Welcome to the website for GreenWorks, a Portland based design firm specializing in landscape architecture and environmental design.

Nature Based Playground Group Tour

GreenWorks organized and led a Nature Based Play Tour early this year. We had an increasing number of clients, peers and local agencies that were showing an interest in natural play options. Many of these agencies are still working through questions like; how nature play works, what makes something nature play, and what are the benefits and nature play. GreenWorks and members from Oregon Park and Recreation Department, Portland Parks and Recreation, Metro, US Fish and Wildlife Service, Miller Hull, and Mahlum Architects met to talk over issues surrounding nature play and visit some examples.

Site Visits Included:

Catlin Gable School

Providence Montessori School

Cooper Mountain Nature Area

Memorial Park – City of Wilsonville

GreenWorks is currently working with Oregon Parks and Recreation Department to design their first natural play area at Silver Falls State Park to open in 2011.

Cape Horn will get a Forest Service-designed trail in Skamania County

Cape Horn Trail is an eight mile trail in Skamania County located twenty six miles east of Vancouver, WA to which the Forest Service is currently making improvements. The existing trail has two at grade crossings where hikers and horse back riders traverse heavily traveled State Route 14. To improve safety for trail users, the Forest Service and WASH DOT are constructing pedestrian underpass tunnels at these two crossings. GreenWorks’ role in the project was to develop schematic designs for the tunnel entrances and provide construction design drawings for the tunnel fascias, which included stone wall construction, custom metal guardrail fence design and planting design around the entrances. The design of the tunnel fascias uses locally quarried Columbia River Basalt to form walls that are in accord with other examples of historic basalt stone work in the Columbia Gorge.

This GreenWorks project was featured in the Oregonian discussing the coming changes, click the link below to see the full article:

http://blog.oregonlive.com/terryrichard/2010/02/cape_horn_will_get_a_forest_se.html

Join us for the groundbreaking of the Merlo Bus Fuel & Wash Facility and LIFT Building

The Merlo Bus Facility is TriMet’s primary facilities operation for the western service region.  This project constructed a new 19,000 sq. ft. operations facility within a fully built out site which needed to maintain its daily operation during construction.  GreenWorks provided design services for the site including new stormwater facilities, landscaping, and irrigation.  Design efforts included consideration and coordination with the existing CWS stormwater swales and THPRD’s Nature Park adjacent to the project site. Site design included street frontage improvements for accessibility and street trees.

Please join U.S. Congressman David Wu, Washington County Commission Chair Tom Brian, Beaverton Mayor Denny Doyle and TriMet General Manager Fred Hansen for the groundbreaking of two new facilities at our Merlo Bus Facility: a new bus fuel and wash facility, and a new building for our Westside LIFT service.

The $13.5 million project is made possible by federal stimulus funds from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA).

The Merlo Bus Facility is where TriMet’s Westside bus lines are fueled and washed each day and has been in failing condition for many years. This project will construct a new 19,000 sq. ft. facility. The Westside LIFT facility supports TriMet’s door-to-door ADA service. The current LIFT building is leased, and the building owner’s desire is to use this building. TriMet will construct a new 4,700 sq. ft. building for its Westside administration functions. Construction of both buildings will take approximately one year to complete.

Wednesday, February 17, 9 a.m.

