This report was published by Greenbuild in October 2022. A focus on sustainability and energy efficiency in the multifamily housing market can deliver benefits for a wide range of stakeholders. Using green features and sustainable design achieves optimal results when all priorities, perspectives, and goals of stakeholders are in balance. The use of low-risk and proven technology and methods that have measurable value-add to the properties can be achieved with energy modeling and sustainable design at the earliest planning stages, ensuring every decision delivers a measurable benefit. This paper presents multifamily housing projects by teams of developers, architects, and engineers in Seattle. It details the necessary evolution of integrated design and energy strategies creatively implemented in three successive completed multifamily projects in Seattle. Multifamily housing, if designed and built responsibly, provides much-needed housing for a fraction of the cost of single-family construction. By design, dense urban housing creates a smaller carbon footprint, dramatically reducing per-person energy use and carbon emissions.

Keywords: Architecture/Engineering, Building Retrofits, Energy Efficiency/Management, Healthy Buildings, HVAC & Indoor Air Quality (IAQ), Post-COVID-19, Property Management, multi-residential, energy modeling, electrification