What is the purpose of a new green building aesthetically? Should it look like every other energy hog on the block? Or should it look different to call attention to the fact that it’s special?

That’s what I’m wondering after your comments to the post below, regarding the new LEED platinum headquarters building for the U.S. Green Building Council. Holz says “it’s got no soul,” while a conversation between Nate and I revolved around the image that the USGBC is trying to project. Nate says “USGBCs goal seems to be to bring green to the mainstream, and thus it is not surprising that they wanted their office building to look like a traditional office building.”

But why go traditional when you can go exciting?

I don’t even work in the field and I can come up with a number of reasons. It’s less of a risk if you design something that looks like everything else. And while many people might think the idea of LEED is great, there are also people out there who think it’s a load of hogwash. And heck, if you’re standing in a standard-looking building, you’ve got to search out the single USGBC plaque and know what it means before realizing you’re in a green building. What percentage of the population would even recognize the seal if they saw it?

But if you’ve got a green building that’s obviously a green building from its architecture, who knows how it will be accepted? Who knows if people will like it, or if tenants will choose it over a more common counterpart. It’s also more obvious to nay-sayers that the people who developed the building - and use it- are committed to green practices (or at least want to appear that they are).

Then again, one has to assume that if you’re going to the USGBC’s offices, you know that the people you’re about to be speaking with are green-minded.

And if the envelope is never pushed, you won’t get buildings like this:

The roof of the LEED platinum California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco by Renzo Piano

or Nate’s favorite:

CK Choi Building for the Institute of Asian Reserach by Matsuzaki Architects

or possibly the first living building in the country….

The Omega Center for Sustainable Living by BNIM Architects

Or the LEED gold Environmental Protection Agency Region 8 headquarters in Denver. From the outside…

From the outside, designed by Zimmer Gunsul Frasca Architects

And from the inside

Though to be fair, all the above photos are of buildings for private institutions or agencies that don’t really have to worry about market forces.

What do you think? Should really green buildings look like everything else or do they need to look mainstream for reasons of marketability, etc.? Answer my poll at right or share your thoughts below.

And if I missed a great example of a green building that pushes the aesthetic envelope, please comment with a link to a photo of it…..

The U.S. Green Building Council sent out a press release this morning announcing that its headquarters in Washington, D.C., has been certified LEED platinum under the new version of LEED. It also sent out a whole powerpoint presentation of photos, which gave the viewer a pretty good idea of what the space looks like.

But before I show you the eye candy, please stop and take a moment to think about what you think the headquarters should look like. First, it is important to know that the USGBC is the creator of LEED, the environmental rating system which has produced some really innovative and exciting pieces of green architecture. So it stands to reason that their building should be the epitome of everything green that it possibly can. Second, it’s also important to understand the building’s context before you judge it. The office is 75,000 square feet that is divided between two floors and connected by an open staircase. It’s also in an urban area, so realistically, this building was going to look like an office building from the outside.

Here’s what Rick Fedrizzi said he wanted it to be: “The vision of the space was to exemplify everything a LEED building is: high-performing, resource-efficient, healthy and productive.”

Alright. Look at the photos below and tell me: did they suceed? Is this how you imagined it would look? If so, what did they get right? If not, what would you have done differently?

This is the exterior view. Rendering courtesy Envision Design

Entering the office... all photos by Eric Laignel

The stairway and conference area

A giant USGBC seal

Happy colorful cubicles

Colorful chairs and a flat screen TV. I hope it's an efficient model...

So readers, what do you think?

Tomorrow, the Seattle Chapter of the AIA will announce its winners of the What Makes it Green Awards. The awards celebrate the greenest projects in the Pacific Northwest (and a few overseas countries. Still not sure on how the overseas aspect works but it does).

So before they make their big announcements, I wanted to ask you, dear readers…. what do you think are the greenest buildings of the past year?

Nationally, the AIA chose Weber Thompson’s headquarters and Dockside Green (for more info, click AIA tag below). Who do you think the local awards will honor?

Just for fun, I’m including some randomly chosen images of green buildings I have reported on in the past year. Let me know if you think these - or any I haven’t mentioned - will be winners:

The garage next to the future Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation Headquarters.

Alley House, Sloan Ritchie's Leed platinum home project

Gerding Edlen's Bellevue Towers in Bellevue

Building Changes' LEED platinum Kenyon House in Seattle

Vancouver, B.C.'s Convention Centre West

P.S. For pictures of last year’s winners, click the tag ‘AIA’ or ‘Awards’ below!

Last week, the 1.2 million-square-foot Vancouver Convention Centre West opened in Vancouver, B.C. The project is massive.

Built next to the existing east convention center, the new west building allows the convention center to triple its capacity. it will also be the broadcast media center during the 2010 Olympics where it will host 7,000 members of the media. It cost $883 million in Canadian dollars and was designed by Seattle’s LMN Architects, who partnered with local firms Musson Cattell Mackey Partnership and DA Architects & Planners, who were prime architect.

