Pier 48 Cook + House is a project in honor of the Native Americans presence in Seattle and the Pacific Northwest. The project is situated in Pier 48, a historic waterfront site in downtown Seattle where the Ballast Island was formed and had become the only place close to Seattle’s business district where Indigenous people were allowed to live and take refuge.

​

As a part of the Public Access studio, the project develops the pier into a cookhouse & marketplace to represent the significance of community gathering around food. The building takes inspiration from the Native American longhouse as an architectural prototype adopting a flexible, modular, and growing architecture. This concept is translated to a gridded structure with modular vendor stalls designed to cater the different needs of the market throughout the changing seasons.

 

The building is divided into two volumes intersected by the main pedestrian path connecting the city to the waterfront. The north volume houses the main kitchen and various eateries where most of the preparation and cooking takes place. The south volume accommodates farmer’s market vendors where local produce, specialty food products and crafts are sold and featured. The central intersecting path is demarcated by a large wood burning fire pit stand, the hearth of the house. Adjacent to it is a modular long table designed to seat hundreds of people for seasonal events and community gatherings. A sheltering gable roof spans the length of the entire structure to create generous outdoor spaces under the eave overhangs. This extends the market activities to the outdoor and provides a porch for the city and the waterfront all year round.