Spirit of the Times

Environmental Works’s founding emerged from the civil rights era’s values of revolution and collaboration. 

Whitney M. Young’s keynote speech at the 1968 AIA convention called architects to action:

IMAGE CREDIT: AMERICAN INSTITUTE OF ARCHITECTS

Environmental Works’s founders, a group of University of Washington students, vowed to respond to that call. They launched a scrappy grassroots organization to provide accessible, respectful planning and design services to underserved communities.  

From a storefront on University Way, they quickly moved to occupy an abandoned historic fire station on Capitol Hill to protect it from being razed.