1414 Market Street, Kirkland—Our personal effort to design and implement sustainable design can be seen by visiting our own offices. In 2003 we purchased property and started the design, permitting, and construction process for the building that we work in today. Our office employs the following design features:

• Daylighting design.
• Maximum efficiency lighting design, installed and operating under the allotted lighting code.
• Exterior and interior shading systems, including a cable trellis that supports shade-providing vegetation.
• Landscape for solar shading in summer.
• Vegetated roofs over the parking garage to lower overall heat reflective impacts of the building. These roofs provide water retention, and also slow down the impact of excessive water intrusion into the storm drainage systems.
• Solar heated lobby.
• Highly efficient heating system with a boiler that provides both heating and domestic hot water.
• In our offices on the upper floor we are using natural ventilation in lieu of air conditioning.
• Building materials were chosen for their longevity/long life, reducing our maintenance requirements.
• Reused various materials from demolished buildings.

The daylighting design was implemented with the assistance of the Northwest Energy Efficiency Alliance Seattle Daylighting Lab. This facility is a public agency that promotes energy efficiency and provides analysis of building design to improve daylighting. They assisted us in the placement and type of skylights to better daylight our building, thereby lowering our energy bill.

This building was built with a limited budget that made each choice a value engineered decision. When possible, recycled material was incorporated into the design. We understand the personal and practical issues of budget and the cost of construction impact on design.