Conscious Choice Seattle: Queens of Green

February 2006 | Cover Report

Queens of Green

By Heather Nordell

You don’t often write the building trades, women and environmentalism in the same paragraph.

Or decade.

But here are three local women who have blazed trails of innovation on the frontier of sustainable housing. Look for where their technical skills intersected with passion and resilience in each story.

Martha Rose
53, builder/owner, Martha Rose Construction
www.martharoseconstruction.com

“Get a job that earns a man’s wage,” a friend exhorted Martha Rose three decades ago, as Rose was about to turn 21.

Rose took the advice to heart but wondered what to do. She didn’t go to college and had no interest in office work.

But she had skilled hands.

Rose forged into the male-dominated construction business. At the time, she lived in Washington, D.C. where a major subway construction project turned away several women as prospective workers. The subsequent lawsuits and headlines cracked open the doors of the boys-only club.

That was Rose’s first, but far from last activism experience.

After the lawsuits, Rose spent weeks visiting project sites seeking work. Eventually she hooked on as a carpenter’s assistant for a massive 200-unit residential development.

Some of the crew shared lunch with her while others sang taunts, “Look at granny redneck,” while flinging mud and laying bricks.

“If I hire you, all my men would quit,” exclaimed one supervisor. A financier fired her after he discovered Rose earned more than her junior male crewmates.

One boss noticed the peer ridicule and told Rose, “Just ignore them.”

“Knowing someone understood was all I needed,” Rose recalls.

After four years, her confidence and proficiency were ready for new sights. During the national energy crisis of the mid-1970s Rose moved West as a framer and foundation worker in Portland. She joined a civil disobedience group that occupied the construction site of the Satsop nuclear plants and later helped sponsor the first two Northwest Alternative Energy Fairs.

Several years later, Rose began freelancing in Seattle. She learned how to build homes that conserved energy and maintained healthier indoor air quality. Three years ago, Rose discovered the national Build Green certification program checklist and was thrilled to realize that she was already doing many things on the list.

Today, Martha Rose Construction is celebrated as one of our region’s greenest builders. “I am now getting a flood of inquiries from people interested in joining my company,” she explains. “I advise them to join any company. Work to gain their employer’s respect and then help them become green. That contribution will have an even bigger effect on our environment.”

Terry Phelan
48, architect/owner, Living Shelter Design
www.livingshelter.com

As a Campfire Girl in Spokane, Terry Phelan relished the round-the-fire stories from Native American cultures and the regular chance to be out in nature. She felt a strong connection to sustainability issues and her time around the campfire only enhanced that.

These days, Phelan owns one of the only regional woman-owned green architectural firms and serves on the Northwest Eco-Building Guild board.

The truth is, Phelan never enjoyed school. But she loved to draw. She enrolled as the only woman in a local college architectural drafting class. After two quarters her instructor advised, “I don’t think this is the field for you. Why don’t you take interior design?”

Young and impressionable, Phelan switched courses briefly but quickly returned to architecture.

Phelan followed an apprenticeship path to become an architect. Although she didn’t have a degree, time and talent landed her a job in an architect’s office. She worked there for three years and during that time passed all seven architecture exams.

Most of Phelan’s early design assignments were for super-sized, single-family homes. She enjoyed design but something about these designs didn’t click with her green values. By 35-years-old, Phelan realized that she was not on her true path and questioned her commitment to architecture.

“The hardest part was figuring out how to do what I loved, pay my bills and still be true to myself,” remembers Phelan.

Then a light glowed like the campfires of old. While reading the Real Goods catalog, she came across an ad for the book Strawbale House, written by Athena Swentzell Steen.

“I realized I could do architecture and still be true to myself,” she recalls.

Phelan read the book cover to cover and began taking workshops on natural building and strawbale design.

Serendipity lent another hand. A few months later, Phelan was laid off. She embraced the opportunity to start her own green architectural firm.

“I had to follow my dream and have faith that if I did what I loved everything would fall into place,” says Phelan.

Fourteen years later, Living Shelter Design is going strong.

“Some of my clients choose my company because we’re green,” she says. “Some sought me out because they thought a woman architect would be specially attuned to the details of what makes a house live well.”

Ameé Quiriconi
34, manufacturer and owner, Tiger Mountain Innovation
www.tmi-online.com

Two blonde teenage Kansas girls spent the summer working construction. Ameé Quiriconi and Katrina Cooper roofed, remodeled and hammered alongside the boys.

“Our supervisor had a limited vision of our capabilities, but while many of the guys were looking for their next beer, we fixed a roof in the blazing sun,” says Quiriconi, whose earliest tree house projects made her a natural for architectural engineering.

Despite being only one of two women in her program’s graduating class from Kansas State University, Quiriconi always felt supported by her professors.

Upon commencement, she became a building engineer in Seattle.

“As a twenty-year old female engineer, I wasn’t what many clients were expecting,” she says. ”When I showed up at construction sites, I wore my construction boots and worked quickly to demonstrate I knew what I was doing.”

During that time, the City of Seattle had started using the US Green Building Council’s LEED (Leadership in Environment & Energy Design) standards for all new construction.

“It was the first time I was exposed to the concept of sustainability,” she recalls.

LEED projects sparked Quiriconi’s interest in energy conservation and green building.

From there, Quiriconi started her own consulting practice for energy-efficient lighting design and green building. Among her projects was the Issaquah Highlands Fire Station, which received LEED silver certification. She continued her education with a nine-month Sustainable Building Advisor (SBA) program and later, a Master’s degree from Antioch University.

Quiriconi’s Antioch economics class further expanded her knowledge of sustainability. She realized the importance of local in the equation.

Her thesis turned into her next business venture.

She and her Kansas friend, Katrina Cooper own Tiger Mountain Innovations, which manufactures Squak Mountain Stone, a durable and beautiful stone-like material for countertops and tiles made from local recycled paper, glass and fly ash concrete.

“After learning about sustainability I saw the writing on the wall. I wanted to use my skills to do my part,” says Quiriconi. “Starting my business took every week and weekend for many months but it felt like the right path.”

Quiriconi sees green as becoming mainstream in the not-so-distant future.

“We need to bring along the laggards but also begin to think beyond green,” she explains. “Green should be part of what we do anyway along with the other things people expect such as service, quality and value.”

Heather Nordell writes the Green Lines column for Seattle Conscious Choice.

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