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Oneonta Gorge, in the Columbia River Gorge, is an unlikely muse for an apartment project.

The half-mile stretch of canyon is framed by steep, mossy walls where water trickles into a stream below a pounding waterfall. The area is wet and exposed. But it led Portland design-build firm SolTerra Systems to plan The Woods – a sustainable, six-story mixed-use development in the Eliot neighborhood.

“That was the inspiration for this whole thing,” said Andrea Wallace, SolTerra’s design director. “That these would be living walls, and it would create this ravine waterfall effect.”

SolTerra is finalizing drawings for The Woods at the northwest corner of North Williams Avenue and Fargo Street. Like Oneonta, the 50-unit development will be split down the middle so rainwater can cascade into a central garden; the facade will evoke undulating trees.

SolTerra is set to break ground late this year on the $6 million project – the third in Portland to employ the company’s approach of design with a sustainability baseline. Also, a sister company, SolTerra Cities, is cultivating a group of investors to support new projects.

“In the next three years we’re going to build over $100 million in value in buildings in the Seattle and Portland markets,” said James Wong, co-founder and managing partner of SolTerra Cities. “Right now the majority of our buildings are in the Portland market.”

In addition to The Woods, SolTerra is planning a 96-unit building across the street called The Strata (floors resemble a stack of slate slightly askew); a 46-unit building called the Brooklyn Yards in the Brooklyn neighborhood (with vine-wrapped trellises and a central planter for growing food); and a four-story headquarters building near Southeast Division and Ninth Avenue (prominently displaying the company’s proprietary living wall system).

Meanwhile, work is wrapping up on the Woodlawn – a 19-unit mixed-use building in Northeast Portland. It will serve as a demonstration site for SolTerra’s living wall system, and include numerous other innovative features.

“We’re really working on a brand in the sense that we really want to provide those elements of nature in every single building we do,” said Brian Heather, president and founder of SolTerra Systems, and co-founder and managing partner of SolTerra Cities. “Not just in the (material) elements, but in the visual appearance.”

That is appealing to investors – especially in China, where Wong is leveraging ties to his native country. He said many wealthy people there are checking out foreign real estate markets because China’s is starting to inflate – property values in some areas have been climbing 10 to 20 percent annually.

The price of entry in Portland is much more palatable, Wong said, especially with cost-control measures inherent in SolTerra’s design-build process. The company’s goal is to provide high-level service at a low cost, which will be increasingly important as competition increases.

“Right now we just feel that at a 2.4 percent vacancy rate in Portland, and a sub-5 percent vacancy rate in Seattle, even with what’s in the pipeline, with our population growth in both cities there’s plenty of room for apartments,” Wong said. “And we’re confident that with the product that we’re building, these (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) platinum, beautiful buildings, that we should get them rented – no problem.”

SolTerra anticipates that The Woods will exceed requirements for a LEED platinum rating. Set among living walls, its gorge-like courtyard will feature five platforms that step progressively back into the building. In addition to serving as a channel for rainwater to cascade from the green roof to a large rainwater cistern, each platform will house a communal amenity like storage space, a shared kitchen, a fitness room and a theater.

SolTerra wants the building’s sustainability to be somewhat existential as well so that passersby get a sense of “looking at dappled light through a grove of trees,” according to its submission for design advice. At night, backlit windows are meant to evoke tree bark.

“Our vision for the brand is that when people see a building, they say, ‘Oh yeah, that’s a SolTerra,’ ” Wong said, “like a Frank Lloyd Wright building.”