Seattle’s Holding Pattern Design Competition

Kelly Rodgers of Confluence Planning, Jason King at Terra Fluxus, and Kelley Roy (that’s me!) of Sassafras Consulting, submitted the following design concept for The City of Seattle’s Holding Patterns competition.

A Modular Approach to Build the Sustainable City
Issue: Too often, urban areas have a monoculture of office buildings or condominiums without the diversity of form or use, and neglect to provide the amenities and services a community needs to be vibrant, healthy, and sustainable.

Goal: Our goal is to create resilient cities that have a healthy green infrastructure, easy access to healthy food for all residents, closed-loop systems where resources are recycled and repurposed, and opportunities for the residents to build relational bonds that support one another.

Purpose: A holding pattern affords an opportunity for the city to re-examine typical development and infrastructure delivery. Vital food, community, and ecological services can be provided to the community on these stalled parcels. This concept alone is not new. Community gardens are often developed on sites waiting for their opportune development moment.

Challenge: However, community attachment to these amenities often complicates the process, as residents protest the more permanent design when the time comes (signifying the real need for these amenities).  Knowing this, developers will resist the chance to create impermanent amenities and the opportunity to create something desirable is thwarted.

Solution: What if the amenity provided continues in an adapted form within the new use?  What if the developer uses the temporary opportunity as a way to prepare the building site or cultivate clients for the new structure? Or what if the developer could actually generate income from this temporary use?

Program: This proposal suggests that interim uses can serve two purposes: delivery of vital community and ecological services needed for a sustainable city and an efficient, more sustainable and financially viable means to phase development for a building site. For example, the vendors from a food cart pod could be integrated into micro-retail spaces in the final building design.  A children’s play area could be transformed into a day care facility once the building is constructed.

Design Intent: This proposal seeks to use these sites as a way to create a compelling development model that is sustainable, mobile, and integrated. This proposal frames community uses for vacant parcels, providing options for the different needs of the community as well as by type of parcel.  It does not suggest that one amenity fits all neighborhoods and sites, thereby providing the flexibility for the community and efficiency for developer.

This proposal identifies three general approaches, many of which can generate income for the site or provide a cost-savings to the developer by integrating into the final design:
Roll-in, Roll-out: Uses that can be moved to another location when development occurs
Integration into the building: Uses that can be applied to surface and then vertically integrated into building
Production: Grow building materials for the building or the neighborhood