By Alec Dietz, UW News Lab/Special to CHS
When Interstate 5 was built more than 50 years ago, many didn’t consider the problems associated with a massive highway splitting up the University District from Wallingford, Capitol Hill from downtown, and First Hill from the International District in the Seattle area.
But, a small group of architects, engineers, and community members met at the 12th Ave Arts building on Capitol Hill Sunday to discuss ways that they could heal those divides, and fix lids that had already been built in Seattle, at a Lid I-5 Kickoff Charrette gathering led by co-chairs and architects John Feit and Scott Bonjukian.
“Freeway Park is a beautiful design, but it didn’t work,” Feit said of one of the lids Seattle had tried already. “People are acknowledging that it is a beautiful design, but that it doesn’t work, and we want to make it better. That’s just something the city struggled with for decades.” Continue reading