The Self-Sufficient Office Building
By BRYN NELSON
Published: October 4, 2011
SEATTLE — One of the most highly anticipated development projects in the Pacific Northwest is still little more than a grid of concrete and rebar at the edge of the Capitol Hill neighborhood here. When completed near the end of next year, though, the six-story office building may be the greenest commercial structure in the world.

The building, the $30 million Bullitt Center at 1501 East Madison Street, is expected to set a new precedent for environmentally friendly design and construction and in doing so would reinforce Seattle’s reputation as a global leader in sustainable development.

As the future home of the environmentally focused Bullitt Foundation and other like-minded tenants, the Bullitt Center is designed to produce as much electricity as it uses, making it both energy- and carbon-neutral. The building will supply and treat all of its own water, capturing rainwater in a 50,000-gallon underground cistern. And its construction will exclude items on a “red list” of hazardous materials like lead and cadmium, a stipulation that has required developers to compile a spreadsheet of 362 prohibited building components.

If the Bullitt Center passes the self-sufficiency test after its first full year of occupancy, it will be certified as a “living building” by the International Living Future Institute, a group based in Seattle that has established a green building standard, called the Living Building Challenge, widely viewed as the world’s toughest.

“The story is that this building is pushing the boundaries of performance in all categories, not just in one or two,” said Jason McLennan, the chief executive of both the certifying institute and the Cascadia Green Building Council, a chapter of the U.S. Green Building Council that administers the better-known LEED rating system. “For this building type and this scale, it’s the first in the world to go this far.”

So far, only three modestly sized buildings have been fully certified as “living buildings,” a phrase Mr. McLennan coined in the ‘90s for structures that could operate “as elegantly and efficiently as flowers.” Joining the exclusive group means meeting expectations in seven areas, or “petals,” including water, energy, health, materials, site, equity and beauty; projects also may attain certification in individual petals.

Although the concept has not yet attained the popularity of movements like the primarily European Passivhaus, about 100 other “living building” projects are in development.

Denis Hayes, the president and chief executive of the Bullitt Foundation and a national coordinator of the first Earth Day in 1970, said his foundation’s future home had benefited from an integrated design process involving architects, engineers, developers and contractors.

Rising above an adjacent pocket park lined with gnarled sycamores, the building will be capped by a rooftop “sombrero” of photovoltaic panels expected to produce enough energy in the summer to overcome wintertime deficits and break even over an entire year.

The idea that solar energy alone could meet the needs of a multistory office building in overcast Seattle might strike some as wishful thinking.

But that will be accomplished through a combination of increased panel efficiency and a decrease in energy demands. The Bullitt Center is expected to use less than one-fourth the energy of a typical building its size; conventional usage would have dictated a 64,000-square-foot solar panel canopy that would have shrouded the block.

Even so, the solar panel array will extend out like a brim over the sidewalk, requiring a special permit from the city. Minimizing the building’s energy footprint has also required higher ceilings and windows to let in as much natural daylight as possible, tacking an additional nine feet to the building’s overall height and prompting an ultimately unsuccessful zoning challenge from a neighboring apartment building.

Meeting strict water usage rules could prove more onerous. As planned, the Bullitt Center will collect and treat rainwater for its showers, sinks and drinking fountains, then filter the used “gray water” through a lower-level green roof and a strip of landscaping. The building’s raw sewage will be composted and decontaminated before being shipped offsite to be converted into fertilizer.

The Washington State Department of Public Health requires urban public-use buildings that obtain their potable water from anything other than a municipal supply to chlorinate it. But chlorine would run afoul of the Living Building Challenge’s prohibitions on toxins, and the Bullitt Center’s backers are pushing instead for ozone purification, a less toxic method used elsewhere around the world.

Chris Rogers, of the building’s developer, Point32, said the project’s team was negotiating with state authorities over how to have the Bullitt Center’s water independently tested to prove that it would meet quality standards. Even if it does, the Bullitt Center will remain connected to the city’s water supply as a backup.

The project ran into another snag over financing. The Bullitt Foundation challenged a design firm, the Miller Hull Partnership, and their collaborators to develop a core of steel, concrete and timbers with a life expectancy of 250 years, a nearly unheard-of number in an industry that typically uses 40-year life spans in appraising the value of commercial buildings. With no comparable structures to point to, banks were at a loss for how to value many of the building’s central features, including its expected longevity and its energy and water self-sufficiency. Most balked at lending. Meanwhile, the upfront costs have run about one-third higher than for commercial structures of comparable size.

”Candidly, we had to put more equity into this building than we expected,” Mr. Hayes said. “We found only a very, very, very limited number of banks that would even consider making a loan, and the most generous of them gave us a construction permit for about 50 percent of the cost of constructing the building.”

Mr. McLennan said the difficulties in financing the project, however, could ease the strain on future efforts by providing a template for the added value of a living building. “How do you find comparables for a building that’s never been built like this before?” he asked. “You can’t.”

The project has won some important victories. Earlier in its development, it was a catalyst for the passage of a 2009 Seattle ordinance that set up a pilot program offering new flexibility in the city’s land use code for up to 12 potential “living buildings.”

After the developers selected highly energy-efficient windows from Schüco International, a German company, it agreed to set up its first American assembly plant, in the Puget Sound region. And Point32’s team persuaded Building Envelope Innovations, of Clackamas, Ore., to reformulate its Wet-Flash sealant, a liquid spray that creates watertight and airtight barriers, to exclude phthalates, compounds that mimic some human hormones and have been linked to disruptions in the endocrine system.

The Bullitt Center has early lease commitments for four of its six floors. The building’s general contractor, the Schuchart Corporation, will be a principal tenant, joining Mr. McLennan’s Cascadia Green Building Council in staking their reputations on the structure’s success. The foundation says rents will be comparable to those for other newly constructed, LEED-certified buildings in the area, and it eventually expects a positive return on investment.

Mr. Hayes said the project team was talking with behavioral economists on incentives to encourage tenants to practice environmentally responsible habits. Immediate feedback on energy use may be one. Competition among floors may be another, as well as making each tenant’s consumption public.

Designers also are not beyond a little bribery. At the site’s high point along East Madison Street, a glass-enclosed stairwell will connect the upper four floors. Those who choose to walk rather than take the elevator will be rewarded with spectacular views of the Space Needle and downtown skyline.