As distant corners of the world resemble Seattle more each day - with a Microsoft program on every PC and a cup of Starbucks coffee on every desk - Seattleites conversely fret that the Pacific Northwest looks more and more like the rest of the world. This xenophobic view is due to a spectacular natural setting that fosters an unshakeable faith in the region's uniqueness. Thanks to a decade-long infusion of cash from locally headquartered giants of globalization, there is the means to assert architecturally this pride of place. Two of Seattle's most prominent citizens, Microsoft co-founders Bill Gates and Paul Allen, took remarkably different tracks in realizing their own personal versions of the Pacific Northwest. Gates's shelter from the virtual world is a heavy-timber lodge on the suburban shores of Lake Washington while Allen bankrolled a Frank O. Gehry-designed rock-and-roll museum downtown.

CHRIS EDEN

A series of small cabins on Decatur Island in the San Juans reflects Miller/Hull's development working with spare forms, structural expressiveness and exaggerated graphic sensibility. The inverted roof of the firm's first design for the island, the 1987 Gorton/Bounds cabin, mirrors a mossy bowl on a hillside overlooking the water. From a flat area over the entry, the roof slopes up and out in three directions, projecting the main living area toward a panoramic view of the Canadian coastline 30 miles away. The perimeter of the compact 600-square-foot cube is a framework of double-height, heavy-timber columns and cross bracing with two-story-tall windows set 5 feet inside the structure. The strict geometry of the structure packs a graphic punch, giving the cabin a visual impact that belies its diminutiveness. The cabin demonstrates the architects' resourcefulness with tight budgets and off-the-shelf materials to link inside and out. The oversized window walls are glazed wooden garage-door panels stood on end with joints sealed and covered by wood battens with hinges at operable end panels.

The Miller/Hull Partnership takes a different route. Instead of the well-executed but literal pastiche of the first project, or the over-the-top artistic vision of the second, the firm offers a modernist aesthetic that is accessible to the larger world. Miller/Hull's refusal to engage in the either-or, all-or-nothing debates of the architectural elite is one of the architects' greatest strengths. They walk a tightrope to add a civil presence to a landscape that has a distinct character and native architecture without being straightjacketed by either.

The key lies in David Miller's and Robert Hull's commitment to modernism, but it is a regional derivation fueled by the specificity of place. They respond to the Pacific Northwest's mild maritime climate, pearl gray sky and wooded wilderness with a transparency that is the crux of their work. They view the region's modest utilitarian structures - the lumber mills, fishnet-drying sheds and forest-fire watchtowers - with a modernist's love of structural clarity, taut skins and industrial materials.

Miller/Hull's stated theoretical intention - continuing the evolution of modernism - has its roots in the designs of Pietro Belluschi and John Yeon in Oregon during the late 1930s and 1940s. Working independently, these two developed a Northwest Contemporary style, characterized by close integration with the landscape, post-and-beam construction and the use of natural native woods. The economic boom following World War II ushered in a golden age of modern residential design in the region. Seattle architects Paul Thiry, Paul Hayden Kirk and Victor Steinbrueck were among a first generation of modernists in the region to refine a design language emphasizing revealed structure, natural materials and glass expanses in houses around Puget Sound.

Miller/Hull has continued this tradition of innovative residential design in 40 houses over 20 years - ranging from a concrete-block retreat in the Cascade foothills that recalls Thoreau's Walden Pond cabin to a contemporary version of Charles and Ray Eames' Case Study house on suburban Mercer Island. While Miller/Hull is known internationally for houses, it is the firm's public work that makes the biggest impact at home. By subtly redefining a nonexistent Northwest urbanism in the astute siting of government, institutional and community projects, Miller/Hull asserts a new civic presence in amorphous town centers and on the scraggly edges of suburbia. By tethering design to larger urban, social and environmental concerns - values that trace back to Miller's and Hull's stints in the Peace Corps - rather than surrendering to self-expressionistic urges, Miller/Hull garners a currency with clients that buys them the freedom to stretch the envelope.

Miller/Hull's 1992 Marquand retreat comes closest to resolving the dilemma of seeking to enjoy a private piece of the Pacific Northwest without paving over the wilderness that was the attraction in the first place — thanks to a client who didn't need to equip his vacation house with all the luxuries of modern life. The 450-square-foot primitive hut is off the power grid: Kerosene lanterns provide light, a wood stove heat, and a picnic cooler serves as the weekend refrigerator. A truck hauls water to the remote site in the Cascade foothills of Eastern Washington and stores it in a tower over a gravity-fed shower and toilet. The spare design recalls the economy of means that both Miller and Hull learned in the Peace Corps, but its scale imparts a monumentality befitting the raw beauty of the landscape. The retreat's industrial materials were chosen for practicality, since it sits in an area prone to wildfires and intruders. The exterior walls are concrete block; metal shutters lock down over each opening. A roll-down steel door protects a 10-foot-square opening in the center of the south facade. Clerestory windows between two overlapping planes of the roof allow sunlight to penetrate into the two-room interior.

