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Mary’s Place Family Center in The Regrade was designed as Mary’s Place’s first permanent shelter for families with children experiencing homelessness.

Located in the heart of downtown Seattle, the project opened in early 2020 within the Graphite-designed Amazon Seattle headquarters of Block 21. The new shelter increased the organization’s shelter capacity in King County by 50 percent and shelters more than 400 families each year.

The Regrade Center is a prototype, with the shelter component offering private, quiet sleep, giving families the best chance to focus on resolving barriers to permanent housing and connecting with opportunities within the city. Amazon asked Mary’s Place to “dream big” and work with the design team to use the design process to solve as many of the problems inherent in the complicated journey out of homelessness as possible.

Graphite led Mary’s Place through its first-ever programming and visioning session, then leveraged those findings throughout the design and documentation phases, resulting in a unique, first-of-its-kind shelter tailor-made for Mary’s Place and the services and programs it offers to help families experiencing homelessness find their way back to stable housing and an opportunity to thrive.

Sleeping accommodations and spaces that support guest services are stacked in the 8-story facility to create a vertical community designed to be navigable by staff and guests, with easy access to laundry, a kids’ play area, housing services, employment services, central community dining, and meeting and gathering spaces.

It is not just a shelter, it is a “home for now” that supports life’s needs so that parents can work on housing and employment search, and kids can play and just be kids supported by staff and volunteers.

Awards:
2023 Seattle AIA Awards, Honorable Mention