Subscribe
Share
Share
Embed
with Matt Aalfs
Reframe host Jeff Nichols sits down with Matt Aalfs, founding partner of BuildingWork and lead architect behind Seattle's remarkable Metropole Building restoration. What begins as a discussion about a historic renovation quickly evolves into a broader conversation about climate action, urban revitalization, and why reusing existing buildings may be one of the most important sustainability strategies available today.
At the center of the discussion is the Metropole, a 135-year-old building in Seattle's Pioneer Square neighborhood that most people would have considered beyond saving. Damaged by earthquakes, fire, and years of neglect, the building was transformed into a LEED Platinum-certified community hub serving nonprofit organizations and communities of color. More importantly, it achieved an astonishing Energy Use Intensity (EUI) of 18—less than half that of a typical new office building built to Seattle's already stringent energy code.
One of Matt's most powerful observations challenges a deeply held assumption in sustainability circles that historic preservation and sustainable design are opposing forces.
Many industry people still believe that achieving high performance required tearing down older buildings and replacing them entirely with new materials and more efficient construction. Matt argues the opposite. Historic buildings contain enormous amounts of embodied carbon, craftsmanship, and material resources. Demolishing them often creates a larger environmental burden than renovating them—culminating in the episode's most defining idea: the greenest building is the building that already exists.
Matt explains that nearly half of U.S. carbon emissions are tied to buildings through both construction and operations. If society is serious about climate goals, the solution cannot come primarily from new construction. Instead of building our way toward a cleaner future with new construction—the greatest opportunity lies in upgrading and transforming the millions of buildings that already exist.
The conversation also explores how innovation often emerges from constraints. The Metropole team experimented with advanced technologies including passive chilled beams, triple-glazed windows, natural ventilation systems, solar generation, and a highly optimized building envelope. The result was not only an exceptionally efficient building but also a real-world demonstration project that others can learn from.
Matt’s vision for the future of neighborhoods like Seattle’s Pioneer Square is not preservation for preservation's sake. Instead, he advocates for adaptive reuse—restoring older buildings while giving them new purpose, and modern performance standards. Historic districts should become thriving, walkable communities where people live, work, gather, and connect.
He argues that older buildings contribute to the character that makes neighborhoods desirable. Reinvesting in them encourages walkability, reduces environmental impact, strengthens local identity, and helps create the kinds of places people genuinely want to spend time in.
“No one person knows everything.”
Matt is clear that the Metropole was brought back to life through the collaboration of a team of experts with shared values and a mutual commitment to sustainability, community, and historical preservation:
- Funding for the Metropole’s renovation was provided by the Satterberg Foundation
- Sustainability Consulting was provided by O’Brien360
- Design was led by Matt’s team at BuildingWork
- Contracting was provided by 100-year-old construction firm, W.G. Clark
- Engineering and performance modeling provided by Ecotope
- Policy and design guidance support by the Pioneer Square Preservation District
This episode “reframes” sustainability itself. The future is not simply about building better new buildings. It's about recognizing the value of what we already have and finding ways to make them perform for the next century. In Matt's view, preserving historic buildings isn't just nostalgia—it's where climate strategy, community development, and urban regeneration intersect all at once.
The Reframe podcast is hosted by Jeff Nichols and presented by Pilotlight. If you have questions or feedback for the Reframe team, please email us: reframe@pilotlight.ai
Creators and Guests
Host
What is Reframe?
Reframe is the podcast about building sustainability.
Commercial and public buildings are among the biggest producers of carbon emissions. It’s a problem of massive scale. But, for building owners, engineers and contractors, solving it may actually be more of an opportunity than a challenge. That’s what the “Reframe” podcast is all about. Join host Jeff Nichols on an exploration of the forces driving sustainability in our built environment. And meet the people who are leading the charge.
Matt: [00:00:00] That's how we can move the needle. We can't build our way with new construction towards a cleaner, more carbon neutral future. It has to happen through reuse of existing buildings.
Jeff: Welcome to Reframe. I'm Jeff Nichols. Today I'm joined by Matt Aalfs, founder of BuildingWork and the architect behind the award-winning transformation of The Metropole building in Seattle's Pioneer Square. The Metropole challenges the idea that new buildings are automatically more sustainable than existing ones.
This 135-year-old building is preserved, upgraded, and transformed into a LEED Platinum community resource while still keeping its carbon, character, and history intact. In this conversation, I wanna better understand [00:01:00] how Matt and the team balanced historic preservation and achieved high-performance sustainability work.
Matt, welcome to Reframe.
Matt: Thank you. It's great to be here, Jeff.
Jeff: We met actually at the Vision Awards, and we actually got seated at the same table by happenstance and you ended up winning for the project. So I'm thrilled to dive in to The Metropole and really kinda dive deep. But before we do that-
Matt: Sure
Jeff: who are you? Or what, how did you get involved in this project? Tell us, tell us a little bit about your background.
Matt: Sure. Well, um, I am an architect, um, here in Seattle. I've been practicing architecture about 30 years. Um, I have a, a, I'm a founder of a small architecture firm called Building Work. Um, it's kind of a silly name, a simple name, but we work on buildings, you know, uh, keeping it really straightforward.
We, uh, we do a lot of adaptive reuse, um, so transformation of existing buildings, a lot of historic building work, and we do a lot of civic and public work, which [00:02:00] sometimes is involves new construction. But that's professionally who I am, and I came to architecture relatively late, I would say. I always liked building things.
When I was a little kid, I wanted to be a carpenter or a builder. And then I went to university, University of California, and I just studied a broad range of humanities, so history, politics, literature, art history, and I ended up with a degree actually in fine art. So I did, uh, sculpture, painting, and photography and, and then this sort of broad range of, of sort of humanities back, uh, interest in, in my undergraduate work.
Then I moved to San Francisco. I was in college in Santa Cruz. I moved up to San Francisco and began working as an artist and just sort of living, you know, as a young person. And something about living in the city, in the urban environment, I had never really lived in a city before. I grew up, again, in kinda semi-rural areas, and San Francisco is such a powerful urban environment.
