As the first building of its kind, the Pet Resource Center is a revolution in the animal care industry. With kennels and cages intentionally omitted, it’s function is similar in many ways to an animal shelter, but its fundamental philosophy is the polar opposite.

Best Friends Animal Society has a goal of No-Kill by 2025. To achieve this they had to devise an alternate approach disrupting a 150 year-old industry.

Driven by data, they are building an infrastructure to transport animals from overpopulated parts of the country to underserved parts, and are housing shelter pets with local foster families rather than keeping them on site in kennels and cages that are detrimental to health and behavior.

Instead of hiding on the edge of town, this building is centrally located and easily visible and accessible to all. It houses a medical center for animals passing through and for local rescues, a community center filled with engagement activities for the locals and a support center for all the foster parents and animals. Events such as Knitting with Kittens, Foster Fridays and Adoption Saturdays keep them connected to the community and make this a model for future centers worldwide.

THE VERNACULAR
A deep dive into the local barn vernacular allowed us to parse and categorize that language into architectural strategies for form. These are the strategies we used to manipulate our roofscape to achieve an efficient and intentional peaking, merging, and kicking out of the slopes to traverse the site and shelter the program.

A NEW WAY
During Covid many shelters were shut down and as a result, a large network of foster parents emerged. Best Friends capitalized on this and halfway through design, we decided that the kennels had to go: The goal was to build a shelter of the future.

A CUSTOMIZED PROGRAM
This meant a different approach to the design of the building. We had to rethink the purpose, the flow and the program. This Center needed to be community-focused, inclusive, and welcoming. We needed to pull the public into the world of Best Friends and get them involved, either to donate, volunteer, adopt or foster. It needed to support its affiliated rescues, foster parents, and the animals. It needed to provide adequate medical care and spay and neuter services. It needed to educate on all aspects of animal care including dog behavior or kitten feeding. It would even provide a community pantry for parents that were in need. Alongside this, there needed to be a ‘transport’ component that could support the relocation of pets across the country. The spaces are designed around these functions and creatively support these aspirations.

COMMUNITY AND CONNECTION
The building form makes a logical split between the main Community spaces to the north and the more technical Medical and Support spaces to the south. The linking elements are the front courtyard and Porch spaces and the Volunteer Bridge. With parking to the south, and pulled away from the building, visitors approach on foot from the front porch, passing a large dog-themed mural by a local artist. The Medical wing is pulled back so that a clear path to the front door is revealed. This side entry to the main lobby space is intentionally incidental and as such inclusive to all. Visitors can ‘slip in’ easily without much pomp.

The axis of the main community lobby space provides stunning views of the park to the east and west capturing the sunrise in the winter and the sunset in the summer through its high peaked roofs and providing parkgoers respite.

Interior and Exterior spaces are connected wherever possible with open views and large operable glass doors. The two levels of the Community Wing also visually connected. The openness of the space invites and encourages exploration with public access given throughout the facility. Even the administrative space is open to view from the main lobby although most staff is working out in the main space making them easily approachable.

Stadium seating and a slide (for fun) takes guests downstairs to the dog enrichment room and second community room where Best Friends holds Adoption events, Dog Yoga classes amongst other enrichment events.

A critical backbone to the success of the non-profit: The volunteer bridge is held in esteem as it straddles the lower courtyard and is clearly visible from both the Community and Medical Wing Entries.
Every space within this wing is highly flexible: almost all spaces are open and furniture movable to accommodate change and the growth of the facility.

SUSTAINABLE DESIGN
The Pet Resource Center is designed to integrate fully into the surrounding Park. Its axis and orientation reveres the ‘Hillside Meadow’ to the west of it that is maintained in its natural state with local flora and fauna. Positioned slightly higher in elevation and overlooking the oval, the building’s ‘Front Porch’ provides inviting access to those walking or cycling past. A clear path through the building allows them to traverse its many functions and connect the West Park to the East park.

