Marques Vickers

Downtown Seattle Marques Vickers

The edition is an architectural survey of the contemporary Seattle skyline. Documenting the city's explosive growth, artistically photographed images capture the elevated monoliths of the cities expansion. Photographed between 2016-2021, the edition profiles nearly 150 commercial development projects from a variety of perspective angles. The heightening of the downtown Seattle skyline up until 2020 mirrored the prosperity and expansion of the high technology and bio-med business center. The effects of the 2020 pandemic has not slowed the construction, designed years earlier. It has raised questions over the quantity of available office and residential space as the nature of commercial enterprises are evolving . The contemporary projects incorporate compositions of steel, glass, and concrete creating innovate building skins. Historically, the Seattle regional economy has been diversified with Boeing and later Amazon as its most visible institution. Tech growth has accelerated the demands for office space, parking, residential housing and transportation solutions. Aggressive development resulted in stages of soaring rents, congestion and extreme gridlock. The new normal will test these former precepts. The city of Seattle appears to be playing infrastructure catch-up. It has been commentated that the city was never intended to expand into its present escalation. Such observations become academic and antiquated when one views the fruition of its present vertical skyline. Numerous additional developments remain in various stages of planning and completion during this boom period. Retreat and constraint once seemingly inevitabilities may be slowed.. Future visions for a vibrant downtown core stream forward. With each subsequent constructed monolith, Seattle solidifies its claim as a building showcase of twenty-first century style, credibility, and stature. Growth becomes an insatiable surge. For the high technology industry to maintain its frenetic pace, progress is essential. Perhaps soon, Seattle and such a volatile industry will arrive at a crossroad where sustaining such expansion becomes problematic and unsustainable.