Designers of the new child development center at Portland Community College‘s Rock Creek campus, in Washington County, had to account for two very different groups: children and college students.

“It’s a fun, energizing, open and friendly space,” PCC project manager Zahava Jones said. “We wanted to see that and I think we accomplished that. It’s a simple, house-style design, but it still fits with the college atmosphere.”

The $7 million, bond-funded facility is now substantially completed. It features a single story of wood-framed construction atop a slab-on-grade foundation. The 7,800-square-foot building will be able to hold up to 88 children, in separate infant, toddler and preschool classroom areas.

Efforts to secure a third-party vendor to manage and operate the child care center are ongoing, Jones said, but added that Portland-based Fruit & Flower is one of the leading contenders.

Ground was broken in spring 2018, and officials expect the facility to open by the start of the 2019 fall semester. Child care will be reserved for parents enrolled at PCC, but may be opened to the public in the future.

Scott | Edwards Architecture designed the building, while Shapiro Didway handled design of the exterior grounds. Kirby Nagelhout Construction is the general contractor.

“The challenge I think for the design on this project was to create a building that’s appropriate for a college campus,” said Bob Smith, a project manager for Scott | Edwards Architecture. “With the exterior we used very durable materials, and we tried to blend it with the palette of the rest of the campus with its concrete and metal and wood accents.”

The goal for the interior was to create a “playful, enjoyable and exciting” environment, Smith said.

“We tried to do that with colors and accents,” he said. “But we’re recognizing that it still is a campus building, and it needs to be resilient and durable.”

The facility was designed to resemble a family residence. It features gable ends and a pitched roof, with large bay windows adorning the main hallway.

Composite siding, with a surface manufactured from rice husks, dominates the exterior. The siding is sustainable, but also durable and able to effectively absorb paint and other finishes.

The external cladding is a limestone plaster formulation that comes with an alkali- and UV-resistant permanent finish.

“We approached this looking at the durability and quality of the materials for everything we selected,” Smith said.

Metal panels were used near the entrance to provide a waterfall effect in combination with an ADA-mandated wheelchair ramp.

Special attention was given to the outdoor play area.

“We tried to vary an outdoor learning environment and give the kids play on a variety of different surfaces,” said Carl Liebhardt, a landscape associate with Shapiro Didway. “There are seating areas for outdoor education and there are stepping services for motor skills play. We tried to allow the outdoor area to be a fluid environment for the kids to run around and play in.”

Honey locust trees will provide shade, and ginkgos, dogwoods and maples will serve as accents.

The outdoor play area was also carefully landscaped with sand and other native species along with a host of wooden play features carved from Oregon white oak.

The project team is aiming for Earth Advantage gold certification. Brightworks provided early energy modeling.

“We have a very robust envelope, and we’ve worked closely with PCC to design it as resilient as it can be,” Smith said. “We haven’t really done anything exceptional with over-insulating, but we made some upgrades along the way as part of the Earth Advantage transition.”

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Yellowstone National Park will get an infusion of Portland design, after the park’s foundation this week announced winners of two design competitions.

Otak won for its landscape architecture designs of restoration work and improvements on deteriorating north and south rim trails and overlooks from Inspiration Point to Artist Point.

Hennebery Eddy Architects won for its design of redevelopment and new construction at the park’s Youth Campus.

Five firms submitted entries for the trails and overlooks competition, and four submitted entries for the Youth Campus competition.

All of the design entries were underwritten by the competitors, Yellowstone Park Foundation spokeswoman Melinda Gable said.

“They all did it pro bono, and it was tough to pick a winner,” she said. “The designs are all great, and all the firms spent a lot of time and money.”

Otak’s design calls for rehabilitating historic elements, rerouting trails away from dangerous areas with stone and boulder barriers, creating new walkways and other improvements using natural materials and adding informational signage, according to a statement from the foundation.

Chad Weiser, an Otak principal, said he has worked with the National Parks Service on multiple types of projects over the past 15 years. For the Yellowstone design, he is leading the team that includes project manager Keith Bates and project designer Cliff Lind. All are landscape architects at Otak, Weiser said.