Merlo Bus Facility

16130 SW Merlo Rd.

Beaverton, OR 97006

National Prize for Maya Lin Project

The GreenWorks’ Confluence Project recently received national recognition, winning the 2009 “Excellence on the Waterfront” Awards Program.  See the full article below as posted in the Chinook Observer. National prize for Maya Lin project Tuesday, December 22, 2009 Photo courtesy GreenWorks The fish cleaning table at Cape Disappointment State Park is one of the completed Confluence Project sites. CAPE D – The Confluence Project, which includes the outdoor artwork by Maya Lin in Ilwaco, has earned additional national recognition. The project was honored with the top award in the Waterfront Center’s 2009 “Excellence on the Waterfront” Awards Program. The competition was founded by the Washington, D.C.-based organization in 1987 to recognize the best examples of waterfront work by communities, developers and design firms around the world. The Confluence Project was formed in 2002 to create seven works of art on sites of cultural and historical significance. Each of the sites features an art installation by Lin that interprets the area’s ecology and history, encouraging the visitor to reflect on how the surroundings have changed over time. Conceived to mark the 200th anniversary of the Lewis and Clark expedition, the sites reference passages from the Lewis and Clark journals. Each of the Confluence Project’s sites is linked to water, Three of the Confluence Project’s seven sites are complete. Lin collaborated with GreenWorks, a Portland-based landscape architecture firm, on the Cape Disappointment State Park and Sandy River Delta sites; Jones and Jones, a Seattle-based landscape architecture firm, collaborated with Lin on the Vancouver Land Bridge. Cape Disappointment in Ilwaco has four artistic elements. One is a large block of basalt used as a fish-cleaning table, on which Lin engraved the traditional Chinook story of creation. A trail leads to an amphitheater. An oystershell bed surrounds upended drift logs at the forest edge, providing a place for reflection. A piece of land buried under a parking lot for decades now flourishes with native plants and a water overlook. The other planned sites are Celilo Park near the Dalles, Ore.; Sacajawea State Park in Pasco at the confluence of the Snake and Columbia rivers; Chief Timothy Park at the confluence of the Snake and Clearwater rivers in Clarkston and Ridgefield, where the Columbia and Willamette Rivers are joined. In selecting the Confluence Project for the 2009 Excellence on the Waterfront Honor Award, the jury noted the rich joining of art, landscape architecture and design, the public outreach entailed and the amount of fundraising required. There was also appreciation that public agencies involved did not, as one juror put it, “cut out the magic and poetry from the project.” The nonprofit Confluence Project is based in Vancouver, and is led by Executive Director Jane Jacobsen. For information, log onto (www.confluenceproject.org) For more information about the article and the Chinook Observer visit:  http://www.chinookobserver.com/Main.asp?SectionID=1&ArticleID=31896

Happy Holidays from GreenWorks

Low Impact Development Approaches Handbook

To view the complete handbook visit the link below.

http://www.cleanwaterservices.org/LIDA

Eco-roof helps solve high-rise height problem

Based on a history of sustainable sucessful private development projects and knowledge of regional ecoroof incentives, GreenWorks PC was hired to provide landscape architecture services for The Beacon, a mixed use development in downtown Portland.  Services include ecoroof and rooftop terrace concepts for multiple building levels, including design, detailing & specifications.  This required working closely with the client and team to provide and submit information for review directly with Bureau of Environmental Services - ensuring the project was in compliance for the specific FAR Density Bonus requirements. GreenWorks was also responsible for developing exterior space designs, including outdoor entry plazas, pavement, water features, integrated stormwater planters, public art, exterior lighting and vegetated walls to provide additional amenity to local inhabitants and future residents.

A recent Daily Journal of Commerce article highlighted the Beacon and it’s community impact: 

POSTED: Tuesday, December 15, 2009 at 10:28 AM PT
BY: Eli Segall 

Jerry Eekhoff represents the developers of The Beacon, a proposed mixed-use building on Southwest Sixth Avenue, near Portland State University. The city’s Design Commission is scheduled to vote on the project on Thursday. (Photo by Dan Carter/DJC)

The developers of a Portland high-rise last year sought to build higher than allowed by transferring development rights from a downtown historic building. A city panel suggested another approach, sending the builders back to the drawing board.

Now they’re proposing to build an eco-roof in order to gain extra building height.

The mixed-use project, known as The Beacon, is on Southwest Sixth Avenue near Portland State University. The rooftops of the building’s 13-story and nine-story towers, along with a small portion of a second-floor roof, will be covered by a combined 6,668 square feet of eco-roof, more than 60 percent of the total footprint, according to a cityBureau of Development Services report.

A vote by the city’s Design Commission on the project, formerly known as College Station, is scheduled for Thursday.

Meanwhile, at least two other planned high-rises in downtown could gain height by including eco-roofs, said Christine Caruso, the Portland city planner overseeing The Beacon. She declined to identify the projects because, she said, plans have not been finalized.

Brent Grubb, an architect with Skylab Architecture, said the company’s planned Weave Building, at the corner of West Burnside Street and Southwest 13th Avenue, will have an eco-roof. He said this will earn the building an extra two floors of space, allowing it to be a maximum of 12 stories.

As for The Beacon, “they ended up doing the eco-roof as one of the only ways to get what they needed,” Caruso said.

