City Second Has Finally Arrived
The nearly completed world headquarters for Washington Mutual Bank (whose cash machines are easier to find in Manhattan than in Seattle) has won me over for one reason: its best side, which faces south, has done something special to the middle part of a stretch on Second Avenue that begins in the north with the Josephinum (which, to use Jonathan Raban’s words, looks “like the Medici tomb”) and the flying top of the Space Needle; and ends in the south with the aqua-green glass-fall of the Vulcan’s building at the foot of the Smith Tower. The new 42-story tower of glass and steel, which was designed by NBBJ, has changed forever the way one experiences (or even feels) Second Avenue. It’s as if the street, the sealed stretch, is finally fulfilled.
Walk up or down to the parallel corridors on First and Third, and you wont find that special feeling, that sense of fullness.
First Avenue, however, is the source of a little good news for regional architecture. The expansion of SAM on that street is presently the top story in the journal Arcspace. Designed by Portland’s Allied Works Architecture, the building is a boxy composition of stainless steel and glass that, when finished, promises to do fancy things with light. Though the expansion looks fine enough, I don’t think it’s a success because it looks too much like Washington Mutual’s headquarters.
Where does the bank end and the the museum begin?
Once again, Charles, you form all of your reactions to tall buildings by looking up, which is the least important factor in how a building works. The important thing, as David Sucher has mentioned here before but which appears nowhere in your description or photographs, is how the building addresses the street. You mention a "sense of fullness" but not any actual human emotions.
Does the building address the other buildings next to and across from it? Are the entrances easy to find and to use (no "pull"-style handles on "push" doors, for instance). Does it enhance the roomlike qualities of the street, or does it oppress pedestrians? Are there blank walls? Block-long multi-story blank walls? Are the underground parking exits designed for visibility both by and from pedestrians? Is every square inch of the ground floor facade filled with retail, as it should be?
These are the kinds of things that actually matter with tall buildings, and are so often forgotten or done incorrectly.
I don't know if I even expect you to see them, Charles, since you are appear to be a big fan of alienation and anomie. But most people are not.