I have had the great honor of working with Denis Hayes and Jason McLennan on the Bullitt Center project over the past few years. Denis was one of the visionary co-founders of Earth Day back in 1970, a landmark event which essentially launched the U.S. environmental movement and brought about numerous changes in public policy. He is now the guiding force behind the Bullitt Center currently under construction in Seattle, a building that aims to set a new standard for urban sustainability. Jason McLennan is the CEO of Cascadia Green Building Council and is the author of the Living Building Challenge, a program that is profoundly affecting the way we design and construct buildings — and which is the standard the Bullitt Center has been designed to meet. On May 10th, Denis and Jason will be discussing ‘The Future of Building Design’ at the Intiman Theater, on the grounds of historic Seattle Center. If you are concerned about the planet and you care about building design,  you won’t want to miss this event. It should be an amazing and inspiring discussion by visionaries with a long history of involvement with progressive change in this century.

I have also had the pleasure of serving on an advisory committee that developed the Howard S. Wright ‘Urban Intervention’ Design Ideas Competition for Public Space, another Seattle Center ‘Next Fifty’ event. Urban Intervention is an international design competition that asks designers to help envision what public space will be like in the future. The proposed site for the intervention is the Seattle Center campus and teams were challenged with developing a new use for nine acres there, including the Memorial Stadium site. The three finalist teams are coming to Seattle this weekend to present their visions and to discuss the future of public space. Videos of each team’s solution can be viewed here and check here for more event information. If you  care about public spaces and like to think about the future, come to the historic  Seattle Center campus — home to visionary thinking of the last century – for a look forward to what is possible as we move toward the next century.

The Watershed Address was inspiring to me, living next to Seattle’s Duwamish River and working with People for Puget Sound, Duwamish river Cleanup Coalition, and the Environmental Coalition of South Seattle, to help create habitat to repair Seattle’s only river – and it’s salmon runs – one restored parcel at a time. These efforts will take communities of committed folks years to accomplish and returning salmon, juvenile fish in the new backwater eddies, and increased bird populations prove that the efforts have traction.

Friends of the Cedar River Watershed takes watershed sustainability beyond restoration ecology. In partnership with manual habitat repair, they educate and inspire future generations of thought leaders to restore sustainability in the social landscape, engaging community and political leaders through action, policy change, and commitment. With smart, passionate high school students, a Vimeo channel, strategic inquiry, and succinct messaging, FoCRW has the secret weapon that it takes to make lasting change from the ground up. I’m in. Are you?

As a firm, Miller Hull is involved with numerous events of The NextFifty celebration marking the 50th anniversary of Seattle Center and the 1962 World’s Fair. I will have the opportunity to continue the conversation started with Peter years ago on May 5 where Friends of the Cedar River Watershed is assembling a multigenerational panel of youths and sustainably-minded thought leaders to compare the 2012 and 2062 versions of the Watershed Address. In 1962, Seattle entered the space age at the World’s Fair. The future was bright, technology and innovation were forging new frontiers. In 2012, we are at a tipping point. We have identified the need for carbon neutrality, energy independence, zero waste, food security, and the importance of water in all its forms. Where will we be in 2062? What does a 100% sustainable future look like and how do we get there? We encourage you to come join the conversation. For more information visit http://www.cedarriver.org/

During the development of Bothell City Hall the design team was charged by the Historic Preservation & Landmarks Board to relate our use of masonry to the historic brick facades of Downtown Bothell. These buildings were constructed at a time when bricks shared both structural and ornamental functions. The facades reflect an understanding of the building material and its placement — a relationship between structure and texture. The rich patterns are evidence of a craft rooted in the relationship of hand and brick.

Fast forward… 2011. The role of masonry (specifically brick) has changed. With its structural capabilities diminished, the module is now used as a skin. Furthermore, the tools for designing and constructing with brick have also shifted from the hand to the machine. The current context is much different than the scenario we had been asked to relate to, and our design strategy would need to respond to that.