“We are very excited to be working on and involved in rehabilitating seven overlooks and the interconnecting trails of Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone,” he said. “It’s a very large canyon carved out by the Yellowstone River, so these overlooks are perched along the rim of the canyon to give views of two beautiful waterfalls.”

The design team had to consider erosion factors and public safety, Weiser said, because the overlooks are on the edge of steep drops.

“We’re also very sensitive to being in a national park and creating a design that fits into the context and preserves views throughout the canyon,” he said. “We are trying to be subtle in use of materials and choices so the overlook you see across the canyon blends in.”

Hennebery Eddy Architects won its competition for the Youth Campus based on the design for the redevelopment of a youth meeting hall – a 1978 building at Mammoth Hot Springs. However, the plans have expanded considerably, firm principal Tim Eddy said.

“This is a big deal with stiff competition and we are very excited to be participating in the project,” he said. “We’ve been working on it for a number of months and are nearing the completion of the schematic design which, at this point, is a 48,300-square-foot facility including five buildings.”

In addition to the youth hall, the design includes plans for three dormitories and a commons building with a dining hall, classrooms and a commercial kitchen to meet the needs of the busy campus, Eddy said. The Youth Campus is “essentially a residential and environmental learning facility,” he said.

“It supports the Youth Conservation Corps in the summer and for the balance of the year supports a program called Expedition Yellowstone that serves elementary school kids,” he said. “They stay at the facility a few days and take trips into the park. It’s a very busy place.”

In keeping with the theme of environmental learning, Living Building Challenge certification – via the International Living Future Institute – will be pursued for the Youth Campus structures, Eddy said.

“We’re also pursuing LEED (Leadership in Energy & Environmental Design) for the project, but rather than just reducing consumption, the buildings need to be restorative,” he said. “Instead of net zero it will need to be net positive energy.”

Eddy said his team also is addressing wastewater treatment and other environmental issues.

The team includes Catena Consulting Engineers, Walker Macy, Interface Engineering, Brightworks, Rider Levett Bucknall, and the Bozeman, Montana, office of Stahly Engineering & Associates.

Construction of the canyon project will begin next year, Gable said, at Inspiration Point. The expanded Youth Campus design will go through more review and permitting processes before work begins.

“There’s also weather conditions because the winter weather here is very severe and would have an effect on either project,” Gable said.

Construction will be managed and contracted by the Federal Highway Administration, with oversight by Yellowstone National Park, she said.

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If life imitates art, then art should imitate nature.

That is how Nicole Isle, director of sustainability and planning at , views the world. In fact, she believes the design industry should do the same. For years, Isle, who has a background in watershed ecology and urban planning, has worked to promote the concept of biomimicry – using plant and animal behavior to solve human issues. Architects and engineers can use designs and processes evident in nature to increase sustainability in buildings, she says.

After working as an environmental consultant and a field biologist, Isle became a certified Biologist at the Design Table through the Biomimicry Guild in 2007. She is helping establish the Oregon Biomimicry Network so that workshops can be offered and companies can learn how to use it to solve design issues.

Portland has the potential to become a hub for biomimicry-based design, according to Isle. The 91��Ƶ recently asked her about that and how architectural design can benefit from the concept.

91��Ƶ: How do you think biomimicry ties into architecture?

Nicole Isle: I think there is a huge potential for biomimicry in architecture as a design tool and as a model for sustainability. One of the key benefits is that it broadens the range of solutions and enables designers to think outside their regular parameters.

You can’t use a simple system like (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) that’s prescriptive in order to achieve high levels of sustainability – you have to go beyond platinum. LEED is very safe in that there’s a menu to choose from, while biomimicry is very fluid and it allows for creativity and innovation in the design process. I think it will help get us to that regenerative state that we need to achieve to actually heal the environment.

Nature’s perspective is what it means to live sustainably on Earth, so why not look to nature as to an approach to solving our design challenges? Nature is our original designer in architecture.