It's so beautiful with sort of the historic context, and it's such a specific place, [00:03:00] and I began to think... At that time, I was doing a lot of photography, and I, I had been doing landscape photography, so photography as fine art, you know. And, um, I started to kinda look at the built environment as subject matter for art, for making visual art.
And through that process, I began to think a lot more about buildings and about how they affect people and what's it like to live in a certain, uh, urban environment. And, um, I then eventually got attracted to architecture as a field of study And I went a little bit further. I, I took some architecture classes in San Francisco and really got excited about it.
And, um, I think one of the things that's excited me most is that it's a field that really encompasses all the other humanities. You know, there's fine art, there's visual art, there's art history, there's history, there's politics, and economics, and science, and technology, and natural sciences. It's all there in architecture.
So I decided I wanted to get a master's degree in architecture so that I could pursue architecture as a career. But then I [00:04:00] took a year and I went and worked for an architect in my hometown, which is up on the North Coast in Humboldt County in Arcata. So I worked for an architect for a year and just learned some of the basics, and then I went to grad school, and I ended up coming to the University of Washington.
That's what brought me to Seattle, and that was exactly 30 years ago. Um- Wow ... actually 1996. So I came here to start my, uh, architecture program at the University of Washington, and I've been here ever since. So I sort of built my architecture career here in Seattle.
Jeff: In college, I was the photo editor for the school newspaper for, uh, a brief time back when we, you know, we were still developing film and all that kind of good stuff.
Never, never quite was able to parlay that into anything other than composition is a very underrated skill when it comes to that.
Matt: Well, it, it, photography teaches you to see and to look at things, and to me, that kind of, I think somehow led me into architecture because I was looking and seeing, and then you start to, uh, think differently about your environment.
You know? At least [00:05:00] that's my theory.
Jeff: Well, so let's dive in. I'm, I'm fascinated to kinda, you know, really unpack a real example of a particular building that for many, many years was, uh, maybe overlooked or, or just, you know, it's like, what are we gonna do with this thing, especially historic buildings, you know.
This is kinda the, the subset of buildings I think is gonna be most, uh, difficult to really, you know, rehab or make efficient. So you guys won the award, uh, for embodied carbon for the Metropole project. How, um... Who else kinda helped on that project? You know, let's make sure everybody is kinda included as we begin to unpack this.
Matt: I think first, I think we have to mention the client, the owner of the project, who hired us and our team, because they really pushed us and set the goal, and they said, "How sustainable can we make this historic building renovation? How much positive impact can we have on climate and on making a building [00:06:00] that's, uh, uh, sets an example for being healthy and for addressing the climate crisis and addressing the need to, you know, lower our energy usage as a society?"
So the client really set that, and that's the Satterberg Foundation. So they're a local philanthropic organization. Uh, several Seattle families, uh, started that. They came out of business, they started this philanthropic organization, and they're, they're using their resources to try and advance sustainable design and also other goals related to creating a just society.
So I would say it starts with them. They hired us, and then we brought together the team of consultants and engineers, and we had a sustainability consultant. O'Brien 360 was our sustainability consultant. We had our mechanical engineer, Ecotope, who I think really was a k- obviously a key player in making this a super energy efficient project.
Ecotope is a local mechanical engineering firm. They really focus on high sustainable design impact projects. And, um, and then we had many others. We had, um, our structural [00:07:00] engineers, Swenson SJJ. So it was a really collaborative effort that, uh, got this project moving in, in the direction that it is.
Jeff: And how did you get hired?
Or how did, how did they find you, or how how did you get connected with the project?
Matt: We were lucky. So we've done a lot of historic building renovation, and we've done a lot of work in the Pioneer Square National Historic District. And when you work on existing buildings down there, you have to get approval from these historic review boards.
And, um, s- it- we've just gotten really, quite frankly, um, we've learned how to do a good job on preservation and also meet our clients' goals in transforming the building, and you kinda gotta bring these two forces together. Sometimes it feels like they're opposing forces. Like preservation, let's, let's change every- th- b- let's not change anything.
Let's preserve everything. And sustainable design, which is, hey, we need to, we need to make some changes, we need to modify what we're doing in an industry. So we, we've been kind of trying to bring those two goals together, and I think that's given us some, you know, good reputation, I think, as [00:08:00] a firm that's able to, to do that.
So we had that going for us. We had also worked on the Metropole building itself for a previous client. So there was a private developer who had bought the building back in 2014, I think, and we st- we worked on it for them 2015, 2016. They were unable to advance their project financially. It was a for-profit project, and they couldn't make the numbers work, so they kind of walked away from the project.
But meanwhile, we had l- after, after working on that building for two years or so, we knew a lot about it. We knew what its problems were, what its deficiencies were. And so when we heard that the Satterberg Foundation bought the building, I approached them and said, "Hey, I'm really interested in what you do.
We're... I think our values are really aligned as an architecture firm, and you as a, a, your philanthropy, and we know a lot about this building and we can... Can we help you?" So we started that conversation. Through multiple other conversations, they then decided to, to hire us. So we're really honored to, um, you know, to have the opportunity to, to work for them and to do this [00:09:00] project.
Jeff: For those maybe that aren't familiar with Pioneer Square and kinda that historic area of Seattle, maybe paint a little bit of picture of kind of Pioneer Square and its importance, you know, or kind of its place in history, I guess, in the city of Seattle.
Matt: I love Pioneer Square. So it was the original downtown core.
The original city core was in that location, um, when the city first started to, you know, get built out in 1860s, 1870s. Um, originally the buildings were all wood, so they were wooden, wood-framed, wood-clad buildings. You know, they th- it's like any kind of, like, frontier town, which Seattle initially was. It was a mill town, right?
So Yesler's Mill, Yesler Street ended at a mill in the waterfront. That's Pioneer Square. So they were milling timber and putting it on boats and sending it off. Um, so but that was a th- so that was the core of Seattle. There was a big fire in 1889. It basically burned to the ground And they rebuilt very quickly, but at that time, the city instituted some [00:10:00] building codes and said, "Hey, you gotta make buildings fire resistive."
