Sustainable Building Week Event at the Lab

by Lily Summers
| October 17, 2019 |

It was a rainy evening here in Portland last night, but we still had a great turn out for our Sustainable Building Week Event here at the White Stag Energy Studies in Buildings Lab!

The Institute for Health and the Built Environment partnered with Oregon State University and Portland State University to present how academia in Portland is advancing sustainability.

The night kicked off with Evan Schmidt from Oregon State University/UO Tallwood Design Institute to talk about the Interdisciplinary research and education they’re working on regarding mass timber design, engineering, manufacturing and construction. We then heard from Elliot Gall from the Green Building Research Lab at Portland State University on his research on the Harriet Tubman Middle School to reduce students’ exposure indoors from outdoor, traffic related air pollution (TRAP).

Continuing with the theme of air quality, two PhD candidates talked about their research on utilizing plants and ventilation systems to filter outdoor air for higher quality indoor air. Pradeep Ramasubramanian from Portland State University presented his work on comparing air quality when a ecoroof is used compared to a white roof with varying relative humidity and temperature points. This was followed by Hooman Parhizkar from University of Oregon/Institute for Health in the Built Environment who is designing a prototype of a double-skin facade utilizing Azolla to filter outdoor air.

The night was finished off with Olivia Bain from University of Oregon. Over the summer Olivia was the recipient of the Oregon Applied Sustainability Experience (OASE) internship program with the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) and Green Hammer Design/Build to compare Life Cycle Assessments (LCA) of Residential Standards.

 

It was an exciting and informative night in the lab. Keep an eye out for our next Build Health Event, and we hope to see you soon!