1201 Third Avenue Tower

The 1201 Third Avenue Tower is a Postmodernist skyscraper designed by Kohn Pedersen Fox Associates, in association with The McKinley Architects, and built between 1986 and 1988 in Seattle, WA.

1201 Third Avenue Tower is not the only name you might know this building by though. Between 1988 and 2006 it was also known as Washington Mutual Tower.

Its precise street address is 1201 Third Avenue, Seattle, WA. You can also find it on the map here.

The 1201 Third Avenue Tower has received multiple architecture awards for its architectural design since 1988. The following is a list of such prizes and awards:

• Excellence Award by the Urban Land Institute. in 1994
• The Office Building of the Year (TOBY) award, in the Over 1 Million Square Feet category for the Pacific Northwest Region in 2003

The tower features a pedestrian plaza with three levels of shops and services, as well as a public atrium overlooking an open-air plaza on the west side of the building.

Kohn Pedersen Fox Associates was the architecture firm in charge of the architectural design, in association with The McKinley Architects. But there was also one other architect involved, as far as we know. We are talking about .

That being said, architecture is a complex discipline involving many professionals from different fields, without whom this building would have not been possible. We will surely be leaving out a lot of names here, but here is a list of the people we do know also played their part in making the 1201 Third Avenue Tower a reality:

• KPFF Consulting Engineers in charge of Structural Engineering
• Howard S. Wright Construction as the Main Contractor
• Wright Runstad & Co. as the Main Developer
• Anne Poirier, and Patrick Pirier as the collaborating Artist

The 1201 Third Avenue Tower can be categorized as a Postmodernist building.

The 1201 Third Avenue Tower was completed in 1988. At that time Postmodernism was the prevailing style. Fresh, bold and daring, architects were exploring the freedom of designing without having to follow the strict, sometimes arbitrary rules of a specific architectural movement (which ironically became a movement itself). The 1201 Third Avenue Tower was therefore every much in line with what the architecture community, and the people liked and wanted at the time.

The 1201 Third Avenue Tower uses a frame structure made of steel columns and concrete and steel slabs.

A frame structure uses a combination of beams and columns to sustain the building's weight. The walls in this case are non-load bearing, which allows for more flexibility when distributing the interior spaces.

The facade uses a non-load bearing curtain wall system. This means the curtain wall modules are anchored to the building's structural frame, typically by being attached to the edge of the floor slabs. The curtain wall system connects to the slabs using brackets, anchors, and mullions, which transfer the loads imposed by wind and temperature changes, to the building's primary structural elements.

This setup allows the curtain wall to accommodate differential movement between the facade and the structural frame, such as thermal expansion, floor deflection, or sway from wind forces. This system's integration with the slab edges also allows for continuous insulation and weatherproofing layers.

From an aesthetic point of view, the facade features a curtain wall made of light-colored Brazilian granite and emerald green glass.

The facade of the historic building that occupied part of the site, the Brooklyn Building, was preserved and the structure was incorporated into the base of the tower complex.