Michael John Scott

1951-2023

Michael John Scott (Mike) passed away on January 12, 2023 after a brief battle with glioblastoma, an aggressive form of brain cancer. He was 71. Mike was born on Feb. 16, 1951 at Medford Memorial Hospital and grew up in the hamlet of Chelsea, twelve miles north of Medford. He was a member of the class of 1969, the second class to graduate from MSHS’ new high school. He often thought these were Taylor County’s golden years.

One of his earliest trips was when his mother brought him along on a field trip to Chicago. He was so impressed he told everyone that someday he would live in a city, and that city would be Chicago. Always fascinated with designing and building, he dreamed of becoming an architect at an early age. His proof claim was a scrapbook he compiled of buildings and bridges from LOOK and LIFE magazines he submitted to the Taylor County Fair when he was 12 years old. Unfortunately, he received a silver rather than a gold ribbon! Undeterred, he obtained a B.S. Architecture degree with Honors and Master of Architecture degree from the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee. He started his architecture career in Milwaukee, and then moved to his dream city Chicago for an architecture job shortly afterwards.

In 1972, he took a road trip out west with a friend and fell in love with the Northwest. He moved to Seattle in 1979, where he continued to practice architecture for 35 years. He became a design partner with Callison Architecture, one of the largest architectural firms in the U.S. In 2011, he helped found Graphite Design Group with three other long-time collaborators. The company quickly grew from the original founders to about 50 employees.

Mike was a prolific designer. His diverse body of work includes some of the most recognizable structures in the Pacific Northwest and projects across the U.S. and around the world; from Microsoft buildings and Amazon’s headquarter campus in Seattle, Wash. to the ski village at Mammoth Mountain in California to the Grand Gateway Towers in Shanghai, China to a financial center with six mixed-use buildings in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. He was a noted advocate for sustainable design and was an early adopter and practitioner of the L.E.E.D. process certification early-on. He was a 12-year member of the U.S. green Building Council and achieved 8 Gold project certifications. His last published piece in Environmental Design+ Construction Magazine was an article he cowrote with Ada Healy, Director of Real Estate, Vulcan, which focused on Seattle’s South Lake Union’s emerging sustainable community. Mike retired from Graphite in 2015 and made it his mission to visit all seven continents. By the time of his passing, he had visited all but Antarctica, which was still on his list.

Though he loved to travel, he was really a homebody who took enormous pride in renovating and restoring his 1913 home in the Mt Baker neighborhood in Seattle. He was a bit of an urban pioneer when he bought the home in 1986. Though rich in history, the south-end was struggling after the “Boeing Bust” of the 1970’s. Mike saw past the recent neglect to the neighborhood’s rich potential. The wide boulevards, large historic homes and location on Lake Washington reminded him of the Midwest.

Mike was well-known for his quick wit and great laugh, and colleagues say he made work fun. He loved music and played the trombone and was a proud “First Chair” for the trombone section in high school. He was a serious musician and won a music scholarship to the University of Wisconsin. He especially enjoyed rock music and often said he was glad he came of age during the 60’s and 70’s, which he considered the greatest music era ever. He always had a house project or two going and could build or repair almost anything. He spent the Covid pandemic happily puttering in his garage wood shop, reading history, watching true crime shows and World War II documentaries, teaching himself to watercolor and taking long daily walks with his wife and dogs.

He was preceded in death by his parents, Joe Scott and Ida Brandner Scott. He is survived by his wife of almost 30 years, Debora Rogers Scott; and daughter, Katherine of Seattle, Wash.; his brother, Patrick Scott (Sharon) of Sun Prairie; and sisters, Allie Scott Brehm (Bob) and Myra Scott Nye (Ron) of Antigo. He is also survived by his beloved King Charles Cavalier spaniels, Rosie, and Freddy.

A celebration of his life will be held on June 16 at the Mt Baker Community Club in Seattle, Wash. Please send memorial donations to the Musella Foundation for Brain Tumor Research and Information, Inc. https://virtualtrials.org/donate/ or to any animal rescue charity of your choice.

Paid Obituary 135066