WHATCOM VILLAGE
Redmond, Wash.
EXCELLENCE IN SUSTAINABILITY
Sent by: Skanska Balfour Beatty (SBB), a joint venture between Skanska and Howard S. Wright Construction Co., a Balfour Beatty company
OWNER: Undisclosed
LEADING DESIGN COMPANY: LMN Architects
GENERAL CONTRACTOR: Skanska Balfour Beatty (SBB), a joint venture between Skanska and Howard S. Wright Construction Co., a Balfour Beatty company
STRUCTURAL ENGINEERING: Coughlin Porter Lundeen
MEP ENGINEERING: MacDonald-Miller Mechanics
CONSTRUCTION MANAGER: CBR
DESIGN FIRM – CAFE: Graham Baba Architects
SUBCONTRACTORS: Apex Tower Crane Inc.; MacDonald Miller Facility Solutions LLC; Bayley Construction; Big Sky Insulations Inc.; Brundage-Bone Concrete Pumping Inc.
This four-building development within a larger east campus modernization project for a confidential client encompasses approximately 988,500 square feet.
Designed primarily as office space, Whatcom Village also features a variety of high-end amenities, including dining areas with 32 unique dining rooms, commercial kitchens in two buildings, and a gastropub accessible to the public. Each building has its own outdoor terrace, multipurpose meeting rooms, centralized hubs, meeting spaces, conference rooms, as well as bicycle storage and locker facilities. In each of the five-story buildings, stacked H- and C-shaped volumes intertwine around a multi-story central space that connects all levels via a characteristic staircase.
Photo by Adam Hunter
Whatcom Village is on track to meet LEED Platinum, ILFI Zero Carbon and Salmon Safe certifications, underscoring its commitment to sustainability and environmental stewardship. The project integrated minimal employee bicycle parking, green roof areas, rainwater harvesting and all-electric building operations. The teams tracked construction material and construction activity incorporated carbon emissions as well as water use from the construction activity. Additionally, the team pursued Forest Stewardship Council certified wood procurement and diverted at least 90% of construction waste from landfills.
Another key sustainability goal was to eliminate natural gas from the new campus, requiring all commercial kitchen equipment in the two dining halls to be electric. The carbon reduction mandate, driven by the owner’s carbon-neutral goals, presented several challenges and opportunities for innovation, including a necessary increase in electrical design criteria and the construction of a temporary gas feed to the property. In a traditional kitchen, the electrical distribution system houses about 65 watts per square foot of back-of-house kitchen space before National Electrical Code (NEC) diversity.
Photo by Adam Hunter
However, with an all-electric kitchen, Whatcom dining rooms had to plan for an electrical load closer to 200 watts per square foot before NEC code diversities. Each dining building also required two services: a 3,000-amp service for all four floors of office space and shell/core loads and a second 3,000-amp service dedicated exclusively to the kitchen/dining area on the level 1.
Photo by Matthew Millman
During construction, temporary heating was provided by gas heaters installed outside and fed through the building by flat ducts. Once the permanent power and thermal energy center supplied chilled water to the buildings, the temporary gas line was demolished. Kitchen equipment manufacturers were involved early in the design process to develop large-scale induction technologies. A significant innovation was a first-of-its-kind induction wok stove, which provides rapid temperature adjustment, high heat and a stable surface.
By the end of December 2023, Whatcom Village had achieved an embodied carbon footprint 61% below 2019 industry benchmarks.
