Issue 7
ISSUE
STORY TYPE
AUTHOR
12
THE BUILT ENVIRONMENT
October 7, 2024
What It Means—and What It’s Worth—to Be “Light”
by Julie Lasky
12
PERSPECTIVE
September 23, 2024
Redefining “Iconic” Architecture and Ideals
by Sophie Lovell
12
PERSPECTIVE
September 9, 2024
Surrendering to What Is
by Marianne Krogh
11
THE BUILT ENVIRONMENT
August 26, 2024
Sometimes, Democratic Design Doesn’t “Look” Like Anything
by Zach Mortice
11
THE BUILT ENVIRONMENT
August 19, 2024
What Does Your Home Say About You?
by Shane Reiner-Roth
11
BOOK REVIEW
August 12, 2024
Is Building Better Cities a Dream Within Reach?
by Michael Webb
11
PEOPLE
August 5, 2024
The Value of Unbuilt Buildings
by George Kafka
11
THE BUILT ENVIRONMENT
July 29, 2024
Future-Proofing a Home Where Water Is a Focus and a Thread
by Alexandra Lange
11
BOOK REVIEW
July 22, 2024
Modernist Town, U.S.A.
by Ian Volner
11
PEOPLE
July 15, 2024
Buildings That Grow from a Place
by Anthony Paletta
10
URBANISM
June 24, 2024
What We Lose When a Historic Building Is Demolished
by Owen Hatherley
10
PERSPECTIVE
June 17, 2024
We Need More Than Fewer, Better Things
by Deb Chachra
10
THE BUILT ENVIRONMENT
June 3, 2024
An Ode to Garages
by Charlie Weak
10
PERSPECTIVE
May 28, 2024
In Search of Domestic Kintsugi
by Edwin Heathcote
10
THE BUILT ENVIRONMENT
May 13, 2024
The Perils of the Landscapes We Make
by Karrie Jacobs
10
PERSPECTIVE
May 6, 2024
Using Simple Tools as a Radical Act of Independence
by Jarrett Fuller
9
PERSPECTIVE
April 29, 2024
Why Can’t I Just Go Home?
by Eva Hagberg
9
PEOPLE
April 22, 2024
Why Did Our Homes Stop Evolving?
by George Kafka
9
ROUNDTABLE
April 8, 2024
Spaces Where the Body Is a Vital Force
by Tiffany Jow
9
BOOK REVIEW
April 1, 2024
Tracing the Agency of Women as Users and Experts of Architecture
by Mimi Zeiger
9
PERSPECTIVE
March 25, 2024
Are You Sitting in a Non-Place?
by Mzwakhe Ndlovu
9
ROUNDTABLE
March 11, 2024
At Home, Connecting in Place
by Marianela D’Aprile
9
PEOPLE
March 4, 2024
VALIE EXPORT’s Tactical Urbanism
by Alissa Walker
8
PERSPECTIVE
February 26, 2024
What the “Whole Earth Catalog” Taught Me About Building Utopias
by Anjulie Rao
8
THE BUILT ENVIRONMENT
February 19, 2024
How a Run-Down District in London Became a Model for Neighborhood Revitalization
by Ellen Peirson
8
THE BUILT ENVIRONMENT
February 12, 2024
In Brooklyn, Housing That Defies the Status Quo
by Gideon Fink Shapiro
8
PERSPECTIVE
February 5, 2024
That “Net-Zero” Home Is Probably Living a Lie
by Fred A. Bernstein
8
PERSPECTIVE
January 22, 2024
The Virtue of Corporate Architecture Firms
by Kate Wagner
8
PERSPECTIVE
January 16, 2024
How Infrastructure Shapes Us
by Deb Chachra
8
THE BUILT ENVIRONMENT
January 8, 2024
The Defiance of Desire Lines
by Jim Stephenson
7
PEOPLE
December 18, 2023
This House Is Related to You and to Your Nonhuman Relatives
by Sebastián López Cardozo
7
THE BUILT ENVIRONMENT
December 11, 2023
What’s the Point of the Plus Pool?
by Ian Volner
7
BOOK REVIEW
December 4, 2023
The Extraordinary Link Between Aerobics and Architecture
by Jarrett Fuller
7
THE BUILT ENVIRONMENT
November 27, 2023
Architecture That Promotes Healing and Fortifies Us for Action
by Kathryn O’Rourke
7
PEOPLE
November 6, 2023
How to Design for Experience
by Diana Budds
7
PEOPLE
October 30, 2023
The Meaty Objects at Marta
by Jonathan Griffin
6
OBJECTS
October 23, 2023
How Oliver Grabes Led Braun Back to Its Roots
by Marianela D’Aprile
6
URBANISM
October 16, 2023
Can Adaptive Reuse Fuel Equitable Revitalization?
by Clayton Page Aldern
6
PERSPECTIVE
October 9, 2023
What’s the Point of a Tiny Home?
by Mimi Zeiger
6
OBJECTS
October 2, 2023
A Book Where Torn-Paper Blobs Convey Big Ideas
by Julie Lasky
6
THE BUILT ENVIRONMENT
September 24, 2023
The Architecture of Doing Nothing
by Edwin Heathcote
6
BOOK REVIEW
September 18, 2023
What the “Liebes Look” Says About Dorothy Liebes
by Debika Ray
6
PEOPLE
September 11, 2023
