A new, state-of-the-art building fit for the coast is in the pipeline for Clatsop Community College, in Astoria.

The new Maritime Science Building, designed by SRG Partnership, will be the first structure people see when they enter the Marine and Environmental Research Training Station (MERTS) campus. The 15,500-square-foot building’s exposed steel, mechanical systems and stairways all will evoke a maritime vessel.

The facility will house general and specialized classrooms for maritime science, environmental studies, scientific research training, industrial and manufacturing technologies, and technical academic and training programs. Marine engineering instruction will take place on the facility’s lower level, where ship engines will be used; meanwhile, navigation and bridge simulation courses will be taught on the top level.

Clatsop’s maritime science program is one of the few offered in Oregon and on the West Coast. Individuals seeking a career in the field or a related certification (or renewal) will spend short but demanding weeks at the facility.

SRG design principal Carl Hampson knows such experience all too well. Before becoming an architect, he attended the Cal Maritime academy in California. There, he lived briefly on a ship docked near the school as part of his training. One week before the vessel was set to sail on a three-month voyage, Hampson jumped ship, so to speak, in favor of architecture school.

Along with the exposed steel, the building’s interior will showcase mass-plywood for the floor and roof decking. Hampson said this will not only convey the atmosphere of a ship and give a nod to the region’s timber industry, but also eliminate the need for internal columns.

The interior will also feature a large, graphic map of where the Columbia River meets the Pacific Ocean. The map will be made from perforated wood and face out to a wall of windows. To achieve this vision, the design team had to overcome one silty hurdle. The MERTS campus sits adjacent to the Columbia River and on land once dredged from the riverbed. Instead of dirt, the soil is full of sand and silt and at high risk of liquefaction in an earthquake or other seismic event.

A smaller ground-floor footprint was needed to limit expensive drilling to 60 feet down to the bedrock. That meant most of the programming had to go on the second floor, so the project team got creative with cantilevers. Each end of the second floor will hang over and tie back to the structure to utilize the deep pier’s strength. There will also be outdoor workspaces underneath the cantilevers.

All construction documents are in place, but because of market prices and funding constraints, the project is on hold.

On the Boards is a 91��Ƶ feature offering a look at the projects in Oregon being tackled by local architecture firms. To have your firm’s projects considered, contact the 91��Ƶ at 503-802-7221 or newsroom@djcOregon.com.

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Portland State University and its partners have named a new building in memory of a tragic chapter in the region’s history.

The seven-story structure in south downtown previously known as Fourth and Montgomery has been renamed the Vanport Building. The name recognizes Vanport (now north Portland), a largely Black city that flooded on May 30, 1948, resulting in many residents’ deaths.

The 175,000-square-foot Vanport Building is a cooperative project of PSU, Oregon Health & Science University, Portland Community College and the city of Portland.

Vanport was a haven for Black Portlanders who were kept out of other local neighborhoods during World War II. But after the war ended and the flood devastated the neighborhood, Vanport fell into disrepair.

“Vanport represents an important part of Oregon history that we must acknowledge and learn from,” OHSU President Danny Jacobs stated in a news release. “The Vanport Building offers us an opportunity to honor those who were harmed, while reaffirming our commitment to creating an anti-racist future for Portland.”

A noose was found at the construction site in May 2020. The discovery of the racist symbol led general contractor Andersen Construction to file a police report and conduct an internal investigation, but the perpetrator has not been identified.

The building, designed by SRG Partnership, opened in January. It is home to PSU’s College of Education, the OHSU-PSU School of Public Health, Portland Community College’s dental hygiene and dental assisting programs and the city of Portland’s Bureau of Planning and Sustainability.

A mural by Portland artist Alex Chiu and an exhibit by Bryan Potter Design, titled “The Spirit of Vanport,” occupy space near the building’s entrance.

“There’s a collective, deep sense of loss for what this city could have been had the flood not happened or, more importantly, if city leaders had rightly valued the community,” stated city Commissioner Carmen Rubio, who oversees the Bureau of Planning and Sustainability. “We take a small step in honoring Vanport’s value, and in reminding ourselves to value all our communities every day, by choosing this name.”

