Saratoga Modern--exterior from backyard

Set in the Saratoga, California suburbs, this house is a complete reboot of a 1969 faux colonial.  We're stripping away the historical pastiche, and focusing the design on nearly seamless indoor/outdoor living.  Wrapping the house is a stone terrace and arcade which defines a new dining space, lounge area and a series of gardens.  It screens the intense solar exposure, and reinforces the horizontal in keeping with the City's very restrictive planning regulations.

The palette of natural materials is pretty rich, but understated, using changes in texture and shadow.  We'll be using a light colored, hard limestone, called Fiore from Maidenstone.  We'll use a split face texture for the arcade columns, hammered tile for the outdoor terrace, and a brushed finish for the interior tile.  The cabinetry and trim will be mostly walnut slab and panels.

More information and photos after the jump...

We've been investigating what the Urban Olympic project would look like as an 27 unit apartment building.  One potentially excited twist on the building is that we have split the bulk into two volumes with a 18' wide courtyard atrium.  The atrium and circulation are exterior, so we can apply another 2000 S.F.for an extra 3 units and still come in under the FAR limit.

We also did a first run at some energy modeling, using Archicad's EcoDesigner program, and feel that given the bulk it would be fairly straight forward to achieve the Passive House standard, but the return on investment is better if we design to the envelop to Washington State Energy Code, add solar hot water, switch the lighting to LEDs, and add an ERV.

Dave Boone has broke ground on our latest commercial project, The Canal Street Studio. This mixed use building on an infill lot in the Fremont neighborhood of Seattle, will house retail and office space, an artist's studio, and a caretakers residence. This live work studio for an interior designer/ceramicist and a writer, over looks the Fremont Canal, and is projected to be finished in spring of 2012.

A short subdivison in West Seattle is serving as the site for two prefabricated homes for a Seattle developer.

CAST worked with a modular factory in Oregon to understand the constraints involved with building, shipping, and installing factory built structures. Leveraging this knowledge we have designed a prototype house which balances the economy of modular construction with selective site built elements to gain the modulation, character, and function which stock prefabricated construction typically lacks.

By making changes to the homes orientation, location of site built portions of the structure such as awnings, eaves, parking, and decks, an extremely economical structure is tailored into a series of custom homes.

1

This new home was permitted under Seattle's citywide backyard cottage ordinance (which is rapidly approaching it's second year anniversary). The existing home, with a large corner lot and alley access, was an ideal candidate for a backyard cottage. The site allowed both the existing home and new cottage to enter from separate streets, have separate outdoor living areas and maintain a great deal of privacy from one another.

The owner desired a modestly scaled 800 square foot structure with exterior massing that followed the traditional lines of the existing home and a modern, light filled interior that opened to a private courtyard and was suitable for entertaining guests. The floor plan centers on a double height dining room with clerestory windows, sleeping loft and a large 4 panel door that frames views of the private courtyard and terraced garden. The cottage features radiant floor heating, an efficient on boiler with integrated solar hot water collection and a 1500 gallon cistern for rainwater catchment.

2

View from the dining room into the kitchen.

4

1,500 gallon cistern for rainwater catchment.

3

View from the kitchen into the dining room and living room.

The Widner Cottage is going to be open to the public twice this summer for tours:

First, the Phinney Neighborhood Association's Home and Garden Tour will roll through on June 12th, from 11-4 pm (see link).

Second, the Cottage will be featured as the AIA Seattle's Open House on July 17th from noon to 3 pm.  More information here.  As part of the tour, the house will be published in Seattle Magazine, in the Northwest Home section in July.

Stefan and I attended a conference put on by Passive House Northwest at Evergreen State College on Friday and I feel like we got a bit more of the nuance of the standard, understanding of more of the nerdy building science, as well as a chance to look at first hand some of new projects being brought to the US market. A little more background: Passive House is a concept developed by the PassiveHaus Institute in Germany.  They developed the tools that are used to model performance, and do the training and certification of Passive House consultants.  While there are about 30,000 PH projects worldwide, the US rollout has led to a few complications.