On the green front, the center is shooting for LEED Canada gold and has two real stand-out features. One is the six-acre living roof, which press materials say is the largest green roof in canada and the largest non-industrial green roof in North America (does anyone know what the largest green roof is in North America, industrial or non-industrial?) You can’t walk around on the roof but there is apparently a viewing space where visitors can see it.

The other is the building’s consideration for local habitats. For example, the team worked with scientists to reduce the building’s impact on marine animals (about half of the structure is built over water). The building has an underwater habitat ’skirt,’ or an artificial reef that emulates a shoreline and provides habitat for barnacles, fish and other sea creatures, in addition to other restorative features.

My question is - does the inside of it feel green? McCormick Place in Chicago, for example, felt just like any other convention center. And having been to a conference in the Vancouver East Centre (which again, felt just like a regular convention hall) I am curious to see if any of the green elements that influenced the west building are visible to the general user. 

For more information, check out the DJC article here.

View of the green roof

Outer view of the center

Interior view

Outside view

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.

On Thursday, Seattle-based Rushing hosted an open house for its new workspace. The mechanical and electrical engineering, and sustainability consulting firm, has moved to the third floor of 1725 Westlake Ave N., and is currently awaiting a LEED platinum certification for commercial interiors. In case you missed it, I’ve got some photos of the space - and the event - for you below.

Inside view of the space

Rae Anne Rushing in her new office

The ceiling

A wall of the different LEED points the space has targeted

Rushing also made handy little booklets that outline all the credits Rushing (again hopefully) achieved for LEED platinum. Each page in the booklet explains what Rushing did for each credit. For example, under Energy Use Measurement and Payment Accountability, the boooklet says Rushing installed submetering equipment to measure and recod gas and electricity use in the space. It also says a lease was negotiated where energy costs are paid by Rushing, and not paid in base rent.

Close up view of a couple LEED points

The food you missed!

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

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

Here they are:

View of the inner staircase

View of the staircase through an opposing inner glass wall

Interior view of office space

View of the courtyard inside the building

Outside view of the building

vertical view of building sunshades

About a month ago (Jan. 20) I wrote a story in the DJC on the green roof at the Gates Foundation’s garage. At 60,000 square feet or about 1.4 acres, it is the largest green roof in Seattle by a landslide.

The garage is a crosswalk away from Seattle Center on the east side of Fifth Avenue North. It is located next to the future Gates Foundation headquarters and is kitty-corner from EMP. The garage is technically a public-private partnership between the Gates Foundation and the city of Seattle. NBBJ was the architect. Sellen Construction was general contractor. Gustafson Guthrie Nichol was landscape architect.

The roof itself is visible from the Space Needle, a consideration in its design. The roof has five inches of soil over a layer of synthetic drainage. 

Here are photos:

A worker weeds the green roof

The green roof is clearly visible from the Space Needle's deck and vice-versa

A side view photo only begins to show how massive the roof really is

View from the street

Aerial view, courtesy Sky-Pix

The green roof at Seattle hotel-condo project Olive 8 is being installed this week. It is one of the largest green roofs in Seattle at 8,355 square feet.

The roof is actually two green roofs so the developer, R.C. Hedreen, can test out which system it likes best. Above the chillers there is a sod-based green roof. On the actual fourth floor ground level, there is a tray-based sedum system. There is a lasting argument between which one of these techniques is better, which I will discuss in a later post at greater detail. For more on this project, or to learn about R.C. Hedreen’s conversion to being a green developer, read the story in the DJC here.

R.C. Hedreen is also considering a second green roof on the 39th floor of Olive 8, though if it pursues that option it will need to be sod-based as David Thyer, president of the company, said the city is afraid the green roof trays will blow away at such a great height.

On Tuesday, I was fortunate enough to see part of the tray installation. Here are photos I took of the process:

Trays on the ground

Workers pick up a tray...

And load the tray into a pattern

The green roof from behind

Both green roofs

A close up of the sod-based green roof

For more on Olive 8, see the official page here. To see more photos, visit Eco Friendly Mag here.

After a tumultuous year, the zHome project has started off on a new foot with its Monday groundbreaking. The project is a 10-unit townhome development in the Issaquah Highlands that uses smart design and technology to create all the energy it consumes. It plans have net zero carbon emissions and cut water use by 60 percent.

I first wrote about the project last December here when Noland Homes was the

Courtesy of David Vandervort Architects

builder on the project and planned to develop it at its own cost. A lot has changed since then: namely Noland dropped out and Howland Homes came on (and will develop it at its own cost). But the project has finally broken ground and, as Brad Liljequist, zHome project manager for the city of Issaquah, says in the project’s inaugual blog post (yes it has a blog here) it “takes my breath away a little bit” to be at this stage in the project’s life.

zHome has a nifty Web site that can answer all and any of your questions from what materials are being used to how they’re doing it to how to buy into it. For more information, visit it here.

Courtesy of David Vandervort Architects

This solar panel from the groundbreaking comes wrapped in a bow!

The latest rendering