So they built out of brick. So brick, and some have stone, uh, but really brick is, is the exterior of the building. So the buildings got built very, very quickly in the, uh, 1889, early 1890s. So when you walk through Pioneer Square today, you see these buildings that were all built around that period, around the 1890s.
Some are a little bit newer, maybe into the early 1900s, but most of them were built in that 10-year period, 1889 to 1900. And so it's a really beautiful example of, of architecture from that moment, and, um, I think it really stands out today as a beautiful place in terms of its physical characteristics.
And we don't have that many. I mean, uh, from, uh, I think on the West Coast, you know, our cities are relatively new. It's not like Boston, New York, Philadelphia. Cities on the East Coast, they're all over the place where they've got buildings that go back to the s- in some cases, 1600s, but lots of buildings from the 1800s.
We don't have that here really, but we, [00:11:00] that's Seattle's piece. There's a couple other spots like Ballard Avenue, you know. Um, San Francisco has a, has a historic core, um, but very little on the West Coast. So I think Pioneer Square's really special in that it's a sizable historic area, and, um, uh, it, it, which left us with this sort of legacy of these beautiful buildings from that era, uh, you know, about 130, 140 years ago.
Jeff: Obviously, historic buildings are, are still buildings that are, you know, over 100 years old now.
Matt: Yeah.
Jeff: It, you know, that presents, I'm sure, some unique challenges. How do you, uh, you know, as... Let's talk about Metropole specifically. Like, when you walked in- Yeah ... what did you see? What did you experience?
Matt: Boy.
Well, um, I'll talk a little bit about the Metropole, and then I'll t- I'll talk for a second about the issues of dealing with 120-year-old buildings as an architect. The Metropole itself was in really, really bad shape. It had been unoccupied, essentially abandoned, for about 17 years. There had been a fire in the early 2000s [00:12:00] in the building.
Prior to that, it was kind of a old downtown building. There were restaurants and shops in it, but there was a fire in around, I don't know, 2006 or something like that, and the building was essentially abandoned or unoccupied. So it, there were areas where it was open to the weather, holes in the roof. Um, there were pigeons living inside.
There were some areas where there were pigeon droppings about a foot thick on the floor, so you know, that, that's pretty bad. There was also just a lot of deterioration, like I said, from weather, a lot of cracks in the, in the structure. It just, it, the building was kind of a ruin. It was beautiful, but it, it, it just, it really needed a lot of work.
Um, so, so it was in pretty, pretty rough shape Zooming out a little bit to just the big issues with historic buildings is, you know, when they built these buildings out of brick, you know, that did one thing, which was it made them fire resistive. And, and in the 1890s, fire was the big concern. That's what killed people, you know?
They wanted to stop that, stop [00:13:00] that vulnerability. But brick is really vulnerable to earthquakes. And the problem with earthquakes is that big earthquakes only happen every few hundred years, and so people don't really remember. And when they built those buildings out of brick, they weren't built with any ability to resist sideways movement.
We call it lateral movement, but that's what an earthquake does. It shakes a building sideways. And if the brick is very heavy, it's gonna move because it just-- once it starts moving, it's gonna keep moving. And brick is brittle. It doesn't bend. Like wood can bend, but brick doesn't, and so it can start to crack and fall apart.
When that happens, you can have a catastrophic collapse of the building. So when we start to renovate a building from that era, one of the first things we have to address is its seismic risk, and which is very high. They're, they're, they're probably the, the riskiest, you know, the, the most dangerous buildings in terms of an earthquake.
So seismic design and bringing the building up to structural code with respect to earthquake resistance is a huge thing. We also have to g- deal with life safety issues, [00:14:00] exiting, accessibility, making sure the building is accessible to all people, so that's elevators and ramps. Um, we gotta bring the buildings up to energy code performance.
So there's just a whole bunch of things we gotta do to re, re- um, re- we almost have to rebuild certain aspects of them, you know, wh- when we begin
Jeff: You know, we had the Nisqually quake, I think that did a lot of damage in Pioneer Square, if I'm, I'm not mistaken. I remember there was one visual of like this red brick facade that was like, you know, tumbling down into the streets.
Um, so, uh, okay so you show up on the scene, you knew the building a little bit, and you get there with your client, you walk the building through a foot of, you know, of, uh, pigeon poop. How-- What was the vision or, you know, what was... I guess, what was the client's vision? What were they hoping to accomplish with the building?
Like, what were their objectives? And, you know, talk us a l- through a little bit that thought process of how you take these ruins and create what you created. I'm, I'm fascinated by [00:15:00] that.
Matt: Yeah. So the first step, the client side, was they were trying to create a community resource. So, um, r- real quickly, the, the client funds not-for-profits that do work either for environmental work or social justice and equity work.
You know, they, they, they, uh, work for communities of color and other organizations that are trying to make people's lives better, right? They're not a developer. They'd never done a building before. They'd never bought or renovated a building. But they said, "What if we owned a building in downtown Seattle, and we created a space where all these different organizations that we fund could work together and have, like, synergies about, you know, make connections and do their work better?"
They then reached out to a bunch of different of their constituents, these, in these f- groups, and this is sort of Black community, um, Latino community, Asian American community, Native American, Indigenous communities, et cetera, and they said, you know, "What does your community need in downtown Seattle?" And a number of issues rose to the surface.
One, childcare. There's a lack of affordable childcare, a lack of a, a, a meeting and event space, a lack of a space to have cultural events, [00:16:00] conferences, board meetings, et cetera, arts and culture space, and then office space that was affordable. So those issues then became the, what we had to design. They said, "Okay, this is what our constituents, our, the communities we're working with say they need.
Here, you guys figure out how to do that in this building." And that was a challenge 'cause it's a whole bunch of different uses that we had to figure out how to organize within this small, old building. Um, and that became sort of a, one design challenge, and then at the same time we were asked, "How can we do this with the greatest impact on climate?"
Meaning the, produce a building that's the most sustainable or low energy use. Um, so it was a really interesting creative and technical challenges that we had to jump into right away from the beginning.
Jeff: So you, you paint the picture, you know, beautiful architectural drawings. This is what's possible, you know, all the pretty pictures, right?
