Established in 1981, ARCADE's archive consists of an abundance of print journals.
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This first edition of Arcade's new quarterly digital magazine centers around the idea of revitalization and restoration while simultaneously taking the time to introduce our readers to a new cohort of journalists who will regularly contribute to this quarterly publication.
This issue’s theme of “Exception” combines singularity and ambiguity in its layers of phonetic and conceptual interpretations.
We’ve embraced the changing of the guard, developed new outreach and engagement opportunities and increased the diversity of our dialogues.
Explores the concept of death in the built and designed environments as more than an endpoint.
Experiencing between here and there
Changes in our shares space
ARCADE writers and community members express their thoughts about the organization.
Exploring what is lost in an era where efficiency has forcefully entangled itself in all aspects of our lives.
Auckland's Visions of a Public Realm
Climate Change and Life After the End of the World
Edward Burtynsky's photographs of a changing world
A Survey of Displacements, Routes, and Arrivals
Visiting the past, Designing the future
Histories and Futures Inside the Rainer Oven Building
Navigating the Real in Cities, Design and Art
Rethinking the narrative of modernization
Design for social innovation
Life in the city turns out to be greener than life in rural areas.
Builders of one-of-a-kind architecturally significant residences
Putting Art and Design at the Center of STEM
Global More = Global Less
Design Education
The Role of Risk in the Creative World
Art & Artifacts from the Landscape of Glorious Excess
Methods of Design
"start me up"
Thinking about Air Today
Aquatic Dysfunctions
Concerning the Earth
Chris Jordan’s portraits of American mass consumption
Furniture and Product Horizons
25 Years of ARCADE
Where ls the Next Public Generation?
A catalog of interiors that are not for Sale
Secrets of the Anti-Style
The Shape of Northwest Design
February/March 1985
Excerpt: "With this issue, ARCADE completes its second year. We have grown in the past year from an 8-page to a 12-page journal, and our subscription and newsstand sales have increased to twice those of last year. We have sought and found contacts in other Northwest cities to ebcome a more inclusive regional journal." Katrina Deines and Bill Gaylord, The Editors, page 2.
This issue has a fascinating article on when Bellvue went from a subarb to the "downtown neighborhood, with resendential uses as well as commercial" (page 1) that we all know today. There's also writings of some the most famous buildings in Seattle, featured drawings of the skyline by fifth graders, a study on Portland's Warehouse District, an article on Robert Becker, and a proposal of increasing the flora and fauna of Seattle.
Excerpt: "Through conversations with new and old friends and colleagues, we share with you some concerns and stories of landscape architects. Let this open eyes and minds to viewpoints of this environmental design profession...As our world shrinks, let us grow in our vision and understanding of landscapes. Our visions are enhanced by collaborations, communication, and awakened curiosity" Jestene Boughton, Guest Editor, page 2.
This issue's theme revolves around the intrigue of unfinished architecture as an art-form, the architectural design of various offices, and a commentary on the practice of architecture with a focus on women-owned firms.
Excerpt: "In the spirit of the armchair escapist, ARCADE has devoted this issue to stories from Nicaragua, one written by a member of CANTO (Cultural Workers and Artists for Nicaragua Today), and the other an interview with David Bloomby the fouther of CANTO." page 1
Excerpt: "This issue of ARCADE is a venture into the world of secret challenges and rewards of the less glamorous parts of architecture, without which there could be no greater whole" Rebecca Barnes, page 2.
Excerpt: "This issue, with some thoughts on the education of architects, has been a long time coming. A series of roundable discussions occurred in Seattle with the goal of examining education philosophy at Northwest schools of architecture. The task proved enormous. Difficulties arose in deciding where to begin and what to compare. Soon it became clear that any discussion of the present must be prefaced by an understanding of what has come before... The three historial pieces which follow are intended to stimulate discussion on architectural education and provoke further comment in ARCADE" David Schraer, page 1.
The major theme of this issue is Union Station being built nearby the Tacoma Dome and how the designs clash between old and new with commentary on historic preservation and the rehabilitation of Third Avenue being given a special identity.
Excerpt: "Regarding light as something which can be expressed and supported by the surface and form of architecture may allow the two elements of light and substance to assume an equality which reflects their interdependence, reinforcing our connection to the spaces we inhabit." Bill Haas, page 5.
