How to Develop Green? It's Good to Redevelop!
By Peter Greaves, AIA
Weber + Thompson
as published in Puget Sound Business Journal Commercial Real Estate Quarterly
December 8, 2006
There is no more sustainable approach to development than reusing a building. The structure can be incorporated into a renovation for a fraction of the cost of building new.
In a tight market the choice is simpler, as space demand drives budgets and schedules.
Outside in
CarrAmerica Willow Creek Corporate Center, Building G, was originally designed as a single-user Eastside corporate headquarters and manufacturing facility. It stood alone off Willows Road as a crisp, clean, modern edifice most recently housing the technology company Data I/O, which has since moved elsewhere in Redmond.
Over time the building became a part of a corporate center that CarrAmerica developed. The building contrasted with newer, more articulated, 1990s buildings. Building G was showing its age.
Instead of demolishing it, CarrAmerica repositioned the building. The plan called for either a single user or multiple tenants. Either plan required enhanced daylighting, improved thermal performance and new high-efficiency mechanical systems.
The solution created a free-standing perforated metal frame to emphasize the building entry. The windows were made bigger by lowering the windowsills and raising the tops of the windows, or the heads. Opaque portions of the skin are a fine-gauge horizontal metal that complements the clear anodized aluminum window wall mullions. Ceilings are eschewed in favor of exposed structure.
Construction started last July, and is projected to be complete in February. The cost is about $5 million, or about $50 per gross square foot.
Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, a pioneer of modern architecture, realized the exteriors of his buildings would be replaced as new technologies emerged. The crisp lines of Building G now have a taut new skin, and this again is a sleek building but this time for the new century.
Inside out
North Coast Electric Corporate Office is another excellent reuse example, this time in Seattle's Sodo neighborhood. But this change was inside out.
The owner requested new corporate offices and warehouse, and a new Alexander Lighting showroom — all within the building footprint.
The solution: a new second floor inside the original envelope and set back from the existing wall to create a unifying atrium. This space re-imagines the full height of the former warehouse and gives both floors an inside/outside space to buffer the industrial environment and moderate temperature extremes. Hot air is captured at the ceiling and exhausted to heat the adjacent warehouse.
An exposed blackened steel and maple stair leads to the new corporate offices. A Dan Flavin-inspired fluorescent light sculpture designed by the architect emphasizes this vertical path.
Storefront glazing fills the former loading dock doors. Upper-level windows cut into the concrete walls bring in light and allow views out the atrium. Galvanized structural steel sunshades on the lower openings and fabric hoods on the upper windows signal new uses inside but maintain the existing structure's industrial character.
An elevator is designed as a metal-clad tower, set free from the building and topped by a backlighted white cube. Moored to the building by a glass-and-steel bridge, the tower marks the new entry to the showroom and offices.
Throughout the new construction, structural, electrical and mechanical elements are exposed to express the builder's art. A strong commercial real estate market, such as ours, fosters exciting and creative solutions to existing office buildings — outside in and inside out.
PETER GREAVES, AIA, is an associate at Weber+Thompson in Seattle and design director of urban mid-rise projects. He is also currently president of Washington Council of the American Institute of Architects. He can be reached at pgreaves@weberthompson.com.