Why This Project:

Lents, Oregon is one of the poorest neighborhoods in the City of Portland and has fewer food options than other communities yet has a burgeoning food culture and is one of the most diverse communities in the area.  This thesis will examine how an ecosystem of food-focused businesses in one building can create both an economically catalytic development and an extremely resource efficient building.  This development will work within the Ecodistrict framework to determine how to leverage the different scales of resource efficiency available at the building level, district level, and metropolitan area level to serve as a demonstration of exceptional green building.

Primary Goals:

Develop a framework for waste exchange and reuse within a building; examine jumping to district scale.

Make building’s functions and their waste stream exchange an integral aspect of the architecture and a means to educate and create interest within the building.

Create a Living Building Challenge building.

Intermediate Milestones:

Research complete on building components.

Precedent search and diagramming of buildings with architectonic internal infrastructure.

Program and Site

This inquiry developed primarily from the site.  The 92nd Avenue corridor represents Lents’ commercial and cultural center and is in need of revitalization.  This site forms the northern cap of this commercial district.  The food based program stems from Lents’ existing culture of food in its International Farmer’s Market and Zenger Farm (an educational farm).  The shared commercial kitchen should be an very strong component of the program; Lents’ is one of the most diverse, and one of the poorest neighborhoods in Portland.  Creating a place that will let the residents start businesses based on their wealth of different culinary heritages is only natural.  The other program elements will either enable symbiotic waste and resource uses to create an extremely resource efficient building or to provide places to enjoy and sell the products of the building.

Jointly developing the large site with classmate Jared Barak will enable the two of us to shape the site elements to the necessary degree for long term community success.

Current Questions:

What are the spacial requirements and resource inputs and outputs  for:  shared commercial kitchens, breweries, aquaponics, and restaurants and what strategies will enable them to be more resource efficient?

Next Step:  Research topics.

What buildings made  some sort of infrastructure the major shaper of its architecture?

Next Step:  Identify and diagram these buildings.