The Washington Policy Center, a conservative think-tank whose mission is to “improve lives through market solutions,” has issued a report on green buildings in the state that has less than stellar results.

However, the center is not totally a nonpartial organization. And the study, which is not even a full four

You should know better!

pages long, seems shaky to me in that references cited include articles that are not cited, single emails, and only a small handful of case studies that really don’t provide the reader with much information with which to make an informed decision. It also is very narrow in scope and only looks at a few types of projects.

Nevertheless, the points brought up in the study are of interest. The gist is that performance-based contracting in Washington State and schools that use the Washington State High Performance Schools Protocol have mixed results. Some save energy, some don’t and many have long pay back times. Additionally, the study says there is often not enough information available to track how much energy is actually being saved.

These are important issues that need to be studied on the local level. But I’d like to see them investigated in a more thorough and scientific manner.

The study also proposes three solutions to the problem: rigorous audits of green projects, local control and flexibility as state mandated “cookie-cutter” approaches don’t always work, and accountability in holding agencies and contractors responsible for project results. The study says “if there are no costs for the agency or contractor for failing to achieve energy savings targets, there is unlikely to be strict enforcement or effective auditing. Without those elements, savings are not likely to materialize.”

In general, these suggestions do make sense. Green projects should be audited and if something is wrong with the design, that information needs to circulate back to the architect so they can learn from their mistakes. Flexibility often has beneficial results (though I don’t know I’d go so far as to change state policy on that front). And there should be some level of accountability for projects or team members that don’t meet their goals.

Now, how do you think we should do this? I’ve heard that rough times (ie the past year, anyone?) are the best times to make sweeping changes to the way we work. But I find it hard to imagine legislators moving on requiring audits or some level of accountability in green building at any point in the near future.

Ignoring the study’s flakiness, is the Washington Policy Center right with their three suggestions? In a perfect world, what would you want to see? What is the best way to ensure that green buildings are living up to their planned predictions?

In case you missed it, I wrote a story in yesterday’s DJC about how Intracorp Marketing & Sales had been hired by Bank of America to finish and sell the remaining 17 properties at Ashworth Cottages. Ashworth Cottages, Seattle’s first LEED platinum housing project, went into foreclosure in August.

Last May, I wrote a post about what went wrong at Ashworth here and it has been one of my most popular

Image courtesy Intracorp

posts ever since. Most commenters said the prime problem was houses were simply priced too high. Judging by how they’re being snapped up now, you were right.

When the homes came on the market, they were priced between $739,000 and $950,000. Today, they are priced between $399,000 and $649,000. Of the original 20 homes, 17 went into foreclosure. Since those 17 homes went on the market in a soft opening last week, eight of them have received purchase and sale agreements as of Wednesday, according to Jeff Smallwood of Intracorp.

In the article, I reference a few of your comments that said the price point was too high, even if they were LEED platinum. I wish I could have referenced more comments; they were so varied and insightful.

Today, Smallwood said the homes are probably selling at a little below market value and that the LEED features are mentioned by every buyer so far. But what does this say about green, expensive projects? While Ashworth is the prime example because it has had such a public story told, it’s not the only one. A number of super green expensive projects - haven’t sold. Or are being used for different purposes by the developer.

In my original Ashworth post, Anne Whitacre had a great comment that developers may expect green buyers to pay more because their utility bills will be lower over the life of a building. But if people don’t expect to stay in a building for years, then they can’t really take that value into account. This is why institutions, schools and nonprofits are often more likely than private developers to jump on the green bandwagon.

A few other commenters said they had been excited and interested in Ashworth but the price tag was just too much. How much of a premium would you pay for a super green house? Five percent? Ten percent? Nothing?

Similarly, if my price range is $950,000 I have a lot of options.  I could buy a great, old house with a lot of character for $650,000 (especially in today’s market) and then spend $300,000 rehabbing it with super green features. For that much money, I could make a lot of green improvements that were functional and tailored to what I wanted AND I would be saving and improving an old structure, rather than sending whatever originally existed to the dump. Even if you recycle the majority of your construction waste, some of it still ends up being tossed.

A number of green builders believe that the market is ready to pay more for green projects and a number of studies support this to different variations. (There’s this study on local green certified homes, this study on national commercial buildings and this one on four local examples).

But in today’s economy, where is the line drawn? How much more are people willing to pay if they’re willing to pay more at all? And would this be a different situation in a better economy?

I’d love to hear your thoughts, your response to Ashworth’s situation and anything you know about other high priced green projects that haven’t sold or have been in a similar situation.

