for Collaboration, ARCADE has partnered with the University of Washington’s College of Built Environments Architecture Writing class, taught by Lauren Gallow, and will be publishing essays written by the students on a topic or design project of their choice. A large part of bringing this theme of “collaboration” to life is through the pairing of each essay with a professional or mentor currently working in the field who is adjacent to the student’s topic.

This issue explores the theme of monuments, memorials, and artifacts by conversing under the umbrella of urban regeneration, personal and civic relationship with public space, respite and reflection, and how urban generation/regeneration creates and destroys. Within, you will discover the experience of public parks and greenbelts, how the city implements public art as an act of memorialization after gentrification, and the too often nefarious nature of nostalgia – both the light and dark sides of memorialization and monuments. We have included works of composition as memorialization to the lived experience, and work from architectural critic Bruce Rips, the civic poet of Seattle Shin Yu Pai, cultural critic and philosopher Charles Mudede, architectural journalist Vernon Mays and many more.

This issue’s theme of “Exception” combines singularity and ambiguity in its layers of phonetic and conceptual interpretations. Exceptions to the rule; exceptional things off the beaten path; that which has been left to the side – or looking sideways to find something new.

Refraction examines how the events of 2020 and 2021 have forged new lenses and perspectives by which we understand our place in the world, and represents where ARCADE as an organization is impacting and inspiring positive change in our architecture, design, and arts communities.