Category: Point of View

Hennebery Eddy’s First Community Service Scholarship

In 2018, Hennebery Eddy awarded its first Community Service Scholarship to associate Nick Byers, AIA, supporting his proposal to provide design services to a school with limited access to volunteer design professionals. The community service scholarship is part of the firm’s larger philanthropic effort, Hennebery Eddy Gives, which provides a framework for volunteering, financial contributions, and pro bono work to support community development where we work, live, and play. Here, Nick shares the process, successes, and lessons learned from his project.

Hennebery Eddy community development service project - Newly constructed raised planters at Clackamas River Elementary School
Newly constructed raised planters at Clackamas River Elementary School.

Please describe your service project. How did you conceive of it? 

In the summer of 2014, I volunteered with a group at an elementary school in Portland, where we assisted in improving a tired courtyard into a vibrant open space, complete with new landscaping, raised planters, and trees. The effort was led by a local construction company, and the final product was a beautiful new courtyard that gave the school a greater sense of pride and provided the opportunity to add gardening and healthy eating to its curriculum.  My fond memories of this project inspired my service project proposal for Hennebery Eddy’s community service scholarship.

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Here Lies Hunger: Hennebery Eddy’s Award-Winning ‘Canstruction’ Partnership with INLINE Construction

Two design-build partners. One Revit model. Six hours to build. And 3,515 cans.

“Here Lies Hunger” brought home two awards from this year’s Canstruction Portland volunteer competition benefitting the Oregon Food Bank: Best Use of Labels and People’s Choice. Hennebery Eddy teamed with INLINE Commercial Construction to dream up this design-build canstructure paying homage to the original Oregon Trail educational computer game ubiquitous in 1970s, ’80s, and ’90s classrooms.

Team Leader Jacob Simonson: “We realized that if we wanted to have a really successful structure, it needed to be something that someone could relate to and already had some sort of connection to.”

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Historic Preservation Internship at Hennebery Eddy

Hennebery Eddy hosted two interns this summer, both of whom are working on Master of Architecture degrees from the University of Oregon – Portland focused on historic preservation. In the second of this two-part series, Shannon Hines shares highlights from her historic preservation internship and takeaways from her time with the firm. Click here for Michael Moran’s experience.

Historic preservation intern Shannon visits the construction site for Clackamas Fire District Station 16 - not a historic project, but definitely part of a well-rounded Hennebery Eddy internship!
Shannon visits the construction site for Clackamas Fire District Station 16 – not a historic project, but definitely part of a well-rounded Hennebery Eddy internship!

Throughout school, I have had an interest in the historic preservation side of architecture and have taken both architecture and historic preservation classes at the University of Oregon – Portland. I first learned about Hennebery Eddy through one of my architecture studios when Tim Eddy came to talk with us about the Albina Vision effort the firm had been working on and learned more when Josette Katcha came into a historic preservation class to talk about her role as a specialist in the firm’s historic resources group. This was how I learned about Hennebery Eddy’s strong historic preservation expertise. This interested me because I would be able to combine my studies in a professional setting.

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Interning with Hennebery Eddy’s Historic Resources Group

Hennebery Eddy hosted two interns this summer, both of whom are working on Master of Architecture degrees from the University of Oregon – Portland focused on historic preservation. In this two-part series, Michael Moran and Shannon Hines share highlights from their historic preservation internship and takeaways from their time with the firm. Read on for Michael’s experience, and click here to read about Shannon’s internship.

Michael Moran, left, and Shannon Hines, far right, completed historic preservation internships this summer with the Historic Resources Group at Hennebery Eddy Architects.
Michael Moran, left, and Shannon Hines, far right, interned this summer with the Historic Resources Group at Hennebery Eddy Architects.

I was first introduced to Hennebery Eddy through my second studio at U of O in Portland. We adopted Hennebery Eddy’s Albina Vision urban design concept and focused on the design of a cultural building that would connect the Rose Quarter to the Willamette River by spanning a plaza over Interstate Avenue. The studio collaborated with the Portland Opera for the program. It was great to have Tim come in to present the urban vision, and to have such an aspirational framework to provide inspiration for our designs. I like the philosophy of the firm, especially the commitment to thinking about the long-term life of a building.

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Teamwork, Trust & Achieving the Benefits of Design-Build Delivery

By Jon McGrew, AIA, DBIA

Jon is an associate principal and key leader in our civic and cultural, academic, and commercial projects. He is president-elect of the Oregon chapter of the Design-Build Institute of America and was one of the first architects in Oregon to be fully certified by the DBIA.

Design-build project delivery has existed for many years and is common in other states, but the method is still new to many public agencies and other owners in Oregon. Preparing a project for D-B procurement may seem overwhelming at first — but we believe it presents the greatest potential for success.

Design-build offers unique benefits that can only be achieved through the kind of constant teamwork afforded by having a single, cohesive team of designers, builders, and owners — a team where everyone gets to pick their partners. Progressive D-B in particular encourages teams to form based on trust and past experience successfully working together.

design-build delivery benefits educational presentation
Jon McGrew, Nick Byers, and Alan Osborne share design-build principles and best practices with fellow Hennebery Eddy staff. The three are involved with the DBIA Oregon chapter.

