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.

Tomorrow and Saturday, Martha Rose (the “queen of green”) will be hosting wine and cheese parties at her

Martha Rose at the development site

newest development, Fish Singer Place. The event features a behind the walls tour. It runs from 2-4 p.m. on Friday and from 12 p.m. to 4 p.m. on Saturday. To attend, meet up at 15715 Dayton Ave. N., Shoreline Wa. 98133.

To watch a video about the project (with a really catchy song), click here. To learn more about the project, visit the project Web site here or click the tab ‘green developers’ below to learn more about this project.

I’ve had a few interesting articles in the DJC this week. If you’re not a subscriber, you’ve been missing out!

First, an article published on Monday discussed what local green contractor Martha Rose had to do to get financing for her latest 4-home project. Turns out she had to fund part of the project herself and educate (many, many) bankers on just how sustainable a builder she is. (Rose believes in continually improving her green credentials. Her latest projects employs a number of Passive House techniques and is striving to be a net zero development). That story was carried by the AP - so anyone can read it, even if you don’t have a subscription. The story is located here at The Tacoma News Tribune and here at The Seattle PI (who do you want to give your advertising dollars to?)

Second, an article I wrote appeared in yesterday’s (Jan. 5) edition regarding the first straw bale structure in Seattle to receive a permit. The project was completed last fall and was built by the community via a number of different work parties. As part of my reporting, I visited the home addition, which has a bedroom in it. The space was beautiful but what struck me most about the space was how different it feels… it somehow seems more safe and secure than your stick built home (likely thanks to the walls that are around 20 inches thick!) It also is extremely, extremely quiet… and comforting.

Have you been in a straw bale house? What was your experience?

There were a number of photos I didn’t get to include in the story so I’m including them below for your enjoyment:

An outside view of the edition

An inside view

A small window showing the staw behind the wall (and some cute, lil animals)

Architect Sage K. Saskill and home owner Brenda Abjour

Interior view of the window without people in it

Third, also in the Jan. 5 edition, I wrote a story about Art Stable, a new development in the Cascade neighborhood of South Lake Union. More on this later but the team is using an innovative combination geothermal and piling technique, which allows the system to make sense financially. Fun stuff!

Apparently, Living Future has a theme of people taking their shirts off. Last year it was Sim Van der Ryn. This year it’s the people introducing the 15 Minutes of Brilliance (though to be fair they said they were just getting more casual and only stripped to their t-shirts under dress shirts).

(By the way, the audience is whoot-whooting like in the Arsenio Hall show….)

So 15 minutes of Brilliance lets a few pre-chosen teams to get up and share their brilliant ideas in 10 minutes or less. Excuse me if the below information is a tad fragmented. 

The first item was presented by Geof Syphers, chief sustainability officer of Codding

The Sonoma Mountain Village site plan

Enterprises and Greg Searle of BioRegional. Syphers is helping to redevelop Sonoma Mountain Village, a 200-acre factory site in California into an urban neighborhood that will be leed nd, leed platinum and will meet the OnePlanet sustainable criteria. The project is 100 percent solar powered. The team is regrinding 40,000 tons of asphalt to recreate roads. It has a biodiesel factory. What’s brilliant, Sypher said is looking at the impacts of a project through this tool,  we have to set impact design goals for projects, and we have to measure the end impacts of projects. “Leed platinum isn’t always better than LEED silver,” he said… but this tool will help get projects greener.

Aurora Mahassine of Habitile The Hanging Gardens went second. She said we need to re-think what our home is, what we value as a society and our connectivity with the Earth systems we evolved with. She said we need more curves, holes and places for life to happen in our landscape. Quote of the day? “fertility begins with a hole.” If we keep telling ourselves stories of an apocaypse, she said, we will get there but if we re-embrace gardens with our hands, touch life and reinsert ourselves into the natural lifecycle, our future won’t be an apocalypse. Reintegrating ourselves. Habitile itself create vertical modular living systems that become a living wall. 

Jim Estes of Inhabitability dicussed the Greensburg Living Building Challenge Competition. Two years ago, a tornado decimated Greensburg, Kansas. As they recovered they

Greensburg after the tornado

decided there had to be a better way, so each new structure is being developed to LEED platinum. The city has a new sustinable recovery plan to make the city into a sustainable pioneering center. Greensburg Green Town is developing a series of green houses so people can test drive them. Greensburg is currently forming a new partnership with Cascadia to create affordable homes. It will host a contest for teens to design, build and create affordable homes that meet the Living Building Challenge. Greensburg is offering no ordinance roadblocks for water, netzero energy etc. Teens from different locales can enter.  They hope to launch the competition in the fall. At every item this will be presented to the media (ahem).

