A small studio that builds

Vision

We believe that architecture can reveal the inherent beauty and poetry of life. By accomplishing more with less, we solve challenges with creativity and collaboration, inspiring communities to see new possibilities. Rooted in sustainability and innovation, we aim to design a better future for all living things and foster harmony between humanity and the natural world.

Mission

Drawing on building and material science as well as emerging technologies, Viridian uses the living-laboratory approach to the design-build paradigm to create net-zero architecture through circular construction and Integrated Project Delivery.

The buildings are the medium. The human and ecological fabric is the actual product.

What we do

Studio Viridian is the research and design lab. Viridian Builds is its field and building arm. Together we buy single-family properties in Seattle and turn them into small groups of three or four homes, set in living landscapes. We rent and hold what we build instead of selling it. That is a choice of stewardship over the fastest return, and it means we live with every decision for decades.

We test the whole approach first at a small pilot campus on the Kitsap Peninsula, where a mistake is cheap and the lessons are the point.

How we work

Living laboratory, beginner’s mind. Every project carries a stated goal, a baseline, a hypothesis that could prove wrong, measured results and a published conclusion. Failures are written up as carefully as successes.
First principles, then the checklist. Decisions pass through the same lenses in the same order: responsibility, values, technology, regulation, cost. Cost comes last on purpose.
Integrated, not fragmented. The people who build share a room with the people who draw.
Teach and be taught. We share our methods openly and look for people who have done the work far longer than we have.

Our six themes

Net-Zero Architecture

Buildings that use little energy, water and carbon over their whole life, judged by what each measure displaces in the place where it is built.

Beauty

Aesthetic excellence, ethical integrity and ecological responsibility, pursued together or not at all. The most sustainable building is the one loved enough to be kept.

Circular Construction

Buildings as material banks: keep what exists, design the next change, and waste nothing that still has value.

AEC Innovation

Counter the building industry's fragmentation, thin margins and waste through integrated delivery, shared data, measured results and new methods.

People

Architecture is for people: well-being, safety, dignity, community and a lasting commitment to place.

Nature

Design buildings and their living landscapes together, with equal care, so each restores the other.

Tenets

We don’t know everything.
We treasure curiosity.
There is beauty and value in everything.
Our aim is not to save the world, but to improve it to benefit as many as possible.
Incremental change is preferred.
Some improvement is better than no improvement.
We can’t please everyone, and we accept the things we cannot control.
Trying to do too many things at once can lead to achieving nothing.
The world is nuanced, and rarely are things black and white.
Life is short. We try not to let making a living get in the way of making a life.

Nine axioms of good design

Practice the art of enough. Design with a disciplined hand, seeking the balance where nothing is lacking and nothing is wasted.
The poetics of purpose. Make architecture that is proportionate and appropriate to its time, its place and its use.
Let materials speak their truth. Beauty is not applied. It is revealed when we stop disguising.
Ground grace with gravity. Let every aesthetic choice be rooted in a deeper purpose.
Design as an act of kinship. Consider the neighbors, the city, the site and the Earth.
Be a silent steward. Design for the future as well as the present, and treat every resource with respect.
Capture the pulse of the now. Let the work speak the language of its own era.
Speak truth softly. Let the architecture offer a polite moral reflection on the world as it is.
Celebrate the fleeting. Bow to the ephemeral, and draw attention to a world in constant motion.

The name, and the bird

Viridian is a blue-green pigment, the color of new growth with a little shadow in it. The hummingbird in our mark is drawn by hand. The pair in the collage above are Viridian Metaltails, Metallura williami, hummingbirds of the high Andes, from John Gould’s monograph of 1861. A hummingbird takes very little and pollinates as it goes. That seemed a fair thing to aim for.

People

Keith Cash, co-founder.

Write to us at info@studioviridian.com.