ADELINE ST URBAN SALVAGE PROJECT

Summary
In this project, Leger Wanaselja Architecture remodeled and added to a 100 year old house and adjacent concrete block shop in Berkeley, California.  Raising up the two and a half story house and building a new commercial space below created a compound of two street level commercial spaces with two residential units above.  Rather than simply refurbishing the existing buildings, we salvaged them.   Recombining building elements with discarded auto parts and recycled materials, we created a modern, sun-filled architecture that uses a minimum of new material.  Several energy saving measures were included throughout that project that taken together dramatically improved energy performance.  Residences now use less than a third as much gas as those in similar buildings of this era.  Cutting edge at the time of completion, this project won both national and local AIA awards for green design. 

Details
All of the single pane aluminum windows were changed out for double pane wood and new windows also were double pane wood.  New skylights on the south added needed solar heat gain and daylighting, while triple glazing on these skylights minimized night time losses.  All of the exterior walls of the larger building and both roofs were insulated with blown-in cellulose. The new slab floor was also insulated and thermally broken at the perimeter.

Our ecological design and construction process and our commitment to recycling and reuse figured prominently in the renovation.  We recycled “internally” by reusing, in new locations, the doors, windows and trim that were carefully removed and stored during demolition, and all framing lumber was FSC certified.  Functional and whimsical details, often involving salvaged materials, animate the entire project:  the kitchen counters and tables are slabs of wood retrieved from storm-downed trees; the pendant lights are custom made from French vinegar bottles; and a variety of automobile components, from rear-view mirrors to hatchbacks, are used for benches, shelves, railings and awnings.

Construction by Wanaselja Construction
Photographs by Karl Wanaselja, Ethan Kaplan and Linda Svendsen