On my recent visit to Seattle I couldn’t help but notice the vertical texture on several of the new skyscrapers, including Amazon’s Doppler Tower. I’d walked out the door of the Westin Hotel looking for a bite to eat, and was completely wowed by what I saw. There’s been so much construction in Seattle since my last visit some five years ago.
What I loved about Amazons Doppler Tower is how the vertical metal bands were mounted perpendicular to the building, shimmering in the light as you walked by. Therefore, the colors changed as you moved past the building like iridescent fish scales. There was an ebb and flow to the tonality of building, looking more red at the top, and yellow orange towards the bottom. I’ve done a ton of research on this tower and can find no reference to the textural surface employed by architectural firm NBBJ. Opened in December of 2015, the three block campus is on track to receive LEED Gold certification (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design). One of the unseen design concepts that makes this building so efficient is their use of waste heat from nearby data centers at the Westin Hotel. The system transfers heat via water piped underground to the Amazon campus, thus heating the buildings. The cooled water is then piped back to the Westin. Oh, and did I mention that have a dog park on top of one of the towers… they do.
Olive 8, a mixed-use building that includes both condos and a Hyatt Hotel, opened in 2009 and was designed to reach LEED Silver certification. While it’s known as Seattle’s greenest luxury hotel, I love it for those deep blue glass fins lining the buildings exterior. When Seattle is at its grayest, a little reflected blue light can’t be a bad thing.
Premiere on Pine is also Leed Silver certified and boasts 40 stories of downtown luxury living. Built by Weber Thompson it features an exterior design palette that is a tad more traditional with tones of earthy rust, gray and bronze, designed to compliment the vintage masonry of of the adjacent 1929 Paramount Theater.
I’m so looking forward to my next visit to Seattle. By then Amazon’s Tower II should be complete, and by 2017 their three sphere bio-domes will be the talk of the town. Amazon’s new corporate headquarters are making quite the splash in the Emerald City.