Excerpt: "We seem to be at a point now where the term 'artist' is freely used by those in both the design and fine art fields. Yet considerable confusion exists about what is art, design, or whatever. Many who call themselves artists are like the monks who illuminated manuscripts. Are they artists in terms of original ideas and thoughts? Many are simply translators, are mediums for ideas that have been espressed by others. Most of the people are stewards of styles that other people have created" Richard Andrews, page 1.
Excerpt: "this issue of ARCADE examines the relationship between architecture and graphic design. The relationship between the two has always existed, although it has remained unkacknowledged until recently. Architects and graphic designers now collaborate to produce, for example, a signage system that is graphically please to follow, and compatible with the building's architecture." - Caroline Petrich
Excerpt: "this is the last issue of ARCADE's fourth year. ARCADE began as a calendar: you still depend on it for the calendar, but features and news are at least as important to you." - Fred Basseti
Excerpt: "This issue of ARCADE provides a window onto the possibility of inhabition--most particularly with the creation of houses and housing that are worthy of inhabition--places in which individuals and families can invest care and love in order to create real homes and communities." - Katherine Rinne, Guest Editor, page 4
Excerpt: "this issue of ARCADE seeks to address not just issues related to the city as municipality or even that of urban form, but broader issues associated with produced design and our ongoing and awkward relationship as designers to the idea of nature... this issue does not intend to solve the problems associated with the city and nature but to provide an outlet for the research and opinions of its writers, photographers, and readers." - Juliet Sinisterra Cole, Guest Editor, page 4
Excerpt: "This issue of ARCADE focus upon making and materials as the radical essence of architecture--they make the casse that the beauty of architecture derives from the necessity of it's contruction--and that the making of meaning is not possible without first understanding the meaning of making." - Peter Cohan and Aubrest Summers, Guest Editors, page 4
Excerpt: "In this issue of Arcade, I asked architecture critic Glenn Weiss, theater director Kurt Beattie, environmental designer Paula Rees, new media artist Diane Gromala, poet Clifford Burle, and photographer Charles Katz to respond to the notion of "spirit of place" from their respective points of view. What links their independent explorations is that we bring as much to the making of the place and its spirit as those who have the perogative of creation." - T. Ellen Solllod, Guest Editor
Excerpt: "This issue of Arcade examines critical regionalism in the context of recent Northwest architecture and design, but you won't find an overwheling endorsement of it in any of these articles. Instead, Frampton's theory serves as a springboard for new--possible unaswerable--questions. Exactly what is it that makes this region unique? Is regionalism too narrow a vision for the Northwest or is it how the region derives it strength? Can local architectural criticism influence the quality of regional design? Together the articles suggest that the reasons that make these questions so difficult to answer are the same reasons that make them worth asking." - Sheri Olson, Guest Editor
Excerpt: "This issue evolved from the idea of urban weaving into the diverse ways art can form cities; watersheds, revitalizing creeks, green architecture, recycled materials." - Jennifer Donnally, Associate Editor, page 2.
Excerpt: "Our cause was broad--too broad to acheive: What is design in the Northwest? We thought of water management and architeacture, then we thought of interior and interfaces, or outdoor gear. But in lieu of achieving everything, we have achieved something: a review of the little subject of industrial design, what it is, and what it looks like locally. If a few more people understand that, the exhibition will be a success. And it will be a success if you go and enjoy it." - Victoria Milne, Guest Editor and Guest Curator, page 2.
Excerpt: "Welcome to the final issue of Volume 18. The volume documents the works of the physical world: visual artists, industrial designers, and architects, these artists live and work in the Northwest United States and Western Cananda." - Glenn Weiss, Summer 2000 Editor.
Excerpt: "The essays and poem in thiss edition of ARCADE are deeply personal reflections on change... Market economics and city boosterism collude in an act of creative destruction--the death of our cities' soul. The segementation of our social and physical spheres bolsters the adolescene mind--the inability to be touched by that which is different. By welcoming diversity, embracing theh unpredictable and the picaresque, we expand the possibilities of achieving a truly humanistic architecture." - Bruce Philip Rips, page 16.
The pieces in this section display a tension between the concepts we entertain as "dreamers" and the identities, sometimes far richer, surprising and constructive, that we enact as "doers," when engaged in collaborative, discipline and interest crossing practice.
Photography's history is bound to architecture in myriad ways. Photography, like architecture, is based on perspective, rooted in planarities and volumes; it operates on their transformation. Each work of architecture, like that of photography, is an instance of order imposed.
