Sheri Olson Architecture PLLC

03/09/2023

Great short video about why Seattle has a homeless problem. Spoiler: its lack of affordable housing.

02/23/2023

Happy to announce I received a Writer's Room Residence at Seattle's Main Public Library. Thank you Seattle Public Library! This will provide a space for me to finish my next book, "The Architecture of Niceness."

09/14/2022

RIP Jean-Luc Godard. Thank you for Alphaville.

09/11/2022

Thanks Seattle Times for covering an architect that needs more recognition. Also thanks for covering the remodel I did of one of his homes!

As an architect, an activist and a dad, Benjamin F. McAdoo Jr. created buildings and connections that still resonate — and deserve celebration.

08/19/2022

Captures why I hate barn doors even more than HGTV.

You can’t escape gray floors.

07/29/2022

The last thing you probably want to hear about right now is more heat, but a heat pump can cool your home, too, and electricity, not fossil fuels, power it. A heat pump can help you get through the weather changes from climate change while helping to fight it Yesterday the Senate passed the Inflatio

06/09/2022

"As storm water washes across lawns, gardens, and streets, on its way to storm drains, it picks up pollutants. They include pesticides, motor oil, herbicides, fertilizers, heavy metals, animal f***s, and bits of trash. They go directly into the water, poisoning fish and wildlife, and damaging our marine ecosystems. According to the Washington State Department of Ecology, storm water runoff accounts for 30% of the pollutants in our waterways." West Seattle Garden Center

The Clean Water Act took effect 40 years ago Thursday. In 1972, stormwater pollution was nowhere near a top priority. Today, it's taken the lead as the top…

06/06/2022

Good environmental news! Biden is using the defense act to spur production of heat pumps.

Bill McKibben writes at his Substack column, Earlier today, President Biden signed the above order, which mandates the use of the 1950 Defense Production Act to sput the production of heat pumps, because, as he puts it in the text, “ensuring a robust, resilient, and sustainable domestic industrial base to meet the requirements of the clean energy economy is essential to our national security, a resilient energy sector, and the preservation of domestic critical infrastructure.”

Readers of this newsletter played a big role in making this happen. I broached the idea here on February 27, 3 days after the Ukraine invasion, in an article called Heat Pumps for Peace and Freedom. Within a couple of days, a group called Rewiring America had fleshed out the plan, and Third Act had begun to push it out across the country, getting older Americans to write letters by the score. Between you all, the effort paid off. Biden’s order isn’t precisely what we’d called for, since the heat pumps are destined for U.S. homes instead of European ones—but that may well be more politically palatable, and in any event, as we’ve pointed out over and over, oil is a global market. If we can suppress demand here by giving people efficient technology, it will help drive down the windfall that rising oil prices have provided Putin.