h2’s architect, David Baker, is not known for his modesty. In fact, quite the opposite. The man behind David Baker + Partners thinks BIG. The celebrated San Francisco architect has bold and bright ideas about how our dwellings should be designed. His SOMA Studios – an affordable housing project that hangs like a Picasso above Eighth and Howard streets – was named one of the city’s best buildings of the past decade by important people who write about such things. And in recent years, as the “green” architect’s focus shifted towards creating energy-efficient, environmentally sustainable, high-density cityscapes – like his 224-apartment neighborhood at Showplace Square on Seventh St. – he’s been hailed as the “high priest” of new-urbanism. So when it came time to select an architect to design our super green h2hotel, he was a natural choice. Not to mention the bang-up job he did with our AIA-award-winning big sister, Hotel Healdsburg, of course.
David Baker + Partners was charged with creating a fun, fresh, and eco-conscious property that catered to active users, and at risk of sounding immodest, or like a sports color commentator, he smacked it straight outta the park. It’s not just that h2hotel looks cool. Sure, it has a visually striking living roof that reflects the rolling hills of Healdsburg, but form always follows function. That undulating roof also serves several environmental purposes (more on the roof in an upcoming post). In fact, there’s a pragmatic utility to everything in Baker’s design, right down to the corten steel balconies that will (quite literally) imbue the property with rustic charm as they intentionally rust over time and stain the exterior. But when talking about h2hotel on a recent press tour, what really got him animated was the rooms themselves.
Genius at work
“I like to think of this as the Apple of hotel rooms,” he beamed. “It’s the iHotel.” For one, the rooms are sleek and stylish. With the 42-inch flat-screen TV’s mounted on the walls (and an auxiliary plug to play movies off your laptop) there’s no need for the deep dresser or bulky armoire that oftentimes house the entertainment system. So the rooms can afford to be sleeker without sacrificing any space or comfort. And with user-friendly closets that can easily accommodate your rolling luggage, he eliminated the standard-issue luggage racks that he may or may not have described as “horrible” on the tour. Another pet peeve of his seems to be showers that you can’t easily adjust without getting blasted with cold water, so he re-imagined their design so you could tweak the head and temperature before stepping in. “We got to build a full scale mock-up of this room which was really great because we solved a lot of the issues. Typically when you design a hotel, you build it and then realize all the things that are wrong. But this time, we got to fine tune things big and small.”
As the tour wound down, he elaborated on the iHotel analogy. “Apple has been gaining market share because it’s actually easier to use. And people finally realize you pay a little more, and you get something really useful that’s not frustrating all the time. I think people will see that we really thought this thing through.” And with David Baker thinking things through, we know we’re in pretty good hands. Not just me and you and we, but the planet itself.
As you can surely imagine, a construction project like h2h doesn’t happen overnight. It’s takes years and years of prep and planning. And since it was important to us to reach LEED Gold certification, there were that many more hurdles to hop and hoops to jump through in our build-out. It’s been a challenge, yes, but a wonderfully exciting one. And now, with the nuts and bolts, halls and walls in place, it’s time for the fun part… the Art.
Of course, in keeping with h2h’s eco-conscious spirit, we were looking for a very specific aesthetic. And to help us out, we tapped the absurdly talented folks at Swarm Gallery in Oakland. Swarm isn’t just a gallery space, it’s more like a clever cultural experiment. Researching new ideas pertaining to “green art” – artworks that embrace the natural environment – Swarm Gallery commissioned a series of works with regard to our Healdsburg surroundings, with an interest on high aesthetic standards, educating guests of the area’s native plants, and provoking curiosity in our “green” efforts.
Today, we’re installing Katy Stone’s “Little Universe (Burst Boom Bloom)” in Spoonbar. Though the piece on the left isn’t the one you’ll see at h2hotel, it gives you a sense of her unique aesthetic. The former Marin County resident, works with acrylic paint on archival plastic film, and in the case of “Burst Boom Bloom,” the installation will almost look like yellow bursts of lichen that wrap around Spoonbar’s concrete wall into our lobby. Blooming with life and color, the piece is designed to reflect the abundance of nature in the area. Local photographer, Craig Clement, will be capturing today’s installation in time-lapse photography, and we’ll post it here as soon as that’s processed. Exciting stuff!
