Artisans Group
Artisans Group 1 Artisans Group 2 Artisans Group 3 Artisans Group 4 Artisans Group 5 Artisans Group 6 Artisans Group 7 Artisans Group 8

TESTIMONIALS
AWARDS
AFFILIATIONS

ABOUT US…

The Artisans Group is a true Design and Build firm. Bring us your needs with the confidence that we will take full responsibility for every phase of the project, while you spend your energy on realizing your dreams, and not on trying to manage a surprisingly large group of specialists and suppliers.

We have designed and built more Passive Houses than any other firm in Washington State. Creating a successful Passive House requires many different fiercely committed players who focus on the details. We have the experience to identify the important details, and a proven history of “getting them right.”

On a more personal level, every person at the Artisans Group  agrees on the essential need for freedom. Given the scope of choices in our lives, how we each achieve our sense of freedom looks different from one freedom-seeker to the next. Though, we all agree  that ‘simplifying’ is at the core of it somehow.

Fundamentally we need warm, dry shelter, good quality food and water, decent air to breathe, and a good amount of natural beauty, but, ‘quality of life’ begs us to expand our definition of ‘fundamental’. Discussions about ‘freedom’ around our offices include such topics as ‘peace of mind against rising future energy costs’, ‘limiting our carbon footprint‘, ‘more time for family and friends‘, ‘easy home maintenance’, ‘the total cost of owning a home’, good health into old age‘ and of course, we all dream of traveling sooner than later.

Not surprising to us, it turns out our clients feel much the same as we do. We are delighted to have found home buyers who value a new approach to the idea of ‘home’. At the Artisans Group, we are designing and building homes that we want to live in too. It’s pretty simple.

Artisans Group Mission

Juicy Bits
  • The Home of the Future

    New York based journalist Charlie Hoxie recently made a documentary, Passive Passion,  to help spread the word about designing and building using the Passive House methods. In his video clips he features the homeowner of the first certified Passive House …


    juicy divider
  • Testimonials

    • "I have nothing but good things to say about Artisans Group..."
    • "They seem just as excited as I am about the project and its realization!..."
    • "Our experience of working with the Artisans Group was remarkably smooth..."
    • "We are very excited about our passive house built by the Artisans Group!..."
    • "Great job and we will definitely (and are already) recommend your company to others..."
    • "The idea of a passive house was new to us and we chose it because of its overall view of environmental sustainability..."
    • "We were impressed by the home The Artisans Group designed for us..."
    • "The complexity involved in all the details of building a house is huge..."
    • "The quality, creativity, expertise and service have been second to none..."
    • "You can't greenwash this. You have to be a terrific builder to do this..."
    • "The windows never feel cold, nor do the concrete floors, even though they don't have in-floor heating..."
    • "The numbers speak for themselves… I can't see why anyone would build any other way than a Passive House..."
    juicy divider
  • Just a Thought