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Oregon State University is preparing to tackle a $153 million renovation of Reser Stadium, thanks in large part to a $50 million anonymous donation – equal to the largest gift ever received by the university.

The stadium’s west side will be demolished and rebuilt entirely. Additionally, the facility will gain a state-of-the-art, interactive welcome center as well as one new health center for students and another for OSU faculty and staff.

The OSU Board of Trustees’ Finance & Administration Committee on Jan. 28 issued its approval for the project to enter the design phase. The board is expected to give final project approval during its May meeting.

The project team includes SRG Partnership, Populous and Hoffman Construction. With approval, construction would begin immediately late this year and be expected to finish before the start of the 2023 season.

Plans call for a “move to construction documents at the end of the 2021 football season,” said Scott Barnes, vice president and director of intercollegiate athletics at OSU. “Literally go into demolition mode and knock the west side down.”

OSU will continue to host games at Reser Stadium during the project.

The overall fundraising goal is $85 million, Barnes said. So far, $64.5 million has been raised. Revenues from event seating and other stadium services will also help pay for the project.

Upon completion, Reser Stadium will have a 360-degree concourse as well as new premium and general seating on the west side.

The renovation will provide the stadium with aesthetic balance, OSU President F. King Alexander said. The west side is a bit smaller currently, but will closely mirror the east side.

Meanwhile, the new welcome center (including meeting space) and health centers will make the stadium active and fully functional 365 days per year.

The project also will eliminate the need to address $70 million of deferred maintenance, King said. As Reser Stadium has aged, maintenance costs have increased. But construction will seismically strengthen the facility’s west side.

“This is not a time to stop moving forward and looking forward,” King said. “Yes, we’re in COVID, and we want to come out of this stronger with great momentum as a university.”

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Completion is finally in sight for Multnomah County’s Central Courthouse project.

With delivery scheduled for spring 2020, the three-year process to erect a new 17-story, $325 million courthouse building on Portland’s waterfront is entering the home stretch as the number of craft workers on site starts to ramp down significantly. From a high three months ago of some 350 workers on site each day, that figure is now down to just over 200 as rough-in has been completed and finish work accelerates.

“The biggest period was about three or four months ago because you had everything happening,” said Justin Paterson, project manager for construction manager/general contractor Hoffman Construction. “You were still doing rough-in on the upper floors, but now the wet-side mechanical guys are pulling out and the dry-side mechanical guys are pulling out from the rough in, and they’re down to a couple of people.”

Architecture firms SRG Partnership and CGL RicciGreene designed the 461,000 square foot building, which will feature 44 total courtrooms on floors eight through 17. Additional small claims, traffic and other high-volume court functions will be located in the renovated historic Jefferson Station building at the southwest corner of the project site on Southwest First Avenue and Jefferson Street.

The project is aiming for a Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) gold rating. The new facility will replace the old county courthouse on Southwest Fourth Avenue, which was completed in 1914 and is considered by the county to be functionally obsolete. The older building does not meet modern seismic codes, and is considered at high risk in case of an earthquake.

The new courthouse will be an estimated 46 percent more efficient than a conventional code building, and will use energy saving strategies that include radiant slab heating and cooling, a high-efficiency chiller plant, displacement ventilation, radiant panel heating and cooling, thermal storage in fire and rainwater tanks and chilled beams. A rooftop solar array will help generate power for the building.

Another notable feature is the limestone cladding used on the building exterior and on the interior walls of the main lobby. The cladding was fabricated by Columbia Stone and is being installed by the company’s own personnel.

Further, because the building is designed to withstand a significant earthquake, viscous dampers akin to shock absorbers have been placed throughout floors eight through 17, while outsized concrete and steel structural members anchor its framework.

This is most evident in the main entry, where massive octagonal structural columns serve both a functional and aesthetic purpose.

“It’s not hollow on the inside, it’s solid concrete and it’s poured exactly like that,” Paterson said. “It’s got a wide-flange beam on the inside of it and then a rebar cage and basically a steel shell goes around that. We build that in two halves, board form line it, stand it up, bolt it together and then the concrete is pumped in from the bottom.”

Once the head pressure falls too low, he added, which is right around the 40-foot mark, crews quickly switch over and start pouring from the top. “You’re trying to make the gap, the seam, disappear,” Paterson said. “So they have to move pretty quickly.”

