On Sunday, Sept. 11, a church in South Lake Union is holding a grand opening for their new building, located in the heart of Amazon's Seattle headquarters.
The building housing Seattle Unity – a non-denominational spiritual community with its roots in Christianity, but which welcomes people of all beliefs including atheists – was designed by Tom Kundig, a famous Seattle architect who also designed the Burke Museum.
Seattle Unity has been in South Lake Union, across the street from Denny Park, since 1960. It’s seen the neighborhood change drastically, from a warehouse district to the headquarters of Amazon.
"We did look at options of selling and moving, you know, out into the suburbs," Reverend Diane Robertson, the church's associate minister, said. "And then our community just really felt it was important to maintain kind of a spiritual presence here in South Lake Union and in downtown Seattle."
Kundig wanted the new building to be a place of stability. It’s a simple building: The corner tower has small slits that bring in light to the meditation rooms and chapel. At night, those little windows turn into light fixtures and illuminate the street corner. Kundig calls it a tower of light.
“These buildings are, in a sense, musical instruments. Volumetric musical instruments. Certainly music is played in them, but also the light and how the light is playing in there,” Kundig said.
It’s the first time he’s led design on a place of worship, although he helped design the Chapel of St. Ignatius 25 years ago on the Seattle University campus. And working on this new church was personal for Kundig: He grew up Unitarian, in a denomination similar to Seattle Unity’s, which welcomed many people from Catholic and Jewish backgrounds.
“Honestly, I think they’re the most special spaces in architecture,” Kundig said.
