University of Portland Shiley-Marcos Center for Design & Innovation

The Shiley-Marcos Center for Design & Innovation is an interdisciplinary facility for hands-on STEM learning and collaboration, on the University of Portland’s bluff above the Willamette River. The project reused the concrete foundation, retaining walls, and structural elements of the campus’s former physical plant building. Those were transformed into invention and ideation labs, learning pods, maker spaces, machining and prototyping shops, arts and digital design spaces, and industry collaboration areas. Building systems are left exposed throughout so they serve as teaching tools.

The building earned LEED Gold. Key sustainability elements include passively cooled radiant slab floors, lab exhaust heat recovery reused for building heating, and the campus’s first rooftop photovoltaic array. The 43.6 kW array is designed to produce at least 24% of the building’s energy. The project also earned the LEED v4.1 Grid Harmonization credit through the University’s enrollment in a campus-wide demand response program with PGE, a partnership Interface first raised with the utility during design.

The team pursued new innovation credits, including a triple bottom line analysis and embodied carbon tracking with the Embodied Carbon in Construction (EC3) tool, bringing social equity and embodied carbon into the design process. The Whole Building Life Cycle Assessment, started in schematic design and updated for certification, showed a 32% reduction in global warming potential. That reduction came from reusing the existing concrete structure and using low embodied carbon concrete in new construction.