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With its growing downtown skyline and global tech hub status, the city of Bellevue—birthplace of Amazon—can more than hold its own against Seattle, its older sibling situated just across Lake Washington. The largest city in the Seattle metro area’s East Side region with a population of more than 150,0000, it has progressively shrugged off its reputation as a sleepy, suburban satellite town. And average rents in Bellevue and the city’s also-affluent neighboring communities reflect this: they’re the most expensive in metro Seattle and, like Silicon Valley, among the priciest in the country. 

Along with such concentrated wealth comes housing disparities, including a dearth of options for low-income residents and a regional homelessness crisis. (Seattle and greater King County, including Bellevue, have the country’s third-largest population of unhoused people behind New York and Los Angeles.) A new cluster of buildings on a nearly 10-acre campus located near Bellevue’s Interstate-90/405 interchange on Southeast Eastgate Way, however, aims to provide a solution with accessible options across the housing spectrum. There’s Polaris, a 353-apartment affordable workforce housing complex and, on a separate parcel to the east, the 92-unit Plymouth Crossing, which is the city’s first permanent supportive housing building for people who have formerly experienced homelessness. Tucked directly behind Plymouth Crossing on a sloping site amid thick groves of Douglas Fir and Pacific Madrone trees is PorchLight, Bellevue’s first purpose-built men’s homeless shelter.

Flanking the main entrance is a large, two-part mural by Australia-born artist Guido van Helton. Photo © Kevin Scott

Designed by Seattle studio Block Architects with site planning and landscape architecture by Mithun, the three-story, 100-bed facility also serves as operational headquarters for the secular nonprofit formerly known as Congregations for the Homeless, which rebranded itself as PorchLight in conjunction with the June 2023 opening of its eponymous new building. The project was built in response to a 2018 land use code change allowing for the construction of permanent shelters—three years after King County issued an emergency declaration for homelessness.

Initial local opposition to the shelter was eased through significant community engagement and a design approach in which the Block team didn’t set out to design a shelter at all but a sort of nebulous community building whose function isn’t immediately clear from the exterior. The top two floors of the rectangular building’s south, fiber cement panel–clad facade feature a roughly 3,125-square-foot mural by Australian artist Guido van Helten. Timber-framed, embedded into natural Pacific Northwest landscape, and veiled in public art, it’s a handsome, economical building with a civic air about it—Porchlight could pass as a small museum or public library. The fact that the main, street-level entrance is located on the middle floor via a bridge that spans a lower terrace only adds to its enigmatic qualities. Block called this approach “art melts walls.”

View from the main public corridor on the second floor looking out over a wooded area to the north. Photo © Kevin Scott

“Because it’s such a polarized demographic in Bellevue in terms of wealth, public art was something that could be appreciated by everyone, without a monetary tie to it,” says Block co-founder Jenn LaFreniere, who previously worked in the offices of Miller Hull and Graham Baba Architects. “We used the mural as a bridge and to connect with the community and break down negative stereotypes.”

Block Architects operates as a true family affair. Jenn is joined by her husband Joshua LaFreniere, also an alumnus of Mithun as well as the now-defunct Katerra, who joined his wife at Block after running his own practice. Joining the couple as firm co-founder is Jenn’s father, Rex Holbein, who ran his own residential-focused architectural practice for nearly three decades before going on to establish Seattle nonprofit Facing Homelessness.

The building offers visual and physical connections to the outdoors throughout all three floors. Photos © Kevin Scott

In contrast to its perception-challenging exterior, the interior program of PorchLight is more straightforward albeit with some unique features, borne from an intensive collaboration between the design team and client. “They were redefining themselves and interested in pushing boundaries,” says Joshua. “The program wasn't set in stone and we really massaged it to get it to where it is.”

The 20,000-square-foot building’s second level is the “public” floor and includes a reception area, day shelter space, commercial kitchen and dining room, computer stations, support offices, and more. A covered deck extending from the rear of the second floor and a spacious patio to the east provide just two of the many seamless connections between the indoors and outdoors. There’s also the lower level’s sunken terrace, complete with a community vegetable garden and amphitheater-style seating, to the south, and a tree-shaded patio with intimate meditation nooks to the north. Offering direct access to these outdoor spaces, the lower level also has meeting rooms, staff offices and support spaces, a library, and a “serenity room” for quiet contemplation.

View looking south from the lower level. Photo © Kevin Scott

PorchLight’s third floor is home to the shelter’s open bunk room, with large windows that face north into a thick canopy of trees behind the building. Support spaces—bathrooms, lockers, laundry, and shower facilities—are consolidated to the south. At the top of the main stairs is a seating area with an expanse of floor-to-ceiling glass that looks out over the entry bridge and terrace garden below. Another set of stairs on the western end of the building and an elevator provide additional access to all three levels. Abundant daylight, durable finishes, low-maintenance surfaces such as sealed concrete flooring, and warm, natural materials—including plenty of wood, much of it donated surplus material—define the interior spaces.

Nestled into the site's sylvan setting is a north patio with intimate seating areas; seen above it is a large deck extending from the second floor. Photo © Kevin Scott

As the architects explain, designing a low-slung, sunken building was intentional from the beginning.  “It makes it more approachable,” says Joshua. “If you have a three-story building, it’s a little intimidating and less inviting. Sinking it down made it feel more like a residential scale.” Despite PorchLight’s proximity to I-90, the roar of the freeway is muted by the presence of the larger Plymouth Crossing building directly in front of it, elevating the peaceful, nature-swathed atmosphere of the facility. (Because the transitional housing and shelter buildings neighbor each other, there’s the idea that men from the shelter can potentially shift to Plymouth Crossing, allowing them to maintain any connections they’ve made on the campus.)

Perhaps the most intentionally sited aspect of PorchLight is an auxiliary structure: a smoking shelter. Overlooking the main entrance, the shelter is at a remove from the interior but prominently positioned within the site so that users remain engaged. “It was front and center in the project, where normally a smoking area would be relegated to an unseen area, because there's probably a judgment made on what that means,” says Dakota Keene, a partner and landscape architect with Mithun. She adds: “Our team focused on the idea of what it looks like to experience the outdoors by choice and rather than out of circumstance—how we can foster healing and growth and build community through those outdoor experiences.”

Crafted from Kebony modified wood, the outdoor terraced seating area provides a natural space for larger gatherings; at street level above it is a smoking shelter, also a popular spot for congregation. Photo © Kevin Scott

“We weren’t interested in just simply housing the men and getting them in under cover—we wanted to push back and provide a place they could feel comfortable, dignified, and uplifted,” says Joshua LaFreniere. “We tried to rethink what this building wanted to be.”

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