NEEA’s BetterBricks was happy to be a major sponsor this program. This year the focus was on energy performance and water performance. For the first time, all projects were required to provide an energy consumption measure, the energy Use Index or EUI, which seems small but, in fact, is a huge step to getting all entrants to think about energy performance. In addition, the only other mandatory requirement was to describe the project team’s integrated design approach, a key process to achieve high performance buildings.

I’ll get to the award winners in a minute. First I want to share what I find stimulating about the awards process itself. To start, the jury consisted of leading sustainability experts, and not just architects. People like Bob Berkebile FAIA, Founding Principal, BNIM Architects and co-founder of COTE nationally, Don Horn AIA, Assistant Director, GSA Office of Federal High-Performance Green Buildings, Claire Johnson, Associate Director, Atelier Ten, San Francisco, and ALEX STEFFEN, Executive Editor, Worldchanging.  The jury was moderated by Nadav Malin, President, BuildingGreen, Executive Editor, GreenSource.

The Awards process began with the submittals but led to a public jury panel discussion that was videotaped for later posting on the AIA website, followed by a public jury interview of the finalist teams. Then the 11 finalist projects were printed on panels for public display and eventual shipment for display around the region, further extending the impact of the lessons generated by these projects. The Awards ceremony allowed a public discussion with the winning project teams and in the near future there will be a set of case studies and a small booklet and an issue of Seattle AIA Forum magazine describing the projects. So if you missed the other public opportunities you still have many options for viewing the projects. Web images and descriptions of these and all submitted projects can be found at http://wmig.aiaseattle.org/2010_gallery.

Finalists and Winners

Now for what you’ve been waiting for. The jury selected two Gold-level projects, one Silver, and two Honorable Mentions — one for Rural Housing and one for Cultural Sensitivity.

GOLD
King Street Station Rehabilitation, Seattle WA
ZGF Architects
Collaborators:  SMEP Engineer: ARUP; LEED Certification: Green Building Services, Inc.; Commissioning Agent: Keithly Barber Associates

Photo Credit: Seattle Department of Transportation; Museum of   History & Industry
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GOLD
Vancouver Convention Centre West, Vancouver Canada
Design Architect: LMN Architects. (Prime Architects: Musson Cattell Mackey Partnership & DA Architects & Planners)
Collaborators: Mechanical Engineer: Stantec Consulting; Commissioning Authority and Mechanical Commissioning Agent: KD Engineering Co.

Photo Credit:  LMN/Studio 216
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SILVER
Twelve | West
ZGF Architects
Collborators:  Gerding Edlen Development Company LLC ; Total Mechanical – M/E/P Engineers, Lighting Design

Photo Credit:  Timothy Hursley,  ZGF Architects LLP
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Honorable Mention for Rural Affordable Housing
Common Ground, A Co-op Neighborhood
Mithun
Collaborators: Lopez Community Land Trust.

Photo Credit:  Mithun, Juan Hernandez
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Honorable Mention for Cultural Sustainability
Northwest Maritime Center
The Miller|Hull Partnership
Collaborators:  Mechanical Engineering: Ecotope, Inc; Sustainability: O’Brien and Company

Photo Credit:  Nic Lehoux
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During the awards ceremony, there was an open Q&A session with project team members and the audience. Below are some of the interesting ideas from NEEA’s BetterBricks’ point of view:

- Integrated design proved to be a key process to attain high performance.

- Thermal comfort expectations can and should vary by seasons, by use and by zone.

- Green BIM tool advances are really helping.

- District-level awareness and connections are key to advanced sustainability.

- It is important to explore all the energy options early and seeing where they might work or even influence the design scheme.

- Some new products were developed or introduced into the US via some of the projects thus making it easier for future projects to take advantage of.

- It was essential to either have a client that was interested and even aggressively pushing the energy and sustainability goals or have the architect effectively convince the client of the importance.
So go check out the detailed project information at the Seattle AIA website, and look for the video trailer http://wmig.aiaseattle.org/2010_gallery.