And tell us a little bit about what, like what did you have to overcome through the actual build process?
Matt: Yeah. Well, I would say prior to the [00:17:00] build process, we had a design and permitting process that was... I mean, we were three years, at least three years in design and permitting before construction started.
So, and part of that is we had to solve our engineers a- a- and us as the architects and our consultants, we had to solve these, um, technical problems about repairing the building, right? Which were significant. And then also Bringing the building up to code. At the same time, uh, we had to figure out how to resolve all these different functional uses of childcare and office and conference space and make all those come together.
And then the permitting process was challenging. It's a complex building, and it takes a long time to get something permitted in the City of Seattle. And, um, you know, so, so those, th- those efforts sort of, like, kind of exhausted everybody to a ce- certain degree. Yeah. Then we started construction and, and then you're right, it got really real.
Um, our, our general contractor is WG Clark, great team. Uh, but they faced, you know, a lot of challenges [00:18:00] trying to build this building. You know, you got a downtown site, there's no space to spread out your equipment, and, uh, we're trying... You know, we designed s- systems that w- to go into this building that were really innovative and sort of outside the box.
And, uh, and so I think it, it, it was a lot of, like, first time doing something kind of thing, you know? Um- Yeah ... but we all pulled together as a team, but it, it was a tough one. So three years in design and permitting and then about three years in construction, so it was a six-year project from start to finish.
Jeff: Tell us about some of those systems.
Matt: Yeah. I think one of the big ones, since we're talking about energy efficiency, is the way we're heating, cooling, and ventilating the building, and we came up with a design that's, um, doesn't rely on blowing air around. It's radiant. So we have radiant heating and radiant cooling, um, which is kind of unusual.
Um, and so, uh, normally, you know, you heat air in ducts and then you blow that air. But actually now in a post-COVID world, we've kinda learned that that's not really the best way to do things 'cause you spread [00:19:00] contaminants around. But we've designed this before COVID actually, but... And, and, and we selected this system because it was, um, much more energy efficient.
So on the roof we have these air exchangers, heat exchangers. It's a equipment, it's actually from Europe. Um, I think the, the heat exchangers are from Italy and, uh, it's pretty innovative. Uh, uh, it's, it's a sort of a heat pump, but it, it, it works in a slightly different way. It heats or cools water, which is then pumped into either baseboard radiant heaters or what's called a chilled beam cooling element, and it's an element that sits in the c- up at the top of the space, and it has cold air in it, or, or sorry, cold water, and then the warm air rises and gets cooled by this cold water in these little narrow pipes, and then the, and then the cold air filters back down.
So it's a really super energy efficient way of doing this. There's other, other equipment that was used. It's something called a very efficient dedicated outdoor air system. [00:20:00] So when we exhaust air, we're taking the heat, the heated component o- out of that exhausted air, so we're not losing it, um, and then transferring that to the fresh air that we bring in.
Um, so it sounds kind of silly, but that's kind of what it is. It's a super efficient way of keeping the air recirculation and the fresh air in, in, in the building without having to reheat it or recool it. So those are, uh, kind of a, a summary of the systems, and they-- and like I said, they're really unique.
I don't know of another building in Seattle that has, um, uh, air source heat exchangers that are driving radiant heat and passive chilled beam cooling. Um, so it's just a unique system. It was equipment, like I said, came from Germany and Italy and was, uh, was-- and our engineers figured out how to bring it all together, and our contractor figured out how to build it.
Um, but it was really something none of them had ever done before.
Jeff: So Matt, you guys were recognized for the Embodied Carbon Award. Uh, people may not be kind of familiar with, you know, what that means. But you guys did [00:21:00] some, some also some innovative things around kind of materials use and like walk us through kind of what that was or, you know, why did you win for embodied carbon?
Matt: Yeah, I mean, I, I, I think the big idea is When you build a building, you, you expend a lot of carbon. Uh, you're cutting down trees, you're, you're making concrete, you're making steel, you're, you're making masonry. That ex- a, a lot of carbon goes, uh, uh, i- is expended. That carbon is sort of embodied... The, the, the carbon that was spent to make those materials is represented in the materials.
And so if you reuse those materials in, especially if you reus- reuse them in place, you're not ex- you're, you're keeping that carbon where it is. If you knock a building down, you, it goes in the garba- uh, landfill, that carbon is released again into the atmosphere, and then you're releasing a lot more carbon to manufacture the new materials, truck them to the site, and then more carbon on the energy to erect the new building out of those new materials.[00:22:00]
So, um, I, I think that kinda goes back to that statement that the, the greenest building is the building that's already built. You've already spent all the energy, you've released all the carbon to build a building. You know, if you can keep it in place and reuse it, you're way ahead of the game in terms of having a positive impact.
Um, in this case, this building, um, it was in really bad shape, and I think it really took a commitment to reuse it and save it. Uh, it took a financial commitment and, and, and, uh, uh, a creative and technical commitment. By doing that, um, I don't have the numbers in front of me, but there's just hundred, thousands of tons of represent- carbon represented into that building that is, is still there.
And, um, and then we didn't have to... It released new carbon to build new elements. So I think that's kind of the big concept. We, we were really focused on also saving and preserving anything that was in the building. This, uh, there's cast iron, there's a lot of timber, beautiful old-growth timber, [00:23:00] and then brick and stone.
And we were really focused on preserving, stabilizing, reusing that material on the building rather than getting rid of it. Um, and so kind of that's a step farther than just saving the building. We also tried to save all the materials in the building. Um, and I think those things contributed to us being recognized for that award for embodied carbon.
Um, but because the building's so old, it's-- the walls are about, in the basement, they're alm- some of them are almost three feet thick of s- brick and stone, you know- Wow ... down, down below grade. And so you just think of all that material that, that was extracted from the earth, you know, uh, 135 years ago, and we figured out a way to M- modernize it, bring it up to code, but keep it in place and reuse it.
Um, so and, and that, that's kind of a simplification, but to me, that's kinda how we, uh, had the p- uh, received that, why we received that, uh, embodied carbon award.
