Last year's ZERO: Zero Energy Ready Oregon event (Sustainable Building Week)
BRIAN LIBBY
It's sometimes a trap to talk about the good old days. Whether it's architecture, politics, pop culture or technology, we often look longingly to the past when in reality each era comes with its own set of problems.
That said, I'm not sure I'm the only one who has felt a lingering sense of lost momentum in Portland's sustainable building community.
There was a time 10-15 years ago in the early 2000s when the city seemed to be continually registering firsts when it came to green buildings, especially the LEED rating system. We saw some of the first LEED-rated office buildings, the first historic building on the National Register to earn a Platinum LEED rating, and the first medical building to earn that distinction. And these pioneering efforts seemed to follow on the heels of similarly lead-taking efforts in the realm of urban planning.
It's not to say no innovation is happening today, for in particular Portland seems to be modestly ahead of the national curve when it comes to mass-timber-framed buildings, which are inherently greener than any steel or concrete-framed structure. We've continued to explore eco-districts as well, and to look at not just net-zero energy usage in our homes and workplaces but net-zero carbon.
Even so, for Webly Bowles of the New Buildings Institute and Terry Campbell of Sustainable Northwest Wood (and various other colleagues), something needed to happen. Enter Sustainable Building Week, which returns for its second year with a slate of events from October 14-19.
The impetus a few years ago when Bowles and Campbell were at a green building conference in Los Angeles. "We said, ‘We don’t have anything like this in Portland,' Campbell recalls. There really wasn’t anything to galvanize professionals in Portland any longer. I feel like we’d all sort of seen the momentum and the fun and the newness of green building kind of wither away, and we wanted to bring it back together and make it feel like the old days."
At the time, Bowles was chairing the Portland chapter of the AIA's Committee on the Environment and Campbell was chairing the Living Future Institute’s Portland chapter, so they were able to tap into their networks to collaboratively get Sustainable Building Week going last year. In essence, SBW is a series of events presented by a web of different organizations in the broader AEC (architecture, engineering, construction) industry. But the ultimate goal is cross-participation. "The idea is you could be at an AIA event but have landscape architects and engineers and building professionals there too," Campbell adds. "That doesn’t always happen. It’s trying to break down the silos."
In the 2000s, Bowles says, "Portland was the city for green building. It was a shiny green city that everybody else looked to." But as the recession hit hard in 2008, "I left the profession and 50 percent of my friends lost their jobs. I think architects started taking work because they needed work. In that process…it’s a controversial thing to say, but I think we lost some of our sustainability momentum trying to stay alive. A lot of those friends have not gone back to architecture. They’ve gone back to other careers in design and construction. That green expertise is no longer there. I think Portland has imported a lot of architects from other places that didn’t get rooted in that green ethos. We’ve kind of shied away from that message this year [with Sustainable Building Week], because we don’t want to insult architects in town. And besides: firms are doing great work today but it’s often outside of Portland. A firm like ZGF might be doing great net zero projects but not as much in Portland. I think our city has done a good job of keeping up that green ethos in planning. But in terms of the market, I think that’s a different story, and I want us to change that."
Last year's Green Building Slam (Sustainable Building Week)
Campbell cites local building codes as another area where the city has lost momentum. "Portland was one of the first cities to require LEED being met in the building code. It’s not done the same as other rating systems have come along," he says. "They let developers just sort of build whatever they want to build. And if you want to have eco-district concepts in places like the Broadway Corridor, they say, ‘We want to have affordable housing, and that’s the priority.’ But there is a network of professionals out there who want to put us back truly where we belong and meet our climate action plan. The city has two incentives to get projects sort of greased through the permitting office. They used to have close to 30. Both the remaining incentives are related to affordable housing. We’d like to open that up to sustainability and green workforce development." And besides, Campbell adds: affordable housing and sustainability (particularly energy efficiency) need not be an either-or decision.
Looking to this year's event listings for Sustainable Building Week, certain themes seem to emerge, particularly when there are multiple events devoted to one topic. Bowles cites equity as being one deliberate area of concentration.
"We had the Women and Green event last year in collaboration with the USGBC, and that gave us some momentum. This year we’re broadening it to not just gender but equity in general. There's the Equity in Design event and excited about the Black & Green event, especially since the latter one is at the June Key Delta Community Center. It's is our only true net-zero project in Portland, which is really sad. But it’s exciting to include all communities in Portland. That’s an effort we made this year."
Being equitable isn't just some kind of obligation. It's where innovation and real change come from. "I think what we’re learning in the green building world is it was good enough for a while to talk amongst your friends," Campbell says. "These problems require much more of a diverse conversation. I feel like what Sustainable Building Week could champion is building a better message around green building. It can be not just climate change but green workforce development, especially for non-urban areas. We’ve tried this year to get as many groups as possible that represent minority contractors and entrepreneurs involved; that’s another theme we’d like to be a part of. It’s another way of getting out of silos."
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