In the early phase while working with the City and the Park designers to establish the limits of our site, we identified zones within the Park footprint that were void of trees to minimize our impact on vegetation. The building takes up roughly 40,000 sf of land and the rest of the 6 acres of our site is hydroseeded and left to natural growth. A majority of exterior spaces use decomposed granite as a surface allowing water to permeate into the ground. A retention pond to the north of the building collects all the stormwater runoff and allows it to percolate slowly.

WATER EFFICIENCY
The Center takes all measures to lower its water consumption and use appropriate low water fixtures but it’s active elimination of kennels in this building type is what makes it stand out.
Instead of boarding dogs in kennels, the center has devised a new way of housing their adoptable dogs.
Best Friends has created a network of foster parents that house the dogs in their homes. The Center arranges for the housing roughly 1000 dogs in local homes annually. This operational shift is what allows us to eliminate kennels. The average stay of an adult dog in a typical animal shelter is 42 days which means that we would need 115 kennels to accommodate the animals and achieve the desired rate of adoption. This would have accumulated to roughly 7,000 sf of kennels space. Beyond their behavioral and health impacts, kennels are expensive to build, costly to maintain and have extremely heavy water usage. Kennels have internal trench drains and are hosed down daily with hot water. As a rule of thumb dog trench washdown uses 3.2 GPD/dog which amounts to 135,000 gallons of water SAVED annually. This in turn means an EUI reduction of 11 kBtu/ft2/yr
by not heating up 135000 gallons of water annually

ENERGY
The main strategy to reduce energy use is to maximize exterior program area to reduce conditioned space. Other strategies include elongating the North building in the east-west direction to achieve longer exposure for daylighting, adding awning in the West and the shade structure in the East for sun protection, and specifying cool roof to prevent excessive heat gain inside the building.

A combination of astronomical timeclock, photocell and strategically placed local controls and occupancy sensors provide for customizable user interaction with efficient LED lighting while seamlessly providing energy reduction. Efficient distribution of electricity was achieved by providing 480/277V power for large electrical building systems, paired with strategically placed energy efficient transformers for the common 120V loads.

The HVAC design uses a Variable Refrigerant Flow (VRF) heat pump system. The VRF system is designed with an internal heat recovery system to allow simultaneous heating and cooling in different zones of the building. There is a Dedicated Outdoor Air System (DOAS) for each half of the building. This system pretreats the air to deliver approximately room neutral temperature and humidity fresh air to the different spaces.

The water heating system utilizes multiple on-demand gas-fired water heaters to reduce gas usage and while providing sufficient hot water to the users.

WELLBEING
The building was designed to encourage physical movement - terraced seating and the slide at the main staircase make it a playful experience to explore the space. Educational and engaging elements throughout the building, like infographics and cat's portal windows, are thoughtfully placed at both adult's and children's heights. There are no kennels or cages in the center. Dogs stay in meet-and-greet rooms, and each has access to exterior play yards. Cats live in free-roaming rooms where they can interact with staff and volunteers.

The building was shaped to create multiple courtyard spaces for events and animal training. Most occupied spaces have views of the surrounding landscape, which is the future 8th St Gateway Park site.

Up to 72% of the occupied space is daylight. In the surgery suites, clerestory windows were placed to bring daylight into the interior. In addition, using astronomical timeclock, photocell, local controls, and occupancy sensors provide occupant comfort.

DISCOVERY
The design process for this Center involved stakeholders from the Best Friends Leadership Team, local Best Friends Management Staff, Local Veterinarians, as well as periodic involvement of City Officials, Donors, and the Park Designers. Since Covid had limited travel at the time, we engaged in a long series of weekly virtual meetings which continued from the early concept phase through to the completion of construction. This was a highly collaborative environment, also 90% female on all sides from engineers to architect to ownership to donors. It was this collaborative and frequent engagement that allowed us to shift gears early on and redefine the program and operations of the facility.
This camaraderie has continued post-occupancy and less frequent meetings have ensued to address any changing needs as the staff start to use the building.

While the goals of the Pet Resource Center are serious, the design of the center is playful, open and welcoming.
An on-site coffee lounge with free WiFi allows people to work in the company of adoptable cats and dogs. And people can bring their own dogs to the center for a DIY dog bathing station or to participate in dog socialization activities.