LOVE+REGENERATION • Fall 2025 • VOLUME 7, ISSUE THREE

A Quarterly Journal from McLennan Design. Rediscovering our relationship to the natural world. Volume 7 Issue 3

Maritime Regeneration

The Maitland Chart House

Welcome to another edition of Love+Regeneration!

I often write these intro letters while traveling, as it seems to give me a different perspective on our work serving clients in so many different places. This time I am writing while traveling to Merida, Mexico – where we are kicking off the design of a new campus. I’ll share more on that in a future issue! But for this issue, we turn back time a bit to a project that we worked on pre-pandemic – the wonderful little Maitland Chart House and Maitland Masterplan – a historic place in my home province of Ontario. It has been great seeing what was once a crumbling relic turn back into a community asset, thanks to my friend – Philip Ling’s vision and efforts. A short essay summarizes the work.

Also in this issue are several other interesting things to share with you all. We provide an update on a groundbreaking summit we recently held on Bainbridge Island that we called – the Death and Life of the Green Building Movement. We hosted around 60 people from across the country and Canada in discussing and analyzing what went right – and wrong over the last couple decades in our efforts to make change. My friend Elena Bondereva helped me host the event.

There is a fun article I wrote over the summer called “My Life in Cars” where I talk about how the passage of time can often be marked by the vehicles we drove at the time – and then members of our team share their first cars – and there are some cool ones!

And like always, we try to focus on people and projects we care about. This issue is dedicated to the memory of Paula McEvoy, a colleague at Perkins&Will and a long-time green warrior who passed away too soon this year.

Enjoy and let us know how you like this issue!

Best,

- Jason

Jason F. McLennan Founder, Living Building Challenge Principal, McLennan Design Chief Sustainability Officer, Perkins&Will

Fall 2025

EDITOR-IN-CHIEF

MARKETING MANAGER

GRAPHIC DESIGN

CONTRIBUTORS

SOCIAL MEDIA

Jason F. McLennan

Jay Torrell

Susan Roth

Galen Carlson, Elena Bondareva, Lindsey Baker

Fall 2025, Volume 7, Issue 3

LOVE + REGENERATION is a digital publication of McLennan Design, LLC.

© 2025 by McLennan Design | Perkins&Will

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. Content may not be reproduced in whole or in part without written permission and is intended for informational purposes only.

Cover: The Maitland Chart House

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what’s inside

Jason

Lindsey

McLennan Design respectfully acknowledges the Suquamish and Duwamish peoples, who, throughout the generations have stewarded and thrived on the land where we live and work.

This

The Death and Life of Green Building Summit

In September, we hosted a powerful gathering of green building leaders from across North America interested in figuring out where the movement needs to head in 2026 and beyond. Significant shifts in national support for green building have left many feeling like our efforts have stalled, yet never has the need for innovation in green building been so evident.

During the event, we tapped a few key “luminaries” to share insights and observations, including: Vivian Loftness, Pliny Fisk III, Bill Reed, David Eisenberg, David Korten, Juan Rovalo, and Bob Johansen. Following each address, the group engaged in lively dialogue, debate, and provocations. Chief Facilitator Elena Bondareva did a phenomenal job of holding the room together and advancing dialogue and insights.

Participants overwhelmingly described the summit as “inspiring,” “hopeful,” “powerful,” “deep,” and “unexpectedly emotional”.

Many commented on the unique blend of intellectual rigor and emotional honesty, calling it “the first time in years I’ve felt both my brain and heart fully engaged in this space”.

Facilitators were recognized for “brilliant design,” “holding complexity with grace,” and “creating space for vulnerability and truth”.

Constructive notes centered on integration and accessibility — several suggested “more connective tissue between sessions,” “more time to digest insights,” and “a clearer entry point for those newer to regenerative thinking.”

Many described the event as a “revival of joy and soul” within a movement that had grown “too technical, too bureaucratic”.

Over half mentioned a yearning to “bring fun, play, and emotion back into the work”.

Several noted that “we’ve professionalized the soul out of sustainability”. Another wrote, “we’ve built systems that measure everything except love”.

There was strong consensus that the movement’s renewal depends on reclaiming its emotional core — centering “love, awe, and caring” not as sentiment, but as “fuel for sustained engagement”.

The next step for the effort will be to release an initial report in early 2026 that summarizes key findings from the event and a series of suggested next steps. Additional gatherings are being planned in 2026 to broaden and deepen the impact.

Stay tuned!!!

Jason F. McLennan & Elena Bondareva

Why Words Matter The Future of Regenerative Design

by Lindsay Baker, CEO of Living Future

As the design world embraces the language of regeneration, we must be clear about what the term means—and what’s at stake when it’s misused.

The compulsion to create and celebrate new things is a deeply embedded piece of the design world, and for good reason. Our creative spirits are constantly looking for new ways to create spaces, materials, and objects to enliven our environments and engage in the ongoing dialogue about the built world and its significance in our lives. The same holds true for the words we invent and descriptive terms we utilize to introduce new ideas. But words are powerful, our language has implications, and we’ve all been around for these cycles of experiencing a term gain traction, reach a fever pitch, and become passé all in the course of a couple of years.

And so it appears that fever pitch has arrived for the term “regeneration.” In the past few years, we’ve seen architecture and engineering firms rename and reposition their sustainability teams with the term, and it is becoming a more common goal for ambitious project teams and product designers seeking to “go beyond” their previous accomplishments in environmental sustainability. And it is true that regenerative work can feel like advancing beyond sustainability, but it is critical to understand that it isn’t just another rung on the ladder.

At Living Future, we define regenerative design as creating things—materials, buildings, place—that regenerate the systems they are a part of: they are healing, they are creating more good than harm, they are providing a “net positive” impact to a system. And we don’t just define the systems as ecological systems. We are pushing for regeneration of the health of our bodies and minds, the regeneration of our community health and

resilience, and really the regeneration of all systems that create planetary and human health (including economic and political ones). In short, regenerative buildings have a net-positive and restorative impact across all the social, cultural, and ecological systems that they are a part of.

As is often the case, Europe seems to be ahead of us in adopting the trend, as evidenced by the names of various events and sessions at industry conferences in the past couple of years. This past September, the major global building materials company Holcim (headquartered in Switzerland) released a report with the consulting firm Systemiq, titled “Unleashing a Regenerative Revolution for the Built Environment.” Last year, two brilliant engineers, Oliver Broadbent and James Norman, authored an e-book called The Regenerative Structural Engineer, delving deeply into concepts and tactics for regenerative design for structural engineers. The UK’s Institution of Structural Engineers also hosted a Chatham House event last year to explore the topic and produced a concise summary: “Regenerative design: What is it and how can we do it?”

