Leading the way with transition to sustainable living

Santa Monica City Hall East

Santa Monica, USA

The all-electric, net-zero energy and net-zero water Santa Monica City Hall East building meets the world’s most rigorous criteria for sustainability, resiliency and long-term cost-effectiveness.

Buro Happold provided integrated engineering and sustainability consulting services to ensure the new office building, is ready to meet Living Building Challenge criteria – the world’s most stringent green building rating system. 

Conferred through the International Living Future Institute (ILFI), this certification aligns directly with long-term sustainability commitments made by the Santa Monica City Council. The project is committed to achieving community-wide carbon neutrality by 2050 or sooner, water self-sufficiency by 2023 and zero waste by 2030. The council’s aim is to inspire others to improve their green credentials whilst showcasing how to do so.

Santa Monica City Hall East is a modern extension to the existing City Hall. It houses highly energy efficient civic offices with indoor air quality monitoring to optimize health and wellbeing.

Buro Happold provided integrated engineering and consulting services to ensure the new office building, which opened in 2020, is ready to meet Living Building Challenge criteria.

The project incorporates composting toilets, gray water recycling and will be the first project in California to convert rainwater to potable water in this way.

The super-sustainable building, which produces more energy than it uses, is designed to pave the way for ongoing environmental transition across the city.

Challenge

The standard ensures that the 50,200ft² building will make positive contributions to its environment as opposed to merely lessening its negative impact. Some of the methods used include infiltrating more water than is consumed, achieving nutrient recovery from composting toilets and demonstrating itself to be carbon positive in operations.

To meet the Living Building Challenge criteria, the building must be self-sufficient and remain within the resource limits of its site by producing more energy than it uses, collecting and treating water on the site, and ultimately “creating a positive impact on the human and natural systems that interact with them.”

The City of Santa Monica has long been at the forefront of sustainability. From a policy level, the local government has a proud history of reducing energy use, trying to become water independent, and utilising environmentally-friendly waste solutions.

The City Council was keen for its new building to act as a showcase, reflecting the goals it has for the wider community on sustainability. Through the application of tried and tested strategies along with new and emerging environmental technologies, the project would inform the future evolution of the City’s wider sustainability policies.

Solution

A range of innovative technologies helped the project to achieve its vision of being a landmark of sustainability.

The project uses passive design techniques to maximise daylight, views and natural ventilation to ensure occupant comfort while minimising energy use. Our experts devised strategies to ensure daylight and natural ventilation enhanced cooling performance while reducing operating and maintenance costs, while also providing health and wellness benefits.

Radiant tubing embedded throughout the open plan offices and meeting rooms efficiently heat and cool the space and optimise comfort. Phase-change material adds further effective thermal mass in lightweight partitions, absorbing heat by day and releasing it at night, significantly reducing the need for cooling and heating.  Building electricity is supplied by rooftop photovoltaic arrays and solar shade structure photovoltaic arrays, which were extended out over the car parking area in order to maximise the space for solar generation.

Three separate water strategies collectively allow all the building’s needs to be met by water harvested on-site. The projected water and sewer demand for the structure was cut by half with the introduction of an innovative foam-based composting system for all the toilets.

For potable water uses, rainwater from the roof is captured in a 40,000-gallon cistern located beneath the building. In drought conditions, the rainwater system is supplemented by groundwater pumped from a well drilled on site. All rainwater and groundwater is treated with a combination of cartridge filters and granulated active carbon filters on site. This project will be the first building project in California to convert rainwater to potable water in this way.

For non-potable water uses, the building captures greywater from showers and lavatories and condensation from the cooling system’s air-handling units, which is treated via a moving bed-membrane bioreactor and used for onsite irrigation.

Buro Happold was exceptional to work with for the City’s Living Building Challenge office project. From their wealth of international innovation experience to their collaborative approach to solving complex design and governance issues, we were grateful to have Buro Happold on the team. The building will push the industry 20 years forward and Buro Happold deserves all the credit in the world for making it happen.

Joel Cesare, previous Project Manager, City of Santa Monica

Value

The new structure will be one of the greenest buildings in the world, exceeding Santa Monica’s already ambitious sustainability standards and reinforcing its commitment to high-performance design.

The architecture, engineering and construction practices behind the building considered not only the environment and the challenge of climate change but also the human health aspect. The workers in the buildings and also those in the broader communities where products are manufactured were included in the plans by avoiding red list chemicals. Our multidisciplinary team brought a wide breadth of expertise to the project, working closely alongside the client and architects Frederick Fisher and Partners and general contractor Hathaway Dinwiddie Construction Company, to elevate the building to a showcase of sustainable design.