Our starting point for developing design parameters was to reassess both our material and our toolset. The brick still offered us a modular and efficient solution to building assembly, while digital tools introduced a new capacity for variability within the system. Using Grasshopper + Rhino we developed a set of rules for the placement of the bricks along the walls of the new city council chamber. The behavior of the system was based on carefully designed parameters to deal with brick size, bond and overlap. Basic structural and weathering requirements, along with aesthetic desires informed the input values for the equation and could be manipulated to produce a variety of patterns. By designing a behavior rather than a specific solution, we were able to generate multiple iterations of the wall and evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of each one. 

The outcome of these relationships is a variable rotation of each brick along the length of the curving façade. The idea is actually very simple, though its visual appearance indicates otherwise. One half of the arcing wall is laid as a traditional running bond along the curved surface — this is actually the mathematically complex portion because every brick has a different rotation value. Luckily, masons have no problem laying up a smooth curved wall. Breaking at the tangent point of the wall, the other half of the arc maintains a running bond with a fixed rotation. This means that all of the bricks are laid parallel to the tangent at the midpoint of the wall. To assist in the assembly of the wall, a digitally fabricated steel template will be placed at the top and bottom of the wall to act as an alignment jig. This will eliminate the need for the mason to measure the displacement of each brick and it passes along the curve.

The resulting effect is a sort of unraveling masonry, accomplished by the relationship of material and digital processes. The potential of this wall system lies in its ability to relate to the historic texture of masonry while reflecting a new digital craft.

You can join the discussion here on Facebook.

During the 1962 World’s Fair in Seattle, housing exhibits provided a vision for the future of domestic life as exuberant modular assemblages packed with high-tech energy-intensive gadgets that did the living for you, built and powered by seemingly endless resources. Fifty years later, we are at work on The House of the Immediate Future with Habitat for Humanity to be built first at Seattle Center as part the 50th Anniversary celebration of the ’62 World’s Fair, and then moved to an emerging Seattle Housing Authority neighborhood in Rainier Valley.

Our approach seems modest when compared with the space-age vision in 1962. But that’s the point.

The difference highlights how advances in building science over the past five decades have trended toward a sober return to basics as we better understand the reality of limited resources and global warming. Smaller footprints in walkable transit-oriented communities and ever-tighter building envelopes that make miserly use of renewable energy sources may not capture the imagination quite like the sci-fi visions of the past, but may be the only way we can survive long into the future.

To kick-off the project, Miller Hull hosted a Think Tank workshop attended by over 60 local experts from across the spectrum of residential design, engineering and planning. The Think Tanks were focused on four major topics: Construction, Energy, Program and Site that prioritized repeatable solutions for near-term Habitat projects by combining the right blend of established but forward-looking techniques.

Our hybrid-approach to construction systems includes prefabricated “wet-cores” (mechanical room, kitchen, bathrooms) by Method Homes and a panelized double-stud exterior wall assembly constructed by Habitat volunteers. By prefabricating the infrastructure cores, professional labor can be separated from a less-skilled volunteer force so important to every Habitat for Humanity project. Volunteers will build wall panels that can be erected around the wet-cores at the Seattle Center exhibit and then disassembled and moved to the permanent site.

A “dream team” of residential energy experts including our in-house energy-guru, Jim Hanford, along with Buzz Burgett of NW Mechanical, Tadashi Shiga of Evergreen Certified and Brad Liljequist of Z-Home are all looking for the most simple and cost-effective approach to achieving net-zero energy for the home. Currently they are crunching the numbers to compare two solar-driven mechanical systems: an air-to-water heat pump with radiant slab versus a ductless mini-split system. Habitat will use the house to develop techniques that fit their volunteer-model to minimize air-infiltration and maximize insulation to reduce the energy loads and resultant costs of renewable energy sources.

Beyond building science, the team is pondering the question, “How do families live now?” To address this question, the house and site are planned to optimize flexibility for a widening variety of family configurations, aging-in-place and income-generation possibilities for the global family of the future.

You can join the discussion here on Facebook.

Discussions for improvements to the Moses Lake City Hall were taking place in 1999, probably earlier. That was in the last millennium!

