LIVING CITY

Seattle’s Pioneer Square neighborhood lies at the meeting place of land and water. Historically, it has been the locus of intersecting cultures: from Duwamish tribespeople to the first settlers, loggers, and builders. As such, Pioneer Square is an ideal test bed for creating a place of balance between urban culture and nature.

A collaboration with Framework Cultural Placemaking, Gastilworks, and students from the UW College of the Built Environment, Pioneer Square: Living Blue + Green builds on the existing layers of natural and cultural attributes, creating new relationships to land, water, and power. These new connections will transform Pioneer Square into a Living City by creating new paradigms for energy, updating water infrastructure, revitalizing historic structure with living building systems, adding new residences and commercial space, inserting a system for local food production, and making this walkable neighborhood more resilient, capable of meeting the challenges facing future cities in the United States.