Rice Fergus Miller Office & Studio

Bremerton, Washington

“We put a down jacket on it and  turned it off“

– Greg Belding, Principal Architect, RFM Architects”

The Rice Fergus Miller (RFM) new office and studio project was a major renovation of an old Sears warehouse and showroom into a state of the art office building that is helping to revitalize downtown Bremerton. After the second year of operations this building has the lowest verified energy use of any office building in the region with an Energy Use Index (EUI) of just 18.2 kBtu/sf-yr. The project has achieved a LEED 3.0 Platinum rating; earning more LEED points (92 out of 100) than all but a small handful of buildings in the world. A rainwater harvesting system is installed and combined with low flow plumbing fixtures offset over 60,000 gallons of potable water use per year for the project. This represents over 70% less potable water use over a similar office building built to current code. All of this was achieved for a remarkably affordable construction cost of $105/sf of floor area plus $30/sf in the cost of the land and existing derelict building. The HVAC system is VRF Heat Pumps and Heat Recovery Ventilation. The building uses no HVAC energy for 40% of the year and is setup around a passive mode of operation using operable windows.

Awards

• 1st Place 2013 ASHRAE National Technology Awards, Existing Buildings
• 1st Place 2012 AIA What Makes it Green Award

Read more about project in High Performance Building magazine.