Fast forward to 2007:

The growing city required more services, and the staff had outgrown their existing facility. Meanwhile, the Moses Lake Museum and Art Center (MAC) had procured a $1M Heritage Grant from the Washington State Historical Society. (The MAC is an impressive civic service and amenity, especially for a city with a population of about 20,000.) The city decided to go forward with an unconventional idea: combine the MAC with the City Hall.

It was at this time that Miller Hull became involved with the City Hall project, later dubbed the Civic Center since it encompassed much more than an administrative building. It was a great opportunity to work with a forward thinking client who wanted not only a building to work in, but also a building for the citizens to really use. And, on top of this, Bob Hull grew up in Moses Lake.

Fast forward again, Grand Opening on November 18, 2011:

It was a beautiful sunny day in Moses Lake. An estimated 1,000 people were in attendance. There was a brief opening ceremony and then the festivities commenced. Although the permanent exhibits were not yet in place for the MAC, it was fully occupied for the holiday show which included a silent auction, temporary exhibits, children’s arts and crafts, and lots of people. Even Santa Claus was there.

People wandered the building, checking out the offices, the museum, and other public spaces. The main circulation space (called the “Avenue” as it is the extension of 4th Avenue to Civic Center Park) was packed. Movies were being shown in the auditorium. In the MAC, there was live music at the east end of the gallery; at the west end, shoppers were getting an early start to the holidays in the museum store.

Then, the fire alarms sounded. I looked on in curiosity: maybe I could stand back and witness the exiting requirements for an Assembly Occupancy in action? How cool it would be for the arrows and width calculations on our exiting plans to come to life. But, no one moved or missed a beat, not even the Fire Chief. The exception was Bruce Strait, the building maintenance supervisor, who hurried to the basement. Instead, people chatted with neighbors and co-workers as they queued for the buffet (the source of the alarm…a cooking hood brought in for the opening that was not anticipated for the public lobby). Strobe lights activated, the party was now in full swing!

Although it is not completely finished, it was amazing to see people enjoy the building, in just the way that was envisioned so many years ago. It is more than a place where one goes to pay utility bills or apply for permits. This is truly a public building, a place for citizens to gather and see their government at work.

Moses Lake Mayor Jon Lane said, “Many council chambers in this day and age are building bars and extra security while Moses Lake is building glass windows that open up to the outside. How tremendous.”

As Bob said in his remarks at the dedication, “It takes a real team not only on our side, but also the people with vision on your side to create a building like this.”

We are now nearing the end of the road, for our part, anyway. We hope that the City of Moses Lake will enjoy the building for many years, and that it will be a place that becomes part of the tradition and culture of this vibrant and growing community. If you are out in this part of the state, stop by to visit Moses Lake and the Civic Center. The trip, while long, is beautiful.

The Moses Lake Civic Center is located between the existing City Hall and the Parks and Police Building, adjacent to Civic Center Park. The approximately 41,000 square foot facility includes the council chamber/community room, administrative offices for two city departments, public lobby, 200 seat auditorium, museum gallery, and art classrooms. The building is targeted for LEED Silver.

“The annual earnings of people like me are hundreds, if not thousands, of times greater than those of the average American, but we don’t buy hundreds or thousands of times more stuff…It’s true that we do spend a lot more than the average family. Yet the one truly expensive line item in our budget is our airplane (which, by the way, was manufactured in France by Dassault Aviation SA), and those annual costs are mostly for fuel (from the Middle East). It’s just crazy to believe that any of this is more beneficial to our economy than hiring more teachers or police officers or investing in our infrastructure.“

Investing in our infrastructure does more than create jobs. Miller Hull is best known for its design of award-winning public buildings. For me, there are no projects that are more rewarding. But there seems to be a trend where these public projects are seen as unnecessary and the first thing to be cut. There is a special session of the legislature happening in Olympia right now where this is being discussed. Will we have to let our vital infrastructure projects deteriorate? How can we cut higher education any further? This is not just about creating jobs; these public projects are needed to uphold the quality of life for our residents, and to attract outside investment in our state.