The fourth idea was presented by Bryony Schwan, executive director of the Biomimicry Guild. Scwan said if we could use biomimicry to create change in the built environment, we could effect real change to help prevent climate change. Animals, she said, do more with less while humans problem solve in a completely different way. For example, she said, we thought until recently that flat surfaces were easier to clean. But we looked at lotuses, which had tiny rivets that allowed water to roll off the leaf and clean it. The guild is hosting the Green Building Design Challenge, to look at the connections between design and nature. There are three parts to this challenge: on Wednseday, the guild hosted a design charette to tackle the problem. Now, the challenge will be available online for comment and the third part will be taking designs to market. The challenge will be at asknature.org.

Sara Garrett, director of the Motivespace Coalition spoke about community asset funds and growing community space. Motivespace asks how space can motivate change through community asset funds. The first step in developing a fund is is to stay positive. The second is to support each other. The third is to know your value. The fourth is to cooperate. No one person or gorup could build a thriving community asset fund alone, Garrett said. Because time is money, neighbors can work together to get projects done, bank extra hours and use the extra time they’ve banked for yard work, neighborhood massages or other work. In this system, any person can seed a project and the best projects will rise to the top and draw the neighbor’s assets and skills. 

….. and that’s it!

Bright and early this morning (7:30 a.m.) I boarded a Seattle train bound for Portland so I could attend Wednesday’s Living Future site tour (the first official part of the Living Future Conference) and share the results with you. Though I may be hitting the sack a little early tonight, the results did not disappoint.

There were three tours being held. I attended the one at Portland State University’s Shattuck Hall, a building that was originally built in 1915 and recently underwent a ginormous renovation, both functionally and sustainably.

The building itself houses the school’s architecture program, so one of the goals of the renovation was to make the building itself a teaching tool. Hence it features things like exposed piping and systems and exposed radiant ceiling panels. The visibility of systems changes from floor to floor, with the top being the most obvious and open.

Having written about the Vance Building earlier this week for the DJC, I noticed a lot of similarities. Both were built early in the century, and both recently underwent massive improvements on tight budgets. The differences in what the two decided to concentrate on though, especially having toured both buildings, were really interesting.

I took some amazing photos, which my (old) computer is unfortunately not letting me load. I promise to post them as soon as I feasibly can. I’ll also try to add more information about Shattuck Hall at a later date.

Stay tuned: tonight’s keynote speaker is Janine Benyus!

This week, I covered the giant new Thornton Place develoment next to Northgate in the DJC here.

The nine-building project is 109 condos, 278 apartments, 50,000-square-feet of retail and restaurant space and a 14-screen movie theatre with two IMAX theatres. There’s a 143-unit senior living center on the site called Aljoya, developed by Era Living, and a large portion of Thornton Creek that has been daylighted by Seattle Public Utilities.

It’s targeting LEED silver certification under LEED for Neighborhood Development. Its buildings are also shooting for separate LEED NC silver certification. Green features include easy access to transit, project walkability, water efficient and energy efficicient features, and extensive daylighting. For more info, see its Web site here.

The story got a lot of press - in the DJC, the Stranger, and the Seattle Condo Blog, for example - so if you want more info on it, you can read about it there. I’ll get straight to the photos.

A view of the piazza. Developers say they need to do something with this roof, though they aren\'t sure what!

An inside view of a condo unit.

The area where Thornton Creek will flow.

View of the park-and-ride from inside an apartment unit.

Era Living\'s Aljoya project

An inner pathway.

Obvious headline, I know, but it had to be done.

Yesterday, I received an e-mail from the USGBC announcing that the Olympic Village in Beijing that houses 17,000 athletes (at left) had been certified gold under leed for neighborhood development, and is the first international project to be certified under that program.

And I thought finally! Enough with Michael Phelps, let’s learn about some buildings! (Sarcasm. Partially….) Unfortunately, the USGBC doesn’t say much about the green features of the space so I have to rely on other sources.  The Environment News Service says it uses solar cells, geothermal heat pumps, solar heat, solar hot water, solar thermoelectric cogeneration and intelligent control devices.

The announcement, however, seems to be drawing its bit of attention. On the Archinect site, the comments are particularly vehement with one commenter named Apurimac stating, “Show me a development in the states at that scale with a LEED gold rating and I’ll eat my hair.”

I am interested in seeing how the Beijing village will compare with the Olympic Village in Vancouver, B.C. for the 2010 Winter Olympics. I attended a forum put on by the Network for Business Innovation & Sustainability in February and based on that, there’s certainly going to be some competition.

