1402 Third Avenue
Suite 515
Seattle, Washington 98101
206.956.0883
Suite 515
Seattle, Washington 98101
206.956.0883
Blog
We've Moved!
The lease on our space at the Terminal Sales Building--which we'd occupied for ten years--was coming up for renewal. Our space there had tons of raw character, and we did a thoroughly green renovation of it eight years ago. We would have liked to stay, but unfortunately TSB's new owners weren't willing to negotiate a good rate for us despite a 20% vacancy rate for office space downtown.With the excellent help of Dan Stutz of CBRE as a tenant rep, we found and negotiated a lease for a nice space in the Joseph Vance Building at Third and Union. The LEED-Gold certified building (renovation completed in 2007) is home to our friends Sightline Institute and a great community of other progressive organizations including Fuse Washington, Climate Solutions, Stockholm Environmental Institute, Washington Conservation Voters and more. There is a shared conference room on our floor, as well as bike lockers, showers and changing rooms in the building. The building even composts! The Joseph Vance Building meets the 2030 Challenge now (http://www.sustainableindustries.com/greenbuilding/95903464.html) with building standard energy efficient lighting, light shelves, efficient steam heat, operable windows and no air conditioning necessary.
We're walking the talk with a "Not So Big Office"--reducing our square footage by about 30%. With the more compact, efficient layout we still have the same capacity for workstations we had in the old space. With fewer square feet and a lower rental rate per square foot our rent will be half what it was. We will put that extra cash toward paying ourselves more equitably, additional employee education and better employee benefits.
Our tenant improvement work was simple, and executed quickly and affordably by Odyssey Builders. We combined two suites into one, painted with our favorite paint, Yolo Colorhouse, and will be installing efficient T-5 Lightoliler PowerWash uplights brought from our old space on track reclaimed from Lightolier Northwest's showroom relocation. We'll also be relamping our Tech Lighting track lights with LEDs from Lighting Supply. We were able to salvage and reuse virtually all of the reclaimed fir and pine and recycable polyetheylene partitioning system and all of the FSC-certified plywood bookshelves built by former employee Michael Lentz in the new space. We left behind only the cork floor from Ecohaus.
The move itself was quite smooth. We (well, Geoff mostly) had already taken everything apart in the days preceding, and packed everything possible into 70 Frogboxes. Frogboxes (http://www.frogbox.com/) are reusable, recycled plastic boxes similar to Amazon Fresh boxes but bigger, which you rent and return. After investigating moving by bicycle and finding that too much to organize in the time we had, we hired EcoMovers. (http://www.ecomoversmoving.com/) They brought five guys and two small trucks, and in four hours moved all of our stuff out of the old place and into three different places in the new building (our suite on the 5th floor, a temporary staging area on the 2nd floor, and our basement storage room) for a bit over $1,000.
It's hard to believe we've been here almost a month. We still have a fair amount of organizing to do, but we're up and running and getting started on new projects. We'll have an open house in the fall--please come and visit!
-RH
Green Roof Garage in National Pepsi Campaign
Venturing onto YouTube today, I came across the above advertisement for Pepsi's new humanitarian/environmental effort, and was surprised to see my own green-roofed garage!
A couple years ago fashion/rock star photographer Karen Moskovitz came over with a young model family to shoot some stock "lifestyle" photos and video using our garage as the backdrop. (That's not me watering the roof!) This is the first of the images to bear fruit, as far as I know. One funny thing is that while the clip shows the fellow watering the roof--which definitely makes a better video--we very rarely need to do that, since the roof is planted with drought-tolerant grasses and sedums.
It's a bit odd to be shilling Pepsi, even if very indirectly, but I do like the idea that we are clearly living in someone's idea of a better future!
RH
Best Green House of the Month
3716 Springfield, a zero-energy home, built by our intern Molly Fogarty (shown far right, installing Serious Windows) and her studio-mates from Studio804, was recognized at Best Green House of the Month for November 2009 by GreenSource Magazine.
Built to LEED for Homes Platinum standards in Kansas City, Kansas, the house has 22 solar panels, a residential wind turbine, a geothermal heat pump, ERVs, recycled materials, low flow faucets, dual flush toilets and reclaimed and FSC certified wood. For more information about the house e-mail: molly@harrisonarchitects.com.