I chair the Public Policy Board of the local Seattle chapter of the AIA and the topic of taxes is the hottest thing on our agenda. Of course nobody now uses the word “tax.” Instead, what we are talking about is now referred to as “revenue.” Why are we so afraid of talking about taxes and investing in our society? For decades taxes were modified continually to respond to the economic condition of the country. Ronald Reagan raised taxes 11 times in eight years. Nixon and Ford fought for higher taxes. John F. Kennedy secured a huge tax cut (to lower the upper bracket to 70 percent!). It didn’t matter what your party was, it was just another tool to balance the budget.

As Nick so matter-of-factly lays out in his article, the current tax policies are upside down. He admits to paying 11 percent on an eight figure income. How can this be fair? Higher taxes on the wealthy can
put Americans back to work, which not only stimulate the economy but make our country a better place through the betterment of infrastructure projects and the creation of beautiful public spaces. Taxes is a word that needs to be discussed openly and intelligently at the state and federal levels. I only wish there were more smart people like Nick Hanauer involved in these discussions.

Prior to the November election, AIA Seattle hosted a candidate forum for Seattle City Council candidates to hear from them on issues regarding the built environment. The event was held in our office and was co-hosted by the local chapters of ULI, AGC, and USGBC. All ten council candidates attended the event, and many of the leading architects in Seattle came out to hear what the candidates had to say.

The interesting coincidence that caused me to reflect on these two events was when on stage to receive an AIA Honor award for the Vancouver Community Library, I was happy to be shaking hands and sharing congratulations with Mark Reddington of LMN and Walter Schacht of Schacht Aslani, who also both won awards for outstanding buildings for local public institutions that evening. Both Mark and Walter are recognized design leaders in Seattle and are members of the AIA Public Policy Board (PPB), which I chair, and which sponsored the candidate forum. What can be interpreted from the fact that three of the five PPB members were receiving design awards? Why are design leaders so interested in advocacy?

The answer is simple: we share a passion for making a positive impact on our quality of life, whether that be for a community through the design of a new public building, or for a community through smart public policy.

We at Miller Hull participate in a program called The 1% through which a minimum 1% of our work is dedicated to pro bono activities. The Snoqualmie Veterans’ Memorial was a perfect candidate, and in addition to our donated services, the landscape architect, Jack Johnson of Outdoor Studio, as well as structural and civil engineers, Quantum Consulting Engineers and SvR Design, donated their work. In fact, across the board, the project has enjoyed a strong grass-roots support, with donations of time and materials coming from all corners of the Snoqualmie Valley.

The Memorial itself occupies a formerly vacant lot adjacent to American Legion Hall and across the street from the Snoqualmie City Hall. It includes a granite tablet engraved with names of all the known soldiers who fought for their country and hailed from the Snoqualmie river valley. There are six flags representing each branch of the armed services: Army, Marines, Navy, Air Force, Coast Guard and Merchant Marines. The flags are backed by a low curving stone wall, composed of local andesite, which was recently removed the bedrock below Snoqualmie Falls. There is also a living memorial in the form of a newly planted London Plane tree, surround by nine boulders. Each boulder comes from a different town in the valley, and is symbolic of these communities coming together to remember and honor those who fought to protect them.

Today, on Veterans Day (11/11/11), the Snoqualmie Valley Veterans’ Memorial was officially dedicated with an event that included guest speakers, a tribal blessing, a reading of the names, a three-volley salute, and the playing of taps by a local girl scout. Several hundred people came out to honor the Veterans and celebrate the new memorial. It is projects like these that make architecture and design rewarding for me: the level of community involvement, the participation is something bigger and greater than ourselves, and the creation of a lasting legacy. Such opportunities are an honor to participate in.

Architecture is not always about the building. In many cases such as this, it is about creating community space, and working with people.

