Built with a re-purposed blue shipping container by hip Seattle EcoBuilders Sage Saskill and Mike Vacirca, the C-Box was designed as a Detached Accessory Dwelling Unit (DADU), known in Seattle as a “backyard cottage”. Since it would be used as a commercial kitchen to house the owner’s small culinary business, it was permitted as a “shed” i.e. accessory structure (non-dwelling).
Ballard Nickelsville is one of the first two transitional homeless encampments to be permitted on City-owned land through Seattle’s innovative ‘Transitional Encampment as an Interim Use’ policy, which also added specific regulations for their approval and operation to the Seattle Land Use Code. The encampment, which consists of five Tiny Homes, 18 tents, and a communal kitchen and donation tent, serves roughly 28 of Seattle’s homeless at any given time.
The Bullitt Center is a unique, first-of-its kind office building in downtown Seattle at 1501 Madison Street. The building is designed to meet the rigorous standards of the Living Building Challenge (LBC), including Net Zero Energy and Net Zero Water. Working directly with the City of Seattle and their LBC pilot program, new technologies and design elements for sustainability were permitted or allowed through conditional-use permits, variances, and exclusive permissions from the city. Micro-foam-flush marine toilets with an onsite composting system are used to help achieve the Net Zero Water goal and adhere to the requirements of the city’s pilot program.
The Bertschi School Living Science wing is an award-winning building completed in 2011, which includes a small classroom, science lab and ethnobotanical garden. It was the first building certified under the Living Building Challenge V2.0, considered to be the most stringent green building certification in the world. The LBC’s Net-Zero Water imperative requires on-site supply, treatment and reuse of all the building’s water needs. They met this in part by installing an innovative rainwater harvesting system that uses filtration and sanitation to treat water for potable use by the school’s staff and students.