But also, the term is gaining popularity in adjacent fields. Agriculture is the industry where the term has become most pervasive (and well deserved, in terms of the very tangible ecological regeneration work that good agriculture can do), but now we are seeing the term applied in the grocery store (“regenerative rice,” anyone?) and in our clothing purchases (I may have recently purchased my first pair of jeans made with “regenerative cotton”).

And so, as we anticipate and watch the term growing in popularity, I hope we can take a moment to really consider what we mean when we use the term, and acknowledge that, unlike some trendy words in the design world, there are real consequences to misusing the term and collectively greenwashing ourselves into a mess.

Regeneration isn’t just ultra-sustainability. Certainly, it’s helpful if you’ve been focused on learning sustainability tactics and strategies, you’ll be better equipped to engage in regenerative design work.

What is regeneration when it comes to design? Is there such a thing as “regenerative design” or a “regenerative building”? For those new to the idea, I would highly recommend Arnold’s e-book linked above, the wonderful book (and podcast) Flourish by Sarah Ichioka and Michael Pawlyn, as well as some of the OGs of regeneration: the late, great Carol Sanford’s work and Bill Reed’s 2007 piece on shifting from Sustainability to Regeneration in the built environment. We at Living Future have also been championing regenerative practices with the Living Building Challenge, Living Product Challenge, and our various events and educational programs since 2006. We welcome you to check out our programs to get more resources to help you adopt regenerative practices in your design work.

As you navigate these resources, I believe you’ll find some common threads of caution and care with how to use the term regenerative, and I want to suggest a few key points here for consideration:

A net positive impact does not necessarily equal a regenerative impact. A net positive impact is great, don’t get me wrong. But, for example, if a building is generating more electricity than it uses, but that electricity is not being used by a larger system or community to improve the overall performance of the system, it is not doing regenerative work.

A fully regenerative building or a regenerative product is a bit of a white whale, and we should all be quite careful using the term to describe an object. One way I’m trying to navigate this is to focus on the idea of regeneration as an action verb rather than regenerative as an adjective. As is the case with regenerative agriculture, regenerative design work is a constant practice of care, healing, and engagement with the system you are intervening in.

Regeneration isn’t just ultra-sustainability. Certainly, it’s helpful if you’ve been focused on learning sustainability tactics and strategies, you’ll be better equipped to engage in regenerative design work. And in some systems, it may feel a lot like just a step up from sustainability work. But let’s keep the terms clear. It reminds me of a moment a few years back when a young architect I worked with proudly described the various levels of sustainability one could attempt for a building to a group of her assembled peers: “LEED Silver, Gold, Platinum, then at the top, WELL.” My palm quickly hit my face. Please, folks, let’s remember that these terms and programs are carefully introduced by advocates seeking to fundamentally transform and fix the broken systems we are dealing with in the building industry every day. They are not notches on your belt.

In the case of regeneration, the work we encourage and believe is fundamentally necessary is the work of healing, repairing, and indeed, regenerating through the act of design. It is a beautiful and critical act. Some of my favorite stories of regeneration come from Living Buildings like the Kendeda Building in Atlanta, the PAE Living Building in Portland, Oregon, and the BLOCK Housing Project in Seattle, Washington. As you engage more with the concept of regeneration, you will see it all around you. It is the act of care, the act of giving, the act of listening and offering support—but through the work you do as you build, make, and maintain the built environment. We welcome you to this work with open arms but suggest that you take care with your words so that regeneration can grow to its full potential of transforming our global built environment entirely away from extractive and harmful impacts. A better world is made every day we choose the act of regeneration, and the community doing this work is growing with every act. We hope you will join us!

JASON'S RECIPES

In any endeavor, scale the effort of your work to the effort required for success. Accept that sometimes your “best ” varies under different conditions. Do not overthink or overdo.

Achieve success by practicing balance and restraint without harsh internal judgment.

The ¾ Baked Recipe For Success

INTRODUCTION FROM THE MAGIC OF IMPERFECTION

by Jason F. McLennan

OVER THREE DECADES, I’ve had the great pleasure of working with and being an advisor to many of the world’s top companies and institutions. I have worked with several dozen universities all over North America — from Canada to Mexico, including venerable institutions like Yale, Vanderbilt, and Georgia Tech. I have worked with companies that have more revenue than many small countries do and make many of the things we use in our daily lives, from computers and airplanes to the stone, tile, wood, and carpet that we use to build our homes. I have had clients who are billionaires, celebrities, and prospective US presidents. I have worked with governments at the national, state, and local levels across the United States and Canada. I have also worked with small nonprofits, First Nation tribes, and business startups with only a handful of employees.

And from all this experience, I have learned that innovation and effectiveness do not always track in ways that people think.

I have been a careful observer of how entities of all types — from big to small, complex to simple — get things done or struggle to do so. In the end, regardless of the organization and its voracity to change the world, people and how they think are the most important or most harmful attribute. People and process are both the numerator and denominator in the equation of success and failure.

On an individual level, it’s also easy to assume that it is always the smartest and most talented individuals who are the most effective. Remember the straight-A students from your high school who seemed destined for greatness? A large number of them end up with only modest or average societal and economic contributions. Great talent and intelligence are obviously advantages, but by themselves they’re easily undermined by critical flaws in approach, attitude, and personal philosophy. We’ve all been around smart people who can’t seem to get out of their own way or are so self-critical that they can’t get anything done.

For example, one massive company that I consulted to had shockingly outdated ways of thinking and working, as well as a culture of “paralysis by analysis” with high-paid, talented staff who were afraid to stick their necks out on anything. Therefore, very little, aside from incremental improvements, ever got done. This is a company that was once one of the world’s most innovative and influential businesses and that still supplies hugely important products for societies all over the world — but does so now with shockingly outdated and rundown facilities, a culture of inefficiency, and risk aversion. Many people assume that the biggest and most important organizations are also the best at what they do, and yet this is often not the case.

Perhaps you wonder why you can’t get more done or have a bigger impact in your work and life. If so, you’re in the right place. This book contains an entirely new philosophy on life and business that has the capacity to unlock your potential and significantly improve your capabilities to innovate and, even more exciting, how quickly you innovate. It involves an almost magical concept of avoiding perfection and perfectionist thinking (the opposite of what most people try to do) and seeking to release things at a certain point in their imperfect quest for rapid feedback and then iteration. The “magic” to achieving perfection, in other words, is to avoid seeking it and learn to embrace imperfections in a way that ironically actually gets you closer to it, and faster.

