The University of Washington’s West Campus sits at the seam between the campus and community, located within Seattle’s urban University District. In the last five years, more than 3,000 new residential beds and 1,800 staff have relocated to the West Campus, which will now house the University’s first business accelerator—Start Up Hall—to better link research activity with entrepreneurial talent. Even more dramatic changes are anticipated with the opening of the new light rail station and up-zoning of the broader University District in 2021. It is within this changing landscape that interdisciplinary collaboration, pioneering pedagogy, the creation of ideas and entrepreneurship, and the commercialization of research can flourish.

In 2014 Mahlum commenced the planning effort for the Development Framework, which provides the avenue to generate an aspirational vision and identity for the precinct, supported by foundational programmatic and physical parameters. The 20-year Development Framework considered programmatic needs, synergies between like-minded programs, deferred maintenance and facility conditions, and physical variables such as height, land use, density, massing, open space and landscape, circulation, infrastructure, built character, and the creation of memorable spaces. To generate the framework, Mahlum synthesized findings from previous planning documents and conducted a historical development analysis to determine the University’s annual average rate of growth. The University’s existing space was simultaneously benchmarked against comparable institutions to highlight where surpluses and deficits of space types exist and vetted with constituent groups.