Cynthia Brothers – Vanishing Seattle

Our speaker for July 2023 is Cynthia Brothers—founder of Vanishing Seattle. For this special installment, Cynthia invited us for a private tour of the Vanishing Seattle exhibit at RailSpur, followed by a live Q&A session in the space.

Vanishing Seattle is a media movement that documents displaced and disappearing institutions, small businesses, and cultures of Seattle—often due to development and gentrification—and celebrates the spaces and communities that give the city its soul.

At its core, Vanishing Seattle is about raising questions and poking holes into the notions we have around progress—what it means and what it looks like.It’s not just about nostalgia, it’s about equity. “Don’t underestimate the power of documentation. If you document it, they can’t say it didn’t exist.”

The exhibit, a collaboration with Forest For The Trees for Seattle Art Fair, offered a poignant reflection on the ever changing face of Seattle—a reminder of the impermanence of urban spaces and valued art forms through a collection of sign works, artifacts, and memorabilia that have shaped the city’s visual and cultural landscape over the decades. It is an ode to the artisans and spaces that brought life to the city streets, and a celebration of the ephemeral beauty that continues to shape our collective memories.

___

Every Monday, Olson Kundig starts the week with an all‑office meeting, and once a month this meeting is devoted to an outside guest speaker. The Olson Kundig Speaker Series was created by Alan Maskin over two decades ago with the goal of inspiring staff with presentations from people who work outside the realm of architecture. To date, more than 300 guests have come to speak in our offices. The forum is also available for internal speakers, who share completed project overviews, complex project details, and research findings, all with the aim of increasing our shared knowledge.

The 2023 theme of The Speaker Series is Other Plans. Other Plans is a retelling of stories untold which capture the unexpected moments in time that have altered our narratives. These are the plot twists, the detours, the pivots that challenge us to tap into the truest versions of ourselves and press on toward the future — even if that future is a vastly different destination to where we had planned. At its core, Other Plans is an examination of the human condition to better understand how each individual responds and adapts in the face of change.