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Crosscut articles of the past 10 days with the most clicks.

Architecture / Design

Crosscut most recent

The 787: Not the plane of the future

Posted Mon, Nov 16, 6 a.m.

Boeing's new Dreamliner reflects the tiny gains that can still be extracted from the old technology arc, and the conservatism of airliner design.

Bellingham gets a new museum with a stunning centerpiece

Posted Thu, Nov 5, 8:39 p.m.

By Lawrence W. Cheek

The tight budget creates some disappointments at the new Whatcom Museum, but Jim Olson's bold curved glass wall is an inspired "lightcatcher."

Welcome to 'Destroy History Month'

Posted Mon, Oct 12, 6 a.m.

By Knute Berger

September's demolition of state landmarks leaves Washington preservationists reeling.

The Bravern fits right into Bellevue's architectural style

Posted Wed, Oct 7, 6 a.m.

By Lawrence W. Cheek

The elaborately designed new Bravern complex is a pastiche of ideas drawn from European public spaces. As architecture, it's all very tasteful, but it lacks whimsy, unpredictability, and Northwest context.

Score one for Seattle's historic nuke site

Posted Sun, Oct 4, 7:10 p.m.

By Knute Berger

The University of Washington's Nuclear Reactor Building has won a place on the National Historic Register, a key step in saving this wonderfully designed structure from demolition.

What would Jane Jacobs do about the Viaduct?

Posted Fri, Oct 2, 6 a.m.

By Knute Berger

The patron saint of livable, walkable cities is being invoked on both sides of the debate over Seattle's Viaduct solution. Would Jacobs be a tunnel supporter, or a surface option fan?

A big week for the cottage cult

Posted Mon, Sep 21, 6 a.m.

By Knute Berger

Backyard cottage housing is a benefit, not a threat, to single family neighborhoods, and in keeping with the values that shaped Seattle. Let's have more.

Six key lessons from Portland's urbanism

Posted Sun, Sep 20, 5:36 p.m.

By William Fulton

An expert on cities distills the Portland DNA. Most of all, it's a city that is comfortable with being an urban place.

How to craft a better Seattle

Posted Tue, Sep 15, 6 a.m.

By Knute Berger

The Future Shack awards suggest some design principles that could help us shape the city and region for the better.

Utopia: Are we there yet?

Posted Wed, Sep 9, 9:24 p.m.

By Knute Berger

An art exhibit in Port Angeles displays creative responses to the Cascadia dream.

Will a new mayor think boldly about planning?

Posted Wed, Sep 9, 6 a.m.

By Chuck Wolfe

There are plenty of land-use controversies to heat up the election. But some cities are jumping beyond these block-by-block skirmishes and proposing sweeping new forms of zoning and urban design. Our turn?

The legal issues in 'backyard cottages'

Posted Fri, Aug 28, 6 a.m.

By Chuck Wolfe

The state directs such small accessory units, to increase housing in cities. But cities get to regulate the local conditions. The fight in Seattle is joined in a few weeks.

Dense, denser, densest

Posted Wed, Aug 26, 6 a.m.

By Knute Berger

A look at Seattle's densest and most intensely developed neighborhoods, the least dense, and Pugetopolis' fastest growing towns.

Why Seattle won't grow as fast as planners say

Posted Tue, Aug 11, 6 a.m.

By Kent Kammerer

The common claim that the city's population will double by 2040 is bogus. Historic factors and our own failures at building to a broad market are the main reasons.

A model for the Duwamish in Quebec?

Posted Tue, Jul 28, 6 a.m.

By Catherine Brewster

You can go for a gorgeous ramble along the St. Charles River in Quebec City and get lost in thoughts of how Seattle might pull off something similar.

Backyard cottages for Seattle? Not so fast.

Posted Mon, Jul 27, 6 a.m.

By Kent Kammerer

The City wants to allow them all over town, in effect creating duplex zoning. The City has a long way to go to earn enough confidence in the neighborhoods for this experiment.

Light rail does not a 'grown-up' city make

Posted Mon, Jul 20, 6 a.m.

By Knute Berger

Seattle has acquired light rail and a strongman mayor, but that doesn't put us in the big leagues. In fact, we were more mature a few decades ago. And Seattle's civic DNA is about not imitating other cities.

Save that old firehouse at Magnuson Park

Posted Fri, Jul 17, 6 a.m.

By Kathryn Rogers Merlino

An architect counts the ways, environmental, economic, and architectural, for avoiding the wrecking ball now aimed at Building 18.

Future Shack or Future Schlock?

Posted Tue, Jul 14, 6 a.m.

By Knute Berger

Two panels wrestle with the future of Washington's residential architecture, and especially the fabric of a growing Seattle. An overriding question: How much can good design solve the problems of density?

Preserving a city's sacred sites

Posted Tue, Jul 7, 6 a.m.

By Knute Berger

The loss of an historic church in Tacoma and the saving of several in Seattle offer lessons about the particular problems, and opportunities, of saving urban religious sanctuaries.

Other media

Fonts. They don't make everyone's eyes glaze over How typeface looks is worth millions of dollars in product design and even more in inner satisfaction to people who really care how things look.

NEW YORK TIMES

Dallas applies a Rem Koolhaas cure for its downtown arts district The team that produced the Seattle Library has produced a radical rethinking of theater design, turning the normal design of a theater from horizontal to vertical.

WALL STREET JOURNAL

The curtain drops on the age of showy cultural palaces by star architects These indulgent buildings were meant to tear down old social barriers to the arts, but in Los Angeles and Denver they just put up new ones. At any rate, the bubble has burst.

NEW YORK TIMES

Lawrence Halprin, landscape architecture giant, dead at 93 Among his notable West Coast projects: Seattle's Freeway Park and World's Fair-Seattle Center site; Olympia's Water Garden on the capitol grounds; Portland's Ira Keller Fountain and Lovejoy Plaza; San Francisco's Ghirardelli Square, and Sea Ranch on the Sonoma-Mendocino coast.

SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE

Struggling historic preservation efforts in Portland As in Seattle, Oregon activists are finding that as cities change, they must grapple with how to identify and preserve iconic buildings.

NORTHWEST HUB

Blog posts

From 1911, the Bogue Plan speaks

Posted Tue, Nov 10, 9:12 a.m.

by Chuck Wolfe

The nearly 100-year-old "city beautiful" plan for the city, never adopted, still holds a worthy reminder.

MOHAI’s future begins at the Armory

Posted Fri, Nov 6, 6 a.m.

by Feliks Banel

With a new fundraising campaign kicking off tonight, the history museum hopes to be in its new Lake Union digs in 2012.

Sneaking good design into town

Posted Thu, Nov 5, 2:24 p.m.

by David Brewster

Memo to Mayor Newbie: Don't concentrate on monuments, but instead see that a dozen or so small public buildings are joys to behold and glories of the neighborhoods.