Up it goes, the 12-story monolith that online books built.

At the corner of Terry Ave. and Harrison St. in Seattle's South Lake Union neighborhood, this is the new Amazon HQ that raised controversy back in 2007 when the City approved a special upzone allowing 160-foot tall buildings to accommodate the project.

I'm all for the height, as well as the street life and vitality that the 4000 employees will bring to the neighborhood. But architecturally, in a word: ugh.

Amazon.com is an international icon, a world-renowned success story of the Internet Age. Given Amazon's stature and wealth, one might expect a world HQ design that was daring, or fun, or unconventional in some inspiring, creative way.  Or at least better than the typical sterile office towers that litter U.S. cities from Phoenix to Charlotte and everywhere in between.

Granted, the building isn't done, so criticism isn't totally fair. But does Seattle really need yet another building with an incongruous, clunky brick base that's supposed to give some kind of half-hearted "nod" to the historic fabric?



The site plan is no less uninspiring, with the new buildings wrapping awkwardly around the bland Bio-Rad building at the corner of Terry and Thomas St. North of here, new development has transformed Terry Ave. one of the most cozy pedestrian streets in the City---about the closest thing we have to the comfortable walking environment found all over Portland's Pearl District. But on the Amazon block shown above, the hulking buildings feel oppressive.

So okay, it's just another workhorse building that will get the job done. Fine. But in this case there's another reason that the lame design matters. Because if people don't like this building, it will be held up as an example of why the City shouldn't grant upzones. And that's the wrong medicine for making progress toward creating a sustainable Seattle.