Wing Luke Asian Museum
The design of the Wing Luke Asian Museum preserves and restores the historic fabric of the East Kong Yick Building and offers new and expanded space to the organization, a Smithsonian Institution affiliate and America’s premier pan-Asian Pacific American museum. The new building is located in Seattle’s Chinatown International District, the cultural hub of the city’s Asian American community. It offers space for community meetings and events, public space, theatre space for performances, exhibit spaces for community art and emerging artists, family-centered learning environments and leadership development for neighborhood youth.
The design of the museum grew out of the original, 1910 multi-story building. Drawing inspiration from its history, the architects saved as much of the original building as possible. In addition to building materials – such as timbers cut out between floors – the character and scale of the building were maintained. On the upper floors, original narrow doorways and corridors and small rooms preserve the intimacy of the original space, and are a venue for the museum’s immersion exhibits.
Re-use and recycling play an important role in the building’s sustainable strategies. Windows and doors were repaired and reinstalled, fir joists were recycled as stair treads, and fire doors and other no longer “functional” objects served as inspiration for furniture and works of art. Operable windows and two-story lightwells encourage natural air flow, while transparency between adjacent spaces and floors allow daylight to filter down to the main entry level. The original building’s exterior remains intact, but the interior combines the old and the new.
Before they were even chosen for the job, the architects visited and began to document the Kong Yick building. Portions of the building had been condemned since the 1970s and the architects carefully navigated the upper floors, squeezing through boarded-up openings, and skirting 100 years worth of debris. Starting in July 2004, the architects held community meetings in their offices (located only a few blocks away from the site). Hundreds of community members participated in the process of the Museum’s expansion.
