Mercer Slough Enviromental Educational Center

Mar 12, 2010 at 3:15 pm
Room # 408

Prented by: Mark Johnson, Jones and Jones Archictects & Landscape Architects, Martha Rose, Martha Rose Construction

Session Description:

This project is about trees and water and respect. As an education facility focused on the study of wetland ecosystems, this (LEED Gold) Center teaches by design and example. It immerses students in a thriving upland tree canopy overlooking a major urban wetland, while exhibiting principles and techniques that help keep the wetlands intact.

This wetland ecosystem is the fi lter to everything that enters it from uphill, with many natural vessels to carry water and nutrients. By creating a place that respects these factors, the Center is integrated with the wetland organism, a part of the system rather than apart from it.

Preserving the tree canopy meant footprints of no more than 2,500 square feet. By analyzing voids in the forest, the design team identified “rooms” for each of eight structures, four of which barely touch the land. Using helical pilings and concrete pile caps, the structures cantilever over the land and up into the tree canopy. This allows water, air, and vegetation to flow beneath, thus sustaining the fragile, sloped site and the land’s natural vessels. Building volumes and decks are staggered,off set and pierced to accommodate trees and allow the buildings to interact with their surroundings.

While the buildings comprise 9,500 square feet of usable space; less than one quarter of the square footage touches the ground. We ask; what is the value of seeing eye-to-eye with a Pileated Woodpecker? What is it worth to design buildings so that, in 15 or 20 years, the water, bugs and birds don’t know the buildings are there?

Speakers Bios:

Mark Johnson, Jones and Jones Archictects & Landscape Architects

Mark Johnson is an architect who strives to make architecture inspired by natural processes, while expressing diff erent scales of human experience. With undergraduate degrees in architecture and sculpture and a master’s degree in architecture from Savannah College of Art and Design, he brings a site sensibility to his work. By peeling away intertwining layers of site history and ecology, his work exhibits concepts rooted in and expressing the essence of place. For Mark, architecture does not end at the doorway, but is reciprocal with the landscape, integrating forms and natural forces to create shelter, focus, a stage, a place for life, and a place to learn. Mark has been a speaker about sustainable building technology and the integration of buildings and their associated landscapes with the American Institute of Architects, North American Association of Environmental Education, North American Association for Interpretation, American Nature Centers Administrators, King County GreenTools, The City of Bellevue, and Pacifi c Science Center. He has taught integrated architecture and landscape architecture courses at the University of Washington, and has appeared as a guest on Bellevue’s“Your City”, cable access program discussing green building. Mark has a great love for rust, old wood, and gravity.

Martha Rose, Martha Rose Construction

Martha Rose, known by many as the ‘Queen of Green,‘ is a national leader in the Green Building Movement. Her interest in energy efficiency and sustainable building practices goes all the way back to the 1970‘s and currently is her main focus. Today Martha is striving toward building Zero-Energy spec-homes.

Martha started working in the construction industry in 1972 as a laborer and carpenter after realizing she liked working with her hands better than being in an office. Ten years of “nail-pounding“ brought her to several areas of the country on both coasts. The work ranged from production framing to finish carpentry work and from residential foundations to the West Seattle Bridge. While the work was hard, the training was an invaluable foundation.

In 1982, Martha went to work for the City of Seattle as a building inspector, where she spent 4 years monitoring all of the commercial and residential projects in her district. During this time, she was taught about related construction topics such as shoreline erosion control, slide area identification and prevention, and techniques to keep water out of buildings. By being in the unique position of looking at both good and bad building styles and techniques, she was able to gain a broad working knowledge of good construction practices.

For the next 10 years, Martha worked as a free-lance project manager for other developers. The types of projects she supervised were large and small residential, commercial, and institutional. This period of time added new growth in topics related to the development process.

The energy crisis of the 1970‘s sparked her interest in conservation and alternative energy that became intertwined with her career in construction. The necessary learning that goes along with this topic is deep and on-going. Today, Martha is an educator herself, pushing the building industry towards zero-energy-use homes.