Roy McMakin’s Overpowering Simplicity
by Eva Hagberg
6
OBJECTS
September 5, 2023
Minimalism’s Specific Objecthood, Interpreted by Designers of Today
by Glenn Adamson
5
ROUNDTABLE
August 28, 2023
How Joan Jonas and Eiko Otake Navigate Transition
by Siobhan Burke
5
OBJECTS
August 21, 2023
The Future-Proofing Work of Design-Brand Archivists
by Adrian Madlener
5
URBANISM
August 14, 2023
Can a Church Solve Canada’s Housing Crisis?
by Alex Bozikovic
5
PEOPLE
August 7, 2023
In Search of Healing, Helen Cammock Confronts the Past
by Jesse Dorris
5
URBANISM
July 31, 2023
What Dead Malls, Office Parks, and Big-Box Stores Can Do for Housing
by Ian Volner
5
PERSPECTIVE
July 24, 2023
A Righteous Way to Solve “Wicked” Problems
by Susan Yelavich
5
OBJECTS
July 17, 2023
Making a Mess, with a Higher Purpose
by Andrew Russeth
5
ROUNDTABLE
July 10, 2023
How to Emerge from a Starchitect’s Shadow
by Cynthia Rosenfeld
4
PEOPLE
June 26, 2023
There Is No One-Size-Fits-All in Architecture
by Marianela D’Aprile
4
PEOPLE
June 19, 2023
How Time Shapes Amin Taha’s Unconventionally Handsome Buildings
by George Kafka
4
PEOPLE
June 12, 2023
Seeing and Being Seen in JEB’s Radical Archive of Lesbian Photography
by Svetlana Kitto
4
PERSPECTIVE
June 5, 2023
In Built Environments, Planting Where It Matters Most
by Karrie Jacobs
3
PERSPECTIVE
May 30, 2023
On the Home Front, a Latine Aesthetic’s Ordinary Exuberance
by Anjulie Rao
3
PERSPECTIVE
May 21, 2023
For a Selfie (and Enlightenment), Make a Pilgrimage to Bridge No. 3
by Alexandra Lange
3
THE BUILT ENVIRONMENT
May 8, 2023
The Building Materials of the Future Might Be Growing in Your Backyard
by Marianna Janowicz
3
BOOK REVIEW
May 1, 2023
Moving Beyond the “Fetishisation of the Forest”
by Edwin Heathcote
2
ROUNDTABLE
April 24, 2023
Is Craft Still Synonymous with the Hand?
by Tiffany Jow
2
PEOPLE
April 17, 2023
A Historian Debunks Myths About Lacemaking, On LaceTok and IRL
by Julie Lasky
2
THE BUILT ENVIRONMENT
April 10, 2023
How AI Helps Architects Design, and Refine, Their Buildings
by Ian Volner
2
PEOPLE
April 3, 2023
Merging Computer and Loom, a Septuagenarian Artist Weaves Her View of the World
by Francesca Perry
1
THE BUILT ENVIRONMENT
March 27, 2023
Words That Impede Architecture, According to Reinier de Graaf
by Osman Can Yerebakan
1
PEOPLE
March 20, 2023
Painting With Plaster, Monica Curiel Finds a Release
by Andrew Russeth
1
PERSPECTIVE
March 13, 2023
Rules and Roles in Life, Love, and Architecture
by Eva Hagberg
1
Roundtable
March 6, 2023
A Design Movement That Pushes Beyond Architecture’s Limitations
by Tiffany Jow
0
THE BUILT ENVIRONMENT
February 7, 2023
To Improve the Future of Public Housing, This Architecture Firm Looks to the Past
by Ian Volner
0
OBJECTS
February 7, 2023
The Radical Potential of “Prime Objects”
by Glenn Adamson
0
PEOPLE
February 20, 2023
Xiyadie’s Queer Cosmos
by Xin Wang
0
PEOPLE
February 13, 2023
How Michael J. Love’s Subversive Tap Dancing Steps Forward
by Jesse Dorris
0
SHOW AND TELL
February 7, 2023
Finding Healing and Transformation Through Good Black Art
by Folasade Ologundudu
0
BOOK REVIEW
February 13, 2023
How Stephen Burks “Future-Proofs” Craft
by Francesca Perry
0
ROUNDTABLE
February 27, 2023
Making Use of End Users’ Indispensable Wisdom
by Tiffany Jow
0
PEOPLE
February 7, 2023
The New Lessons Architect Steven Harris Learns from Driving Old Porsches
by Jonathan Schultz
0
PERSPECTIVE
February 7, 2023
The Day Architecture Stopped
by Kate Wagner
0
OBJECTS
February 7, 2023
The Overlooked Potential of Everyday Objects
by Adrian Madlener
0
ROUNDTABLE
February 7, 2023
A Conversation About Generalists, Velocity, and the Source of Innovation
by Tiffany Jow
0
OBJECTS
February 7, 2023
Using a Fungi-Infused Paste, Blast Studio Turns Trash Into Treasure
by Natalia Rachlin
Untapped is published by the design company Henrybuilt.
URBANISM
10.16.2023
Can Adaptive Reuse Fuel Equitable Revitalization?

