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.

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!

In today’s marketplace, so many things claim to be “green” that it can be really, really tough to decipher what’s green and what’s greenwashing. Sometimes, green measures even conflict with each other.

Apparently, that’s the case with LEED and Green Globes, at least in Washington State. Green Globes,

Green certifications duke it out!

administered in the U.S. by the Green Building Initiative, is a green building certification that I have only come across a few times in my travels. LEED is by far and without question the more prominent certification of the two.

However, LEED’s prominence is due in large part to its inclusion in state and city government incentives and requirements. For example, Washington State requires major buildings meet LEED silver or higher to receive public funding. Seattle requires developers meet at least LEED silver to receive a density bonus. Those requirements have gone a long way towards making Washington a leader in its number of LEED certified buildings, and LEED projects on the board.

Senate Bill 5384 would change the state mandated requirements by adding the Green Globes standard as an alternative to LEED silver.

Now, it might surprise some to learn that Cascadia, the region’s go-to organization for green building, is lobbying hard against this. But then again Cascadia is part of the U.S. Green Building Council and the U.S. Green Building Council created LEED, so it stands to reason that it would support LEED certification. The bill is also opposed by the Washington Environmental Council and the Washington Conservation Voters, which represents many different environmental organization statewide.

An advocacy e-mail appeared in my in-box today asking readers to call state legislators to make sure

A truly green globe

Green Globes is not included in state law as an alternative to LEED. The e-mail says “Green Globes was created by the timber and chemical lobbies as a much weaker alternative to LEED,” and that it is untested, funded by industry and requires no third party verification. 

I don’t know enough about Green Globes to report on whether any of the above allegations are true. I know board members of GBI represent a number of different interests from universities to business. I know a number of industry organizations heavily support their initiatives (though to be fair, industry also supports USGBC).

I also know the actual bill, available here, has a piece in it stating all major projects receiving state funds that are four stories or under must use wood and wood products as building materials in them. Not sure how that fits into the point of the bill and it seems a little odd to me but make of it what you will.

If you’re interested in this topic, Architect Online has an excellent rundown of the two systems by Christopher Swope here that I highly suggest reading. Swope points out that LEED could benefit from a bit of competition.

For still more information, visit GreenbuildingsNYC here.

What do you think? Is LEED too restrictive and is Green Globes the way to go? Is Green Globes a less strict certification? Weigh in by commenting below!

This week, I attended a conference hosted by The Seminar Group on sustainable development and green buildings. Among many interesting topics, one theme kept coming up over and over again: if we want green buildings and other parts of sustainability to catch on, we need to change the market.

Is consumerism the answer to a new society?

Hmmm. How to do that.

Susan Drummond of Foster Pepper said it comes down to how we make our money. Many industries, she said, make money on the idea of more. As a lawyer, she bills by the hour to make more. Utilities make more the more power they make. A developer makes more with more projects, as does a contractor.

But the production of more, she said, itself depends on the supply of natural capital, or those natural aspects we make money off of… like oil, or trees or vegetables. She said that frontier of natural capital is closing. And if it is closing, businesses need to adapt and create new, sustainable models of working.

But there are different interests - from transportation to land use to renewable energy - that need to be addressed. Together, they resemble a herd of cats. And how do you herd cats, she asked? By moving their food. So business needs to look at strategies that move the food bowl. (This is what the entire conference was about. Moving the bowl in looking at new strategies for transportation, land use etc.)

Later in the conference the idea of a changing market came up again when, A-P Hurd, a vice president of local developer Touchstone, spoke. One problem with the local market, she said, is essentially that things are too cheap. Water is cheap. Energy is cheap. And if they are cheap, there’s not much of an incentive to save it.

“We are going to have to, at the very least, reflect the cost of providing these things to the people, ” she said. “If the market is going to find the ability to innovate, it is going to need to find a way to get a payback on that innovation.”  

It sounds complex. But Drummond said it really comes down to one thing:

“Frankly, all we are doing is changing how we shop,” she said. That applies to your home, your food, your car. Instead of asking what’s in it for me, we need to expand our view and ask ‘what’s in it for humanity?’  

Is that really all it is? Changing how we shop? Can the market be transformed by thoughtful consumerism? And if so, how do you harness that change…..

