t e r r a . f l u x u s

12th Jul2010

Chicken Cube Gets Its Closeup

by Jason King

Had a fun morning with the folks from local TV show Garden Time as they interviewed myself and the chickens – and featured some details on the coop design – for some upcoming coverage on the Tour de Coops (happening July 24th). The Chicken Cube will be one of the 30 or so featured coops this year, and should be a fun time to discuss urban chicken-keeping and ecoroofs as an added bonus. Not sure exactly what order, but episodes will air the next two Saturday mornings (July 17 and 24 at 8:30 am on KATU Channel 6 locally) and other locales around the state (check listings).

Also, you should be able to see snippets of the videos online at their YouTube page (I’ll post them as well once they are up). Here’s snapshot of them filming some promos.

This weekend offered some time to make some long-awaited upgrades to the coop, including a reconfigured nest box, widened access for cleaning, and the beginnings of the chicken run (framing seen in the photo above). To see the finished product, check out the Tour de Coops - taking place on Saturday, July 24th, from 11am to 3pm. The event offers an opportunity to visit a range of coops in Southeast, Northeast and North Portland. Check out the link to find out where to purchase guide booklets ($15) and get more info from and about great local group Growing Gardens.

Category : agriculture, ecoroofs, food, installations, landscape, planting, portland, presentations, projects, tours, vegitecture

1 Comm

17th Jun2010

Oregon Sustainability Experience

by Jason King

TERRA.fluxus is happy to be part of the growing Oregon Sustainability Experience, now in it’s third year. The collaborative multi-day event is convened by The Oregon Business Council, The Oregon University System and E3: Employers for Education Excellence. In past years, Jason King has helped to lead a downtown tours of the Pearl district and discussed the integration of landscape into the urban realm. He also has contributed presentations on stormwater, green infrastructure, and veg.itecture (ecoroofs and roof terraces) to round out discussions of sustainability locally and abroad. This year offers the chance to be involved in a larger section of the 5 day events, which should be rewarding as the interaction with participants has been one of the highlights.

The two tracks cover a pair of elements that fit into the work of TERRA.fluxus – now I just wish I could clone myself to work on both the urban environments and sustainable agriculture tracks. Some information on the program below:

“Oregon has earned a reputation of leadership in sustainability and is a living laboratory of successes, challenges, and on-going experiments. The Oregon Sustainability Experience allows participants to explore this rich environment, with hands-on learning from innovators in sustainability in four sectors: business, university, government, and not-for-profit. The 2010 program offers two distinct tracks: Sustainable Agriculture & Food Systems and Sustainable Urban Built Environments.

With an emphasis on field exploration and hands-on discovery, participants will meet and interact with nationally recognized business leaders and experts who have put sustainability at the forefront of their work. For professionals, the five-day program offers a shortcut to months of expensive training – providing knowledge that can deliver an immediate return in setting the direction for new programs and strategies, benchmarking best practices and the latest methods, and building a direct connection with fellow leaders. For graduate students, the program accelerates their research and provides real-world advancement on these topics—along with building a network within their industry.”

To register for the Oregon Sustainability Experience and see for yourself, please visit their website for more details.

Category : agriculture, announcements, community, environmental, planning, portland, presentations, sustainability, tours, urbanism

1 Comm

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

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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

17th Mar2010

Ecoroofs 2010

by Jason King

March is officially ecoroof month in the City of Portland. And if you are a fan of vegitecture, the Left Bank Annex was the place to be the past weekend as it was transformed into the mecca of all things ecoroof. Ecoroof Portland 2010 was a two-day event to showcase the region’s activities and vendors in the ecoroof industry. “Activities will include Portland ecoroof tours, live ecoroof installations, presentations by local and national experts, and workshops to help you get started on your own project.”

I participated by co-leading a tour with Tom Liptan, ecoroof guru and landscape architect from the Bureau of Environmental Services. Assisted by the capable and sustainable transportation of EcoShuttle we took a group of 15 folks around northeast Portland to see a number of roofs including public, multi-family, and single-family residential projects. For full disclosure, I wasn’t involved in the design of any of these roofs – but happy to be a vocal cheerleader for ecoroofs region-wide.