I have been collaborating with Susan Black and Associates to formulate a vision for the expansion of the Washington Park Arboretum facilities, as part of the SR 520 replacement and the demolition of the highway ramps that currently dominate the north end of the Park.

With this project, we are proposing a " new gateway structure to orient visitors, provide space for general services and curation/collection exhibits, and fulfill many of the aims of the 2001 Master Plan.  As conceptualized, the development respects the history of the site and reclaims the altered landscape to natural, healthy conditions.  It will provide organization, orientation, and education for visitors as a means to explore the greater Arboretum.

As a gateway, the design will put visitors in the frame of mind for the study and enjoyment of the Park.  Balancing educational needs and recreation activities as functions that informally overlap and inform each other, the facility welcomes both types of visitor and enfolds them in the living greenness of the Arboretum/Lake Washington edge environment.  The building concept blends with the naturalistic organization of the site with minimal visual impact and performs as a closed loop system with regard to energy and water, using only resources collected on site.  The concept also enhances the connectivity to the adjacent neighborhood and trail system and welcomes pedestrian and bike traffic.

The buildings are gently folded into a rolling wetland rise like leaves blown in on the wind.  The roofs are gently articulated to provide shelter and solar access.  Rammed earth walls announce the gateway yet continue uninterupted through the glass to become an integral part of the ambiance of the facility.  Glass walls provide an invisible barrier to the surrounding landscape during the day.  In the evening, light from the buildings spills out onto grounds muted by the vegetation foliage.

Retaining a small remnant of the “flyover” bridge allows for the development of an elevated promenade for the establishment of a “pier garden”.  The pier would be planted in a series of linear landscapes culminating in an overlook of the southern waterway of the Mountlake Cut.  The pier garden provides the visitor a new perspective of the northern limits of the Arboretum, Foster Island and the day-lighted Arboretum Creek." (from the Concept Plan)

Ideally, the building will be designed to the standards of the Living Building Challenge.  I've anticipated about 75kW of photovoltaics on the roof, plus a ground source heat pump for building climate control, harvesting all rain water for the building's use and to irrigate the demonstration gardens.

We've only just put this out into the public sphere for comments, and I can imagine that we'll have some lively discussions about how a modern structure fits within the Olmsteadian structure of the park.  I ultimately think that the contemporary architecture will best serve the Foundation, rather than grafting high performance energy and sustainable systems onto something that is overtly historicist.   The Washington Park Arboretum can look both both into its own history and the future to chart a path for success in it's second century.

Renderings courtesy of Lambert Design Studio

Friday's nights Green Building Slam was a big success. The Guild packed the auditorium in the Central Library and was, dare I say, raucous?  There was a lot of energy in the room and the enthusiasm was palpable.  I wanted to highlight a couple of trends that we saw in multiple projects.

1.  Passive houses--super insulated, airtight buildings that consequently use very little energy to heat (a hair dryer or toaster would do the trick).

Projects ranged from Joe Giampietro's Mini B house , Jim Burton's Backyard Box, and Dan Whitmore's house.  There are a lot of people working on the details, and trying out innovative strategies for meeting the rigorous standards, like the .6 air changes per hour (Joe's was .58ACH and Dan's measured .41 ACH).  Here is a blog about passive houses--Existing Resources.

2.  Beyond Passive Houses specifically, there was a drive for measuring building performance using blower door tests, thermal imaging, etc.  The point was made  that the real time feedback is a great learning and teaching tool for both the designers and the craftspeople, linking the attention to detail required at all phases of construction to execute a high performance building with regards to energy usage.

3.  Waste stream minimization:

Two projects highlighted efforts to reduce construction waste: Bastyr University housing, and Walsh Construction's Salishan redevelopment.  The Salishan project was especially notable, not only for the context, an affordable housing project with upwards of 100 units, but because they put in place a system of labled dumpsters to sort all the construction waste--down to just one unrecyclable dumpster load over the project's construction.

I had a great time, first presenting the Sunset Substation Park, and second, learning about what other like minded companies are working on in our region.

I'll be presenting the Sunset Substation Park to the NW Ecobuilding Guild at their annual "green building slam," 10x10x10. It's "a high-energy introduction to ten cutting-edge sustainable building projects in and around Seattle...featuring fast-paced presentations by the region's leading green builders and delicious food and drink."