I call this magic approach ¾ baked thinking, and, if properly applied and practiced, it will improve your projects’ success rate, your workflow, and even aspects of your personal life, saving you time and perhaps even making you a lot happier and less stressed.

But as with anything else in life, new challenges and expectations typically require new ways of doing things. Success requires letting go of old habits, recognizing and shifting established patterns, and embracing a few simple yet fundamental ideas. It also requires a willingness to fail fast and learn from that experience in order to apply that new knowledge appropriately to your situation and context.

Good chefs take the time to prepare their ingredients so that when heat is applied, everything is ready, and there’s less risk of overcooking or undercooking the food. This process, known as mise en place (French for “putting in place” or “gathering ingredients”), is not only about preparation, but also about enjoying the act of preparation.

Mise en Place

Let me share a metaphor.

Good chefs take the time to prepare their ingredients so that when heat is applied, everything is ready, and there’s less risk of overcooking or undercooking the food. This process, known as mise en place (French for “putting in place” or “gathering ingredients”), is not only about preparation, but also about enjoying the act of preparation.

Mise en place is a useful metaphor for this book. You can think of each chapter as a different ingredient that is required to make the overall recipe — the ¾ baked philosophy — successful.

Let’s go a bit deeper with this metaphor.

Imagine an unpracticed home chef who cooks spaghetti by dumping it into a big pot and letting it boil away until the pasta seems ready to eat. After all, it even says on the box how long to cook it! They foolishly try to get it perfectly cooked while it still boils, when, in reality, it is now on its way to becoming overcooked. The home cook takes their “ready to eat” pasta out, strains it through a colander, and then lets it sit while they finish the sauce, which they’ve removed from the jar and let simmer. To plate the food, the home cook simply pours the sauce on top of a pile of spaghetti. Voilà!

The result is typically far from satisfactory: the hot pasta continues to cook in the colander and becomes sticky and mushy, and the sauce simply sits on top of it, ensuring bites with too little or too much sauce.

How uncivilized.

Consider a more sophisticated approach by a seasoned chef. Ahead of cooking the pasta, the chef prepares their mise en place. Then, only when the ingredients are ready, the chef makes a simple homemade sauce with olive oil, garlic, fresh tomatoes, Parmesan, and seasonings. Despite its simplicity, it’s a more thoughtful preparation than that of the home cook.

The chef then places the pasta in boiling water, cooking it only until it is ¾ finished — slightly firmer than al dente. This is essential. The chef is not trying to cook the pasta fully in the water but instead looking for the “sweet spot” where the pasta has absorbed enough heat to be mostly cooked. At that point, they remove the pasta and finish cooking it directly in the sauce.

Thanks to this key step — at a ¾ point — a couple of things happen:

• Since it’s not fully done, the pasta can rehydrate and absorb the sauce as it finishes cooking, ensuring even flavor distribution and infusion into the noodles. This is akin to sharing your ideas with the world early and letting other people’s ideas and market feedback infuse and perfect it — a core part of my philosophy.

• Because the pasta can no longer stick to itself, each strand is separated and bound by sauce, not gluten — a good metaphor for not getting stuck in one place and rigid in our ways (another key tenet).

Same ingredients, but different process — the result of which is most assuredly a vastly superior meal.

In this book, you’ll learn about several important principles and skills:

• The world is full of half-baked ideas that are no good to anyone. Properly preparing, testing, and refining ideas and work product through rapid feedback ensures that they can be as successful as possible and never half-baked.

• The world is full of overcooked and burnt ideas past their prime that never get out of the kitchen or out of your inbox. It’s important to recognize when you are holding onto ideas too long, being too much of a perfectionist, insisting on controlling every detail, or undermining your own or others’ success by not observing timely, well-planned deadlines.

• The act of sharing at the magical ¾ baked moment tends to create a culture of innovation and collaboration where the skills of the many enhance those of the few.

• Harnessing feedback and failure encourages a process of constant improvement for yourself and your team. The ¾ baked way can be perfected like an art form!

• You can effectively apportion your efforts so that there’s always time for the important things in your life and you become known as someone who can be counted on to consistently deliver.

• Aligning your passion with what you do at work will yield greater satisfaction, personal benefit, and ultimately happiness.

These lessons and key takeaways from each chapter are summarized in features labeled “¾ Baked Secret,” which appear throughout the book.

We all have dreams and aspirations to accomplish in our lives, but so often our work and life “stuff” just gets in the way. Our life energy is precious, and we should spend it where it matters, not waste it where it doesn’t. So let’s get cooking to find out how!

“The world needs big ideas, and it needs them urgently. McLennan’s ¾ baked approach teaches us how to get important things done with clarity, purpose, and wit.”

—Phil Harrison, CEO, Perkins&Will

King County Renton Shop, Renton, WA

Functional Sustainability

Client: King County Parks Ops & Maintenance Size: 50,250 sf

Completion Date: June 12, 2025 Sustainability: Pursuing LBC Energy Petal Certification

Completed by McLennan Design as Design Architect, and HDR Architecture as Architect of Record

PHOTOS BY DAN SCHWALM

C ] Bioretention garden and "Living Hallway" beyond

D ] Shops Building operable doors

E ] Admin Building porch and view of Shops beyond

F ] Covered storage buildings for parks equipment

G ] Stormwater bioretention garden

H ] Admin building main entry

The Central Maintenance Facility - known as the Renton Shopis the new headquarters for the Operations and Maintenance department of King County Parks, and features the first masstimber, Net-Zero building in the county's retinue. Including a Crew and Administrative Building, Shops and Storage Buildings, covered outdoor storage canopies, a functional parking lot both for Operations' fleet vehicles and for personal vehicles, electric vehicle charging stations, and an equipment wash pad. Renton Shop has been designed to achieve the Energy Petal certification of the Living Building Challenge - along with the Beauty and Health & Happiness Petals - and is set to achieve Net-Positive solar energy production on-site.

With a series of separate structures each designed to cater to their specific uses, the project creates a campus of buildings optimized for solar orientation. Continuous green buffers along the site perimeter offer direction connections to nature, featuring native landscaping, boardwalks, and a bioretention garden trail alongside the southern wetland. Solar arrays on each building roof provide 105% of the project's annual energy needs. Designed to accommodate a tight County budget, this project is a living example of how to successfully balance economics and prioritize building performance and sustainability.

A ] Pendants above central stair

B ] Daylit open work area

C ] Central entry stair buildings

D ] Mass-timber columns and beams

E ] Community corridor between offices

B

D

E

Maitland Chart House the

Learn More Here

Client: Maitland Tower Size: 2,200sf Completion Date: 2023

Completed by: McLennan Design

Scope of Plan: Architecture, Construction Drawings, Campus Planning, Ecological Analysis, Energy and Water Conservation Analysis, Retrofit strategies, Living Building Challenge Planning, Phasing, and Implementation.