The design for the Bullitt Center has been an integrated process — seeking to reduce energy consumption through a balanced contribution of high efficiency envelope and mechanical system, passive systems such as operable windows and exterior blinds, lighting power reductions, reductions in plug loads through technology and controls, and operational changes by building tenants.

The resulting building is projected to use as much energy as can be produced on site by a rooftop PV array:  approximately 230,000 kWh/year, for an EUI of 16 kBtu/SF-year when averaged across the Gross Floor Area (GSF). This extraordinarily low energy use is less than 20% of a typical Seattle office building. It is well below the level of any comparable North American office building and is consistent with what we know about the highest performing buildings in Europe. When considering the Treated Floor Area (TFA) — a European measure of interior occupied floor area — the EUI is approximately 21 kBtu/TFA-yr.

Passive House (or Passivhaus) has been discussed recently as a higher standard than net zero, or at least the best methodology for achieving the low energy use necessary for achieving net zero. In fact, there have been specific references to Passive House and the Bullitt project in published discussions in Fast Company and ArchDaily. While we welcome critiques of the project, the discussion in these blog posts is not as informed as it could be on the relative merits of this design approach.

Passive House methodology seeks to create energy efficiency through a high-performance building envelope coupled with heat recovery on ventilation air. By incorporating these strategies, the heating and cooling equipment is downsized considerably. Because of its strong focus on the building envelope, Passive House is sometimes perceived as the “gold standard” for an efficient building design, or at least an efficient envelope. Passive House has not gained acceptance in the US for non-residential buildings, but has a track record in Europe with some certified projects.

Despite our understanding of Passive House concepts, the criteria used for certification has been unclear. In particular, how well does it apply to an urban all-electric office building, where plug loads dominate the energy use? Passive House has three primary criteria for certification: it sets limits on heating and cooling loads, envelope air infiltration, and overall primary (source) energy use. The design estimates for Bullitt show that it is well under the Passive House limits for heating and cooling loads, but it doesn’t meet the overall energy limit of 120 kWh/m² of TFA on primary energy use, which converts to 14.1 kBtu/TFA-yr for an all-electric grid-tied building. Bullitt’s heating and cooling energy use only about 5% of the building’s energy use, and the biggest end uses in the proposed project are office equipment — computers, monitors, servers, printers, copiers, appliances, elevators, control systems, and other miscellaneous devices (typically called plug loads) — and electric lighting. Together, these account for almost 2/3 of the building’s energy budget and are not well addressed in Passive House. We were wondering how this made sense — how could adhering to Passive House improve Bullitt’s performance given that most of the energy was in non-HVAC end uses? What are built Passive House projects doing to meet this overall energy limit, if they actually are meeting it in practice? We were very interested.

Just our luck, the Passive House Northwest fall meeting was held in Seattle this year, and the conference topic was “Beyond Single Family Residential.” In one presentation, an example end use energy profile of a Passive House-compliant office building in the Pacific Northwest was described in detail. The speaker prefaced this data by admitting these were extremely aggressive goals requiring significant behavioral and cultural change. A quick comparison of the Bullitt Center’s end use breakdown with this prototypical PH project yields some surprising results.

First, Bullitt’s estimated annual heating and cooling energy is less than 1/4 of that in the Passive House example. Could this be right? How can a high-performance building standard, which has a laser focus on the building envelope, be so generous on the heating side?

The predicted heating energy use of the Bullitt Center is 84% better than the Passivhaus standard (0.75 kbtu/tfa sf/yr vs 4.75 kbtu/tfa sf/yr). In addition, the Bullit Center’s heating, cooling, ventilating and pumping energy combined are only 11% more than the Passivhaus standard for just heating. In our opinion, we have wrung the vast majority of the efficiency out of the building envelope, heating systems, cooling systems and ventilation systems.

Just as striking is the comparison of plug energy and lighting energy in the two examples. Bullitt’s lighting energy is 60% greater than the PH example. This is even though Bullitt’s lighting power density is already at an astonishingly low 0.4 W/SF (current code is 0.9 W/SF). But even with this supposed bust on lighting energy, Bullitt is still well under the PH example when including HVAC and lighting only.

