30 Years of Sustainable Practice

Episode Transcript

Terry Phelan: Welcome to the Living Shelter podcast, where we explore ways to create healthy, energy-efficient, and joyful places to live. I’m your host, Terry Phelan, a Pacific Northwest native, and an architect with over 30 years experience designing with a focus on sustainable options. I’m delighted to be presenting this podcast series as the Director of Sustainable Practice at Board & Vellum, an integrated design firm based in Seattle.

Last season, on the Living Shelter podcast, we invited a series of inspiring guests with a deep well of experience and sustainable practice, policy, and leadership. With them, we explored:

Climate positive policy on the local state and national scale.

Reducing waste in the construction industry by deconstructing instead of demolishing buildings.

Water infrastructure and conservation through the lens of social justice.

Carbon sequestration and the role of wood in a sustainable future.

Advocating for building code revisions to include sustainable building methods and materials, like straw bale, cob, clay, and rammed earth.

Exploring the developing use of hemp as a building material.

Building climate resilient spaces using permaculture as a guide.

And, a look at how the green building movement has progressed over time.

I just love getting to share the mic with so many leaders in the green building industry, and the opportunity to catch up with some of my heroes and mentors. I have so much respect and appreciation for all of our guests last season and, of course, offer a big thank you to our listeners, as well.

If you missed any of these episodes, we encourage you to tune in to Season 1 of the Living Shelter podcast; they hold up over time. As always, you can find the Living Shelter podcast on your podcast streaming app of choice, as well as on our website at boardandvellum.com/podcasts.

Living Shelter’s goal is to help you expand your green knowledge toolkit, so together we can help build a resilient future that includes comfortable and sustainable places for everyone to live.

Now, welcome to a special — and final — Season 2 of The Living Shelter podcast. That’s right, at the end of this year, I will be retiring and with that, so will the Living Shelter podcast after these two final episodes. It is bittersweet, but I’m always inspired by what is next. And, it’s possible I’ll engage in more podcasting in the future. Who knows — we’ll leave that for the future to tell.

So, what is happening this season? Well, here with me in our recording studio in the Board & Vellum office in Seattle, I’m pleased to introduce Jeff Pelletier, Founder and Managing Principal of Board & Vellum. Jeff will be joining me for these two final episodes to talk about the evolution of sustainable practices in the architecture and design industry over the course of my 30+ year career, and where we see it going next, in particular through the lens of Board & Vellum.

So, Jeff, thanks so much for joining me.

Jeff Pelletier: Terry, I am so happy to be here, thank you for having me.

Terry Phelan: So, Jeff, tell us a little about yourself and how it came to be that you’re here leading Board & Vellum.

Jeff Pelletier: Well, that could probably be a whole podcast by itself, so, I’ll try to keep it relatively quick. I’ve had a pretty varied career, and I decided back in 2011 to go off on my own and start Board & Vellum. But it became pretty clear early on that I didn’t want to be on my own, but I saw a big value in a collaborative approach with other talented designers.

And so, I built the company around an idea that we could do things better as a group. And that meant, all project types, all project styles. And then I knew that we could elevate the work that we do, if we all brought our best ideas to the table. Part of that meant having different disciplines. So, we had architects, and then we added interior designers, and then landscape architects.

Well, it became pretty apparent at some point, that… (I became one of the earlier Passive House Consultants (CPHCs) here in Seattle; I really loved the science behind Passive House building) …but, for whatever reason, it became pretty apparent that we just weren’t going to develop that deep bench of knowledge around that. And so, over the years I thought about, how can I grow something I’m so passionate about, which is sustainable building. So, that’s kind of how we’re here today talking. We’ll probably get into that more.

Terry Phelan: Yeah, so, let’s dive into a little bit about how you and I came to meet. I had been running Living Shelter for almost 30 years. This was was fall of ’21. We met before, but not with business in mind. And I was looking for a way to retire and not just close the business, and I heard through Rena Klein, who was consulting with both of us as a member of CVG, that you were looking for a firm that specializes in sustainability to bring into the fold.

