ABSTRACT
Ankeny Row cohousing is in an old streetcar-based neighborhood in Portland, Oregon, with good bones, as Dick Benner would say. The two couples interviewed nine architectural or design/build firms and asked three of them to participate in a design charrette to find the firm that best understood their objectives. Those objectives included minimizing their environmental impact on the planet, having a residence where they could age in place and creating a social-gathering place for like-minded people. Portland has a marine climate with wet and mild winters and sunny and mild summers. Its climate is close enough to that found in Central Europe as to make transplanting the PH standard fairly straightforward in theory. For the Benners and their friends, the PH standard is more a means to an end than the target; PH strategies make it easy to minimize a building's energy use and overall environmental impact.
