Seattle Design Center

SDC GETS A BREATH OF FRESH AIR.

After a yearlong renovation process, the Seattle Design Center (SDC) now has a new look and has centralized its 25 home furnishings and decor showrooms in one location on its campus. “We wanted to create a building that looked and felt like a real design center,” says Mike Jones of JPC Architects, lead architect for the project, “where you don’t need to have a sign on the desk when you enter to know immediately you’re in a creative space.” Previously divided between two buildings, a five-story plaza and two-story atrium, the SDC now houses all of its showrooms in the 157,000 sf atrium. New porcelain tile, lighting and brighter interior paint replaced the atrium’s previously dark, dated lobby, which hadn’t been redesigned since the ’70s.

The clean-up continues outside the building with the bulky concrete canopy of the SDC’s entrance replaced with a larger, sleeker surface topped by a gypsum-board plane that extends from the interior ceiling, connecting the inside with the outside and creating a welcoming entry for the building.

“When you walk in now, you can breathe, you can think big,” Jones says.