What do you think?

This week, I wrote an article in the DJC on Bellevue Towers, its developer, Gerding Edlen, and what the project represents for Bellevue.

Bellevue Towers is a two-tower luxury condo project with 539 units. According to

Bellevue Towers

Mike Brennan, director of Bellevue’s Development Services Department, it is the most prominent green building in Bellevue and the first multifamily high-rise that has gone for LEED certification in the city. It is targeting LEED gold and is supposedly the largest LEED-certified residential project in the Northwest, according to press materials. It is also the first project Gerding Edlen has done in the Puget Sound region.

That’s a lot of firsts. I’m wondering what this means for Bellevue.

Bellevue tends to have a mixed reputation when it comes to green buildings. In my wanderings, I’ve heard about city codes that make it difficult for projects to do low impact development, and green techniques that relate to stormwater. I’ve also heard disappointed reactions that the city wasn’t more receptive to green building earlier.  (For a reaction on how Bellevue has been MIA, see the comments to a previous post regarding Kirkland here.)

But I wonder if that is changing.

Bellevue is the first city in the Puget Sound region to have a Gerding Edlen development. Gerding Edlen, Portland’s premier green developer, is known internationally for its work. I’m sure Seattle and other cities would have appreciated one of its projects.

Phil Beyl, principal in charge of Bellevue Towers with architect GBD, said the city welcomed aggressive sustainable techniques “with open arms.” Working on this project was exciting for him, precisely because he felt like he was bringing something new to the city: “We’ve been able to bring to Bellevue an elevated level of sustainability that now I think has raised the bar quite a bit higher… and that’s very exciting.”

Brennan said Bellevue is hoping this building will serve as an example and bring other green development to the city (though he also was unsure whether it actually would or not).

Incidentally, there are only two LEED certified buildings in Bellevue, according to the USGBC’s registry. But there are 24 that are registered. Then again, some of the projects that are awaiting certification like the Mercer Slough Environmental Education Center (wrote about it a year ago here in the DJC) are pretty darn interesting. 

Then there’s my own experience with people that read this blog.

I like to track where blog readers come from, and believe me, there’s been a dramatic shift. Last summer, I was surprised by how little readers I had from Bellevue (one here and there but virtually none). I even e-mailed certain city representatives to get them to read, but readers from Bellevue remained flat.

In the last two months, something changed. Now, Bellevue is consistently the third rated city, in cities that read this blog. (Behind Seattle, and then either Portland or New York, depending on the day.)

What the heck is going on?

Did something shift or did a whole lot of people from Bellevue start reading this blog for no reason? Was it the economy? Was it the change in presidents? I’m stumped.

What do you think? Is Bellevue getting - or going to be getting greener? Has anything changed or is this really just one LEED project? Comment below or answer my poll at right.

For more on Gerding Edlen, click the tab ‘Gerding Edlen’ below. Or check out SkyscraperCity and look under Bellevue Development or Bellevue Towers.

This week, I attended a panel discussion hosted by the Seattle Art Museum and by the Cascade Land Conservancy on how art, design and sustainability fit together. Lucia Athens, sustainable future strategist at CollinsWoerman, moderated the panel. Panelists were Tom Kundig of Olson Sundburg Kundig Allen Architects, Rebecca Luke, co-founder of the Sustainable Style Foundation and stylist, and Roy McMakin, Northwest artist.

The conversation twisted and turned around how sustainability intersects with art,

Sustainable home? Courtesy OSKA

style and architecture, but overall, all speakers said they wanted to create something that lasted. Whether it was art, a beautiful house, or a great dress, they said it was more sustainable to create or buy something you’d use forever, rather than something that you would dispose of in a year or a decade.

The problem with that is sustainability is so new it’s not always clear what is truly sustainable (for more on this, read a previous post here  or look under the tag ‘greenwashing’ below). And for art and outfits, fashions come in and out of style. Kundig summed it up nicely when he said: “Culturally, we don’t understand the decisions we’re making now and what their larger effects are… architects don’t know yet what is truly sustainable and what is not.”