There’s the new, and there’s also the tried and true. The renovation of the historic, three-story Jefferson Station building falls squarely in the latter category. The first reinforced concrete structure built in Portland, the old building is being refurbished for use as high-traffic courtroom space, but because of its historic designation the original façade has been retained even as the building has been physically connected with the new courthouse tower.

Another original touch, however, is purely for show.

A 20-ton-capacity gantry crane dating to 1909 will remain on its original track on the top level of Jefferson Station, still able to roll back and forth smoothly on its track. That discovery, however, took a bit of work.

“It (the crane) was actually still sitting on a little stub of rail that was still there,” Paterson said. “We do a lot of work for Sound Transit in Washington, so we called them up and said ‘Hey, where do we buy railroad track?’ And they said ‘Oh, no problem, we’ve got a railroad track company,’ and he sent me a name.”

A Hoffman engineer sent the firm a profile of the needed track and a photo of the Jefferson Station crane. The response was somewhat unexpected.

“One of our engineers sent them a profile of it and a picture of it and the guy said ‘You know what? We actually have some of that in our yard.’ So they shipped it down here, it was actually pretty cheap, and we installed it ourselves.”

As it turns out, the century-old crane was built to last.

“We just connected the rail together and some guys got up there and unlocked the wheels and the damn thing still rolls,” Paterson said. “It’s got a chain fall on it and they started pulling on the chain and it traveled on its own.”

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An adaptive reuse project that combined a pair of Northwest Portland industrial buildings into a single creative office campus took top honors at the Portland Architecture Awards ceremony hosted by AIA Oregon last month.

earned LEVER Architecture an Honor Award for what judges described as a “rather sublime conception of how design might better relate to ecology in this century.” The project, completed earlier this year for Langley Investment Partners, involved stripping a pair of 1940s-era heavy-timber buildings down to their structural elements before rebuilding them into an open-office building with an industrial aesthetic respectful of the site’s heritage.

Old-growth timber posts, beams and joists were refurbished and left exposed, and mezzanines were installed in both buildings. New banks of clerestory windows provide natural daylighting. The buildings were clad in weathering steel and joined by a glass-enclosed breezeway that serves as a main entrance and reception area.

In their judging notes, Quebec-based competition jurors Cécile Combelle of Atelier Barda and Kiel Moe of McGill University lauded the building as an example of a design ethos that “… carefully considers and interprets what already exists in order to nudge and extend the life of our building environments.” The jury also included Kim Pariseau of Quebec-based Appareil Architecture.

Judges bestowed four Merit Awards, including two upon Hacker: one for a private residence in Bend, and another for Berwick Hall, a building that provides music rehearsal/performance space and offices for the Oregon Bach Festival on the University of Oregon campus in Eugene.

Merit Awards also went to Architecture Building Culture for Jarrett Street 12, a modular affordable housing project containing 12 for-sale units in North Portland, and Opsis Architecture for the Navigation Center shelter project in the Pearl District.

Citation Award winners included Silica by William/Kaven Architecture, the Oregon Conservation Center by LEVER Architecture, OHSU Center for Health and Healing – Building 2 by ZGF Architects, and Howard Residence by Architecture Building Culture. Works Progress Architecture‘s 7 SE Stark won a Citation Award as an unbuilt project.

In addition to the judged entries, two projects were honored for meeting or exceeding 2030 Challenge standards for carbon neutrality. Those honors were based on energy data from project submissions and with assistance from BetterBricks and the University of Oregon School of Architecture’s Energy Studies in Buildings Lab.

Tillamook Row, designed by Green Hammer director of design Erica Dunn, won a 2030 Award. Also, Hennebery Eddy Architects‘ Great Smoky Mountains Institute second campus in Townsend, Tennessee, won one for an unbuilt project.

Three design professionals were recognized for contributions to the community and the profession. John Reynolds, professor of architecture emeritus at the University of Oregon, was named the AIA Portland President’s Award winner; Carin Carlson, an associate with Hennebery Eddy Architects, was given the Young Architect Award; and Whitney Ranson, a designer with SRG Partnership, was honored with the Emerging Professional Award.

