“Center for Urban Agriculture” by Mithun

Many people know that the Northwestern coast of the United States, with cities like San Francisco, Portland, Seattle and Vancouver, is a hotbed for liberal and civically progressive initiatives when it comes to environmentalism and sustainability. And the Cascadia Region Green Building Council (GBC) is no exception. Its parent organization, the USGBC, is a non-profit organization pushing to foster interest in green building technologies in hopes that all construction will be sustainably built within a generation. These are lofty goals indeed, but with areas like Cascadia setting the example the end result does not seem so far out of reach.

The Cascadia GBC also hosts the Living Building Challenge, a project that presses architects to find new, creative and affordable ways of enhancing our built environment with sustainability in mind. A few characteristics of their ideal building include: generating all energy with renewable resources, capturing and treating all water, and operating efficiently while maximizing beauty. For projects to attain living building status they must cater to six performance areas, or Petals as they say: site, energy, materials, water, indoor quality and beauty + inspiration.

In 2007, the Center for Urban Agriculture by Seattle-based design firm Mithun won “Best of Show” at the Living Building Challenge, and for obvious reasons. It is an entirely self-sufficient urban farm that will grow both vegetables and chickens for local consumption. While its footprint occupies a mere 0.72 acres on the site, the 23-story building contains 318 one- and two-bedroom apartments and produces enough food to feed 450 people annually. The building is also sheathed in over 34,000 sq ft of south facing solar panels that will theoretically match 100 percent of the building’s energy consumption. The ground level features an organic café that will serve food grown on the site to reinforce the importance of travel-free food consumption. As famed suburban polemicist James Howard Kunstler quoted in a 2004 TED Talk, “the age of the 3,000 mile Caesar salad is coming to an end.”

by: s.a.johnson