NEXUS Condominium provides a glimpse into the future of Downtown Seattle living

Viki ZabalaNews

Ren­der­ing by Weber Thomp­son Archi­tects

As seen in Geek­wire.

NEXUS – a 382 unit, 41-sto­ry con­do­mini­um high-rise set to break ground this mon­th, is among the most pro­gres­sive icons pro­posed for down­town Seattle’s sky­line. It’s also the arche­type of the future for mod­ern liv­ing. The scale mod­el for this much-antic­i­pat­ed devel­op­ment was pre­viewed dur­ing the Down­town Seat­tle Association’s (DSA) “State of Down­town” event held on Feb­ru­ary 14th at the West­in Hotel in Seat­tle. The sold-out pro­gram host­ed more than 1,200 stake­hold­ers that are shap­ing the future of down­town Seat­tle includ­ing the keynote speak­er, Vishaan Chakrabar­ti, author of A Coun­try of Cities: A Man­i­festo for Urban Amer­i­ca and founder of the New York-based firm Part­ner­ship for Archi­tec­ture & Urban­ism. Chakrabar­ti believes cities are pow­er­ful tools with which we can shape a pros­per­ous, sus­tain­able future for Amer­i­ca. He’s a lead­ing opin­ion on how cities evolve and was pub­lished in an op-ed “America’s Urban Future” by The New York Times.

PICTURED ABOVE: Futur­ist urban plan­ner Vishaan Chakrabar­ti (left) was the keynote speak­er dur­ing the Down­town Seat­tle Association’s “State of Down­town” event on Feb­ru­ary 14, 2017 fea­tur­ing NEXUS Con­do­mini­ums.

PICTURED ABOVE AND BELOW: NEXUS was pro­filed among the few con­do­mini­ums pro­posed dur­ing the “State of Down­town” event to more than 1,200 guests that attend­ed the sold-out pro­gram, while it was report­ed that more than 70,000 peo­ple now live in the cen­ter city.

It was a time­ly con­ver­sa­tion con­sid­er­ing that down­town Seat­tle is expe­ri­enc­ing an unprece­dent­ed num­ber of devel­op­ments – in fact 62 tow­er cranes are cur­rent­ly erect­ed, more than any oth­er urban cen­ter in the US. This news even reached glob­al media in the UK where the Finan­cial Times report­ed on Feb­ru­ary 10th that a con­struc­tion boom makes Seat­tle ‘crane cap­i­tal of the US’ with new offer­ings like NEXUS announced “amid high demand and a sev­ere short­age of homes”.

PICTURED ABOVE: A scale mod­el of the $1.6 bil­lion+ expan­sion to the Wash­ing­ton State Trade and Con­ven­tion Cen­ter, which will join NEXUS among the most influ­en­tial devel­op­ments being added to the north­east cor­ner of down­town Seat­tle.

Mas­sive projects are trans­form­ing the city; the $2 bil­lion deep bore tun­nel that will replace the High­way 99 via­duct and revi­tal­ize the water­front; and the $1.6 bil­lion expan­sion of the Wash­ing­ton State Con­ven­tion Cen­ter are a cou­ple of the largest. But it’s the com­bi­na­tion of all the indi­vid­u­al projects that are lit­er­al­ly cre­at­ing new neigh­bor­hoods. A col­lec­tion of more than two dozen high-rise res­i­den­tial, office, hotel and com­mer­cial devel­op­ments total­ing more than $6 bil­lion of cap­i­tal invest­ment will rede­fine the north­east­ern cor­ner of down­town Seat­tle being dubbed the “East Vil­lage”.

ABOVE AND BELOW: A 2020 view of the poten­tial sky­line of the north­east cor­ner of down­town Seat­tle dubbed the “East Vil­lage” with NEXUS as a cen­ter­piece.

