I have a story in today’s paper on The Bullitt Foundation’s proposed living building on Capitol Hill. The project is fascinating: it aims to create all its own energy, produce and treat all its own water and re-energize the neighboring park among other points.

The project has a lot of interesting aspects. However the one I’m most interested in is the water angle. The building hopes to break the mold by capturing all its rainwater off the roof, which will be held in an underground cistern, according to Colleen Mitchell, project manager with 2020 Engineering. Then, some of the water will be treated by UV filters, pumped to faucets throughout the building and used as potable (or drinking) water. Some of the water will be sent to toilets, which will use one pint per flush. All waste from the toilets will be sent to a composting container in the basement, where it will slowly compost and be used for the building’s greenhouse. The greenhouse will run up the south side of the building with plants on each level. Urine from the toilets will go to four tanks in the basement where it will stabilize and be sterilized over a three-month time period. After three months, one part urine will be mixed with eight parts greywater (or the water that goes down faucets). That mix will be sent to the greenhouse where it will be evapotranspired by plants with nutrients from urine being used for fertilization.

I’ve got a rendering of what the system will look like here:

This is what the water system will look like. Click on image to enlarge.

Image courtesy 2020 Engineering

The system is incredibly cutting edge and will set an amazing precedent if permitted. And the ‘if,’ dear readers, is a big ‘if.’

Unfortunately, the precedent is one of the things that probably has permitting agencies worried. Last June, I attended a forum on water attended by a number of speakers. One of them was Steve Deem of the state health department. Going off the water grid is great in theory, he said, but architects, developers and engineers don’t generally understand that if a project provides water, it is responsible for the building’s water forever. That raises a lot of health and safety issues.

Secondly, there’s the issue of charges and rates. King County is in the process of building Brightwater, its massive, multi-million-dollar water treatment plant outside Woodinville. Brightwater gets paid for in part by capacity charges, fees and rates from users. From what I’ve heard from multiple sources, projects are welcome to go off the water grid, as long as they pay those hook up fees and charges. For most developers, this is a turnoff because they are paying twice - once for the water system and once for the hook up. Bullitt has yet to finalize these details with the county. Chris Rogers of development partner Point32 said, “There will be conversations with the county and other players to understand what sort of levies there will be for something that we don’t use.”

At that same June meeting, Christie True, director of the King County Wastewater Treatment Division, said it’s a social justice issue. If developers don’t pay for wastewater infrastructure, people with fewer resources will end up paying more.

Last April, Ray Hoffman, acting director of Seattle Public Utilities, said on-site water treatment is not moving forward in the Puget Sound area because of bureaucracy. “There are institutional barriers on both the public and private side that prevent things that are readily available from getting off the shelf and into the ground.”

These are some of the issues Bullitt faces in trying to go off the water grid. I don’t envy them the process but it will be an amazing achievement if they succeed.

When I asked him about the difficult code issues he was about to face, Denis Hayes of Bullitt said all agencies are on the same page in wanting to see innovative projects happen. “We’ll take that robust optimism until somebody in authority says we shouldn’t have it.”

What do you think, readers? Just how important is this project and what kind of a precedent will it set? Will it succeed in getting off the water grid and are the health and social justice issues valid concerns? I’d love to hear from you on this topic.

Austin, Pittsburgh, Portland, Denver, Chicago, Boston…now Phoenix! Greenbuild has grown by leaps and bounds from the first year I was inspired by this movement, at my first Greenbuild in Pittsburgh. As I look around at all of the people, booths, products, educational sessions - a plethora and flurry of excitement washes over me.

Have we finally reached the critical mass to ‘main street green’ as USGBC suggests?

As usual, it’s great to touch in with practitioners from around the country who helped launch this movement over a decade ago, and to be reminded of just how much Pacific Northwest is infused in the spirit of this movement. The Lucia Athens, the Jim Goldman’s, the Lynne Barker’s and the Tom Paladino’s of the world are beaming in the glow of the energy of this place.

While we celebrate Turner’s 100th LEED building and a clinking of glasses, we recognize our job is far from done. This is just the beginning. Now is not the time to rest. Now is not the time to congratulate ourselves on a job well done.

We need to continuously pull the movement forward with hope and optimism and I’m proud to stand by the International Living Building Institute as Jason McLennan, Eden Brukman and others roll out the evolution in the way we redefine our buildings within the context of our current paradigm.

This morning I heard ‘Re-membering: the Patterns of Living Systems’ from Bill Reed, Penny Bonda, Jon Boecker, Dayna Baumeister and am reminded that again, the key to transformation is all about an evolutionary mindset. I recognize the complete mindset shift that needs to take place if we are going to save our planet from ourselves.

The messages are compelling, and I wonder, are the masses getting the right message? Let’s see what Rick Fedrizzi, Al Gore and Sheryl Crow (?!!??!) have to say tonight.  Stay tuned!

Marni Jade Evans, the Living Project

Last week, I had the incredible good fortune of being invited to listen in on a living building charrette. If you ever have this opportunity, drop what you’re doing and go. It’s worth the effort.

This charrette was for a project developed by GreenFab, a team headed by Johnny Hartsfield. If you don’t know Johnny, this is from his profile: “After working as an

Johnny Hartsfield

engineering technician for Snohomish County Surface Water Management and as a sustainable project designer for Mithun and Gustafson Guthrie Nichol Ltd., he realized that developers, not designers, control our built infrastructure.”

