Q1 Fall 2009: Studio 683 – Portland Sustainability Center
Professor Don Genasci and Professor Hajo Neis
After working on design for a few weeks and mostly working on producing a good set of images for the final review, this is what I arrived at. For a first project and first quarter in grad school, it was a large endeavor. As always, I wish there was more time. But there isn’t, and you just have to learn to focus on an overall concept and develop a few details. For this portion of the blog, I’ll include links to high resolution versions of the boards and thumbnails to individual drawings.
I thought the term as a whole was a good introduction into what the school emphasizes and teaches. There was a strong emphasis on the urban portion of the design as well as integrating sustainable technologies into the building. Using these technologies is more than just saying they’re there, but integrating them into the building design itself. Whether or not I was successful in doing so, I tried to make this building about water. There is surely more rain than sun in Portland, and why not use this to the building’s advantage?
The large plaza acts as a rainwater collection device, using pervious paving material that directs the water to a water storage cistern in the basement. Rainwater is also collected on the rooftops, and stored locally at each floor through a series of cisterns. There are several diagrams on the boards that explain this visually and in greater detail.
Final Boards:
