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.

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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.

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View from the dining room into the kitchen.

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1,500 gallon cistern for rainwater catchment.

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

Last night, we had about 50 people come out for drinks and a short program on pro bono design services.  Two non profits were kind enough to speak a little about their experience with pro bono service and what it allowed them to accomplish (a lot!).  One architect, Brian Palidar of GroupArchitect spoke about his partnership with the Sibling House Foundation, doing housing assessments/remodels to keep foster kids together.  We ended with a Q&A covering a wide range of topics, from convincing management to prioritize pro bono services, to selecting non profit clients. I was very pleased with both the attendance and the response!

If you have questions about pro bono service, how to sign up, or would like to have me come to your non-profit and answer questions about how to capitalize on the amazing expertise of local design professionals, please contact me at matt@castarchitecture.com.

CAST architecture and the Miller Hull Partnership have put together an after-work mixer for The 1%, an organization whose design professional members pledge to donate 1% of their billable hours to pro bono causes every year.

The event will have a short program featuring architects and clients talking about the power of pro bono, a question and answer session, light fare and drinks.  Most of all, mix and meet leaders in the Seattle's design profession looking to serve the non-profit sector!

Please let us know that you are coming, by July 22, via  RSVP@MillerHull.com

CAST architecture recently participated in a Seattle City Council discussion regarding backyard cottages. The meeting began with a presentation of backyard cottage statistics that were gathered during the first year of the city wide backyard cottage ordinance. Following the presentation participants discussed working with the ordinance in practice and suggested potential improvements that could be made to the ordinance. You can view a video of the entire discussion at seattlechannel.org: Backyard Cottages: 1 Year Later

There is also a backyard cottage annual report available to download from the DPD's website: Backyard Cottages Annual Report - April 2011

Of particular interest was the number of cottages permitted in the first year (57) and their relatively even distribution throughout the city. One of the primary concerns opponents had expressed in opposition to the ordinance was a fear that dense concentrations of cottages would "take over" single family neighborhoods causing widespread parking and privacy issues. The fear was so potent and adamantly expressed that at one point during the development of the ordinance city council members considered placing limits on the number of permits per year (50) and limits on the number of cottages allowed in any given area. Thankfully, neither limit was written into the code and the fears have been proven to be unjustified thus far.

A few other interesting issues that came to the surface during the discussion were:

1. The relatively high costs of constructing a backyard cottage makes it difficult for home owners to see a return on their investment if they hope to use a cottage to generate rental income. In general it was felt that backyard cottages were an important new housing typology for the city and that the cottages are a valuable addition to the city's rental stock. It was proposed that the city should consider incentives that would help lower the cost of constructing a cottage and help encourage their creation. A reduced permit fee and property tax credits are two areas I think the city should review.
2. The feeling that the off street parking requirements (2 spaces) was in most cases unnecessary and to the detriment of green space and usable yards. One idea put forth was to loosen the parking requirements by making it easier to obtain a parking waiver on streets where parking is not an issue.
3. The base height limit was thought to be a bit too low and creates unreasonable difficulties for the construction of two story structures. During the public comment portion of the meeting architect Jim Burton suggested changing the datum to which the base height could be measured (top of plate) to add a bit to the base height limit and encourage homeowners to exceed minimum requirements for insulating roofs and ceilings. The overall height limit was thought to be adequate with the exception of the following issue:
4. The current ordinance sets the height limit to 15' above an existing home. This was thought to be problematic and unfair in the case where the property owner's lot has a significant slope up behind the existing home.
5. The current ordinance does not allow for a backyard cottage to be built on a through lot (a lot with a street on both the front and rear lot lines of a property). This was generally thought to be a mistake in the writing of the ordinance and that the ordinance should be revised to allow cottages on through lots.

All in all it was a fun and informative meeting. Kudos to the city employees key in the development of the ordinance and to Sally Clarke and the city council for passing the ordinance unanimously. After the first year of real world testing the ordinance has proven to be a resounding success.

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.

I'm trying to organize a tour of recently completed backyard cottages in the month of June.  If you have one that you'd like to have considered for the tour, please contact me!

Matt@CASTarchitecture.com

CAST architecture was featured in a couple of articles in the latest Forum magazine (published by AIA Seattle):

Sunset Substation Park was highlighted in an article, Ideas Toward a Renewable City, by Kate Cudney and Tom Mulica.

In a second article, New Edge/New Blood:  Refreshing reminders from ten young firms on keeping your competitive edge, by David Spiker, I talk about our use of blogging as a tool to highlight recent work and causes such as Backyard Cottages and reforming the Multifamily code.  Hopefully it is giving people a broader understanding, beyond the glossy portfolio, of the values that drive our designs.

One of our clients is documenting the process of transforming their bungalow with passive solar addition  (Design brief here) with a image laden blog. Check it out!

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.