Jeff Pelletier: We were match-made, Terry!

Terry Phelan: Yeah, we were! It was, as I shared with some of my colleagues and you know, people in my network, how this happened, and they were like, “That’s brilliant, you’re selling to Jeff?” Because you were also part of that network, just kind of in a slightly different…

Jeff Pelletier: I’ve not been as focused as you, Terry.

Terry Phelan: Yeah, ok. I was intimidated by you until we actually met and got to talking.

Jeff Pelletier: It’s interesting to me because I think I love a lot of things, and I love different styles, I love a broad approach to architecture. But I knew I wanted to do more sustainable projects. And over the years we’d had a variety of passive house projects come through design, and then for whatever reason (the clients moved, or things happened) and they didn’t get built. So, it’s kind of like the “if you build it they will come.” But our portfolio was pretty thin on deeply sustainable projects. We had a lot of experience, a lot of really talented staff, a lot of projects that we took through design, but that never got built. And so we were brainstorming as a team like, “What do we do if we want to do more of this work?” And, tried every way possible… we tried to educate our clients, we blogged about it, talked about it. And in talking with Rena from CVG, she was like, “What if you, you know, met up with someone? I have this person, and I’ve met…” And it seemed, frankly, like a really natural match. We shared our values, and we were very much — even though we’re a bigger firm than you were — we’re a “neighborhood” firm, we like taking care of our neighborhood. I think that is so important. We had the exact same values. And, you had the experience that we, frankly, didn’t.

Terry Phelan: Yeah, I remember, we went to lunch together. Just said, “Oh, let’s go to lunch and see.. “ And it was like a date. And I know I walked away going, “Wow! This could work, this could really work!” So, long story short, Living Shelter Architects and Board & Vellum joined forces in 2022.

Jeff Pelletier: It was more than two years ago, which is completely amazing! And we wanted to make sure that when you retired, that things were not going to end here. So today we thought we’d share the hosting hat, as it were.

Terry Phelan: Mm-hmm.

Jeff Pelletier: And really move to the next chapter together.

Terry Phelan: Yeah. Right, the way we’ve thought about this conceptually, is that in this first episode, Jeff will be the “asker” of questions — so to speak — and I get to take a turn at the guest mic for a little bit! Then, we will zoom out from the two of us to hear from more of the team at Board & Vellum in the form of two companion blog posts. And then, finally, in the second episode, I’ll shift back into the role of the “asker” of questions, with Jeff taking on the mantle of leading where we, and Board & Vellum, will go from here.

Jeff Pelletier: That’s right. So, let’s tease those blog posts. Who’s involved, and what do we have on deck?

Terry Phelan: I really love how these turned out. For the blog posts, we interviewed the members of B&V’s leadership team that head up the studios. So, we started asking questions to understand how sustainable practices intersect with, impact, and influence their day-to-day work, and those conversations coalesced into these blog posts.

Jeff Pelletier: So we have:

• Sara Emhoff, who leads most of our single-family work here,
• Jill Burdeen, with multifamily,
• Yi-Chun Lin, with commercial,
• Robin Quinn, with interior design,
• and, Zack Thomas, who leads our landscape architecture group.

Terry Phelan: That’s right. As you can imagine, they had a lot of thoughts to share on the topic!

Jeff Pelletier: I can definitely imagine.

Terry Phelan: They are somewhat big personalities, really! Of course, they let the client shine through, but they have strong feelings about things.

So, coming this week, the first post is, “The New Normal” —

• We are all learning more and more about the effects of climate change every day. Is there so much talk about sustainability that the word has lost some of its impact? Has what we might call “sustainability-fatigue” begun to undermine the progress that we’ve made? Perhaps, but the good news is that the progress has been made, meaning that the baseline or starting point for all projects is inherently more sustainable than it ever has been before.

Jeff Pelletier: That’s so great.

