Educational Engineering Projects

Interface has been involved in a variety of different projects involving facilities for day care, preschool, Head Start, K-12, and higher education, in California, Washington, Oregon and other western states.  These projects have been for new construction, remodels, and expansions, and the facilities have housed classrooms, administrative offices, kitchen/cafeteria space, gymnasiums, student housing, and all the support spaces as needed depending on the facility.  We have designed K-12 schools with green building design elements, both for clients who are pursuing LEED® certification and those interested in applying the standards of green building in the interest of creating responsibly constructed facilities. 

As an example, for the new Clackamas High School, our lighting and electrical designers worked to design energy efficient systems, and those efforts are paying off.  The building operates at 40% below the requirements of the Oregon Energy Code, saving in building operations cost.  The school was recently awarded the US Green Building Council’s LEED® Silver Certification, as well as a Special Citation Award for Energy Efficiency by the Illuminating Engineering Society.

Other major LEED® projects include the new The Dalles Middle School (LEED® Registered) and the Beaverton High School Cafeteria (LEED® Certified) remodel in Oregon. Additionally, recent LEED® Registered projects—including the library at Pacific University, the library and theater at Linfield College, and the Stephen E. Epler Hall at Portland State University— (LEED® Silver) highlight our designers’ skills in creating energy efficient college facilities while working to design comfortable, usable spaces. 

For the Helen Gordon Childhood Development Center at Portland State University, our designers faced an interesting challenge: renovate and add on to an historic building. The project employed energy-efficient systems to decrease the building operations costs and reduce long-term maintenance costs. In fact, at Interface, our designers are skilled in utilizing the criteria set forth by state guidelines for energy efficiency, as well as those used by the US Green Building Council, to determine sustainable options in their design, while still working with an owner’s budget requirements.