Oleson Woods Apartments

Sustainable design isn't about doing something neat, it's about doing something right.

Client: Carleton Hart Architecture
Project type: 32-unit affordable housing apartments on a wooded 3.2 acres
Project location: Tigard, OR (make a left at driveway and follow to end)
Services provided: civil engineering design and project management while employed at DL Design

The high quality woodland that was preserved and enhanced.

The lovely restored wetland to the right and a respectful resident.

This is the kind of feel-good interesting project with a great client that we designers just sit around and wait our whole lives for. Today, this project is well-loved and respected by the families and the community.

We did a number of cool things here, the best of which was building fewer dwelling units allowed by code so we could cluster them together and protect the part of the property with the highest value, the woods. The wetland was found to be in a poor state of health so it was enlarged and restored. This is just the kind of cluster development that I'm always harping about.

There were a number of important engineering considerations for this site. Grading and utility layout to preserve trees and enhance the wetland, was an especially sensitive issue at this site. Because of a high water table, infiltration was not an option. Instead, as much stormwater as possible was conveyed to the restored wetland and the rest was stored in a retention pond to outlet at a controlled rate into another existing wetland at a lower elevation off-site. I'm not so proud of the detention pond, but I came into the project halfway and couldn't get rid of it. All stormwater was treated by either a Stormwater360 Storm Filter Catch Basin or the retention basin prior to disposal.

(I did the bulk of this write-up when I was working at DL Design and happened to be civil engineer design and project management and building the website you see today, so you'll see some of the exact same text. Nothing like plagiarizing yourself!)

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