OUR WONDERFUL CLIENT, PHILIP LING, went exploring one day along the shores of the majestic Saint Lawrence River in Ontario, Canada and ended up in the small town of Maitland, Ontario –staring at an abandoned windmill structure on a beautiful stretch of riverfront. The dilapidated campus captivated his imagination, and soon enough he found himself the owner – but really the steward of this historic property, the site of amazing Canadian history – such as the construction of the last French ship before losing to the British, and Upper Canada’s second largest flour mill. Philip had a vision to help heal this stretch of water and restore the old stone ruins to their former glory. He embraced the Living Building Challenge – and soon after – was working with our team.

― WHAT IT IS

Renovation of an historic 1820’s era building in the Great Lakes Basin through the lens of the Living Building Challenge.

A. Tower

B. Maitland Chart House

C. Marina

D. Restoration

The Maitland Riverfront Masterplan and historic Chart House Restoration showcases McLennan Design’s deep expertise and passion for revitalizing community and renovating historic buildings. As the oldest project in our portfolio, the 1828 Chart House presents a unique opportunity to blend heritage preservation with cutting-edge sustainability in a block scale project.

McLennan Design led both the masterplan for this 13-acre waterfront campus on the St. Lawrence River, transforming a site rich with layered history into a vibrant community hub. Our approach honors the past while creating innovative spaces for marine research, technology incubation, and cultural gathering. This project highlights our commitment to breathing new life into existing buildings, proving that adaptive reuse can set the stage for resilient, inspiring futures. Maitland stands as a testament to the ambition and skill we and our clients bring to every project—leading thoughtfully, sustainably, and creatively.

ASHRAE

HEADQUARTERS

The Power of

Irresistible Stairs

One of the core design principles of our practice is to Elevate the InBetween Spaces. These interstitial spaces - staircases, hallways, transitions, porches, vestibules - are often overlooked, yet are in many ways the most important places in a building. Special attention given to these areas elevates the overall design and experience of moving through a building. Let's examine a few of our favorite stairs and the myriad ways they - literally - elevate our projects.

HMTX

All three stairs within our HMTX World Headquarters project in Norwalk, CT exemplify the notion of the "irresistible stair". Anchoring either end of the long, linear building are two daylight-filled exit stairs. Enclosed entirely in glass, these stairs beckon visitors to explore upward into the treetops, visually connecting people to the surrounding landscape. At the interior Great Hall, a sculptural spiral stair boasts rich walnut treads and embedded handrails, providing a warm, tactile journey up to the mezzanine space above.

Showcase

Center for Novel Therapeutics

Perkins&Will San Fransico

Perkins&Will Seattle

Perkins&Will Vancouver/Calgary

Western Washington University

Kaiser Borsari Hall

Perkins&Will Seattle

Perkins&Will Bainbridge Island

Rather than relegating stairs as merely utilitarian spaces, we prefer to treat stairs as places to bewelcoming, intriguing, and always connecting back to nature and daylight. Within the Perkins&Will catalogue, many examples of such place-making stairs can be found. Whether majestic multi-story experiments in glass and steel within a grand atrium space, or simple, modest wood constructions within a home, our stairs emphasize views to the outdoors, tactile materials, and honesty in structural expression.

Showcase

Crafting "irresistible stairs" is not only an exercise in beautiful design - it can also have tangible impacts on a building's energy performance. Stairs that engage people's sense of curiosity encourage users to take the stairs in lieu of elevators, lowering overall project energy use and improving health and well-being.

Showcase

MY LIFE IN CARS

A FUN AUTO BIOGRAPHY

BY JASON F. MCLENNAN

In 2015

I read Neil Young’s autobiography entitled A Memoir of Life and Cars. In the book by the world-famous musician, he described how he always bought a new or used car to commemorate important moments in his life – relationships starting and ending, career highlights, personal change, etc. He told stories of his life in music through the lens of what he was driving and where he was in the world.

I found it fascinating and insightful, and it sparked something in me – a realization that many of us who grew up in a car-centric culture often do associate chapters in our lives with specific automobiles we owned or used. They become visible symbols for moments in time.

Neil was really onto something.

Photo by Jefté Sanchez

We all tend to spend a lot of our in-between time within the space of these wheeled objects, and they carry conscious and subconscious symbolism. They can be carriers of memory as well as people. Like it or not, they do often say something about us as people – and as we change as people, our vehicle choices often change with us. After a house, they are typically the most expensive assets people own or lease, yet with far less permanency – cars break, they run down, they get into accidents, and so on. Think about the cars your parents drove and how you may associate them with those vehicles. Think about your very first car and how it made you feel. Think about your first family car, perhaps, or the car you were in for your first kiss, or when your heart was broken for the first time. These are often shared cultural moments, but with different wheels.

I’ve always had a conflicted relationship with cars to be honest.

The environmentalist and urban planner in me has always bemoaned how the automobile has perpetrated immeasurable damage to our natural systems as well as the health of our cities. Air and water pollution, fossil fuel toxins, and climate change are legacies we still grapple with – and clearly in North America in particular, we let cars and their excessive parking needs destroy the idea of walkable, healthy urban environments in communities nationwide.

The designer and poet in me, however, has always loved cars as design objects and as symbols of adventure, freedom, and exploration. Ugly cars hurt my soul, but beautiful cars, well that is a different matter. I have countless foundational memories doing road trips with friends, and some of my most vibrant memories of my family have come while traveling in various cars.

So, I thought I’d take a stab at my own version of Neil’s memoir and tell my life in cars. I’ve left out the cars my parents owned and my spouse has owned, even though they too played key roles in my life – I grew up driving my father’s station wagons, for example, and often drove my wife’s vehicle on family trips. But for the sake of art – I’ll focus only on vehicles that were mine alone.

A few key observations right off the bat

1. The story of my cars has always been underscored by the battle I had between representing my environmental ideals while also honoring my aesthetic ideals – a task that until recently has proven very difficult to achieve.

2. Generally speaking, “eco-cars” have been ugly and the more attractive cars have been gas guzzlers. Automotive companies have had little incentive until recently to make cars more environmentally responsible and indeed actively resisted it –fighting fuel efficiency standards, misleading the public (think VW and diesel-gate), and actively shelving electric car projects until Tesla came along and changed the paradigm.

This article is meant to be a fun, nostalgic journey of the cars in my life. My hope is that when you read it you reminisce about your own journey.