The bonus, which provides up to 3 square feet of extra floor area for every square foot of eco-roof , is not new. According to Troy Doss, a senior planner with the city’s Bureau of Planning and Sustainability, the option has been available for roughly eight years. He could not immediately confirm how many buildings have received the bonus.

But in the past five years, he said, eco-roofs have become increasingly popular, especially in the Pearl District and in the South Waterfront District, where, he said, “just about all” new projects have it.

The Beacon, a proposed mixed-used building near Portland State University, was supposed to be a maximum 125 feet tall, but by adding eco-roofing, its developers can add up to an extra 45 feet of height. (Photo courtesy Jerry Eekhoff)

And, he said, many new eco-roofs are built not to earn height extensions, but to help projects achieve Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design certification.

When the bonus was introduced, Doss noted, green roofs were not the industry standard, and builders were afraid of leaks or roofs burdened by excessive weight.

“It’s less bonus-driven at this point than general practice by a lot of people,” Doss said.

Nevertheless, The Beacon, without any bonuses, is allowed to be 125 feet tall. According to the development services report, its planned eco-roof and art exhibit have earned the project an extra 45 feet of height.

The developers, though, are asking for only an additional 18.5 feet. Their representative,Jerry Eekhoff, principal of Portland-based W.E. Develop, did not say why they aren’t using the full bonus.

The developers originally sought to build a student housing complex at the site and, to earn more height, transfer development rights from the historic Henry Building.

But this transfer would have required City Council approval, which, according to Caruso, would have required the project include some kind of public benefit, like a park.

The development apparently lacked that.

“Just building a new building is not necessarily a public benefit,” Caruso said. “It’s bigger than that.”

According to the city, eco-roofs – often comprised of grass, plants and other vegetation – reduce storm water run-off and provide habitat for birds, among other benefits.

“It was better for the project,” Eekhoff said of the eco-roof. “It’s a green building.”

The Beacon’s ground-breaking is at least eight months away, he said.

Meanwhile, the city offers other incentive programs to add eco-roofs, such as grants of $5 for every square foot of green roof built.

The grant program, which started in July 2008, has had three funding cycles, the most recent of which ended this month.

According to Alice Meyers, environmental specialist with Portland’s Bureau of Environmental Services, the city has approved $700,000 in funding, all of which is contingent upon the roofs being built.

“And we inspect,” said Amy Chomowicz, the city’s eco-roof program administrator. “We even confirm the final square footage.”

Excellence on the Waterfront Confluence Project

Portland, Oregon – Located along the Columbia River with sites in Oregon and Washington, Confluence Project has earned the prestigious top Honor Award in the Waterfront Center’s 2009 “Excellence on the Waterfront” Awards Program.  The Waterfront Center’s annual “Excellence on the Waterfront” awards competition was founded in 1987 to recognize the best examples of high quality waterfront work by communities, developers and design firms from around the world.

The Confluence Project was formed in 2002 to create seven works of art on sites of cultural and historical significance—to re-envision our relationship with the Land, Water and People who live along the Columbia River.  Each of the project’s sites features an art installation by Maya Lin that interprets the area’s ecology and history, encouraging the visitor to reflect on how the surroundings have changed over time.  Initially conceived to mark the 200^th anniversary of the Lewis and Clark Expedition, the sites reference passages from the Lewis and Clark journals.  Each of the Confluence Project’s sites is linked to water, recognizing that the Columbia River System has formed the backbone of Northwest culture and human settlement for hundreds of years.

The vision of Confluence Project is to foster sustainability through artistry.  Each site’s design uses materials that contribute to its sustainability.  Three of the Confluence Project’s seven sites are complete. Maya Lin collaborated with GreenWorks, a Portland-based landscape architecture firm on the Cape Disappointment State Park and Sandy River Delta sites.  Jones and Jones, a Seattle-based landscape architecture firm collaborated with Maya Lin on the Vancouver Land Bridge.

Cape Disappointment State Park in Ilwaco, Washington, where the Columbia River empties into the Pacific Ocean, has four distinctive artistic elements. One stunning piece is a large block of basalt used as a fish-cleaning table, on which Ms. Lin engraved the traditional Chinook story of creation. A trail leads to an amphitheater. An oyster shell bed surrounds upended drift logs at the forest edge, providing a place for quiet reflection. A piece of land buried under a parking lot for decades now flourishes with native plants and a water overlook.

