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Overview

The Miller Hull Partnership designed this L-shaped visitor center for a large urban park in the somewhat isolated, northwest Seattle, WA, neighborhood of Magnolia, overlooking Elliott Bay. The park was formerly a military camp, Fort Lawton, opened in 02/1900, that operated during World Wars I and II, and the Korean and Vietnam Wars, but was decommissioned starting in 1973. Full removal of US Army personnel was gradual and completed by 09/14/2011. The visitor center occupied the ground formerly used by a barracks and was finished in 1997. Taking its cue from vernacular, she- roofed buildings used throughout the US, the building's sophisticated and precise detailing sets it apart from simpler rural structures, aligning it with contemporary Modern buildings.

Building History

The Seattle Parks Department and the Discovery Park Advisory Committee commissioned the Miller Hull Partnership, LLP, to design this small complex located within the 534-acre Discovery Park, what once was the US Army's Fort Lawton. The visitor center was meant to welcome the visitor and sensitize him or her to the park's natural resources. According to the Miller Hull web site: "...this center fulfills its mission and promotes a genuine appreciation of this very special natural resource. Public activities within the center will take place in the exhibit space off the lobby, Discovery Room (for children), classrooms, a multipurpose room, and an outdoor gathering porch and its adjacent green. A separate day camp building for 60 children is located off the green." (See Miller Hull Partnership.com, "Discovery Park Visitor Center," accessed 04/09/2014.) This was the second visitor's center at Discovery Park. Miller Hull supervised the thorough re-planting of native species on the previous center's site.

In her book on the work of Miller Hull, architectural writer Sheri Olson described the Discovery Park Visitor Center: "Miller / Hull defined a south-facing outdoor room by placing two narrow bars perpindicular to each other to form an "L" facing a grassy hillock and wall of pines. The Visitor Center's entry is through the east end of the main bar and into an exhibit area and out to a double-height glazed porch facing the courtyard. Inside, public areas include the Discovery Room for children's orientation, a large, multi-purpose room, and a row of classrooms. Offices for docents and naturalists are at the west end of the building. Across the outdoor space is a separate building with a row of flexible rooms housing a children's day camp in the summer and conferences and retreats the rest of the year." (See Sheri Olson, Miller | Hull Architects of the Pacific Northwest, [New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2001], p. 136.)

Olson asserted that the center derived from sources both vernacular and Modern. She wrote: "The Visitor Center's broad roofs and woodsy material palette recall the national park service buildings that dot the American West, but Miller / Hulls's graphic sensibility stakes out new territory. Part of this is due to the overscaled cedar siding that forms a two-part system, combining a 'V' groove section with drop siding to create a big module. Offsetting the natural grain and color of the cedar siding are puce green panels of medium-density fibreboard with wood battens covering the seams. The moment where the project diverges from the vernacular into the modern lies in the steel detailing. At the canopy on the front of the building and the ones on each end, tube steel brackets are spliced and welded to semi-circular steel plates set in the wood siding. The brackets hold aloft another tube steel beam that cantilevers beyond the edge of the roof, adding a sense of buoyancy to the assembly. This lightnes continues in the detailing of the porch along the south where pairs of wide flange columns take the place of a single column member, allowing a decrease in the structure's size. Horizontal and diagonal tube steel bracing and an open wood lattice lace the columns together visually and structurally. The layering of materials and structure from solid to transparent, modulates the change in scale between the manmade and the natural and blurs the distinction between inside and out drawing people into the real classroom: the park." (See Sheri Olson, Miller | Hull Architects of the Pacific Northwest, [New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2001], p. 140.)

Building Notes

This project won multiple awards including: a American Institute of Architects (AIA), Seattle Chapter, Honor Award, 1999; American Wood Council Citation Award, 1998; Public Projects Construction Data and News, Award of Merit, 1997.

Tel: 206.386.4236 (2014).

PCAD id: 19181