News: Mithun
A Living Laboratory for Sustainable Strategies
02.12.2010 Mithun, In The News
Work in Progress at Eco-Structure.com by Dave Macaulay, blogger at GreenArchiTEXT.com and author of Integrated Design—Mithun (Ecotone, 2008):
Ten years after moving into a renovated pier on Seattle’s waterfront, Mithun’s office continues to act as a living laboratory for sustainable strategies.
Besides extensive use of reclaimed and recycled lumber for the tenant improvements, the 36,000-square-foot Pier 56 serves as a showplace for Mithun’s deep green design approach. Operable clerestory windows run the length of the building, admitting daylight and sufficient ventilation for the office to take full advantage of natural cooling during summer months. The design also features durable, salvaged wood and low-VOC finishes throughout in the oriented strand board flooring, open frame office partitions, and solid core doors.
Continue reading at Eco-Structure.com.
Taylor 28 Surpasses LEED Target, Brings Home a Silver!
The Taylor 28 project originally targeted basic LEED® certification—receipt of Silver certification is a significant achievement, given the project’s schedule and budget constraints. Reaching Silver level results from the exceptional effort the team made to find creative and pragmatic solutions that fit the unique circumstances of the site and building. The project also closely reflects the mission that drives the developer, BRE Properties; to provide highly desirable communities in which residents and commercial tenants can live and work, and to support a thriving green lifestyle within a dense urban framework.
Precognitive Planning
02.09.2010 Mithun, In The News
In this brief (~1 minute) phone-video posted to YouTube, Mithunee Lee Copeland, FAIA, gets a laugh recalling Mithun's first rethinking of Seattle's waterfront without the Alaskan Way Viaduct—before the Nisqually earthquake made that an actual likelihood. This was recorded at Mithun's Seattle Office during the Seattle Architectural Foundation tour, Central Waterfront: Shifting Tides at Seattle’s Front Door, on January 30th.
The Year in Green Modern Homes
01.26.2010 Mithun, In The News
TreeHugger, a popular online publication on sustainability and eco-lifestyle, included Mithun's Lopez Island Community Land Trust in their 2009 wrap-up feature The Year in Green Modern Homes:
TreeHugger hasn't covered a lot of single family houses this year, even if they are green to the gills; they are rarely in urban settings, often expensive and not good poster children for how we are going to have to design our communities in the future.
[...] Preston at Jetson Green shows us the coolest little project that I have seen in a long time. It's affordable housing for working people in the San Juan Islands, some of the most expensive real estate in the country, built by the Lopez Community Land Trust and designed by Mithun.
Continue reading The Year In Green Modern Homes or skip straight to Green Net-Zero Energy Housing by Mithun Shows How It's Done, both by Lloyd Alter on treehugger.com. The Lopez Community Land Trust project has also been featured on Jetson Green, most recently in the article 62 Innovative Green Homes of 2009.
This Week’s Archidose: WSU Olympia Ave Student Housing
11.30.2009 Mithun, In The News
Mithun’s WSU Olympia Avenue Student Housing is featured as archidose.org’s weekly dose of architecture:
The green features in this building reflect Mithun’s widespread commitment to sustainable architecture as well as what is becoming the norm in LEED and even some non-LEED projects: geothermal heating/cooling, sun-shading (largely dictating the building’s appearance), stormwater collection and reuse, regional materials, recycled materials. It is a straightforward building executed skillfully and thoughtfully, educating the residents about sustainability as much as their classes.
A weekly dose of architecture, written by John Hill, looks at contemporary architectural works with architectural and/or cultural significance. The broad focus of the articles is the ideas embedded within the works.
Read the full article and view an image gallery at archidose.org
Video: Center for Urban Agriculture Remix
11.19.2009 Mithun, Thought Bursts
Last week in the Greenbuild 2009 panel Urban Food Systems: From Vertical Agriculture to District-level Food Strategies, Mithun systems ecologist Critter Thompson and his co-panelists discussed urban food systems and the role food production, distribution, consumption and recycling plays in helping to shape sustainable urban communities. He also spoke about the Center For Urban Agriculture – a conceptual high-rise net-zero vertical farm Mithun designed for the Cascadia Green Building Council’s 2007 Living Building Challenge.
A few conference goers were hoping for more information on CUA so the Mithun video team provided an update that includes more discussion of community impact and urban food production (above).
Mithun wins AIA Seattle 2009 Commendation
11.11.2009 Mithun, Awards, In The News
This year’s AIA Seattle Honor Awards, held Monday night at Benaroya Hall, received 175 submissions — a near record number. Only twelve projects were recognized. Novelty Hill Januik Winery is one of them, getting high praise in the Commendation category.
The international jury gave equal attention to projects of all types and scales. Novelty Hill Januik especially impressed jurors with its merging of hospitality and production, and indoors and outdoors, even helping to preserve the adjacent wetland.