The home, built by students from the University of Kansas, is also mentioned in the Dec/Jan 2010 issue of Dwell Magazine saying, "The program spits out talented alumni like fizzy water through a seltzer nozzle." (Dan Maginn)
It is also featured in the February 2010 issue of Metropolis Magazine in "Platinum at a Price" by Daniel Akst.
For more images of the process and completed project please go to www.studio804.com.
MF
Rooted Foods
Rooted Foods is a volunteer organization committed to promoting products that are truly rooted in their communities - healthy, unique products that contribute to helping communities sustain self-reliance.Betsy Power--a work-study student of Rob's back in the day--and Kitty Brosnan have created lists of products you can buy, and companies you can buy from, that directly help to strengthen social, environmental and economic fiber of the communities from where the products came.
From Prickly Pear Marmalade to Purple Corn Organic Flour, the idea of eating delicious food to help others is delightful.
By the way, Rooted Foods is working to win a $15,000 YouTopia Free Range Ideas Grant to produce a video of the wonderful small producers that the Rooted Foods seal represents. To help them win the grant, put in your vote for Rooted Foods! Go to: http://youtopia.uservoice.com/pages/33741-community-development/suggestions/386455-are-your-food-purchases-supporting-the-multinational-corporate-machine-or-local-economies-?ref=title, sign in with your Google or FaceBook account, and register your votes.
Voting will remain open until December 1, 2009 — so make sure to place your votes before the deadline, and spread the word to your networks. Winners will be announced in January 2010.
MF
One Bus Away
One Bus Away is a favorite application around the office. It makes using the bus system as primary transportation much easier. Through the phone number, website, SMS, iPhone app or text-only pages for older phone you can get real-time bus arrival times.Where is your bus? http://onebusaway.org/index.html
MF
Passive House now on Wikipedia
For a quick look into Passive House (Passivhaus in German) criteria and design strategies, take a look at Passive House on Wikipedia, the free Encyclopedia. The article has diagrams, a history of Passive House and the standards for creating a building that requires 1 BTU/square foot/degree day.Passive House buildings use 75% - 95% less energy for space heating and cooling than new buildings that meet current US energy efficiency codes. This summer Rob and Matt both took the Passive House Consultant Training course. We are excited to put these standards into practice.
MF
Solar Decathlon Shows Passivhaus Standards are #1 for Energy
Solar Decathlon is a worldwide competition that annually challenges groups of students to design, build and operate the most attractive, effective, and energy-efficient solar-powered house. This year's 1st and 2nd place winners (Technische Universität Darmstadt and the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign, respectively) modeled their designs off of Passivhaus standards.We are enthusiastic about the successful examples of Passivhaus, as we are currently working with those standards on projects of our own.
Richard Defendorf of GreenBuildingAdvisor.com blogs about the winners at:
http://www.greenbuildingadvisor.com/blogs/dept/green-building-news/solar-decathlon-winners-embrace-passivhaus-standard
MF
Capitalizing on the Green Economy
Sabrina Tillman of eco-structure writes: “There has never been a better time to build green!” Check out her clear and concise article in the September issue of eco-structure to learn how to take advantage of green incentives!http://www.eco-structure.com/governmental-projects/capitalizing-on-the-green-economy.aspx
MF
Backyard Cottages Could Create Affordable Housing
Chris Grygiel of Seattlepi.com talks about the new ordinance approved by Seattle City Council that will allow cottages to be built on single-family zoned lots. City Councilman Tim Burgess suggests, “That’s a positive way to create affordable housing in our city.”For height, square footage and other restrictions please check out the article: “Backyard Cottages OK’d in Seattle”
MF
Welcome to HARRISON architects!
HARRISON architects welcomes three new faces!Geoff Briggs (senior staff) comes to us from EDGE LLC. A certified Sustainable Building Advisor and beta tester for our new software, ArchiCAD, Geoff is totally tech-savvy and has been getting us through our transition to Building Information Modeling smoothly.
Matt Wasse (project architect) worked previously for our friends at Case Design and Project Management. Rob met Matt during the Passive House Consultant Training they both took this summer. Designer and SketchUp-master extraordinaire, Matt is a perfect fit for HARRISON architects’ sustainable goals.
Molly Fogarty (intern architect) just graduated from the University of Kansas and received her M.Arch. She specialized in sustainable design/build, and helped design and build the first LEED Platinum house in Kansas. Molly brings a youthful spark to the office as well as a keen eye for design.
Please read more About Us!