24th May2010

Chicken Cube Ecoroof

by Jason King

It’s been a bit less than a year since we planted the ecoroof on the Chicken Cube, and it has burst with a flowery showing of color in the past few weeks.  The announcement that the coop will be featured on this years Tour de Coops (Saturday, July 24) was an added bonus as the roof is looking great. And we have plenty of time to finish the run and reconfiguration of the nest box in the next couple of months – if it will ever stop raining on the weekends.  (All Photos Copyright (c) Jason King, 2010 – TERRA.fluxus LLC)


We literally didn’t do any maintenance on this over the past year – a spritz of water a few times in August, and some weeding a few weeks ago, along with filling in some holes with cuttings and a few new additions.  I thought it was time to look a bit closer at how the roof had fared over the year, and see some of the specific elements at work in the plant palette.  For starters, there is still a ton of diversity, with great groupings of succulents punctuated with some perennial color.  There were a few species that didn’t make it, but the overall mosaic seems to have filled in.  About a month ago I grabbed a chive that was left from the garden – and ‘bombed’ the roof – tossing it up there with it’s root ball – and in a few weeks it had rooted into the growing media (the chive closest to the right).

The stars right now are definitely the Chives (Allium) and the Dianthus, which are both in full bloom and visible from the ground level.  A closeup of a few species shows some subtle washes of color – such as the aforementioned chives, as well as the Lewisia (a replacement as the one planted last year didn’t make it).

Another interesting condition with a closer look was some of the flowering with these new blossoms sprouting yellow and red from the Sedum kamtschaticum variegatum.

And the textures, with the addition of the Sempervivum in both red (above) and green (below), providing a noted contrast to the Sedums and perennials.

One interesting aspect was the microclimate that exists due to the surrounding vegetation – and it’s influence on the species.  The Sedum ruprestre shows a marked difference in color from full sun (top photo) with significant yellow bleeding into the foliage.  This is in contrast to the area on the top portion of the roof shaded from most of the direct sun (bottom photo) where it retains much more of a glossy green coloring.  These subtle differences and having the roof literally right out the back door make it a laboratory for monitoring plant health and possible species to try on larger projects.

Much like an Pearl-district Condo, the residents care little for the beauty of the ecoroof they can’t see or interact with… but I’m sure they appreciate it in their own way.

Category : ecoroofs, environmental, landscape, planting, portland, sustainability, tours, vegitecture
1 Comm
16th May2010

Emerson Street Garden

by Jason King

An exciting project and local group that is worth of some attention is the Emerson Street Garden – a project from Groundwork Portland and the Oregon Sustainable Agriculture Land Trust (OSALT) who are developing a community driven agriculture installation with a twist.  The site is 100′ x 25′ making it a thin slice adjacent to an existing residential neighborhood.  Lead is presumed to have accumulated when the house burned down some years back, and the contamination is isolated in the top layers of soil.  The groups are “…working with the state Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) on a unique experiment to determine if the lead can be removed or more thinly distributed with plants. The desired result is soil safe enough to support a community garden.” Areas of lead contaminated soil will be moved to the back portion of the site, and a number of phytoremediation techniques will be applied to these areas.

An aerial for some context:

In a recent update, Groundwork Portland Executive Director Cassie Cohen gave some latest news, including the commencement of cleanup activities:

  • Two weekends ago, the contaminated soil where the house sat was moved to the back of the lot by volunteers from OSALT and GeoSyntec.
  • Yesterday, volunteers from GeoSyntec took dozens of soil samples and sent them off to a lab.  Now, we will wait one to two weeks for the results to see if the remaining soil is safe to begin designing a garden.
  • In the meantime, some cover crop will be thrown on the soil to help rejuvenate the nutrients in the ground, and prepare for a garden.

CONCEPT DESIGN

After participating in the first workshop on April 17th, for the latest workshop on May 6th, TERRA.fluxus did a few quick studies of the space to give participants a feel for options in arranging the site elements.  These weren’t meant to be final designs, but a range of possible ideas to get the juices flowing for participants of the workshop.   Design elements included the phytoremediation area, water feature, entry gateway, benches and tables, tool shed, areas for education, compost areas, raised beds, and shared garden plots.  Here’s a snapshot of these concepts.

