Salvaged Wood Wall

This mockup presents the custom interlocking wood siding system designed from salvaged timber recovered from buildings that once stood on the site of the Georgetown Wet Weather Treatment Station. Before construction began, existing industrial structures were carefully dismantled, and materials including old-growth timber were salvaged and reused. What stood as remnants of Georgetown’s working past now re-emerges as part of the Station’s civic presence as a defining interior surface within the Operations & Maintenance building; the most visible, human-scaled structure at the corner of the site.

The Station itself exists because of the convergence of combined sewer infrastructure at this precise location. Built to treat stormwater before it reaches the Duwamish River, it transforms hidden systems into visible public work. EMERGENCE here is both literal and civic: material reclaimed from erasure, infrastructure brought into view, and a former brownfield reshaped into a place of ecological repair and public awareness. 

The Georgetown Wet Weather Treatment Station is a gateway to Seattle’s arts and industrial neighborhood and utilizes strategic site planning, materials, massing, and art to communicate its purpose: improving the ecological health of the Duwamish Waterway. Rather than being off limits and hidden behind fencing, this public infrastructure embraces visibility—and the merger of public art, architecture, and landscape architecture are fundamental to its identity. Together, art, architecture, massing, and site animate the facility, drawing people in and celebrating the beauty and complexity of rain, water, and public service.

The Station takes over the task left by the mudflats that filtered rain water before colonization, filtering the water and protecting the Duwamish River. It is the first of eight capstone projects in King County’s four-decade initiative to control combined sewer overflows still affecting parts of Seattle where storm and sewer systems were installed in the early to mid-20th century. The Georgetown Station is the first Envision Platinum-certified project in Washington State and will treat up to 70 million gallons of combined stormwater and wastewater during overflow events, reducing untreated discharges into the Duwamish River by up to 95%.