Sustainabilty also means different things in different locations. In nature, it’s about being light on the land and letting nature be the focus. But in the city, he said it’s more about density. In either space, Kundig said there are many conspiring issues that must be balanced from land use to environmental concerns to planning. “How they’re resolved is what we hope is good architecture.”

I love attending discussions that bring different disciplines together, because you often get tossed out of your comfort zone.

Sustainable furniture? Courtesy Domestic Furniture Co.

Roy McMakin was an interesting voice to have in on the panel. One of the impediments to becoming more sustainable, he said, is the tension between individual rights and the common good. It’s hard to come together and agree something is best for everyone, he said, when this country is founded on the individual being able to do what they think is best for them.

Another point McMakin made is that honestly, we could have everything we talk about in panel discussions - from more art in public places to more sustainable infrastructure - if we just agreed to tax ourselves more and give more of our income to the common good. But realistically, how many people in Seattle would vote to do that? He has a point.

Luke pointed out that it’s important to have different disciplines sharing information

Sustainable clothing? Courtesy the sustainable style weblog

or working together on issues of sustainability, otherwise every industry ends up reinventing the wheel, which she said doesn’t need to happen. In her work with style, she said she tries to connect the experiences of different disciplines. 

Unfortunately, all of these things cost money and require some serious investments. Buying a great dress that will last for years? Pricey. Buying a house designed by OSKA that reflects and respects the local environment? Pricey. Buying furniture that is art, which will become a family heirloom? Pricey. Sustainability, it seems, does not come cheap.

I leave you with this quote from McMakin: “Sustainability is partly the idea that it’s not ephemeral, it’s used for a long time … but we’re humans. We do stuff. We have ideas … I’m an artist. I want to create stuff but how do you deal with the impacts of what you do?”

Now that the very last remnants of ’snowpocalypse’ are gone, I thought it would be a good time for the DJC Green Building Blog to ask “just what did we learn?”

(For those of you not in the Seattle area, a thick blanket of snow carpeted the Pacific Northwest for most of the past week and a half. In Seattle, this amounts to a once-every-15-years-event).

As a city there weren’t many surprises: we learned Seattle doesn’t really know how to deal with snow and local drivers understand how it works even less.

But as individuals did we connect to our immediate environments a little bit more? I did. I live in a very walkable neighborhood with a market, restaurants and a coffee shop all across the street. A little further away there’s a retail district and a movie theatre. I walk to these places constantly and use them frequently.

But here’s the thing: beind snowed in forced me to think about my local amenities differently. No longer did I have the choice to drive to the movie theatre. If I wanted to go, I had to walk. And if I wanted other entertainment not across the street, well I had to reconsider just how much I wanted that too. Was I willing to walk for it?

Cutting out the choices shifted my perspective. If city planners ever hope to make the car a defunct item, that’s the kind of space they’re going to need to create.

Apparently I wasn’t the only one who was thinking differently: all of my local restaurants were packed whenever I passed by them (even sushi.) People I know who never take the bus were doing it. Or walking to places they had never considered walking to.

The Seattle Times  reported on local retailers seeing big foot trafffic. Looking back on the week and a half, it was annoying, yes. But having Mother Nature limit my choices for me was also kind of nice.

Green building is about creating a structure that gives back to its community a little bit more than the standard product. But a green building in the middle of nowhere only does so much good. Sustainable living, on the other hand, is about creating a community that doesn’t just take but gives back. In a way, the snow made me give back more to my community because it forced me to interract even more with it.

There’s a kind of momentum there, if a city could only capture it. But how is it possible to capture a forced locality, if you will, and turn it into better urban planning? It seems like there’s a great opportunity there, if only someone would step up and find a way to take it.

This post is by Gary Nordeen of the Washington State University Extension Energy Program.

Do you really want this under your floor?

Essentially what it documented is when you have a vented crawlspace in a warm, humid climate the floor framing is prone to rot. In this climate, your house is often being mechanically cooled (which also cools the crawl space), warm, humid air enters the crawlspace through the vents and condenses on the cold framing members. Eventually the house may develop rot and mold problems. I agree in this climate scenario that closed crawlspaces are a great idea to maintain structural integrity. Also, if there are ducts in the crawl space, any duct losses are now contained inside the building. Note the radon differences between the two crawlspaces and keep in mind that Princeville, NC is considered a low risk radon location by EPA.

