Muriel's Landing I Seattle, Washington

In planning a new 100-unit multi-family apartment building in Seattle’s vibrant University District, developers at The Schuster Group knew it had set the bar high with previous projects. The developer wanted to live up to its reputation of combining innovative, contemporary style with high quality and a focus on sustainability and energy efficiency.

Throughout the years, The Schuster Group name has become synonymous with innovation, sustainability and assured quality.

The design for Muriel’s Landing (named in honor of Mark Schuster’s great aunt) by Seattle-based Caron Architecture included floor-to-ceiling windows for optimal natural lighting and private balconies on selected units.

Radim Blazej, founder and CEO of Caron Architecture, says he realized that the large (10x8 ft and 10x10 ft), single-opening (no support post) windows and doors that his design called for were slightly unorthodox, but he had used REHAU systems on previous projects and he was confident the polymer solutions provider would be up to the challenge.

Blazej says REHAU’s ability to provide flexible solutions while maintaining high energy efficiency through Seattle’s cold, wet winters was vital. The energy code in Washington is one of the strictest in the country, he explains. All windows and doors had to exceed a U-factor of 0.25 by 15% in order to earn the four-star Built Green certification that Muriel’s Landing eventually received as part of Seattle’s Sustainable Building Policy.

Built Green is an environmentally friendly, nonprofit, residential building program of the Master Builders Association of King and Snohomish Counties. It is designed to help home buyers find quality, affordable homes that offer opportunities to protect the health of their families and the Northwest environment. Builders are required to meet energy, air quality, water efficiency and storm water management standards. A Built Green home is designed and constructed to maximize energy savings by reducing heat loss through a combination of design elements and building practices, thereby making the home more economical to operate.

For the windows, Blazej used the REHAU System 1400 casement design in multi-lite configurations with a basalt gray foil exterior. The System 1400 operating window is AAMA commercially certified to CW-PG60, with air infiltration at 0.03cfm/ft² and water to 12.12 psf, which are exceptional compared to alternative systems. It is a compression-seal projected window that provides high energy efficiency, hurricane-impact and acoustical performance and security. The system achieves a U-factor down to 0.18, also significantly better than thermally broken aluminum.“

The fact that the windows were so solid in terms of energy efficiency meant that we didn’t have to go through a lot of ‘gymnastics’ with the other parts of the building in order to meet energy compliance,” Blazej says. 

REHAU French hinged doors provided access to the outdoors for those apartments that feature a back terrace.