March 17, 2010

Bullitt wants to start a revolution with design of new headquarters

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The Bullitt Foundation is creating what it hopes will be the region's greenest building. Denis Hayes, president and CEO of Bullitt, said the goal is to “begin a design revolution.”

Schematic design for the Cascadia Center for Sustainable Design and Construction on Capitol Hill is just wrapping up.

The project is targeting Living Building certification and could be one of the first in the Pacific Northwest. The challenge, a program developed by the Cascadia Chapter of the U.S. Green Building Council, requires buildings to create all the energy they need on an annual basis, and provide and treat all the water they use, among other things.

Bullitt's headquarters will occupy half a floor in the six-story building. The rest of the space will be leased to tenants, which will be involved in green building and sustainability issues. One tenant, Hayes said, will be the Cascadia Chapter.

The 48,000-square-foot center will be at 1501 E. Madison St., where C.C. Attle's bar is today. The bar will be demolished this fall, and the team is pushing to break ground late this year. Construction is scheduled to take about 14 months.

Point32 is Bullitt's development partner and The Miller|Hull Partnership is the architect.

Hayes said he wants Cascadia Center to do for design what the Model T did for cars, by introducing people to a new product that will change their lives.

Buildings, he said, should react to their environment and help solve energy and water issues. “We would not do this if it were just for the sake of building a building that we and a few tenants were going to be using.”

The center will meet LEED platinum certification and adhere to the 2030 Challenge. Hayes said these standards are easy compared with creating a living building, which the foundation chose to do because of the difficulty and because it most closely aligned with Bullitt's beliefs.

Living buildings

Chris Rogers, CEO of Point32, said most projects aiming to be living buildings are smaller, around 10,000 or 20,000 square feet, and are built on larger, more rural sites. There are fewer than five completed living buildings awaiting certification.

“I think what's important about this is that we are doing it within a dense, urban environment that we believe in... to prove that cities can function in sustainable ways as well,” Rogers said.

The building will be designed to last 250 years or longer, with sturdy materials and a flexible floor plan. It will be uniquely designed for the Pacific Northwest. “It would be a pretty lousy building in Panama City,” Hayes said.

Energy will come from a 270,000 kilowatt per year solar array; the building will be warmed by geothermal heating. Solar panels will blanket the roof and also cover the south wall.

Some of these cutting-edge technologies are more expensive, Hayes said, but using them will help local utilities and architects see how they work. Rogers said they will also save money in the long run.

The team won't say how much the project will cost.

Craig Curtis of Miller|Hull said the site is challenging because it lacks a long southern exposure to take advantage of the sun. This has made design more difficult but has made the architecture more interesting.

“If we can make this work, it shows that you can achieve this pretty rigorous goal even on a site that is not ideal,” Curtis said. “It's urban, it's a small site, it's a relatively small building. It's a building type that you think would be impossible to meet the living building challenge with, so to be able to do it, I think, has been really interesting.”

Curtis said the site is also like most of the sites that are still undeveloped in Seattle: quirky. It has a slope, an odd shape, interesting neighbors and a funky street grid. “It's a real Seattle site.”

Reusing water

The team hopes to collect, treat and reuse all of the building's water, a feat no other commercial building in Seattle has accomplished. If permitting agencies approve, rainwater will be collected from the roof and gathered in a cistern under the building. Some water will be pumped through a UV filtration system and used for drinking. Other water will be sent to toilets that will use one pint per flush. There will also be waterless urinals.

Toilet waste will go to the basement, where it will be turned into compost. Urine will be sent to separate tanks, allowing it to sterilize over a three-month period. Greywater from sinks and showers will be mixed with the sterilized urine and pumped to a greenhouse, where it will go through evapotranspiration. The multi-level greenhouse will cover the south side of the building and each floor will have a small section of plants.

Hayes said every agency the team has worked with wants to support innovative projects. The city of Seattle recently created a Living Building pilot program to help projects go through the rigorous process.

But project teams that want to treat rainwater to potable standards have faced difficulties with multiple agencies in the past. Rogers said the team will talk with the county and other agencies to understand what sort of charges may apply to projects that bypass the current systems.

The building will have up to six parking spaces for electric vehicles. Tenants and visitors will be encouraged to walk or use public transit.

The building will also have what Hayes calls an “irresistible staircase,” or a glass enclosed stairwell that allows viewers to look east and west down Madison Street. The goal is for everyone use the stairs, not the elevator.

Making connections

Another goal is to help revitalize a pocket park across the street, between East Madison Street, East Pike Street and 15th Avenue. The center will have two entrances, one opening onto the park and one on Madison Street. Curtis said it would be great to close 15th Avenue to traffic in that block and create public space connected to the park.

Bullitt's offices are located in the carriage house of the Stimson-Green Mansion on First Hill, a quaint historical space. A few years ago, the organization decided to shift its work toward urban ecology, and the connection between humans and the natural environment.

Hayes said the Stimson-Green space is charming but doesn't allow the foundation to “walk its talk” because it is not efficient.

The new headquarters will also act as a teaching tool. Curtis said Bullitt will likely have a meeting room for building occupants on its first floor. Tenants could offer occasional conferences or guest lectures to bring neighbors into the building.

“The more we get people to come to the building and participate, the better chance we have at promoting a larger scale of change. That's the real goal,” he said. “This is not a project for the foundation. This is really a project that kind of shows the rest of Seattle and beyond what can be done.”

For more on this topic, read these past DJC articles:

Bullitt Foundation plans uniquely Northwest Building https://www.djc.com/news/en/12007109

Living Building Challenge goes broader and deeper

https://www.djc.com/news/en/12012170

Getting off the grid: Alternative water systems raise new issues https://www.djc.com/news/en/12007532

For green to grow, codes need to change

https://www.djc.com/news/en/12008839

Program could lead to 12 new living buildings

https://www.djc.com/news/ae/12013091