After his plans for a new Seattle Waterfront were widely derided as not being innovating and not reflecting anything of Seattle, the city’s contract with James Corner for 8 million
has already spent $7.5 million dollars. Cornet is an international landscape architect, well known for his work on the High Line park in New York City. “That money, in my mind, is pretty well spent,” city planning director Marshall Foster said.
Why was this not spent at the UW?
Obviously a local firm could have done the technical work, but the real issue is design and the thought behind the design. The UW has both an internationally known architecture school, and the cultural resources that could have led to a far more interesting design without people here needing to remind Mr. Corner of our Salish heritage, The architecture school of great urban architecture that includes Yamasaki (the architect of the 9 11 World Trade Towers but also Seattle’s Science Center and the iconic IBM building that foreshadowed the World Trade Center designs). The idea of a presence for the Burke Museum, a museum that considers itself a unique pacific rim resource, seems all too obvious.
Hell, why not have a husky dog or a grotto honoring the UW and the Hutch’s collection of Nobel Laureates? I suspect a fraction of the dollars given to Mr. Corner for his less than mediocre design would have gone a long way.