Jeff: Yeah. Well, and I, I, I think also y- you mentioned kind [00:24:00] of the three-foot thick walls and being- Yeah ... underground. Uh, but people also may not know that a, that a lot of kind of the Pioneer Square area was infill, right?
That it was kind of a, the swampy marshland that, that as they built out or grew. Um, but because of that as well, they had to raise... I've done the underground tour, so you can kinda go under the streets of Seattle. Uh, maybe share, did that impact you guys at all? Or, or how did you tackle that?
Matt: That's a great question, Jeff, 'cause we, we had to deal with that really, uh, a lot on this building.
So you're right. When, when they... Seattle was originally built on fill. I'm sorry, Pioneer Square was built on fill. A p- much of Pioneer Square was actually underwater initially, and they filled it in just with, like, debris and stuff from the mills. And, and, um, then when they had the fire, they had a whole much more debris.
Well, what did they do with it? They just spread it out on the ground, you know? And, um, it, it... You know, they were just trying to rebuild the city. Um, and so that created not only soft ground, but it was low, and so then they, they, they started having flooding [00:25:00] problems. So somewhere around 1900, I don't really know, but maybe a few years after the great fire, they raised the streets.
And so when they did... So buildings were... You know, the ground level was down here. They raised the streets. So what was the, um, street level became a basement level, and the sidewalks, there's a, there's a... We call it an areaway, but it's a passageway underneath the sidewalk in Pioneer Square. When you go on that underground tour, those fun history tours, you're walking in these passageways, and you're underneath the sidewalk.
And so as part of this project- We wanted to take those areas that are under the sidewalk and incorporate them into the building. It gave us conference rooms and it, uh, s- added to the functionality of the building. In order to do that, we had to restore those, that, the structure of those airways, and that was a huge complex problem.
We're down below Second Avenue. We had to build a new retaining wall to hold back Second Avenue, right? With all the buses and the traffic and the, and everything. And then we had to [00:26:00] rebuild the structure that holds up the sidewalk. Um, that was historic material. Um, we had to figure out how to brace it and rebuild it.
One fun thing we did in doing that was there used to be these skylights in the sidewalk and considered bringing light into these lower areas, and they had been long gone in, in this building, but we rebuilt them, and they had that sort of, those little purple glass prism-
Jeff: Yes ...
Matt: cubes of glass. So we reconstructed those, and so now when you go down to the basement of the Metropole, you go into these conference rooms, which are underneath the sidewalk, and you look up and you just see these beautiful purple glass, you know, daylight coming, filtering through these purple glass, uh, skylights.
So it-- But that project wa- uh, repairing that, like it, it took a lot of time b-because again, it wasn't something that we'd really done before, and the city didn't quite know how to handle it in terms of a permitting process. Um, the engineers had to, you know, really sharpen their pencils and figure out how to, um, design it, and then the contractor had to build it.
I mean, it, it was a real technical challenge. Um, but I think the [00:27:00] outcome's pretty cool.
Jeff: I think it's super cool. Many listeners may be thinking, you know, they think about some of these challenges or, you know, all the, you know, reusing. I, I, I gotta imagine one of the, the questions on people's mind is like, you know, this must have been so expensive, like cost-prohibitive.
Like no one else, no one else can do something similar to this 'cause they don't have, you know, maybe that kind of a budget. But like, talk to me about like, you know- I, I don't know. How m- how much did it cost? Is this cost-prohibitive to try and do in other buildings, or is this just a one-off?
Matt: Yes, the building was expensive for a number of reasons.
One, it is LEED Platinum certified, and, you know, th- that comes with a cost premium. I'm really proud that we got LEED Platinum certification. It's the highest level of sustainable design accreditation that you can get. There's only about 6,500 LEED Platinum certified buildings in the whole world, and not very many of them are f- in a 135-year-old building.
Most of them are [00:28:00] new construction. 'Cause when you- Right ... build a building new, you can build it just the way you need to from the ground up. You know, you're not dealing with all the quirks and g- weird inconsistencies of an existing building. Um, so getting LEED Platinum certification in this project, I think is a real achievement that we're proud of.
Yes, it comes with a cost premium, but, um, I think we've demonstrated through this building that historic preservation and sustainable design are not oppositional goals, that we can preserve old buildings and really create the, among the highest energy performing buildings, the most sustainable design buildings at the same time.
So yeah, I mean, it, it certainly, not every building can afford the cost per square foot that this one was, and I don't know the number off the top of my head, but it was definitely more expensive. But, uh, I think it's an example. People can look at this building and say, "Oh, how did they do that? Well, maybe we [00:29:00] could do some of that.
Maybe, um, we can look... What, what does a passive chill beam look like? I've never seen one. Well, let's go to The Metropolitan and look at them. They're right there. How do they work? Okay, great. Let's, let's learn from that." You know, if, if something hasn't been done, it's easy to say it can't be done. As an architect, I'm always looking around at other buildings that amazing architects and engineers have, have completed and learning new things.
And I think with this building, we are contributing to that knowledge base for other builders, architects, building owners to say, "Oh, wait a minute. How did they get that building so energy efficient? Well, let's go tour it. Let's talk about it. Let's talk to the engineers or the architects or the owner and, and, and, and see what they did."
And sometimes just having a, a built example really goes a long way. And, and certainly, yeah, the, i- you're not gonna replicate it exactly, but I think there are a number of things that are examples of things that other projects might look to and say, "Yeah, let's try that
Jeff: Innovation means we're doing something new
Matt: Yes
Jeff: That we don't, you know, we don't, we don't have best practices yet, so [00:30:00] there, there are gonna be some inefficiencies or just learnings along the way.
And, and typically there's, there's a cost to that, usually in time or, you know, additional expertise you need. So I think, you know, anybody who says that they are truly innovating and yet are, like, hyper-efficient, they just, you know, I, I don't, you know, I... Th- that wouldn't-- that doesn't really compute for me.
But, um- Yeah ... I think you're right that there is something that when we look at real examples of innovation, you know, how do we then take that and apply that? And it doesn't mean you have to do it exactly the, the same way. So, but the, the values, I-- that was the thing I thought the Satterberg, uh, this was a real expression of, uh, in, in that case, they were gonna actually be saving money that they were giving to, you know, these not-for-profits for rent because now they, they were providing kind of the building.
