The Ayer.

Project brief

The Ayer is a 45-story apartment tower at 1000 Virginia Street in Seattle's Denny Triangle neighborhood, with 454 apartments, ground-floor retail and about 575,000 square feet of floor area. Holland Partner Group developed it with North America Sekisui House, Weber Thompson was the architect, and Susan Marinello Interiors designed the interiors. The tower takes its name from Elizabeth Ayer, the first woman to graduate from the University of Washington's architecture program and the first woman licensed as an architect in Washington State.

The design draws on the tectonics of the Pacific Northwest. Its massing reads as fractured, sheared blocks, with geometric patterning and seams set against a reflective glass skin. The building shares its block with a sister tower, The Ivey on Boren, and holds nearly 17,000 square feet of indoor and outdoor amenity space, including a double-height fitness room and a roof level given over entirely to shared space. Levels 40 through 45 form a penthouse collection of one- to three-bedroom homes. The project is LEED Silver certified. Construction began in 2020, and the building opened in December 2023. It was named High-Rise Residential Development of the Year at the 2024 NAIOP Washington State awards.

BOGZA produced exterior and interior renderings and a film for The Ayer in 2019. Aerial views show the blue-glass tower at dusk and at night, with lit setbacks marking its crown among the downtown towers. Street-level views focus on the brick and glass base.