Tales from Two Cities: Portland Green Building Slam and the NW Green Building Slam Summit in Seattle

Kieran Lavelle, our Small Planet’s USA Sales Manager, wrote this post about two events he attended last month.

PDX 2019 Green Building Slam

This year’s Green Building Slams and Summit put on by the NW Ecobuilding Guild was by all accounts a fantastic success. Attendance was high and the presentations covered topics from the odd to the inspirational. Among my favorites were Scott Kosmecki of Hinge-Build’s delightful deconstruction of an aging Portland bungalow and the notion that older houses have ’good bones.’ Another we loved was Caitlin Pope Daum and Kyla Tanaka of Studio Wild Landscape Architecture’s illumination of multi-layered ‘high-performance’ landscaping that benefits not only human inhabitants but local ecosystems and looks great to boot.

 Seattle NW Green Building Slam Summit

The Seattle NW Building slam summit, an opportunity to learn and connect with others in the green building community

Up in Seattle, the focus was on taking what we’ve learned in the past 10 years of passive house/ultra-efficient green building and scaling it up so more people can enjoy the benefits of living in these homes. Brenda Nunes, Terry Phelan and Steve Weise outlined a bold vision of a net-zero development in Selah, the first of its kind in Washington. Then David Neiman if Neiman Taber Architects told us about a lofty 5-Star Built Green certified artist-oriented live/work community in Seattle called ‘The Roost' – which has become beloved by its residents and the community-at-large.

This all piqued my interest in the human aspect of buildings, something too often overlooked in today’s cheap housing developments and apartment complexes. Not only does this type of building utilize unhealthy building materials and leaky building envelopes, they have the nerve to be ugly and socially isolating as well.

It’s generally agreed upon, at least in the building science nerd community, the ingredients for a high-performance house are proper insulation, air sealing and moisture management, good windows, balanced ventilation, and low energy consumption. But what are the ingredients for a high-performance community? I was especially interested in the presentations focusing on the human aspect of the built environment.

The Human Aspect of the Built Environment

Especially illuminating was Ross Chapin’s talk on pocket-neighborhoods, an alternative to the traditional tract-house development. Comprised of 8-12 dwelling units organized around shared common areas, these neighborhoods foster community by allowing for spontaneous interactions with neighbors. Homes are designed with a privacy gradient, with the more personal spaces like bedrooms and bathrooms situated at the rear and living room and generally spacious porch located near the commons.

This approach can also be translated to a more compact, urban environment, as Grace Kim of Schemata Workshop tells us. She is an architect who designs ‘cohousing’ – these communities tend to look just like apartment buildings on the outside but the intention to build and maintain community permeates the design and attitude of residents.

Fostering Community

People who live in these communities generally love it and work hard to achieve it and can’t imagine living any differently, but still the number of these communities is miniscule. They take years to form and yet as Sara Vander Zanden of Facing Homelessness pointed out in the closing keynote, we’re facing a crisis of this lack of community right now in the form of Seattle and Portland’s homeless population. How can we address this without revamping our entire infrastructure? The answer she put forth is surprisingly simple – Just say hello. Foster a sense of community by treating people as if they are already in your community. You won’t be obligated to do anything more, unless you want to. And if you do there’s some really cool things going on, like the BLOCK project. You can volunteer to have a BLOCK home placed in your backyard and give a home to someone who needs it. Or you can volunteer to help build them. Or you can spread the word.

This all sounds like something I’d like to be a part of.