As an artist who makes 'public’ work, I am by desire and necessity out on the street pushing the exchange of ideas. Invited to be a guest editor of ARCADE, I thought it would be interesting to investigate ways that ideas surface in the city.
Somewhere around mile 17,574 of their national tour, Seattle's own action: better city drove through the looking glass and stumbled across the not-so-ordinary town of Gentryville, Missouri. Hear one man's cautionary tale of a small town that dared to dream big.
Landscape is the place for the complex interplay between nature and culture, supporting all human activity. Landscapes are our story because they reveal who we are. They embody our values and history, and provide the framework for our future.
The Pacific Northwest Corridor has three main train stations - Pacific Central Station, King Street Station, Union Station - that were built during the peak of the Railway Age, fell into neglect after World War ll, and since the '90s have made a steady return to public life. Presently, the stations have the potential to transform the cities of the corridor into one urban realm. The following essays examine the fixed histories and open futures of the train stations.
A catalog of interiors that are not for sale including: Stairwells, Elevators, Radiators, Lamps, Armchairs, Ceilings, a Basement, a Hardware Store, and Much More!
Excerpt: The voyeur in me is eager to see the shifts in design and urban content. That's why l fashion myself as flaneur: a person who wanders the city in search of something, anything, that could be interesting. I want to see the new buildings and the discarded ones, the tip of sidewalks and the orange cranes of the shipyards.
Excerpt: So, why do the six firms gathered here deserve public work? They would all like to get it and some have even achieved small commissions. But their current attitudes toward public work vary greatly, from desire to frustration, ambivalence to disinter- est. They all have the skill, talent and seriousness to accomplish public work.
For the special anniversary edition, this feature celebrates the visual and offers a gift of contempIation: the possibilities of architecture as idea, geology and attitude that photography-itself a medium literally born in silver-capably describes.
We want to think about architecture and its relationship with cinema in two distinct ways.
This issue of ARCADE brings together a collection of architectural illustrations as imagined by the gamers of the art world: comic book artists.
The desired goal of the human endeavor is to optimize conditions for human development over time. This is largely what our founder, Ove Arup, meant when he said that we must pursue our work with a humanitarian attitude.
Excerpt: and then I built a table. and kept manifesting them. I am little uncertain as to why. but it is now a nervous tick — and invades my dreams (and I pace, fidget, even squint “tables”).
Technology vowed to take the exacting labor out of such tasks as sewing a dress. It facilitated more efficient weaving, new fibers, increased volume and fast fashion, but also heralded the rise of sweatshops and landfills teeming with synthetic fabric.
A Conversation with Bill Fritts: Bill Fritts is the founder and director of intelligent design—creators of collaborative design solutions across the architecture, interiors, furniture and lighting industries—and founder of SOLIDCORE— providing sustainable solutions in furnishings and interiors.
Jordan’s photo portraits of the Pacific Northwest’s industrial sites and waste management facilities treat accumulated waste as landscapes: towering mountains and crumbling cliffs, vast plains planted with discarded products and industrial debris. These dense, sensual images express a Romantic appreciation for the aesthetics of ruin and share scope, physical size and subject matter with Edward Burtynsky’s sweeping photographs of polluted mine sites and Andreas Gursky’s portraits of architectural spaces that are chockablock with people or products.
Excerpt: Instead, we (ARCADE’s Editor Kelly Walker and Pliny Fisk III) decided to bring together examples that directly and immediately affect planning and design. These projects describe a possible stitching together of life cycles for how resources could be “urban mined” and manufactured sensibly based on Design for Manufacturing (DfM) and Design for Disassembly (DfD) protocols.
Our country’s waste management system is flawed. the essence of these flaws lies in the fact that as a country we’ve been trained to buy stuff, use it and throw it away, only to buy new stuff again.
Massive changes to the atmosphere are nothing new. The pace of this human-caused change is what makes it unique. To the best scientific knowledge, the changes to the atmosphere caused by human industrialization are occurring at the fastest pace ever.
Grounded is the first of four issues comprising ARCADE volume 28, a series urging change in the way humans inhabit the planet. Building on the questions regarding waste raised in volume 27, these issues use the four elements of alchemy — earth, water, air and fire — as an investigatory lens.
“Water is the one substance from which the earth can conceal nothing: it sucks out its innermost secrets and brings them to our very lips.” - Jean Giraudoux, The Madwoman of Chaillot, 1945
It is the first and last of the elements we encounter. It is almost nothing, yet no living thing would be without it.
