TROY Block is full-block development located on a slope in Seattle’s South Lake Union. This neighborhood has been developing rapidly, transitioning from industrial commercial uses to high-tech and social science campuses with mixed-use housing and retail.

Two 12-story towers are integrated with two historic structures: the Boren Investment Building and the Troy Laundry Building. An extensive public open space bisects the site, addressing the city’s desire for mid-block pedestrian connections. This generous system of open space blends the public and private realms, provides amenities, and distributes the 28-foot grade change through an entry plaza, courtyard and covered arcade within the Troy Laundry Building.

The neighborhood design review board wanted the architecture, landscape, and artwork to acknowledge the previous uses of the site, particularly the Troy Laundry. Artifacts and building materials were salvaged for use in the project. The public art also mediates an aesthetic between contemporary sculpture and historic artifact.

Lead Pencil Studio’s City Fragments is constructed of thousands of small, blackened stainless-steel rods. Like a very delicate pencil drawing hovering in space, it is infinitely mutable, almost ghost-like, and changes dramatically depending on the time of day and Seattle’s weather. Integrated LED lighting at the base of the sculpture heightens the mutability of the form, raking the surface of the blackened steel to render it ghost white. South Lake Union has undergone tremendous transformation. The artwork reflects the artists’ ongoing interest in smaller-scale structures that develop organically over decades in commercial districts: newspaper stands, kiosks, transit stops, comfort stations, and parking attendant huts. The artists view these “non-architecture building types as icons for a transformed neighborhood.” Rendered transparent like an apparition, the structure is a reminder to the thousands of new professionals passing through this area to pause and reflect on the continual evolution and history of the neighborhood.