Okay, it’s a six story office building in the middle of the largest city in the Pacific Northwest, so how does it relate to home designs for a rural ecovillage like Stone’s Throw? It’s a design philosophy. It’s a pattern that can be repeated in any building design.
Design image – 90% daylighted
The Bullitt Center in Seattle exists and is functioning, as it will for hundreds of years. Designed with 250 years of useful life in mind, it came from the vision of Denis Hayes who founded the Earth Day network and was the coordinator of the first Earth Day in 1970 (and is from Wisconsin!). Hayes’ goal went beyond making an incrementally more-sustainable building to creating a regenerative building, not just a net-zero but a net-gain to its surroundings. That was achieved. And it was done with readily available, off-the-shelf components.
Solar roof
Take a look at the wealth of information and documentation on their website: Bullitt Center. Below are a few of the features of the building. There are many more detailed online. These goals can be the same for your new home design:
We generate as much electricity as we use from solar panels on our roof, so society doesn’t have to build a new power plant. We capture rainwater for all purposes, including drinking, so society doesn’t need to build a new reservoir. We uses composting toilets so society doesn’t need to build new sewage treatment capacity. We return treated gray water to the soil on site, reducing the need for storm water drains.
Stone’s Throw Ecovillage 