Category: stormwater
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Feral Green Streets
On E. Burnside Street in Portland, the construction of the Burnside-Couch Couplet, a project aimed at ‘humanizing’ the wide arterial that slices through Portland and provides the dividing line between North and South. Construction is ongoing, and as part of the design, the streets on both sides of the couplet have a number of green…
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Elizabeth Caruthers Park
One on the more recent additions to the park inventory in Portland is the neighborhood park for the South Waterfront Area. (see here and here for more on SoWa). The park is named Elizabeth Caruthers Park (after one of the pioneering founders of Portland – on whose original land claim the park now lies) this…
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Bell Street Park – Seattle
A new project recently via the Daily Journal of Commerce unveiled by SvR Design Company in Seattle shows a pair of proposals for Bell Street Park: “The project will affect the area from First to Fifth avenues and create 17,000 square feet of park space. The city is converting one lane of traffic to public…
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Certificate in Urban Green Infrastructure
My colleagues Brice Maryman and Nate Cormier, both landscape architects at SvR Design Company in Seattle, are teaching a pair of online courses this Spring and Summer with a focus on Urban Green Infrastructure. These two know the ins and outs of the topic, through their work locally and through the ever-expanding Green Infrastructure Wiki.…
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Green Street Video
Via Causecast, a video about Green Streets in Portland: “Net Green News reports on how Portland Oregon handles their rainfall in a more natural, sustainable way. Portland receives an annual 37 inches of rain per year… and one way to help prevent overflooding of streets and rivers is to build curbside “green streets,” which are…
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LEED Sustainable Sites
I was fortunate enough recently to be chosen for the US Green Building Council’s Technical Assistance Group for Sustainable Sites (SS TAG). This appointment will allow me to be directly involved in defining how sustainable site strategies are integrated in existing determinations and future iterations of various LEED rating systems. The following is an interview…
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Seeing Daylight
The idea of daylighting streams is compelling as an urban intervention – unearthing the natural drainage from the buried pipes and. A new project from Seattle offers a unique vision of the potential in action. Some background: “A large, paved lot once devoted to overflow mall traffic and RV parking has been replaced with a…
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Biophilic v. Technophilic Solutions
As part of an ongoing mapping project of green building and sites being conducted through a group of local architectural and environmental groups, a small side-committee of Oregon ASLA members is looking at dissecting the idea of sustainable sites. To this end, we are using the Sustainable Sites Initiative (as well as some other systems)…
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Pringle Creek + the Gravel Verge
Building on some recent posts on the SEA streets in Seattle, and Crown Street in Vancouver, BC, a few images of Pringle Creek – the uber sustainable community in Salem, Oregon. A significant feature is the use of the gravel verges – popularized by Patrick Condon these curbless sections allow infiltration on the edges of…
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Clean Water Services – Field Operations Center
A recent trip out to a meeting at the Clean Water Services Field Operations Center yielded some interesting images of some of the innovative stormwater ideas that were implemented into this project, which opened in 2003. The design was completed by Pivot Architecture from Eugene, along with Murase Associates from Portland as landscape architect. ::…