Making a Mark on Seattle's Skyline
Daniels Real Estate, The Mark/F5 Tower
Mixed Use
One of the most striking additions to downtown Seattle’s skyline, F5 Tower is a bold symbol of a city on the move, reinventing itself amid a historic building boom. More than a beacon of innovation and change, the project is also the culmination a 30-year effort to preserve a treasured piece of the city’s past.
Design of the tower, a commercial office and boutique hotel, was driven by the desire for a distinctive form on Seattle’s skyline while simultaneously preserving two existing historic structures on the same block: the First United Methodist Church and The Rainier Club. More than a hundred years after its opening, the former sanctuary was restored for community use and incorporated into the new development. As a result, F5 Tower is the first downtown high-rise to occupy a quarter-block site. This shared commitment and sensitivity to context not only yielded a more sustainable solution, it maintained the character and history of the block.
Location
Seattle, WA
Square Feet
785,000 SF
Completion date
2018
Project Component
Architecture services
Certifications
LEED Silver
The original First Methodist Church in Seattle, located at 5th Avenue and Marion Street, 1910's.
The glass tower meets the street and the historic First United Methodist Church, now aptly named The Sanctuary, with a Travertine stone façade.
A glass connector serves as a beautiful enclosed transition between the tower and the former church.
A number of schemes were initially evaluated for the ability to integrate form, function and sensitivity to the historic structures at F5 Tower’s base. The building’s faceted scheme was inspired by classical figures such as Michelangelo’s David and the Venus de Milo. Formal explorations of balance focused on achieving a proportional arrangement of mass about a vertical axis that is neither symmetrical nor static. The elegant design offers subtle variation in plane from facet to facet: a soft expression which avoids overpowering the delicate detail and scale of The Sanctuary and The Rainier Club.
With only 15,000 SF available on level one of the compact site, floor areas needed to expand on subsequent levels to maximize the tower’s leasing potential. Through a joint development agreement with The Rainier Club, ‘over-under’ property rights are utilized, allowing the tower to flare out over the neighboring structures. The lower northwest corner cantilevers over The Rainier Club by more than 20 feet before tapering back gently through a sequence of triangulated planes.
The Sanctuary: An Urban Bee-con of Light
What began as a humble preservation story now serves as a showcase example of how sustainable design comes full circle when you connect the past to the future in a meaningful way.
Standing Up to "The Big One"
F5 Tower is not only an iconic addition to Seattle’s skyline, it is an engineering feat. Distinguished by the expressed diagonal steel braces that divide the building’s 16 planes, the mega-brace structural system is a first for commercial towers in high-seismic regions. The tower is engineered to withstand a 2,475-year quake registering as high as 9.0 on the Richter Scale.
The braces shift the load away from the core and to the exterior walls, eliminating view-obstructing elements like internal columns and reducing the core size to allow for open, flexible floorplates.
落地窗,一公顷lf times the height of typical office spaces, deliver stunning water and mountain views and allow daylight to permeate the building.
Expressed diagonal steel braces divide the building’s 16 planes, coming together at a custom-fabricated steel knuckle.
“F5 Tower represents the next level of Class A office space in Seattle. Its innovation is rooted in the connection to the historic Sanctuary building, formerly the First United Methodist Church.”
Today, world class network technology company F5 Networks occupies the 516,000 SF of office space, and Korean-based Lotte Hotels & Resorts operates the 189-room boutique hotel, which includes a 30,000 SF restaurant and bar, a spa and 20,000 SF ballroom located in The Sanctuary.
Depending on the time of year, weather and observer’s point of view, F5 Tower reflects both adjacent high-rises and the historic buildings at its base, paying homage to Seattle’s past and present.