So I think there was maybe a little bit different business case or ROI. But I think- Yeah ... fundamentally it was that this is, like, we're gonna put our money where our mouth is. Like, this is- Yeah ... this [00:31:00] is how we align our values. Yeah. So I thought that was pretty cool.
Matt: Yeah, I think you're right. And in some ways, the building, you know, 'cause we're all familiar with the build- the Bullitt Center, right?
Which is the new construction building that was done a few years ago. Miller Hull designed it, um, the Bullitt Foundation, uh, commissioned it, and that showed the way. That's new construction, and they said, "Well, you can make a building that's not connected to the grid." That manufactures its own energy, and it's not con- you know, and all the energy and resources are produced on site.
That's an amazing thing. It's not plugged in to the grid, and so that says it's possible. I'm not comparing our building to the Bullet Center, but I am saying we did something within an existing historic building context that I don't think had really been done before, at least not locally, to the same level.
And, and I think it gives a, a real concrete, real-world example of something that can be done.
Jeff: Talk a little bit about your EUI, 'cause I think that is-- When you look at that number, it's, it's pretty [00:32:00] amazing. But also, what else did you have to do to, to achieve that result?
Matt: So I like to think of the E- EUI, which stands for energy use intensity for those of- who are listening, who are not familiar, I kinda think of it as like a m- it's a way of gauging the efficiency of their buildings.
The lower the number is, is better in terms of effi- if energy efficiency. So an EUI of eighteen is really low, and that's what this building was designed to, to have. So Seattle has among the strictest energy codes for buildings in the United States. We are very forward-thinking in that way. And so if you design a building that meets Seattle Energy Code, you've-- you're already a building that's pretty energy efficient and much more efficient than in many other cities and jurisdictions across the country.
And so a new construction office building in Seattle has an EUI of around forty. Might be thirty-eight to forty, and so that's pretty darn good. It's a lot better than it used to be ten, twenty years ago, and it's a lot better than, say, building a building [00:33:00] in some other state or city. So an EUI of 18 is ridiculously energy efficient.
It uses less than half of the energy of a building that meets Seattle Energy Code, which already is one of the more efficient buildings in the country, right? So it's pretty great. So that's the metric that I think is worth, uh, uh, understanding. How we did it was, I w- well, first of all, our mechanical engineer, Ecotope, really led this process, right?
So they crunched the numbers and did the engineering to figure out how to get there. Couple things we did with them. Created an energy model, so a three-dimensional model of the building, and then they ran energy simulations. Well, what if we do this to the building? What if we do that to the building? What kind of energy, uh, needs are we gonna have?
And then what kind of mechanical equipment, heating, ventilating, and cooling can we use that will meet those needs? And then they, they run the numbers again. So it's like a, it's a 3D digital modeling. It's kind of a mathematical modeling that they did, um, in sort of iteratively during design. Couple [00:34:00] things that we produced.
I've mentioned selecting this, um, passive chill beams and the radiant, uh, heat exchangers, uh, equipment from Europe. That was a key thing. We also really worked on the envelope, making sure the building envelope was super energy efficient. So we had to put all new windows in the building 'cause the historic windows were long gone, so that gave us an opportunity, and we put in wood windows with triple-glazed glass.
So, uh, there's, there's, there's three layers of glass and two sealed air spaces between them. That makes the window really, really good at blocking the temperature exchange from inside to outside. So if you've cooled it, you're not gonna lose that cooling, and if you're heating it, you're not gonna lose that heat through the window.
And then a couple other in- innovative things. We used a, a, a special wood window wall system. It's called a curtain wall. Normally, a curtain wall is used on really big buildings, but we have a curtain wall system that's made out of wood, made out of timber. And on the street level, those really big windows that you see along Second Avenue, those are curtain wall, [00:35:00] and it's just much more efficient because it doesn't have all the breaks in construction where air can leak.
But it's triple-glazed glass in a wood curtain wall system. Again, that system was new. We really hadn't seen it before. A company in Canada manufactures it. We found it, worked with them, brought them down here, and they were able to provide that, that system. That, it was pretty new. Couple other things we did was there's a lot of onsite power generation.
We have a lot of photovoltaic on the roof, so, uh, that contributes Another fun thing we did that affects the UI is we looked at the building's orientation and we realized, you know, this building's a pretty good candidate for natural ventilation for a couple reasons. One, it's an old building with big windows.
When they built old buildings, they had tall vertical windows because they had to get daylight deep in the window, right? Uh, deep into the floor plate because they didn't necessarily have electric light. So those windows, if you-- they're double-hung windows, so the top can slide down, you can get fresh air.
Other thing we noticed is we have a taller building to the [00:36:00] west, so that means our building sh- is shaded in the afternoon. That's when our overheating in Seattle comes, usually is in the afternoon. That hot afternoon sun, you know, in July, August, uh, September, heats us up. Well, we're in shade from that, so we said, "How can we incorporate natural ventilation?"
You don't wanna open the windows if your heating and cooling system is in operation. So every space in the building has a little, uh, green light, red light, uh, readout on the wall, and when it's green, it means, "Hey, go ahead and open the window because we're not spending energy to heat or cool the building right now."
And if it's red, it says, "Don't open the window because we're spending electri- we're using electricity to heat or cool the building." So the building occupants get to participate in this energy performance, I think in kind of an interesting way. And again, that was an idea that our, our mechanical engineers had as well.
Jeff: That is super cool. I haven't heard about that, kind of the gamification of Yeah ... how we heat, heat the space. So Matt, this was a six-year [00:37:00] project, three years in permitting, three years in building, and I kinda imagine that with all the innovation or first-time things, there were probably some, some doubts or maybe some, uh, dark moments.
How-- You know, were there any, and how did you overcome those?
Matt: We definitely had some lack of confidence or some fears that what we were trying to do wouldn't be successful. I think on the energy side, we weren't certain that we could achieve LEED Platinum. We set that out as a goal. It's pretty hard to do, and there were a- along the way, there were a number of questions that arose like, "Oh, no, we, we can't achieve this a- aspect of this.