Terry Phelan: Then we move on to “The Tradeoffs” —

• Making sustainable choices for your project can feel like a zero sum game, but there’s no “all or nothing.” It is ok to not do it all! Thinking in absolutes only ensures all efforts will grind to a halt. It’s rare a budget will support addressing absolutely everything, so it’s important to take time to think through where you can actually make a real impact, and what is really most important to you. Of course, a design team is the perfect advocate to have in your corner when you are trying to navigate such a complex issue!

Jeff Pelletier: Awesome. I am really looking forward to these!

Terry Phelan: Glad to hear it. Besides them being available on the B&V Blog, we’ll provide links to these from the Living Shelter podcast episode pages on the Board & Vellum website. For those of you listening, find us at boardandvellum.com/podcasts, and the B&V Blog at boardandvellum.com/blog.

Terry Phelan: You’re listening to the Living Shelter podcast. I’m your host, Terry Phelan, and I’m joined in the studio by Jeff Pelletier, Founder and Managing Principal of Board & Vellum, an architecture and design firm in Seattle. Board & Vellum’s multidisciplinary teams design projects for clients in the single-family, multifamily, commercial, and civic sectors. Jeff and I are sharing host duties this episode. So, Jeff, why don’t you take it away!

Jeff Pelletier: Thanks, Terry. You’ve been such a great advocate for green building and sustainable practice — over decades(!) — I’m sure it’s been really eye-opening over the years to see how the movement has evolved. I know when I met you, ages ago, at least, I knew you through someone, you were already deep into your career and understanding what sustainable practice really meant. I’m sure it’s been really eye-opening over the years to see how the movement has evolved, how there have been both big leaps forward and that crushing feeling of progress falling away.

Terry Phelan: Oh, man. It really is a pendulum that swings. I’ve experienced a lot of delight and satisfaction, and even relief, over the progress made over the years towards healthier and more sustainable ways of doing things, but there have been times when it can feel like the proverbial “two steps forward one step back.”

Jeff Pelletier: Yeah. Building sustainably used to have a (I mean, maybe valid) reputation for being ugly, slow, and expensive, and it’s been hard to shed that image, I think, nationally, and even globally. But, it’s so different now. Sustainable projects can be stunningly beautiful, and that was often an unfair reputation anyway. Can you tell us a little but about how it started with the green building movement?

Terry Phelan: Yeah. Well, green building in the US seems to have been sparked in the 1970s as part of a “Back To the Land” movement that followed some of the big social changes of the ‘60s. At this point, it was an essential part of low-cost living in harmony with nature, and people were building their own homes out of what they could find. Not exactly sustainable in the way we understand it today, but some of the nature-based strategies such as passive solar homes sprang out of this. I believe it was a response to some of the scary things that had been exposed by Rachel Carson’s seminal 1962 book Silent Spring. And books came out around that time and into the future; other authors joined with books such as Paul Hawken’s 1983 The Next Economy.

By the late 1980’s, the movement was taking hold as a documented approach for commercial buildings under the pioneering Building Research Establishment Environmental Assessment method (a mouthful known as BREEAM). That started in Europe, followed by the launch of the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design, what we all know as the LEED rating system, in 1998. Other tools soon followed to define, evaluate, and recognize buildings that achieve higher performance goals than prescribed by code — and some national and others more regional, such as our local Built Green program.

William McDonough and Michael Braungart’s 2002 book, Cradle to Cradle also launched a wider international following for the sustainable building movement. And I remember being in the midst of all this during the ’70s and ’80s and ’90s — it was so exciting, all this change, all this possibility.

Jeff Pelletier: It was funny, when I went to Cornell for architecture — it was in Ithaca in upstate New York which is sort of a haven for the counterculture, back to the earth movement that you mentioned. And I remember in school for architecture, it was certainly prevalent in terms of what was happening in the scene, but it really did feel a bit like a fringe movement, like it was something that was going to move the needle at some point, but was still on the periphery.

And, so, we have a groundswell of people, even if still somewhat out of the mainstream, who are not just raising the alarm, but actively creating solutions and forging potential paths forward to bring the efforts into the mainstream, which is what we’ve really seen these last few years.

Terry Phelan: Yeah.