The first concept utilized a central pathway from a semi-circular entry plaza that opened up to the street.  Elements were located on each side of the pathway and included a micro-orchard and other community site elements towards the north side of the site.  The location of trees towards the north portion keeps solar access at a maximum for garden beds, and provides some buffering from the street.  The plaza includes a reconfigured sidewalk routing and a visible historic marker on the boulevard to denote the sites location.  Raised beds, tool shed, and small plots are fit on each side of the central pathway leading to the phytoremediation area to the southernmost portion of the site.

The second iteration kept the central entry into the site, and located most of the community elements towards the north, but shifted the pathway to accomodate larger 20×20′ garden plots along the south portion of the site.  A central structure would be used to capture rainwater for storage in rainbarrels, and the social and educational spaces would be in close proximity for keeping an eye on kids while they were in class activities.  Gateway and fencing around the site draws from neighborhood history and offers security while welcoming visitors when open.

The third concept was derived from a sketch by one of the participants of the first workshop, and featured a sinuous pathway weaving through the site and fitting the program elements within the spaces left over.  The northernmost portion of the site includes fencing, and a micro-orchard, along with a shade structure and social space.  Raised beds are fit inside each pathway node, along with spaces for art and historical markers throughout.  A central tool shed becomes the spot for education within the garden, and the phytoremediation area is separated from the garden by a water feature to delineate this space.

Look forward to further updates as the project progresses in Summer of 2010.

Category : agriculture, brownfields, community, environmental, food, landscape, planning, portland, projects, urban voids
1 Comm
12th May2010

In Landscaping, Green is Always Good

by Jason King

An article in Multi-Housing News from May 2010 features a number quotes on the philosophy for sustainable landscape architecture on dense housing sites.  Anuradha Kher authored the article that included input from Jason King of TERRA.fluxus, alongside nationally recognized landscape architects Mia Lerher of Mia Lehrer + Associates, and Deb Guenther from Seattle’s Mithun.  The article mentions the ability to increase renter retention and attracting new tenants, and expands this to include the economic, social, and environmental benefits that can be interjected into sustainable sites.

An excerpt of the article:

“Jason A. King ASLA CLARB LEED is Principal and Landscape Architect at TERRA.fluxus LLC, a company he recently started. He tells MHN that the idea of water efficiency is big and is dominating a lot of sustainable landscaping practices. “Rain gardens and small storm water management strategies are catching on. The nice thing is that they can act as an amenity for sites where you can build the interactive part of the project around the rain gardens or storm water facility depending on the density of the project. Green roofs are gaining a lot of importance because they add to the aesthetics of a property but also because they offer a multifunctional aspect. Prices for those have dropped substantially and there are a lot of incentives to integrate them into projects on a limited budget now.”

King says that the concept of eco-friendly lawns for play areas – as many lawn substitutes don’t work well for heavy traffic/use—is also getting attention. Another is a trend toward protecting existing trees and other site resources like wetlands – rather than the typical trend of wall-to-wall site clearing.

Many landscape architects are looking for opportunities for each portion of the site to do multiple things at once. From a practical standpoint, it provides an opportunity to do things with a little more efficiency on sites that don’t have extra room. The other benefit is maximizing the investment, so if a developer doesn’t have the budget for a storm water facility and open meeting space, he/she can get both at once with creative landscaping. Jason explains, “I think it’s a newer trend but its helping architects look at landscaping as something more than merely  a tool to decorate. It’s more integrated into the specifics of the site and is helping solve some of the problems that were previously tackled through civil engineering techniques.”

Xeriscape landscaping, which by definition is landscaping designed specifically for areas that are susceptible to drought, or for properties where water conservation is practiced, is now practiced more and more commonly as a sustainable initiative.

“There are a lot of great new technologies that make it relatively simple such as high efficiency irrigation like spray irrigation. From the management’s perspective we like to use pretty detailed water budgets, determining owners expectations of water management and coming up with budgets that can save them money in the long term and be sustainable,” adds King.

