ITEM NO. 7b Attach 2 
DATE OF 
MEETING July 24, 2012 
From: eco-structure January-February 2012 
Posted on: February 6, 2012 
Portal to the Emerald City 
A lush and inviting new installation welcomes visitors at Washington's
Sea-Tac Airport. 
By: Murrye Bernard 
Airports provide travelers with their first and last impressions of a citytypically announced on
low, blocky signs flanked by shrubs. Arriving or departing from the Seattle-Tacoma International
Airport (Sea-Tac), however, is now a more engaging experience. A new installation, titled "Emerald
City," lives up to its name in creating a portal to the Pacific Northwest. 
The design illustrates Port of Seattle CEO Tay Yoshitani's vision "to become the cleanest, greenest,
most energy-efficient port in the nation." Designed by local artists Haddad|Drugan and situated along
either side of the roadway leading to the airport, "Emerald City" is both landscape and art. It consists
of a clock tower outfitted with solar panels, whimsical vine-covered towers, and mesh topiary cages
set amid colorful rolling berms. At night, these elements transform into an otherworldly terrain
illuminated by cool-hued LEDs. 
The focal point is the clock tower, rising from the median and highly visible from passing cars and the
new Sound Transit light-rail system. Clad in protruding and receding stainless steel fins, the tower not
only announces the time and temperature on its LED display, but it also emits a glow from within that
corresponds to weather conditions: blue when it's below freezing, green in moderate temperatures,
and yellow, then red, as temperatures go above 70 F. Six modules of green crystalline photovoltaic
panels are installed along the tower's south face. They generate 1.8 kilowatts at peak production,
which is fed back into the grid. Haddad|Drugan collaborated with AltPower in New York City and Peters
Studios, a glass-art workshop in Portland, Ore., to design the system and procure the unusual green
solar cells, which sparkle like emeralds in the sun. 
On the west embankment, three stainless steel towers rise to varying heights. They will soon be
covered with evergreen vines including clematis, jasmine, and passionflower, and are illuminated by
green LEDs at night. Lower mesh topiary cages house broadleaf evergreen shrubs including Japanese
holly, purple false holly, and Mexican orange blossom, which will grow to fill out the rectilinear forms.
In line with the airport's wildlife-management program, the designers selected species that don't
produce bird-attracting berries. 
Haddad|Drugan visually anchored the sculptural metal elements into the landscape by building linear
gabion walls filled with granite or locally quarried basalt that retain undulating berms. This striped
effect, which calls to mind ocean waves, is emphasized by carpets of flowering ground cover. Above
these gabion walls, lines of Mt. Fuji cherry trees that blossom white are illuminated at night with blue
LEDs. 
"Emerald City" conjures the lushness of the Pacific Northwest and the wonder associated with travel
while emphasizing the region's collective energy consciousness. As artist Laura Haddad explains, it is
an "ecotopiaa fantastic abstraction of an idealized place."