First Flight

JA’s conceptual design was selected as the winner of the 2022 Seattle Design Festival Pavilion Competition, giving us the opportunity to design and build a reusable pavilion that welcomed visitors and hosted pop-up programming at the Festival’s Block Party in South Lake Union. First Flight is inspired by Seattle’s longstanding connection to aviation. The Emerald City’s airspace is rich with innovation, and this pavilion invites visitors to engage with that dynamic history of taking flight. Its structure and purpose also aligned with the Festival’s 2022 theme of Connection, transparent and approachable from multiple sides; it served as the central gathering point of the Block Party.  The architects drew inspiration from Alexander Graham Bell’s early 20th-century experiments with the Tetrahedral Kite—an ambitious attempt to create a scalable kite large enough to carry a person, a motor, and potentially cargo. This early prototype, a precursor to the airplane, was composed of hundreds of lightweight tetrahedral cells. Together, these cells formed a rigid yet airy space frame with minimal mass but high potential surface area. Bell’s experimental kite became the conceptual foundation for the pavilion’s forms and patterns.  Meeting the Festival’s requirements for lightness, portability, and repeatable assembly, JA’s pavilion was constructed from lightweight metal conduit struts, bolted together and anchored to a large wooden platform. Translucent ripstop “sails” and integrated LED lighting amplified the geometry, echoing Bell’s originals while creating a striking contemporary installation. To ensure the design could be rebuilt for future festivals, JA even produced a step-by-step Assembly Manual.  The week-long Festival opened with two full days of programming at the Block Party, where the Pavilion became a welcome kiosk, performance stage, and interactive activity space. Visitors were invited to build their own miniature versions of Bell’s kites inside the pavilion—using compostable straws, modeling wire, and tissue paper—creating a playful, hands-on connection to aviation history.