For this feature I approached 67 people from a variety of professions and walks of life with a call for submissions—I asked them for new and creative views on fire. I solicited artists, writers, culinary types, architects, industrial designers, graphic designers, pilates instructors, musicians, dancers, librarians, curators, academics and government officials.
As a design-build firm in the Northwest, a typical day for us involves everything from conceptual design sketches to fabricating a connection between steel and wood. Because the path of design and construction covers such a wide spectrum of thinking and doing, there are many potential stopping points along the route to considering a designed object “finished.” When and how we choose to declare a design complete is often just as important as the designed object itself.
The projects included here were presented in Energy Effects: Art and Artifacts from the Landscape of Glorious Excess, an exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art Denver during the summer of 2010. They are judged by their usefulness but instead by aesthetic, political, cultural and historical potential. They are less involved in the ethics of how energy should be used than in imagining the many ways in which it could be used.
If we are going to design a sustainable way of living, we need to take “the good life” more seriously. We don’t need raw hedonism – waiter, more champagne! – or monkish asceticism, but instead, something in between.
Carlos Khali talks with Judy Lee, a cerebal post-punk rock band explores gesamtkunstwerk, Rachel Gallaher reviews LEGOS, Mutuus’s ‘resident artist’ chats with Anna Coumou, Recology announces 2024 A.I.R.s, Keith Cote has a bunch of -isms, and Michael Barkin documents Love City Love
This issue of ARCADE was originally conceived as the last in a series that loosely explores seemingly disparate forces that come together to make something unexpected. Our approach was to set up an opposition with piety, order, rules and, by implication, timidity on one side and rebellion, ambiguity, tension, uncertainty and bravery onthe other.
In interactive ecosystems, the more communicators share with the communities they’ve convened the more trust is created, leading to more sustainable interactions and possibly more powerful actions. The change of the Tunisian and Egyptian political regimes in the so-called “Arab Spring” in early 2011 is testimony to what self-organized communities can do when their members realize that they’re not alone in their thoughts and aspirations.Suddenly, they recognize that they can come together as a makeshift community and effect tremendous upheaval.
When the ARCADE Editorial Committee began discussing potential themes for the magazine’s 30th anniversary volume, we settled on the concept of less. Today, at a time when the global economy and climate change have defined a new world, what are the impli cations for the manner in which architects, designers and artists communicate, practice, educate and live? In the last issue we addressed communication. In this issue we present a handful of ideas about how better to practice—now and always.
In this issue of ARCADE, we explore a range of patterns, models and methodologies that exist in design education. The field of design is changing rapidly in fascinating ways. While in the past, design may have focused most on issues of form or aesthetics, increasingly the profession has grown to encompass social, cultural, technological and economic contexts, as well as new tools and technologies.
Less is the future. Less water. Less food. Less resources. Less consumption. Less of everything. Less equals a mandate for massive change now-the shift in values, in use, in stewardship and in the way we inhabit the world.
We are trained at a young age to separate art from the core subjects of our studies. Students are unknowingly squeezed through a series of tightly fitted molds on their way from elementary school into adulthood, fully accepting an assumed fact that we spend less time teaching art because it is frivolous in the shadows of science and math. The truth of the matter is that these basic topics of art and science are more closely related than not, and the overlap is more relevant now than ever. The STEM subjects {Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics) are no longer adequate to describe the needs of our society. Our contemporary world craves empathy and understanding in the face of an intensified onset of techno logical advances and a decline in direct interpersonal communication. Art and design can offer just that. The equation is simple:
Art and science are forms of inquiry. Artists and scien tists ask questions. Both engage research, and most often those who practice want to share the knowledge generated. However, this does not translate to art as being the same as science—they are distinct. And they are each equally important to our collective future. Societies that nourish diverse forms of inquiry gener ate new knowledge and shape how we act in the world.
Life in the city turns out to be greener than life in rural areas. Humans in the woods do more damage to the environment than humans in densely packed urban cores. The reason why hippies failed to see things this way is because it’s counterintuitive. But Buster Simpson did, and that’s why he sat on that jumble of concrete, and that’s also why that image in the timeworn newspaper is at the center of his retrospective.
Aesthetics is one of the most difficult things to formalize and teach a computer.
