Reactions to Sustainability Center proposals

Although I was not at the presentations late last week by four teams vying for the city's new Sustainability Center commission, a few friends of Portland Architecture were. So I'd like to pass on their thoughts.

First is architect and artist Fredrick Zal, a regular at such events:

Walking into the City Council Chambers of Portland, Oregon for the Living Building Challenge’s Sustainability Center of Excellence, I was prepared to be WOW’d, but I got even more.

I have the greatest of respect for Gerding Edlen Development, as they have made their name and significant money over the last number of years as a community partner and by marketing their sustainability. They certainly were the favored team walking into the room, with their established relationship with PDC, their standing contract for the Block 153 property, and having harnessed the best and brightest of Portland, Oregon to work with them on their many LEED projects. But, something went awry.  Mark Edlen continually harped upon his Oregon base for the entire team, even though they have a significant presence in Los Angeles, and marketed themselves as ‘all about California’ for their San Diego Civic Center proposal, which also happens to be their poster child for sustainability and their ‘Liveable Place Index’.

Facing a competing team with Brightworks, that could have potentially shown just about every one of the same project images as GED, since they worked together on most of them, I believe that they were hedging their bets against the German influenced Brightworks/Behnisch team. It was for good reason, as Stefan Behnisch simply put, “We cannot keep doing what we have done in the past and expect change”.  Or, in the words of Albert Einstein, “No problem can be solved from the same level of consciousness that created it”.

I am not saying the GED created the problem.  Certainly not!  They have done immense work to pioneer the LEED efforts by constructing many prototypes for the US Green Building Council to champion.  Dennis Wilde was able to show a number of ‘on-the-boards’ sketches of how sustainability can influence design form and orientation.  But, their projects have primarily been a series of boxes with layers that only address LEED marketing, but not core design issues or lifestyle choices.  With all due respect to GED, SERA and GBD, we have seen many examples of what their collaboration and financial willingness constructs.  GED’s Civic Center design with ZGF could serve as inspirational for this proposal, but they left it out of the presentation, as they determined that the design was not financially viable and withdrew from developing it for San Diego.  GED’s primary LEED consultant, Chris Forney of Brightworks put it clearly, that sustainability is not about a bunch of checklist, but it is about creating work that is regenerative to our community and our Planet Earth.

In November of 2008, Ethos Development split into three components and Brad Wellstead is heading up the Project Management division.  It was awkward for him to be presenting his exceptional project management skills on complex projects, which is very relevant to Phase II of this project, when he needed to be acting as the Phase I developer for this RFP, which he is not.  Even though Brightworks is hands-down the best sustainability consulting firm in Portland, they unfortunately do not have the important developer component necessary to secure the federal stimulus dollars from Governor Ted Kulongoski that David Van't Hof spoke of.  Even with Stefan Behnisch showing the impressive Institute for Forestry and Nature Research in Wageningen, the Netherlands that he co-designed with the scientist user-group, which is perfectly synonymous with the P+OSI/OUS/LBI [Living Building Initiative] tenants, he ran out of time to revive his team.

Similarly, Holst Architecture was only able to show a few projects of minimal relevance to the intent of the Sustainability Center.  They are one of the best mid-density mixed-use designers in town, and prior to the dismissal of Randy Higgins, one of the best designers in town, but they have lost their inspiration.  Their presentation was flat.  It did not help that Bruce Fowle, of FXFowle, barely scratched the surface of the benchmark New York Times Building that they managed for the Italian designed Renzo Piano Building Workshop. The scale of development presented by both Pettigrove Venture and Equity Community Builders again was just not inspirational in scale nor execution.

The Winkler Development Corporation with Busby Perkins + Will, and LRS Architects team is clearly the best selection for a number of reasons:

Jim Winkler, and his sometime business partner Bob Naito, have been the silent force behind the urban revitalization of Portland in all of the areas that other developers did not have the patience or vision to touch.  It is great to see them moving in this ecologically-minded direction.Winkler has always contributed greatly to the culture of Portland, following in the model established by the Schnitzer family.

LRS shows great potential with their Cosmopolitan Point Tower for the PDC.  The project not only shows how they can collaborate as the Architect of Record with the IBI/HB Architects design team, but it also resolves the long-standing partial development of the Cascadian.

With the adjacent historic Harrison Court Apartments on the National Registry, it will be important to have an architect as sensitive as LRS was in the adaptive reuse of the deSoto building, where their offices reside in the Pearl District.

Busby, Perkins + Will has an immense portfolio of sustainable, commercial, educational, and mixed-use projects that are at the leading edge of architectural best practices.  [Some of which were shown as ‘best’ examples in the presentations of their competition this evening.]

The Dockside Green Development in Victoria, British Columbia demonstrates how bio-filtration can not only be beautiful, but a community amenity.  [The GED and Ethos teams bury their bio-systems, or tack them on as an afterthought, instead of engage them holistically.]

The Laurentian University Cooperative Freshwater Ecology Unit in Sudbury, Ontario, Canada not only harnessed future technologies in a harsh environment, it acts as an educational model for others.  This will be important in allowing the Sustainability Center to teach the public and professionals.

And lastly, the VanDusen Botanical Garden in Vancouver, British Columbia shows the direction of their current / future works, which is greatly influenced by the sinuous femininity of Mother Earth and would certainly serve as a beacon for tourists and researchers to engage the City of Portland as a world leader in Creative Sustainability.

Then there were the comments of John Jennings. In full disclosure John works for BetterBricks, which is a sponsor of this site. I'm posting his thoughts, however, because I thought they were worth reading in their own right:

Last night after sitting though all the presentations by the four finalists for the Sustainability Center of Excellence to be located in downtown Portland, I asked myself which team would I choose.

Although there were world class leaders in sustainable design on the teams and enough images of really dramatic and substantial buildings that purportedly come close to meeting the ambitious Living Building goals, I came away thinking a recombination of some of the team members might be best. Pick the best of each specialty from each team and mix them back into a super team. Too bad we can't do that. But what makes a good team anyway? 

What kind of team can assure successful delivery of this highly ambitious innovative project that aims for zero carbon emissions, no off-site energy resources consumed, zero waste, all water use from captured or reused water from the site, with no wastewater discharge, a healthy interior environment, and at the same time beautiful and inspiring.

From our experience, it will require a team with a client that sets clear and significant performance goals (done here by the project sponsors); a developer that is open to ideas, willing to take risks and innovate; an architect able to work collaboratively with lots of team members (not a visionary "starchitect"); engineers with out-of-the box thinking empowered by significant technical expertise; and a sustainability consultant with a holistic view (not just a list checker).

In fact, all team members need to be well versed in ecosystem thinking (ecology, systems dynamics, regeneration, balance, biomimicry, biophilia, etc.). The whole team must be open to community input. And to ensure effective integrated design, the team has to be able to easily and quickly communicate on a regular basis.

Comments

[Heidi Bertman]

Note that the GED and ZGF proposal for the San Diego Civic Center is still under financial review, it has not been withdrawn from consideration.

[crow]

the San Diego project was in their presentation too - Mark actually had a couple images that he spoke to. i saw it. just to clarify brightworks was not part of the GED team for this project.

[stan]

With the assumption that the apartment building next door is staying, will the sustainability center be a half block or 3/4 block?

[dennis]

stan, I was under the impression that it is just minus the apartment building on that block, so probably closer to 3/4 of the block.

[Cat Leccia]

Nice post :)
design lovers, get inspired!