For a sixth year, the Portland chapter of the American Institute of Architects  is sponsoring a tour of local homes designed by Portland firms.

This year’s self-guided tour will take place Oct. 3, from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Admission is $40, and tickets are available .

The tour is a good chance for citizens to examine residential architecture, said AIA Portland Managing Director Amy Sabin.

“It is an opportunity for the general public to look inside a home designed by an architect,” she said. “They can see the use of light, materials, views and an architect’s approach to those premier opportunities that shape our lives.”

Eight homes will be featured on the tour. They include residential new construction and reconstruction. They are: Five Square by Lever Architecture, Arlington Heights residence by Scott | Edwards Architecture, DO House by Architecture W, Garden House by Waechter Architecture, H2 Home by Deca Architecture, House C by OFFICE 52, Myrtle mid-century house by Giulietti | Schouten Architects and Nims Bezaitis residence by Paul McKean Architecture.

The Nims Bezaitis residence, a 3,200-square-foot home built in 1959 for the Holtz family, serves as an example of historic restoration with a modern touch. Eighty square feet were added to the home to increase the size of the kitchen, but the project’s goal was simple: restore existing natural finishes while upgrading functional aspects such as the kitchen, bathrooms, family art studio and media room.

OFFICE 52 faced another kind of challenge in the design of House C. The original house was lost to a fire, but the owners decided to rebuild on the site – a narrow, deep lot in Southeast Portland. The firm was able to not only build a new 3,500-square-foot house, but make it larger than the previous four-square structure by adding two squares on the east and west sides. Also, large windows were installed to take advantage of views.

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With three decades of experience in architecture and interior design, DECA principal and interior architect Sallee Humphrey has expertise that is in great demand.

She has earned an industry-wide reputation for innovative design that has brought her awards both locally and abroad. She has earned seven awards for design excellence from the International Interior Design Association, and her work has been featured in numerous industry publications.  Her clients are located throughout the Pacific Northwest as well as Korea, Malaysia and Taiwan.

Humphrey co-founded DECA in 1998 and has led the firm’s interior architecture work ever since. As an architecture and interior design firm, she led DECA’s commitment to merging the two disciplines and has fostered a culture of collaboration among her staff.

She is a leader in training and mentoring younger interior design staff both at DECA and outside of her firm. She serves as a regular guest critic at University of Oregon, The Art Institute and Oregon State University.

She also regularly hosts student interns and recently taught an advanced two-term interior architecture studio course at the University of Oregon that required weekly trips to Eugene while maintaining an active firm in Portland.

Every year, Humphrey selects a worthy organization for pro-bono design services. She has led her staff in contributing time and energy to nonprofits including Loaves and Fishes, City Dance, Zenger Farm, Portland Institute for Contemporary Art, the Architectural Foundation of Oregon, The American Institute of Architects, the Oregon Historical Society and Kows for Kids.

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The Cyrk building at Southeast Clinton and 20th streets in Portland is a model of sustainable features: The roof will sport solar panels for electricity and water heating, and the indoor temperature will be controlled with an underground water-source heat pump. Altogether, the project is on course to achieve Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design platinum certification.

The project team is dedicated to creating as green a building as possible – and overcoming the challenges inherent in such an effort.

Project owners Will Emery and Bonnie Serkin wanted to create an urban space where they could live and work. They will reside on the building’s top floor, which also will include a guest suite for visitors. The main floor will hold the offices of Double E Northwest, the investment management company Emery and Serkin own and operate. The main floor also has space for a retail tenant, which is still being sought.

Double E Northwest owns a number of companies: one is developing a sustainable residential community in Newport, and another owns a certified sustainable forest on the Oregon coast. So creating a sustainable live-work space was a natural step for Serkin and Emery. Serkin believes that green buildings like the Cyrk will be the norm in a decade or two.

“Ten to 20 years ago, this would have been impossible,” Serkin said. “Right now, this is the kind of building that can be built if you work hard and think about it.”

Project team members DECA Architecture and B&G Builders last week offered a tour of the Cyrk Building, now under construction, to architects. DECA principal David Hyman said the team considered sustainability certification methods other than LEED – including the Living Building Challenge.

“I’m fairly confident that we could have met that, but it would’ve required a lot more paperwork,” Hyman said. “It’s a more difficult, more time-consuming process.”

As it was, the project team faced challenges in sourcing material. Working inside a green framework, Hyman said, “narrows the availability of materials.” He credits B&G Builders with providing connections with the right sources.

“The big unknown is always recycled wood, because sources change all the time,” Hyman said.

Much of the Cyrk building is framed and sided with wood that is either recycled or FSC certified. Some large beams visible in the residential area are recycled from a shipwreck.

“It takes quite a bit of research and phone calling to source the facilities that have those resources,” Hyman said.

One of the more difficult aspects of the project, according to B&G, was familiarizing contractors with the process of sorting waste materials. In order to hit LEED platinum, 95 percent of construction waste needed to be recycled or reclaimed, and everything needed to be documented.

Carrington Barrs, a B&G Builders principal, said waste management is the baseline for all of his firm’s green building projects.

“Not only is this project pushing the limits of sustainability, it’s also a very high-end project,” Barrs said. “What I’ve been telling all our subs is this: ‘Nothing out here is like what you did on your last project.’ ”

Serkin added that “it’s not intended to be a shrine to sustainability – it’s a beautiful place to live in a neighborhood that has a lot of integrity.”

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A new live-work building designed by DECA Architecture Inc. is going up in Portland.

Developer Bonnie Serkin of Landwaves wanted to combine her home and work with the Cyrk, a 14,500-square-foot building that will house Serkin’s home on its second floor and office on its ground floor. Serkin also plans to lease part of the ground floor to a retailer.

“We’re combining our lives,” Serkin said. “Live-work cuts out the work commute completely. We hope to lease the retail space to an environmentally minded business.”

Located on Southeast 20^th Avenue and Clinton Street, the project will use a high performing envelope, vegetative roof and 26 kilowatt photovoltaic system to provide 90 percent of the building’s power needs, said David Hyman, a principle with DECA. The project is currently under construction by B&G Builders and is expected to be completed in 11 months.

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Shapiro Didway Landscape Architecture has designed conceptual plans for a new K-12 campus in Daejeon, South Korea.

The firm worked to create a naturally flowing, flexible and secure campus to serve Taejon Christian International School students and the community.

“It’s all fenced in,” firm principal Steve Shapiro said. “It’s a corner piece of property designed to have good sight lines. We used low shrubs to improve visibility and keep people from loitering around the campus.”

Stonework and natural plantings were incorporated to evoke the landscape of the surrounding mountain valley. Storm water will be treated on-site with a natural-flow swale system designed to express and celebrate the flow of rainwater. The campus’ landscape was designed with a Korean aesthetic, according to Shapiro.

“We used a lot of blooming trees and natural forms, as well as rock outcroppings,” Shapiro said. “It’s a celebration of stone.”

The school building itself was designed by Myhre Group Architects and DECA Architecture, and will soon house 600 students.

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