PAE Engineers designed the building systems for the six-story Bullitt Foundation building Seattle that is one of the five “living buildings” PAE has worked on.

Blanca Torres
Reporter- San Francisco Business Times

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PAE Consulting Engineers Inc. wants to work on the first “living” building in San Francisco. They just need a developer or architect to hire them.

The Portland-based engineering firm opened its San Francisco office less than three years ago to bring its expertise in sustainable buildings to the market.

PAE specializes in sustainability practices such as zero net energy, where a building generates more energy that it uses, and living buildings, which are structures that capture and generate their own water supply and are not connected to a municipal sewer system.

The Bay Area is home a few zero net energy buildings like one in San Leandro, a industrial building retrofitted to house an electrical union training center, and the Exploratorium, which opened earlier this year in San Francisco.

But there are no living buildings in the Bay Area.

“We want to find people interested in this challenge,” said John Paul Peterson, senior associate with PAE’s San Francisco office. “Let’s make this happen here. We know the science can work.”

PAE has worked on five living buildings including one in downtown Seattle, a six-story office building for the Bullitt Foundation, that opened earlier this year. The firm designed a system that composts all the waste from toilets (people still flush, in case you were wondering) and has a its won rainwater reclamation system.

The building takes advantage of natural lighting, which is more challenging in Seattle than in San Francisco, uses geothermal radiant heating and cooling, and encourages occupants to take the stairs instead of elevators as much as possible.

Blanca Torres covers East Bay real estate for the San Francisco Business Times.

Article source: http://www.bizjournals.com/sanfrancisco/blog/real-estate/2013/09/pae-engineers-zero-net-energy-buildings.html