Portland is once again on the national stage, but this time it’s not the New York Times touting the city’s epic eateries (thanks for the nod, but enough already).  Architect Magazine released its second annual ranking of green architecture firms and two of the top ten firms call Portland home.

Sera Architects and Zimmer Gunsul Frasca (ZGF) Architects both earned a well-deserved seat among the nation’s most sustainable-focused firms.  Sera, coming in at No. 3, is behind the city’s greenest projects, including the Oregon Sustainability Center, which aims to be a net-zero high rise and is catching the attention of designers and developers the world over.  ZGF, coming in at No. 10, gained acclaim for its commitment to sustainable projects like the rain gardens at the Oregon Convention Center and its own offices at Twelve West in downtown Portland.  Perkins + Will came in as the number one green architecture firm according to the magazine.  While the firm is based in Chicago, the work coming out of the Perkins + Will Seattle office is on the cutting edge of green design (and of course adds to the sustainable cache of the Northwest).

On a related note, Clark Brockman of Sera Architects and a cadre of current and former ZGF architects, including Amy Cortese, John Breshears and Naomi Cole, have all been recognized with a BetterBricks Award over the years.

The other eight firms that made to the list include:

Perkins +Will , Chicago (No. 1)

EYP Architecture & Engineering, Albany, N.Y. (No. 2)

PGAL, Houston, (No. 4)

Cook+Fox, Chicago, (No. 5)

HOK, St. Louis (No. 6)

FXFOWLE, New York (No. 7)

Anshen + Allen, San Francisco (No. 8 )

DLR Group, Omaha, Neb. (No. 9)

A groundbreaking new research effort reveals how hospitals, which account for four percent of all energy consumed in the U.S., can achieve a 60 percent reduction in energy utility use by redesigning the way they use energy. A newly constructed, code-compliant hospital in the Northwest following the process and employing strategies identified in the research can expect to save around $730,000 a year.  Savings in other areas can be higher where utility prices are higher. All sectors of the medical industry are tackling issues of sustainability as providers continue to be asked to do more with less and lighten their impact on the environment.  This work represents one of the latest contributions to the ongoing push to green America’s hospitals and build healthier communities. The most salient outcome of this work is the definition of a process that brings together architectural, mechanical and central plant systems to deliver significant efficiencies. These strategies include heat recovery, daylighting, and thermal energy storage, which when integrated at the very beginning, can reduce up to 60 percent of a new hospital’s energy use. This approach resulted in a full hospital prototype that has been modeled for energy use as well as cost of construction and can be implemented for less than three percent of the total project’s cost, an incremental cost that is expected to be recouped through energy savings and utility incentives within the first five-to-eight years of a building’s life depending on local utility costs.

The study was presented at the CleanMed Conference in Baltimore on May 11, 2010. To read an executive summary of Targeting 100! click HERE. To request a copy of the full report, click HERE. For Energy in Healthcare Fact Sheet, click HERE.

The study, titled, “Targeting 100! Envisioning the high performance hospital: implications for a new, low energy, high performance prototype,” is the result of the close collaboration of the University of Washington’s Integrated Design Lab and NBBJ, one of the nation’s leading healthcare architectural firms. The study was primarily funded by the Northwest Energy Efficiency Alliance (NEEA) through its BetterBricks initiative, with significant in-kind time commitment by NBBJ and others on the research team including engineers, general contractors, utilities, hospital CEOs and facilities managers.

Previous research conducted by the UW’s IDL of Scandinavian hospitals showed that a hospital can achieve an Energy Use Index (EUI) of 100 and still provide patients and staff with an exceptional work and healing environment. An Energy Use Index, or EUI, is the total amount of energy used by a building (electricity and natural gas) per square foot of floor area, measured on an annual basis to establish baseline energy use.  The EUI value for a building is used in a similar manner as MPG is used to describe the efficiency of an automobile.

This study shows that hospitals in the U.S. can also aim for an EUI of 100 and achieve similar successful outcomes while fully complying with codes. To put this in perspective, the EUI of an average Northwest hospital is 270 KBtu/sq.ft.yr.