How are we gonna make it up somewhere else?" I think in terms of the EUI, the energy performance, I think we were initially shooting to get below 25, and we weren't sure if that was possible. So I think, um, then just in terms aesthetically, we w- we were doing so many things to this building, and we were trying to keep this balance of old and [00:38:00] new and a visual kinda conversation between the historic elements that, that are beautiful and the new elements and trying to bring them together into a visual composition.
We didn't know if that was gonna look good or feel good. So I would say we had a lot of, uh, risk in the process, meaning we were doing things that we hadn't done before. How we got through it, I would say, was couple things: collaboration, recognizing that w- not-- no one person knows everything, and as the architect, you know, our team is really, really critical to us being able to have good outcomes.
So s- taking a moment, stop, talking with our engineers, um, uh, collaboration, I think, all the way through. And then I think the other thing was the client was willing to take the risk with us, and sometimes that's not the case. Because we were doing things for the first time, it did take a lot longer. Um, I think you said earlier, you know, efficiency was not there in terms of the effort.
We had to do things more than once to get to that point, and I think our client was willing to take that [00:39:00] more extended process and maybe accept some more risk. At the end of the day, it, it, it, I think it paid off. Uh, it's, it's open for discussion, but, um- It, we definitely had to keep reminding ourselves of why we were doing this and what the goals were.
And sometimes somebody would be like, "Wait a minute. I d- you know, I don't, I don't, I don't like the direction here. Why are we doing that?" And we'd, we'd stop for a minute, have a conversation, collaborate, and say, "Well, okay, what are the trade-offs here?" So to try and answer your question, I think it was a lot of conversation and a lot of collaboration.
And we had a certain kind of vision that we had to hold onto even when things got kind of squishy.
Jeff: How do you think this project should inform other cities that have a concentration of, you know, historic buildings? What, what do you, what do you hope others, when they hear the Metropole story, what do you hope they take away?
Matt: Kind of, I mentioned it before that historic preservation and high-impact sustainable design are not divergent goals, [00:40:00] that we can bring these goals together, and we don't have to think of historic preservation as an obstacle to doing really high sustainable design. So I think that's one, one thing I think is worth taking away.
You know, you asked me earlier about Pioneer Square. Pioneer Square's a beautiful place because the character of the buildings, their size, their texture, the-- it makes it a nice place to be. And if you're in a nice environment, y- y- you wanna walk more. Well, walking's good. It's good for you, it's good for the environment.
And if we can find ways to reinvigorate our old buildings in our historic neighborhoods, I think we're creating better communities, we're creating better neighborhoods, and we have a positive impact on the environment, an impact on climate. And so I, I think that the building sort of s- shows, you know, again, one, historic preservation and sustainable design are not opposing forces.
And two, there's a real value in saving and, and reinvigorating our historic neighborhoods because they're [00:41:00] places where people like being. You know, I wanna walk down the street and get a coffee there. You know, there's a reason why we like going to Europe. We love walking around Paris and Rome. It's, it's beautiful, and it's because th- the buildings create an environment that just feels nice to be in.
I think we have that in Pioneer Square.
Jeff: Well, it, it's interesting you mention. I-- at the Vision Awards, I was talking with, um, city of Seattle, the- Yeah ... the Department of Transportation, and, you know, we've taken down the viaduct, uh, which was a major thoroughfare, right, right along the waterfront. And they said one of the, the big benefits of removing the viaduct is it brought a lot more natural sunlight, especially to Pioneer Square.
And it's interesting, the number of projects, I think, in Pioneer Square have just kinda exploded. I, I guess I-- what's been fascinating to me to learn the last, you know, over the last several months is I've been thinking of kinda buildings in isolation, but how we get to buildings, all of the infrastructure and supporting- Right.
Right ... you know, I think there is a growing movement, especially on the design front or amongst [00:42:00] architects, that we have to think about how those two interact.
Matt: I'm glad you brought up the viaduct. Um, and, uh, f- maybe some listeners don't know the viaduct, but it was a double-decker, two-story freeway that ran along the waterfront, and it's cut off Pioneer Square and other neighborhoods from the waterfront.
It, it was dirty, it was noisy, created a lot of shadows. We had to get rid of it because the Nisqually earthquake damaged it, and it wasn't safe. And so we took it down and, um, rebuilt that waterfront Uh, as if more of a pedestrianized environment. So now you can go from Pike Place Market, it's another beautiful historic district, you can walk along the waterfront to Pioneer Square, and I think the connection of those is really important, and I think the sense of, um, you're right, buildings aren't in isolation.
The buildings are part of a, a context or a c- a, a, a physical community, if you will, of other buildings and spaces, and taken together, they create areas where, where we wanna be. And I think Pioneer Square is that area, and it is [00:43:00] improving, and more people see it as a place that they wanna be, whether that's to live or work or to eat or to hang out.
Obviously, there's a lot more work to do. There's a lot of buildings that need renovation. But I still think Occidental Park is just one of the most beautiful urban spaces. You know, it, obviously it needs more energy. It needs more restaurants and, and people there, but physically, it's just a wonderful place in our city.
Jeff: So what, in 50 years, what do you hope people say about what happened here?
Matt: Oh, boy. Um, I do think we designed a building, a renovation or transformation of a building that w- is forward-thinking enough to really be relevant 50 years from now. And I hope people look back at it and say, "Well, the building creates community," and that's what the client really wanna do, uh, in serving the populations and the communities that they do.
The building has, um, helped create a space where people have a, have a, a ability to live and work downtown. And that hopefully that the building is seen as [00:44:00] one step in, um, c- the, the process of reinvigorating Pioneer Square, let's say. 50 years from now, I'd like to see Pioneer Square as a place with, you know, thousands of apartments and people living there, walking around, going to the grocery store, you know, picking up their kids.
And, um, I think it'd be pretty cool if 50 years from now that's the case, and say, "Yeah, Metropole was one of those buildings that, you know, helped, helped move things in that direction."
Jeff: Okay, last question for you. The greenest building is the one that's already been built. Do you believe that?
