Construction is slated to begin this winter on Gerrish Hall, an eight-story apartment project at 1820 Boylston Ave. on Capitol Hill in Seattle. NK Architects is designing the 55-unit project for a site two blocks from a recently opened light rail station in the neighborhood. The project’s developer and owner is Capitol Hill Lofts LLC, a partnership between Christopher Hall and Josh Fletcher. The apartment mix is 44 one-bedrooms, nine two-bedrooms, and two two-bedroom penthouses. Interior glass walls will separate bedrooms from living areas and sliding doors will open to private balconies. The penthouses will have a large kitchen, living area and master suite, and one will have access to a private rooftop deck….
 
 

When the Bullitt Center opened in Seattle’s Capitol Hill neighborhood two years ago, the six-story office building was hailed as one of the greenest on the planet. Now, Bullitt has the data to prove it. Last year, the building generated 60 percent more energy than it used. Its “energy use intensity,” a widely used metric among property managers, was 9.4 in the first year, compared to a score of 60 for a typical Seattle office building. The property’s owner, the Bullitt Foundation, says the building is succeeding financially, too…
 
 
 
 

SEATTLE — When an office building here that bills itself as the world’s greenest officially opens later this month, it will present itself as a “living building zoo,” with docents leading tours and smartphone-wielding tourists able to scan bar codes to learn about the artfully exposed mechanical and electrical systems. Tenants have already begun moving into the six-story Bullitt Center, in advance of its grand opening on Earth Day, April 22. With the final touches nearly complete on the 50,000-square-foot office building at 1501 East Madison Street, at the edge of the city’s Capitol Hill neighborhood, its occupants are about to embark upon an unparalleled — and very public — experiment in sustainability…
 
 

Art Stable is an urban infill project located in the rapidly developing South Lake Union neighborhood of Seattle. Built on the site of a former horse stable, the building carries its working history into the future with highly adaptable live-work units. Both front and back elevations of the building are active. The architects collaborated with engineers to design what may be the world’s largest hinge: a system designed to manually open large steel-clad art doors with a custom-designed hand wheel. The davit crane on top of the building can lift objects from the alley into units. Users can open the door up to 75 degrees by turning a large hand wheel. The wheel connects to a threaded rod, which goes through the building envelope and connects to a pivot bolt on the exterior of the building. The threading on the rod ensures that the doors can be held open at the desired angle and eliminates the possibility of them being blown open or shut. On the street-facing side of the building, 8-foot by 7-foot hinged windows open with the same technique, providing natural ventilation to the units…

Seattle’s Bullitt Center is being heralded as the greenest, most energy-efficient commercial office building in the world. It’s not that the six-story, 50,000-square-foot building is utilizing never-before-seen technology. But it’s combining a lot of different existing technologies and methods to create a structure that’s a showpiece for green design—and a model for others to follow. A project of the Bullitt Foundation, a Seattle-based sustainability advocacy group, the Bullitt Center has an incredibly ambitious goal…
 
 
 
 

The Technology Access Foundation’s new technology drop-in center recently opened in White Center, Seattle thanks to the design team of Miller Hull and Public Architecture. TAF is a grass-roots, non-profit organization that is championing the fight to provide science, technology, engineering and math education to students of color throughout Washington State. As of October 24, the LEED Gold-designed (soon to be certified) TAF technology center, which is located in Lakewood Park, will be providing White Center with a new community venue and a vehicle for a brighter future for local teens…
 
 
 

All eyes were on the Bullitt Center when it opened—auspiciously on Earth Day, April 22, 2013. Mainstream and design media worldwide speculated on the promise of the compact six-story structure, in Seattle, topped by a crown of solar panels. It was “a milestone building—one of the most important commercial buildings of the last 50 years,” says Alex Wilson, the building-performance guru and founding editor of BuildingGreen.com.

All that publicity was a double-edged sword, of course. If the Bullitt Center was a success, it would be hailed as a model for net-zero design and construction. But if it failed, there would be nowhere to hide…
 

Seattle is changing, and fast. 62 cranes decorated our cityscape at the end of 2016—more cranes than any other U.S. city—and it seems like sometimes the entire city is under development.

We’ve rounded up 10 development projects to watch in 2017 below. There are, of course, hundreds more where these came from…