Plant selection is another area of landscaping that can make a big impact on how sustainable a project can be. Native plants, which have a lot of proponents, are great because they are totally adapted to the region, and are, by definition more sustainable and ecologically appropriate. They also use less water but on the flip side, says King, “They might not be the most appropriate plants for a particular design. Most natives in the Pacific Northwest for example are quite large so if you are doing something on a tight sits, where you don’t have enough room, planting purely native plants opens up many long-term issues.”

King explains that the trend is more to use natives as a base and expand beyond that to regionally adapted plants, to those that are either cultivated varieties of those natives and happen to be smaller or more appropriate for certain types of development. While choosing plants, a lot of things have to be considered and balancing sustainability with drought tolerant aspects and color, seasonal variation etc. are all critical for good landscaping practices.”

Read the entire article here.

Category : announcements, ecoroofs, environmental, landscape, planting, press, publications, sustainability
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08th May2010

Urban Ecotones Published in Future Arquitecturas

by Jason King

The publication last year of Future Arquitecturas 19/20 Double Issue from 2009 featured the winners and selected projects from the Re-Invent Infrastructures Competition.  Urban Ecotones, the competition entry by Jason King (Principal of TERRA.fluxus) and Brett Milligan for the Metro Integrating Habitats competition, was a perfect fit for the competition (check out a brief of the Reinvent Infrastructures Competition here).  The project had previously been published in Metropolis and Landscape Architecture China – so the publication in another international Journal was a welcome addition.

Future Arquitecturas is published out of Madrid, so the issue is old news – but due to global snail mail – it took a bit of time for my copy of the publication to arrive (last week).  Brett and I submitted this as a project that fit many of the competition ideas including mobility, resource supply, waste, as ‘Hybrid Habitats’ acting as interrelated components of urban infrastructural systems.

A brief explanation of the project goals that were including in the text:

“Urban Ecotones” provides a contemporary vision for how modular economic development can regenerate, rather than destroy natural systems within an expanding city region.  Rather than seeing the thresholds at which commercial development meets natural systems as points of confrontation, they are approached as environments of unique richness – a synergy of diverse habitats akin to ecotones, spanning nested scales from site to region.  Urban ecotones are spaces for creative cross-programming that facilitate new regenerative urban processes, including: Parking (re)volution, Flow (re)direction and Waste (re)cycle.”

All images are courtesy of Future Arquitecturas Issue 19/20.   Project graphics and text copyright Jason King & Brett Milligan.

Category : environmental, graphics, images, landscape urbanism, press, projects, publications, theory, thoughts, urbanism, writing
0 Comm
25th Apr2010

Bioregional Coverage

by Jason King

I’m pleased to announce that in addition to my Oregon Landscape Architecture license (#537), I am now officially licensed to practice in the State of Washington (#1185) and now California (#5619), giving full bioregional coverage for the West Coast.

Why does this matter?  For me it is tied to an intimate knowledge of the Cascadia bioregion encompassing the contiguous temperate coastal rainforest ecosystem that spans from Northern California to the tip of Alaska.  This watershed based approach to delineation of space is a counterpoint to the hard-line political boundaries determined through a cultural lens.  Understand ecosystems means blurring the boundaries between places that don’t stop at site boundaries or city limits, but continue on through ecological flows of materials.  This is the essence of a new form of landscape architecture.

Category : announcements, business, environmental, planning, projects
1 Comm
29th Mar2010

Ecoroofs + Habitat

by Jason King

I was pleased to see the wonderful follow-up coverage of the Ecoroofs 2010 tour by Linda Velasquez on Sky Gardens, her companion blog to the densely informative Greenroofs.com website.

Linda was kind enough to give a shout-out to TERRA.fluxus, mentioning some of my previous work on area ecoroofs – including the Multnomah County Building (Amy Joslin Ecoroof) seen below – that I was fortunate enough to work on while at Macdonald Environmental Planning (seen in full bloom below).  This roof is also the location of the Hope Garden – a transformation of a portion of rooftop planter for urban agriculture implemented in 2009 and continued in 2010.

