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Overview

Seattle architects, Miller Hull Partnership, LLP, received this commission to design a master plan for the Shelton branch of the Bremerton-based Olympic College. Shelton was once a prosperous lumber town that fell on hard times by the 1970s, as logging of old growth forests was reduced in the 1970s. Architectural writer Sheri Olson said of this commission: "With an animated volume, monolithic roof, and deft handling of materials, Miller/Hull achieves a physical presence for Olympic College in Shetton worhty of its symbolic role in a struggling timber-working community. Before the college was built young people left town to get a secondary education--often never to return. Only through donations of cedar siding and glu-lam beams from one timber company, a free wooded 27-acre site from another, and services from several local businesses, was the economically pressed town of Shelton able to build this satellite community college. Of the $1.4 million construction budget, over $500,000 was raised by the town nad matched by Olympic College; the balance came from donation of services and projects." (See Sheri Olson, Miller | Hull Architects of the Pacific Northwest, [New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2001], pp. 87.)

Building History

In Phase I of the building project, Miller Hull planned an 8,000-square-foot, long, rectangular volume sited with the long dimension running east-west. It was a self-sufficient campus center, covered by a shed roof that flared up on its ends, containing a lobby, an administrative space and two managerial offices, four classrooms, a central laboratory, a student lounge, a daycare center and various service spaces (mechanical rooms, janitorial rooms, and restrooms). The builidng was laid out primarily on one level, although a rise in the shed roof on the east end accommodated a small second-floor student lounge. The west end contained the daycare center and an exterior playground. Writer Olson said of the building: "Interior spaces are as compact and flexible as a ship's. Classrooms also accommodate community and civic functions." (See Sheri Olson, Miller | Hull Architects of the Pacific Northwest, [New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2001], pp. 91.)

Building Notes

The Olympic College won a 1998 National Honor Award from the American Institute of Architects. The building had an aesthetic influenced by post-and-beam domestic and commercial architecture of the mid-century. Roof beams were exposed as were ducts and other mechanical features.

PCAD id: 25514