This marks our second year in a row presenting (last year, we showed off the Fremont Townhomes)!

Kate and Ric have begun construction on their backyard cottage... They have been working hard the last few weeks and have enlisted the help of a few friends and colleagues along the way. A few key players have been helping guide us through the process:

• Rusty Borromeo of Borromeo Construction LLC is providing his general contractor and construction expertise
• James Jenkins of O'Brien & Company is contributing his green building knowledge and will be our Built Green Verifier  - we are aiming for 5 star Built Green certification
• Cory Fraser of LFD Structural Engineering LLC provided the calculations and engineering for our plan set

Ric has been doing a wonderful job of photographing the process and has put together a few galleries of the construction process thus far (all images in this post are © 2010 Ric Cochrane). He has also agreed to write up a blog post on the experience thus far - so stay tuned for that!

DECONSTRUCTION GALLERY An existing shed (that was a bit worse for wear) was painstakingly deconstructed and all reusable and recyclable materials were sorted and stacked

LABOR OF LOVE - THE FOUNDATION Digging in the dirt and other fun activities - the true definition of 'sweat equity!'

LUMBER FROM THE BONE-YARD Salvaged beams, columns and decking are being purchased from Bruce Borjesson of Pacific Resources

The final Feasibility Study and Community Design Report is available here

We're busy, and that is news in an of itself.  Not that we haven't been keeping busy over the last year and half since the big crash, but given the abysmal state of the construction industry as a whole, we're happy to report that anecdotally there seems to be more activity out there (knock on wood). More housing starts, sales, news in the Daily Journal of Commerce about other firms hiring, and some of those holes in the ground out there starting to see renewed activity. So what have we been working on?

First, check out the latest schemes for the Sunset Substation pocket park in Ballard.  We've made a hybrid scheme out of the three prior options, increased the potential of the solar array, and reworked the parkscape with a more sculptural land forms and a sinuous path from corner to corner:

We've also been working on a great remodel/addition in Laurelhurst, opening up a classic midcentury modern house. There is a timber bamboo grove and small park to the north, creating an intimate feeling for the new kitchen and dining room despite the expanse of glass:

And we're making some progress on the Mitate House. I'm excited that as the design has been refined, we're getting more elegant volumes, a clean functional plan and expanding the opportunities for interaction with the landscape.  I'll be posting more shortly on this one--we're getting the renderings ready for the builder's pre-sale marketing and will highlight the sustainable construction aspects:

Plus we're working on a live/work in Fremont, renovations in Ballard, Sand Point, Montlake, Capital Hill, a restaurant, 2 backyard cottages, to name a few, and I'll feature some more projects this month.

We've done our first presentation of three ideas for the Sunset Substation Park.  More information about the three schemes are here, here, and here.

The solar component of this park will produce between 20 kW and 30kW, and provide power for the community multipurpose space, and an emergency relief center.

We're looking at meeting the Living Building Challenge, the highest standard for sustainable construction.  It would be a major undertaking, since there are less than a hundred structures in the world currently attempting to meet this challenge, but we have a lot of things going for us at this scale of project.  As the project develops, I'll keeping posting information on the Challenge--how it is affecting the design, and the costs.

We've completed the first community design workshop for the Sunset Substation pocket park and we've started a blog for the project at www.SunsetSubstation.org.  The results of the workshop are posted here and you can read a write up from the Ballard News tribune here and another article from KOMO's neighborhood blog here. Now that we have some community input, we can start shaping their unique goals for bringing solar power generation and community space together.

In other news, Stefan is working through designing a micro-hydroelectric generation station for an eco-retreat/outdoor recreation center and meditation retreat in Colorado, and should be posting an introduction to the project and more information about micro-hydro.  Suddenly, we have a lot of projects which have some active or passive alternative energy components--very exciting stuff.

Tim is leading the charge on backyard cottages.  We have two custom cottages currently in design, and another design which will be available as a prefab.  We're finalizing the pricing, so we will have a more comprehensive information available soon.

We're also working with a homebuilder  to develop a series of spec homes bases on a fusion of asian design, modern spaces and out of the norm materials (see image above).  We're especially excited because the house's function emphasizes a series of landscapes integrated into living spaces, so we'll have courtyards, pocket gardens, and salad gardens for growing your own vegetables off the kitchen.  Our big presentation is on Tuesday so I'll post the schematic renderings afterwards.

