On a cold and rainy day in February 2017, Todd Vogel and Karen Hust hosted a meeting with the renovation team at their new home. Located on a lush lot on Bainbridge Island, off the Washington coast, the property was designed by architect Harold Moldstad as two buildings—a 2,000-square-foot house built in 1968 and a smaller guesthouse added later. With an enormous, partially shaded deck stretched between them, the buildings frame a postcard view of the Seattle skyline across Puget Sound.

The gathering wasn’t a typical design meeting. The group included architects, an interior designer, contractors, structural engineers, and experts in biophilic design. The latter was the day’s focus, as everyone gathered around a folding table and convenience store takeout to discuss how Todd and Karen’s remodel would support the connection between humans and nature.

“It was our job to hold on to the spirit of these buildings. They worked so well with the site and the views, so the project was really about exercising restraint.”
—Brian Court, architect

Everyone shared childhood memories of the natural world. They donned rain jackets to stroll the two-thirds-acre lot, picking through ferns, walking the beach, and admiring the cherry tree growing through a cutaway in the deck. This wasn’t a typical design meeting because this isn’t a typical remodel, as Todd and Karen’s home is the first residential renovation in the world to achieve Living Building Challenge (LBC) certification.

The Living Building Challenge, an ever-evolving program of tools and standards administered by the International Living Future Institute (ILFI), asks: “What if every single act of design and construction made the world a better place?” In other words, the LBC framework looks at construction not just from the standpoint of a particular project, but also for its ripple effects. It was this more global, holistic approach that appealed to Todd and Karen—“that it includes not only the structure, but the landscape, the relationship to energy streams, and to the wider economy and social community,” says Karen.

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Todd had chanced upon the property’s for sale sign while on a visit to his sister, who lives down the road. He and Karen, who owned a condo in Seattle and a cabin on Vashon Island—both an hour-plus car and ferry trip away from Bainbridge and family—had already been thinking of downsizing to a single residence; they were instantly smitten. While neighbors were sure a teardown was imminent, the couple had other plans. They not only loved how Moldstad had knitted the buildings into the landscape, but also wanted to restore the grandeur of the Northwest-modern architecture while showcasing solutions for current environmental challenges.

Karen, an artist and a teacher, and Todd, who works in philanthropy, had started a foundation some years before that focuses on social equity and sustainability. At the beginning of the renovation project, they asked their architects at The Miller Hull Partnership about net-zero energy, and the answer was: no problem. “Well, that was easy,” Todd recalls thinking. What else was out there? The architects gave a presentation explaining various green building programs. “The Holy Grail at the end was the Living Building Challenge,” says architect Brian Court. The couple decided to go for it. “Even though it is a huge challenge, we were so inspired—we had to say yes right away,” says Karen.

An early hurdle was regulatory change. “A Living Building project is illegal on paper in a dozen-plus ways,” says Court. Consider an inglorious topic: wastewater. On Bainbridge, a home within 300 feet of a sewer main had to connect. Yet the LBC requires blackwater and gray water to be treated and redistributed on-site.

“We’re hoping this renovation provides some solutions for how to take our existing homes and make them sustainable into the future, because we’ll never build completely new homes for everyone in time to handle the climate crisis.”
—Todd Vogel, resident

Over months, the team and ILFI worked with Bainbridge City to pass an ordinance that allows a limited number of on-site blackwater treatment systems within city limits. Now, water flowing from the property’s shower-heads and toilets is captured and treated before being dripped via 760 feet of line into the gardens and grounds.

The remodel preserved the shells of the two buildings, as well as key elements like the tongue-and-groove cedar ceilings and tapered rafter tails that project from the eaves. The main house’s floor plan was reworked to become more open and include a formal entrance, which is reached via a new wood-covered steel bridge. The skylights in the main house were shifted to make room for a solar array, while triple-pane glass at both buildings replaced one ton of single-pane glass, which was sent to Olympia to be recycled into road aggregate.

Everyone on the project took painstaking care, whether it was the contractor’s team relocating a Chinese dogwood with a 6,000-pound root ball or the landscape architect who strategically wove mushrooms into the vegetation to help meet the LBC’s urban agriculture requirement.

The most laborious aspect of any LBC project tends to be avoiding materials with ingredients on the “Red List,” a spreadsheet of more than 800 harmful or toxic chemicals commonplace in building materials. Although it wasn’t required, interior designer Charlie Hellstern, with the agreement of the team, extended the proscription to all of the furnishings as well.

Hellstern designed for the couple’s daily rhythms and love of texture. The latter is evident in the crackled surface of shou sugi ban interior walls, the pitted steel of the front door, and the new stairwell’s 21-foot lantern made of bronze-plated steel and rice paper.

Completed in November 2019, the house achieved full Living Building Challenge certification 14 months later. The hope is that the renovation will show how an older home can be interwoven with more resilient systems for the future, rather than razed and lost. “We need to figure out how to save the beauty, the history, the connection to nature that is embodied in this style of architecture,” says Karen. Rain patters against the skylight overhead. The prized cherry tree flutters. Behind her, the waters of the Puget Sound murmur, almost every seat in the house set up with a view of the horizon. “It’s a thing worth saving,” she says.

Project Credits:

Architecture: The Miller Hull Partnership LLP / @millerhull

Construction: Clark Construction LLC / @clarkbuilds

Interior Design: Charlie Hellstern Interior Design / @charliehellstern

Landscape Contracting: Ohashi LandscapeServices

Structural Engineering: Quantum Consulting Engineers / @quantumconsultingengineers

Civil Engineering: Seabold Engineering LLC

Landscape Architecture: Anne James LandscapeArchitecture LLC / @annejames_la

Lighting Design: Lighting Designs Inc. / @lightingdesigns

Light Fixture Design: Stefan Gulassa / @stefan_gulassa_inc

Water Resource Engineering: Biohabitats / @biohabitats

Cabinetry: WilliamWalker Woodworking (206.406.5800)

Mechanical Engineering: WSP / @wsp.usa

Envelope Consulting: 4EA Building Science / @team4ea

Geotechnical Engineering: Aspect Consulting LLC / @aspect_consulting

Biophilia Consulting: Sonja BochartWellbeing+Design

Photography: Rafael Soldi / @rafaelsoldi

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This May Be the Most Ecologically Ambitious Home Renovation on the Planet