E-mail updates
Follow on Twitter
Subscribe to RSS
Miller Hull Partnership illustration
Earth Day co-founder Denis Hayes and architect Jason McLellan are behind a project that aims to build the greenest office building ever.
SEATTLE – An office building that lasts 250 years with no monthly electricity or water bills? It may sound like an environmentalist’s pipe dream, but it will soon be a reality, say the builders of what they hope will be the biggest office tower in the nation that produces as much water and electricity as it consumes.
Currently rising from a pit in downtown Seattle, the $30 million, six-story “living building” is being spearheaded by Denis Hayes and Jason McLennan, who believe they can save the world one building at a time by reducing the massive energy appetites of modern cities.
"Eighty-two percent of Americans, and more than half of humanity, now live in cities -- none of which have been designed for sustainability," said Hayes, who in 1970 helped create Earth Day, which has developed into the planet’s unofficial holiday.
Hayes, 67, now heads the Bullitt Foundation, an environmental nonprofit that intends to practice what it preaches by moving into the building when it’s completed, currently planned for November.
The Bullitt Center, as the building will be known, is designed to use just a third of the energy consumed by a typical office building its size. It also aims to minimize its resource footprint by generating electricity from solar power, collecting water from rainfall and treating all sewage and wastewater onsite. It also will have no parking for cars -- just racks for bikes.
It won’t be entirely off the electrical grid, so that it can make it through the periods when there isn’t enough sunlight to meet the tenants’ demands. But it will later repay those withdrawals, said McLennan, 38, who is CEO of the Northwest-based International Living Future Institute.
"In the summer it gives excess energy to the (power) grid and in the winter it gets it back when we can't generate enough," he said. "It nets out at zero on an annual basis."
As for the water system, Seattle law requires the building be hooked up to its water supply but the goal is to take in enough rainwater to make ends meet.
Standard buildings are a "negative gift" to taxpayers, he said, because of the burdens they impose in terms of pollution and wasted energy. "We clean up our own messes ... that's the big picture," he said.
Hayes said that in addition to being self-sufficient, the building will make sense financially, explaining that while it may cost a third more to build than a traditional office building, it is designed to last centuries longer.
"We are using the Bullitt Center to explore what is possible on the cutting edge of green, using existing technology and constrained by reasonable economics," said Hayes. "Durability is key. The average building lasts 40 years, we're going for 250 years. ... It's a fundamentally different approach."
Getting the building to last 2 1/2 centuries, McLennan said, comes down to three factors: quality building materials; careful and clever detailing from the architecture firm; and high quality construction from the contractor.
Ultimately, the partners hope to get the Bullitt Center certified under the “Living Building Challenge,” which is run by the Living Future Institute.
In order to be certified as a living building, developments much meet benchmarks in seven performance areas. The slideshow at the top of the story illustrates those areas, each of which includes several "imperatives," such as "car-free living" and "urban agriculture."
So far, about 140 projects are registered for the Living Building Challenge, including a handful in Seattle. Only four have been certified as meeting the challenge criteria so far, as many are under construction or have not yet met the year of occupancy necessary for certification. Most are small projects; a few are office buildings, but none is as large as the Bullitt Center.
Net-zero homes have been around since the 1970s, but McLennan noted that it's "much harder to achieve this in a larger building, as the larger the building the more difficult it is to generate all your own energy and harvest all your water. Scale makes it challenging."
If the Bullitt Center is certified as a living building, it will be the largest net-zero office building in the U.S., McLennan said. A three-story Center for Sustainable Landscapes also is under construction in Pittsburgh at Phipps Conservatory and Botanical Gardens, he noted.
Here are some of the major pieces that Hayes and McLennan say will enable the building to meet the challenge:
- Solar panels on the roof that extend over the sides of the building will provide the electricity. (Panels have gained enough efficiency in recent years to make them operable even in places with as much cloud cover as Seattle.)
- Water will circulate through 26 geothermal wells, each 400 feet deep in earth that's a constant 55 degrees, to help offset heating costs in winter.
- Rainwater will be collected in a 56,000 gallon basement cistern. Purification steps include a special membrane for the roof, ultrafiltration and ultraviolet light. Because the process has to be tested before Seattle will consider authorizing it for drinking water, sinks and showers, Hayes calls it "the last big hurdle" for the center.
- Sewage will be sent to 10 basement composters and then shipped offsite to become fertilizer.
- All timber frames and other wood will be certified as sustainable by the Forest Stewardship Council.
The criteria for certification, McLennan said, are "more high performing" than the standards of the better known LEED, for Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design, which were developed by the U.S. Green Building Council and adopted by many developers across the country.
"It's time to move the ball farther," he said, adding that "single projects can change the way the design community thinks."