Jeff Pelletier: And into the general mainstream, into the public consciousness. Where do you, personally, fit into all of this?

Terry Phelan: Well, I’ve been an environmentalist for as long as I can remember. My parents grew up during the depression, so they saved and reused all sorts of things, and I was influenced by that. We also went camping every summer and I learned to love nature and appreciate indigenous ways when I was in grade school. And then I designed an earth-bermed passive solar house in the late ‘70s for my job search portfolio. So, you know, there wasn’t much happening around that back then, but I was interested in it. But my real entry point into the movement was through straw bale construction.

Jeff Pelletier: Oh, I am dying to hear about that, but I need to say that my parents also grew up in the depression, amazingly — I’m the youngest of five kids — and did you have a Victory Garden growing up? Do you know what that is?

Terry Phelan: I do know what a Victory Garden is, but we did have a vegetable garden, but it wasn’t a huge, feed-your-whole-family vegetable garden.

Jeff Pelletier: It’s funny what that sort of whole… what the depression really did to people in that era, but that’s maybe a different podcast, I guess.

Tell us a bit about the straw bale construction.

Terry Phelan: Well, about 15 years into my career, I was becoming disillusioned with custom home design. I mean, I have been in single-family residential design pretty much my whole career. That’s what I love to do, I love to create spaces for people who are going to occupy those spaces and love those spaces. But the projects were getting bigger and bigger and my clients and I shared fewer values, so I was feeling this real pushback. So, you know, am I in the right place? Should I be doing something different? I even thought about leaving architecture all together.

But I started my own practice in ’92, and soon after that I saw a book on straw bale construction in a Real Goods catalog, and it totally pulled me into a new world of possibilities. I took as many workshops as I could find that year. I read everything I could find. I met leaders in that burgeoning movement, and decided this is what I wanted to do. I realized that I could partner my values with my career and I set an intention to be doing only sustainable projects within 10 years. It actually took 14, but the intention was the key to making it all happen.

Jeff Pelletier: I was going to make a joke about a design project taking longer than the goal, but that’s really, really impressive and I’m really glad you didn’t quit architecture and you kept at it.

Terry Phelan: Well, thank you. My mantra became, “Help me learn so I can teach,” and Living Shelter became the go-to firm for straw bale design and hands-on workshops in Washington State. We grew to a staff of 6 people, and were involved in over 20 of these projects from the mid-’90s to 2008 when I downsized back to just myself. During that time, I was invited to talk about building with bales at schools, conferences, and public events. There were also many events and conferences to attend and be involved in during that time. It was a great team building and tribe building time of my career. Really connected with some wonderful people in the green building movement. And then by 2005, you could find 3 or 4 good sized conferences, sustainably-focused professional growth events a year just in the western US, and every year there were more and more people going. It was 2008 when the bottom fell out of the economy and that slowed all that down for a while.

Jeff Pelletier: Yeah, I’m sure. An important element of all of this, of course, is that our Pacific Northwest region was home to many early adopters, correct?

Terry Phelan: Yes, yes. And the people I met through these conferences and events, as I said, they became my tribe. It was a network of co-change agents that really formed then and is still active through several key organizations. The Northwest EcoBuilding Guild, and Cascadia Green Building, which spawned the Living Building and Living Future International program, are based right here in the Puget Sound region. (Cascadia is a chapter of U.S. Green Building Council, which administers LEED, and Living Future International (LFI) is now a separate non-profit but they started under the Cascadia Green Building organization.) We also have a very strong Built Green program here run by our local Master Builders Association, which makes certification very accessible for home builders. While our region has been at the leading edge of things, other parts of the country — even other parts of the state — have taken longer to adopt these ideals. Just as so many things across this country, there’s a variety of outlooks and sensibilities that you come across.

Jeff Pelletier: And these are all pretty awesome organizations. But I gotta say, I’m a sort of partial to the Northwest EcoBuilding Guild because through that is how I heard of your name, through our first employee who came to work one day completely obsessed about you, this awesome person who was blowing his mind with innovative ideas. So if that didn’t exist, we wouldn’t be here today, which is pretty amazing!

