legacy unveiled
Bainbridge Island firm gives new life to century-old stables
Words by Linda Kramer Jenning
Photos by Dan Banko
Bainbridge Island firm transforms historic military structures into modern, energy efficient offices.
JASON MCLENNAN KEEPS A LUMP OF COAL BY HIS DESK. AFTER ALL HIS OFFICE USED TO BE A COAL SHED.
That small black lump is the only fossil fuel you’ll spot in the formerly dilapidated military shed that’s been renovated into modern, energy efficient offices for McLennan’s firm on Bainbridge Island.
“I love old buildings and the idea of giving them new life,” says McLennan, Principal of McLennan Design and chief sustainability officer of parent company Perkins&Will. “It’s wonderful to be able to show that you can take something old and update it.”
In this case, McLennan and team redesigned two buildings constructed by the U.S. Army in 1911 at Fort Ward on Bainbridge Island. One had been a wooden stables and storage shed while the other was a brick barracks. The U.S. Navy took over the site at the start of World War II and turned the barracks into a dormitory for the WAVES working at Fort Ward’s top-secret listening post. These were the soldiers charged with eavesdropping on Japanese transmissions.
The Army later resumed control until Fort Ward was deactivated in 1958. Much later on, a large area of the old base became a park and historic site while other areas were developed for homes. Some of these homes were updated old military housing. Other buildings were left to crumble.
The abandoned buildings included the military bakery, stables and barracks. Rather than see the bakery torn down, neighbors formed the Friends of Fort Ward and transformed the structure into a now bustling community center that opened in June of 2023.
McLennan and team stepped up to save the former stables and barracks with the vision of making one their office headquarters and the other a school to teach regenerative design. “Most people would have torn them down and have just said, ‘it’s not worth it, get rid of it,’” says McLennan, holding the lump of coal in his hand. “There was no floor in the building. It was just dirt, as the animals would do their business on the floor, and they would also dump coal in this room. And so now we’ve moved from a building that was operated with fossil fuels to one that’s operated by the sun, and it’s just kind of ironic that my room was the coal storage room.”
To McLennan, the century-old buildings had “history, patina, character.” They also had a series of unpleasant surprises. When work began on the stables, they encountered missing columns, a sag in the roof, and rotten studs.
“As we started pulling off wood, we were looking at each other going, what is holding this building up?” says Galen Carlson, project manager. “It turns out there were three openings on the south side of the building that originally horse drawn carriages would go through. There were cast iron stanchions on either side of the openings that basically were the only things holding up the whole south wall. We preserved those and now feature them on the corners of the building as a kind of cool relic.”
Much of the original wood also is now featured throughout the building. “It’s an attitude,” says McLennan, the author of seven books on sustainability and social justice. “That wood is old growth with a grain that is so tight you can’t buy wood like this anymore. It’s about seeing the beauty. The trees that Bainbridge Island used to have, these massive trees that were all cut down, that’s the kind of wood that is in both the barracks and this building.”
When they needed to buy wood, they sought out more salvaged wood. For example, the windows come from a factory in Oregon that uses salvaged Douglas fir for the frames.
While the bottom few feet of the building’s original studs had rotted, the rest were sound enough to be reinforced. The original trusses were also in decent condition and remain visible in the ceiling.
Carlson says the existing roof was oriented due south and “was perfectly positioned to add the solar array on top. We have an eight-kilowatt array which provides 100 percent of the energy used in the building.”
The building’s other sustainable features include a cistern to capture rainwater from the roof to irrigate the outdoor spaces, in-floor radiant heating, and a heat-recovery ventilator.
These features reflect the precepts of the Living Building Challenge, a program McLennan authored in 2006 to define how a truly sustainable building needed to operate. Several buildings in Seattle incorporate these principles as do several Bainbridge Island homes, including McLennan’s, which is known as Heron Hall. “We are getting all our energy from renewable energy sources, not fossil fuel sources,” he says. “We are using healthy materials for everything in the building and reducing waste significantly with the use of salvaged materials and water reuse.”
The Living Building Challenge also factors resiliency into a project. In case of emergency, the McLennan office building can operate on batteries for up to a week and serve as a community shelter. There is a fully equipped kitchen, a bathroom, and even a snug sleeping nook built into a wall of McLennan’s office.
The building preserves the footprint of the old stables, and the wood exterior replicates the original tongue and groove siding. Artwork by McLennan’s wife Tracy brightens the walls, as do framed murals created by Joshua Fisher, the firm’s director of Creative Media, and his artist collaborator Cory Bennett Anderson (featured in our Summer 2024 issue). A vintage canoe, suspended overhead, and a divider filled with living plants add character to the workspace. Sliding doors and generous windows create direct connections to the outdoors, and a covered patio at the far end of the building opens to a gathering area surrounded by native plants.
“It’s incredibly inspiring to work here,” says Carlson. “It’s a really different experience to work every day in a building like this with all its history and deer walking through the courtyard right outside our windows.”
It also reflects the principles of biophilia. “Biophilia means love of nature and gets at the idea that, as humans, we have an inherent desire to connect with the natural world,” says Carlson. “We want to incorporate that idea into our architecture as designers and that’s on display throughout the building. There’s access views to the landscape no matter where you are in the building. We added solar operated skylights in the roof to bring in additional daylight. It’s using natural, beautiful materials like the wood you see everywhere.”
It’s also a design process that has won McLennan international acclaim for his restorative and regenerative solutions. Growing up in Sudbury, Ontario, he witnessed the environmental devastation caused by nickel mining and how concerted community efforts could revive the land. As an architect, he set out to find ways to create buildings that would be green and sustainable as global warming continues to worsen.
“The design, construction and development industry is one of the most polluting in the world,” he says. “If people are paying attention to climate change and the science, the rate of decline in the planet is substantial, and we have to be tackling these issues head on. The idea is that we can do it in a way where we have better buildings, better cities, better homes that are better for people while solving those issues.”
bringing nature indoors
McLennan Design teamed up with Mohawk Group to design the area rugs scattered throughout their new Fort Ward digs. The rugs use patterns and colors drawn from nature and are made entirely free of toxic chemicals. The Lichen line arises from the vision of lichen as nature’s carpet. It features patterns that are multihued and multi-textured like lichen, paying homage to the regenerative role of lichen in the ecosystem. The Owl line captures the essence of North American owls with colors, shapes and textures evoking the beauty of the snowy owl, the great gray owl and the great horned owl, among others. Both lines are modular plank carpet systems that offer versatility in how and where they are placed. The complementary designs within each line also allow them to be mixed and arranged in different combinations.the team
BUILDER
Brant Moore Construction
WINDOWS & DOORS
Jeld-Wen Millwork Manufacturing
Bend, Oregon
SOLAR ARRAY
Cascadia Solar, Port Townsend
ELECTRICAL
Eklund Electric, Inc.
PLUMBING
Silverdale Plumbing & Heating
HEATING
Michael Mayda, Thermal Systems
Silverdale
APPLIANCES
Albert Lee, Silverdale
CABINETRY
Henrybuilt, Seattle