1996,

Oregon 1977 VW Dasher

I bought my very first car in 1996 when I was partway through my 4th year in university (in a 5-year program) at the University of Oregon. I had previously only used my bicycle for getting around Eugene, but decided I wanted a car so I could travel a bit further afield. Having very little money, I looked for and found a car that was only $500 – a heavily used, high-mileage 1977 Volkswagen Dasher. It shook and rattled when you drove it and didn’t really want to ever get beyond 55 mph. Someone had painted it grey – with house paint! When it rained, you could see tinges of yellow paint peeking through the layer of grey.. It was funky and ugly, and yet - it was mine.

As humble and rudimentary as that car was, I was proud of buying my first car and enjoyed taking it out around Eugene, up to Portland, and out to the Coast with my girlfriend at the time. The car was a bit like my relationship – it didn’t last overly long, but left an indelible impression. The car represented the excitement and independence of fledgling adulthood - my first serious relationship where I lived with a partner and my first vehicle. We dated for two years – which felt like four or five – as I finished my architecture degree, and the experience taught me a lot about life and love and commitment. Having a car during this time allowed us opportunities to explore, even if only nearby Eugene.

But all such things must come to an end – first loves and first cars. At the end of my 5th year of coursework I was driving the VW down 13th street in downtown Eugene when the engine seized up and simply died while underway. I coasted it to a stop in front of a copy store and stepped out.. I gave it a long hard stare, patted it affectionately, and turned around and didn’t look back. It was junked the next day. The Dasher had served its purpose.

Ironically, my girlfriend and I broke up a few months later, just as suddenly and dramatically – or so it felt to me. One minute it was running fine, and the next moment it was over.

Looking back, the old Volkswagen and the last two years of my college years were symbolically intertwined. They represented a new stage in life and maturity, traveling new territory with others and discovering new places.

1998 Kansas City

1986 Jaguar xj6

In 1997 I had graduated college and was offered a position working with Bob Berkebile in Kansas City. Sight unseen, I packed up all my belongings into a small Penske rental van and drove from Eugene to KC – with a broken governor that only let me go 50MPH as a top speed – making for a long trip to the Midwest.

When I first arrived, I had no vehicle and tried to make it in KC like I had in Eugene – using my bike and public transportation only. It didn’t work out too well in a city that had poor transportation options, and proved terrible for my personal life – hard to go out on dates and meet people while having to bum rides. So I broke down and decided to buy another used car in the summer of 1998.

I happened to come across an ad for a used Jaguar – a car that I absolutely loved and associated with the show “The Equalizer” that I used to watch with my father in the 1980s. It was a symbol of cool refinement.

It was metallic blue and beautiful to behold – on the outside. The inside needed some work, but that only helped with the price negotiations, so despite it not being overly “green” I put down $5000 and the Jaguar was mine. The truth was, I loved the car – it rode smooth and had character and class. The twin gas tanks had to be filled separately at the back, but you could toggle between them with the push of a button. The car came with its original cassette mixed tape from the factory that included hits like the medieval poem ‘O Fortuna’ from the Carmina Burana followed by “Wichita Lineman” – as if those songs go together! Nothing like matching up the song track to the Omen with Glenn Campbell!

Not long after getting the car I also got my first dog – the amazing Papillon (Pappy), my most beloved dog ever – a Great Dane that I found abandoned in a field in southern Missouri, covered in ticks and nearly dead from dehydration. As the dog grew, he eventually took up the entire back seat of the Jag, and he and I would cruise around KC together with his giant head sticking out the car door window. We were quite the sight! Beautiful dogs and beautiful cars were great ways to meet women, as it turned out –especially when you also play in a band.

I started my Irish rock band – Thistle – that same year,and the car became my band car – the spacious trunk and back seats holding my guitars and amps.

1998 Kansas City

2001 Corbin Sparrow

The problem I had with the Jaguar was not aesthetic, but rather its environmental impact due to its poor gas mileage. I was constantly on the lookout for more environmentally friendly options – but little was available back then. GM toyed with an electric car before killing the idea, hybrids were not yet available, but one crazy company did start making a vehicle that caught my interest – the Corbin Sparrow, a three-wheeled fully enclosed motorcycle-like car made by the company that manufactured the leather seats for Harley Davidson.

During a California work trip, I got a chance to visit their small startup factory in Hollister, CA and was immediately smitten. I put down a deposit – and finally in late 2001 the jellybeanesque vehicle rolled off a delivery truck to my home on State Line Boulevard.

The vehicle cost me $15,000 and couldn’t be financed (since it was so unusual) – so it was a hefty price tag for me at the time. To offset the cost, I created a whole marketing program around the car. I dubbed the car the “greenwarrior” – a name that I have used ever since for all sorts of my endeavors – and agreed to promote like-minded businesses whenever I showed up places. You can imagine how out of place a lime green tricycle was in downtown Kansas City in the early 2000’s!

People would follow me around in the car and stop me with questions wherever I went. I had unit 147 out of only a couple hundred vehicles they ever produced, and most were on the west coast. So when people asked about it, I would hand them a flier with info on the car – and the logos and websites of my sponsors. A few representative examples of the benefits I received based on my self-promotion program; I received free groceries for a year from an organic farmer nearby to help promote her CSA program. I got free dog walking services and other such “trades” from local shops. At one Earth Day event at the Kansas City Zoo, I parked the car at the entrance to the zoo and handed out hundreds of flyers about the greenwarrior and my partner businesses. It represented the future – the green lifestyles and electric vehicles to come.

The only problem was… the car mostly didn’t work. and it had dreadful range due to the lead acid batteries under the seat. It spent more time in the shop than on the road, and finicky early battery technology left me at the side of the road on more than one occasion – having to push it to nearby houses to plug in for more juice to get home. I had to carry around a 100-foot extension cord wherever I went! The Corbin business folded soon after - unable to sell enough cars, and having trouble with all the cars they did sell. Bleeding edge rather than leading edge tech in action.

After a couple years of use, the greenwarrior sat in my garage in my new home with Tracy in Kansas City. We were starting to have a family, so more sensible transportation was soon needed. While I didn’t get rid of the Sparrow right away, I stopped repairing it, and eventually sold it to a collector in 2008 for about the same price I paid for it.

2003 Kansas City

1996 SAAB Turbo

In 2003, I found myself without the Jag or a functioning Sparrow and needing a new ride. Tracy had just leased a new Volkswagen Beetle, but I had my eye on another used car – a 1996 SAAB Turbo that I saw on a car lot on my way home from work.

It was cool, European, and all black – with nicely worn black leather seats that looked and smelled great. It was going to be my new “family car”, but also a cool work car. And it was, for a short time. I did like driving it – it was fun to drive and sophisticated. Tracy and I had just bought a beautiful new home together on Main Street in the Brookside neighborhood of Kansas City.