“This part of the city was defined by car deal­ers, park­ing lots and low-rise com­mer­cial build­ings at the edge of down­town Seat­tle that offered avail­able land, high-rise zon­ing and close prox­im­i­ty to South Lake Union, Capi­tol Hill and the CBD,” said Dean Jones, Pres­i­dent & CEO of Realog­ics Sotheby’s Inter­na­tion­al Real­ty. “Now it’s the hottest urban neigh­bor­hood in the mak­ing. It’s incred­i­ble, by 2020 this will be one of the most dense­ly pop­u­lat­ed and vibrant com­mu­ni­ties on the West Coast.”
While the East Vil­lage will even­tu­al­ly be home to more than 10,000 new hous­ing units, NEXUS is the only devel­op­ment offer­ing homes for sale. It’s devel­op­er, Van­cou­ver-based Bur­rard Group chose Seat­tle to build its vision for NEXUS because of its inno­v­a­tive cul­ture, unpar­al­leled mar­ket fun­da­men­tals and emerg­ing sta­tus as a glob­al city on the rise.

PICTURED ABOVE: The debut of NEXUS was spon­sored by Bur­rard Group, the devel­op­er; Realog­ics Sotheby’s Inter­na­tion­al Real­ty, the sales bro­ker; Weber Thomp­son, the archi­tect; and Cal­iber Home Loans, the pre­ferred mort­gage lender for the much-antic­i­pat­ed con­do­mini­um high-rise in down­town Seat­tle.

“NEXUS will chal­lenge the sta­tus-quo, not just with of its unique archi­tec­ture but also the lifestyle that it will afford its own­ers,” said Chris­tian Chan, Exec­u­tive Vice Pres­i­dent of Bur­rard. “We’re intro­duc­ing a fourth dimen­sion of tech­nol­o­gy includ­ing IoT (Inter­net of Things) inte­gra­tion and the acti­va­tion of unique ameni­ties and ser­vices. We are envi­sion­ing the way we will live in the future and ensur­ing that our res­i­den­tial com­mu­ni­ty keeps up with the times.”

Chan knows that hard­ware devices will evolve over the next few years as NEXUS reach­es sky­ward. That’s why he retained Seat­tle-based Sirqul to lead a first-of-its-kind “Liv­ing Lab” that’s inte­grat­ed into the NEXUS Sales Cen­ter. This work­shop of-sorts will uti­lize an exclu­sive-to-project app to explore the lat­est tech­nolo­gies for home­own­ers to inter­act with their envi­ron­ment, order prod­ucts and ser­vices and encour­age con­nec­tions between res­i­dents; whether that’s to sched­ule pet meet-ups in the dog lounge, to join a Yoga class in the fit­ness stu­dio or book pri­vate din­ing in the Sky Club.

In order to show­case the future neigh­bor­hood and inter­act with the robust ameni­ties pack­age, the NEXUS Sales Cen­ter will include an aug­ment­ed real­i­ty expe­ri­ence pro­duced by Z-Axon made pos­si­ble using Microsoft’s HoloLens tech­nol­o­gy, which pairs the phys­i­cal envi­ron­ment up with dig­i­tal holo­grams. When the Sales Cen­ter opens in Feb­ru­ary, prospec­tive buy­ers will be able to visu­al­ize the neigh­bor­hood of the future, with the NEXUS scale mod­el pro­vid­ing a phys­i­cal anchor around which a vir­tu­al cityscape is formed. But first, the scale mod­el and the HoloLens expe­ri­ence will be debut­ed dur­ing the DSA’s State of Down­town event.

PICTURED ABOVE: NEXUS archi­tect Blaine Weber (cen­ter) of Weber Thomp­son nav­i­gates the inter­ac­tive HoloLens expe­ri­ence that inte­grates holo­grams.

“It feels like you’re a giant walk­ing through a ver­ti­cal vil­lage,” adds Chan. “It cer­tain­ly brings into per­spec­tive the bur­geon­ing com­mu­ni­ty and show­cas­es how NEXUS is front and cen­ter amongst a grow­ing sky­line.”

PICTURED ABOVE: Nis­hant Pad­hye and Bharat Ahluwalia, lever­aged Microsoft’s HoloLens to pro­gram an aug­ment­ed real­i­ty around the scale mod­el of NEXUS, which debut­ed dur­ing DSA’s State of Down­town Event and will be installed at the Sales Cen­ter that opens in March 2017.