The real source of the discrepancy is plug energy. Plug energy in Bullitt is over four times as large as in the Passive House example. In the design for Bullitt, we have assumed state-of-the art equipment efficiencies but have also allowed for high densities of computing that is typical of modern-day commercial office occupancies. In order to meet the level of plug energy identified for the PH prototype, the owner would need to limit the tenant pool only to organizations that use minimal computing energy, or to require cloud computing which would then just move the energy consumption off site.

To put the numbers in perspective, when we started design on the Bullitt Center, our firm spent time measuring our own computing equipment energy use. We found that our EUI for just workstations, monitors, servers and printers (not including copiers, kitchen uses, elevator, etc.) was about 25 kBtu/TFA-yr. So far we’ve succeeded in reducing this by 40% — to 15 kBtu/TFA-yr — through hardware and operational changes, and we have a roadmap to take it further down to about 7 kBtu/TFA-yr in the next two years. At this point we would just begin to be able to inhabit the Bullitt Center, but certainly not the PH prototype.

One thing we learned from this in-house exercise is that office equipment is currently the area of greatest innovation and change in commercial building energy use. Justifiably, the focus in the design for Bullitt was to minimize energy use in the base structure, which will have a much longer lifespan, and allow the more quickly-changing technology — such as office equipment — to catch up. It is possible that over the next 10 years, with the rapid pace of improvements in computing, Bullitt could start to become a net energy exporter. If the project had been designed along the lines of the Passive House example, the tenant base would have been limited to only those entities with minimal computing needs in their daily work, and there would have been little opportunity for improvement over time.

The intent here is not to dismiss Passive House as a design approach. In fact, the Passive House conference we attended confirmed for us that the design strategies and technologies employed in the Bullitt Center are consistent with Passive House approaches in Europe. But the lesson we take from this comparison is that there are no simple solutions for the path to net zero, and no single best approach to meeting that goal. Obviously, an approach that ignores occupancy types and densities, operating schedules, and other activities in the building contradicts the tenets of low/no energy design. For a multi-story urban office building in Seattle, the approach we have used is one that our best estimates tell us will work. Of course, the proof will come once the project is operational. Unlike any other high performance rating system or standard that we know of, including Passive House, meeting the Living Building Challenge requires actual performance when in operation, not an estimate of the energy balance made during design.

What we also take away is that we can work collaboratively to advance the industry and culture around low-energy and net-zero buildings. We have been lucky to work with a visionary client, forward-thinking developers and other design consultants, and a contractor willing to look at different ways of doing things. We have sought advice from local, national, and international practitioners engaged in high performance buildings. We are enjoying the opportunity to see how other projects in the Northwest are approaching similar challenges. In turn, we hope some of the lessons we have learned and passed on will be useful for others.

The professionals who judge the Honor Awards for Washington Architecture have extremely high credentials in design, and in recent years some have come from as far as Europe and Asia. To be recognized by your peers or people of this caliber is the highest honor you can receive.

The city itself plays a role in the quality of the award program as well. Seattle isn’t too big, yet it has a strong global influence and attracts extremely strong design professionals. The tenable size allows for people to come together in formal and informal ways, and people like Peter Miller, ARCADE functions, Space.city and other programs help build a strong community.

I believe that as a profession, architecture has been traditionally undervalued. We put in the long hours and have nearly the same amount of schooling as doctors and lawyers, yet are paid substantially less. Architects are constantly fighting for credibility, and once a year this award program gives validity to the art of the profession and our advancement of detail, materials, space and form.

It is for these reasons that I believe that with the exception of the national AIA Honor Award program, the AIA Seattle Honor Awards program is the best in the country. It also makes me ask the question:  if we didn’t have as strong of a program, would the work be as good?

The Miller Hull Partnership won two 2011 Honor Awards: the Lott Clean Water Alliance Regional Services Center in Olympia, Washington, and the Vancouver Community Library in Vancouver, Washington. Since AIA Seattle’s award program began in 1950, Miller Hull, founded in 1977, has won 40 of the awards.