BULLITT CENTER THE MILLER HULL PARTNERSHIP COMMERICAL- NEW CONSTRUCTION

PROJECT DETAILS: Architect: The Miller Hull Partnership Location: , WA Type: Commercial - New Construction Project Duration: June 1, 2009 to April 22, 2013 Size: 52,000 SF over six floors Project Delivery: Design-Bid-Build with Integrated Design Process

STAKEHOLDERS: AIA FOREFRONT Owner: The Bullitt Foundation Developer: Point32 Contractor: Schuchart October 24, 2013 Key Subcontractors: Mechanical/Electrical/Plumbing (PAE) Salt Lake City, Utah Structural (DCI) Landscape (The Berger Partnership) Solar (Solar Design Associates) Waste (2020 Engineering) BULLITT INTRODUCTION The Miller Hull Partnership is a 55-person firm based in downtown CENTER Seattle, WA with offices in San Diego, CA. Founded in 1977 based on the principles of socially responsible and humane public “Could we create a building architecture, the firm works on a broad range of project types that did not have an and scales, with an emphasis on simple, innovative, and authentic environmental footprint?” designs. Miller Hull’s design philosophy centers around two essential Brian Court, Miller Hull architectural ideas. One is to use a building’s structure to create a significant place within a site, and the other is to be sensitive to climate and to respond to environmental demands with the form of the building. The recently-completed Bullitt Center in Seattle, WA, exemplifies the firm’s commitment to environmentally-sensitive, site- responsive design and demonstrates how owner-driven collaboration is one of the most effective ways of fostering integrated project design and delivery for extremely high-performing buildings.

The client for the project, the Bullitt Foundation, is a visionary organization whose mission is to safeguard the natural environment by promoting responsible human activities and sustainable communities in the . In planning their new headquarters, the organization leadership sought to lead by example in assembling a high-performing group of experts to set a new precedent in sustainable building practices by meeting the requirements of the Living Building Challenge, the most ambitious benchmark of sustainable design in the built environment. To become certified as the largest and first commercial building to achieve such certification, the building is required to satisfy all of its own energy, water, and waste needs on site.

Additionally, the project team wanted to not make a ‘one off’ building, but one that could affect significant change beyond the project by demonstrating sustainable practices that could be applied to all buildings using existing technologies. The project represents not only the level of sustainability possible in an urban environment, but also the level of innovation and collaboration possible when integrated design teams target aggressive efficiency goals. “Integrated design was imperative,” according to project manager Brian Court of Miller Hull in achieving these goals. “The Living Building Challenge demanded great effort on all fronts. A synchronized team was the first step toward achieving this goal.”

SECTION A: PROJECT DELIVERY TEAMS, STRUCTURES AND TOOLS

According to Court, the guiding question that propelled the Bullitt Center project development was: “Could you create a building that did not have an environmental footprint?” The Miller Hull Partnership led an integrated design team handpicked by the Bullitt

LCAP:Leadership in Collaborative Architectural Practice page 2 Foundation, which sidestepped the traditional RFP process to vet firms recommended by peers as the best suited to create a Living Building. Design and development team members included: Point 32, Schuchart Corporation, and Portland-based PAE Consulting Engineers. Court led the performance-driven design process as set out by Bullitt Foundation President and CEO, Denis Hayes. “The building was intended as a new prototype,” Court explained, fitting into a typical developer’s pro forma of mid-rise structures at six floors and 52,000 gross square feet. Its deeper purpose, however, resonated with the mission of the Foundation, which is “to change the debate on sustainability and urban issues in the world today.”

Figure 1: Living Building Challenge “Petals”

The Living Building Challenge™ 2.0 guidelines were chosen from other sustainable rating systems because they most-appropriately represented the aspirations of the Foundation in leading the way to see what level of sustainability is possible in a contemporary office building. The International Living Future Institute, which establishes the Living Building Challenge guidelines, has organized their seven requirements in the form of flower petals. Components of site, water, energy, health, materials, equity, and beauty form the ‘petals’ of the Living Building Challenge and require rigorous adherence to sustainable principles to attain certification in each sector. The material ‘petal,’ for example, demands full abstinence from use of materials on the Red List, a one-time carbon offset to cover the project’s total embodied carbon footprint, and the use of sustainable materials such as Forest Stewardship Council-certified timber. The water and energy ‘petals,’ demand net zero performance in that

LCAP:Leadership in Collaborative Architectural Practice page 3 100% of the water used be naturally gathered and treated on site, and that 100% of the energy consumed also be produced on site.