Last week, I attended a Town Hall lecture by David Owen, a columnist at the New Yorker and author of the book ‘Green Metropolis.’

Owen spoke about his own experience of living in both Manhattan and in the countryside, and about which is greener (cities because people have everything they need at their fingertips).

But he also said something striking: that big, tall buildings in cities are actually the greenest projects we

Inherently green?

have, not projects that are LEED certified. High-rises get lots of people working in one space. That gets lots of people living nearby and walking between the two. The effects of this and the concentration of people, he said, is far, far greener than a LEED certified project in the middle of nowhere (though he didn’t mention if it were greener than a LEED certified high-rise in the city). The premise touches on one of the main problems of LEED: that it only looks at pieces instead of the whole.

For example, Owen discussed Sprint’s (now Sprint Nextel) headquarters outside of Kansas City, Mo. The corporate campus, he said, consists of 15,000 employees spread among a 50 building low-rise campus. The space also has 15 parking lots and an underground parking garage, providing one parking space per worker because everyone has to drive to the headquarters in the middle of nowhere. Though the campus was planned before LEED came out, one of the buildings at the site ended up receiving LEED certification. The space also preserves 200 acres of property as open space.  How is this a greener situation, he asked, then simply letting the farmland be that had previously existed?

He argued that setting up a business in a location that requires car travel is not green, even if the buildings are certified as such.

Should buildings in the middle of nowhere receive LEED certification? And should organizations that are about sustainability - like the Rocky Mountain Institute and its headquarters in Snowmass, Colo. - be held to a higher level of accountability and locate in a dense area? Or is there value to having great environmentally friendly buildings in the wilderness?

I suppose it comes down to what you prioritize and what you think the future of cities and urban planning is.

In this economy as well, it’s worth noting that cities across the nation have vacant high-rise buildings that currently are not at capacity, and are likely wasting large amounts of energy.

What do you think? Is Owen right on or way off base? If Owen is right - and the greenest project is in a city be it LEED certified or not is a high-rise - than should LEED reflect this in its rating system and how so?

Incidentally, his book also argues that New York City is the greenest city in the world. That seemed to touch an interesting nerve at Portland’s The Environmental Blog here.

Yesterday’s New York Times has a great overview on the the elephant in LEED’s room. The story, “Some Buildings Not Living Up to Green Label,” by Mireya Navarro, discusses how many buildings aren’t as efficient as they were planned to be, or should be.

It’s a good overview for those who don’t already live the problems and issues discussed in it. Though the article discusses a very valid question, I don’t know that it’s really fair, considering the

Should your building get retested?

USGBC did not even require a LEED building be more energy efficient than a standard building until June of 2007. Plus, both the main building cited in the article and the study of 121 buildings mentioned in it looked at buildings certified through 2006. (Doing a similar study looking at buildings designed and built since then would be fascinating but I digress.)

Anyhow, what I find most interesting is the last line of the story where Scot Horst of the USGBC says LEED may eventually move towards the EPA’s Energy Star Model where buildings must attain the label each year in order to keep it. “Ultimately, where we want to be is, once you’re performing at a certain level, you continue to be recertified,” he said.

This raises two main questions in my mind. First, if that’s where the USGBC wants to be, why isn’t it there now? LEED 2009 has some major changes in it, but it will be another couple years until the next version is released. I understand that LEED is still a growing tool (and money-maker) but if this is really the way it will be in the end, why not just bite the bullet and figure out a way to incorporate the goal now? The Living Building Challenge had some pretty audacious goals as a part of its first incarnation. Why can’t LEED make these changes now?

Which brings me to my other main question. Is the idea of making LEED something that can be rescinded even realistic? While there is no denying that it would be valuable to require LEED buildings be tested every year to retain their certification, LEED is an investment and an expensive one at that. Would it become a less attractive investment from a business perspective if your pretty little plaque could disappear due to let’s say a crummy building manager?… or to a changing system? What if further versions of LEED required changes that you simply couldn’t add on to a building. Would you be penalized and lose your certification because you, or the person you bought a building from, didn’t make a significantly different decision in design?

Maybe commissioning should become a required part of LEED. But that also adds costs to a project.

What do you think?

This is a guest post by Dave Bennink, owner of Re-Use Consulting.

I recently was asked to speak at the California Resource Recovery Association Conference in Palm Springs.  I know, Palm Springs, it sounds like a vacation, but the high for each day was 112 degrees.  Anyway, this year’s theme was ‘zero-waste’.  The CRRA had asked me to discuss building deconstruction in the context of it helping to achieve zero waste goals in many California cities.  It caused me to pause and think about what zero waste means and how to achieve it.  I came up with a couple of interesting points.

