The Federal Center South Building in Seattle was a complex problem-and we approached it as a large design/build team with highly skilled architects, engineers, planners, landscape architects, and consultants who created an environment where we could holistically evaluate the design problem and find solutions. "High performance" can be a shorthand term-and it's often used that way-but the design team had an opportunity to work across the spectrum of research and practice, and we started thinking about high-performance as an energy question. Pretty quickly, the term also became about accommodating the needs of different users. In other words, a space has to be optimized to work for people-so that's another aspect of performance that I think is lost when we use it as a shorthand term. Even though the . form of Federal Center South is a lyrical oxbow shape, how we could accommodate program, unifying the experience, and how we could speak to individual needs were all essential qualities of that high-performing building.
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