HADDAD | DRUGAN

Emerald City combines art and landscape to create an entry drive portal to and from Seattle-Tacoma International Airport. The art is conceived as an “ecotopia,” a fantastic abstraction of an idealized place.  Emerald City connects the evergreen ethic of the Pacific Northwest with the sense of possibility and wonder associated with travel. 

Towers and terraces create a framework onto which plants will slowly grow over time, conveying a “greening” of the city. On the west side of the roadway, flowering vines will envelop three towers, and mesh topiary cages will gradually fill with evergreen shrubs. This structured landscape will emerge and evolve over the years, revealing and becoming the Emerald City. Green LED fixtures will illuminate the vine towers, conveying the concept of the “green city” at night.

Leading up to the portal are undulating earthworks in the median and west embankment. Retained by a series of linear gabion walls, these flowing earth forms are planted with seasonally dynamic groundcovers that allude to the landscapes and waterscapes of Washington State. Top terraces formed by the gabion walls are lined with rows of white-flowering cherry trees. Flanking each side of the roadway, these rows of trees are accented at night with blue LED lights.

The focal point of Emerald City is a clock tower in the median of the roadway adjacent to Sound Transit’s light rail line. The tower is clad in receding and protruding stainless steel fins, one of which houses an LED clock display. Green crystalline photovoltaic panels integrated into fins on the south side of the tower tie the idea of renewable energy production to the “greening” of the city. The photovoltaic system powers LED light fixtures inside the clock tower that change color with the air temperature, ranging from blue (cold) to green (moderate) to red (hot). 

This project was particularly complex, as it involves multiple contracts and design teams, and review and compliance with regulations of agencies including the Port of Seattle, the FAA, Sound Transit, and WSDOT.

Harbor Pacific was the general contractor. Metal fabricators for the art structures include S & S Welding and Atomic Fabrications. Engineering was by Huitt-Zollars and KPFF.

“Emerald offers us rarity and sparkle. A green city provides an ideal reflection of nature; a city not in opposition to the forest, but a humanized version of it. It is the city as a dazzling garden, a dream of nature perfected.”

- The Emerald City by Daniel Willis