Betraying the mission:

Some of the projects that I have been involved with or have read about that have strived for zero-waste or very high diversion rates may have succeeded in doing so, but at what cost?  It may have taken weeks to accomplish and cost much more than demolition.  Therefore, even though the project stands as an example of what is possible, the general public may see this as confirming their belief that building deconstruction (and perhaps other green building methods) cost too much and take too long. 

Looking at this another way, we see that the single project may divert 70 tons from the landfill during

Is this going to a site or from one?

its 3.6 week schedule.  A less agressive approach that we frequently follow would divert 60 tons in 1.2 weeks or 180 tons during the same 3.6 week schedule.  So, in the end, who is closer to zero-waste? 

There are different ways to achieve zero-waste, by achieving zero-waste on one project and building off of that and using it as a bar that others can reach, or to achieve high-diversion on 10 projects at a cost-competitive price and time-sensitive schedule.  In the end, we really do need the zero-waste projects to push us forward, we just need them to admit that we still have a ways to go before achieving zero-waste on a regular basis. 

Designing for disassembly:

When planning our presentation, we reviewed past projects that we had completed and sent the materials in three directions: reuse, recycling and disposal.  Our focus was on how we could have eliminated the disposal category on projects performed in the ‘real world’.  Our conclusion was that if we design waste into a structure, it is not surprising that we get waste out of projects. 

Designing for disassembly is a movement in architecture to admit that their structures will likely not live out their entire lifespan and that when the building is removed someday in the future, the materials that make up that structure will be worth harvesting and that the design should favor this disassembly.  The more fasteners, ADHESIVES, and other waste producing or labor consuming building systems that are battled when the building is taken apart, the more unlikely that deconstruction will be a viable choice for building removal. 

Having deconstructed 500 structures in the last 16 years, RE-USE Consulting has gained a unique perspective on this problem and is moving ahead with its own solutions to be applied to today’s buildings.  We hope that tomorrow’s buildings will be made of reusable panels that can be reused and are perhaps constructed on multiples of 16″ or 24″, floating floor panels, paneling set in channels with fewer fasteners, and well thought out use of adhesives.  

I have seen what zero waste looks like.  It is an amazing thing.  Imagine a job site where the building was removed and the stacks of materials sitting on the ground confuse the passer-by.  Is a building about to be built, or did it just come down? 

Should we focus first on zero-waste, or should we focus on increasing the percentage of materials that are diverted for reuse?  In the end, the reuse of materials can be many times better than simply recycling them due to the preservation of energy, job creation associated with it, and from resource conservation.

On Thursday, the DJC published an article I wrote on a new report that says codes are getting in the way of cutting edge green buildings. This, in itself, is really nothing new.  Last August, I wrote this article about the city’s Priority Green program. In it, DPD’s Peter Dobrovolny (whose last name is almost as difficult as mine!) said many projects consider innovative ideas but drop them when they realize how much extra time it will take under city code. However, having the problems and possible solutions written down in an actual report - well that is new.

However, the report. Is. Huge. If you dare to read it, click here . It manages to be very

The Rubik's Cube of codes

comprehensive and vague at the same time. It is comprehensive in that it studies code barriers across the country, identifies problems and makes recommendations. But because it is dealing with national issues, some of the solutions are vague in their range. For example, one solution is to “identify and address regulatory impediments to green building and development” while another is to “create incentives matched with desired goals.”

I spoke with one of the study’s primary authors, David Eisenberg of the Development Center for Appropriate Technology, this week. Essentially, he said codes are built incorrectly in that they are hundreds of ad hoc responses to problems. Codes, he said, should instead be built comprehensively to support a specific kind of development or project. Basically, he said the entire system needs to be rebuilt.

Ouch.

In Seattle, it can take months or years for changes (especially large ones) to occurr. Can you imagine what it would take to wipe out all the city departments responsible for allowing development to get built… and then to rework the system from scratch? 

Eisenberg said he realizes that what he’s asking might be impossible. But even if it is impossible, by voicing the idea, he hopes to get people talking about it. Everyone - he said - whether it’s greenies or permitting people or anyone really - wants healthy buildings. And our current code system does not encourage healthy buildings because it pawns risks relating to climate change and environmental degradation off on future generations.

What do you think about all of this, dear readers? Is there any possibility that our overall codes could be reworked and if so, what would you want them to encourage? Here in Seattle (where we are pretty progressive in environmental issues, at least compared with some parts of the country) do we even need to be considering reworking the system or do we need to tweak it? If you could totally rework one code or issue, what would it be?