The U.S. Green Building Council said it welcomes the living building concept and has worked closely with McLennan, who also runs the council's Seattle chapter.
"It's more challenging," acknowledged Scot Horst, the council's vice president for LEED. "Most buildings that attempted but couldn't meet the (living building) criteria were still LEED certified."
John Brecher / msnbc.com
The six-story Bullitt Center will block the downtown views from the apartments at left, as well as partly obscure those from the condos in the center of this photo.
Even a cutting-edge development like the Bullitt Center can have difficulty meeting the living building benchmarks. For example, it is replacing a single-story bar and thereby covering up the views from apartments behind it.
That would appear to violate the Living Building Challenge's "equity" imperative: "The project may not block access to, nor diminish, the quality of fresh air, sunlight and natural waterways for any member of society or adjacent developments."
But McLennan notes the apartments went up knowing that the Bullitt property would some day be developed. "The windows for the adjacent building were placed along an alley where development was always expected and part of city zoning for that site," he said.
STORY: 'ZeroHouse' concept debuts in California
Hayes said tenants will get a rent reduction in return. "It's not a perfect solution but we're doing what we can," he said.
McLennan added that the upsides -- more diversity and added jobs in the area -- outweigh any downside.
Architects from Pink Cloud leap into the future with their eco-friendly vision of turning oil silos into low-cost housing and share their award winning ideas with Msnbc.com's Dara Brown.
Eco-friendly projects aren't immune to the community frictions that often greet new developments.
In Wallingford, a neighborhood of homes and low-rise commercial buildings in Seattle, a green developer inspired by the Bullitt project says it needs to exceed the city's height limit in order to make its building cost effective.
That has angered neighbors like Katherine Bragdon, herself an environmental activist, and put the project on hold as city government deals with the opposition.
"No developer should be given special privileges to exceed current zoning by 44 percent, impair views that belong to the public, and trump years of work and consideration that have gone into neighborhood planning," Bragdon said. "I’ve worked on a number of conservation campaigns around the country over the past two decades so I want to stress that I respect and value the green building aspect of this project. … But I also believe that we can’t trample over one good cause (well-planned neighborhoods, public process, fair zoning) for another."
More content from msnbc.com and NBC News:
- Mom: Trayvon was killed because of 'the color of his skin'
- Fuhgeddaboutit! NJ top state for fighting corruption
- Woman found dead with three kids was 'good mom'
- Nebraska tornadoes rip roofs from houses
- Soldier held in Afghan killings had financial issues
- Tea Party spokesman arrested in sex assault case
Leave a Comment:
Six stories is not a tower!
No it is not, Further what will happen when other taller building are built around this mini tower and the amount of sun required to make this building sutainable is reduced because of the shade created by the other taller buildings.
This is the dirty secret of the environmental movement.
Views for the wealthy.
They want the rest of us to live somewhere else.
Seems like this is a step in the right direction. I hope the developers are successful and this idea spreads!
I had a professor, Dick Levine, at the Univ of Ky College of Architecture using every one of these concepts (plus more) in a home he built in the early 1980's - we have advanced ZERO since then.
Worse, this is simply re-applied ancient technology as most of this (sans the solar panels) "technology" was used by American Indians at places such as Mesa Verde. The adobe walls were built facing the prevalent solar angles, collected "passive" solar energy that was released at night to heat the buildings and cisterns collected rain water.
Those who are ignorant of history are condemned to repeat ignorance and have it called "innovative" by the uneducated masses.
Our advances will come in finding a large energy producing material through science in the private sector as it always has.
Agreed, an exercise in mental masturbation; a feel-good way to delude yourself into thinking you have solved a problem.
"The significant problems we face cannot be solved by the same level of thinking we were at when we created them." - attributed to Albert Einstein. (or is Norman Einstein? Ask Joe Theismann, he knows)
Virtual offices have the potential to solve man yof our problems, if we could let go of the 1930s mindset. The future is not going to be a re-hash of the same old cube-farm with workers prairie-dogging all day. We have to get around that barrier to go forward, but I doubt we're up to it.
I am just curious that is all. But, have we built non toxic solar panels? I thought we were only at the beginning stages of that. Doesn't that mean that you have already had a significant environmental impact? I haven't followed solar energy in a long while so I could be wrong but the last time a check making a solar panel was highly toxic. Hopefully, I am wrong. Because that is the only thing stopping me from buying solar anything if I can avoid it.
Skeeter -
I get kind of tired of these "innovators"
One of my favorite buildings of all time is a territorial at Pipe Springs National Monument. Two wings, each about 14 feet across, sleeping wing to the north, kitchen wing to the south over a natural spring, the wings separated by a gated courtyard aligned with prevailing winds. Store and clay construction. A marvel of efficiency and sustainability.