Vancouver Land Bridge, in Washington State, is a beautiful, bold intervention, enabling pedestrians to cross over a busy highway to make a connection to the Columbia at the Vancouver National Historic Reserve. River vistas invite people to a River Walk.

Designed by Johnpaul Jones, the bridge itself is a gentle curve covered in soil and native plantings. A ceremonial First Walk in 2008 attracted 3,500 people. The land bridge is at once an engineering achievement, a work of art and provides a storyboard contained in historic and explanatory panels.

The Bird Blind at Sandy River Delta in Troutdale, Ore., is an elegant and functional artwork, built of black locust and perched on a hilltop overlooking the confluence of the Sandy and Columbia Rivers. A total of 18 months went into researching the most sustainable wood. Each upright board is engraved with names of animals that Lewis and Clark encountered.  There is a 1.2-mile trail, built by volunteers, and reforested areas in this National Park Service area. A cooperative network of Federal, state and local governments, working with civic groups, collaborated to bring about this project.

The other sites are Celilo Park near the Dalles, Oregon; Sacajawea State Park in Pasco, Wash. at the confluence of the Snake and Columbia Rivers; Chief Timothy Park at the confluence of the Snake and Clearwater Rivers in Clarkston, Wash., and Ridgefield, Wash., where the Columbia and Willamette Rivers are joined.

GreenWorks is providing landscape architectural services for the Confluence Project, working with artist Maya Lin in the development of 6 of the 7 project sites in Oregon and Washington.  The firm is responsible for site developments in support of Ms. Lin’s artwork: viewpoints and overlooks, trails, parking, comfort stations, fish cleaning stations, information kiosks and other site facilities. GreenWorks is responsible for all detailed site design as well as leading an interdisciplinary team of engineers, designers, architects and regulatory professionals in the development of these sites.

In selecting the Confluence Project for the 2009 Excellence on the Waterfront Honor Award the jury noted the rich joining of art, landscape architecture and design, the major public outreach entailed and the prodigious amount of fund-raising required. There was also appreciation that the public agencies involved did not, as one juror put it, “cut out the magic and poetry from the project.”

The jury also recognized Confluence in the Schools, a three-year arts education program that linked students and teachers with professional artists, Native American tribes and community partners. It aimed to encourage students to understand the relationship between the Columbia and the tribes that first inhabited the Pacific Northwest. In all over 5,000 students took part.

The non-profit Confluence Project is based in Vancouver, Washington and is led by Executive Director Jane Jacobsen.  For more information, visit http://www.confluenceproject.org/ You may also contact Jane Jacobsen or Walter Cook at the Confluence Project office: 360. 693.0123.

Based in Washington DC, Waterfront Center is a non-profit educational organization, formed in 1981 in the belief that waterfronts — where the land meets the ocean, bay, lake, river or canal — are unique, finite resources.

The vital characteristic that separates waterfronts from other areas in a community is the relationship to water.  For additional information go to http://www.waterfrontcenter.org/ design firms to strive for well-designed undertakings. Entries are taken from around the world

GreenWorks is a Portland-based landscape architecture firm with a practice focused on sustainable design. GreenWorks specializes in artistic urban stormwater projects and is developing and improving ecological approaches that conserve, clean, recycle and celebrate water.  The firm is working on some of the region’s most innovative and creative projects including The Confluence Project with Maya Lin.  Other projects include the award-winning Headwaters at Tryon Creek in SE Portland, RiverEast Center along the Willamette River, and Tanner Springs Park in Portland’s Pearl District. LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) Gold certified projects include the RiverEast Center, Washougal Town Center, OSU Kelly Engineering Building, American Honda; and Toyota Terminal Four Facility.  More information on GreenWorks can be found at http://greenworkspc.wordpress.com/

Photo Credits:

Sandy Bird Blind – The Confluence Project

Cape Disappointment Fish Cleaning Table – GreenWorks

Trends in the Landscape Industry

GreenWorks’ Principal Mike Faha recently hosted an Education Session at the 2009 Oregon Landscape Expo, discussing Trends in the Landscape Industry.

“The session will identify future trends in the landscape industry with the current focus on sustainability and the means of implementation for construction and maintenance projects.  What new projects can be expected in the future will also be discussed.”

To see Mike Faha’s full powerpoint presentation, click the link below:

Green Trends