91视频

After several months of delays in the permitting process, crews finally broke ground on the PAE Living Building project in Portland’s Old Town Chinatown earlier this year. Then the COVID-19 pandemic struck, putting the team behind schedule in the effort to erect the heart of the project: five stories of cross-laminated timber panels and heavy glulam structural columns and beams.

Several months later, however, that work is almost done 鈥� just before the anticipated arrival of wintry weather.

Crews recently placed the last five-ply CLT panel, hundreds of which were manufactured for the project by British Columbia firm Structurlam. The heavy-timber columns, beams and panels wrap around the concrete building core that was completed beforehand. Weatherproofing work is on tap next.

The PAE Living Building takes its name from the Living Building Challenge, which is perhaps the world’s most stringent green building program. To attain certification, a building must meet superior standards for energy and water use, and the project team must adhere to strict lists dictating use of materials, products and processes.

鈥淚t visualizes the ideal for the built environment and uses the metaphor of a flower because the ideal built environment opens clean and efficiently like a flower,鈥� said Adam Klauba, director of sustainability for general contractor Walsh Construction Co. 鈥淪o, everything kind of flowers when it comes to the Living Building Challenge.鈥�

This is the first potential Living Building the firm has constructed, and the first such project that ZGF Architects has designed. PAE carried out its own MEP engineering for the project, while KPFF Consulting Engineers contributed structural work.

If the building does indeed gain certification, it will become the largest Living Building in the world.

Aside from renewable timber elements, the building will have a number of sustainable features. One will be a cutting-edge micro-grid electrical system, with a large lithium-ion battery to store leftover power. The system is being developed jointly with Portland General Electric, and the project team believes it is possibly the most important part of the project when it comes to future adaptation.

Net-zero energy will be accomplished via a 95-kilowatt rooftop photovoltaic array and the micro-grid system.

鈥淏ecause of the spot network and the way the grid is set up, we can’t feed as much energy as we want out to the grid,鈥� PAE principal Marc Brune told the 91视频 in 2019. 鈥淪o we’re getting around that with a 250-kilowatt battery. It’s a pretty big battery for a building, and a micro-grid controller paired with batteries allows the building to operate on an independent grid within the building itself.鈥�

The building also will have a 71,000-gallon basement cistern for storing rainwater to be converted to drinking water. Plus, a vacuum-flush plumbing system will collect wastewater and feed it to a series of composters. There, waste will be converted into nitrogen- and phosphorus-based fertilizer to be sold to other parties.