Architecture guided by the form of a leaf.  Design concepts inspired by a rechargeable battery.  A chronometer as a building metaphor.  The house understood as an expression of the Greek principle of Estia. This is a sampling of the ideas and creativity embodied in the wave of design submissions we received from architecture students and interns yesterday.  The group is competing in perFORM 2014, a competition created to demonstrate that high design and high performance building can be a dynamic duo.

Our feeling is that, rather than hindering high design, high performance building may become high design’s lifeline in coming decades.  As the imperative for more and more efficient buildings increases this century, designers will need tools to navigate those waters while also achieving their programmatic and aesthetic goals.  Advanced building science and accurate energy modeling provide those tools.

perFORM contestants employed a spreadsheet-based energy performance verification tool designed for the competition to approximate the kind of energy modeling that goes into high performance structures. Several participants supplemented this tool with other, real world tools to make the case for the performance of their designs.

Designs will now go to the perFORM jury and be judged on how “resourceful, replicable, and beautiful” they are.

We’ll unveil winners on Earth Day (April 22) at our Seattle office in the Bullitt Center.  Stay tuned!
– Zack (Connect with me at +ZacharySemke)

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Today we’re excited to unveil, in honor of Earth Day, the winners of our perFORM 2014 design competition!  perFORM challenged emerging architecture professionals to fuse high design with high performance building in the design of a single-family house in Seattle that achieves Passive House-like levels of energy performance while being resourceful, replicable, and beautiful.

First Place Winner
Cameron Huber, architectural student at the University of Oregon, won the $2000 first place award for his entry, entitled “HO[MIN]ID.”  Cameron’s design impressed the jury with its restraint, purity of form, friendliness to neighborhood context, and understanding of energy performance within a holistic approach to sustainability.

Runners-Up
The perFORM 2014 jury awarded four runners-up $1000 each in recognition of the quality of their work:
• Andrew Schenk, student at Ball State University
• Steve Clark, student at Montana State University
• Jacob Dunn, student at University of Idaho Integrated Design Lab
• Samuel Kraft, architectural intern at Seek Architecture

The Jury
The perFORM 2014 jury was made up of noted architects, educators, and builders from Seattle and Portland, including:
• Daniel Friedman, University of Washington College of Built Environments
• Jim Graham, Graham Baba Architects
• Sam Hagerman, Hammer & Hand
• Gladys Ly-Au Young, Sundberg Kennedy Ly-Au Young Architects
• Robert Peña (perFORM Advisor), University of Washington Integrated Design Lab
• Cory Hawbecker, Holst Architecture

A full display of the winning entrants’ 24×36 design boards are on exhibit for several weeks at Hammer & Hand’s Bullitt Center office at 1501 E Madison Street #250, Seattle, WA, 98122.

Congratulations to all the participants of perFORM for their excellent work.

– Zack (Connect with me at +ZacharySemke)

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With the winners of the perFORM 2014 House Design Competition announced last week on Earth Day, excitement is starting to build for perFORM 2015. Check out the video below to learn about perFORM 2015 and hear from the competition organizers and jury members.

Here’s a sneak peek from the video – a map of where perFORM 2014 registrants hail from:

perFORM House Design Competition

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perFORM 2015 builds on last year’s inaugural perFORM 2014 competition, won by University of Oregon architectural student Cameron Huber, with recognition also awarded to four runners-up.  Learn more about perFORM in this video about last year’s competition:

While perFORM 2014 focused on the design of a single family home, this year’s competition jumps up in building scale and energy requirement, calling for architectural students and interns to design a net zero energy, mixed-use, multifamily building for a site in the heart of Portland, Oregon.

This competition’s purpose is threefold:
1.    Demonstrate that high performance building and high design are inherently complementary and that by fusing the two we can create buildings of unsurpassed beauty and efficiency.
2.    Show that net zero energy use is practical for larger, multistory buildings.
3.    Support emerging architects in their development as designers of high performance buildings.

Group and individual entries will be judged based on the criteria of resourcefulness, replicability, and beauty, with consideration also given to adaptability and the triple bottom line. The perFORM jury, made up of leading Northwest design educators, practitioners, and builders, will distribute $6,000 in cash awards to award winners, who will also see their work displayed online, in print, and as part of public displays in Portland and Seattle.

