Charrette focused on area’s future

By Steven Goldsmith
News & Information

Aided by a 56-foot-long photomontage, the energy of adolescents and the expertise of volunteer architects, the UW this week will try to find a better way to help a neighborhood envision its future.

West Seattle’s Admiral neighborhood is the focus of the 2001 Design Charrette that begins at noon today and culminates in a community meeting Friday evening.

The marathon week is the climax of months of collaboration among community activists, UW students and faculty, volunteer professional architects and students at West Seattle High School, said Sharon Sutton, a professor in the College of Architecture and Urban Planning.

“We can help people imagine things and be part of planning their community,” said Sutton, who is coordinating the charrette.

The charrette gives UW architecture and planning students hands-on experience in community design, Sutton said, while supplying Admiral residents with a high-quality set of alternatives for their community.

Pushing the process along is a 56-foot-long “visioning tool,” a digitally created streetscape photo that becomes a sort of collective collage for the entire neighborhood. The image, which was assembled by Sutton’s students, will be “collaged” by having charrette participants add pictures of different sizes and styles of buildings, lighting and street furniture to help community residents envision various possibilities.

“What we’re doing is unusual,” Sutton said, “in that we’re helping people make informed aesthetic choices about their neighborhood.”

And not only does the Admiral project take pains to anticipate the needs of teenagers, but teens are among the planners. Students from West Seattle High School have teamed up with UW students to help design a public-art installation that may be funded as part of the renovation of the high school. Half of the high school’s students also took part in a survey about where to put sports fields.

Taking part in the charrette are UW students in art, architecture, landscape architecture, urban design and planning, education and social work. They work with neighborhood plan activists, UW faculty and design professionals to help the community define its choices.

The area covered is the eight-block Admiral Urban Residential Village, with a focus on a stretch of California Avenue Southwest between Hanford and College streets. There are three charrette teams, one focusing on the streetscape, another on potential changes to the Safeway site, and the third on the Hiawatha Playfield, with all the teams looking at urban design alternatives for the village 20 to 30 years from now.

“The overarching goal of the charrette is to stimulate short- and long-term projects that create educational opportunities,” Sutton said, “and advance the 1998 Admiral Neighborhood Plan.”

Charrettes, a French term referring to a short, intensive educational activity, are intended to stimulate ideas and involve the public in community planning and design.

This week’s Admiral charrette will include a guided neighborhood tour (2 p.m. today), an on-campus neighborhood input session
(6 p.m. tomorrow), and a public presentation at the neighborhood’s Lafayette Elementary School (5:30 p.m. Friday).

The final result, say area residents involved in the planning, will be an ability to communicate the community’s design requirements to future developers.

The charrette is a collaboration between the UW Center for Environment, Education and Design Studies, UW Office of Minority Affairs, West Seattle High School, the Admiral Planning Coalition, the city Department of Neighborhoods, and Gensler Architecture, Design and Planning Worldwide.