As the great cultural anthropologist, Margaret Mead, famously said…
Now, regardless of what you may or may not think about slogan stickers like the aforepasted, it’s hard to argue with her sentiment. Especially when you see how a small community like ours has rallied to restore a creek. Foss Creek, which cuts through Healdsburg and outlines our h2hotel property, was once a thriving Steelhead habitat, with thousands of the endangered trout running through it each year. And then came plants like the Himalayan Blackberry, or English Ivy. If they sound suspiciously “un-Healdsburgian,” that’s because they are. Since these non-natives are removed from their natural predators and flora competition, it’s easier for them to run rampant. In our case, the Himalayan Blackberry overwhelmed the banks of Foss Creek, and in the blink of an eye, effed everything up.
How?
Foss Creek Flooding, Jan '08
Let’s start with the flooding. The Blackberry in question is an extremely fast growing plant that “leapfrogs” other plants by growing branches through existing plants and those branches sprout new branches that climb higher until, just like that, it envelopes native vegetation. In its growth Himalayan Blackberry weaves a web of fibery branches that will knit together from opposite sides of a creek and form debris dams that can, you guessed it, withstand the force of flowing water. When this happens it can cause a creek to jump its banks as Healdsburgers saw in January of 2008.
Beyond that, non-natives are bad news for the wildlife. Here’s an oversimplified, and questionably scientific summary of the problem:
Plants don’t like to be eaten. So they develop self defense mechanisms like poisons or terrible tasting compounds to avoid being eaten. Well, over the course of however many tens of thousands of years, the local wildlife have evolved to deal with the local plants’ self-defense strategies. If they didn’t, they wouldn’t be here. (Take the Monarch Butterfly, for instance, which has developed anti-bodies to deal with the poisonous milkweed.) Now, when you introduce an exotic, non-native species that the local wildlife can’t safely eat, or don’t want to eat, well, they go away.
The Folks Margaret Mead Was Talking About
While Foss Creek, like so many other urban creeks, has been an afterthought for far too long, in recent years, local organizations like Russian Riverkeeper and Trout Unlimited have spearheaded an effective restoration project. h2hotel and sister property, Hotel Healdsburg, have partnered with these non-profits, and the funds we provide train local volunteers in native and exotic plant identification. Volunteers are taught the proper eradication techniques for exotic plants, and optimal methods for re-establishing native species. The funds are also used for planning, regulatory permits, tools, new native plants, irrigation to establish new plants, erosion control and interpretive signage to educate visitors on the restoration project.
But beyond our fiscal contributions, we knew it was imperative that our hotel was mindful of the neighboring creek’s delicate ecosystem. It is, after all, right in our backyard. And so, in addition to our efforts to restore the native plant species, our architects, contractors and consultants used low impact development strategies to reduce or eliminate stormwater pollutants. Our living roof is the most obvious example. Sure it looks cool and recalls the rolling hills of Healdsburg, but it also filters rainwater and protects Foss Creek from runoff. The end result is that a small group of thoughtful, dedicated citizens is helping to transform a blighted creek into the jewel it could and should be for residents, visitors and, most importantly, wildlife.
Find out more about the Foss Creek Project. And if you’re feeling inspired, sign up for one of the Saturday morning Volunteer Days. After all, we can change the world. Or at least save the endangered Steelhead. One Himalayan Blackberry bush at a time.
A sleek, stylish, and dare we say, sexy granny bike. Imagine that! Well, Rob Forbes, founder of Design Within Reach imagined just that. Inspired by a trip he took to the the famously bike-friendly city of Amsterdam, he set about creating his own collection of two-wheelers for people with a passion for bicycling in style. And in April, he launched PUBLIC Bikes. His mission has always been to improve the quality of the spaces we inhabit, and like the modern lights and furnishings that made DWR so successful, his line of bikes strikes that perfect balance between utility and high aesthetics. They combine the stripped down look of a fixed-gear bike with the comfort of the Dutch city bikes, with elevated handlebars that promote upright posture (ie. better visibility). Utility and high aesthetics. The Rob Forbes way. In a talk he gave at TED, he said “the first job of design is to serve a social purpose.” And bicycling certainly serves a social purpose.