Since this construction method is catching on nationally, WSU Energy Program received funding to test houses in our state to determine if this is the way to go in the Pacific Northwest. Here is a description of the results from David Hales, Lead Researcher on this project:

nbec-logo-sq-3color

“We’ve recently completed research on sealed and vented crawlspaces in the Pacific Northwest. The results are not yet published but based on our experience with four homes in Vancouver and four in Moses Lake that we monitored for about 18 months, the sealed crawlspaces (without supply air but power vented to the outside) maintained very stable temperatures through the entire heating season in the 55 to 60 degree range. The crawl should be kept negative to the house. Based on tracer gas studies we found that in the typical vented crawl, approximately 40% of the house air came from the crawlspace in the winter. By power venting a sealed crawl (50 cfm 24/7 in 1000ft2) less than 6 percent of the house air came from the crawl. Because of higher dilution rates and additional factors radon levels at both sites were less than 2 piC/l in the vented crawls but at the same sites radon levels were from 12-16 piC/l (EPA states radon mitigation should happen when a house has radon levels of 4 picocuries per liter or higher) in the sealed crawls. From an energy standpoint there is a small penalty overall for the sealed crawl that gets worse if you actually add supply air to the space. If a cold floor is your primary concern, I would insulate the floor and not provide heat to the crawl. Over the life of the building this would be the most cost effective way to maintain a warm floor.

Based on this research we are preparing to make a recommendation to the Building Code Council that would allow conditioned crawls under some circumstances. However, in most areas of the Northwest they incur an energy penalty and an added expense that I don’t think is really justified. Some jurisdictions have been allowing them but a strict interpretation of the WA State Energy Code does not. I believe that if they are done they should be power vented to the exterior and should not have conditioned supply air directly introduced. I also think they should not use fiberglass batts for the perimeter wall insulation. Radon mitigation is a must.”

The power vented crawl may have an advantage from an IAQ perspective because as our testing showed, it is possible to substantially reverse the winter time stack effect and decouple the house from any contaminants that may be in the crawl. The problem with this is that it requires the continuous operation of an exhaust fan. If the fan fails and is not replaced, the IAQ may actually become worse because the air now entering the house does not benefit from the passive dilution that takes place in the vented crawl.

So it seems that from an energy efficiency and indoor air quality perspective unvented crawl spaces are not a benefit here but let’s not forget about the ducts. If you have ducts in a crawl space they leak - it’s just a matter of how much. Here’s a radical concept. Instead of moving your house around your ducts, why don’t you design your house with the ducts inside your house? Then duct leakage is not a problem. If you can’t get them inside your house make sure they are sealed well (with mastic, NOT duct tape) and test them with a DuctBlaster.
 
Finally, here is a statement we hear a lot: “I have a water problem in my crawl space so I’m going to seal it up and heat it.”  Fix the water problem or you will end up with a science project under your floor.

Readers, do you agree with Gary?

If you haven’t guessed by now, I really have fun with calculators. Yes, I know they aren’t always accurate. Yes, I know they often are designed to inflict guilt (and are

This is the water calculator!

often successful). Yes, I know they don’t always represent the entire picture…. But heck, they’re fun.

So today, my calculator of choice measures a “water footprint”. The calculator, presented by a New York-based project called H2O Conserve, asks you a number of questions. You answer and BAM! Your water use gets compared to that of the typical American, all accompanied by handy and sometimes cute graphics. My favorite is the one that accompanies the ‘I don’t brush my teeth’ answer. (Which I do, by the way. I just wanted to see the graphic….)

I am below the national average, but just barely at an individual water use of 1,072.20 gallons per day. Written out, that seems staggering.

The calculator also offers handy suggestions of how to decrease my water use, but some of them are just plain against my cultural habits. For example, it says I can save 10 or more gallons of water a day by not flushing the toilet and “letting it melow” instead.  Somehow I don’t think that would fly with my colleagues at work.

But some of the tips are also interesting. For example, the calculator says I can save water by getting an efficient dishwasher, rather than washing dishes by hand.

If you want to see how much water you use, click here. And if you missed it, click the tag ‘calculator’ below to find out what an ecological footprint is… and how you measure up!