Keep in mind, this picture was taken during lunch break…..

Courtesy Weber Thompson, thanks Dan Albert!

Weber Thompson is based in a naturally ventilated building (as am I!) So the staff there are thinking of novel ways to stay cool on this record breaking day of heat. If you’re wondering just how “unbearable” it is to work in a naturally ventilated space (I say it’s not so bad) read the comments on the post below. Stay cool!

Today, the AIA’s Committee on the Environment selected its top ten green projects. Tomorrow’s DJC will feature a short story and slideshow of the images but there were so many great pictures, we couldn’t include them all. Here, I give you some of the pictures we aren’t about to run in the DJC.

Local winners of the awards are Weber Thompson for the Terry Thomas Building and Busby Perkins + Will for Synergy at Dockside Green.

…But before I give you the pictures, I wanted to remind readers of the jurying for last year’s AIA COTE awards, which were held here in Seattle. That event last April was one of my most favorite green events ever because the judges were - at times - brutally honest about the state of green building and how nominees need to go further in the quest for green goodness.  (I wrote a story about it called ‘U.S. green buildings don’t go far enough, AIA award judges say‘.)

Among their comments (remember, this is last year’s judging for 2008, not 2009) judges said: “We saw very much less of what I would really liked to have seen” (Glenn Murcutt); “Projects that call themselves green are not green enough and in most of the work that we see we’re not taking the big enough leaps that we need to make” (Jason McLennan); and “The last thing you want to do is have the environmental movement associated with things that are overbudget and with things that are ugly” (Rebecca Henn). Like I said, sometimes brual. But honest.

I blogged on last year’s winners here.

Unfortunately, I did not get to attend this year’s jurying as it was not in Seattle. I wonder if it was quite as critical or if the entries had improved from last year. If anyone attended, I would love to hear a short review below!

However, Rebecca Henn’s comments about the separation between beauty and performance seem to be officially part of the judging process now. An AIA press release says “In architecture, performance and aesthetics are inextricably linked. The COTE Top Ten is one of the very few awards that evaluates performance and design,” said jury members. “Other awards and organizations look strictly at performance without care for how a building looks.”

The award winners might achieve this balance but it still seems to be a pretty big issue, and one that local award programs have struggled with as well. It will be interesting to see the AIA Seattle’s COTE awards at the end of this month…. (on April 28 if you dont’ already have it on your calendar).

As for performance, it looks like most of the award winners are LEED platinum.

So, did these winners achieve both performance AND beauty? You be the judge:

Dockside Green in Victoria, B.C., courtesy Enrico Dagostini

World Headquarters for the International Fund for Animal Welfare in Yarmouthport, Mass., courtesy Peter Vanderwarker

Gish Family Apartments in San Jose, courtesy Bernard Andre Photography

Portola Valley Town Center in Portola Valley, Calif. Cesar Rubio, courtesy Siegel & Siegel Architeects

To read more about the award winners and to explore the jurying process, check out AIA’s COTE page here.

Yesterday, I was visiting members of architecture firm Weber Thompson in their headquarters when I decided to pull out my camera and snap some pics for those of you who have never been.

The nearly year-old building is LEED gold core and shell and is eagerly awaiting a LEED platinum certification for its interior. We’ve written about this building numerous times in the past year so I’m going to skip the description and go straight to the photos. For more on the building, read Shawna Gamache’s story on it here, read the building’s blog here, or click tag Weber Thompson below.

Here they are:

View of the inner staircase

View of the staircase through an opposing inner glass wall

Interior view of office space

View of the courtyard inside the building

Outside view of the building

vertical view of building sunshades

Last week I came up with my own “brilliant” idea: create an online forum where people that work in green buildings would record their experiences to create a better understanding of how green buildings really feel.

That post was in response to Weber Thompson’s blog that is doing exactly that. If you missed it, that blog also answered my question on how the team is measuring their building’s performance (see tag below for Weber Thompson).

Now I’m asking you what your brilliant ideas are?

It’s no secret that Seattle (and Chicago, and Portland and New York etc….) are racing to be the greenest city in the country. So if Seattle wants to hold onto that goal, what should it do? Should density be the focus or should it be regulations through things like stricter energy codes?

On a broader scale, is urban planning the answer or is it more incentives?   

For a British perspective on what cities should do, see a BBC story here. For a video on the nature of sustainability and its future from the perspective of Sir Norman Foster, click here. Or you could check out Sustainable Ballard’s Web site here to see what one Seattle neighborhood thinks, or Sustainable Capitol Hill’s site here.

Did you ever hear about an interesting project, wonder how it would  work and then forget about it?

To avoid that situation the Weber Thompson team at the Terry Avenue Office Building (at left) is blogging about what it’s like to work in a LEED gold (for core and shell), naturally ventilated building. To check it out, go here. (For more on the building, my colleague Shawna Gamache wrote about it in her blog here).

The blog’s most recent post talks about cooling the building on a hot day … and opening all 248 of the building’s windows. The post before that discusses how the building SOUNDS different…. and what it’s like getting used to that.

What a novel idea. To share with the public the water cooler discussions of how people like their new surroundings. 

(Just for the record the building we work in here at the DJC also has no air conditioning. It gets warm a couple days in the summer but it’s very doable).  (more…)

Today is green project day at the DJC because there’s just so much to report. It’s also Earth Day and I meant to write a post about the silly earth themed product advertisements I got in my inbox, but that will just have to wait until later, while we get to what you really love…. projects!

In fact there’s so much to cover, it will be written in two posts: this one and another following it.

First we’ve got the winning project called Eco-Laboratory from the Cascadia Region Emerging Green Builder program’s Natural Talent Design Competition. The competition was open to students or anyone in their job less than five years. This year, it asked entrants to design a living building (for more on that, click here).

The winning entry was a team from Seattle’s Weber Thompson. Team members were Brian Geller, Myer Harrell, Chris Dukehart and Dan Albert. The entry, which is purely theoretical and will not be built (at least in the near future), was sited next to the 7,200-square-foot p-patch in Belltown at the corner of Elliott Avenue and Vine St.

The team used what was already on site, from the garden, to a high homeless population, to an active community, to inspire the design of the building. Judges liked that and thought it truly incorporated the idea behind a living building.

(more…)