Seattle Center

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Seattle Center Armory

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What started as a facelift to a mixed-use civic building unfolded into a complete rebrand and comprehensive wayfinding system.
Project
Seattle Center Armory
Location
Seattle, Washington
Year
2013
Team
Principal: Kristine Matthews
Designer: Cassie Klingler
Partners
Structural Design: Graham Baba Architects
Photography
Sam Cook, Studio Matthews
Categories
Branding, Wayfinding

Since its construction in 1939 as a civic armory, this building has served a multitude of purposes, most notably as an exhibit hall for the 1962 World’s Fair. But over the years the once-proud building had been layered over with cheesy displays and tired graphics. We collaborated with Graham Baba Architects to strip it back to its proud bones, and reinstate the Armory name. With the Seattle Center team we dug back through their substantial photo archives to assemble a visual timeline of the building’s remarkable history.

To announce current programming we devised a family of inexpensive and flexible structures that could be fabricated by the Seattle Center in-house team. With these improvements, along with an influx of great local food venues, the Armory has once again taken pride of place as the “Center of Seattle Center.”

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