A BREATH OF FRESH AIR

THE VERTICAL FARM — THE BOOK

The book is out! Dr. Dickson Despommier’s manifesto on vertical farming has been released and is already being met with acclaim and praise. The Vertical Farm: Feeding the World in the 21st Century is an intriguing look at this new potential solution for solving our food, water and energy crises.

We are honored that two of our urban agriculture projects — Eco-Laboratory and the Newark Vertical Farm — appear in the book, and look forward to seeing the next steps in this world-changing movement.

For more information on Dr. Despommier and his book, please visit www.verticalfarm.com.

WT in NYT

Weber Thompson gets mentioned in the Environment section of New York Times. Read the article "A Crop Sprouts without Soil or Sunshine" by Todd Woody, and visit our website to learn more about the Newark Vertical Farm.

 

SUNSET ELECTRIC BUILDING

The Sunset Electric Building has been selected for recognition by the Quality Growth Alliance. Our client and visionary for this project is Pryde + Johnson.

The Quality Growth Alliance is a partnership of major organizations in the area concerned with sustainability in regional planning and the built environment.

Located at the intersection of Pine Street and 11th Avenue across the street from the southeast corner of Cal Anderson Park, the existing two-story brick and terra cotta building on the property was originally built in 1916. The building’s historic façade will be preserved as the project’s commercial base and act as a focal point for the pedestrian experience. The residential portion above will serve as a background structure that will quietly fit into the exiting neighborhood. The internal courtyard is defining element of the residential portion. The courtyard will provide light and ventilation allowing all units to have windows at both the interior and exterior of the building.

The project is targeting LEED Gold and Built Green 5 Star certifications, and is participating in the City of Seattle’s Priority Green pilot program as well. With passive cooling and daylighting via the courtyard, an innovative reverse cycle chiller system for providing hot water, a green roof and other sustainable building strategies, we expect to cut the building’s energy use by approximately 45% in comparison to a typical apartment building in the Northwest.

The project team at Weber Thompson includes: Scott Thompson AIA, LEED AP, Principal-in-Charge; Jeff Reibman AIA, LEED AP, Project Manger; Myer Harrell Associate AIA, LEED AP, Job Captain; Catherine Benotto AIA, ASLA, LEED AP, Landscape Architect; Dan Albert Assoc. ASLA, LEED AP, Landscape Designer; and Kristen Mullin Bakken, Graphic Design. Steve Cox AIA, LEED AP also participated as the design consultant.

Please see the project page on our website for more information.

TOURING THE TERRY THOMAS

After the BOMA convention concluded in Los Angeles this week, a contingent of real estate and development company CEO’s, Directors and Managers from Japan flew up to Seattle to visit the Pacific Northwest and tour The Terry Thomas.

Scott Thompson AIA, LEED AP and Peter Greaves AIA, LEED AP have given well over 100 tours to folks mostly from the Northwest and the United States, but have also walked The Terry Thomas with groups from Europe, Australia and Japan since our opening over two years ago. Most tours have the expected questions about cost of construction, building performance and occupant well being.

However, every tour has a unique quality. Visitor’s reactions during the presentation and the dialogue afterward at the question and answer session give us as architects and designers the opportunity to take away valuable knowledge and differing perspectives.  We consider our building to be an interactive learning laboratory for sustainability that continues to inform our design decisions going forward.

ECO-LABORATORY AT THE SMITHSONIAN

If you haven’t seen it on Facebook, or our e-newsletter, check out the five minute video we created with Hansen Belyea about Eco-Laboratory. The video was developed for the Smithsonian’s Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum’s fourth National Design Triennial exhibition; it highlights Eco-Laboratory’s vertical farm aspects and makes a greater case for vertical farming. 

If you aren’t winging your way to New York before the close of the exhibition (it runs May 13th 2010 to January 9, 2011) you can still watch the video. Stay tuned for more updates on this, and a new vertical farming project currently in development. 

HOW MUCH ENERGY DOES YOUR BUILDING USE?

The Terry Thomas took First Place in the New Commercial Buildings Category at the ASHRAE Technology Awards in Orlando, Florida back in January. 

We have compiled performance data for 2009 and are encouraged to see that the building has exceeded our projections for energy usage.

Stantec’s initial modeling suggested that our building would consume 30-40% less energy than a typical class A office building. 

As it turns out, we are consuming 56% less energy based on the Department of Energy’s National Action Plan for Energy Efficiency metric.

The average Energy Use Intensity for a class A office building in Seattle is 78 kBtu/sf/yr and nationally the EUI is just under 80 kBtu/sf/yr. Our building is tracking at 34.1 kBtu/sf/yr.

The Terry Thomas met the AIA 2030 challenge when we moved in – April 2008 – and is slightly under the target of a 60% energy reduction by 2010. 

The good news is that the building is fully leased in very difficult times. The building's broker, Urbis Partners, points to the sustainable strategies/environment that gave The Terry Thomas the market edge. Summer is right around the corner and we look forward to opening a few windows (248 to be exact) and capturing the courtyard for an evening or two.

 

— Scott E. Thompson, AIA, LEED AP

REGIONALIZING LEED-ND

Building on her prodigious project experience with LEED for Neighborhood Development, WT principal and sustainability evangelist Catherine Benotto was asked by the Cascadia Green Building Council to assist the USGBC in the development of the LEED ND Regional Credits by managing this work for Washington State and coordinating it with the Pacific Regional Task Force, which included her counterparts in Alaska, Oregon, California and Hawaii.

