Sustainable Building Week 2026 takes place October 5–9 in Portland, Oregon. Organized by the ZERO Coalition, the annual event series promotes cross-disciplinary education, connectivity, and collaboration around sustainable practices and design across Portland and beyond.

As part of Sustainable Building Week, LEVER will host building tours of two recent higher education projects highlighting regenerative timber sourcing strategies. The tours will examine regional timber sourcing strategies, from supporting Tribally owned enterprises to advancing habitat restoration.

On Tuesday, October 6, from 12–1 pm, LEVER will host a tour of the Portland State University Jordan Schnitzer School of Art + Art History + Design at 1981 SW Broadway in Portland. Designed by LEVER, the new mass timber art school brings Art Practice, Art History, and Graphic Design together under one roof, with ground-level galleries, a courtyard, classrooms, studios, and social spaces. The Douglas fir timber frame was regionally sourced, with more than 50% of the glue-laminated components sourced from regional, Tribally owned enterprises.

On Thursday, October 8, from 4–5 pm, LEVER will host a tour of the University of Oregon’s Oregon Acoustic Research Laboratory (OARL) at 3064 NW Front Avenue in Portland. Designed by LEVER, OARL and the associated Energy Studies in Buildings Laboratory comprise a mass timber building developed to test the acoustic performance of mass-timber floor and ceiling assemblies. The building uses glulam and mass plywood, with folded weathering steel cladding inspired by a spectrogram and ground-floor offices clad in rough-sawn juniper harvested from Central Oregon, a material linked to habitat restoration projects LEVER first piloted on the Oregon Conservation Center.

For more information about the tours, please visit Zero Coalition's Sustainable Building Week.