This may seem strange but I basically grew up in a Starbucks store. Not literally, of course. But it’s been a fixture in my life from childhood to teenagerdom to adulthood.

Sarbucks' older design at Green Lake

My earliest memory of the now-global-chain is awaiting my cherry Danish pastry (sadly, no longer the same amazing recipe) at a Northgate location on special treat days before school when I was somewhere around age six. Mom would get a vanilla latte and I’d feel like the luckiest kid in the classroom.

Then, as a teenager, I liked to visit local coffee houses (many of which are now defunct) to study or socialize. But whenever I didn’t feel like driving to Capitol Hill for Bauhaus, Charlie’s or Cafe Septieme, I ended up in one place near my home: the University Village Starbucks.

On a cool summer evening, there was nothing better. Back in the good ol’ days, it was open until midnight and you could while the hour’s away over one venti latte. Since then, my relationship with the chain has varied. But needless to say, I knew the old Starbucks store well.

Starbucks\' new store design at the University Village

I say the old Starbucks store because Starbucks recently unveiled the new store. And man, are things different!

In place of standard walls and windows are movable glass walls that allow air to naturally ventilate the space and daylight to come in. In place of the blocky displays in the middle of the space and separated cafe area, is one big place with community tables, dark nooks and barista bars.

It’s funny but sometimes, a place has to change before you realize how outdated it was. When I visited the original store, it was just the store. But now, it seems to have been a very 1990s incarnation of the coffee house. Passing by the Green Lake location yesterday, I found myself comparing the store to the new location and imagining how much nicer it would be if the walls peeled back to allow total views of the lake. 

The interior of the new store

The new University Village store is sleek. It’s kind of sexy. It’s modern. And it’s got sustainable features. It’s got LED and CFL lighting, energy efficient hand driers, and water efficient features like dual flush toilets that will save 1,000 gallons of water per day. During construction, teams diverted 80 percent of construction waste from the landfill.

(Of course that still means 20 percent of construction material ended up in the landfill. Is a new design really worth the waste?)

The community table was repurposed from a fallen ash tree in Wallingford

The store’s biggest sustainability focus is in sourcing, reusing and recycling local materials. These materials in the store include slate from Garfield High School, redwood siding from hop vine poles in Eastern Washington, merbau wood from existing buildings, scrap leather from car and shoe factories, burlap coffee bags from a Starbucks roasting plant, Douglas fir from school bleachers and metal from old espresso machines.

It’s all part of the company’s goal to make Starbucks relevant to its community, and to turn it into a customer’s “third place” (if you just said third what? click here). Will it work? Will it be enough to lure you in? Should Starbucks be doing more or is this a good start? Did the space need to be redesigned in the first place or would it have been greener to have just stuck with what was there? Feel free to share your opinion, comments or personal memories below. I’d love to hear if you, like me, grew up in a Starbucks or if you didn’t hear about it until you were 45.

The design is only one element of what Starbucks is trying to do as part of its Shared Planet Strategy. For more information on that, go here.

For more information on Starbucks’ new design concept or the sustainability features of the store, read the story in the DJC.

An interior bar at UV that is dedicated to showcasing small batch coffee, and its stories

Have you ever watched Extreme Makeover: Home Edition and thought to yourself, “Wow. That TV show sure is using a lot of resources. That aren’t green. Or environmentally friendly?”

Well, ReGeneration Productions is aiming to create a reality television show for you, dear reader. It’s called Sustain the Rain and it’s being billed as “Seattle’s first sustainability

Rose Thornton

makeover television show.”

Doesn’t sound like your cup of TV? Maybe you’re just imagining this from the wrong side of the fence. It turns out the TV show, which is the brainchild of Rose Thornton, pictured at right, is also seeking a host for the show and expert consultants.

Here is what the show is looking for: a green business consultant, a green transportation consultant, a green chef/food consultant, a green interior home consultant, a green exterior home consultant, a Pacific Northwest outdoors consultant and a green personal care consultant.

Everyone involved in the show must be well connected to Seattle’s environmental community, able to donate evening and weekend time during a pilot shoot this July and August, comfortable in front of a camera and passionate about the environment.

Sound like you? Then you need to e-mail Rose at rosecthornton@gmail.com to receive an extended list of qualifications. You also need to sign up to audition for a part. Auditions are this Saturday between 10:30 a.m. and 3 p.m. in the meeting room of the Greenwood Branch of Seattle Public Library, 8016 Greenwood Ave. N. Audition time slots last 15 minutes. Those auditioning for consultant spots must prepare a two to five minute description of how to “make-over” a lifestyle choice in your area of expertise.

Here’s to being a green movie star!

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!

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.