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Last year, Oregon State University completed a long-range expansion plan for its Cascades satellite campus in Bend that calls for construction of entirely net-zero-energy structures on a former pumice mine and landfill.

The first major project of that initiative is now in the design stage as SRG Partnership works with Catena Consulting Engineers and construction manager/general contractor Swinerton on a four-story, 50,000-square-foot academic building. A host of green strategies – including a photovoltaic solar array, an exterior shading system, radiant heating and cooling systems, gray water storage, and other active and passive systems – are expected to ensure the building produces more energy than it consumes.

“We’re pretty excited about this project for a variety of reasons,” SRG Partnership principal Carl Hampson said. “It’s very aspirational with what the university is trying to do.”

An ambitious master plan calls for construction of dozens of new academic, residential and student life buildings. This first one, dubbed Academic Building 2 for the time being, will be used for science, technology, engineering, arts and mathematics education.

Construction will take place on part of a former pumice mine. The site, Hampson said, will eventually serve as a gateway to new campus development along with a future student center planned for an adjacent parcel.

“That will be the defining feature of the campus,” he said.

The new academic building will have a rectangular floor plate. It will be oriented east-west, with the longer sides facing north and south to maximize effectiveness of a rooftop solar array.

Roughly half of the ground floor will be embedded below grade because of the slope of the site. That slope, however, has allowed designers to include a large amphitheater with both indoor and outdoor seating divided by a two-story curtain wall system.

“We’re bringing it inside the building so the landscape and the building become one gesture,” Hampson said. “Plus the indoor space has quite a bit of flexibility because adjacent to it are two large classrooms that will have partition walls so they can reconfigure that overall space for a variety of uses.”

All four floors will have learning spaces, including specialized classrooms able to accommodate curriculum-specific equipment. Laboratories and engineering spaces are planned, along with maker spaces for art, engineering, computer science and outdoor product programs. Other collaborative, informal spaces will serve both staff and students.

The project is intended to be a model for the rest of the proposed net-zero campus. In part, this flexibility comes from the mass-timber structural elements, which allow for long interior spans and the ability to easily reconfigure interior walls.

“We’ve laid the building out in a narrow floor plate,” Hampson said. “We’ve got 30-foot-deep bays with a central corridor running down the middle and no columns in the bays. That way you can divide that long linear space however you want to move the program inside.”

Structurally, glulam beams and columns are being used along with cross-laminated-timber floor panels. Only the slab-on-grade foundation and shear walls at each corridor’s end will feature concrete so the project’s carbon footprint can be minimized.

“We looked at different options,” Hampson said. “We were looking at them from a cost standpoint and which supported the modular flexible approach, and all of them worked. But the mass timber made the most sense. The erection time is less than steel, so there’s cost benefit there. But the biggest benefit is all of this wood expressed on the interior.”

One final unique element is the building’s core. It contains elevators, mechanical systems and restrooms.

“We’ve centralized everything in one location so it simplifies distribution of systems and creates an order that can be then replicated,” Hampson said.

On the exterior, a series of vertically oriented metal panels will provide shade to large windows that will stretch from low-slung sills to the underside of the deck on each floor. Central Oregon’s climate influenced this choice.

“It’s much colder in the winter, but because of the functions in the building there are lab spaces and such that generate heat,” Hampson said. “The cooling loads will put more of a strain on this building, so we’re making sure to maximize the daylight in here. But we’ve organized the patterning to minimize the excess heat gain and created some solar advantages with the metal panel on the window.”

Ground has not been broken yet; however, project literature lists fall 2021 as the target to open the building.

“It’s a very dynamic building,” Hampson said. “But also from a cost standpoint, given the challenges of net zero and building on the edge of a mine and the sloping site, I think we’ve come up with a very strong solution that balances all the elements.”

On the Boards is a 91��Ƶ feature offering a look at the projects in Oregon being tackled by local architecture firms. To have your firm’s projects considered, send an email to newsroom@djcOregon.com.

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A former surface parking lot on the Portland State University campus is quickly becoming a seven-story, 175,000-square-foot mixed-use building.

