A Walking Tour Through Downtown Seattle's Past and Future

This mobile session will visit three of Seattle's iconic downtown open spaces: Freeway Park, Westlake Park, and Seattle Art Museum's Olympic Sculpture Park. Freeway Park's first phase, completed by Lawrence Halprin in 1976 and recently restored, is a classic example of his work. Subsequent phases of the park and the Washington Convention and Trade center will lead to Westlake Park and mall with its distinctive "basket-weave" paving pattern. The session will continue through Belltown, an evolving "upscale" residential and commercial section of downtown, located on the "regarded" Denny Hill.

Participants will visit art and storm-water facilities that are part of the "growing Vine Street" installations. The session will turn back toward downtown at Seattle Art Museum's very successful Olympic Sculpture Park, following its zig-zag path over roads and railroad tracks, while "taking in" panoramic views of the city, Mt. Rainier, and the incomparable Olympic Mountains and Puget Sound, to the waterfront currently being designed by Field Operations in conjunction with the reconstruction of the Alaskan Way Viaduct. Participants' interests, time and weather, will determine whether the tour takes the Hillclimb steps to Pike Place Market or the Harbor Steps to Seattle Art Museum and the Garden of Remembrance at Benaroya Hall before depositing participants, footsore but satiated, at the hotel. The tour will provide innumerable opportunities for weary participants to live the Seattle lifestyle by defecting to coffee shops en route, such as the universe's first "Starbucks", or to find a Metro bus back to downtown Seattle. The session’s goal is to provide participants with a taste of "emergent placemaking" by examining the design evolution of Seattle downtown open spaces over the last 40+ years and to suggest how this development reflects and responds to the geological, ecological, social, and cultural evolution of the city over this period.

Registration is required for this event; however, there is no cost for registering for this session.

Click here to register