Ballard food bank

“What Feeds You?” Literally writ large over the work yard at the Ballard Food Bank. Three streetscape frontages and densely utilized onsite planting areas work in concert to evoke welcome and purpose to aid the design team’s goal of destigmatizing being a food bank patron. This is the little project that could, with every element serving multiple functions in service of the food bank’s mission of bringing food and hope to their neighbors.

a soft landing

The east frontage starts its day with a line of patrons, accommodated by seating, playfully arrayed down the frontage in combination with raised herb planters. The curbside area anticipates frequent circulation between short term vehicle parking and the building entry. With the curbside zone working hard to support foot traffic, a narrow strip of planter was retained at the back of the sidewalk to ground the architecture in green.

As a place supported by and for the community, this is a neighborhood hub that runs on the spirit and energy of its volunteers. During the course of the design, the food bank leadership was looking to find a way to acknowledge long-time volunteers who had recently passed. The design team worked leadership’s initial idea of adding a memorial rose garden to the site into a series of shrub roses into the right-of-way plant palette. The sturdy, long-blooming and low-maintenance flowering shrubs sharing the same vitality and spirit back to the neighborhood as the departed volunteers.