Tieton, a town in eastern Washington State, is a case study in the affirmative.

small storefronts along a wide street in Tieton, Washington
Tieton, Washington. (Courtesy Ed Marquand)


Almost overnight, people had stopped buying Red Delicious apples. It was 2005, and decades of short-term–ist market fundamentalism had worked as a cider press on the species, wringing out its flavor and leaving behind only optimized coloration and storage potential. You are probably familiar with the dilemma of this particular fruit: It is beautiful—a visual eponym, even, in terms of the “apple” referent—but a bite tends to suggest cardboard. Wrote The Washington Post that year in something of an obituary: “Of the two words in the Red Delicious name, one can no longer be believed.”

In the Yakima Valley, in Washington state, where most of the world’s Red Delicious apples were grown, 2005 sounded thus like a small-town death knell. You can’t pivot an orchard to video.

And yet: That same year, in what is perhaps a slightly apocryphal moment, an art book publisher named Ed Marquand pedaled up the grade from a small Yakima Valley town called Naches to a smaller Yakima Valley town called Tieton (pronounced “tie-it-ton”) and rolled over a patch of fanning, matlike weeds in a parking lot. Also known as puncture vine, the goathead lived up to its name and promptly delivered 18 holes to Marquand’s bike tires. He’d spend the next several hours in a park repairing his flats and letting his eyes wander the surrounding streetscape.