Professor Peter Keyes of the Department of Architecture at the University of Oregon will serve as perFORM advisor for the competition, helping to guide competition design and managing the jury process.

For detailed guidelines, visit: https://hammerandhand.com/perform/design-competition/guidelines/.

Please spread the word!

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“We’re excited to see the great response,” said H&H’s Sam Hagerman. “We started the competition to encourage architecture students and interns to explore the nexus between high performance building and high design, and this year’s zero energy, medium-rise building typology seems to have really struck a chord.”

perFORM 2015 challenges architecture students and interns to design a zero energy, multifamily, mixed use building in Portland, Oregon. The competition’s design site is a new parcel of real estate in inner NE Portland created by the removal of a portion of NE Sandy Boulevard.

Architectural students and interns based in the United States and Canada are eligible to compete, either as individuals or as part of a team. A jury of design professionals and educators, headed up by Prof. Peter Keyes of the University of Oregon, will judge the entries based on the criteria of resourcefulness, replicability, and beauty. The jury will distribute $6,000 in prize money among competition winners.

One sign that perFORM 2015 has gained traction is the fact that the competition’s design problem is being used by architectural educators as a teaching tool.

“We’re particularly excited to see perFORM 2015 being featured in design studio coursework at the university level,” said Sam. “Faculty from the University of Oregon, University of Idaho, University of Arkansas and several other schools have incorporated the competition into their studios.”

The perFORM 2015 jury will deliberate in July and announce winners later this summer. View last year’s winning entries.

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The jury will deliberate later this month at a session to be held in the Glasswood Building, site of Hammer & Hand’s commercial Passive House retrofit. The group will evaluate fifty submissions by architecture students and interns from across North America, representing two dozen universities and many private firms.

This year’s competition challenged participants to design a net zero energy midrise building in Portland’s urban core. The submission swill be judged based on the criteria of resourcefulness, replicability, and beauty. The jury will award $6000 among winning entries.

perFORM 2015 winners will be announced at a ceremony at AIA Portland on First Thursday, August 6, as part of the launch of Hammer & Hand’s high performance building exhibit there, entitled “Evolution of Enclosure.”

Stay tuned!

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We now have the science and techniques to build for comfort, health, and revolutionary efficiency. At the center of it all is the advanced building envelope. Join AIA Portland and Hammer & Hand for this exhibit of cutting-edge building praxis. Drawing on built projects in Portland and Seattle designed by four leading NW architecture firms, the exhibit will explore the building science that guides high performance assemblies.

Evolution of Enclosure: the Anatomy of Building Performance
Exhibit Opening Party, August 6, 6-8pm
Wine and Refreshments
AIA Portland, 403 NW 11th Ave, Portland
(Exhibit runs August 6 through September 10 at AIA Portland)

Four full-scale wall assembly cross sections, a suite of building science of illustrations, project photography, and an interactive set of high performance building animations will show how buildings can go from net consumers of energy to net producers: part of the climate solution.

The exhibit Opening Party will also include the unveiling of the winning entries of the perFORM 2015 Building Design Competition.

See you on August 6!

P.S. Get a sneak peek of a few exhibit graphics here.

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H&H’s Jason Woods is finishing up four beautiful wall assembly cross sections to provide a 3d representation of the principles of high performance building; illustrator Ryan Sullivan of Paste In Place has completed his suite of graphics for the exhibit; and graphic designer Jen Sliker is pulling it all together into a striking series of exhibit panels. The exhibit will feature built work designed by Holst Architecture, Scott | Edwards Architecture, SHED Architecture & Design, and The Miller Hull Partnership.

We’ll unveil it all at the party at AIA Portland’s Center for Architecture on August 6, 6-8pm (and if you’re reading this, you are invited to the festivities!). But I thought I’d give you a sneak peek at a small sampling of the graphics…

Here’s one, based on data shared by Architecture 2030, showing that the building sector is currently a big part of our climate problem:

Here’s another, showing our high performance wall assembly at Madrona Passive House and how it manages for heat, air, and moisture:

And here’s a third, adapted with permission from a graphic by The Miller Hull Partnership, showing how building performance and solar array size are intertwined in Net Positive Energy projects:

Please join us at the Exhibit Opening to see more!