Location may be the mantra of real estate, but it is also a fundamental ingredient of sustainable communities – in the LEED ND program where you build a neighborhood is as important as how you build. In an effort to tailor the ND program more to a project’s locale, regional priority credits were developed.  A Regional Priority credit awards an extra point to six credits in a LEED ND rating system that have been identified as having a significant benefit for a particular region. A project team may earn up to four Regional Priority credits. If a project earns one of those credits, often at a particular threshold, a Regional Priority credit, and therefore an additional point, is automatically earned within the system. –US Green Building Council

As the ND program addresses both the pattern of development as well as environmental criteria, Catherine’s handpicked working group began by assessing both Washington’s climatic zones as well as density and relating ND credit priorities to both criteria. In the end, six zones were developed: high/urban, medium/suburban and low/rural density areas were defined for each of the two primary climatic zones: eastern high desert and western temperate zones. The key issues being addressed were different for each zone. For example, in high density, temperate areas like Seattle, credits that supported the following issues were selected as highest priority: 

• Reductions of Vehicle Miles Traveled (VMT) to reduce carbon emission
  
• Provisions for affordable housing and housing diversity in urban centers
  
• Support for local food production
  
• Provisions for open space amenities to make higher density livable and desirable

And at the other end of the spectrum, within low density areas in eastern high desert areas, credits that supported these issues were selected for highest priority:

• Water Conservation
  
• Need to plan development in close proximity to existing resources and services
  
• Reduction of automobile dependence/emphasis and related VMT and carbon emission
  
• Create compact neighborhoods
  
• Night sky access and reduction of light pollution

The Pacific Regions’ work is under review by the LEED ND Core Committee and is expected to roll out this spring. Catherine would like to thank Ginger Garff, Jeremy Febus and Nora Daley-Peng for their volunteer assistance with this work.

SEATTLE MAGAZINE GREEN ARCHITECTURE OF THE YEAR!

Great News! 

One of our favorite reads here in the office, Seattle Magazine, came out this December with its much-anticipated annual best-of / worst-of recap of 2009’s notables. What an honor to find ourselves as part of their architecture page!  We do have a few bells and whistles on the Terry-Thomas, such as automatic shades for glare and heat control, and louvers set on temperature and carbon-dioxide sensors, but the feature getting the most notice is our operable windows and that ever-coveted cross breeze. Thanks, Seattle Magazine!

Find us here in Seattle Magazine! 

WHERE'S THE FAMILY IN MULTIFAMILY?

Principal Catherine Benotto AIA, ASLA, LEED AP is presenting at Friday’s Design for Livability: Sustainable Cities Conference. Her presentation is an expansion of an article written for the Daily Journal of Commerce about enticing families into urban, multifamily housing.

Sustainable cities require higher density housing in mixed-use urban areas. However, a closer look at the types of housing built in Seattle’s urban center reveals that the vast majority is geared toward young singles, young couples and empty nesters. Where are the children? Healthy communities include children and not providing options for families in urban areas could lead to sprawl elsewhere. Bringing families into urban, multifamily housing requires a number of design, planning and policy decisions that work together from the individual building and the street level to the larger neighborhood scale. This presentation will cover those requirements and challenge some assumptions with excellent North American examples.

 

For more information about the conference visit Cascade Land Conservancy.

PRODUCT RUNWAY 2009: WEBER THOMPSON CRAFTS HOPE FROM A WISHBONE

What do you get when you offer local design minds a friendly creative challenge, randomly restrict their medium, and then throw in a 120 foot catwalk to boot? The answer is the Interior Design Coalition of Washington’s signature event, Product Runway. Now in its second year, this fashion / design / theatrical event is intended as a way to encourage imaginative thinking and foster collaboration within the design industry.

The Challenge:
Eighteen leading architecture and design firms were randomly paired with product reps and challenged to create and construct a couture garment made exclusively of that rep’s material offering (carpet, tile, etc.). For more information about the event, visit http://www.productrunway.com/

The Collaboration:
This year, the Weber Thompson team enjoyed a unique partnership with Barb Bushnell of Designtex (fabric), and Paula Vollers of Coalesse (furniture). Also joining our band of innovative minds was Bellevue College student Maggie Goodman.

Using our guiding principal of integrated design, it was important that the internal Weber Thompson team be open to everyone from day one. WT’s interior design, architecture, landscape architecture, and support staff all jumped on board with enthusiasm! Our company lounge was transformed into a laboratory of ideas (and creative explosions) where everyone was invited to offer their hands and their two cents to help achieve our goal.

The Concept:
Early schematic meetings led the team on a path of reflection and hope. The concept statement gave me goose bumps the first time I read it, and so I can’t help but share it with you:

“There is a duality in the way we negotiate the world. Issues of our present both ground us and weigh us down, yet we catch glimpses of the potential of the future. We control our own destiny by interweaving our own inherent strength with an acceptance of external support, ultimately allowing us to let go and emerge with unbridled lightness and hope…”

To translate this into a world of wearable furniture and fabric pieces, the team used the back element of the, appropriately named, Wishbone Chair, and agreed on a progression of color and texture that began as a heavy base at the bottom of the garment and became lighter and more delicate as it reached the top. Think of a large tree in the forest — grounded by its stable roots, and reaching up toward the sun. 

A shout out and huge thank you to the Weber Thompson Product Runway 2009 Team: Ann Wolf, Ginger Garff, Laura Greenamyer, Marc Furst, Maria Hayward, Monica Lewis, Nicole Winn and Sabina Fiore!

-Amanda Swartwout