Genevieve Vayda
Urban Ecology & Design

CivicShed

Connect with me on:

• Skype: greenbuggy

CivicShed envisions 'live, work, and/or play' design schemes that benefit the urban environment (built and natural), its denizens, and its economy - the triple bottom line. CivicShed's whole systems design approach integrates design WITH natural systems (and the developer, owner, or municipality's ROI with the end user's preferred outcome) melding all into mutually 'sustainable', naturally beautiful, civic habitat.

Projects are undertaken at any scale, or level of involvement.

The creation of beauty need be no more expensive than the alternative. It may well cost less, and certainly benefits more!

Addressing Public Sector/Large Scale Projects:

IDENTIFY AND CREATE OPPORTUNITIES for improving the community, culture, commerce, and beauty of our shared public realms, while envisioning design solutions which address these built, natural, and social components.

PLAN and DESIGN utilizing urban ecology theory and environmental design approaches at every scale. Truly inspired and forward thinking solutions often derive from specific land-use opportunities - or budget, programmatic, or even code, restrictions.

MARKET via successful community outreach, facilitation or education, toward final plan implementation.

Addressing Private Sector/Smaller Projects:

CONSULT for developer, landlord, or homeowner regarding site, building, or landscape plans; real estate property acquisition or sales (including reviews to establish dollar value and/or design potential), passive solar, garden design, built-in cabinetry to trellis detailing, lighting design (day and nighttime), color choices, or myriad other design or highest use issues.

Would a fresh perspective on your development project help bring it into alignment with current policy, development or economic trends?

Would your residence or investment property benefit from a fresh coat of the perfect color of paint, proper lighting or landscape, improving value, enhancing tenancy potential, or assisting in marketing for a sale?

Please call or email for an appointment to see past projects and discuss strategies for optimizing your urban environment and design issues, practically and ecologically.

GENERATE PRACTICAL, INSPIRED IDEAS DESIGNS using a team approach, often resolving issues upon the first meeting or site visit. These solutions are clearly articulated and often sketched on site, and are based upon your input, your budget, your interests, and decades of experience. Clients inevitably want to put them into effect.

Expertise working with individual clients or groups, of diverse sizes and types, includes:

Adaptive Re-Use - city blocks, streets, structures, pathways

Urban Aesthetics - appealing public spaces - day and night

Pedestrian Scale - experiences, activities, street furnishings

Civic Involvement - inquiry, dialogue, stakeholder inter/actions 

Public & Corporate Education - marketing materials, speakers

Bike Advocacy - advocacy,  planning,  

Passive Solar Design - interior and exterior spaces 
                           (sun/wind/rain)
Design WITH Nature - preserve or create natural habitat

I value collaborative work efforts.

Should you have your own like-minded or complementary projects underway, my creative energy is ready to bolster your efforts.

Let's have lunch!

University of Washington - Seattle, WA

College of Architecture & Urban Planning

Masters of Architecture '90

Floyd A. Naramore Graduate Fellowship, recipient '84, '85

UW Valle Scandinavian Fellowship '85
(travel scholarship to all Scandinavian countries, coursework in DK)

Graduate Thesis: 'Effecting Positive Change to a Major Urban Development through Community Participation - Quadrant Lake Union Center' '90

Denmark International School - Copenhagen, Denmark '85

University of Colorado - Boulder, CO
College of Environmental Design
Bachelor of Environmental Design '81

University of Calfornia - Berkeley, CA
Architecture & Environmental Design - Coursework '80
(In residence at Greene & Greene's Thorson House)

The Hotchkiss School '76 - Lakeville, CT

Joint Embassy School '73 - Djakarta, Indonesia

Escuela Nicaraguensa '70 - Managua, Nicaragua

In addition to formal training in passive solar architecture, natural and urban design, ecology, compositional graphics, and art, etc., I am versed in horticulture and urban gardening, optimized day-lighting, renewable technologies, community building, recycling and dancing in the streets.

Zealously attending a variety of civic and university lectures and symposia, I am a lifelong student of land-use planning, alternative transportation, energy (conservation/renewables/resources), architecture, science, environment, economics, and local governmental policy.

Larger Developer & Community Scale Projects:

Quadrant Lake Union Center Seattle, WA

Fremont Neighborhood Council, Land Use Committee;
Outreach, Communications and Design Lead

Initiated involvement with, introduced to Quadrant, & lead neighborhood council's work w/Portland urban planners Zimmer Gunsal Frasca ( Portland light rail urbanscapes). This 18-acre, urban 'mixed-use' office development - in Fremont - was Weyerhauser's FIRST urban development project. Weyerhauser's Quadrant ultimately chose to build 10+ years later, due to contemporaneous office space glut in Seattle.

In choosing to work with our group, and the urban planners and architects we recommended, a higher quality mixed-use office park resulted, greatly increasing the value of Quadrant's development for themselves, their clients, and the locale.

South Wallingford Stewards

Founder, Outreach and Communications Coordinator

Organized ~70 active citizens, and conducted bi-weekly meetings addressing various land-use issues of popular interest in South Wallingford. This group paved the way for ongoing work with QFC, and heightened involvement in creation of the City of Seattle's South Wallingford 20-yr Plan, chairing many of the planning committees.

City of Seattle 20-Year Neighborhood Plan for Wallingford 
South Wallingford Amendment

Land Use, Open Space Plan, & Steering Committees

The Lake Union WaterShed

Outreach and Communications Coordinator 


The WaterShed proposal was inspired by a surplused King County land holding - a prominently sited city block which the Neighborhood Plan delineates as an Alternative Energy Demonstration Site, also including community swimming pools, streams, and wetlands exhibiting natural storm water filtration systems, and an 'Un-Convention Center' adjacent Gas Works Park and the Burke Gilman trail.

OpenSpace 2100 - Charette

Seattle, WA

Design Participant

Private & Smaller Scale Projects:

With over twenty years designing and overseeing construction and renovation of scores of houses; some retail, office space, and commercial buildings; projects typically exemplify sustainable, adaptive re-use. The projects are contextual, practical, environmentally responsive, aesthetically intriguing and tasteful, and comfortable. Through working with clients, most projects were reduced in scale, in favor of quality.

Listening to clients' needs, hopes and dreams, working in close collaboration with them while designing, and knowing their ongoing delight in living in their spaces, especially their HOMES, is most rewarding.

Various specific projects include: an 180-acre rural waterfront lodge retreat cabins and natural habitat, thousands of pheasant and geese; a three-story waterfront office building (owner built, w/ leasable space); apartment-to-condo conversions in Fremont; discrete new houses on islands of the Puget Sound, vintage wooden yacht interior designs for the Thea Foss and the Malibu, and a gorgeous basement apartment in Wallingford.

Small scale consulting work has ranged from color schemes, lighting (natural/day or artificial/night), and office/home/garden/cafe space plan optimization, to choosing or arranging furnishings and other accoutrement.

Personal Experiences with Urban Environments:

Extensive domestic and international living experiences laid an early foundation in seeing alternative styles of urban living and related opportunities. I was immersed within a variety of aesthetic, social, civic, economic, natural, and built systems and environments.

Places I have lived: Havana (born), Managua, Djakarta, Copenhagen, major East Coast cities, rural Connecticut, New Jersey and Virginia, the Rocky Mountain West, Berkeley, and Seattle.

Places I have visited: Sweden, Spain, Norway, Germany, Portugal, Switzerland, Mexico, Hong Kong, France, Belgium, Holland, England, Finland, Greece, Italy, England, Canada, and Tenerife.