[gallery] “But the Weyerhaeuser headquarters seem purpose-built, rhetorically and materially, for one of Seattle’s growing companies. As Way noted to the Seattle Times, its brawny, low-lying aesthetic is still the dominant one for Pacific Northwest Modern. If you weren’t told that the building was from 1971, would you know? It’s amazing to me how well this headquarters has worn, unlike some of its glassier and boxier East Coast counterparts. Residential communities have grown up nearby, and the thinking behind Weyerhaeuser’s original site choice—equidistant from Seattle and Tacoma, near the airport—remains appealing to many. Rather than embarking on a massive, top-secret earthwork to recreate a childhood memory, or trumpeting an open plan that is hardly revolutionary, Facebook, Apple, or even a local university could use Weyerhaeuser’s historic building to test a more interesting and less heroic theory: that adaptive reuse can be the most environmental choice of all—even in the suburbs.” — Alexandra Lange.
But our current fetish for the urban trumps all other considerations.