The 4th and Montgomery Building is rising on three-quarters of a block bounded by Southwest Montgomery and Harrison streets, and Fourth and Fifth avenues. SRG Partnership designed the approximately $104 million project, which is being built by construction manager/general contractor Andersen Construction. The building will be occupied by PSU‘s Graduate School of Education, the joint Oregon Health & Science University-PSU School of Public Health, Portland Community College dental programs, and Portland’s Bureau of Planning and Sustainability.

Crews broke ground in December 2018, and substantial completion is expected by November 2020, according to PSU. The building will have ground-level commercial space, classrooms, a dental clinic, and both academic and nonacademic offices.

SRG Partnership’s design matches the curved streetcar path that clips the block’s northeast corner. All sidewalks and access to the building will be generous and open.

To accommodate a significant grade change, designers used landscape walks, stairs, walls, benches and planters to define a central courtyard space while offering multiple access points.

Inside, the ground floor will feature retail spaces and a lobby. A central staircase will bring people to classrooms and offices for tenants on the second floor and above.

The design’s aim is for a Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design gold rating. Sustainable features include a green roof with 62 percent coverage, a rooftop solar array, a large stormwater planter and a dedicated outside air system with radiant heating and cooling.

In addition, the building will have a high-efficiency envelope and exterior metal-panel cladding with punched window openings and bird-safe exterior glazing.

Currently, construction crews are gaining speed after a slow start that included additional excavation after the discovery of waste underneath the parking lot.

“We had an old building that they had torn down, and they buried quite a few things that we had to dig through and dispose of in the right manner,” Andersen Construction superintendent Paul Rovianek said. “It was nothing really crazy – just some roofing material, some bricks and different things like that. It’s surprising they buried all of that, but we sent it off and put it in the right spot.”

The new building will feature seven stories of post-tensioned concrete decks and reinforced concrete columns constructed around double building cores housing elevators and stairwells. The first two levels will feature oversized spaces, with ceilings ranging from 20 to 25 feet on the ground level and 16 feet on the second floor. Ceilings on levels three through seven will be 12 feet.

Andersen’s subsidiary, Andersen Structures Inc., is performing all of the project’s concrete work, and the firm’s carpenters are constructing formwork, installing shoring systems and stripping old formwork as the project moves forward.

“We just have the typical guys right now for this stage of the project,” Rovianek said, noting that concrete was being poured for the third level. “We have concrete and (mechanical, electrical and plumbing workers); the electricians and plumbers are here full time and the fire sprinkler guys are just in and out putting in sleeves and blue bangers.”

Excavation work is also wrapping up with installation of a communications vault, while ironworkers from Local 29 and R2M2 Rebar and Stressing are laying down rebar for the concrete decks.

“It’s a lot of the usual suspects,” Rovianek said with a laugh.

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Construction projects can generate a lot of waste material. So why not reuse some of that material for productive or even humanitarian purposes?

That’s the rationale for a new pilot program being developed by Carleton Hart Architecture team leader Julia Mollner and Portland State University’s Center for Public Interest Design (CPID). Together, they’re looking to convert the interior and exterior mock-ups used for large projects into tiny homes for people without housing.

Mollner, previously a graduate fellow at PSU, was one of the students who designed sleeping quarters for a proposed “village” as part of CPID’s POD Initiative. Later, Kenton Women’s Village, a cluster of tiny houses, opened in North Portland in summer 2017. She believes more can be done.

Projects “have all this usable waste,” said Mollner, now an adjunct professor at PSU. “It’s about how can we figure out a reasonable way to siphon off reusable materials that could go to community builds. The village model works and it’s about how these mock-ups can plug into the village model.”

In the program, instead of limiting a project mock-up to a single wall or a corner with two walls, a complete structure with four walls and a roof is built using samples of the project’s interior and exterior materials. The structures are even wired, plumbed and finished on the inside.

Mock-ups normally are recycled or discarded when a project is finished. But in this scenario these complete structures will be shipped wherever they are needed following their project use.

Todd Ferry is a CPID senior research associate. He has worked on the mock-ups and related initiatives with Mollner over the past several years and said the concept is “genius” in its simplicity.

“It has the possibility of being game-changing in terms of addressing homelessness and affordable pods,” he said. “It doesn’t just have to be pods. There could be thoughtfulness on how these things can strategically be used for impact and not just go into the waste stream.”