In the summer of 2002, we got married in a beautiful ceremony down the street, and this was my car. We were starting our new life together in a new home and had just conceived my first born, Declan. The SAAB was the defining car for these important life milestones.

2004 Kansas City

2004 Mini Cooper

In 2004 I had the great honor of being elevated to full partner at BNIM Architects in Kansas City, and to commemorate that career moment I decided to trade in my SAAB for my first “new car” (even though I leased it). As will be clear, I have always been a fan of British Cars – and the newly released Mini Cooper (now made by Germans through BMW) seemed fun and offered reasonable gas mileage. It was the closest I felt I could get to having my cake and eating it too with aesthetics and efficiency at the time.

So I got a British racing mini convertible in green with a black soft top, and enjoyed driving it around Kansas City. It was like driving a go-cart! It handled great and was a lot of fun to drive with the top down. My first and only convertible!

In 2005 we welcomed my son Aidan into the world and Tracy traded in her Beetle for a Volkswagen Jetta Wagon that would fit us all for family outings. The first hybrids had just been released by Honda – the two-seater Insight, and the now-famous Toyota Prius. I found the Prius ugly as sin and couldn’t bring myself to buy it – I felt some guilt about that, but was frustrated that none of the automakers could make a car that was both efficient and fun to drive. The Mini Cooper got 35mpg but clearly should have been better. Since I drove less than 10,000 miles a year, it felt like a reasonable decision that still offered an enjoyable driving experience.

At the end of 2005 I started to write my manifesto – The Living Building Challenge – and began to get antsy that the green building movement was not making big enough strides to deal with the environmental crisis. So, by mid-2006, I decided that I needed to leave BNIM to put this idea out in the world – notably including beauty and good design alongside environmental performance as twin virtues in the standard.

I was offered the job as the CEO of Cascadia Green Building Council and viewed it as an opportunity to platform these new ideas. I decided to leave Kansas City and move to the Seattle area. The only problem was that the job required a fairly large pay cut (working for a non-profit) and required living in a much more expensive cityI felt like we could no longer afford two cars as a family, so I convinced one of my coworkers at BNIM to take over my lease on the Mini Cooper and Tracy and I headed out West. The plan was for me to resume my bike commuting and make do with only one family vehicle.

2005 Bainbridge Island

2005

VW Eurovan

This is the only vehicle in this story that was technically not my own, but was Tracy’s – but it took on such an importance in our lives that it deserves mention. With our impending move to Bainbridge Island and the reduction to one vehicle, we realized that the relatively small VW Wagon was not up to the task of accommodating our growing family. Tracy’s brother agreed to buy it from us and we replaced it with a 2005 Volkswagen Eurovan. It was big, boxy, and cavernous inside. When we first bought it, it felt like the kids were a mile away in the back seat. But it had a folding table and rearfacing middle seats and a big enough area that our giant Great Dane could fit inside as well. It was an ideal purchase.

When we made the 2000-mile pilgrimage from the Midwest to the West Coast, Tracy drove the Eurovan and I drove a rented vehicle loaded with our stuff – and a moving truck followed a few days later. It is a memory I’ll never forget –moving our family and all our belongings back across the country for a new adventure. The Eurovan was the star, and it continued to be for many years.

Once on Bainbridge Island, we had our daughter Rowan in 2008 – and the Eurovan was the center of activity, taking the kids to soccer and tennis practices, school, and all manner of outings. It truly was the family vehicle that marks the time our kids were all small and innocent. It holds a very special place in our hearts – and I can still hear the sound of that giant door opening and closing and the kids running in and out at home or afield. Every time we see one on the road we remark with nostalgia about the times when our kids were young and life seemed simpler.

We lost Pappy in 2011 while we had the Eurovan and saw our kids growing up while using it on so many roadtrips to British Columbia, Oregon, and throughout Washington State. It will always be a special vehicle for us.

2008 Bainbridge Island 2008

Smart Car

My time as a bike-only commuter to Seattle only lasted a short time.. It was too difficult on Bainbridge to get by with one vehicle – always needing to be dropped off at the ferry terminal by Tracy, taking the bus during rain downpours, etc. Whenever I had to travel outside the city for work I’d have to rent a car or catch the train, neither of which was easy. I felt like I needed an eco-car as the head of the Green Building Council, but few good options still existed.

In hindsight a clearly terrible decision, I leased a new 2008 Smart Car that had finally become available in the USA. When I saw them in Europe several years before I thought they were a cool urban design response to tight European cities, and a good commuter vehicle option. I bought one, and instantly regretted the decision. The car was notoriously clunky to drive (despite getting good gas mileage), had no guts, and while ok around the Island, felt like a death trap when I had to get on the interstate to go to Portland or Vancouver for work.

On one occasion, I narrowly survived a rather harrowing trip to Portland during a wind and rainstorm. The wind proved too much for the little Smart Car, and I quickly found myself practically blown off the road and then nearly killed by a giant 18-wheeler barreling past in the rain – causing me to veer off the highway onto the shoulder and screeching to a halt before I could collide with anything. I was so rattled by the experience that I turned off the next exit and stayed overnight in a random hotel until I could wait out the storm. The Smart Car was great in Rome, but terrible on American freeways.

Within a week of that perilous trip, I had traded in the Smart Car for – guess what? – a Toyota Prius.

2009 Bainbridge Island

2009 Toyota Prius

I finally caved and leased a Toyota Prius in 2009. With the Smart Car a total disaster, I felt like I needed to finally drive the “greenest car” on the road, which in 2009 was still the Toyota Prius. Besides, they had made it slightly less ugly and quirky since its launch. So I was now driving a black Prius with a grey cloth interior. I wish I could say I grew to love it – but I never did. The Prius did, however, coincide with a lot of my most important launches professionally. While the Prius was my chariot, I created the International Living Future Institute, the JUST label, the DECLARE Label, and the industry’s first net zero programs. I published three books in this period as well, and won the prestigious Buckminster Fuller Prize. So maybe there was some magic to it after all?

It also lasted through some challenging times, as the great recession hit in 2011 – which was tough for my non-profit to weather and a personally very challenging time financially. Near the end of its run with me, the Prius began to stink –literally. For some reason we kept fighting a losing battle with a family of mice that kept moving into our vehicles and then dying inside – with some odiferous results!

2013 Bainbridge Island

2013 Lexus Hybrid CTH

When the Prius lease expired, I couldn’t trade it in fast enough, and cheerily swapped it for a fun little Lexus CTH Hybrid –white with a tan faux leather interior that looked great. It was essentially a Prius drivetrain with a much better package and a bit more zip. Surprisingly it also handled exceptionally well –and cornered better than nearly any vehicle I had driven.

