ARCHITECTURAL FOCUS
Belltown is Seattle’ s densest urban neighborhood and embodies the tension of the Emerald City’ s past and future.
Our site shares a block with a three-story Tudor Revival multifamily residence and a single-story Georgian Revival structure, both built in the 1920s and clad in masonry and cast stone. We designed Kaye as a tower on a podium— a configuration that allowed us to create a plinth congruent with both our immediate brick-clad neighbors and the tower that rises from it.
We designed the podium to be oriented toward the street and conversant with our mid-rise neighbors— anchored, masonic, and resolute. Conversely, the tower is oriented toward the skyline, becoming ever more ethereal and diaphanous as it rises. These intentions manifest in material and form: the base is a celebration of tectonic weight, while the top is a study in light and reflection.
We established guiding principles for Kaye’ s six-story base. We wanted the podium legible from the street, with conspicuous program elements, open spaces, and intuitive circulation. Grand spaces and soaring volumes feel approachable and friendly, with granular details rendered in warm, tactile materials. Since we designed both building and interior, we were able to treat the ground-floor spaces as an extension of the street.
We created a“ great hall” behind an operable glass storefront, with an internal secondary facade clad in masonry and fenestrated as though it were another street wall. A monumental onyx-clad stair invites guests and residents to the amenity spaces on the mezzanine, all bathed in natural light and connected
to Fourth Avenue. The mail and bike room doubles as a visual and physical connection from Fourth Avenue, through the great hall, and out to the alley behind— the architectural realization of an anticipated“ desire path” for residents heading east or south. The party walls at either end of the great hall are finished with custommade glass bricks, and a projected retail volume of glass and Tennessee pink marble sits underneath a mirrorfinished awning, reflecting pedestrians passing by.
To human-scale the plinth, we treated the mass as something to be eroded. Through subtractive massing, we created setbacks and voids at strategic locations, inviting connections from the street into the building’ s core. At the Fourth Avenue street wall, we designed a colonnade in lieu of Seattle’ s prescriptive overhead weather protection. This move pushed the building’ s threshold back, extending the public realm into the structure and diffusing the barrier between private interior and public sidewalk.
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