Figure 2: Completed Bullitt Center

The Bullitt Center is intended as a ‘billboard of sustainability,’ with a sustainable and performance-based scope spanning the building lifecycle, net zero water, net zero energy, and occupancy considerations. A 250-year heavy timber, concrete, and steel structure is clad in a 50-year envelope, adorned with a 25-year photovoltaic array. Net zero water is accomplished with a 50,000-gallon cistern filled by green roof-captured rainwater as well as complete grey water and waste treatment on site. Net zero energy is achieved with a balance between mechanical means natural daylighting and ventilation, and renewable energy from the project’s photovoltaic array. Ground-source heat exchange, radiant floor heating and cooling, and a heat recovery ventilation system operated with night-flushing operable windows contribute to the energy-saving environmental control systems.

In order to achieve such high-performance goals in the building, the design team used an integrated, performance-driven process. The team selection process was led by the owner, represented by Bullitt Foundation President and CEO Denis Hayes, with input from Miller Hull and the developer, Point32. “We had to have the best of the best,” Court recounted. Together, they organized “a carefully vetted team of people with a demonstrated portfolio of innovative, aggressive, sustainable buildings.” The Bullitt Foundation

LCAP:Leadership in Collaborative Architectural Practice page 4 held a traditional design-bid-build contract for the project but made the effort to bring many team members on early in the design process. Court reflects that a true IPD contractual agreement may have better suited the project’s goals. “We were matched up with our mechanical engineers as you would be in an IPD process,” he said continuing “cost constraints on the project required that the contractor be there from the beginning.” Portland-based PAE Consulting Engineers was the primary MEP engineer brought on to assist Miller Hull with achieving the tall order of a net zero building. Schuchart was also brought on early to better align the design with constructability issues and budgetary constraints. “We were all working together to slowly assemble the team,” said Court.

Figure 3: Highlight of Primary Systems

SECTION B: COLLABORATION AND CULTURE

Though not formally an integrated project, the Bullitt Center team proceeded as if it were, beginning with a two-day kick-off meeting attended by 40 team members. This proved an effective team-building exercise. “This design process was going to be different,” Court explained: “Everyone was at the table.” Horizontal meetings including the architect, contractor, owner, and mechanical and structural engineers were conducted weekly to inform every decision with expertise from all design professionals. Consultants from Solar Design Associates and net zero water consultants from 2020 Engineering

LCAP:Leadership in Collaborative Architectural Practice page 5 “The attention-getting along with a host of other team members participated as needed. elements of the Bullitt Center follow from an “The attention-getting elements of the Bullitt Center—100% on site equally exciting integrated renewable energy, water and waste management, as well as a safe, naturally day-lit and ventilated work environment built to last 250 design process that years—follow from an equally exciting integrated design process that enabled us to move beyond enabled us to move beyond the traditionally linear design, engineering, the traditionally linear and construction process to orchestrate a diverse team targeting design, engineering, and the seemingly impossible together, right from the start,” said Craig construction process to Curtis, design partner with The Miller Hull Partnership. “In considering orchestrate a diverse team first and foremost how to design a building with essentially no targeting the seemingly environmental footprint, it was energizing to identify imaginative and impossible together, right elegant ways to beautifully express the building’s core performance from the start” functions through design strategies using a mix of existing and new technologies, systems, and materials. While in one sense we had to do Craig Curtis, Miller Hull more with less, we happily found that designing to high-performance targets actually opened up numerous formal design opportunities.”

SECTION C: LEADERSHIP IN TEAMS

Figure 4: Bullitt Foundation President and CEO Denis Hayes

Denis Hayes helped lead the collaborative process and attended all weekly meetings along with the developer and the architect. With data and feedback coming from so many fronts, the architect took the lead in synthesizing the information to help the team make the most informed decisions. “As architects,” Court expounded, “you have to synthesize all of that [information] and come up with the most direct solutions.” Particularly in a project with such high performance goals, each decision had to be weighed in terms of its impact on other aspects. “Oftentimes you could not make a move just because something looked better…everything had to work to advance our energy efficiency and meeting the goals of the Living Building Challenge.”

SECTION D: COMMUNICATION & MOTIVATION

Collective buy-in to the common mission helped sustain the team’s

LCAP:Leadership in Collaborative Architectural Practice page 6 “The design process was direction during crucial decisions and amidst fluctuating data. For going to be different - example, the ultimate decision to use a mid-rise Type IV heavy everybody was going to be timber frame as the primary structural system was based on at the table.” a variety of factors including ethical material sourcing, aesthetic qualities, and sustainable carbon sequestering properties of the Brian Court timber. This choice required code officials, structural engineers, and the contractor’s cost estimators to evaluate a structural system that had not been used in Seattle in over 80 years. “None of the building officials really knew what to do with it,” Court explained.