Terry Phelan: That’s very cool to know, I didn’t realize that!

Jeff Pelletier: Yeah, you had a super fan right there. Little by little, I think, we have made progress, through different organizations, through a ground swell of support. What do you think started changing minds?

Terry Phelan: Well, I think media exposure about things like loss of habitat and growing weather impacts on property and lives — that’s caught people’s attention and brought it home. Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth probably started this when it came out in 2006 and really shined a light on the science behind changes in our climate: rising seas, and super storms, heat domes like we saw here a couple years ago, expanded fire seasons, and so on, are all impacting people on a personal level.

Jeff Pelletier: Yeah, I think sometimes, a hit in the pocketbook really triggers things, and it does seem that there has been a seismic shift in people’s perception of what’s really happening.

Terry Phelan: Yeah. The cost of energy is hitting us all in the pocketbook, too, so energy efficiency is much more popular. And industry has changed, too. I remember 20-or-so years ago, hearing predictions of how the insurance industry would likely be the biggest lobby group for carbon emissions and reductions as payouts for disasters and cleanups rose. We are seeing that now. Many companies are denying insurance in areas that are prone to wildfires, and floods, and hurricanes, and where coverage is still available, rates are much more expensive. So the market changes are happening from pressures both within and without.

Jeff Pelletier: Yeah, it’s really a big thing right now. I remember reading about climate change refugees years ago and thinking what a theoretical concept it is, and now we have insurance companies not providing insurance to homes on the coast, like the Gulf Coast, and those people are moving. And those are some of the first climate change refugees that we’re seeing impact who is moving to different cities around the world.

So, where are we now?

Terry Phelan: Well, one really palpable, concrete change is that our building codes have changed so much that achieving some of the early LEED and Built Green higher levels is now required by code, rather than an upgrade. The plan is to keep moving the needle until all new construction is within close range of net zero energy. There is a big push to electrify everything that consumes energy to reduce operational carbon, and embodied carbon is gaining attention as well.

Indoor air quality is also top of mind for more people today. PFAs are being banned from most manufactured goods, which will be a huge undertaking by industry (and likely followed by sweeping litigation as the effects of those chemical compounds we have all been exposed to for years are better understood by the general public). I don’t want to raise any big red flags, but it’s going to be interesting to see how that develops.

And, you know, summers are also hotter and fire season starts earlier, and folks want their homes to be a refuge when outdoor air is unhealthy.

Jeff Pelletier: Changing the code is such a… it makes our job as architects much easier if we are not presenting an option to the client, we are just stating what has to be done. That’s so nice. But, some of these talks, of course, about climate change, and really hot summers, and now we have ”Smoke Season” here in Seattle every year. It can be pretty dark, it can be like a downer. But that’s the reality, the world is changing. It’s super serious business that we need to take seriously.

Terry Phelan: Yeah, yeah, we absolutely need to take it seriously. Over the course of my career, there has been a noticeable up-and-down in the amount of urgency the general public gives to these issues. And, I think the down parts are when people are just tired of it. They’re like, “Can we just forget about this and go on about our lives?” And we have to pay attention. We can’t just put our heads in the sand. I don’t want to be a downer about it, but I do want to be honest.

Jeff Pelletier: Absolutely. And sometimes, unfortunately, people need to be presented with — or personally witness or experience as we’re seeing right now — negative outcomes to really start to take things seriously. But you’re not a downer, Terry!

Terry Phelan: Whew! That’s such a relief! I don’t want to be a downer to anybody, but I do, again, I want to be realistic. I want people to understand that this is serious. And that we can help them find ways to responsibly and find the things that they can do that aren’t too disruptive so they can think about the future.

Jeff Pelletier: Yes, and speaking of the future, there is such exciting progress being made right now. It is, I feel like, a really hopeful time right now. So, what is some of the good news?

