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AMDG-designed LEED cottage an example that green can be homey, comfortable

Owners Joy and Michael Fossel wanted to show that sustainably built homes don’t have to sacrifice on style and comfort in pursuit of efficiency and environmentally friendly practices.

By Joe Boomgaard | TBL
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WEST MICHIGAN ­— Living in a sustainable building doesn’t mean one has to sacrifice all the traditional comforts of home.

While most people associate LEED and green buildings with commercial and industrial spaces, sustainable building practices have also migrated into the residential market across the region. The U.S. Green Building Council reports more than 200 LEED-certified homes have been built in Michigan.

While Habitat For Humanity accounts for many West Michigan LEED-certified homes, a growing number of buyers and builders, especially in the high-end custom market, are requesting sustainable buildings, according to Peter Baldwin, president and principal of AMDG Architects Inc. of Grand Rapids. After many commercial LEED projects under its belt, the firm recently completed its first LEED-certified home, a 2,100-square-foot cottage in Laketown Township, with Scott Christopher Homes Inc. The cottage was built for Joy and Michael Fossel.

“The client came to us with the intention of doing a sustainable home in a cottage setting that would not look like a Frankenstein,” Baldwin told TBL. “They wanted to show that you could do a green building in a residential setting and not have it look like it was right out of the lab. They just wanted to prove that it could be done with the look, feel and character of a home. We’re taking green architecture and applying it to making a wonderful home. There was not a huge case history of people doing it at the time.”

Brent Dykstra, senior architect at AMDG and a LEED accredited professional, was the lead designer and architect on the project. He said his initial role was to provide the clients with options so they could make informed decisions about the cottage. Then, armed with that information, he could come up with a design solution that spoke to their needs.

“The process and the cost of working toward LEED certification was absolutely worth it,” Joy Fossel, partner at Varnum LLP, told TBL. “Most of the cost, and the time commitment, came in the planning. This was our first experience with LEED requirements so there was a learning curve — but that, in itself, was worthwhile from my perspective. We decided to go for LEED certification on the cottage because we believe that sustainable building is the way of the future and we wanted to show that going green can result in comfort and beauty as well as responsible efficiency.

“Too many folks still have the idea that a green project means a stark, cold, minimalist design. I suppose if you like stark, cold and minimalist, that’s OK, but we wanted to create a cottage that felt like a Lake Michigan cottage through and through, that fit its wonderful setting, and that worked with the environment, not against or in spite of it.”

LEED for homes is heavy on performance-based results, a process that requires more upfront accounting and some on-site testing and verification, “a merging of science and home,” Baldwin said. Getting the sustainability features outlined early in the design process was an important part of early discussions with the client and the builders.

As such, Dykstra’s design had to focus on a very tight building envelope, a strategy that was verified on site with a blower door test conducted by a third-party consultant, Mike Holcomb of Home Inspector General Inc.

The clients also mandated that the construction do little to disturb the natural, wooded setting atop a small dune. With those constraints in mind, the team used a pre-cast concrete and foam foundation, which ended up with better thermal properties than tradition methods, Dykstra said.

“It’s factory cured, and you don’t have waste, so you can control the process more efficiently, and you’re only using what shows up at the site,” he told TBL, noting the design also included an exterior sheathing that helped minimize the thermal bridging caused by the studs.

The Fossels liked the idea of screened-in outdoor sleeping areas that would allow passive air movement through the house, which has no air conditioning. “Extreme green fans,” capable of pushing 700 cubic feet of air per minute, cool the whole house very quickly, Joy Fossel noted. “The house is designed as much for outdoor living as it is for indoor life,” she stated. “We wanted to bring the outdoors in as well when you are inside, so the tones and features all relate to that.”

With the focus on natural spaces, the designers didn’t have to make the interior space too voluminous to meet the Fossels’ needs.

“Sometimes, it’s not about building bigger, but acknowledging that the spaces outside can serve the purposes of spaces inside,” Dykstra said. “They wanted an intimate living situation, so we focused on giving them enough space for what they wanted to live there and not oversize the spaces. The USGBC…incentivizes you to build modestly sized spaces and be very efficient with what you’re building.”

Baldwin said one guiding sustainable building principle is to consider where the users spend most of their time and focus on those essential areas versus the occasional-use areas that add to a structure’s size and thus the need for more powerful systems, for example. Making more flexible spaces and paring down the structure to include only what is necessary leads to building more efficiently, he said.

For example, one bedroom was designed as a bunkroom and sleeps four people comfortably in a space that’s not very large. It’s one thing to build an efficient building, but it’s quite another to build a homey, attractive structure. “Green doesn’t have to be boring. It can have some character,” Baldwin said.

“Every room should have a surprise, a view or a built-in, something that makes it distinctive from the others,” Dykstra said. “To be sustainable, you always have options. It’s a matter of developing the project to perform and meet the clients’ needs and desires. You have enough opportunity in LEED for Homes to do that with site design and materials. You always have options, and you have to find those opportunities that make sense for the site and make sense for the client. It’s not a one-size-fits-all.”

Officials from AMDG and Scott Christopher Homes said the cost for attaining the LEED certification added about a 5 percent premium to the cost of the project.

“(The owners) didn’t want the home to be exorbitant on a cost basis. They wanted it to be market in terms of affordability,” Baldwin said. “The premium was fairly limited, but it does require a commitment from the homeowner to be a part of the process.”

Baldwin said AMDG is looking at LEED for Homes as the method of choice for many future home design clients, especially as those in Generation X or the Millennials come of age and start looking at custom homes. Residential work amounts to anywhere from a third to a sixth of AMDG’s business, he said, noting the firm plans to actively begin marketing its capabilities in sustainable home design, whether owners want to pursue LEED certification or not.

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• amdg architects
• brent dykstra
• home inspector general
• jooy fossel
• leed
• mike holcomb
• peter baldwin
• scott christopher homes
• sustainable biz
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