Though heavy timber is inherently fireproof, the design team developed a series of modular steel connectors to facilitate on site construction connections, which required special consideration in terms of fireproofing. The structural engineer originally detailed conventional recessed timber frame steel connectors, which would have been fireproofed by concealment within the assembly. However, cost constraints set forth by the contractor demanded a less expensive alternative.

“We had to work closely with the structural engineer, the contractor, and also with the fire marshal to devise a connection system that acted as a ‘bucket’ to catch the upper-floor timber columns and beams, transferring their load directly through the first-floor columns,” said Court. The upper-floor columns and beams would also have to penetrate and be fixed within the steel connectors, so that “in the event of a fire, if the steel melts away, the beams would still be supported by columns below.” In the end, the team was able to overcome the technical issues and on site assembly proceeded smoothly. “It was an example of a really collaborative, integrated design exercise,” explained Court.

The decision to change to an alternative connector was also made to allow for project replicabillity. “In deciding to proceed with the Bullitt Center, we were trying to accelerate the pace of change by showing what’s possible today, using only off-the-shelf products that any building project could choose. We combined these time- tested approaches in one building in a way that allowed for new synergies,” states Hayes on the Bullitt Foundation website. “The whole goal of this project was to not spend too much money; it had to be replicable,” continued Court. “It had to be as close to a typical developer’s financial pro forma as possible. We had to work hard constantly to keep the cost under control.” Decisions like the move from concealed knife plates, which were more expensive, to straightforward bucket connectors demonstrated the integrated process where the architect, contractor, and structural engineer collaborated to determine a system that is as efficient as possible while maintaining the architectural intent of the

LCAP:Leadership in Collaborative Architectural Practice page 7 “The whole goal of this expressed structure and the project intent of proving the technical project was to not spend and economic feasibility of a LBC certified commercial building. too much money; it had to be replicable. It had to be as close to a typical developer’s financial pro forma as possible.” Brian Court

Figures 5, 6, 7, 8: Timber Connectors Collaboration

Collaboration may have been best showcased in the design of the cantilevering PV array, which is an iconic formal element of the Bullitt Center and one that is illustrative of the project’s mission to the general public. The array was subject to the most data-driven transformations during the design process as its energy-generating capacity needed to be precisely calibrated to the energy needs of the building to achieve the net zero energy goal as mandated by the Living Building Challenge. A typical mid-rise office building similar to the project has an Energy Use Index (EUI) of 72, requiring 64,348 square feet of PV panels to become net zero. The Bullitt Center building underwent extensive modeling during the design process, and after aggressive energy-saving systems and commitments for inhabitant uses were taken into account, the Bullitt Center boasts an EUI of 16, requiring only 14,303 square feet of PV panels.

Figure 9, 10: Net Zero Required Square-Footage for Solar Panel of a Common Building and the Bullitt Center

LCAP:Leadership in Collaborative Architectural Practice page 8 Parametric modeling plug-in to Rhino, Grasshopper, was utilized to quickly assess potential formal configurations based upon the PV constraints of latitude and longitude, site slope, and orientation. These iterations were then evaluated for cost and structural implications. “At one point we had a large vertical array that was attached to the roof hanging down over the south façade of the building,” Court recalled.

Figure 11, 12: Grasshopper Configuration of Eliminated PV Panel Array

“Panel technology changed through the design process,” he continued, which allowed for the removal of the vertical array and the reduction of the size and the configuration of the roof. Other transformations to the grid occurred as energy modeling lowered the projected energy load of the building. Once the team arrived at the final layout, the size of the array significantly overhung the setback zoning requirements of the site. Through collaboration with regulatory agencies and utility companies, the overhanging array was permitted.

Figure 13: PV Array Overhanging Property

LCAP:Leadership in Collaborative Architectural Practice page 9 “Operationally, the Bullitt Foundation has moved CONCLUSION to a more proactive, streamlined, and With the goal of altering the mindset of the design and construction collaborative approach to its industry by creating “the greenest building in the world,” the Bullitt Center team brought together conservation groups, architects, work…We will work closely developers, contractors, engineers, manufacturers, fire marshals, with our colleagues in the building officials, and utility companies in order to accomplish field to devise strategies, their mission. Under the strong leadership of Denis Hayes, the identify opportunities, and team achieved a building on track to achieve Living Building help find needed resources certification using existing technology and within the economic to move the environmental means that most developers could achieve. “Operationally,” Denis agenda forward.” Hayes wrote in his vision statement, “the Bullitt Foundation has Denis Hayes, Bullitt moved to a more proactive, streamlined, and collaborative approach Foundation President and to its work…We will work closely with our colleagues in the field to devise strategies, identify opportunities, and help find CEO needed resources to move the environmental agenda forward.”

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