We’ll spare you the “BIG” reasons why people should bike more and drive less. With each passing news cycle, they become more and more obvious. But all that aside, on the most basic, intrinsic level… biking is fun. And beyond that, it connects people to their community in a way that a car simply cannot. This from PUBLIC’s website: “Our vision is that more of our urban streets and sidewalks get reclaimed for walking and biking, and that our public spaces are developed for better human interaction and conversation. We’d like to see a closer personal connection between residences with shops, parks, cafes and libraries.” Sounds like a company after our own heart.
We can’t think of a more exciting way to experience Healdsburg than by bike. And this is precisely why we’ve secured eight PUBLIC bikes for our guests to enjoy. You can tool around town by day, and lock up it in our secure bike storage room by night. And for all you gearheads, we even have a tuning station so you can work on your bike. Bikes are first come first serve, so you might want to BYOB. And if you do BYOB, we might just offer you a free drink at Spoonbar. Whatever it takes to help folks reconsider the way we get around.
To steal PUBLIC’s slogan, “Come roll with us.”
Oh, and here’s something that should stir your imagination. Rush hour in the Netherlands.
By now, we’re assuming that most everyone – or at least anyone reading this post – has some sense of what it means to be green. Thanks to certain factors, like say, common sense, there’s a swell of people who care about and consider their impact on the environment. Look no further than the rise of local farmers’ markets and hybrid cars to see that we’re evolving into a more sustainable culture. Slowly, perhaps. But surely all the same.
And growing numbers of us take solace in the idea that our most powerful political voice lies not in the ballot box, but in our own wallets. Dollar voting is not a novel concept, but one that’s being effectively proven time and time again. If a community is willing to support their local farmers, said local farmers will most likely find an empty lot to sell their goods directly to the public, once a month and probably more. Call it common sense, supply and demand, whatever you want, but it’s within this crucible – that of the eco-conscious consumer – that boutiques like ours are born.
h2h is a LEED-certified hotel. What’s that? you ask. It’s this. But for the hyperlink wary, LEED stands for Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design. In short, it’s a point-based rating system that establishes whether a building was designed and built with green principles and practices in mind. For us, this meant:
Using locally sourced, environmentally responsible building materials, like reclaimed wood in our furnishings, floor coverings and cabinetry.
Installing an innovative living roof planted with native succulents that not only capture and filter rainwater, but provide a habitat for insects and birds… all while helping to contain energy in the building.
Heating our pool with the solar punch of our summer sun.
Working with the Russian Riverkeepers and Trout Unlimited to help restore Foss Creek, a troubled habitat for wild Steelhead trout that lines our property.
And all of this is to say nothing of the little things, like the complimentary PUBLIC bikes we offer to help you wheel around town. Or the h2o bars on each floor that offer complimentary purified sparkling and flat water. (Why buy a plastic water bottle when you can reuse a glass carafe for free, right?) And much much more.
Of course, this begs the question, why was it important to us to be a LEED-certified hotel? Furthermore, why are we striving to up the ante and become LEED gold-certified? Is it because it’s the cool thing to do? The trendy thing? Of course not. Rather, we know it’s the right thing to do. We believe strongly in this Healdsburg community and in taking care of the world we inhabit. And so long as it makes financial and practical sense, we are committed to creating a super green luxury experience. Lucky for us, there are enough people seeking such an experience. People like you. People who are informed and aware and willing to vote with your dollar. And thanks to you, there are increasing numbers of eco-friendly options in today’s marketplace – from farmers’ markets to boutique hotels like ours.
Thanks for being on board. We look forward to seeing you here in the near future.
A sleek, stylish, and dare we say, sexy granny bike. Imagine that! Well, Rob Forbes, founder of Design Within Reach imagined just that. Inspired by a trip he took to the the famously bike-friendly city of Amsterdam, he set about creating his own collection of two-wheelers for people with a passion for bicycling in style. And in April, he launched 
