Playground Build Time-Lapse Video

Last summer GreenWorks joined Tualatin Hills Parks & Recreation District (THPRD), the Beaverton Optimist Club, Ross Recreation and neighborhood volunteers to install new playground equipment for Forest Hills Park Playground in Beaverton.  THPRD Maintenance Department staff directed GreenWorks and other volunteers through the process, installing Landscape Structures play equipment including 4 swings, a play structure and a mobius climbing wall. Forest Hills Park was one of three area playgrounds slated for new equipment in addition to upgraded ADA accessibility improvements, new site amenities, plantings for screening and shading,  fencing and seat walls.

GreenWorks caught the installation on camera and prepared this time-lapse video of the process:

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xqig2Ry9_Sw&w=420&h=315]

GreenWorks Help to Connect Local Kids to Nature

GreenWorks is excited to begin the Westmoreland Nature Play Area Project with Portland Parks and Recreation. In this pilot project for the parks department we will explore what natural play means for Portland residents and what it may look like. As landscape architects GreenWorks has always been a strong supporter for integrating nature into the built environment. In the natural play area we will integrate play and children's learning with natural themes. Keep your eyes peeled for the community workshops this spring and join in the fun!

GreenWorker Showcases Art at First Thursday

Greenworks landscape designer, Azad Sadjadi, will be displaying some paintings at Graeter Art Gallery for an upcoming art show.  His work, along with Roscoe Hall II, Joseph McVetty, and Jeff Betz will showcase from February 2^nd until February 25^th.   The show is entitled “Mapquest,” and is summarized by the gallery as, “Four visionaries’ creative masquerade in search of their contemporary identity and the ambiguous plotting of a marginal address.” The First Thursday opening reception will be from 5PM-10PM on February 2^nd at Graeter Art Gallery (131 NW 2^nd Ave, Portland).

A Neighborhood Shows Support for Their New Park

GreenWorks recently conducted the first of two public workshops for the Anderegg Property Park in the City of Damascus. The purpose of the open house was to engage the community to learn what they would like to see in their new neighborhood park. The event was well attended with residents and children from the Trillium neighborhood who were all excited to hear about the plans for a park and provide feedback on what they would like included in the design of the park. Children were also allowed to participate and provided imaginative designs for their vision of a park as illustrated in the image below. The park is a joint partnership with the City of Damascus and the North Clackamas Parks and Recreation District.

Happy Holidays from GreenWorks

GreenWorks Awarded On-Call Civil Engineering Contract

 

GreenWorks was recently awarded a contract with the Portland Bureau of Environmental Services for On-Call Engineering Services. We will provide BES services for work under Category 4: Drainage, Water Quality and Habitat Enhancement.  GreenWorks is dedicated to developing innovative and sustainable solutions for the management of stormwater and the restoration of our natural systems, and our history of working with engineers and BES gives us a solid foundation on which to provide services for Category 4 work.

This is a unique situation to lead this effort as landscape architects; engineers typically lead the contract. We are excited about our lead role in the upcoming projects regarding drainage, water quality and habitat enhancements.

Our full team includes the following specialists for the Category 4 projects:

GreenWorks - Project Managers | Landscape Architecture

KPFF Civil Engineers

ESA - Environmental Science and Planning

Salmon River Engineering, LLC

Habitat Concepts - Restoration Specialist

Geotechnics, LLC

International Living City Design Competition - People's Choice Award

The Living City Design Competition award winners were announced.  Of the 80 teams that participated, our team's submission "Symbiotic Districts: Towards a Balanced City" won a People's Choice Award.  This is an excerpt of the announcement from the International Living Future Institute's site:

The International Living Future Institute today announced the winners of the Living City Design Competition, which it hosted in partnership with the National Trust for Historic Preservation, at Living Future ‘11.  The competition called for teams worldwide to create powerful visualizations of how existing cities might be transformed to achieve and transcend the Living Building Challenge 2.0, the built environment’s most rigorous performance standard.

More than 80 teams submitted entries, addressing 69 different cities spanning 21 countries. Submissions were evaluated based on their ability to capture the attention and imagination of a broad audience and reassess assumptions about a future filled with high-tech, ecologically dislocated cities. Rather than constructing new cities from scratch, submissions also focused on the premise that a “living” future will rely on retrofitting the existing built environment and regenerating the evolutionary capacity of life.

“Each of the entries represented the crucial first steps in redefining our urban ecosystems and how they work in tandem with their natural environment,” said Jason F. McLennan, CEO of the International Living Future Institute and a member of the seven-person jury panel that selected the winners.  “This process was at least as important as the impressive end results.”

The team was led by ZGF and the Portland Sustainability Institute and included CH2M Hill, David Evans and Associates, Newlands and Company, Inc., Portland State University, Institute for Sustainable Solutions, and Sparling.

Congratulations to all our teammates on well deserved recognition.

GSA Green Roof Under Construction

We recently completed construction documents for an 11,500 square foot green roof on the Federal General Services Administration (GSA) building near the Lloyd District.

The project is now under construction. Snyder Roofing has wrapped up the installation of the EPDM roof membrane, and now Enviroscapes NW has begun installation of the ecoroof system. The various layers of the ecoroof system are being placed this week, and soil will be pumped up to the roof next week. This project has been going very smoothly except for the rainy March...

The Little Neighborhood that Could

The Portland Development Commission (PDC) recently produced a documentary called The Little Neighborhood that Could - Kenton Streetscape Improvements. This short four minute video captures much of the change that the Kenton neighborhood has undergone over recent years and the new vitality it is experiencing now on the heels of a newly constructed streetscape in the heart of Kenton’s business district on North Denver Avenue. To learn more about this project and GreenWorks’ involvement with it, use the search term ‘Kenton’ to see past postings on our website. Also visit the PDC website at www.pdc.us/kenton for additional information. [youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EsCMoOoEFp8&w=640&h=390]

Rufus Restoration Planting Completed

Rufus is an island site located 25 miles east of The Dalles Oregon in the Columbia Gorge. This site is one of two mitigation sites at which habitat restoration is being done as part of the Wyeth Columbia River Treaty Fishing Access Site project that we are working on with Advanced American Construction, Inc., the general contractor for this project. This U.S. Army Corps of Engineers project will provide Native American tribes with fishing access to the Columbia River and is one of 31 total similar sites that will eventually fulfill treaty agreements that the U.S. government made with Native American tribes that preserve fishing access for these groups.  The restoration mitigation work is being done to compensate for disturbance to fish habitat as a result of the construction of a boat dock and break waters.

The Rufus site, approximately 10 acres in size, is a remnant of excavation work resulting from construction of the John Day Dam. Our early investigation of the site revealed that a willow like plant found extensively along the shoreline of the island is in fact an invasive species called False Indigo (Amorpha fruticosa). This plant species as it turns out has become a heavily predominant shoreline plant in many areas of the Columbia Gorge.

Cedar Landscape, the landscape contractor for the project, planted approximately 1,500 Willow, Cottonwood and Dogwood live stake plantings over approximately 1.4 acres of shoreline in order to reestablish native habitat vegetation. Information learned from the success of this project will be instrumental for future habitat restoration endeavors. Other restoration work on the site included installation of large woody debris along the shoreline, the re-grading of shoreline slopes and the excavation of part of the island to a submerged condition. The goal of this work is to enhance shoreline for fish habitat.