First, within the name, there are two inherent misconceptions:  that they are passive solar houses, and that it is a strategy for houses (since the direct german translation for haus would be 'building' , it's easy to overlook the impact on larger institutional and commercial projects).

Second, the Passive House standard was developed in Germany, and there are concerns that it doesn't address other climates.  In very cold climates, for example, the PH standard would call for an impractical amount of insulation, while in hotter areas, a code compliant house with an interior air seal might make the cut.

Third, the software is a black box, and as one conference goer pointed out, the Northwest is home to a lot of DIY building science 'rogues' who want to see into the box, fiddle and tweak the system to optimize it for our climate. It's a bit of a culture clash manifesting itself in the black box/open source conversation. Plus it is proprietary, so I feel a little bit of the same resistance I have to LEED and the USGBC.

Fourth, the spent energy metric is based on an area measurement.  Since the US first adopters are building houses, and on the small side, the bar is pretty high because the same energy hogs populate big and small homes alike.  Joe Giampetro has recently finished his 'Mini-B' passive house--essentially a small DADU, so it can be done, but there is no inherent reward for building not so big.

The flip side of the argument would be that we shouldn't be building single family detached at all.  Urban Olympic, our multifamily Passive House, seen in the prior post, will be an excellent data point to compare how the overall size of the building affects the energy model's performance and cost of construction.

All in all, if you are a building science nerd, I'd recommend the next event, scheduled for June 17th.  Regardless of your commitment to green building, the underlying idea is powerful, and will have a big impact on the industry over the next 20 years.

Urban Olympic is a community of 9 townhouses, and will  mark a couple of firsts for us:  our first Passive House project and also our first project under the new Seattle multifamily code.

Passive House is a rigorous green building standard focused on exclusively on energy consumption, energy efficiency and air quality. They are super insulated, almost airtight, and therefore need very little energy input to heat (up to a 90% reduction of the energy used by a typical code compliant house).  The heat from equipment, people and lighting retained within the insulated building envelope essentially replaces the furnace/boiler as the primary heat source. Fresh air is conditioned through a Heat Recovery Ventilator (HRV) with the exhausted air.  Although solar gain does factor into the equation, Passive Houses are not passive solar houses.

Urban Olympic, to my knowledge, will be the first multifamily Passive House in the United States.

We had about 15 at the AIA/CORA Pro Bono Design panel discussion.  Joining me on the panel was Rachel Minnery from Environmental Works, and Geoff Piper from Global Studio.

A couple of valuable points that came out of our discussion:

1.  Pro bono work is different than being a volunteer.   Pro bono service is the application of our professional abilities, judgement, experience, creativity to work for the public good.  Volunteering is a valuable component of civic life, such as working for Habitat for Humanity, but is probably relatively unskilled labor.

2.  Vet potential clients--they need to have the community connection, stability, and personnel to carry out the mission, because our work as architects is really just the beginning for any pro bono project. Our work may be the seed, but it takes a committed organization to make the investment a reality.

3.  Treat pro bono projects just as you would any other project in the office.  Otherwise, you're doing both your client and our profession a disservice by treating it as a less than serious undertaking.  That means contracts, liability, life safety, and solid construction documents.

4.  Work on projects/issues that you are interested in.  First it will help make the commitment easier to make, help you build experience in that area, and help to show people (and potential clients) where your heart lays.

As architects, we're often not in the driver's seat with regards to the project, but with pro bono, you have to take up the mantle of a shared mission with that community group or cause, and part of the compensation for your investment in time is taking the project where you think it should go.  Your vision may be underrated in the private sector, but essential to many non-profits trying to raise funds.  It is a wonderful opportunity to be entrepreneurial,  make connections with a larger community, and act not only as problem solvers, but problem identifiers.

Thank you to all our friends and colleagues that came out last night to help us celebrate our new office space!  Standing room only!  Now if only one of us had thought to snap a picture when the crowd was actually there....

Since we haven't decided what to do with the big wall that separates the desks from the conference/copy space, we took all the recycled moving boxes, cut them down on the table saw, then glued them up, thus recycling them again.   Perfect for the party!