Founders Hall at the University of Washington Foster School of Business, the first mass timber building at Seattle campus of Univ. of Washington, was recently completed. The 84,800-sf building creates a new hub for community, entrepreneurship, and innovation, according the project’s design architect LMN Architects.
The design creates an intersection of three volumes hosting student-focused team collaboration spaces, program offices, classrooms, and gathering spaces, all connected by a five-story steel and wood feature stair that weaves through the mass timber structure.
The community connector houses the feature stair, circulation spaces, pre-function spaces, and two tiered classrooms that can be set for 65 or 135 students. The team bar provides 28 team and interview rooms, four executive conference rooms, a student commons with an outdoor terrace, and a rooftop event forum.
The building was organized to foster spontaneous and open interaction between staff, business professionals, and students by positioning program offices, alumni offices, and career services offices adjacent to student spaces on every level. With meeting spaces accessible to all for shared use, students and program staff will be able to interact with one another daily.
Mass timber construction cuts embodied carbon
The use of mass timber lowers the project’s embodied carbon substantially with the use of Douglas fir creating a warm and inviting interior atmosphere. The exterior architectural expression draws from the material palette established by other Foster School buildings and reveals moments of the mass timber structure.
Founders Hall is the first new building to meet the University of Washington Green Building Standards, reducing carbon emissions by over 90%. The design takes advantage of Seattle’s weather by integrating natural and mechanical ventilation to provide a comfortable environment for users with minimal reliance on conditioned air. As an integrated element in both the interior and exterior expression, the building incorporates a mass timber structure with cross-laminated timber decking. This reflects the Foster School’s connection to the Northwest and the local wood products industry, also reducing the building’s embodied carbon by almost 60%.
Many of the existing nearby Douglas fir and sequoia trees on site were preserved. The peeled-away brick façade paired with carefully placed glazing exposes the timber inside the building while providing views of the Douglas firs, giving the higher floors of the building an immersive Northwest forest experience.
The project partnered with Aureus Earth, a provider of carbon offsetting incentive programs, to create a proof of concept for long-term biogenic carbon storage in a mass timber building. The building will store more than 1,000 tons of CO2 for decades, keeping carbon out of the atmosphere for the lifetime of the building.
On the project team:
Owner and/or developer: The University of Washington
Design Architect: LMN Architects
Design-Builder: Hoffman Construction
MEP engineer: PAE Consulting Engineers
Structural engineer: Magnusson Klemencic Associates
Related Stories
| Jul 19, 2013
Reconstruction Sector Construction Firms [2013 Giants 300 Report]
Structure Tone, DPR, Gilbane top Building Design+Construction's 2013 ranking of the largest reconstruction contractor and construction management firms in the U.S.
| Jul 19, 2013
Reconstruction Sector Engineering Firms [2013 Giants 300 Report]
URS, STV, Wiss Janney Elstner top Building Design+Construction's 2013 ranking of the largest reconstruction engineering and engineering/architecture firms in the U.S.
| Jul 19, 2013
Reconstruction Sector Architecture Firms [2013 Giants 300 Report]
Stantec, HOK, HDR top Building Design+Construction's 2013 ranking of the largest reconstruction architecture and architecture/engineering firms in the U.S.
| Jul 19, 2013
Renovation, adaptive reuse stay strong, providing fertile ground for growth [2013 Giants 300 Report]
Increasingly, owners recognize that existing buildings represent a considerable resource in embodied energy, which can often be leveraged for lower front-end costs and a faster turnaround than new construction.
| Jul 2, 2013
LEED v4 gets green light, will launch this fall
The U.S. Green Building Council membership has voted to adopt LEED v4, the next update to the world’s premier green building rating system.
| Jul 1, 2013
Report: Global construction market to reach $15 trillion by 2025
A new report released today forecasts the volume of construction output will grow by more than 70% to $15 trillion worldwide by 2025.
| Jun 28, 2013
Building owners cite BIM/VDC as 'most exciting trend' in facilities management, says Mortenson report
A recent survey of more than 60 building owners and facility management professionals by Mortenson Construction shows that BIM/VDC is top of mind among owner professionals.
| Jun 17, 2013
DOE launches database on energy performance of 60,000 buildings
The Energy Department today launched a new Buildings Performance Database, the largest free, publicly available database of residential and commercial building energy performance information.
| Jun 11, 2013
Building a better box: High-bay lab aims for net-zero [2013 Building Team Award winner]
Building Team cooperation and expertise help Georgia Tech create a LEED Platinum building for energy science.
| Jun 5, 2013
USGBC: Free LEED certification for projects in new markets
In an effort to accelerate sustainable development around the world, the U.S. Green Building Council is offering free LEED certification to the first projects to certify in the 112 countries where LEED has yet to take root.