91��Ƶ: Can you explain how the architectural design process would be able to incorporate a behavior used by a plant or an animal?

Isle: Just like any typical design process, you start to identify your challenges; you try to find out what the real barriers a team has to overcome on a project. If you can define that challenge and turn that challenge into not what you’re trying to design but what you want your design to do – the function aspect – then that’s your portal into the natural world.

Once a biologist is sitting at the design table, they’re able to examine these natural design examples. The key is to translate natural biological language into design language so architects can say, ‘Oh, I get it. I can see how this might work.’

91��Ƶ: Can you give us a specific example?

Isle: The Eastgate Centre in Zimbabwe. They took the mechanism of how termites ventilate their mounds, which is through a series of underground chambers that pre-cool the air. Then the air ventilates through a stack in the mound.

Those termites are constantly opening and closing the chambers to maintain a very specific temperature in the mound, because there’s a fungus – they eat it for food – that grows there that can only survive in a very narrow temperature range. The building adapted the closed-chamber system with the use of flues.

They asked, ‘How does nature ventilate or not ventilate?’ Then they looked for ‘champion’ species that have perfect ventilation strategies in the same climatic conditions that were facing the building.

91��Ƶ: In your work with Brightworks, have you and the firm designed any projects based on biomimicry in Portland?

Isle: Not entire projects, no. We’ve done an international one. We did a new town in Goyang, South Korea. We looked at the function of a floodplain – the stormwater infiltration, the water cleansing, the forging area for species.
(But) on projects for Brightworks, we always use biomimicry as a recommended tool for our clients.

91��Ƶ: So why do you think Portland is a good setting for biomimicry?

Isle: There’s of course a real grassroots environmental ethic here, and it’s grounded in our beautiful surroundings. As Portlanders, we see nature around us, so I think in helping people understand sustainability, biomimicry creates a great link to people that connect with nature cognitively or passively.

I also think there is some green building fatigue in Portland based around common strategies. And I think people are looking for something more. There is a growing interest in implementation and using the Living Building Challenge and the Regenerative Design (and Nature Awareness Program); biomimicry is a way to help unlock the potential for achieving those goals, which can seem daunting.

With the Oregon Biomimicry Network, which I’m helping to start with Mary Hansel, we’re hoping to get some projects off the ground and work with architects and other designers in a series of workshops. We can look at how to keep buildings dry from moisture and mold. We want to learn from the ‘champion’ species of our area – the beaver, the great blue heron, salmon – that have such significance on our livelihood and see what mechanism they have to further our knowledge to manage water and keep dry.

91��Ƶ: From your experience, has there been a fair amount of interest from other architects in biomimicry?

Isle: There’s a huge interest in biomimicry. Once you start talking about nature’s story – how it’s perfected, the way it’s survived in the environment that we are so desperately trying to figure out how to fit in – there is this incredible interest.

But, at the same time, this is a newer concept. There is this apprehension around meaningfully committing to use it. It’s going to take some projects to get off the ground for people to get familiar with it. It’s a reconnection with nature, so there’s a level of comfort that has to be achieved.

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Architects, engineers and general contractors for years have touted their devotion to an integrated process.

But as the greenest fringes labor to push projects toward sustainability further and faster, one man is calling for an end to the buzz surrounding integrated design.

Scott Lewis, founder and CEO of Portland-based firm , said it’s time for green building leaders to stop resting on the laurels of integrated design and to focus on a method guided completely by sustainability goals.

“Integrated design is still considered new and trendy by a lot of people in the world and even by some people in Portland,” Lewis said. “But it’s not enough.”

The growing interest in developing projects to meet building metrics openly labeled as “challenges” – the Living Building Challenge and the 2030 Challenge – reveals a readiness to take bigger risks in regard to use of materials, water and energy.

Even though the standards are evolving, Lewis contends that the process isn’t. Most industry professionals agree that the way to create a high-performance building is not to rely on linear project design and delivery but rather bring together all team members early in planning stages.