David Cook of Behnisch Architekten, and currently the Pietro Belluschi Distinguished Visiting Professor in Architecture at the University of Oregon School of Architecture, will be speaking at the U of O White Stag Building on Thursday evening May 20th.

David Cook, Dipl. Architekt RIBA, ARB studied architecture at the Polytechnic in Manchester and obtained his Diploma at the University of East London in 1992. Together with Stefan Behnisch and Martin Haas, he has been heading the practice Behnisch Architekten since 2006. He has held teaching positions in Karlsruhe, Stuttgart, and New York and has given lectures in Manchester, London, Aarhus, Cagliari, Miami, and Beijing, among other places.

Behnisch Architekten is a leader in creating distinctive architectural solutions that are environmentally sustainable. The Stuttgart, Germany-based architecture and planning firm maintains U.S. offices in Venice, CA, and Boston, MA. Notable projects include platinum-LEED-rated Genzyme Center in Cambridge, MA; Norddeutsche Landesbank in Hannover, Germany; Cultural District Riverfront Development Plan in Pittsburgh, PA; Unilever Headquarters in Hamburg, Germany; Institute for Forestry and Nature Research in Wageningen, The Netherlands; and the Harvard Science Complex in Allston, MA.

David Cook will be speaking in conjunction with the very interesting and informative exhibit  ”Design, Ecology, Synergy”  which  redefines the term sustainability by examining how people inhabit their built environments. This exhibition which toured Europe, showcases the innovative design approach of Behnisch Architekten and Transsolar Climate  Engineering, as illustrated by several international projects and ongoing collaborations.  It is a cleverly designed exhibition that demonstrates the human senses to the built environment. Human scale diagrams show our intake of the environment and our reactions to light, material, temperature, air, and sound as conditions determined or often dictated by the enclosure system of the building. The exhibition appropriately features audio, visual, and tactile displays including large light boxes where information on each category (light, material, etc.) is printed on the surface; videos of interviews and projects; project models, and large colorful dome luminaries.

Presented by: U. of Oregon Department of Architecture

Date: Thursday  5/20/2010
Time: 6 :00 pm–Lecture,  7:15 pm–Reception
Free and open to the public

Location :
Event Room

White Stag Building
70 N.W. Couch St.
Portland, OR, 97209

In certain circle in the design and engineering community, Guy Battle, of Battle McCarthy Consulting Engineers , is somewhat of a rock star.  His work specializes in the integrated design of low energy and environmentally responsive buildings.  A few of his most renowned projects include Jubilee campus at Nottingham University, Endesa Headquarters, Madrid and Greenwich Millennium Village.

Fellow blogger and BetterBricks contributor, Brian Libby, had a chance to catch up with Guy before a lecture in Portland, Oregon.

Brian Libby: When you were visiting Portland in 2005, you said you thought within five to ten years the U.S. would switch positions with Europe in leading sustainable design and building. So today, is that the case?

Guy Battle: The thing about America is when it gets its act together and gets into gear, there’s not many things that can stop this sort of mad, massive machine. Today I was doing reviews of projects, and I think that even within the past four years since I talked to you last, after just looking at these projects today, [there have been] massive changes.

Yesterday I was reviewing the Oregon Sustainability Center design. There is no way that building would have been built or even discussed four years ago. Dennis Wilde and his team are really pushing it. These guys have really been researching what’s been happening in Europe. In terms of a mental switch, it’s massively important. It’s a recognition that, ‘We Americans are not leading in this area.’ Which is quite hard for Americans. To recognize that someone else has been leading the charge on this has been really important.

Libby: Kind of like the auto industry.

Battle: Yes, all of this comes together. We have a saying in England: You can be waiting for a bus, and then the next time you look up five buses come along at the same time. It’s that  sort of thing. Barack Obama’s been elected, and there’s been a stimulus package. The recession has been good for this, I believe, because it means people have got time to think. The US Green Building Council, and the Cascadia Chapter particularly, have been pushing this Living Building Challenge, which I think is just fantastic.