Matt: Absolutely, and I, I, I really do.
Couple statistics. One that I'm aware of is that buildings in the United States are responsible for something like 45 to close to 50% of the carbon emissions. That's both in terms of materials extraction, transportation, construction, and also operation. So if we wanted lower [00:45:00] carbon emissions, and I b- I believe, I s- I really believe the climate crisis is the biggest crisis that's facing the world, facing our generation, and facing future generations.
We've got a lot of other problems in the world, don't get me wrong, but I still think the climate crisis is the over- o- overarching problem. If buildings, in the United States, you know, we contribute to that. We, we've we make a, we, you know, we have make a lot of carbon emissions, and we have for a long time.
If almost half of our carbon emissions are coming from buildings, then it's up to architects and builders and building owners to try and improve. Yeah, I've looked at the numbers. You can't move the needle by building new buildings. There's so many existing buildings, they've gotta be improved and brought up to a higher level of energy performance and reuse.
That's how we can move the needle. We can't build our way with new construction towards a, a, a cleaner, more carbon neutral future. It has to happen through reuse of existing buildings. And so that's why I think the greenest building is the building that already [00:46:00] exists. And, and when I started my architecture career, you know, I wanted to design new buildings, and I do.
We do new, new buildings. But over the last, I don't know, 15 years, 20 years, we've, I've really began to see that it's really about building reuse and building transformation that, um, i- is really gonna make the biggest contribution to our society. And so I think the conversations you're having, Jeff, on your podcast and the 2030 District, I mean, th- I think advancing this conversation I think is really, really important
Jeff: That was my big aha was, uh, A, I, I think still the general public has no idea the role that buildings play in climate change.
And then, you know, if, if you're serious about tackling climate change or getting to net zero, there is no way to get there without tackling existing buildings. And new buildings are relatively easy. We change the building code, and if you wanna build the building, you build to that spec. Existing buildings, right, because of the tenant landlord split incentive typically is, is much harder.
And that's, you [00:47:00] know, that's obviously why, you know, we're trying to help advance building performance standards for existing buildings 'cause we just see that as the, the mechanism to actually, you know, um, affect the change that we need.
Matt: You know, you're right. I'm glad you what you're, you're, you're doing with this podcast.
It's, it's so important and, you know, we can't just throw things away. The other benefit to it, aside from energy performance, is I think there's something about the cultural continuity of a building. This building's been here for a long time. It's been here before I have, and it'll be here after. And I think that not everyone wants to be in an environment where everything's brand new, you know?
And there's a certain kind of character to things that have been here a long time, especially when we-- our culture has moved so much more into a digital space, there's something really meaningful about the physicality of existing old buildings. They remind us of other times and other places, and I think it helps [00:48:00] balance, I think, our culture in a lot of ways as well.
Jeff: I couldn't agree more. Well, Matt, I wanted to say just thank you. Thank you for your time. Thank you for all your hard work. It was clear that this wasn't just another project. This was something you were, you know, truly passionate about. And what I love is oftentimes, uh, we think of constraints as negative things, and I think actually constraints drive creativity.
And I think Metropole is a phenomenal example of where, you know, the constraints, the size, the historic preservations you meant, like, they don't have to be diametric opposites. We can still do sustainable good work that, you know, drives a great efficient building without having to knock it down. So thank you for all your hard work, and thanks for sharing it.
Matt: Thank you, and thanks for advancing this conversation like you do with this work, helping advance the discussion about making buildings more sustainable.
Jeff: I am so grateful to have met Matt and learned about the [00:49:00] Metropole project. Not only was I inspired about what was achieved with Metropole, but also Matt's own journey from photographer to architect trying to do his part to tackle climate change. Which leads me to the takeaways from our conversation.
The first is that the greenest building is often the one we already have. The Metropole shows that existing buildings are not just old assets waiting to be replaced. They can be powerful climate tools. By preserving the original brick, stone, timber, cast iron, and structure, the project kept a huge amount of embodied carbon in place instead of sending it to a landfill.
The second is historic preservation and high-performance sustainability can work together. As Matt points out, these are not opposing forces. A hundred and thirty-five-year-old Pioneer Square building became a LEED Platinum ultra-efficient project with an EUI of eighteen. [00:50:00] That's less than half the energy use of many new buildings built to Seattle's already strong energy code.
And the team achieved that through triple-glazed windows, radiant heating and cooling, passive chilled beams, heat recovery, natural ventilation, rooftop solar, and overall a deep commitment to solving hard problems instead of avoiding them. And finally, I think one of the things we have to remember is buildings are not just real estate, they are community infrastructure.
The Satterberg Foundation did not take on the Metropole simply to renovate a building. They wanted to create a downtown resource for the not-for-profits they support with affordable office space, childcare, cultural events, meeting space, and community connection. The finished building has become a physical expression of their values: climate, equity, reuse, and civic life.
Which leads me to the reframe. I think so often [00:51:00] we think new buildings are automatically more efficient, more sustainable, and just better for the climate than old buildings. However, the future of sustainable cities is not just newer, shinier buildings. It's proving that existing buildings can be preserved, upgraded, and be made way more efficient than new ones while keeping their carbon, character, and community value intact.
The Metropole is proof that sustainability does not always mean tearing something down and starting fresh. Sometimes the better answer is already standing, in fact, waiting for the right vision, team, and commitment to bring it back to life. Thanks for listening to reframe. Until next time
Announcer: You've been listening to Reframe, the show about building sustainability. Presented by PilotLight. Opinions shared by Reframe guests aren't necessarily the views of their companies. If you'd like to learn more about the podcast, the show's host, [00:52:00] guest, or topics, check out this episode's show notes or visit pilotlight.ai/podcast.
Got a question for the Reframe team? Drop us a note at reframe@pilotlight.ai. The Reframe podcast features original music by Dyaphonic. The show is produced by Robert Haskitt with Eric Opel, and the show's host, Jeff Nichols. Before you go, this would be a great place to hit pause in your podcast app, and then hit that little plus sign up in the corner to follow the show.
That way, you'll never miss an episode
Thanks for joining us