The oppor­tu­ni­ty to see the future doesn’t stop there. A voice com­mand to the HoloLens will cre­ate a dig­i­tal over­lay to the scale mod­el allow­ing the view­er to pull out and view ameni­ties. The inter­ac­tive tours include doll­house plan views of the podi­um lev­el and the pent­house Sky Club as well as launch videos.

PICTURED ABOVE AND BELOW: Anoth­er HoloLens expe­ri­ence will allow view­ers to iso­late the var­i­ous archi­tec­tural com­po­nents that com­pris­es NEXUS to view doll­house plan views of the ameni­ties and to watch videos.

To be sure, there’s plen­ty to digest. NEXUS boasts an ameni­ties pack­age that is akin to an urban resort. It begins with a grand sense of arrival on the lob­by lev­el with a full-ser­vice concierge offer­ing pack­age and guest recep­tion ser­vices as well as access to a pletho­ra of in-build­ing and in-city attrac­tions. The lob­by is also flanked by a café and a des­ti­na­tion restau­rant, which are being court­ed to add food and bev­er­age ser­vices just an ele­va­tor ride away. The building’s podi­um touts a col­lec­tion of ful­ly-fur­nished Guest Suites avail­able for overnight vis­i­tors, a co-work­ing facil­i­ty for res­i­dents to meet, work and col­lab­o­rate, and an adja­cent media lounge for dynam­ic pre­sen­ta­tions, game day or movies. In addi­tion, four-legged res­i­dents and their own­ers will also enjoy a Pet Lounge with inte­ri­or and exte­ri­or (cov­ered) play areas includ­ing pet relief facil­i­ty and a pup­py spa so walk­ing the dog doesn’t require leav­ing the build­ing. Next door a ful­ly-appoint­ed health club offers both car­dio and free-weight equip­ment as well as an indoor/outdoor stretch and yoga stu­dio.

PICTURED ABOVE: The 7th Floor Podi­um Lev­el. Ren­der­ing by Weber Thomp­son Archi­tects

High above it all is the Sky Club – a full floor col­lec­tion of ameni­ties offer­ing wrap­around views of Capi­tol Hill, down­town Seat­tle and South Lake Union. Inside, home­own­ers and their guests will min­gle in the fireside lounge; meet in the con­fer­ence room; shoot bil­liards, shuf­fle board and play cards in the games room; enjoy pri­vate din­ing served by an adja­cent cater­ing kitchen; or cre­ate a meal togeth­er with the exhi­bi­tion kitchen, which opens to the ter­race through over­sized doors. Out­side a mix of indi­vid­u­al and com­mon spaces include an indoor/outdoor sky par­lor with fire pit, a sky gar­den, sev­er­al BBQ sta­tions, eat­ing areas and sky­line grot­to with anoth­er fire pit.

PICTURED ABOVE: The 41st Floor Sky Club. Ren­der­ing by Weber Thomp­son Archi­tects

In a refresh­ing twist the pent­house lev­el of NEXUS is not reserved for a for­tu­nate few but in fact for all to come togeth­er high above the city. It’s just one of the many advance­ments intro­duced by this high-tech, high-rise and speaks to the com­mit­ment by the devel­op­er to cre­ate com­mu­ni­ty.

“We believe urban devel­op­ment comes with a greater respon­si­bil­i­ty than just build­ing units in the sky,” said Chan. “NEXUS is a ver­ti­cal vil­lage, and by inte­grat­ing thought­ful ameni­ties and con­nect­ing res­i­dents with ser­vices through tech­nol­o­gy, we will encour­age a thriv­ing envi­ron­ment for live, work and play.”

The con­cept has cer­tain­ly found a will­ing mar­ket. More than 80-per­cent of the homes have already been reserved for pri­or­i­ty pre­sales. Homes range in size from stu­dios and urban one bed­rooms priced below $400,000 to Sky Lofts val­ued at more than $3 mil­lion. For more infor­ma­tion vis­it www.NEXUSseattle.com

SOURCE

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