This new apartment building for Bellwether Housing provides 71 units of affordable housing on the north end of Seattle’s South Lake Union neighborhood.
The six-story building contains a combination of live/work units, studios, and one- and two-bedroom units ranging from 584 to 923 square feet.
Built into the hillside, the building is a clever solution to maximizing usage on a challenging site. It’s parking garage is underground but the same level features live/work units facing busy Dexter Avenue. All while the exterior look and feel of the building meshes seamlessly amongst the new market-rate housing buildings popping up at the same time in the area.
Construction on site started with contaminated soil remediation, then moved to a combination of pipe pile and shoring for the foundation and podium. From there we built up 5 stories of wood framing to complete the building structure.
The project is built to the Evergreen Sustainable Development Standard and is BuiltSmart. We took special care with maximizing energy efficiency in the exterior envelope proven by the air barrier testing approximately 50% better than code requirements. Other sustainable features of the project include recycled concrete backfill, LED lighting, and a solar array on the roof.