The Living Building Challenge, the objectives they’ve encompassed are up there with what Europe and the UK, which I think is leading it still. It’s saying, “We have to be doing it.” Within the UK, we’ve got to achieve zero carbon buildup and zero energy by 2020. The challenges here in the US are for 2030. So you’re somewhat behind.

But having said that, the Sustainability Center project is really up there with the best that I’ve been working on. I was really impressed by the rigor of the analysis and the architecture that was coming out was beginning to test the accepted norms.

Libby: How do you see that as an example of America’s progress in sustainability? Or do you see it more as particular regions of the country?

Battle: I think there’s no doubt about it that North America, has developed centers of excellence. The great morass is still out there wondering what or how to do it. But there are some great successes out there. That’s been a massive change. We didn’t have those same centers of excellence out there four years ago. I could sense that they were coming.

The great danger, though, especially here, is this whole issue of greenwash— now you can’t move without engineers and architects saying they do sustainable design. When you get down into it, a lot of them are only saying it. That’s a challenge, especially with clients. They need to sift through architects and engineers who can still deliver and are not just saying they can. But at least everyone is talking about climate change.

Libby: Where are you seeing these centers of excellence?

Battle: There’s firms, and there’s areas. I’ve been really impressed over these couple of days with the attitude in the Northwest. There seems to be much more openness. Now, admittedly the climate is kinder. But the opportunities are really being explored. We’ve had some great conversations about daylighting and natural ventilation . Natural ventilation four or five years ago, people were saying, “No way.” Now they’re even talking about it for laboratories, which is fantastic.

Libby: How has the integrated design process changed how you and other team members work together?

Battle: Since I set up the practice with Chris McCarthy, we’ve always recognized having as many disciplines under one roof as possible. It is really the only way to generate this. Because you’ve got to get everyone’s input, working together, all with a common attitude, a common culture of excellence and sustainability.

Libby: How do the US and UK systems contribute to that?

Battle: It’s easier in the UK because while there are specialists, there tends to be less specialization. By that I mean, you take an engineering practice and there are quite a few services engineers and MEP engineers who are multidisciplinary. They’re all together. And sustainability has always existed within those practices. It hasn’t been a specialist consultancy.

In this country, it’s that much harder because the industry appears to be so fragmented. There’s this new group of people who have come up over the past seven or eight years that are called sustainability consultants, mostly for facilitating LEED I’m told. One of the problems with those individuals is that they are quite often just people who have earned the LEED qualification. They’ve had no real experience of delivering it. But put that aside for a moment. The challenge then over here is that you have so many different specialties.

The role of the conductor, the architect, is to get everyone playing to the same piece of music and then to actually all go in the same direction. It really is so much harder in this country than it has been in the UK. In the UK you need the architect, you need the structural engineer, the MEP engineer, and the cost consultant. And really that’s all you need. Everyone has enough information around their subjects to do what they need. But here we need at least double that, it seems. You need a specialist on ecology, acoustics, daylight, energy use.

Libby: What about the responsibility for overseeing materials?
Battle: In the UK the materials are handled quite often by a combination of architect and structural engineer and services engineer who tend to be the LEED equivalent. Because we have BREEAM [British English Environmental Assessment Method], it’s been the service engineers who have done BREEAM. So we’ve had to learn all about sustainable tools. So we bring that to the table.

The other thing I think we’ve seen a big change in is just the analysis tools that are now available. 15 years ago the tools by comparison to now were clunky. Clunky CFD, clunky thermo analysis. Yes, we had them, but they weren’t particularly fine tuned. Now we’re finding that there are analysis tools that allow for quicker, smarter assessment of projects. And that has also raised the ability of teams to deliver on this vision.

Libby: Are there certain projects either recently or in your career that represent breakthroughs like this, or have felt like important stepping stones?