Ferry noted that Mollner is not simply building a prototype; she’s looking to enact systemic and widespread changes in how housing is provided to Oregon’s most vulnerable citizens.

“She was part of our first class of student fellows in 2014 and one of the first graduates of our public interest design graduate certificate,” Ferry said. “She’s a natural leader, she gets stuff done, and it’s amazing to see her going from a student leader to a leader in the professional world. And we’ve been really fortunate to work with her.”

The idea may be simple, but construction of a complete sleeping pod from a mock-up requires the entire design-build team, including subcontractors. The intent is to ensure professional design and keep volunteer work to a minimum so that quality is preserved.

Mollner has been working to develop a functional model for two years now and currently has assistance from two CPID graduate students. By traveling to job sites and suppliers’ locations, they have researched what types of materials work best to create usable mock-ups and how they could best be constructed.

CPID is developing a formal guidebook that outlines design parameters, specifications, sample drawings and timelines outlining how a mock-up can be built and donated.

“Knowing that this is in the early stages makes this about building awareness right now,” Mollner said. “It’s a feel-good thing for the contractors and it will save … money. It’s shifting money from waste hauling to the local community and it’s almost a one-to-one right there.”

As the earliest and most direct connection with clients and owners, she added, architects typically are in the best position to decide whether a project will be suited to such a program.

“Most projects set sustainability goals in early design, so if one has to do with waste reduction or maybe it’s for a nonprofit and there’s a way they can loop it back to the mission of the owner, then that’s a way to do it,” she said.

Scott Mooney, a senior associate at SRG Partnership, is also a CPID professional fellow. He helped design the template used for sleeping pods at Kenton Women’s Village 2.0. Now he is working with Mollner on the first mock-up intended for reuse. First, it’s bound for PSU’s Fourth and Montgomery office building, which is being built by general contractor Andersen Construction. This first mock-up is still being assembled and tested at Andersen’s Swan Island shop. A second mock-up is being constructed on-site at the Nesika Illahee affordable housing project being built by LMC Construction in Northeast Portland.

For the Fourth and Montgomery mock-up, CPID is coordinating donations of materials and shipment of those materials. Andersen Construction has committed to shipping the mock-up when it’s no longer needed on-site.

Without a support plan and infrastructure in place, Mooney pointed out, construction of sleeping pods or tiny homes will do only a small amount to address the homelessness issue.

“Huge amounts of resources go into making these mock-ups, so being able to divert those resources in a meaningful way is a really powerful concept,” he said. “It has huge potential, but we need to create places for these mock-ups to land, and it should be a priority. That way, as other pods come online, (mock-ups) have places to go.”

Catholic Charities, the group behind Kenton Women’s Village, has already agreed to take possession of the Fourth and Montgomery mock-up when that project wraps up.

“That’s one of the hidden costs of these villages,” Mooney said. “In order to have the next village up and running, it’s not just the infrastructure but the social infrastructure that we have to support.”

Important lessons have already been learned when it comes to making the concept sustainable, Mollner said. The biggest, she noted, is being clear about the scope of work and how much is going to be absorbed into the construction budget. Then there is the matter of building the pods and finalizing a reliable method of transporting them to where they are needed most.

“Right now we’re looking for research funding for how this can be replicated more easily,” Mollner said. “We’re working with city of Portland on streamlining processes and how it can be replicated in other jurisdictions.”

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Two and a half years ago, officials gathered on property near the Hawthorne Bridge‘s west end to ceremoniously break ground on the Multnomah County Central Courthouse project. Then major work began in spring 2017.

These days, crews are building at a rapid pace. As many as 350 tradespeople are on the site daily, at either the 17-story courthouse or the adjacent Jefferson Station building. Hoffman Construction is the construction manager/general contractor for the estimated $324.5 million project, which is being funded jointly by the county and the state. SRG Partnership is the lead architectural firm.

Structural steel and concrete work has wrapped up in the L-shaped tower, but most other trades remain on site. Electrical, plumbing and HVAC work is continuing in the two-story entrance lobby, and drywall is being installed. Also, extensive electrical work is required in lower-floor courtrooms and other court-related spaces ranging from jury waiting rooms to defendant holding cells. The 44 new courtrooms will be spread through the lower floors, while district attorneys’ offices and other spaces will take up the remainder of the 460,000-square-foot building.

