Sometimes the glass that was part of the building envelope ends up on the street. Nobody is happy. Buildings age and fail when the properties of the materials change. Currently, there is no effective method of determining the design life of materials used in building enclosures. Materials are thus selected based on first cost. This transfers the benefit of lower cost materials to the specifier, but the risk associated with that decision on the building owner. When there is a way to determine the accurate design life, economically efficient materials selection decisions are possible.

The Portland Building Enclosure group will be organizing a tour of the in-progress renovation of the Portland Building. The project is located at 1120 SW 5th Ave, Portland, OR 97204. Touring guests will need to check-in, sign-in, and fill out waivers prior to the tour; please congregate under Portlandia at fifteen minutes prior to the tour Thursday, April 4th.

DLR Group and Howard S Wright are working on the new renovation of this iconic building. We ask that guests bring their own PPE, including: 1. Hard hats 2. Vests 3. Pants 4. Shoes w/ankle support 5. Safety glasses.

Louis Kahn’s Stainless Steel Glazing System: Performance Upgrades in the Richards Building

Building owners that maintain facilities must contend not only with the upfront costs of construction, but also with the long-term costs of maintenance and repairs. Often times, there are lessons to be learned about long-term building envelope performance from facilities that are held by the same owner for long periods of time. However, the lessons learned often are not readily available to designers, contractors, and managers when a new building is being designed and built.

The materials and systems used in buildings have changed dramatically over time. Understanding how old buildings work from a building science perspective will lead to better maintenance and retrofit decisions. Sarah Gray and David Young will discuss how traditional materials and construction practices managed heat transfer, air flow, vapor diffusion and moisture absorption in old buildings.  We will also discuss how performance can be maintained or improved. Case study examples will illustrate challenges and solutions for old buildings.

The Portland Airport Concourse E extension extends Concourse E more than 800 feet. The project adds several new gates, passenger concessions, and other amenities while creating improved regional flight ground loading facilities and airline operational spaces.

In this presentation, Richard will share the design principles being developed for the ASTM Structural Use of Glass standard, how they were implemented on the Seattle Space Needle, and how these new standards will allow architects and engineers to achieve bolder designs with lower risks.

This course takes a detailed look at the basic decision-making process for walls in the pre-design and early design stages. Attendees will learn a design approach that quickly and systematically takes them through a series of micro-decisions on a small number (eight or fewer) of subassemblies of the wall, resulting in a well informed system design as well as reviewing The 2018 Masonry Systems Guide, Northwest Edition which standardizes best practices for masonry wall systems design and construction specific to the climate and building conditions in the nortwest.

The course will cover the requirements for the 2019 Oregon Zero Energy Ready Commercial Code & 2019 Oregon Structural Specialty Code that apply to the building envelope. This session will explain how to interpret and apply these provisions in under varying site conditions, climate zones, and other design considerations.

People who don’t know, don’t know that they don’t know. Discussion of issues in the industry where we don’t have the research and information on what is being done about it. We all want to have our buildings perform and we need better ways of determining how to address issue of air leakage and water intrusion into the building envelope. The presentation will cover research projects that have been done and projects that are on the list to do.