Terry Phelan: Well, for example, some good news is the continued development and increased availability of technologies. The cost of solar panels, heat pump appliances, and electric cars have started to come down — actually, solar panels are so much less than they were 20 years ago — which means there are shorter investment payback timelines. And people have always been interested in that, like, “When am I going to start to get the benefit of these things?” So you can get very low cost loan for solar panels and your monthly payment might be pretty close to your savings in electricity. That’s a pretty good deal, and then after it’s paid off, it’s free.

Jeff Pelletier: Yeah, solar right now… if people haven’t looked at it in five years, and then they look at it now and they’re just shocked. It’s come down so much. It’s just a smart call.

Terry Phelan: And solar does work in the Pacific Northwest!

Jeff Pelletier: There is sun.

Terry Phelan: Yeah, yeah, well you don’t even need sun, you just need daylight.

Jeff Pelletier: That’s why my kids wear sunblock every day of the year.

Terry Phelan: That’s smart! That’s smart.

So also,product development with natural materials has increased too, transforming annually renewable things like straw and hemp, as well as cork into off-the-shelf products instead of the niche products you had to special order and source. Laminated timber is being used to create large structural members out of small trees, and heat-treated wood is starting to replace chemically treated or composite options for outdoor uses. I’m really excited about the heat treated wood.

Jeff Pelletier: Oh, it looks so great, too! Don’t use that fake stuff on your deck anymore! It’s just not… And I love the fact that we have these products and innovations out there that aren’t just sustainable options, they’re better options — they look more beautiful, they’re better. Oftentimes at the same price point or cheaper. So it is so exciting to finally be able to give our clients and people out there these really hopeful visions about what a sustainable project is for them. It’s not just, “Well, we’re going live in this sort of compromised home,” it’s, “We’re living in a better house.” It’s really, really hopeful.

Terry Phelan: Yeah, sustainable design is good design.

Jeff Pelletier: I love to hear this. There is certainly a forward trajectory right now with sustainable design with all the emerging technologies. But there is also value in looking to the past and learning from history or bringing back some passive building practices that fell to the wayside, or building materials that fell out of favor but are actually very resilient. What are some of the things you are pleased to see coming back “in vogue” so to speak?

Terry Phelan: Hmm… Well, bio-based materials have been a favorite of mine for a long time, and it seems they are finally being embraced in more manufactured products. Straw bale walls are available as panelized systems now in Europe and Britain, with expanded interest in the US. So rather than stacking up the bales from a farm, and, you know, having to make sure everything is level and plumb, you get, like a 12-foot wall panel dropped onto the site with a crane and you still have straw bale walls.

Hemp is being used for insulation, both as batts and as a rigid board, as is expanded cork — which, you know, cork also makes a wonderful flooring material that I used in my own home. Instead of carpet in my living room, I’ve got a cork floor. So it’s resilient and soft, but I can mop it and, you know, it doesn’t gather all that nasty stuff that carpet does.

Jeff Pelletier: We had cork in my last house and loved it.

Terry Phelan: We also are still getting inquiries for old-fashioned straw bale homes as well — complete with the community element of wall raising parties with friends and family.

Jeff Pelletier: What’s old is new again, Terry!

Terry Phelan: Yes! I hope some of those come through as real projects soon. We still get inquiries, but they still cost more than most people that want them are willing to pay. Unfortunately, the cost of construction has gone up so even straw bale homes are not something you build with $50,000.

It’s really an exciting time to be in the architecture and design industry, as it has been for the last 30 years.

Terry Phelan: Thank you, Jeff, for joining me today. And thank you also to everyone listening in, I hope you’ll join us for our final episode of the Living Shelter podcast, coming soon. Jeff will be back with me in the studio, and we’ll chat about “The New Normal,” and “The Tradeoffs,” and about Jeff and Board & Vellum’s vision and action plan for sustainable practice going into the future.

The Living Shelter podcast is a project of Board & Vellum, a multidisciplinary design firm practicing architecture, interior design, and landscape architecture for residential, commercial and civic projects. From our studio in Seattle, I’m your host Terry Phelan. Take care and we’ll talk again soon.

Keep Listening...

Tune into the next (final!) episode of the Living Shelter podcast: Passing the Torch to New Leaders.