About

The Artisans Group is a forward-thinking Design and Build company based in Olympia Washington.

Sustainability means many things to many people. In the building industry, ’sustainability’ is something that is quickly becoming measurable and certifiable. Of course, this can be highly valuable when designing and building to attain specific performance standards. Some essential parts of the sustainable design mission are less quantifiable but equally important and one of those parts is connecting people to places in a healthy and intrinsic way.This is a big one for us.

We are fundamentally committed to the mission of sustainable design. Designing homes and building houses with an educated conscience requires a real personal commitment and passion about the subject. There are many ways to ‘build green’ these days, but they are not all equal, and they don’t all add intrinsic value to the homeowner or to the earth.We work hard to keep ourselves focused on cutting-edge technologies, materials and building standards. Every person on our building design team is a LEED Accredited Professional (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design).  Our  lead building designer, Tessa Smith,  is a Certified Passive House Consultant, and our Owner, Randy Foster just completed phase 1 of the Passive House training. There are less than 300 certified consultants in the United States. The Passive House energy standards are singularly the industries most stringent energy efficient design and build standards today.

Our blog was created as a venue to share ideas and inspirations as well as a place where we can challenge accepted concepts and consider how we might ‘do it’ differently and more acceptably/exceptionally in the future.