These days, the deepening global environmental crisis and recent research revealing the limits, and even dangers, of Western-style consumerism has turned the whole narrative of devel-opment completely upside down. One example of this is that more and more, politicians and economists in poor cities no longer see the car as a marker of progress and are instead considering allocating, or have already redirected, a sizable portion of their very limited urban resources to the lowly bicycle.
Data is infiltrating culture. Artists are using data as a subject for critique or as a new method of form generation, creating work that may help us come to terms with a changing society.
Authenticity is rooted in our disciplines, histories, and experiences. Understanding its meanings can help us grapple with change.
Consistent, supportive hubs for creativity are essential. The Rainier Oven Building's 20-year history shows us why.
As we move into the future, what will we take with us—as we grow and change, what ideas and experiences will guide our choices? What influences from our pasts will help us understand and create our next chapters? In the following pages, contributors from a variety of design fields and more share thoughts on the cultural influences that have impacted their thinking, highlighting large ideas worth considering as we shape our world. The stories they tell and concepts they present are wide-ranging and Insightful.
This issue’s feature explores, documents, and critiques some of the spaces found throughout the migration process. It asks what it means to be displaced from home, to persevere en route, and to arrive elsewhere. Contributors describe displacements as three American cities cater to infl uxes of young, wealthy white people. They conceptualize architectures of those who can no longer build in places of their own. They survey precarious journeys through squats, camps, and detention centers. And they identify welcoming and unwelcoming spaces for migrants upon arrival in Europe and North America.
Excerpt: "Since the 1980s, Burtynsky has been documenting human impacts on the natural landscape, with a particular interest in the transformations brought by industry; indirectly he has also been photographing some of the contributing culprits of climate change. “What makes climate change difficult is that it is not an instantaneous catastrophic event. It’s a slow-moving issue that, on a day-to-day basis, people don’t experience and don’t see."
This is a love story — a story about a city and re gion remaking itseif with the goal of being a place that its citizens will love, a story about a dialog between a city and the people who live there. A powerful story to learn from, it describes a city committed to creating the most livable place in the world for all its residents.
In this ARCADE feature, we explore what is lost in an era where efficiency has forcefully entangled itself in all aspects of our lives. We approach the topic broadly, having prompted our favorite thinkers and writers to consider where inefficiency exists (or existed) and what beauty arises from it. Knowing what we are to lose, we hope to discover some impulse to spend time among the thorns, extricating efficiency from the roots of our culture.
In the following pages, some longtime ARCADE writers and community members express their thoughts about the organization. They reflect on the ways thoughtful storytelling and nuanced dialogue enrich our lives, both nourishing and challenging us. They highlight the importance of community and connection, and they celebrate the role of print publications in an increasingly digital world. In some cases, we worked to quell their enthusiasm for ARCADE, but in the end we acquiesced. Please indulge us, just this once, as we celebrate 35 years of your ideas and work.
As a whole, does Seattle have a set of guiding moral beliefs—a collective ethos—that supports and enables equitable change? For this ARCADE feature, I asked members of two communities to address this issue on a personal level and share their thoughts in the following pages on what they’ve seen happen ing around them.
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.
We’ve embraced the changing of the guard, developed new outreach and engagement opportunities and increased the diversity of our dialogues. While retaining the thoughtful discussion that has been the hallmark of our organization for nearly forty years, we are looking forward to finding more ways to enrich the Dialogue on Design through digital, print and in-person connections. 37.2 was created in the spirit of experiencing between here and there.
With so many obituaries in our city, this first edition of Arcade's new quarterly magazine hopes to convey that there is still creative life and a strong community thriving in Seattle and that publications such as ours will continue to highlight those individuals and projects. In this way, Arcade will help maintain a vibrant architecture, design, and arts ecosystem in the best way we know how: through journalism and publication.
We’ve embraced the changing of the guard, developed new outreach and engagement opportunities and increased the diversity of our dialogues. While retaining the thoughtful discussion that has been the hallmark of our organization for nearly forty years, we are looking forward to finding more ways to enrich the Dialogue on Design through digital, print and in-person connections. 37.2 was created in the spirit of experiencing between here and there.
What is death, really? Scientifically, it’s a shift, similar to how elements change from one state (solid, liquid, or gas) to another, an idea called phase transition. With this inspiration, we conceived our new title: PHASE SHIFT. From the start, our thinking has been framed by ideas of change, considering death as a threshold or catalyst for transformation, rather than an endpoint.
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.