Art + Exhibitions

Olson Kundig Camps Out at the Seattle Art Fair

AD100 firm Olson Kundig creates a rustic pavilion for the inaugural Seattle Art Fair
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Olson Kundig’s open-air design for the Seattle Art Fair’s pavilion nods to the Pacific Northwest’s love of the great outdoors.

Seattle summers are marked by trips to the beach, walks through the woods, and serious hikes in the nearby mountains. So when local AD100 firm Olson Kundig was tapped to design a pavilion for the city’s inaugural Seattle Art Fair, it wanted to bring a dash of the great outdoors to the labyrinth of white-box booths at CenturyLink Field Event Center, the fair’s venue.

“We didn’t want art enthusiasts to have to give up their love of the outdoors on a perfect summer day,” says architect Jim Olson.

Built from raw two-by-fours, the open-air structure called Basecamp is brimming with lush, local evergreens, katsura trees, and herbs. Metal tables are topped with bowls of shells, rocks, pinecones, and more, which Olson scavenged at the beach and in the forest, and wood benches offer a place to chill out. Marked with towers covered in bright red fabric, the Basecamp can be spotted from aisles away. In true Olson Kundig fashion, all of the materials used for the pavilion will be recycled or repurposed after the four-day festival.

Seattle Art Fair, through August 2 at CenturyLink Field Event Center, 800 Occidental Avenue South, Seattle; seattleartfair.com