, and the origami model unfolded in front of the audience. The finished project resembles a stack of books; blocks of floors shift out of vertical alignment to adjust to light, views, and the site’s steep slope, while a glass skin unifies the multifaceted form and defines the public spaces in between. Inside, the library’s most innovative—and controversial—feature is a spiral of books that allows the nonfiction collection to expand or contract without disrupting Dewey Decimal order.
04 | RainierTower (1977)
Minoru Yamasaki | 1301 Fifth Avenue
After the completion of the (not-well received) World Trade Center In New York City, Yamasaki faced a bitter divide in the architecture profession and the community about his design for this 32-story tower. He balanced the tower on a 12-story windowless pedestal that narrows to a width of 68 feet at the street. When New York critic Paul Goldberger deigned to comment negatively on it (“We may know that the building will not fall down, but that is not enough to make walking past it comfortable.”) Seattleites leaped to its defense.
05 | Seattle Tower (1929)
Albertson, Wilson & Richardson | 1218 Third Ave
The original headquarters for the Northern Life Insurance Company, this is the finest example of an art deco skyscraper in the city. The architects emphasized the tower’s vertical piers to make it look taller than its 27 stories. The rocky slopes of Mt. Rainier inspired its incised step-back form (at one time accentuated by 200 floodlights). The exterior is clad with 33 shades of brick that graduate from a dark iron-ore color at the base to a light tan at the top. The marble lobby has intricate bronze panels and a ceiling depicting the local flora and fauna.
06 | Seattle Art Museum( 1992, 2007)
Venturi Scott Brown, Allied Works | 1300 First Avenue
Seattle went out on a limb hiring an architect’s architect for the new SAM downtown. The post-modern design never got the support here that it deserves and was undercut by a (granted, elegant) addition/renovation by Allied Works. The husband/wife team’s theoretical work opposed the reductive modernism running rampant in cities and argued to bring back the “banality and mess” of popular culture. One sign of this is the giant billboard SEATTLE ART MUSEUM carved into the limestone facade. It’s also a carefully crafted urban experience with a ceremonial stair inside and outside that connects Seattle to the waterfront.
07 | Harbor Steps Park (1994)
Arthur Erickson | 1221 First Avenue
This urban park is Seattle’s version of Rome’s Spanish Steps, but it led nowhere for 30 years until the new Waterfront Park opened in 2024. Designed by renowned Canadian architect Arthur Erickson, the park connects First and Western Avenues with cascading plazas and waterfalls extending the University Street corridor from Benaroya Hall and the Seattle Art Museum to the waterfront. The towers’ cafes, restaurants, offices, housing, and daycare draw people 24 hours a day, ensuring a lively public place. Trickling water masks traffic sounds, and the steep climb is interrupted with enough generous landings to make it an enjoyable ascent. The concrete residential towers on either side of the steps were designed by architect David Hewitt, who developed a vigorous regional style based on Seattle’s working waterfront.
08 | Waterfront Park (2024)
Field Operations | Alaskan Way between Yesler Way and Broad Street | Western Avenue
The first major addition to Pike Place Market in 40 years, the project steps down the hill and will connect to the new waterfront design by James Corner Field Operations to be built when the viaduct is removed. MarketFront adds space for 47 new market stalls, features a Producers Hall with a brewery, restaurant and chocolatier. The project also includes 40 units of low-income, senior housing, the Market Commons– a social services center–and 30,000 SF of open public space.
09 | Pike Place Market (1907)
The country’s oldest continuously operated farmers market was almost demolished in the 1970s. You can still buy vegetables here, and the fish thrown at one stall is fun to see, but it draws more tourists these days than locals. It remains worth a visit for its jumbled labyrinth of structures and still-gritty public spaces. Stop by the Pike & Virginia Building (1978) at the North end of the market (78 Virginia Street) by Olson Walker. This project has sophisticated massing that combines a three-story storefront block along Pike Place Market with a six-story block of condos behind. The simple concrete frame, either filled with glass or left open for terraces, references the waterfront’s industrial-commercial past while being thoroughly modern.
10 | Olympic Sculpture Park (2007)
Weiss/Manfredi Architects with Charles Anderson Landscape Arhcitecture | 2901 Western Avenue
The design for this 9-acre park on an old industrial site connects over a road and a railroad track with a sharp-edged zig-zag path. As visitors move from the top of the park down to Puget Sound, the landscape evokes the landscape of the Pacific Northwest from mountains to shore. Different plantings along the way create unique environments, from Richard Serra’s Wake (2004) in the Valley to Tony Smith’s Stinger (197-68/199) in the Grove. When the park first opened, Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen’s Typewriter Eraser, Scale X (1999) playfully rolled down the hill of the Meadow, but the sculpture is unfortunately gone as is the meadow.
11 | The Pacific Science Center | The Federal Science Pavilion (1962)
Minorou Yamasaki | 200 Sue Bird Court North
Yamasaki’s decorative design for a US pavilion at the Seattle World’s Fair made him a household name. Elvis Presley cavorts among the vaguely Moorish filigree columns in “It Happened at the World’s Fair,” and TIME magazine featured the project and a portrait of Yamasaki in 1963. The fair drew over 6 million visitors, including Guy Tozzoli, who Robert Moses sent to scout for the 1964 New York’s World’s Fair. Tozzoli, who was uncharacteristically moved by the beauty of the pavilion, was also the World Trade Department at the Port Authority of New York, and Yamasaki’s name was added to the shortlist for the World Trade Center.
12 | Museum of Pop Culture | The Experience Music Project (2000)
Frank Gehry | 325 Fifth Avenue North
Do you see melted electric guitars when you look at this flowing mass of cherry red, sky blue, and iridescent purple metal? You’re not alone. Originally a rock’n’roll museum bankrolled by Microsoft tycoon (and Jimi Hendrix devotee) Paul Allen, it was repositioned to focus on pop culture (mostly science fiction). Its rippling steel panels were so geometrically complex for its time that only computer-aided manufacturing made them constructible. Seattleites still don’t particularly like the building, but it’s an interesting example of a multi-color building in Gehry’s oeuvre of mostly monochrome projects. I walked with him around the museum when it opened, and he pointed out that the blue section was the most successful in capturing the sense of motion he sought.