A host of local contractors this week will unveil their creations for the Kenton Women’s Village Pod Build Challenge, a friendly design-build competition to create sleeping pods for women transitioning out of homelessness.

Teams representing multiple Portland-area commercial and residential builders have spent the past eight weeks creating 21 sleeping pods for the Kenton Women’s Village transitional housing community in North Portland. Each team donated labor and materials to build a structure based on one of three proven designs by SRG Partnership, Scott | Edwards Architecture and Portland State University’s Center for Public Interest Design.

Teams were encouraged to create their own custom touches within the bounds of the original floor plan, and residents of the village will help judge the designs as part of a community celebration of the volunteer effort. Participants will be putting the finishing touches on their creations during Friday’s event, which runs from 8 a.m.-2 p.m. at the Kenton Women’s Village site at North Columbia Boulevard and Argyle Way.

The new pods will be judged in four categories: Best Innovative Use of Materials, Most Creative Modifications, Best Craftsmanship, and Best in Show. Winners will be announced during a ceremony that begins at 1 p.m. The pods will also be available for viewing during a Portland Design Week open house event on Sunday, April 7, from 2:30-4 p.m.

The Pod Build Challenge was created by Catholic Charities in partnership with the Andersen Construction Foundation, PSU Center for Public Interest Design, the City of Portland Joint Office of Homeless Services, SRG Partnership, Home Builders Foundation, Home Builders Association, Kenton Neighborhood Association, and others. LMC Construction has spearheaded the effort to prepare the site for the installation of the pods, and has been working pro bono since last fall to install concrete pads, utilities, and landscaping.

The post Pod Build Challenge creations to debut appeared first on Daily Journal of Commerce.

When it comes to local efforts to create the next generation of housing for the homeless, computer-aided saws and plywood will be as instrumental as hammers and nails.

“We thought there was some technology that could lead to some really interesting options,” said Todd Ferry, Portland State University research associate for the Center for Public Interest Design.

The results of the computer-aided process of building, part of the next stage of the center’s POD Initiative to create housing for the homeless, will be presented Sunday at the Portland Art Museum as part of an exhibit of pod design that will run from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.

Members of SERA Architecture and PSU students will build a plywood pod home in front of the museum from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. The larger exhibit will feature 15 other pod designs created by Portland-area architects

“We did something called the plywood pod initiative,” Ferry said. “The museum wanted to partner with us.”

The plywood pod effort is an extension of an earlier project that used traditional wood-frame construction to build pods that now make up Kenton Women’s Village in north Portland.

The plywood pod, which measures 8 feet by 16 feet, is built using a Maslow Computer Numerical Control (CNC) cutting machine. Sheets of plywood are hung vertically by chains, and perfectly measured individual pieces are cut by a computer-controlled saw. The pieces then fit together like a jigsaw puzzle.

“It’s a way to quickly and perfectly create something,” Ferry said.

The new approach also allows for easier assembly. The pods that were built for the Kenton Women’s Village required heavy machinery to move them from the where they were built to the final site. The new pods can be disassembled and moved easily, and then reassembled quickly.

“These are built in four sections that can be put up separately,” Ferry said. “This could completely change how big they could be. That is an exciting development in this whole process.”

“It was a little more of challenge,” said Tim Bestor, SERA’s senior job captain, designer and product manager. “The only downside is the innovation process. Conventional wood construction has been done for so long, it’s down pretty well.”

The learning curve aside, the technology has the potential to open up new horizons in the world of pod design and construction, Bestor said. He can imagine using the process to make warehouses full of pieces for pods. Those pieces could be shipped and put together in a fraction of the three to four weeks it took to make the first pods.

“It’s a great system,” Bestor said. “With further refinements, the possibilities are endless.”

Once the exhibit ends, the plywood pod that SERA and the PSU students build, with assistance from employees with Maslow, will be added to those already in place at Kenton Women’s Village.

Eventually other plywood pod homes will be built that will become part of a pod village planned for an industrial site in Clackamas County. Some of the pods in that village also will be built using trusses that PSU students built for the stage they designed for the annual Pickathon music festival last month.

Ferry said the exhibition will offer a chance to see some ways the issue of homelessness is being dealt with in the Portland-metro area. Attendees will be able to get information on how they can help solve the problem in their own communities.

“The exhibits will be about pods and houselessness,” Ferry said. “It’s this rich architectural problem of creating a dignified structure for the issue.”

The exhibition is part of the larger exhibit, Quest for Beauty: The Architecture, Landscapes, and Collections of John Yeon. Stephanie Parrish, the art museum’s associate director of education and public programs, said the pod presentation was a natural extension the larger exhibit.

“When we worked on the Yeon exhibition, we were thinking how to contextualize Yeon and how to contextualize it in Portland,” Parrish said. “He used plywood and we thought this would be a good exhibition showing how architects are solving problems today.”

If you go:

What: Miller Family Free Day — Exploring Architecture, Building Community

When: Sunday, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.

Where: Portland Art Museum, 1219 S.W. Park Ave., Portland

Cost: Free

The post Next generation of pod home design arrives in Portland appeared first on Daily Journal of Commerce.