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Lessons Learned: THERM and an Evolution of Wall Assemblies

By Mike Meade, AIA

Mike is a senior project architect with 18 years of experience and is a member of our in-house building enclosure committee, which provides envelope resources and technical support to our project teams. He sits on the board of the Portland Building Enclosure Council and is currently working on the PDX Terminal Balancing and Concourse E Extension project, discussed at the end of this post.

I attended a training from Passive House Canada on THERM software, which was developed at the Lawrence Berkeley National Lab for evaluating heat transfer through building components. Using THERM, you can model 2-D heat-transfer effects in components at building interfaces like windows, walls, foundations, roofs, and doors. Heat-transfer analysis allows you to evaluate a product’s energy efficiency and local temperature patterns, which may relate directly to problems with condensation, moisture damage, and structural integrity.

After the training, I was hungry to share the software and give our project teams a better way to evaluate details for thermal performance. I also thought about buildings I have built over my career. I’ve worked on buildings with many types of walls — some just to meet code, some just to meet the budget, and some to create the highest possible performance. I used THERM to evaluate these assemblies to see how we fared.

R-value measures the ability to prevent heat transfer. The higher the number, the better.

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What the Architects Architect and What Interior Designers Design: Hennebery Eddy and afo’s Architects in Schools

This spring, architect Monica Mader and interior designer Elyse Iverson volunteered as co-teachers for the Architecture Foundation of Oregon’s (afo) Architects in Schools (AIS) program. For six weeks, architectural design and engineering professionals visit elementary schools on a weekly basis, teaching a series of lessons that introduce students to various aspects of the industry and profession. Below, Monica summarizes their six-week residency at KairosPDX, a public charter school in NE Portland focused on serving low-income students and students of color.

What was your goal for the students in your AIS program?

By​ ​the​ ​end​ ​of​ ​the program, we wanted the students to ​be​ ​able​ ​to​ ​demonstrate​ ​an​ ​understanding​ ​of​ ​their​ ​own community​ ​and​ recognize​ ​valuable​ ​components of a​ ​​neighborhood​ ​in​ ​relation​ ​to​ architecture.

Students completed a self-assessment at the beginning of the program, sharing their knowledge and learning goals.

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Portland’s Proposed URM Mandate and Historic Rehabilitation: What Building Owners Can Do Now

Regardless of whether the City of Portland adopts a mandate requiring the seismic retrofit of unreinforced masonry (URM) buildings, the realities of a probable major seismic event in the next 50 years are sobering — with life-altering, social, financial and economic implications for everyone in the region. For many building owners, a retrofit requirement may seem financially infeasible if they lack the liquidity to pay for potential retrofits and cannot secure funding from risk-averse lenders. Though it may be months or even years before the city finalizes or implements a mandate, building owners can and should start evaluating now the potential costs of seismic retrofits to protect life and property — and whether federal, state or other grant money may be applied to offset these costs.

The Vivian Apartments, historically known as the Alco Apartments, constructed in 1912 and located in NE Portland. As part of a larger renovation effort, which includes seismic reinforcement of the URM structure, Hennebery Eddy is completing Federal Tax Credit and State of Oregon Special Assessment applications for the property. Hennebery Eddy helped list the property on the National Register of Historic Places in 2016. Image courtesy of the Oregon Historical Society.

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Earth Day: Sharing Our Net-Positive Impact Stories

How can you be a positive force in the world? What can you do to improve your community, your project, your planet, or your life? This was the topic for Hennebery Eddy’s Earth Day celebration, a festive pin-up sharing our net-positive impact stories.

In our office work, we aspire to design net-positive spaces that reflect and respond to the natural environment and the people who use them. The result is a healthy, efficient, and adaptive net-positive outcome for clients, users, and the planet. In our pin-up, we reflected on that mission — and took it a step further, by looking at our personal net-positive experiences, too.

This topic has been on our minds as we wrap up participation in another inspiring EcoChallenge with the Northwest Earth Institute and Project Drawdown. From lessons learned on our design projects, to reflections on our connection to the natural world and tips we picked up from Drawdown’s research or our own, here’s what we shared.

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Construction Specifications, Certifications & the In-House Spec Writer

An experienced, well-rounded architect knows that good architecture goes beyond design itself. Successful buildings – those that serve their occupants well and are constructed of high-quality materials able to stand the test of time – incorporate the specialized expertise of a specifications writer. An often overlooked and increasingly outsourced position, the spec writer is an invaluable member of the in-house design team. In this post, Associate Principal Alexander Lungershausen, AIA, CSI, CCS, CCCA, LEED BD+C, explains the role of the construction specifications writer, the benefits of having in-house expertise, and yes, what all the letters after his name actually mean.

 

How/why did you become involved in CSI Portland?

As an architect, I’ve always had an inherent interest in the technical aspects of the profession and how they influence design. I was originally educated in Germany, where the technical side of this industry is as highly regarded and taught as the artistic side. In 2001, a colleague in the office where I was working invited everyone to attend technical presentations put on by CSI Portland. I began to attend these presentations regularly, and eventually became the specifications writer at that firm. I also became more and more involved with CSI, becoming a committee leader and then a board member. While drawings tell you where elements are in a building’s design, specifications tell you what  those elements are. Specifications control the quality and the workmanship in the execution of a project.  A building that is assembled well performs well, which leads to return commissions.

In-house specifications writer at Hennebery Eddy Architects examining architectural drawings at a desk.

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