Side x Side Office Renovation
Location
Chinatown International District, Seattle, WA
Team
All of SxS Architects
In June 2024 we relocated our offices from the ground-breaking Bullitt Center in Seattle’s Capitol Hill to the heart of the CID (Chinatown International District). We moved into a storefront space: formerly the Eastern Café, which had sadly closed its doors in September 2023. In renovating, we preserved as many original features of the space as we could, removing old vinyl floor tiles and refinishing the wood floor hidden beneath. We refinished and reshaped the existing countertop to make a 30-foot-long island for everyone to gather around. We used healthy, sustainable materials throughout, to create an inviting space to team members and the community alike.
Our new neighborhood — a dynamic mix of residences, workplaces, stores and restaurants — is one of the most vibrant and closest-knit in the city, with a human urban street scale, and mixture of new and historic structures. The CID is home to many different Asian communities, whose stories are shared in the Wing Luke Museum, located just two blocks east of us. (The Wing Luke is the only pan-Asian Pacific American community-based museum in the United States.) Community is at the heart of the projects we design, and we wanted it to be at the heart of our new office. We saw our new office as an opportunity to provide a community space that was lost when the café closed a year ago. The open plan ground floor has been kept as a flexible space which will be available for local workshops and meetings.
A few short weeks after moving into the space we were proud to participate in our first community event, JAMFEST, an annual summer music and arts street festival with a longstanding history in the CID. We invited in friends and neighbors to explore the space, make a custom button, try their hand at letterpress printing, or — for the younger visitors — get some cool face painting. We served up an amazing pandan black sesame cake by Properly Cake Co., along with other local delicacies. It was a wonderful turnout and we were gratified to meet lots of new friends.
