I.e., how they look right before they're covered with taupe stucco.

Right now, it looks absolutely terrible.

Might as well rent the space to 14-year-olds with their daddies' Home Depot charge cards.

The yellow mess is only interesting because it's yellow.

One more ugly building on the shores of Lake Union won't make much of a difference.

taupe /toʊp/ – noun – a moderate to dark brownish gray, sometimes slightly tinged with purple, yellow, or green.

Like English Ivy, or Kudzu.

Or that thing that ate Stephen King in Creepshow.

Maybe blackberries or some other bramble-y, thorny thing. The building will look like some steampunk version of Rapunzel's tower.

Oh, sorry, I'm just so used to all the grey and drab buildings around here that make people want to commit suicide ...

And here's my Bellevue Avenue/Bellevue Avenue East story: Back in the 1840's I lived in the "New McDermott" apartments on Bellevue between Pike and Pine.

One night at 4am, there was all this buzzing on my front door intercom. I ignored it, because I thought it was a drunk. But then I heard the elevator, and all of the sudden there was this pounding on my door and a voice called "SEATTLE POLICE - OPEN UP!"

So I let them in (bad idea - I know, but I was still waking up) and they came crashing into my little studio, wanting to know where "Ephram" was. I knew no Ephram, and told them that, and they asked if they could look around. I told them sure, and they did.

Then they said "We got a call that someone named Ephram was trying to kill himself at 1516 Bellevue Avenue East". I said "This is 1516 Bellevue Avenue. Bellevue Avenue East starts at Denny"

They looked at each other, excused themselves, and left quickly, after appologizing for the disturbance.

I often wondered what happened to poor Ephram.

Seattle’s Department of Transportation maintains a right-of-way 20 feet back from the street on Melrose and asks developers to keep that space level with the sidewalk. The problem: complying at this site, on a steep grade, would require transitioning from the sidewalk-level to the bottom floor of the building with this hideous concrete wall.

I don't buy it. How about a transition to absolutely anything besides a hideous concrete wall? Like, say, a wall covered with the same materials that will be used on the surface of the building directly above it?

The terracing in the rendering is hideous.

LOL, wtf are those fins for?

-Is this a yellow submarine?

-Is it a yellow shoebox-zeppelin that's landed on Capitol Hill?

-Or is it a giant, passively-cooled electrical substation to replace the boring one on Bellevue Ave? (They will need to make the "Danger: High Voltage" markings a bit larger; I can't see them in the rendering.)

w7ngman
XXX Bellevue Ave
East Apt X
Seattle, WA 98102

I had to kindly explain to them why this was a Bad Idea(tm) and they informed me that their HR software could only hold 20 characters per line. I had to wonder, is this 1965? Is their HR software also susceptible to the Y2K bug?

I don't get the concrete wall thing. What is there now? I could go look but I'm Lazy.

I take everything back. Seattle has some truly terrible architecture with only a few minor exceptions.