The park itself had the feeling of a town square, but there wasn’t much town to speak of then: a laundromat, a little grocery store, one restaurant. Everything else was struggling and open sporadically, or shuttered. So Marquand, in his early fifties at the time, allowed his mind to populate the storefronts.

He would come back to Tieton, first with his partner, Mike, and then with a Rolodex of pals. His friends are those one might expect of a Seattle-dwelling art-book publisher: artists and designers; architects and playwrights; funky creatives and footloose dreamers. They gazed upon Tieton that year, dreaming a dream of cheap studio space, rolling hills, and revitalization. “We played the game of imaginary Monopoly,” Marquand told me.

old storefronts along a wide road in Tieton, Washington
Tieton in 2005. (Courtesy Ed Marquand)


Nearly two decades later, the monopoly is less imaginary. Marquand bought an abandoned Tieton fruit-storage warehouse at auction, for $205 thousand, and then he bought another one, for $96 thousand. The former became Mighty Tieton, a self-styled “artisan business incubator,” and the latter, upon submission of the first building permit application the town had seen in three years, became condos. In selling the units to aspiring creatives, he ensured they had a stake in the success of the town, too.

Some took the bid. In the 18 years since, the population of Tieton has risen from 1,200 to 2,000 and is projected to grow further. Today, Mighty Tieton is home to a typographic mosaic studio, a prefab cabin company, and an interactive sound stage hosting the MacArthur Genius–winning composer Trimpin’s oddball sonic inventions. Marquand hosts weekly tours of the town beginning at Boxx Gallery and weaving through formerly empty warehouses and storefronts, now bustling.

“I don’t know who I’d be or where I’d be if I hadn’t spent time there,” says Liz Woodward, a principal at the creative placemaking consultancy Isenberg Projects in Boston. Woodward lived in Tieton from 2014 to 2016—a flurrying period that saw, among other sapling starts, the founding of Boxx. She describes a revitalization that didn’t come at the expense of people or place.

“When you work in a creative industry,” says Marquand, “you survive by being creative.” It’s an idea that permeates much of the Mighty Tieton ethos—almost to the point of mantra. “Our basic belief is that creative people in creative professions have to be financially resourceful,” he says.

artwork-like wall of instruments hanging up by strings
A sound space in Tieton, designed by the composer Trimpin. (Courtesy Ed Marquand)


For Mighty Tieton, resourcefulness and creativity undergird a business model they call “hands across the Cascades”: a nod to the mountain range separating the Seattle metropolitan area from eastern Washington. “What are the needs outside the area that can allow Tieton to participate in the national economy?” asks Marquand. By offering up cheap production space for urban needs, the logic goes, Tieton can serve as an outlet for creative ambition and a model for survival.

Who, exactly, is surviving? 2021 Census data paints a picture of Tieton in which 28 percent of residents lack health insurance and 4 percent have college degrees. (Compare these figures to Seattle’s 4 percent without insurance and 68 percent with postsecondary degrees). The town is 72 percent Latino and has a median household income less than half that of the hand on the other side of the mountain range. Tieton’s poverty rate is near 40 percent, compared to 11 percent in Seattle and 16 percent in nearby Yakima. There is an implicit risk here, then: namely, that continually reaching westward across the Cascades will leave behind the people who were already living in the valley to their east.

When I met Marquand and Co. in town for dinner one night at Nomad Kitchen, I spotted on wrists an Omega, a TAG Heuer, and a Tudor dive watch. Wallflower Social, a new millennial-chic coffee shop and mercantile, boasts nine-dollar heirloom tomato toast and Caffe Vita beans. The trappings of gentrification are whispered here on many winds; I don’t need to tell you that a craft brewery is slated to open in the coming months.

portrait of Ed Marquand in front of art space
Ed Marquand. (Courtesy Ed Marquand)


It’s easy, then, to read the Tieton story as one of potential displacement as opposed to equitable revitalization. But I’m not sure that’s the case.