Vancouver’s got two villages - one in the city proper in the Southeast False Creek area (in the yellow rectangle in the picture at right) that is already billing itself as a model in sustainability, and one in Whistler. The Southeast False Creek village is planning on using many of the same devices as Beijing including intelligent control devices and nifty solar technology.

To see a video on the villages, click here. To learn more about the details of the Vancouver villages, click here.

Vancouver calls its villages sustainable because, like the Beijing project, they will be lived in after the Olympics are done. The Southeast False Creek project also considers itself sustainable because it is creating a mixed-use, walkable neighborhood on a historic industrial site. The details are much too much to include in this posting, but I’ll keep you updated as it moves along. It should be fascinating to watch. To see the original sustainability goals for the Southeast Village, click here. To see how it was updated this July, click here.

Of course, like Apurimac’s comments show, many would question whether a project of this size should be considered sustainable at all. But that’s a question for another day.  

Is anyone else out there waiting to make the comparison? Is the Vancouver project going to be more sustainable just because it will be able to benefit from green technology improvements in the next couple years? I, for one, will be waiting to find out.

For more on the comparison, check out Basil and Spice here. For more photos on the Beijing Olympic Village, visit Inhabitat here, or check out Curbed San Francisco for more here. More on the Vancouver Olympic village here.

Beijing village photo courtesy of the official Web site of the Beijing Olympics. Vancouver picture courtesy of Vanoc.

Green building is fairly new, so naturally there are a lot of questions about it. But somehow, amidst the excitement of pursuing new technologies and arguing about what works and what doesn’t, it seems a fundamental question has been left in the dust…. is green building dangerous?

Like any good question, it can be answered with another question: dangerous to whom? Dangerous to the developer, the inhabitant, the team members, the insurer, or to the economy? That answer, dear reader, is a mixed bag.

Now, I’ve most likely caused a number of you to see red by even suggesting that green could be dangerous. But remember that other cultural innovations through history - the atomic bomb and nuclear energy to name a few - have been viewed at times with the frenzied level of expected salvation that green building and green products have recently encountered.

Obviously, green building isn’t about to physically blow up and kill people, so it’s not “dangerous” in that way. Theoretically at least, it might even be increasing people’s life spans by taking harmful chemicals out of buildings like volatile organic compounds.

But remember, green building is just a kid. And kids grow up into amazing - or horrifying - adults. What happens when green building suddenly spawns a spate of lawsuits (which local LEED certified lawyers assure me will happen, the only question is when). What happens when someone discovers a green building sacred cow does more harm than good (biofuels anyone?) What happens when the greenest greenie we know inevitable turns out to be clear cutting Amazon forests in their backyard?

Will the increasing green momentum implode or is green building and the ideals behind it stronger than that? It probably depends who you’re asking.

A while back I spoke with an indoor air quality expert who said he’s been in green buildings - LEED, Built Green, etc - that had such bad indoor air quality the house was effectively poisoning the people that lived in it.  While it’s (hopefully) an anomaly, what if it isn’t?

If we look at the legal aspects of green alone, the trial has just begun. I wrote a story in February here about the legal issues facing green buildings. Just getting information for the one article was excruciating because there just isn’t that much information, or people willing, to talk about the subject. In the past few months however, I’ve heard more and more people saying that green developers need to protect themselves in contracts against possible green building issues. Green building, they say, is a whole new ball game. And many clients aren’t aware of what they could be doing for protection. For more on this issue, check out the excellent green liability subject on greenbuildings NYC, especially this post.

So is green building dangerous? You know as well as I there is no answer to that right now. But it’s still a question that can be raised, and often isn’t. If you’ve heard it raised before in any printed form, please comment below to tell me about it, or just tell me what you think.

 I suppose even if there were an answer, it could be answered by yet another: if green building is dangerous, does the good it does outweigh the danger?

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…)

What’s the greenest kind of new building, you might ask? For many people here in the Pacific Northwest, that answer would be ‘a living building’.’

What’s that you say? A building doesn’t live; it exists! People live!

That’s the way buildings are thought of now, but the whole premise behind a living building is to change that idea to make a building function - (skeptics don’t roll your eyes yet) - like a flower that gives and takes from its environment. (more here).  Living buildings are self sustaining. They produce their own energy, treat their waste and reuse water, among other bits.

Developed by Jason McLennan of the Cascadia Green Building Council, I wrote one of the first stories about the green guideline in April 2007 here.

Only problem is, there aren’t many of them out there yet.

There are a handful of them however, and one is being developed by the Alice Ferguson Foundation in Accokeek, Md.  (more…)