The Lexus was an experimental car that I appreciated – made by a company trying to balance aesthetics with performance – and generally succeeding with both. It was a nice start. The car for me represented a new post-recession era – fresh and more positive. It was during this time that I was honored with the Buckminster Fuller Prize and began working with Delos to write the first version of the WELL Standard for the industry.

Better things were to come, as in 2012 a guy named Elon Musk was helping to get Tesla off the ground and stir up the auto industry – and my passion for electric cars was finally being matched with good aesthetics.

2015 Bainbridge Island

2015 Tesla

Model S The Ghost

2015 was an auspicious year for me. I decided to leave ILFI after nearly a decade of leadership and my new firm McLennan Design was announced to the world with a bang – featured on the front cover of the New York Times alongside Leonardo Di Caprio, as he had selected me to design his new eco-resort in Belize. I also was honored to be awarded the National Award of Excellence by Engineering News Record in a huge black tie ceremony in New York City – all while owning this car.

A new era deserved a new ride.

I was watching Musk and Tesla with great admiration at the time – as the company was essentially ‘fixing’ everything that was wrong with the electric car – its range, its ability to charge on road trips, and its looks. The Model S was beautiful and sexy – and also more fun to drive than an internal combustion engine car. Faster, updating itself wirelessly, free supercharging (in the early days), and the epitome of cool. Being an early Tesla adopter made me feel like being part of a revolution – one that would finally put the petroleum industry on the back foot. The first-generation car cost a whopping $100,000 – much more than I had ever paid for a vehicle at the time – but I felt like I needed to support and invest in the movement. My business was taking off and so I did too. The Model S – which we affectionately dubbed The Ghost - was the best car I had ever driven at that point in time.

The Model S was the car I drove when I started my business –but also when I started building Heron Hall – the Living Building home I now live in. As with the house, it represented finding a way through design to have both beauty and performance without sacrificing either.

2019 Bainbridge Island

2019 Tesla Model X

By 2019, McLennan Design was in full swing with projects all over the US and beyond, and my initial lease with Tesla had ended. They had come out with the kind of crazy Model X –replete with falcon wing doors – and I thought I’d give it a try. So I signed a two -year lease for a black Model X with ultrawhite interior seats, and delighted (for the first 6 months) in showing people how the crazy doors worked and how fast the darn thing could accelerate.

After about 6 months, however, the novelty had warn out. The doors were clunky and slow and, well, didn’t improve the experience. I missed my Model S, which was frankly a much better car than the X. Around this time, Tracy got a BMW i3 and we were suddenly a two electric car family and fully off fossil fuels. She really liked her car and we loved being done with gas stations! Tesla was growing by leaps and bounds, revolutionizing batteries, solar, and so much more – what could go wrong?!

2021 Bainbridge Island 2021 Tesla Model S 'Serenity'

In 2021, my two-year lease of the Model X was finished and I decided to switch back to the Model S, since I found the driving experience so much better. I decided to call the car “Serenity” as a projection of how I wanted to feel through these trying times. It was the height of the pandemic at this point, and travel and work had been fully upended. So you could say this was my Covid car. Tracy was now driving a Tesla Model 3 as we maintained our electric-only lifestyle.

Both of our dogs – Luna and Sammy – passed away around this time, and their losses were salved by the addition of two new pups – Archie and North. Archie had to be shipped to us from British Columbia, since all travel was restricted at this time, but a year later – for North– I was able to drive the Tesla up to British Columbia to get him, undaunted by flat tires in the middle of the Canadian mountains. The Model S continued to be an outstanding car – and amazingly cost me 30k less than the first one despite featuring an additional 100 miles of range. Progress indeed.

The pandemic was a tough time for everyone, and our team weathered the storm better than most, but it definitely took its toll. It seemed to take a toll as well – in a strange way – on Elon Musk, who had gradually become more extreme and right wing in his views on society and government. He left California for Texas and jumped the shark.

By the time 2022 rolled around, I had made the momentous decision to sell my firm to Perkins&Will and become part of that world-spanning, world-class company. The decision turned out to be an excellent one and eventually ushered in my next car, but I hung onto the Tesla for a while – until Trump got elected and Musk began his hairbrained ‘DOGE’ programs to dismantle government agencies. It was no longer tenable to drive a Tesla, in my opinion, after that debacle. Tracy got rid of her Model 3 and opted for a Rivian, and I handed in the keys to the S – despite it being my favorite car to drive, I was done with the company and its founder’s problematic views and actions.

2025 Bainbridge

Island

1973 Jaguar e Series •

Electrified

Which brings us to today, and my current car – my favorite automobile of all time.

When I sold my practice and began work as the Chief Sustainability Officer of Perkins&Will, I wanted to mark that milestone as something significant. So I went back to my longstanding pursuit of truly merging beauty and performance and decided to create my own ideal ride. In my mind, one of the most beautiful cars of all time was the E-type produced by Jaguar from 1961-1974. Purists love the first series from the early years – but those were all for very short people. When I sat in one, I could barely squeeze inside, and my head scraped the ceiling. I knew if I wanted to be comfortable in a Jag, I needed a series 3 – which was made a few inches larger in every direction and, as it turns out, also cost less than the more sought-after early models, - of benefit considering what I was about to do to it.

On a work trip down to LA, I made a side quest to the Beverly Hills Car Club – a company that specializes in old vintage cars – and looked at the dozen E-types they had on display. The one that caught my eye was a gorgeous silver car from 1973 – the year I was born. It seemed kismet. It had already had the original engine removed and replaced with another one –resulting in a lower price as well.

So I bought it and shipped it to Bainbridge Island, where my friends at EV Works proceeded – over a very long period of time (and way too much money) – to convert the car to fully electric. It now has a 200-mile range and is absolutely beautiful to drive. Charged exclusively at home and the office – both buildings powered entirely by solar –it is one of the greenest cars on the road and quite possibly the lowest carbon car anywhere in the world.

STEPHEN ‘77 PONTIAC FIREBIRD

SUSAN R.

