Seattle's Hyatt at Olive 8 Promotes Sustainability

Building Better Hotels
Hyatt heads toward greener future with new eco-friendly Seattle hotel and new sustainable design guidelines.

By Derek Gale, Senior Editor -- Hotels

Put simply, the new 346-room Hyatt at Olive 8 looks and sounds green. From the all-glass façade and living roof to the actual name of the hotel, you cannot help but get a green feeling with this LEED-certification candidate property.

And give credit to architect Richard Gluckman because the Seattle hotel not only looks green, it also looks good.

"I think the Hyatt at Olive 8 is a good example that having a responsible environmental approach can also result in an aesthetically pleasing building—one doesn't have to compromise the other," says General Manager Mark Stiebeling.

While the blue glass architectural elements are striking, also contributing to the attractiveness of the property is the aforementioned living roof, which covers the first three floors of the hotel. Because of the podium-and-tower design of the property, south facing guestrooms (in the tower) look down onto the living roof.

"The aesthetics of looking at a roof planted with native plant materials versus traditional roofing materials is a completely different experience," notes Stiebeling. "It's amazing how much the view transforms the experience."

That said, the plants aren't only for show. They reduce the amount of heating or cooling required for the space immediately below—in this case, the hotel's ballroom. They also dramatically reduce the amount of rainwater going to storm sewers, as it is absorbed into the soil. Finally, they also keep the roof from generating additional heat into the atmosphere during the summer months.

Similarly, the glass façade allows abundant natural light into the building's public spaces, brightening the ambiance while minimizing the need for energy-consuming artificial lighting. Meanwhile, triple-paned glass and a special coating on the exterior protects from excessive heating of the building's interior.

Other aspects of the hotel's greenness are less obvious, but no less important from a design and/or operations standpoint. Some of those include water-reducing shower heads and dual-flush toilets, as well as guestroom master power controls for lighting to conserve electricity.

Hyatt at Olive 8’s glass façade and floor-to ceiling windows allow an abundance of natural light into the hotel’s public spaces and meeting spaces, reducing the need for artificial lighting, which helps save energy.

The net effect of these green design and operational features is a building that will use 32% less water and 20% less power than other similar-sized buildings in its class.

"We know that our commitment to the environmental program at the hotel will also reduce our operating costs," Stiebeling says. "We're certainly [excited] after a few months of operation to look at metrics such as utility cost per occupied room, or per cover in banquets and restaurants."

He says the Grand Hyatt Seattle property across the street, which he oversees as well, will offer a good baseline for comparing a more traditional hotel with one designed to be environmentally friendly.

And perhaps it is lucky for Stiebeling to have such an existing traditional hotel nearby, as Hyatt is unlikely to ever build another one like that again. The company's new global sustainable design guidelines, completed in 2008, will apply to every new-build hotel—as well as every renovation—across all brands worldwide going forward.

"We want to build our buildings 'right' from the start," says Brigitta Witt, Hyatt's vice president of environmental affairs.

That means recycling construction materials, implementing energy-efficient lighting, finding ways to conserve and recycle water, and generally building hotels in a way that allows them to be as environmentally friendly as possible.

For example, Witt says that something as simple as recycling mass quantities of paper and plastic bottles can be affected by design elements such as the size of a hotel's loading dock.

"What we've done with the design guidelines is made sure that even things like loading dock space get addressed, so that if a hotel has the opportunity to recycle, it is not limited by the size of its loading docks," she explains.

"Olive 8 was a great test for us—to understand everything that goes into a LEED-certified property. It helped us build a case for how relevant and important this is. From a cost perspective, there is a misconception that building an environmentally efficient property has to be substantially more expensive. We know that is not necessarily the case. But also, the reception from customers validated that this is something that is not just important to us as a company, but also is important to our customers."

Hyatt at Olive 8

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