About the Studio
Beginning as a graduate design studio, operating out of a vacant storefront on a beleaguered shopping street near campus, the studio has gone on to do work on the 'forgotten' American Main Streets of small communities throughout King County including; White Center, Auburn, Renton, and Skyway. Kent and Des Moines are scheduled for the following year. Before the first Storefront closed, the second community was offering funding. There is now a waiting list. An examination of the success of this architecture studio focuses on the confluence of three related innovations; digital tools, studio location, and sustained duration.
In architectural education, the idea of moving out of the academic ivory tower and into the community began during the counter culture revolution of the sixties. The innovation of this decade is to bring the current digital revolution to the storefront table. The new mobility and accessibility of cell phones, laptops and wireless, further enabled by large format plotting and digital projection, fuels wide band, high speed public interaction and communication. From Photoshop facade renovations, to website message boards, the storefront studio offers a digitally amplified and engaged version of 'taking it to the streets'.
The open house venue of the storefront, combined with the speed and relative low cost of digital printing, means that a fully illustrated public exhibition can be mobilized in a matter of days. The storefront becomes meeting room, studio, theater, and gallery. A van equipped with sawhorses, doors and plastic lawn chairs pulls up, and a second van with twelve students, each with laptop, cell phone and digital camera follows. The visibility and immediacy of the commercial storefront on the main street of the community is the second key to the resonance of this program.
The Storefront becomes an exciting attraction to the community with an extended period of engagement. A series of open houses replaces the brief duration of the charette brainstorm. By allowing a second and third wave of participation, the investigation broadens and deepens. There is time for sustained communication. Released from the constraint of needing immediate solutions, the proposals become emergent, multi-voiced and productively contradictory. The students observe physical and social fabric under change. The biggest change is often in their own vision, moving from first observations to in-depth discoveries. The resultant emergent program becomes the final key.
If only briefly, the studio becomes a fully wired, fully engaged storefront practice, where the architecture student unlocks the doors, sweeps the public sidewalk, and opens for the day.
- Jim Nicholls
House Renovation
(Skyway, WA)
Previous Work:
Masonic Temple Renovation (Auburn, WA)
Storefront Renovation
(University Way, WA)