OUR First Cars

The McLennan Design studio staff shares their very first cars

JOANNA ‘89 DELOREAN (DAD’S MIDLIFE CRISIS)

JOHN ‘89 FORD BRONCO

JUAN ‘75 VW BUG

DIANA ‘17 NISSAN

KISHORE ‘17 BMW X1

JASON ‘77 VW DASHER

BRIDGET ‘16 NISSAN LEAF

DALE ‘59 CHEVROLET BEL-AIR

GALEN ‘98 HONDA CIVIC

AAYUSHI 22 TOYOTA COROLLA

Take time to catch up on our past issues

SPRING 2025

CAROL SANFORD

Regeneration Pioneer

Q&A with McEwen Mining CEO

The Regenerative Mall

Rethinking Airports

WINTER 2024

OFF

GRID

Sustainable Copper Mine in Argentina

LEAP - Regenerative Urban Planning

A Living Community Future

Camp Everhappy

FALL 2023

TRIBUTE

Robin Guenther

3/4 BAKED: A Recipe For Success

The Art of Josh Fisher

World's Finest Chocolate

WINTER 2025

SIM VAN DER RYN

Sustainability Icon

Cultivation of Beauty

World's Finest Chocolate CEO

Buildings That Inspire

SUMMER 2023

UNIVERSITY OF IDAHO

McCall Field Campus

The Circular Economy - Asif Din

The Fabric of Great Places

FALL 2024

HENRICO SOARS

First LBC School in Virginia

The Art of Modeling

Meet P+W Ecologist Juan Rovalo eJag

SUMMER 2024

MY OH MY...WINONA

Mass Timber at Winona State

The Great Transition Performance Modeling

Jason F. McLennan's Office

WINTER 2022

HOUSE UPON THE HILL

LBC project in Connecticut

McLennan Design Perkins&Will merger

Tribute to Christopher Alexander Ecological Civilization-David Korten

SPRING 2021

LIFE TOUCHES LIFE

A.I. and the Nature of Work

Amanda Gorman Women's Voices to Advance Climate Change A Healing Village in British Columbia

SPRING 2024

THE ROAD TO...

McLennan Design Studio

A Living Community On Earth ALL - A Living Library Daylighting

WINTER 2021

ASHRAE

ASHRAE World Headquarters

Edify - Veridian at County Farm Sudbury 2050 Design Competition

ABOUT MCLENNAN DESIGN

McLennan Design is one of the world's premiere regenerative design practices, dedicated to the creation of living buildings, net-zero, and regenerative projects all over the globe. Founded in 2013 by renowned sustainability leader and green design pioneer Jason F. McLennan, the firm focuses on deep green outcomes in the fields of architecture, planning, consulting, and product design. As the founder and creator of many of the building industry’s leading programs - including the Living Building Challenge and its related programsMcLennan and his design team bring a unique ecological lens and unmatched expertise to every project.

In July 2022, McLennan Design merged with global architecture and design firm Perkins&Will to accelerate and scale up decarbonization and elevate the level of regenerative design expertise across the entire industry. Equipped with the global reach and resources of the world's second-largest architecture firm - while maintaining the flexibility and focus of a small-scale practice of carefully selected experts - the McLennan Design team is uniquely positioned to deliver world-class design solutions. Most importantly, the firm continues to serve as a global thought-leader and innovator of sustainable outcomes, striving for each new project to serve as an inspiring beacon of hope for a regenerative future.

ABOUT JASON F. MCLENNAN

Jason F. McLennan is considered one of the world’s most influential individuals in the field of architecture and green building movement today, Jason is a highly sought out designer, consultant and thought leader. The recipient of the prestigious Buckminster Fuller Prize, the planet’s top prize for socially responsible design, he has been called the Steve Jobs of the green building industry, and a World Changer by GreenBiz magazine. In 2016, Jason was selected as the National Award of Excellence winner for Engineering News Record - one of the only individuals in the architecture profession to have won the award in its 58-year history.

McLennan is the creator of the Living Building Challenge – the most stringent and progressive green building program in existence, as well as a primary author of the WELL Building Standard. He is the author of seven books on Sustainability and Design used by thousands of practitioners each year, including The Philosophy of Sustainable Design. McLennan is both an Ashoka Fellow and Senior Fellow of the Design Future’s Council. Jason serves as the Chief Sustainability Officer at Perkins&Will and is the Managing Principal at McLennan Design.

HOUSE UP ON THE HILL tells the story of an important design partnership that represents a bellwether for both the green building movement and regenerative building materials industry. Jason F. McLennan, CEO of McLennan Design and the founder of the Living Building Challenge, along with Harlan Stone, CEO of global flooring manufacturer HMTX Industries, joined forces nearly a decade ago to envision and create a dynamic and restorative headquarters in Norwalk, Connecticut.

Colloquially known as the House Up on the Hill (or HUOTH), HMTX’s new home base is more than “a place to sit and answer emails,” according to Stone. It is “a house, a place where we gather to create.” The building is many things at once: a collaborative maker space, a community space, an exhibition space, a museum, an office building, and a retreat all under one roof. Completed in 2022, HUOTH is a future Petal-certified, mixed-use building that embodies a lowimpact approach to sustainable and passive design.

Situated on a rocky and forested promontory along the edges of Norwalk, the building’s unusual siting is both secluded and urban. The land’s topography is tenuous; the linear site itself, oriented along a north-south axis, is surrounded by a combination of second-growth forest, wildlife habitat, transit infrastructure, and medium-density commercial and multifamily residential development. Within this distinct context, McLennan and Stone assembled a design team that could rise to the challenge of designing a four-story, 24,000-square-foot building that simultaneously responded to and restored this once-neglected pocket of land.

This book details in depth the collaboration between McLennan and Stone and how their design vision for HUOTH was brought to life. It likewise explores the history of the Living Building Challenge and its impacts to date, as well as the decades-long evolution of HMTX Industries that led the company to become a global leader in corporate transparency, employee equity, and responsible material sourcing. The story of HUOTH is one of these two paths converging; it is a catalogue of best practices, and an examination of what restorative development truly looks like when design visionaries are at the helm.

“The

new HQ is a unique space for artists, engineers, developers and architects, as well as creative and disruptive thinkers, to exchange ideas and thoughts. It’s more than a place to sit and answer emails, talk on the phone, and communicate with distant people. Let’s think about it as a house, a place where we gather to create rather than a place to go to the office.”

HARLAN STONE CEO, HMTX Industries

october entered, drenched in amber and transition

how is there so much beauty in death? i asked the trees

may you know for yourself the brilliance of your own unburdening they whispered.

may you rest in the quiet blessing of your own lightness.

i waited for more, but the trees had nothing left to say.

i sat beneath them for a while, understanding

– emory hall

BAINBRIDGE ISLAND STUDIO 1580 Fort Ward Hill Road Bainbridge Island, Washington 98110 mclennan-design.com perkinswill.com/studio/bainbridge-island admin@mclennan-design.com

KANSAS CITY STUDIO 1475 Walnut Street Kansas City, MO 64106 perkinswill.com/studio/kansas-city