Battle: Yes. I guess the first was one I did personally before I set up the office, eighteen years ago when I was at Arup. We did a project called Tomigaya with [architect] Richard Rogers. It’s basically a building that was designed to be a zero-energy building. It was designed all around the wind: the whole shape, form. That made me really explore the link between architecture and the environment. I saw there was a real opportunity within the discipline of architecture to create a new architectural form that is much more responsive to the environment.

And we’re seeing that now. On the Oregon Sustainability Center there was some artistic interpretation of the [roof] teardrop. They were really beginning to get it with the roof and the sun. The rest of it was still lacking some rigor, but the top of the tower was really beginning to respond to the sun-path diagram.

Libby: How do you see today’s projects fitting into a larger sustainable design trend?

Battle: I think we’re in just the beginning… where we’ll look back in five years’ time and realize that we’re in the middle of a new architectural philosophy, architectural movement, which is environmental architecture, modern, whatever you want to call it. I’ve heard lots of definitions of it. Some call it a formless architecture, architecture that responds to environment.

Libby: It reminds of me of the phrase that Le Corbusier coined: “machines for living”.

Battle: Yeah. Machines for living is a kind of interesting term, isn’t it? We look back and see it was really kind of sterile, wasn’t it? You had this light bulb hanging in the middle of the space and this double skin. It was a celebration of the technology without realizing that people are fundamental to everything. Now there’s an understanding that buildings have to create an environment for people to live in. I’m seeing that sort of movement.

Tomigaya 18 years ago was just the start of that. And then after setting up the practice [Battle McCarthy], the first building we did was called the St. Johns Innovation Centre. It was the first modern architecture in Europe to have wind towers for ventilation. It was a very simple stack effect, daylight, external shading—really basic. The architecture doesn’t make you go, “Wow.” It’s not like a Morphosis building. But it’s really honest.

Libby: It’s interesting that your career was influenced by doing an ahead-of-its-time green building with Richard Rogers, because some of his most famous works like the Pompidou Center and Lloyd’s of London have been described as having the insides of the building on the outside, and vice versa. It made the structure and mechanics of the building part of its identity; just as sustainable building does today.

Battle: You’re absolutely right. The thing is Rogers was very experimental with structure. He was working very closely with Peter Rice at that time, and it was all about form following function. And the structure was used to express it. Now we’re through that period where structure is expressed. We’re expressing the environment, which is much more subtle.

I guess along the way another building that was pretty seminal for us was the University of Rwanda with Ralph Johnson (of Perkins + Will). I did a lot of work with Ralph. We did the L.A. Courthouse. [An atrium with a soaring, curved solar wall optimizes daylight, provides natural ventilation and captures energy through high-tech cells embedded in the glass.] That was all about the wind and the sun. You had to respond to the sun to keep it out, but the form really was designed to capture the wind. It’s a large site and it also integrated the landscape. So that was also an important project.

Libby: How similar or different are some of these architects you’ve worked with like Rogers, Perkins + Will, Norman Foster or Daniel Libeskind? Is it a more similar process from project to project and architect to architect than people realize, or is it a matter of learning new dance steps every time?

Battle: Oh no, it’s definitely learning to dance. Compare Rogers to Foster. There’s a real contrast. Foster is really sort of, like, the product. He somehow really encapsulates things. Rogers is very left of center, and social. He’s all about collaboration and discussion. You go to workshops and there’s a process of evolution. Foster’s projects are somehow more refined. You’re working on a much tighter box in terms of your input. You have to learn to work with these guys, and you learn what pushes their buttons, what sets them going, how to seduce them. Because at the end of the day the engineer is in very basic terms…I often call myself a prostitute, inasmuch that it’s not my building. I’m not the architect. At the end of the day, society celebrates the architect and architecture. But you need to learn to influence these guys, and you have to understand that the language is subtly different with each one, and push them certain directions, certain ways. A good engineer learns very quickly that you’ve got to sort of step back and move forward again with the right language and push, emotion and encouragement, through communication, through sketching, whatever the language might be.

Libby: In almost any field as one advances into a leadership role there is the personal risk of getting away from the work one enjoys—going to lots of meetings, always traveling, and so on. What is your skill set and what do you like the most about your job, and are you still able to do it?