When assessing new businesses to incubate under the Mighty Tieton banner, one of the first questions posed to aspiring artisan entrepreneurs is how many people they can hire from the local community. Coffee shops and breweries may be cropping up, but so are Mexican and Salvadorian joints. The owner of the namesake Fernando’s off the town square told me he hadn’t opened his restaurant until 2015: well into the Mighty boom.

“To me,” says Marquand, “gentrification means pushing the people out.” He points to myriad “artist communities” such as Santa Fe, Laguna Beach, and Napa, where artists can no longer afford to live. That doesn’t appear to be happening here.

One of the reasons Tieton doesn’t have a housing crisis is because of adaptive reuse of fruit-packing and other agricultural infrastructure. Most property and business development I witnessed occurred in otherwise defunct warehouses. Grain silos are being converted into a home, and a playground park. Marquand’s original condos went for around $160,000 a pop in 2007—something on the order of $240,000 in today’s dollars. Tieton’s median rent is roughly 20 percent of the median household income—broadly considered affordable by housing scholars. So far, reaching across the Cascades hasn’t implied dragging back Western Washington’s rents.

In some important sense, Tieton 2.0 is what happens when a gaggle of New Urbanists stumble into a libertarian wet dream. It’s easy to build, it’s easy to experiment, and it’s easy to iterate. When an exploratory conversation with Sidewalk Labs, Google’s urban planning subsidiary, got serious, the Mighty Tieton crew bolstered their legitimacy by illustrating their ability to pull building permits within a week.

The lax zoning comes with its own puncture vines. When a new prospector rolled into town recently and bulldozed a pear orchard to stand up a suburban development, they didn’t plant a single tree in the neighborhood. Jeb Thornburg, founder of Tieton Cabin Company, says the omission was possible because Tieton’s code doesn’t contain a landscape section.

Marquand’s brand of investment has required nuance, context, and subtlety: an approach to business development and urban design that has borne fruit thus far but will require careful attention to maintain. Thornburg thinks Tieton has found itself at a crossroads. “I think we’re actually at a point where things could go really badly,” he told me. A certain Wild West mentality threatens to undo the Mighty vision, as is perhaps always the case in areas threatened by any flavor of disaster capitalism.

colorful yellow, blue, and red mosaic sign with the word "Tieton" overlaying a large letter T
A sign by Tieton Mosaic. (Courtesy Ed Marquand)


How can Tieton ensure it doesn’t go the way of the Red Delicious—while also avoiding a Juicero debacle? As Thornburg suggests, the future isn’t at all certain, and early success doesn’t imply sustainability. Most start-ups fail. Fruit-packing and orchards still dominate the game; multinational farms and Dollar General bids still press at the margins.

But Tieton is no business, and Marquand has no interest in running it like one. (“If either of us had MBAs, this wouldn’t have worked,” he says, referring to Mike). Indeed, he doesn’t have much of an interest in running Tieton at all. He’s not doing much art-book publishing these days. He’s got an operating stake in the mosaic business, but he hopes to be out in a few years—by the time he’s 75. Marquand is the extrovert who gleans energy from keeping exceptionally busy, but I get the sense it would be nice to sit on the couch sometimes, too.

To Marquand, Thornburg is the archetype of the “right creative.” He’s hungry but calm. He’s thoughtful. He makes 250-square-foot cross-laminated-timber cabins. Young blood, and perhaps the type to take up the mantle of Tieton’s hype man.

But there won’t be a coronation here, of Thornburg or anyone else. There will only be the little tweaks and adaptations; the slow chaos of urban evolution; the knock-on complexities of design decisions. And always, picked or pressed or juiced or baked, there will be apples.