If there is one experience that altered both Miller's and Hull's lives and laid the foundation for their future work it was the Peace Corps. Both joined after graduating in 1968 from Washington State University, where they had met in architecture studio. Assigned to different continents - Miller built houses in a satellite city of Brasilia and Hull went to Afghanistan to construct mud-brick schools - they sharpened their social consciousness while learning the lessons of building small and efficiently.

Northwestern natives, they always planned to return, but when they did in the mid-1970s it was to Vancouver, B.C., which was booming, while Seattle's economy was flat. Geographically, the cities are close - only 100 miles apart - but in other ways, so far. Vancouver is more cosmopolitan and, as the Sun Coast of Canada, a destination for its young innovators.

It is significant that Miller and Hull met again in British Columbia, because of the region's role as an incubator of modernism for the rest of the country. Miller worked in Arthur Erickson's office on the Vancouver Courthouse Complex, one of the most influential Canadian projects at the time. Itching to start their own firm, they jumped at the chance to open a branch office for Vancouver-based Rhone & Iredale in Seattle. Backed by the firm's substantial portfolio in public buildings, they immediately landed institutional projects. When Rhone & Iredale dissolved in 1977, the two formed the Miller/Hull Partnership.

A thumbnail psychoanalysis of the pair suggests that Miller is the left-brain rational one and Hull the right-brain intuitive one. But it is not always easy to tease their work apart. They cultivate a team approach that allows variations in response to building type and sites while maintaining a consistency of architectural expression. To ensure the firm's continuation after their eventual retirement, two younger architects, Norman Strong and Craig Curtis (also Washington State University graduates), became partners in 1985 and 1994 respectively. Over time the firm grew to the current staff of 35 - the size they wish to remain so that the four partners can stay active in every project. The office is in a creaky maritime loft building on Seattle's waterfront. Passenger ferries to outlying islands are visible coming and going outside the large industrial sash.

A third Decatur project, the Girvin cabin built in 1994, is a charismatic mix of the vernacular and the modern. It is larger than the previous cabins, with two sections set at a 45-degree angle to each other, separating the guest quarters and an office from the main house. In the resultant juncture is an outdoor entry space covered by a glazed roof and faced with a large glazed barn door along the north, which can close for wind protection. In this way, the house opens to the landscape, creating a geometry that adds interest to the simple volumes.

Miller/Hull successfully negotiates the fine line between change (which too often occurs for its own sake) and continuity (which too often devolves to dull repetition). Change is evident in their emblematic, eye-catching details: the attenuated struts that hold up overhangs, circular windows punched in doors and walls, the "V" of steel-rod supports. These architectural elements typically appear, undergo a process of refinement over several subsequent projects, and then disappear before their visual freshness expires. At the same time, the fundamental values underlying Miller/Hull's work - the connection to outside, lightness and transparency, and economy of means - provide a malleable continuum. As the designers mature and the projects become increasingly complex, there is a more subtle means revealed in their ideas that give meaningful context to the earlier work.

One example is Miller/Hull's iconic roofs. In their exaggeration of the simple shed forms of the region's timber mills they distill Pacific Northwest architecture to its essence: shelter from the rain. Under an overriding roof, walls are superfluous and primarily form a barrier between the inside and the great outdoors. As Miller/Hull's emphasis shifts from overscaled roofs to flat volumes, beginning with the Garfield Community Center and then with the Michaels/Sisson and Roddy/Bale residences, it becomes clear that the uninterrupted relationship between interior and exterior is their focus. Few Pacific Northwest architects explore this relationship to the degree that Miller/Hull has, and it continues to distinguish their work. The glazed garage doors that whisk entire walls out of the way are still present, but at the Roddy/Bale residence they combine to create a new type of space that is neither exterior nor interior but changes its nature to fit its use.

The 1998 design for a family of four's Maury Island getaway melds the client's interest in Japanese architecture with the island's farm buildings. Compared with the earlier Decatur retreats, the detailing is more articulated and refined, perhaps due to the 10 years of experience separating the earliest and later designs. The 600-square-foot cabin was designed as a string of interior and exterior spaces under a continuous gable roof. The exterior's exposed columns, dropped cedar siding and spaced cedar boards recall the panelized construction and texture of Japanese folk architects. The cabin's connection to place and transparency between inside and outside are qualities that link the design as firmly to Pacific Rim architecture as to Miller/Hull's past.

While Miller/Hull's new projects are larger and more complex, the budgets are not necessarily more generous. The lessons in economy that fostered their innovation with off-the-shelf materials still resonate as they continue to challenge the constraints of time, money and conventional programs. This tenacity, as well as the rigor and clarity of their early work, remains and yet is never formulaic. Instead, there is a sense of intuitiveness in the proportions of volumes, the texture and colors, and in the connection to the past and to place that gives Miller/Hull's designs an emotional authenticity. In a region concerned with preserving its uniqueness, this accessibility to modernism is their unique contribution to a vibrant architecture of the Pacific Northwest.

Sheri Olson is a Seattle-based contributing editor to Architectural Record.