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A hub for making, collaboration and community

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LMN The Shop Exterior

The Shop enables design exploration and collective discovery to enhance the built environment.

Located in a prominent storefront in the Pioneer Square district, The Shop is an inclusive hub for the design community and the home of making at LMN Architects. The Shop transforms the way ideas become real by bringing designers, builders, and stakeholders together in a flexible space with the tools and resources to unlock collective discovery. Through this collaborative engagement, The Shop aims to advance design ideas to support a pragmatic, sustainable and visionary future.

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Purpose
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The Shop is a space to engage traditional construction techniques across a variety of scales, from physical models to mockups, prototypes, and installations. We currently are capable of processing wood, metal, glass, concrete and other materials using manually operated tools as well as a selection of digital fabrication equipment, including CNC routers, laser cutters, and 3D printers. The 7,000 square-foot high-bay space supports the assembly of large-scale prototypes and multimedia spatial experimentation.

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The Shop’s flexible spaces include moveable work surfaces, partitions, ceiling grids, and wall space to test and explore physical ideas. Hoteling stations allow for focused work to occur alongside collaborative design and assembly. Large-scale audio-visual equipment supports projection and sound to enhance immersive experiences. The space is easily reconfigurable to host meetings, hackathons, big-room collaborations and other events that support design collaboration.

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The Shop brings together many communities across a variety of scales, from LMN project teams to local and national design gatherings. Additionally, the space functions as a hub for the design and arts community in Downtown Seattle, participating in events such as Pioneer Square District’s First Thursday Art Walk and supporting events for our neighbors and partners. The Shop is also the home base of Sawhorse Revolution, a local organization that engages youth with design and construction opportunities.

What’s Happening

Projects & Case Studies

Across its various incarnations over the years, The Shop has enabled significant design and fabrication discoveries that have profoundly affected the work of LMN Architects.

  • Octave 9: Raisbeck Music Center - Interior
    Octave 9: Raisbeck Music Center

    Octave 9: Raisbeck Music Center creates an immersive, experimental, educational and performance arts venue at Benaroya Hall, home of the Seattle Symphony. The ceiling’s cellular geometry was driven by the strict layout requirements for the speakers, microphones, lights, and projectors. The highly tuned system presented an opportunity for LMN to leverage our parametric model to fabricate the ceiling in our shop.

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  • Cleveland Convention Center & Civic Core - Exterior
    Global Center for Health Innovation

    The Global Center for Health Innovation building is an early example of LMN’s integrated use of parametric modeling and digital fabrication to develop a unique exterior enclosure on a tight budget. The parametric model was instrumental in composing the limited kit of parts while providing documentation and quantity takeoffs directly to contractor. Digital fabrication technologies were used to produce physical models to study light and shadow and these same files were directly shared with the fabricator for the production of the concrete formliners.

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  • Voxman Music Building, University of Iowa_659
    Voxman Music Building

    The theatro-acoustic ceiling system in the 700-seat Concert Hall at the University of Iowa Voxman School of Music serves to both visually tie the space together and create an exceptional acoustic environment. Constraints provided by consultants for technical systems – acoustics, stage lighting, house lighting, audio-visual, and fire protection – were directly encoded into a parametric definition that served as the central coordination and collaboration tool. LMN’s prototyping of the ceiling panels proved out the viability of the system and directly informed the final fabrication.

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  • PODDs
    Post-Occupancy Data Devices

    Architects have historically been excluded from critical building performance feedback after building occupancy, leaving them without the information necessary for the advancement of professional expertise. Welcome the PODD: a small, inexpensive sensor device that closes the feedback loop and gives designers the information about the buildings they’ve built.

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  • Grand Avenue Park Bridge - Exterior
    Grand Avenue Park Bridge

    The Grand Avenue Park Bridge illustrates the power of how architectural thinking can elevate the civic potential of fundamental infrastructure.  Wrapping around and running through the truss, a digitally fabricated bare-aluminum guardrail system serves as the bridge’s wayfinding, safety, and lighting systems, contrasting with the weathered steel truss. The resulting visual composition is a formal counterpoint of muscular and delicate, rustic and refined, symmetrical and asymmetrical.

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Making Through Technology: How Digital Tools Transform Architectural Fabrication

May 21, 2025
5:30pm - 7:30pm

Join us at The Shop to learn about how digital tools can transform architectural fabrication. Associate Alex Woodhouse will explore the evolution of LMN’s approach to making—shifting from static documentation to dynamic, data-driven workflows that connect design models directly to fabrication and construction. Through case studies and in-house fabrication examples, Alex will highlight how real-time feedback, interoperability, and early AI-to-fabrication experiments are reshaping the architect’s role in building design and construction. The event is organized in collaboration with the Seattle International Architecture Forum, and everyone is welcome to attend by registering online at aiaseattle.org.

Art Walk_Timea Tihanyi_01
Art Walk at The Shop Featuring Timea Tihanyi

June 05, 2025
5:30pm - 9:00pm

To celebrate another edition of Art Walk in Pioneer Square, Timea Tihanyi is visiting The Shop and will demonstrate some of her 3D printed ceramics. In addition to some of her complex ceramics, she will also showcase an interactive VR space, as well as some of her other recent works. The event is free and open to the general public.

Space City Seattle_Productive Deviance 01
Afterparty for "Productive Deviance"

June 12, 2025
7:00pm - 9:00pm

Join us for the official afterparty with Adam Nathaniel Furman at The Shop. Adam is a London-based artist, designer, architect, and professor whose vibrant work celebrates queer history through bold aesthetics, innovative design, and transformative storytelling. Their work moves across mediums – from painting and publishing to public art and architecture – always with a deep commitment to community, beauty, and cultural resilience. The Happy Hour and book signing at The Shop is free, but tickets for the talk earlier in the evening at the Seattle Central Public Library are available at Eventbrite.

Copies of Queer Spaces: An Atlas of LGBTQIA+ Places and Stories will be available for purchase, courtesy of Charlie’s Queer Books.

General Inquiries

(206) 123-4567

The Shop Manager

Hank Butitta

(206) 788-4346

723 1st Avenue
Seattle, WA 98104

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