But because the conventional integrated design process does not expressly integrate any sustainability goals, Lewis said that many project teams end up using Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design scorecards to drive the process. And that trend may be causing project teams to miss opportunities to find true innovations.

“We need to continue developing and improving the tools we use to help people build better buildings,” Lewis said. “Integrated design became the buzzword in the early 2000s and everyone was all excited – and for good reason. But then they kind of stopped and said, ‘OK. Now we’re doing it.’ ”

But others don’t believe the process needs to be amended.

Mark Cork, principal at , said that integrated design – by its very nature – will continue to evolve based on the people who are using it and the projects undertaken.

“The process is constantly being redefined as it is,” he said. “It has not been a static approach.”

The architects at Mahlum, which has offices in Portland and Seattle, are sticking with integrated design and finding ways to look beyond LEED, Cork said.

“I’m not ready to throw it out yet,” he said. “Not until I see something better.”

Others reject the criticism that integrated design does not go far enough because the openness of the process allows room for the most ambitious sustainability goals, even though it’s not required.

“At its heart, it’s a means to an end,” said Craig Briscoe, director of integrated design at Glumac’s Portland office. “Whether that end is a restorative, transformative building or a building that’s perfectly comfortable, energy-be-damned, (integrated design) doesn’t include or exclude any particular goal.”

Meanwhile, Brightworks is pushing for greater use of backcasting, which the firm has used on more than a dozen projects – including Oregon Health & Science University’s Center for Health and Healing and the Casey Condominiums in Portland.

The backcasting model calls on the owner and project team to set an ambitious sustainability goal, called the “North Star,” at the outset and then work backward to figure out the necessary steps to achieve the desired result.

For the Center for Health and Healing, OHSU and developer set a “North Star” goal of 60 percent greater energy efficiency and a 25 percent lower cost than for a comparable, conventionally designed building.

The project didn’t meet its financial target – it ended up costing slightly more than a conventional building – but that’s part of the point of backcasting. It encourages setting idealistic goals and then using a formalized template to see what can be achieved.

The 400,000-square-foot medical office and lab building, which did meet its energy target and earn a LEED platinum rating, includes sustainability strategies that may have been abandoned if not for the backcasting planning process, according to Lewis.

A proposed wastewater treatment strategy, for instance, was more expensive and required a code variance, but the designers went with it anyway because the backcasting template forced them to spend extra time figuring out ways to meet initial goals.

The membrane bioreactor system in the basement now treats up to 30,000 gallons of wastewater per day, which enables the building to reuse water for all toilet flushing. And the cost premiums associated with the sustainability features were paid back in less than two years.

Backcasting is not being employed by most firms, but of Los Angeles used the method to design a project for California State University Channel Islands.

Frances Moore, a CO Architects associate principal, said the backcasting charrette encouraged the designers to be more creative.

“Every project has a life of its own,” she said, “and the visioning aspect of backcasting really enhances the opportunities that are specific to each project.”

Although she was impressed by the results of the brainstorming, Moore emphasized that it all still comes down to the owner’s willingness.

“In an ideal world, that would be the best formula,” she said. “But for most owners, it’s still difficult to open the conversation and say, ‘Everything is up for grabs.’ ”

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Data center construction is booming, and Central Oregon is gaining more and more attention as the locus of the industry’s most innovative designs.

Facebook‘s huge complex in the high desert of Crook County, where crews are now working on a second 333,400-square-foot building, employs highly efficient technologies and serves as the model for the company’s other centers in North Carolina and Sweden.

But just a few years ago, Facebook was like many other Internet-based companies – renting space for its servers. As the international demand for space on Facebook exploded, however, the company began to work with a team of experts to design and build data centers that could meet its particular needs.

“Three years ago they realized they were growing so fast and becoming so big that there were strong financial incentives to start building and owning their own data centers,” said Josh Hatch, director of sustainability analytics at . The Portland-based sustainability consulting company is providing green building program management and incentives research for Facebook’s data centers.

