This project for the University of Washington Tacoma (UWT), in partnership with the local chapter of the YMCA, provides a campus amenity that merges fitness, intellectual pursuit, and community activities. The many shared goals and values of both organizations provided an incredible framework for building community and providing invigorating programs and services.
The UWT and YMCA spaces are intentionally intermixed to provide an integrative and diverse environment. An open-plan arrangement capitalizes on flexibility and views with rooms inserted against the grade transition. This approach opens up three stories of available daylight and views that spill through open areas and back to adjacent rooms.
The Y Student Center façade uses alternating transparent and opaque enclosure systems to provide a visual porosity that is intended to engage both street and building activities and integrate within the surrounding warehouse neighborhood context.
This project was delivered via the Design-Build process, exemplifying the University’s creative methods to improve the built environment, particularly in a challenging fiscal context for higher education.
