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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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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Kendall Latham_Glossier
Afterparty for "Kendall Latham | If You Build It, Will They Come?"

April 18, 2024
5:30pm - 9:00pm

Join us at The Shop for the official afterparty with Kendall Latham, Glossier’s Head of Retail Design, to learn more about his projects and his innovative approach to blending architecture with immersive retail experiences.

During the lecture, Latham will discuss the overused and often misunderstood concept of “immersive” design. Far from being limited to trendy spaces, true immersive design encompasses a wide array of environments, each unified by the dynamic interaction between people and place. Latham will explore the rich interplay between history, anthropology, and retail design, demonstrating how human behavior has informed these spaces throughout time. From Disney World to McDonald’s, and the classic department store, he will show how these typologies offer invaluable insights into designing retail environments. Latham will speak at 5:30pm on Thursday, April 18, 2024 at the Seattle Central Library’s Microsoft Auditorium.  A reception will follow at The Shop, and advance tickets for the talk and reception are available at EventBrite.

General Inquiries

(206) 123-4567

The Shop Manager

Hank Butitta

(206) 788-4346

723 1st Avenue
Seattle, WA 98104

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