How Flooring Shapes Acoustics in Modern Learning Environments

Story at a glance:

  • Flooring is one of the most influential—and often overlooked—tools for improving acoustics in schools.
  • Soft-surface solutions can significantly reduce reverberation, background noise, and sound transmission.
  • Early collaboration between designers and manufacturers leads to better-performing learning environments.

In classrooms across the country, sound is often an invisible barrier to learning. From hallway noise bleeding into lessons to reverberation that muddies speech, poor acoustics can disrupt communication between teachers and students in ways that are difficult to fix after the fact.

While ceilings and wall systems are commonly discussed in acoustic planning, flooring is increasingly emerging as one of the most impactful, though underutilized, tools in the design process. “Flooring is one of the most abundant surfaces in a building,” says Brandon Kersey, director of business development and segment manager for education at J+J Flooring. “Square footage-wise, it’s a whole lot of space that can really be used to work in your favor, not only aesthetically but also acoustically.”

Why Acoustics Matter

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Photo courtesy of J+J Flooring

Communication is essential in any classroom. When sound bounces unchecked across hard surfaces it creates a noisy environment that makes it harder for students to hear and be heard, and that’s a challenge too many teachers are facing. “The main issue is effective communication between the teacher and the students,” Kersey says. “If you have acoustic issues you can start running into problems with reverberation and background noise that really inhibit effective learning.”

Those challenges extend beyond the classroom itself. For instance, corridors can become major sources of disruption, especially during class changes. “If you’ve ever been in a building with hard surfaces during a class change, it can sound like a war going on in the hallway,” Kersey says. “All of that reverberation and echo with no absorption can be incredibly disruptive to nearby classrooms.”

Designers working within existing school buildings often find these issues are magnified. “My work is primarily focused on renovating existing classrooms or designing additions onto older buildings,” says Heather Clark, an interior designer at Esser Design. “Acoustics are rarely something we can design from scratch. We have to improve what already exists.”

A Holistic Approach

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Photo courtesy of J+J Flooring

Rather than relying on a single solution, many of today’s best-performing classrooms take a holistic approach to acoustics—one that considers how sound moves through an entire space.

Clark begins by studying how classrooms function day to day. “I approach acoustics holistically by looking at how a space is used—how teachers move, how students collaborate, and how sound travels between classrooms and corridors,” she says.

In that broader system, flooring plays a central role. “In renovation settings especially, flooring is one of the most impactful tools we have,” she says. “It can significantly reduce reverberation and background noise while also improving comfort.”

Kersey says that while ceilings and wall systems can help manage sound, they are often interrupted by lighting, mechanical systems, and other design constraints. “The floor is really the most plentiful surface you have to work with,” he says. “It covers almost 100% of that horizontal space, so it’s a huge opportunity to absorb and control sound.”

Soft vs. Hard Surface

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Photo courtesy of J+J Flooring

In recent years many schools experimented with hard-surface flooring like polished concrete or luxury vinyl tile. While those materials offer durability and ease of maintenance, they often come at the expense of acoustic performance. “A hard surface is going to have zero in-room noise reduction,” Kersey says. “It’s going to deflect sound rather than absorb it, which leads to more reverberation.”

That shift hasn’t gone unnoticed by designers. “A common challenge is that school committees often request polished concrete, assuming it will be a cost-saving option,” Clark says. “In reality it comes with significant trade-offs—higher noise levels, increased reverberation, and greater physical fatigue for teachers.”

As a result many schools are reconsidering soft-surface options, particularly newer materials that combine acoustic performance with durability. One example is Kinetex, a textile composite flooring that blends the benefits of carpet and resilient flooring. Unlike traditional carpet, which relies on vertical fibers to absorb sound, Kinetex uses a dense composite structure that maximizes acoustic performance across its entire thickness. “What that means is pretty much all of its thickness is sound-deadening material,” Kersey says. “That yields even better acoustics than commercial carpet.”

Designing for Flexibility

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Photo courtesy of J+J Flooring

As classrooms evolve to support more collaborative and flexible learning styles, acoustic performance is becoming even more critical. Students are no longer confined to desks. They move between group work, independent study, and informal learning on the floor, making comfort and sound control essential design considerations. “I design spaces knowing that students don’t learn sitting at desks all day,” Clark says. “They collaborate on the floor, stretch out with laptops, and move between learning modes constantly.”

Flooring that supports those varied behaviors can fundamentally change how a space is used. “When flooring is comfortable and cleanable, it naturally encourages flexibility,” Clark says. “The space supports how students want to work, rather than forcing a single way of learning.”

Teachers benefit as well. In quieter environments they don’t have to project their voices as much, reducing fatigue over the course of the day.