That larger than the footprint roof is going to be trouble no mater what they say. I'd much rather see green money going to more practical electricity production. A non-news flash for everyone...if electricity is clean and cheap drinking water isn't an issue.
Tell that to the millions who died of bad drinking water before electricity...
250 yrs? Hope it survives "the big one" (earthquake)
Imagine a building with a top hat like that built along the Gulf coast. The first even weak hurricane that comes along would rip it to shreds.
I think it's highly impractical to spend $30mil on developing a building that depends entirely on the environment for it's needs. Rain for water and sun for energy? You really have that much faith in the climate? I think at the very least it should have a "conventional" back-up in case they are experiencing a drought or just a very dark and cloudy winter... Weather is simply too unpredictable to depend on it 100%. Also, no cars? That's going to severely limit the demographic of people who are able to live or work in this building. This seems like a collossal waste of money. Spend that $30mil on paying down our national debt, instead!!
This is how "green" needs to proceed. Private development, and if it works, the open market. This is not "on the ground" yet, but let's wait to see how it works when concept is translated to brick and mortar. Good for them!
Sure, private development and gobs of government subsidies.
I did not see that in the article. Maybe I missed it. Can you note that for me? Thanks.
Just make sure not to build these ugly buildings near the coast, where water levels will rise a hundred feet before the tree huggers realize they can't stop 'global warming' by spending more money on stupid looking buildings. The climate will change regardless of what mankind does.
There is no natural reason why the climate needs to be changing at the current rate (1 deg F warming since the 1970s). We can at least slow down the rate of change in the decades ahead by taking appropriate actions.
I have seen claims like this before. They turned out to be a whitewash for the timber industry's logging of 100+ year-old trees and replanting with 30-year harvestable trees of smaller size and lesser quality.
Actually, the structural uses for wood in a building like this can be met with steel beam or reinforced concrete, and the finish items like doors and frames can be made with either plastic or waste wood pulp composition. Designers avoid the use of those plastic and resin-glue based products in 'green' buildings because the word 'plastic' makes them feel ill. On the other hand, plastic just might last 250 years.
oh, shuddup and ride your bike in the rain and snow!
Did obama invest in this company, too?
As much as this is a great step forward, I doubt that we will ever see it come to fruit. Our government is broken, they spend all the money on their own pork barrel projects and wars. We keep polluting the planet when we know what the consequences will be. We can't even get along with our own neighbors let alone people with different governments and a different god. We are a divided nation of self centered egotistical children who haven't evolved socially. The most important things in our lives, is having a bigger house and a newer car than the people next door and we look up to sports figures and entertainers who are even richer and more immature than we are. I could go on for a couple of hours but you get the drift of my rant. No, the glass is far from being half full. We have made sure that it is almost empty. I'm sure that Mother Nature can't wait to get rid of the parasites infesting her surface. Man.
It is truly bizarre that so many people are opposed to buildings and sources of energy that are sustainable even when these projects are not in their cities or areas. If a business person or community wants to invest in sustainable living, why is it anyone else's business?
What I like most about this project is that they are designing the building to actually last, instead of planning on it being demolished in less than half a century. The loss of a good view for the neighbors is regrettable, but at the same time that is part of living in a city where neighboring spaces can always be expected to develop vertically.
While I think it's an awesome attempt and could be revolutionary on many levels, I guarantee that $30 million projected price tag will surely increase by minimum 50%. And then, who can really afford to rent/live in those buildings besides rich people? And that's not a jab at the "1%"-because I'd love to be a part of that club-but the list of people able to afford the price to be in that building will be short.
God thats ugly. It reminds me of poor families in third world ghetto's who build their homes out of sheets of tin. Isn't it possible to build something that's both Green and attractive?
What a waste of time, money, effort, and anything else the burns any calories.
you're a calorie
Ya that's pretty accurate, but it's still stupid.
To all the simpletons out there who say this is a useless venture - I do this for a living and save my owners lots of money every year making their buildings more energy efficient!
And I make a very good living and have never had even a slight worry about not having a job at any point during this economic downturn. Sounds pretty good to me!
The fact is that oil companies (while still a necessary part of the equation) have for so many years bought so many politicians that unless the "greenies" push their agenda we'll never make progress. Not every oil well produced a geyser - and not every green project will work out perfectly, but...
SO SAD that efficiency has become a dirty word for so many sheep - err Americans. This isn't about taking away your cars or your rights - its about becoming a strong and growing economy! And until the simpletons realize that "green"/efficient building/manufacturing/development should become the norm in this country - we will continue to slip behind other parts of the world.
Pipe dream.
I agree that it needs to support electric cars. This area is too wet for most to get to work without a car. The building is in interesting idea but probably needs to be taller to be successful. I would be concerned that future growth in the area might create taller buildings that will block the sun needed for the solar panels.