San Francisco’s First LEED Platinum Luxury Condominium Tower
Design. Location. Stature. An ability to define a city. 181 Fremont is a landmark for the future and as such it was designed to serve as an enduring symbol of achievement and inspiration for all who see it. One of the many examples of this is the building’s pre-certification as San Francisco’s first LEED Platinum luxury condominium tower.
In an effort to minimize the ecological footprint of 181 Fremont, the Jay Paul Company turned to the people who wrote the book on sustainability. Urban Fabrick is a San Francisco-based firm that actually helped develop the San Francisco Green Building Code a decade ago.
Today, they bring a suite of best practices and building materials together for a comprehensive approach to sustainable living. While the existing LEED Platinum standards are ambitious to meet, the Jay Paul Company and Urban Fabrick took 181 Fremont even further. Every finish and material was evaluated to meet—and often exceed—CALGreen requirements.
181 Fremont has also been engineered to be the most resilient and seismically-sound tall building on the West Coast, with an ingenious high-strength steel exoskeleton structural system. The building’s design is innovative in ways both obvious and invisible. Passersby, and even its residents, probably won’t notice the painstaking efforts that went into this architectural feat.
Interesting Facts:
- The team traveled to Australia in order to learn about the latest water preservation and recycling techniques. Chief among the innovations being introduced here is a membrane bioreactor in the building, which will actively save 1.3 million gallons of water per year.
- 181 Fremont’s water recycling system captures both graywater and rainwater for reuse, and its glass curtain wall system maximizes natural light, giving eco-conscious residents the option to dial back their use of electricity.
- The building’s construction caissons, which were designed by the engineering firm Arup, are the deepest ever drilled in San Francisco, extending over 260 feet into the bedrock. This means that the state-of-the-art structure has unparalleled stability, and Arup has awarded it a REDi™ Gold rating for seismic-resistant construction.
181 Fremont is an engineering marvel that’s here to stay.