Battle: I guess I’m a designer first and foremost. The thing I like most in the process is the early interaction with the architects—where you start with a piece of white paper, and yet it’s always really scary. You’ve got the brief, you’ve got the client saying, ‘We want this.’ Where the hell are we gonna start? It’s kind of daunting. And every now and again there are blocks, you get literally designer blocks, where you just can’t think. You can’t break through. You’re looking for that idea. You always come up with something, but it’s that process of working with the other people on the design team, where we’re sparking off each other—that sort of thing. I really enjoy that bit.

Meetings are a fundamental part of that, and the travel I can take or leave. But the trouble is I really enjoy going to different climates. If I were working in England all the time I’d get bored. I mean, it’s cold in the summer, warm in the winter. You come over to New York, the South and the Northwest and there are different kinds of climate extremes. We’ve done work in some extreme places. We just finished up a new tower where it gets down to minus 27 degrees Centrigrade. It’s a really cold place. That’s an extreme. I love going to these different places and working with an architect who’s willing to listen and see what it’s going to grow out of it. Because it’s always different. This new movement of architecture needs to be regional and about the place and climate.

Libby: You mentioned the economic downturn being good for green building because it necessitates more innovation and long-term thinking about building performance. But looking at Battle McCarthy’s website, in the ‘highrise’ category particularly, a lot of projects are listed as being in the conceptual stage. How has the firm and its portfolio going forward been affected by the worldwide economic downturn?

Battle: Well, inevitably the economy has put some projects on hold. But having said that I think that the recession gives us an enormous opportunity to just take some time out and rethink. I think because there was such a boom over the past several years leading up to this time last year, everyone just sort of ran with it, and no one really spent the time to think about it. Now you’ve got that space, an enforced sabbatical. It’s time to think and learn and bring those ideas to the table.

Libby: Battle McCarthy is identified as a sustainable firm. How does that help marketing for you?

Battle: Everyone is doing sustainability these days. It was much easier five years ago. Let’s just take London, which is my home market. When we kicked off sixteen years ago, we were one of only about two or three firms doing it. Most of the major engineering firms in the early 1990s couldn’t even spell the word sustainability, let alone know what it was all about. Five years ago the whole market just switched. Developers were demanding it. And now every single practice, without fail, has a sustainability section or sells it in some fashion. That knowledge used to be a sort of winning card. Now we can’t win on that alone. We can win on delivery, because we’ve got so much more track record. But that doesn’t always play out, so we have to look for new ways and new approaches.

I guess what we sell now is that interactive approach with the architects. It’s that knowledge, a base of knowledge, saying that ‘If you build a building with us, you’ll be able to do a better building than if you work with this other practice. Even though they’ll bring the sustainability, it’s because of our knowledge and creativity within the practice that you’ll end up doing better. It’s about service.

Libby: What projects or places today have you excited?

Battle: I think there’s actually some really interesting work happening out in the Middle East at the moment. With HOK we’re doing some work for King Abdullah University in Saudi Arabia. And then you’ve got this Masdar [development in Abu Dhabi, 2003-2007, the headquarters will be the world’s first large-scale, mixed-use “positive energy” building, producing more energy than it consumes.]. We’re sort of involved in Masdar, but on the periphery, not on design. We’re doing carbon management. But Foster’s done this master plan for Masdar. And then Smith and Geary are doing a project there. Foster’s also doing the headquarters.

Libby: Where do you see the most opportunity?

Battle: The challenge of climate change is not so much what’s happening in countries like America and those across Europe. The amount that we build is relatively small. We have a turnover of new buildings at about two percent, three percent of the stock every year. But if you move over to the Middle East, or to Southeast Asia, China or other places, it’s another story. If there’s a place where we need this step change, I think it will be places like the Middle East and China. And it will be Africa. Africa’s not economically there yet. But that’s where we’re going to see massive growth in people and populations and resulting demand for shelter and housing and commercial projects.