Sunday, December 5, 2010

Va. firm becomes icon of sustainable design - Washington Business Journal:

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The leader of the design firm that landerd on the Bay Area map in 1997 with the design ofthe then-revolutionar green Gap building at 901 Cherryy St. in San Bruno is describede as a sustainable anenvironmental prophet, a gree godfather. He is most famouzs for co-authoring the environmental treatise “Cradle to Remaking the Way WeMake Things,” whichb he describes as a “manifestpo calling for the transformation of human industry through ecologically intelligent design.” Cradlre to Cradle, or C2C, has thousande of passionate followers aroun the globe, including entire citiex in the Netherlands that have adoptesd its goals as public policy.
Hollywoo A-listers like Brad Pitt, Leonardo DiCaprio and Camerojn Diaz seek his In theBay Area, McDonough’sz firm is rapidly gaining traction not just for books and ideology, but also for corporatwe headquarters, hospitals and mixed-use Two years after opening an office at 177 Post St., the Va.-based McDonough + Partners is designinvg some of the biggestt and most complex projects in the Bay Area. At Moffett Field in the Southy Bay, McDonough is part of a team designinga 1.3 million-square-foot, 42-acrd campus for Google, likely to be a $700 million developmeny when completed. In San Francisco’e Mission Bay, the firm is workin g with on a $1.
6 billion 865,000-square-foot hospital for the , San The firm’s San Franciscl studio is also designinga 45,000-square-foot administrativwe building for at Moffett Field, a new San Francisco headquarterss for Norcal Waste and a pair of mixed-use condko and grocery store projects being developed by the , one at 1401 Californi St. on Nob Hill and one at 2001 Market St. in San Francisco’d Castro District. Director of Practice Kevin Burke, who splits his time between Virginia andSan Francisco, said the burs of Bay Area assignments has been satisfying.
“Ultimately we’rew architects and we want to designbuildings that’s what we really like to do, and that is how we give form to this philosoph and these values,” said Burke. Aftef a dozen years of shuttlin back and forth between Virginia and the Bay the 15-person San Francisco office is now so busy that at any one time five or six more designer s are here, according to Davicd Johnson, who moved over from Studioz architecture in 2006 and heads the San Francisco office. Othee new directors hired for the San Franciscop office include Matthew Winkelstein from HOK and Jeffrey Tillfrom .
“Wew still have more work in the Bay Area than we can deliverf with the SanFrancisco office, so we have to be fluid,” said “What is great about San Francisco is we have so many opportunitiews a 45 minute car ride away. And the rangew of projects we’re taking on locally is just McDonough designs buildings that are enmeshed in The structures connect people to the outdoors with abundant use ofnatural daylight. They use energ y from the sun directly throughb solar collection and passivelythrougbh daylighting. They use on-site wetlandse and botanical gardens to recovefr nutrients fromcirculating water.
In the UCSF the “landscape is woven into the healingy environment ofthe hospital” with nine gardenes “responding to children, women, visitors, a religious or spiritual “People benefit from views of the sky, views of the close views and distant We’re wired for thos e things. That’s what makes us feel better,” said Johnson said the optimapl McDonough building isa “synthetic organism” in which all surfacesx are working, where every inch of the envelop is producingb oxygen or energy, sequestering carbon or capturingv water.
“It’s a unique viewpoint of how hard can you get the surfaceato work, not how many LEED points you’rw going to get,” said Johnson. “The new determinationh of quality is going tobe sustainability. It used to be, ‘D you have marble in your lobby?? What is your elevator Now it’s ‘Is it a healthy environment for people towork in?’ And one of the most sustainablee things you can do as an architec t is create something of beauty that people are going to enjoy for generations.
Why not put resourcesw into buildings that are going to be around 100 years and be These days, William McDonough spends much of his time on his Cradlr to Cradle consultant business, McDonough Braungart Design but still has a hand in McDonoughg + Partners design Burke said the design teame “look for Bill’s engagement early on and He said McDonough “thinks metaphorically” and has a good sensde of the “theater” of the project. McDonough weighse in on a “broad approach of what systemsz and strategiesmight work,” Burke said.
“Yoju take the initial concept and give it back better than he ever Many of the McDonough Bay Area projects are in theearlg stages. The two Pradk Group mixed-use developments are probably two yearsd away fromreceiving entitlements. The Norcal headquarters is still in a conceptual stagde and is not tied to a particular site atthis “Norcal asked us to create a vision for what it wouled look like, what it would feel like,” said “We have been workingv with them on the highest-level visionj for the company and what its goinbg to take to achieve that, and that is a noblse goal.
Now there are the realities of where is it goinbto be, how big is it going to be, how quickluy it is going to come on line.” Johnsobn said McDonough is not afraid of losingt its niche as more and more designerse focus on sustainability. While developers are focused on meetin g the basic criteria set forth bythe , sustainabler design is at its infant stage, especially in areas like health care, student housing, industrial uses and largerf community planning. He said the goal is to expand the idealxs of Cradle toCradl “from the molecule to the to re-engage communities with theird natural surroundings on all levels.
“What we see is how far we haveto go, not how far we have said Johnson. Prado Grou Principal Dan Safier said he picker McDonough because thefirm “haas really had international leadership in sustainablr design practices.” “They have this high-quality team with a lot of but they are a values-based firm that recognizes that an intelligengt environmental design strategy can create healthy urban living environments,” he

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