From start to finish in the pandemic, The Sunrise Water Authority’s new office building is the first project designed by FFA Architecture and Interiors while entirely remote.

Ian Gelbrich, a principal, said the firm landed the project the week after everybody started working from home in spring 2020 and it was an adjustment at first.

When you have a team of five people in an office, he added, the communication is pretty fluid. But when you have to jump on a remote call to talk about it – it changes things.

Sunrise Water Authority will move from its current facility on S.E. 129th Avenue in Happy Valley to a 5-acre parcel of land at the northeast corner of Southeast 172nd Avenues and Southeast Armstrong Circle, also in Happy Valley.

The campus will centralize the company with a new administrative and shop building. The complex will also include a staff courtyard, parking areas, materials storage and a fuel island.

The Sunrise Water Authority is the clean water supplier for Happy Valley, Damascus and Clackamas County. Gelbrich said because of this a lot of the positioning of the buildings and design is tied to the expression of water. For instance, a slopped site is typically a flaw that needs to be corrected, but instead FFA incorporates it into the design.

All of the water that hits the building’s roof will spill onto a lower roof basin, routed to scuppers, then cascade down the side of the buildings in a waterfall. The water then runs over to the rain gardens, where it is soaked into the soil or directed to an existing wetland at the bottom of the site. Even with a little rainfall, Gelbrich said people will see the water be collected and flow down to the wetland.

FFA has also designed the main 15,000-square-foot administrative building to reach a low Energy Utilization Index of 15 and readied the 5,700-square-foot Shop Building to eventually be net-zero.

The main building’s orientation, plus Cross Laminated Timber and concrete structure, is designed to reduce heat gain. These measures — combined with an efficient VRF mechanical system, LED light fixtures and a large photovoltaic array on the roof — will allow the building to reach the low EUI. In the future, the PV array can also be expanded to the one-story Shop Building that has a CLT structure.

The project will go out to bid on Jan. 5 and work is expected to be complete in 2023.

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