So Hartsfield formed GreenFab and is in the process of developing a modular living building house. He envisions his project being well-priced, easily replicable and super green. (He also has a great blog here that he has taken a break from recently. He promised me however that it would be up and running again soon.)

The charrette last week was the first step in developing that project and seeing how it would really work. Just listening to the differing viewpoints between the people in the room - and then between the “greenies,” if you will, and the folks representing the modular construction company, Guerdon Enterprises of Boise, was fascinating.

For example, one of the living building challenge prerequisites says that a building either needs a green roof or needs to be set above the ground, so as not to take away

A house from Brad Pitt\'s Make it Right project in New Orleans sits above ground. Would a house like this attract or disturb you?

from the site’s ability to perform functions of natural hydrology. One of the gentlemen from the modular company was pretty disturbed by the idea of raising a house above the ground and the living area that would create for vermin below. He said he could not imagine anyone wanting to live in a house above the ground, or seeing that as an attractor.

But the whole point of this project, Hartsfield said, is to educate people and change opinions (while of course also creating a profit to keep the company in business). He said, “I’m doing this because I don’t want to work in any system that’s out there now. I’m tiered. I’m pissed off. And we’re going to get there…. Our job is to create the demand.” 

What do you think? Would you ever consider living in a building that was sited above ground? If a living building was available to you that cost around $120,000 plus the cost of land …. so let’s say $400,000 on the low side - would you do it? Or would you stick with whatever you can find in Seattle for that price?

You can weigh in below or answer my new poll at right.

Hybrid Architects is designing GreenFab’s modular home. Bright minds that attended the charrette and were fleshing through ideas included Jon Alexander of Sunshine Construction, Mike Broili of Living Systems Design, Judith Heerwagen of J.H. Heerwagen & Associates, Jonathan Heller of Ecotope, Chris Meek of the UW’s Integrated Design Lab and Sage Saskill of SAGE Designs NW, among others. Marni Evans of The Living Project led the charrette. 

On the other end of the fence, the Bullitt Foundation is also planning to develop a living building. I wrote about this in today’s paper here. The Stranger asked some great questions about urban density in regards to the project here.

What exactly the Bullitt project will be is still entirely in the air, though it could be a five story mixed-use project with retail, office and residential. More to follow later as the project progresses.

Bullitt also recently held a living building charrette, though I wasn’t invited to that process. Teams tend to be a bit cagey about letting a reporter sit in and hear the process of arguing through and figuring out what a project is going to be.

But listening in on GreenFab’s process was invaluable to me. So if you plan on developing a living building, please send this reporter an invite!

A proposed living building in Portland is moving along. This week, the Portland Development Commission announced its plans to award the project’s feasibility study to Gerding Edlen Development.

A living building is a building that meets the Living Building Challenge. The challenge

In 2007, this was Mithun\'s award-winning concept of a living building

goes beyond LEED platinum. A living building is self-sustaining, and aims to produce and reuse all its resources like energy and water. Since the concept was introduced by Jason McLennan of the Cascadia Green Building Council in December 2006, a number of projects have taken the challenge on. Most of them are on the smaller side, or are residences.

What makes the Portland project unique is its size. The building would be around 220,000-square-feet.

The project, called the Sustainability Center of Excellence, is on a super fast track. It received proposals two weeks ago and held a public meeting last week. Yesterday, the PDC announced it intends to award the project to Gerding Edlen, along with SERA Architects and GBD Architects. The three main partners in the project are the PDC, the Oregon University System and the Living Building Initiative, a consortium of organizations focused on sustainability.

Gerding Edlen and its team will investigate whether the project is feasible. If it is, it will have the option to move ahead with project development.

The goal of the building will be to attract other sustainably-minded businesses to Portland and to Oregon. Do you think this is a good way to attract business? Should Seattle be following in Portland’s footsteps, or are we too different to compare?

Locally, the Phinney Neighborhood Association hopes to turn the Phinney Neighborhood Center (everyone’s favorite giant blue building) into a living building. The Bullitt Foundation has also purchased a property and is just in the beginning stages of considering whether to do a living building or not. Am I missing any local living building projects? If so let me know.

For more information or some interesting local opinions on this project, visit Portland Architecture here, the Burnside Blog here, or read this article in the Portland Tribune. Enjoy!

Most everybody agrees that the key to great green buildings is integrated design - where different professional disciplines work together in an integrated way to create a building, rather than cutting a project up into sections and having different companies separately work on those sections.

But when I hear it discussed, people are often doing one of two things: patting themselves on the back for doing such a great, fantastic job on a particular project, or explaining the necessity of the process to newcomers.

Rarely do you hear it criticized or analyzed. But the proof is in the pudding and if you’re really wondering how well the process is working, why not ask your client?

That’s just what Tracy Bowen (right) of The Alice Ferguson Foundation in Maryland is. She’s developing a living building project in Accokeek, (across from Mt. Vernon), and the lady tells it like it is. She chose to go after a living building, rather than LEED because “I felt like LEED was a really good baseline but it was going to create a ceiling… (that) wasn’t high enough.”

Using her experience with integrative design as a baseline, Bowen says the process is in its infancy. In fact, the process was shocking to her. “It’s boxy. It’s very linear.”  - What do you think?

Boiling it down- Bowen said the charette is great because it gets so many minds thinking about the same problems that solutions can actually be achieved - but once it’s done, she said the whole process of design becomes ”less organic” and is dealt with by professional subsection again.
Read more to hear her advice! (more…)