Category Archives: Design

Lan Su Chinese Garden

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Lan Su is a walled Chinese garden that occupies an entire city block in Portland, Oregon. Designed by Kuang Zhen, it was completed in 1999–2000 by Chinese artisans from Suzhou, Jiangsu Province, China, using traditional materials and techniques.

The name Lan Su is taken from parts of the names of the sister cities of Portland and Suzhou. The name itself can be interpreted as the Garden of Awakening Orchids.

The view above focuses on the Moon Locking Pavilion, whose name refers to when the reflection of the moon can be seen in the center of the lake, locked in or framed by the shadow of the pavilion. To the left, in the background, is the Painted Boat in Misty Rain pavilion, representing the friendship that sailed from Suzhou and docked in Portland.

Lake Anne Plaza

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During the summer of 1973, between my first and second years teaching at Ohio University, I worked in Silver Springs, Maryland. Taking the opportunity to tour the D.C. metropolitan area, I visited Reston, Virginia, where I sketched this view of Lake Anne Plaza. I was using a No. 2 pencil at the time, being influenced by Ted Kautzky’s book, Pencil Broadsides.

Lake Anne Plaza was the first of several village centers that formed part of Reston’s town plan designed by James Rossant and William J. Conklin. This particular hub clustered a mix of shops, townhouses, and apartments around the end of an artificial lake. Inspired by the Garden City movement, the plan for Reston accommodated moderately dense development while preserving open space, natural landscapes, and wildlife habitats.

Lake Anne Village Center received quite a bit of national publicity and critical acclaim when it opened in 1964. It was named to the National Register of Historic Places in 2017 and remains the historic “heart and soul” of Reston, Virginia.

Asian Art Museum: Addendum

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The Asian Art Museum closed in 2017 to allow for a major renovation and expansion designed by LMN Architects to occur. This drawing shows the new wing added to the rear of the original structure that will house a new gallery, education studio, conservation center, and community meeting room. With more exhibition space, the museum will now organize artwork by themes that link cultures, histories, and belief systems to convey the diversity and complexity of Asia, the world’s largest continent.

The rebirthed Asian Art Museum will open to the public on the weekend of February 8 and 9, 2020.

Asian Art Museum

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This sparse drawing attempts to convey this elegant Art Moderne building designed by Carl F. Gould, a University of Washington professor of architecture and partner in the firm of Bebb and Gould. Located in Volunteer Park in the Capitol Hill neighborhood of Seattle, it served as the Seattle Art Museum from 1933 until 1991, when a new SAM designed by Robert Venturi of Venturi, Scott Brown and Associates was completed in downtown Seattle. The building was subsequently renovated and reopened in 1994 as the Asian Art Museum. The building is a designated Seattle landmark and is listed in the National Register of Historic Places.

*The Seattle Art Museum acknowledges that they are located on the ancestral land of the Coast Salish people.

La Parroquia San Miguel Arcángel

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San Miguel Arcángel was built in the late 17th century in the colonial Baroque style, but in the 19th century, a local builder Zeferino Gutiérrez Muñoz was asked to rebuild the towers and facade that had suffered substantial cracking over the years. He was a bricklayer by profession and so he relied on a postcard of Cologne Cathedral in Germany for inspiration. The result is a massive pseudo-Gothic structure that has become the iconic emblem of San Miguel de Allende, 50 miles west of Querétaro.

This sketch, done quickly as a demo, is an example of how it is possible not to complete every detail or part of a scene, especially when drawing symmetrical compositions. It is often enough to merely suggest one part and then let the imagination of the viewer complete the view.

KeyArena

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The iconic roof structure of KeyArena on the Seattle Center grounds will be the only remaining part of the original coliseum after it is redeveloped into an NHL and NBA venue. Because the ongoing excavation is lowering the ground level beneath the existing footings, a network of temporary steel supports is necessary to hold up the roof structure until new foundations can be placed. Now called the Seattle Center Arena, the coliseum is scheduled to open in the spring of 2021, in time for the new Seattle NHL franchise. Oak View Group is the developer for the project; Populous is the architecture firm; and Mortenson is the general contractor.

Paul Thiry designed the original structure, the Washington State Pavilion for the 1962 World’s Fair—the Century 21 Exposition. It was soon renamed the Seattle Center Coliseum, which served as a venue for sports, concerts, and other entertainment over the decades. In 1994–95, NBBJ-designed a renovation to bring the coliseum up to NBA standards and and naming rights were sold to KeyBank, which renamed the coliseum KeyArena. Notably, the coliseum was the home of the Seattle SuperSonics before the team’s sale in 2006 and ultimate move to Oklahoma City in 2008.

This second drawing of the arena’s roof structure is from a slightly different point of view and strips away much of the surrounding activity to focus primarily on the shell.

Eagle’s Spirit Totem

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Having some time between recent doctor appointments at the UW Medicine’s Northwest Hospital & Medical Center, I drew this totem created by master Tsimshian carver David Boxley as a tribute to his sister-in-law Cindy Sue James (1965-2016). Dedicated May 6, 2007, the totem honors her legacy and pays tribute to all cancer patients, survivors, and caregivers.

The top figure is the Eagle, or Laxskiik, of the Tsimshian Nation. Below is a shaman wearing a bear-claw headdress and representing doctors and caregivers battling cancer. At the base is Cindy Sue, serving as the foundation for her family and tenderly clutching the shoulders of her grandson, Dominic, 7, “the light of her life, from the day he was born.”

West Seattle Branch Library

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The West Seattle Branch was the third library to be funded by Andrew Carnegie’s 1908 grant to the Seattle Public Library system. It opened on Saturday, July 23, 1910. As with the University and Green Lake branches, the architecture firm Somervell and Coté designed the Neoclassical style structure. In 1984, Seattle voters approved a bond issue to fund renovation of the Carnegie branch libraries, which the West Seattle Branch received in 1987. In 2004, another renovation added a much requested auditorium to the facility.

10th Anniversary of the Seattle Urban Sketchers

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This past weekend, the Seattle Urban Sketchers met at Gas Works Park to mark the 10-year anniversary of when Gabi Campanario organized the first meet-up at Fishermen’s Terminal, back in June of 2009. Here’s a wide-angle view of the park, looking toward downtown Seattle. I composed the view so that the space needle could be seen amid the pipework. Below is a close-up view of remnants of the original coal gasification equipment.

4th & University

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I drew this view from a rootop terrace on the southwest corner of 4th and University Avenues. It depicts buildings from three different periods of Seattle’s downtown development. On the right is Minoru Yamasaki’s iconic Rainier Tower of 1977. To the left is the Cobb Building, a brick-and-terra cotta Beaux-Arts design by the New York firm of Howells and Stokes, which was completed in 1907. And in the background undergoing construction is a new 58-story mixed use tower by NBBJ.

Below is another view of the terra cotta ornamentation atop the Cobb Building, which is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.