A host of features, many passive ones, are being incorporated to boost energy efficiency. The project team is targeting a Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design gold rating, with the possibility of stretching for platinum, Hoffman project manager Justin Paterson said.

Generous glazing will be used on the building’s east and south sides to take advantage of daylight. Also, a large rooftop solar array will both power the building and offset energy costs for the Hawthorne Bridge.

Underneath the building’s concrete floors, however, a radiant hydronic loop system will absorb natural light and the heat that comes with it, and then redistribute that heat throughout the building. A high-performance building envelope, meanwhile, will reduce heat leakage and associated energy use.

The top three floors remain open to the elements as rough-in proceeds and the curtain wall system is built. Professional Lath and Plaster crews are handling interior and exterior metal framing on the top floors, while Elemental Energy crews are installing the tracking for the solar array atop a steel structure designed to give maintenance crews easy access to individual panels.

Meanwhile, crews are also gutting the interior of the Jefferson Station building, one of the first in Portland to use reinforced concrete. That building is now down to its shell and a dirt floor as preparations are made to install new steel shoring in the walls and begin interior improvements. The building will house high-traffic courtrooms such as those for small claims and traffic infractions.

The project team expects work to finish in approximately another year. Officials plan to open the new courthouse to the public in spring 2020.

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Several weeks of work culminated Friday with a series of resounding successes for the hundreds of people involved in the Pod Build Challenge for Kenton Women’s Village in North Portland.

Twenty-one teams from the metro area have spent that time building new sleeping pods for homeless women living at the transitional housing complex. After countless hours of work to craft and install at least 14 of the new pods at a new location at North Columbia Boulevard and Argyle Way, teams engaged in a celebration.

“Today when I came here and I saw all these people showing up it just blew my mind,” said Maddy Stolowitz, director of corporate philanthropy for Andersen Construction. “All the builders have put so much thought and care into it, and you can just tell they were really thinking about these women. I feel like I’m hopeful that these women feel loved and cared for while transitioning out of homelessness.”

Each team built its pod using one of three designs provided by SRG Partnership, Scott | Edwards Architecture and Portland State University’s Center for Public Interest Design. Teams were given freedom to express their creativity within the bounds of the floor plans.

“The guys love doing stuff like this, and for us it’s a change of pace because we’re concrete workers,” said Russ LaVaque, Andersen Construction’s general superintendent. “So, we all got to work with wood and that was great. It’s all recycled wood that came off of jobs, glu-lams that are 80 years old. The 4-by-4s underneath are all re-shores that are 40 years old. So it’s pretty nice.”

Future residents of Kenton Women’s Village participated in the judging portion of the Pod Build Challenge. Andersen Construction’s pod, made largely from reclaimed timber from past projects, received the “Best in Show” award.

“There are so many wonderful things that have been done,” said head judge Deborah Kamprath, a project manager with Catholic Charities. “There was a lot of love going into decorating and extra pieces and cool water saving things like the one with the gutter going into the water reclamation.”

Kenton Women’s Village originally was located on a different property nearby. However, it was always intended to be temporary; that property now is being developed by nonprofit REACH Community Development Corporation. Ground was broken there in January on a three-building, 189-unit affordable housing project designed by MWA Architects and scheduled for completion in spring 2020.

“We came together as a community to play one small piece in helping (the women) transition into, hopefully, affordable housing and a better situation,” Stolowitz said. “And (for) our team, it’s just been the most fun. We’ve had our superintendents and carpenters come together with our project engineers and our leadership team, and everyone played a role. And it wasn’t always people who have gotten to work together before, so it’s just been really a labor of love.”

Pod Build Challenge awards

Best in Show: Andersen Construction

Most Creative Interior Customization: Elite Development

Most Creative Exterior Customization: D.R. Horton

Best Interior Craftsmanship: LMC Construction

Best Exterior Craftsmanship: D.R. Horton

Most Creative Material Use/Reuse – Interior: ReBuilding Center

Most Creative Material Use/Reuse – Exterior: Professional Women in Building

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