“They ran into the classic renters’ problem: you can’t put too many holes in the wall or change the mechanical systems,” he said. “You end up paying more to have inefficient systems.”

Facebook is known for taking risks, and that includes construction and technology, according to Hatch.

“Facebook has an innovative culture – the unofficial mantra is ‘move fast and break things,’ ” he said. “These big data centers are clearly where they spend the most money and have the largest environmental impact … there’s no reason to follow the norm when you have an opportunity to change things.”

Facebook also is departing from industry norms by sharing its breakthroughs and setbacks via the , which is intended to encourage communication among data center designers.

The completed Prineville facility, which includes a 164,000-square-foot computer equipment room and a 100,000-square-foot mechanical equipment penthouse, is able to operate without traditional air conditioners – notoriously enormous energy consumers. As a result, Facebook’s Prineville data center uses 38 percent less energy than one of its comparable leased facilities.

Central Oregon’s low-humidity climate, new server designs and an evaporative cooling system combine to let 100 percent outside air be used for cooling.

In addition, all of the rainwater is captured and reused for all irrigation and toilet-flushing needs – an annual savings of 272,000 gallons of municipally treated water. Solar panels provide approximately 204,000 kilowatt-hours per year.

But the new technology challenged the construction team, led by a joint venture between and .

“The new technology requires a little more hand-holding as we commission the facility,” said David Aaroe, executive vice president at Fortis. “There are a lot of new applications for a lot of our subs who hadn’t previously dealt with technology for cooling and electrical systems, so there’s a slight learning curve, but they catch on very rapidly.”

Approximately 70 percent of the subcontractors that worked on the first Prineville facility are returning for the second one. More than 1,000 people have worked on both buildings now, with approximately 50 percent coming from the local area, according to data from the contractors.

The completed building recently earned a Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design gold rating, and Facebook’s similar facility in North Carolina is slated to achieve the same honor in the coming months.

In addition, construction trade magazine . It is one of the 18 category winners being considered for ENR’s top honor, which will be named by magazine editors on Feb. 13.

“In the last six years, we have constructed over $1.2 billion worth of data center projects, and (the Facebook facilities) are by far the most energy efficient that we’ve ever constructed,” Aaroe said.

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Western Oregon University announced last week that Ackerman Hall, its newest residence facility, achieved a platinum Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design rating, the highest designation issued by the U.S. Green Building Council.

According to Rita Haberman, a sustainability advisor with , Ackerman Hall is the first large-scale, new construction residence hall in the country to receive that level of LEED.

One of the key challenges in green building is coming up with ways to encourage responsible behavior once the building is occupied. In Ackerman’s lobby, a kiosk displays environmental graphics addressing energy, water, and material usage. A competition has been set up among the 10 student communities living in the hall, aiming to use social drives to aid sustainable practices.

Kurt Haapala, associate principal with , met with resident advisors and interested students early in the design process.

“They had specific desires to live more sustainably,” he said. “As architects, we’re able to use that power of students’ voices to work with the universities and continue to raise the bar on our projects.”

The facility boasts an integrated rainwater harvest system with the capacity to store 30,000 gallons in a cistern buried in the courtyard. Throughout the year, the system provides 83 percent of the non-potable water to flush toilets in the hall.

“It’s an impressive system, and what is really great is that is in sync with our climate’s seasonal resources,” Haberman said. “When the residence has its highest population of students, it’s raining more; then in the summer the demand is less.”

Wood that was harvested to make space for the new building was incorporated into the structure as much as possible: in the paneling, the stair treads, and tables and footstools throughout the common areas. And the courtyard is made from more than 200,000 bottles that were recycled for the project.

Forty-four solar panels pre-heat the building’s hot water, resulting in a 50 percent reduction in potable water usage and a 35 percent reduction in energy consumption.

Certain outlets in each dorm room are on motion sensors so that appliances and equipment like DVD players and stereos will automatically shut off when the room is empty.

“The whole project took a lot of coordination on every level of planning, and it’s an excellent example of integrated design,” Haberman said.

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