Live, Work and Thrive

Center for Urban Agriculture

Seattle, WA

A New Model for Urban Living

Recognizing the rapidly growing urban, environmental, and slow-food movements, Mithun’s winning Living Building competition entry combines all three into a visionary new model for urban life.

Innovative Site Response

The 21-story structure presents a sleek energy-producing façade to the south, taking advantage of the open interstate highway (I-5) landscape beyond for solar harvesting. The remaining land on this challenging, triangular site is dedicated to a vertical agricultural landscape used for education and research on urban food technologies and economics.

Net Zero Approach

The project generates nearly all of its own energy and food on site, with significant reductions in embodied carbon through the use of modular prefabricated building blocks. The 28.6 million gallon storage/filtration tanks harvest rain and stormwater from the site, with potential for a district scale greywater system serving the surrounding neighborhood.