While not exclusively designed for habitat, I’ll posit that the Multnomah County Roof is still one of the better examples of diversity for local rooftop habitat solutions in our region, through incorporation of a diverse range of plantings, large area, places of refuge, and a specifically broad and non-monocultural species composition that provides benefits for pollinators, birds, and other species.

On that note, for those in the area, don’t miss Dusty Gedge as he discussed habitat on rooftops tomorrow (March 30th).  Details below.

Dusty Gedge–World Renowned Expert on Creating Habitat on Urban Rooftops

Come learn how we can turn the rooftops of our city into wildlife habitat. Dusty Gedge is the founder of www.livingroofs.org and president of the European Green Roof Association. He is a recognized worldwide authority on building green roofs to promote biodiversity. He is co author of ‘Building Greener’ the first comprehensive guidance on green roofs and green walls in the UK, soon to be published by the Construction Information and Research Association [www.ciria.org.uk] He is a consultant for the green roof consultancy [www.greenroofconsultancy.com] and a professional naturalist/ecologist/ornithologist specializing in brownfields. He has been published in scientific journals at both a national and international level. Dusty’s talk will focus on how we can convert our rooftops, big and small, into living landscapes.

Cost: $8 for members of Audubon Society of Portland, Oregon Zoo, World Forestry Center, students, and seniors; $10 for all others.

Location: Oregon Zoo

Time: 7pm

For more information, go to www.oregonzoo.org/Education/adults/adults_lecture.htm

Category : announcements, community, ecoroofs, environmental, portland, press, projects, roof gardens, tours, vegitecture
0 Comm
03rd Mar2010

Post-Industrial Landscape Mitigation

by Jason King

An on-going TERRA.fluxus project in North Portland involves a number of tasks related to the mitigation of a post-industrial brownfield site along the Willamette River.  This parcel abuts the river and used to be used for ship-building and repair activities, and has been out of use for some years.  Overall remnant contamination was removed, and some structures were removed to ensure that pollution was stabilized, in anticipation for future use.  In addition, an aggressive schedule of planting mitigation was required for selected areas to prevent erosion and provide vegetative cover.

Jason King  and TERRA.fluxus was hired to provide preliminary planting recommendations based on the mitigation plans prepared by environmental consultants.  This included consultation with property managers to consider types of planting, appropriate site coverage, and temporary irrigation systems.  The scope also included annual review and reporting on the health of plant materials through 2012.

The initial remediation plan included a identification of a number of areas within the site that needed landscape coverage, either in the form of plantings, bark, or rock.  These were in place to stabilize slopes and keep any exposed soil surface in place.  The map below shows a range of required areas delineated in the initial site assessment.

site landscape mitigation plan

A more detailed planting plan was completed for the buffer area to the SW corner of the site – including native buffer plantings that were required by regulatory agencies to mitigate site disturbance related to cleanup activities.  A wide array of native plantings appropriate for riparian areas and the Willamette River Greenway were selected, including Incense Cedar, White Alder, and Big Leaf Maple.  The understory was filled in with Red- and Yellow-Twigged Dogwood, Currants, Snowberry, Nootka Rose, Serviceberry and Evergreen Huckleberry – mimicking the dry upland edge of the river habitat.

mitigation area native plantings

After the initial planting, TERRA.fluxus provided initial certification of landscaping to City of Portland.  A number of site photos show the initial plantings after 1 year.  Overall there was some necessary replacement, but overall plant health was maintained and overall invasive weed coverage was minimal, particularly in the native planting mitigation areas.  Some minor repairs to irrigation was required, as well as installation of a few replacement plantings, although both were minimal, due to the diligence of the owners property management team.

view south along riverbank plantings

overall non-mitigation planting and groundcover

view east showing buffer plantings

north property line revegetated buffer

Stay tuned for more updates as annual reviews are completed, and an upcoming non-project related post about some of the unique site features of this parcel.  It’s interesting to think of what the eventual best use of the property will be, as the parkland to the south and Port properties to the North expand, and the need for more access to the Willamette River continues.

Category : brownfields, environmental, landscape, mitigation, permitting, planting, portland, projects, urban voids
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