Keiro Senior Center

The Keiro Senior Center is an Asian community care center committed to providing the highest quality of care for senior residents, predominantly Japanese elders. The courtyard garden serves as a gathering space for residents and visitors, reflecting Keiro’s commitment to serving the greater Seattle community. For this project, we partnered with landscape architects Murase Associates to create an indoor-outdoor connection between the existing building and its new garden. We worked with Murase, Seattle Keiro, and community representatives to assess needs. The solution called for carving out a large indoor gathering space from underutilized offices, replacing an exterior wall with large glass doors, and installing a cedar-clad overhang that extends both inside and out. The result is a linkage of indoors with outside that provides daylight, shelter, views, accessibility and a peaceful sense of safety, warmth and tranquility. Today, the garden and adjacent indoor room also generates revenue for Seattle Keiro. It is a popular and rentable space for weddings and other traditional ceremonies.
Location   Seattle, Washington
Status   Completed 2012
Team   Rick Sundberg, Gladys Ly-Au Young, Nicole Lew, with Murase Associates