Finally, this is the last weekend to see our WASTE NOT installation in the alley east of First Avenue, south of Occidental Park.  Anyone need 2500 2 liter bottles?

Here's another new project in the office, an addition to a residence on Capital Hill. The existing house is a tiny 750 sq. ft. bungalow on one of Seattle's steepest streets. The owners found the compact plan a perfect fit when they first moved in, but two kids later, they desperately need more room. They are drawn of the core values of modern architecture: emphasis on natural light, spaces that flow together, honest and straightforward materials and want a house that expresses that. They are comfortable making a pretty bold statement, but they also want the addition to feel comfortable in the existing fabric of the neighborhood. They are interested in sustainability that is designed in from the ground up, which led to the early decision to preserve the existing structure instead of starting from scratch on the site.

How to add onto an existing building that has a well-defined or historical style is a perennial architectural puzzle (and hip roofs are especially difficult to achieve seamless integration). In this case, we approached it by creating a clear contrast between the new and the old through form, material and color. But it's not enough to just plunk a contemporary form next to an old house and expect a real conversation to take place. In this addition, the new and old talk to each other both in how the volumes intersect and in how the two differing styles overlap.

Intersection Our early drawings all show a long, narrow addition running north-south to hold the downhill edge of the property. However, after looking at dozens of alternative schemes, we realized the potential for a very special outdoor space, between the south-facing wall of the addition, the steep hillside and the existing house. Private, yet with almost ideal sun exposure, this patio is the heart of the design but it sets up a tricky problem: we wanted to the public and private wings of the house to fit up against one another while at the same time creating a space between them.

In the rendering above, you can see how we resolved this conundrum: the charcoal-colored wall literally acts like a giant door, swinging out of the (blue) addition to carve space from the (yellow) existing house and define the courtyard. This dividing wall gets a different material and different detailing show a clear relationship between the planning and the way the house is actually made. Creating a courtyard at the joint between the new and old helps to differentiate the two volumes and separate the bedrooms from the public spaces. The slight angle of the addition's south wall also provides enough solar exposure so that a concrete trombe wall behind the south-facing glass is effective in reducing the use of conventional heating by about a third. (More on the passive solar design of this house in a later post)

Overlap While they are separated by their overall form, the old and new portions of the house are tied together by elements that extend the language of one style into the other portion of the house. The largest example of this is the secondary level of detailing we are developing for both structures. The large-scale metal sun canopy of the addition is repeated at a smaller scale as a canopy at the front entry and then inside the original house as a pair of room-divider screens that create separate zones within the loft-like space (and incidentally help act as shear walls).

The language of filtering light through parallel vertical columns even extends the site design: the wide sideyard on the west creates the perfect bamboo garden outside the kitchen's horizontal slot window and a verdant path to the courtyard.

We are very excited to begin a new project for the Sunset Hill neighborhood to transform an abandoned City Light substation parcel into a pocket park.  Based on the input from the community thus far, the program is very intriguing:  a community space with an artist-in-residence caretaker, powered by a serious photovoltaic array. There may be more or different elements as the project evolves in the community design process, and as we navigate through various City agencies and funding sources, but fundamentally this has all the values we expound as a firm:  sustainable building, energized public space, housing options/density, and  an interactive process that invests people in the civic life of their neighborhood.

In 2008, I designed a structure with a similar program for a Dwell Magazine conceptual competition:

Set at the east end of Crissy Field in San Francisco, this Community Room/Exhibit Hall creates an anchor for a new sculpture park. The hall is a multipurpose space, more infrastructure than building--for public events, private events, exhibits, etc. The glass sliding panels open the hall to the public, the park and the views of the Golden Gate Bridge.

A small caretaker's residence is situated on the second floor, using the broad roof of the Community Room as a vegetable garden, eliminating the conflict between the public park and the private residence. The glass screen walls provides security, and electricity--the design on the glass is created with a photovoltaic interlayer, which powers the house and hall. Stormwater is captured, stored and used to irrigate the roof garden.

While this little conceptual project may help to inform the Sunset Substation, I'm excited to apply some of this experience in designing a real world pocket park.

Stay tuned....