Well, thank god they're having a free event, downtown, at noon on a frick'n workday. I'm sure the common folk of Seattle will be well represented at that motherfucker.

How did Charles NOT write this post?

awww, and poor linda won't be there to realize it's fruition!

I think it would have been *so* much better if they had put an extra 6 feet on that building.

that building would shame every other building around it.

I agree the building should be taller, and frankly it is quite attractive. I am kinda surprised.

It's pretty... but isn't it a bit of a knockoff of the will-it-ever-finally-get-built "Freedom Tower"?

Freedom Tower is just a knock off of every other building in Dubai ... so what's your point Andy?

I though that, too, Andy.

@7

No, that's just a giant ugly exoskeleton pushing the fact that the terrorists have won.

It's a fine piece of commercial architecture that as likely as not will be staffed by thousands of new commuters from Bothell and Bellevue. How's that GMA working out for everyone, again?

This is the result of developer Nitze-Stagen's deal that let the church get some land in Belltown to continue their mission. It's good for Belltown. Nitze's got deep enough pockets that they may be able to hang on to this land until the long, slow commercial real estate bust has run its course, then construct. They're smart to get the permits now, though.

The church's commitment to feed the poor is the immediate beneficiary - awesome.

That's amazing how much brighter it is than all of the other buildings. Is that supposed to be realistic?

It's a knock-off Norman Foster, but that's better than a real everything else in Seattle.

Vancouver, BC, has a real Foster...maybe someday we'll grow up and get one of those, too.

The best news of all is that the bugger's going up right across the street so I get to watch it grow from dirt hole to gleaming presence, just like I got to watch the new library!!! Yippee!!!

The more I see of modern architecture like this the more I start to wonder if computers were really a good thing to invent.

Foster would give it a regularized geometry. This is the Seattle Public Library turned into a generic office tower, with all the style and none of the reason.

Ooh, I hope they remember to include a way to get down from the top!

I'm still not going downtown before noon.

jim kunstler says building any buildings taller than walk-up height denies the reality of the energy-starved future.

"energy independence" doesn't mean you get to keep guzzling it.

think paris.

Looks good to me. At least it's not a boring box. It has a little style. If they're gonna build another office tower, it could be a lot worse.

max solomon, are cities designed by people, or are people programmed by the cities they live in?

@8--i think you restated my point--it's an unoriginal design, both here and in the Freedom Tower design.

I have a hard time getting excited about another office building, but as long as they're being built at least they should be as pretty as possible. This one looks a lot better than most, and it's being built in the right place.

I'd prefer that architects spend less time on the city skyline and more time on creating desirable developments on a more human scale. Even if Kunstler is wrong about the energy viability of taller than walk-up buildings, he's right that most neighborhoods will be more livable on a smaller scale. You can get a lot more density upzoning single-story retail to mixed-use development at 4-6 stories high. And you want to phase in developments in each neighborhood so that you don't get condo gentrification that pushes out affordable apartments. Basically everything we need to do is covered in Jane Jacob's 1961 book "The Death and Life of Great American Cities."

Cascadian, I mostly agree with you. However, skyscrapers delight me beyond words. I admire them from afar, marvel at them as I walk underneath, and thrill to look down from their upper floors.

But, as you point out, more important than pretty towers is a human scale on the street. Most office buildings have grandiose street-level designs that are anathema to sidewalk activity. This building's proposal appears, based on the designs in the last proposal to the city, an offender on that level. *I posted a picture of the ground floor in after the jump if you want to check it out.*

Though I hope it's not as bad as the Columbia Center--with its cave-like entrances food courts and mini-banks.

The IDX tower, on the other hand, did a great job of integrating itself into the street, with a functional internal thoroughfare and a restaurant on the corner.

That's funny. When a similar building was built in Hong Kong, people in surrounding buildings accused the architects, builders, and owners of trying to fuck with their feng shui, since the corners facing their buildings were supposed to send bad ju-ju. They put mirrors and stuff in their windows to reflect it back.

Yet another non-residential non-rental building ...

And you wonder why people drive?

the only thing missing from that picture is a dozen cranes. have you looked downtown lately?

@15 - Seattle IS getting a Foster - and it's going in right down the street from the ZGF knockoff on the site of the old Public Safety Building.

This must be built.

And the ground floor is fine for that area.

The tower’s form is far from arbitrary, it was the most effective way to cantilever over the church and rainier club gracefully, and the diagonal bracing was the most efficient use of steel, which is at a huge premium right now. The structure also requires fewer columns and none at the building corners, which in addition to some of the tallest floor to floor heights in the city will create very bright and scenic office space.

The building glazing will all be exterior of the building columns, and butt-joined, which will make it comparable in lightness and reflectivity to WAMU tower. Based on that the rendering shouldn’t be far off from reality.

At the street level, there will be a courtyard and water feature between the lobby and church, a glass canopy running more than the length of the tower on 5th, and a canted living wall along Columbia. All should be excellent examples of adding human scale architecture and amenities to the financial district.

I agree, however, that the tower should have been 6' taller.

@19 - Building lower buildings (limited to what you can walk up) would cause more Urban Sprawl which causes more fuel consumption and pollution.

@16: I did say knock-off, not copy -- and you are correct.

@28: Whatchootalkin'bout, Willis? Tell me more!!!

@7-If you've seen the current design of the Freedom Tower you could never call this design a knock off or copy of that building. The orginal design of freedom tower wasn't even fully occupiable it was just an exposed urban garden

I was wondering what would go on that spot. I like it a lot better than the earlier designs I saw.

It would be a nice addition to the Seattle skyline, but only 41 stories. Maybe that is all a city of Seattle's size needs, but I wish we had the guts to build tall. Why are the worlds tallest buildings in Asia and the Middle East, oh wait, because we are financing them with by buying their oil and consumer products.

Sigh, maybe (as some have pointed out to me) building tall buildings is just a juvenile form of "my dick is bigger than yours", but I see it as an engineering challenge. I also see it as a sign of a society's strength, like having good infrastructure: high speed trains, mass public transit, etc. We don't do that here either... I'm too depressed to continue my rant.

@30 lets just hope they don't make the same engineering mistakes as Citigroup Center: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citigroup_Center

I WILL NOT SUPPORT ANY BUILDING THAT DOES HAVE 100% SIGN-ON FROM PEOPLE OF COLOR, THE GLBT/QUEER COMMUNITY, AND THE WORKING POOR.

I CALL FOR A DAY OF SOLIDARITY AND A CITYWIDE STRIKE! MEET AT THE FEDERAL BUILDING AT 9AM!!!