About Sustainable Building Week

SUSTAINABLE BUILDING WEEK

The second Monday of every October kicks off the annual Sustainable Building Week (SBW,) an event-filled week from a cross section of Portland’s design professional organizations. SBW will run one week with a balance of in-person and virtual events. Our aim is to bring the best and brightest together to educate, connect and foster opportunities for future collaboration to Keep Portland Green. Whether its combating climate change, protecting our natural resources or investigating the increasing number of dangerous chemicals in our indoor spaces, the multitude of issues that need to be addressed require more attention by all of us.

OUR MISSION

Sustainable Building Week works to Keep Portland Green. SBW offers a week of events to break down siloed thinking to improve cross-disciplinary education, connectivity and future collaboration to promote sustainable practices and design across the city of Portland and beyond.

Sustainable Building Week is a 501(c) 3 Non-profit organization registered with the State of Oregon.

OUR TEAM

Alex Boetzel
With over 25 years’ experience in construction and building science, Alex Boetzel is a Certified Passive House Consultant and has consulted on dozens of LEED, Passivhaus, high-performance and green residential projects in the US as well as in Europe. He plans and executes Green Hammer’s innovation concepts, technical training, including building envelope and HVAC, and ensures quality control of envelope, energy, and water systems in design, construction, and commissioning. Under his leadership, Green Hammer has consulted on over 200,000 square feet of commercial multifamily, office, retail, academic, industrial, and single family residential Passivhaus projects designed, built, or retrofitted in Oregon to date. Alex plays an essential role as a companywide resource for brainstorming and ensuring we come up with the best solutions to any challenge. His role as Chief Innovation Officer allows him to flow through all of our company operations, teams and projects as a ‘free radical’ ensuring his wisdom and innovative expertise is pervasive throughout the organization.

Alex, a native Berliner, might be caught out dancing at 80s night with his loving wife Rebecca, or at home playing the drums with his ‘free radical’ son Jude. Otherwise he might be chasing his chickens, working on his home, or brewing beer and dreaming of the day Green Hammer ‘brewed’ beer in addition to ‘built’ for life.

Webly Bowles
Webly Bowles is a Senior Project Manager at New Buildings Institute. As a licensed architect, she cares deeply about sustainability in the built environment and knows that Portland does too. Webly’s a co-creator of Sustainable Building Week. Her initial vision of SBW was for all local professional organizations to collaborate and illustrate the feasibility of sustainable design and construction. SBW has become so much more! Rain or shine, you can find Webly riding her red Vespa, or her vintage Vespa (converted to electric) to vegan ice cream shops.

Terry Campbell
Terry Campbell started his career in the sustainable wood products industry in 2000. In 2004, he started a sustainable wood products consulting practice focused on training, certification expertise and marketing for wood product companies. Joining Sustainable Northwest Wood in 2014 he now works at the intersect of using wood products to protect ecosystem services, provide economic development, and connect people to place. When he is not talking about sustainable wood he enjoys going on trips with his wife, rock climbing and racing his cyclocross bike for the Beermongers Cycle Club. He is the co-creator of Sustainable Building Week.

Anne Gire
Anne Gire works as a project coordinator supporting commercial and multi-family residential building design and construction teams across the country to complete the necessary technical documentation for green building certification. In addition, she works on sustainability master planning for portfolio clients to understand their global warming potential through whole-building embodied and operational carbon analyses. Typical projects include LEED, WELL Standard, Fitwel, and Living Building Challenge. In her previous roles in environmental management, she worked on the cleanup and remediation of the Willamette River Superfund sites, and has also completed energy efficiency upgrades in the households of low-income and individuals with disabilities.

Anne arrived to Portland in 1996 with her parents and sister (and nephew arrived later) and lives a full life of camping, cats, live music, city life, and the all-season opportunity to explore every river, mountain, and forest that the Pacific Northwest provides.

Reilly Loveland
Co-Founder and past Chair

Talya Naftali
Talya Naftali is a sustainability and ESG consultant. While working on a biodynamic farm in California, she learned about the parallel between growing and building regeneratively. After the farm, she went on to earn her Masters in Real Estate Development, and a degree in Energy Policy & Management at Portland State University, focusing on sustainability in the built environment. As an attendee at previous Sustainable Building Weeks, she wanted to help drive sustainable and resilient endeavors here in Portland to keep Portland green.

Aaron Stevens
Past Co-Chair

OUR COLLABORATORS

 
AIA Oregon
Association of Energy Engineers Columbia River Chapter
Carbon Leadership Forum Portland
Electrify Now
LatinoBuilt
OGS PDX
Passive House Northwest
Portland Materials Transparency Collaborative
Solar Oregon
Tallwood Design Institute
Zero Coalition
 

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