P.S. We’ll also be unveiling the winners of the perFORM 2015 Building Design Competition at the First Thursday party. Exciting stuff.

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• Winning Entry ($3000 prize): Jon Lund, Narek Mirzaei, and Luis Sabater Musa, University of Cincinnati. See their project boards here.
• Runner-Up ($1500 prize): Sang-Oh Jo, JungA Hong, and Do Yoon Kim, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. See their project boards here.
• Runner-Up ($1500 prize): Eduardo Gandara, California State Polytechnic University Pomona. See his project boards here.

The perFORM competition, now in its second year, encourages architecture students and interns to explore the nexus between high performance building and high design. As a builder that partners with architecture firms on every project it builds, we launched the competition to help advance the energy performance training of emerging design professionals and to demonstrate that performance and design are inherently complementary.

This year’s competition challenged students and interns to design a net zero energy, mixed use building for a site in the heart of Portland’s Eastside. Entrants and jurors evaluated the energy performance of design concepts using perFORM’s energy verification spreadsheet to determine if a given design’s energy generation from onsite renewables like solar PV panels would exceed its energy consumption on an annual basis: net zero energy building. With this energy performance prerequisite determined, the jury then judged entries based on the criteria of resourcefulness, replicability, and beauty.

“It’s exciting to see the competition pick up momentum quickly,” said Hammer & Hand’s Zack Semke, coordinator of perFORM. “With fifty entries this year, participation in the competition doubled compared to last year. Two dozen academic institutions from across North America were represented, plus as many private architecture firms.”

The winning entry by Jon Lund, Narek Mirzaei, and Luis Sabater Musa, the “3 Green Bars Building,” impressed the perFORM 2015 jury with its strong urban and environmental response, well considered proportions and design restraint, and emphasis on building energy performance as the path to Net Zero Energy building.

“This team took the time to really understand the biggest sources of energy consumption in buildings of this scale and then focused on reducing those loads with passive and creative programmatic solutions first, before adding big solar arrays to the roof,” said perFORM juror Gladys Ly-Au Young, principal at Seattle-based Sundberg Kennedy Ly-Au Young Architects. “They did all this while also respecting the site and using simple, elegant proportions on the buildings.”

The perFORM 2015 jury included:

• Randy Gragg, Director, John Yeon Center
• Jim Graham, Principal, Graham Baba Architects
• Sam Hagerman, Owner, Hammer & Hand
• Cory Hawbecker, Associate and Sustainability Coordinator, Holst Architecture
• Gladys Ly-Au Young, Principal, Sundberg Kennedy Ly-Au Young Architects
• Judson Moore, Project Architect, Works Partnership Architecture

Peter Keyes, Associate Professor, Department of Architecture, University of Oregon served as this year’s perFORM advisor.

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We’re happy to announce the details of the perFORM 2016 Building Design Competition, a contest challenging emerging architectural professionals to design a net zero energy building in Seattle’s diverse Rainier Beach community.

When it comes to the climate crisis, buildings have been a problem. Today nearly half of US CO2 emissions comes from our buildings, but we now have the science and components to make buildings that can generate more energy than they consume. Buildings can actually be part of the solution.

Still, the idea of “green building” conjures up images of bad design for some. The misconception persists that sustainable buildings are inherently ugly, and beautiful buildings wasteful. Furthermore, both “green building” and great design have earned a reputation for elitism.

The perFORM 2016 Building Design Competition aims to challenge all this. Now in its third year, the competition asks architectural students and interns to explore the nexus between high design and high performance building for a net zero energy project that responds to the community priorities of an economically and culturally diverse neighborhood in fast-growing Seattle. The Rainier Beach Neighborhood’s community planning work provides the backdrop for this year’s competition.

“Given the intense growth pressures that our city faces it’s timely that this year’s competition is grounded in the real world opportunities and challenges of an urban Seattle neighborhood,” said Gladys Ly-Au Young, principal at Sunderberg Kennedy Ly-Au Young Architects and juror for perFORM 2016. “To be truly ‘sustainable,’ green buildings will have to respond with sensitivity to the needs and hopes of diverse constituencies.”

For details, check out our perFORM 2016 page.

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