    • "Well, we don't rent pigs and I figure it's better to say it right out front."
      ~Gus McCrae
    • "Coming together is a beginning. Keeping together is progress. Working together is success."
      ~Henry Ford
    • "The crowning fortune of a man is to be born to some pursuit which finds him employment and happiness, whether it be to make baskets, or broad swords, or canals, or statues, or songs."
      ~Ralph Waldo Emerson
    • "While features, benefits, and price are still important to people, experiences and personal identity are even more important."
      ~ Marty Neumeier
    • "A man is rich in proportion to the number of things he can afford to let alone."
      ~ Henry David Thoreau
    • "Each morning when I awake like a scholar at his first class, I prepare a blank mind for the day, to write upon."
      ~Blind Man, Circle of Iron, Kung Fu
    • "The most powerful drive in the ascent of man is his pleasure in his own skill. He loves to do what he does well and, having done it well, he loves to do it better."
      ~The polymath, Jacob Bronowski
    • "In the same way that music inspires us to certain feelings, space can do the same thing."
      ~Sarah Susanka
    • "Architecture is the learned game, correct and magnificent, of forms assembled in the light."
      ~Le Corbusier
    • "Architecture, of all the arts, is the one which acts the most slowly, but the most surely, on the soul."
      ~Ernest Dimnet
    • "It's design, not strategy that ignites passion in people. And the magic behind better design and better business is innovation."
      ~ Marty Neumeier
    • "Be a yardstick of quality. Some people aren't used to an environment where excellence is expected."
      ~Steve Jobs
    • "The fragrance always stays in the hand that gives the rose."
      ~Hada Bejar,
    • "Always design a thing by considering it in its next larger context - a chair in a room, a room in a house, a house in an environment, an environment in a city plan."
      ~Eliel Saarinen
    • "If everyone is moving forward together, then success takes care of itself."
      ~Henry Ford
    • "When a team outgrows individual performance and learns team confidence, excellence becomes a reality."
      ~Joe Paterno
    • "ab ovo usque ad mala."
      ~Horace
    • "The heart is the chief feature of a functioning mind."
      ~Frank Lloyd Wright
    • "Expect innovation…from people inside the company who think outside."
      ~Marty Neumeier
    • "Good relations with the Wookiees, I have."
      ~Yoda
    • "If everyone is moving forward together, then success takes care of itself."
      ~Henry Ford
    • "Let him that would move the world first move himself."
      ~Socrates
    • "Organic buildings are the strength and lightness of the spiders' spinning, buildings qualified by light, bred by native character to environment, married to the ground."
      ~Frank Lloyd Wright
    • "Anything is possible if you can perceive the way."
      ~ Kwai Chang Caine
    • "Believe you can and you're halfway there."
      ~Theodore Roosevelt
    • "Art washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life."
      ~Pablo Picasso
    • "Community cannot for long feed on itself; it can only flourish with the coming of others from beyond, their unknown and undiscovered brothers."
      ~Howard Thurman
    • "To see a world in a grain of sand,
      And a heaven in a wild flower,
      Hold infinity in the palm of your hand,
      And eternity in an hour."
      ~Wm. Blake
    • "We are limited, not by our abilities, but by our vision."
      ~Anon.
    • "The power of imagination makes us infinite."
      ~John Muir
    • "The crowning fortune of a man is to be born to some pursuit which finds him employment and happiness, whether it be to make baskets, or broad swords, or canals, or statues, or songs."
      ~Ralph Waldo Emerson
    • "The Constitution only gives people the right to pursue happiness. You have to catch it yourself."
      ~Benjamin Franklin
    • "Without craftsmanship, inspiration is a mere reed shaken in the wind."
      ~Johannes Brahms
    • "Once you make a decision, the universe conspires to make it happen."
      ~Ralph Waldo Emerson
    • "Without leaps of imagination, or dreaming, we lose the excitement of possibilities. Dreaming, after all, is a form of planning."
      ~ Gloria Steinem
    • "What is more agreeable than one's home?"
      ~ Cicero
    • "You can't appreciate Shakespeare until you've read him in the original Klingon."
      ~General Chang
    • "Form follows function-that has been misunderstood. Form and function should be one, joined in a spiritual union."
      ~Frank Lloyd Wright
    • "Size matters not, ... Look at me. Judge me by size, do you?"
      ~Yoda
    • "The environment should be put in the category of our national security. Defense of our resources is just as important as defense abroad. Otherwise what is there to defend?"
      ~Robert Redford
    • "Things architectural have two parents: construction and art. Construction serves. Art satisfies."
      ~Harold E. Wagner
    • "Making variations on a theme is really the crux of creativity."
      ~Douglas R. Hofstadter
    • "Heroism is simply a matter of facing the truth. One action can put everything in the proper place."
      ~Kwai Chang Caine
    • "Be a yardstick of quality. Some people aren't used to an environment where excellence is expected." ~Steve Jobs
    • "How do you know when an idea is innovative? When it scares the hell out of you."
      ~Marty Neumeier
    • "All architecture is shelter, all great architecture is the design of space that contains, cuddles, exalts, or stimulates the persons in that space."
      ~Philip Johnson
    • "There are three forms of visual art: Painting is art to look at, sculpture is art you can walk around, and architecture is art you can walk through."
      ~Dan Rice
    • "The home should be the treasure chest of living."
      ~Le Corbusier
    • "Per aspera ad astra"
      ~Latin Motto
    • "Logic is the beginning of wisdom; not the end."
      ~Spock
    • "When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the universe."
      ~ John Muir
    • "While features, benefits, and price are still important to people, experiences and personal identity are even more important."
      ~Marty Neumeier
    • "Wisdom begins in wonder."
      ~Socrates
    • "Simplicity and repose are the qualities that measure the true value of any work of art."
      ~ Frank Lloyd Wright
    • "In the absence of commerce, chocolate is more valuable than gold."
      ~Randy Foster