Designers of an 11-story Seattle of...

Designers of an 11-story Seattle office building received an apparently contradictory message when they first discussed the project's requirements with holder Vulcan Inc. The client wanted a "progressive, innovative, leading-edge emblem of building"--but one that nevertheless would be a dutiful neighbor to other buildings in the Chinatown International District in which it would be located, and to the renovated Victorian-style buildings of adjacent Pioneer Square.

"That had a hap to do with how the [building] form and the skin materials evolved" says John Savo,