Wagner Education Center (WEC) is the newest addition to The Center for Wooden Boats campus situated on South Lake Union in Seattle. The campus is seamlessly integrated into the Lake Union Park, offering visitors a way to get on the water and participate in the region’s rich maritime history. The center promotes northwest maritime heritage through education, interpretation and hands-on experiences that include the restoration and use of historic small craft. For example, when the WEC opened its doors, Säädüüts Robert Peele, the artist-in-residence and member of the Haida tribe, demonstrated the traditional art of canoe carving.
The $6.6 million, two-story, solar-powered WEC structure is the modern center piece for the park, campus and surrounding neighborhood. Like many historic buildings in the northwest, this structure has no air conditioning. It is passively cooled with movable exterior shades, large sliding doors/windows and operable skylights used to expel hot air and induce natural ventilation.
Like a sail boat, the staff must work with natural forces and make adjustments to optimize the building’s performance. The building provides a connection to and understanding of our physical environment that was commonplace before the advent of air conditioning.
Similarly, the center piece of the building is a large wooden boat shop where people can help maintain, restore and build wooden vessels. The shop allows the center to pass on and preserve historic ways of making. It gives visitors the opportunity to use traditional hand tools—to experience cutting a dovetail, carving a mortise, pounding nails or using a plane. As our culture continues to evolve and become more digitized, traditional ways of making are too easily forgotten. It also becomes easier to ignore the limitations and wonders of our physical world. Places like the WEC provide important connections to our history as well as preserving traditional skills and knowledge for future generations. The history of making is unfortunately not always given the attention it deserves.