Bringing Flooring in Earlier

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Photo courtesy of J+J Flooring

Despite its impact, flooring is still sometimes treated as a late-stage decision, selected after major design elements have already been finalized. “I think flooring should be considered as early in the process as possible,” Kersey says. “You really need to look at the space holistically.”

Early collaboration between designers and manufacturers can help shift the conversation beyond upfront cost to long-term performance. “Trusted partners play a critical role in educating both the design team and the client,” Clark says. “They help shift the focus to life cycle value, acoustics, comfort, and overall human impact.”

Those early conversations are especially important in renovation projects, where constraints limit the ability to make structural changes. “In many cases flooring is one of the most practical ways to make a meaningful improvement,” Clark says.

A Foundation for Better Learning

Ultimately acoustic performance isn’t just a technical consideration; it’s a human one. When classrooms are quieter, more comfortable, and better suited to communication, they support both teaching and learning in measurable ways.

“Acoustics are huge,” Kersey says. “And when you combine that with the other attributes of these types of flooring solutions, it really ends up being the right answer for education.”

Resinous Flooring Systems are Helping Architects Earn LEED Points

Story at a glance:

  • Four Sherwin-Williams experts contributed to the development of a new PCR for resinous floor coatings, establishing a framework for EPDs.
  • Resinous flooring systems from Sherwin-Williams offer architects and builders an attractive, customizable way to satisfy LEED goals, no landfills required.
  • Resinous flooring offers exceptional durability and longevity among flooring options, never needing to be replaced or contributing to landfills.

Millions of tons of carpeting, tile, laminate, and VCT wind up in landfills every year. Still, many architects and designers may not specify flooring products that can last a building’s lifetime, and environmental certification programs haven’t always rewarded such choices.

That’s changing fast, however. In February 2026 Sustainable Minds published a new Product Category Rule (PCR) for resinous flooring under LEED v5 that awards points for low-emitting materials, long-lasting products that reduce waste, and systems that reduce water and energy consumption.

That may push resinous flooring products—standout solutions for durability, longevity, and customization—to the top of architects’ wish lists. “You never need to tear it out and put it in a landfill,” says Jen Zepeda, marketing director for Sherwin-Williams High Performance Flooring. “The new PCR acknowledges that, and it’s a big selling point.”

The New Rule

Previously the PCR assessed flooring only by the environmental performance of the overall system. The new rule indicates that “resinous flooring systems are typically not completely replaced over the service life of the building, but instead are periodically resurfaced.” This allows users to customize systems to meet job requirements and earn points toward certification—sometimes more than what a standard flooring system might.

Four Sherwin-Williams experts contributed to the development of the new PCR for resinous floor coatings, establishing a framework for Environmental Product Declarations (EPDs). EPDs now distinguish between single-layer products and multilayer systems, permitting a more granular representation of complex installations’ sustainability.

Sherwin-Williams has published EPDs for nine resinous flooring products so far, making them eligible for four different LEED Materials & Resources credits. In addition, new LEED for Interior Design and Construction guidelines allow flooring solutions to contribute points toward LEED status on new and retrofitted projects.

A Lasting Solution

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Calming and peaceful blues and purples are common in educational settings. Photo courtesy of Sherwin-Williams

Resinous floors’ biggest contribution to sustainability is their extended life cycle. The coatings can outlast VCT, quarry tile, and other flooring solutions by decades, preventing the frequent removal, replacement, and disposal of flooring components. A resinous floor can also be mended easily or act as the substrate for an entirely new floor if a project demands it.

“We look at what ends up in a landfill and how often you have to replace the product,” Zepeda says. “If a tile cracks you take it out, dispose of it, and replace it with a new tile. If something happens to a resinous floor you repair it onsite. Nothing is torn out; nothing is added to a landfill. With resinous floors there is no end of life—no landfill scenario whatsoever.”

Thanks to rapid-cure formulations, professional-grade resinous floors produce extremely low levels of VOCs compared to the epoxy systems familiar to homeowners. That means new installations, retrofits, and repairs can be performed without limiting access to critical areas of commercial buildings, schools, and health care facilities or endangering occupants.

The Sherwin-Williams lineup includes 30 products that satisfy LEED requirements for VOC emissions testing, and the company maintains strict compliance with regulations pertaining to hazardous chemicals, waste management, water, sanitation, and ventilation in production. “Anyone who’s purchased materials and done their own garage floor at home thinks, ‘Epoxy has such a strong odor,’” Zepeda says. “These commercial resinous flooring solutions are 100% solids, which means they have very low odor, and, in many cases, zero VOCs.”

Built for Durability

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Cove bases are often built into resinous floors that need to be cleaned regularly to encourage drainability away from what would otherwise be 90-degree wall-to-floor transitions that could harbor dirt and bacteria. Photo courtesy of Sherwin-Williams

A variety of resinous coatings are available to tailor the floor’s durability to its purpose, from foot traffic to forklifts. Resinous floors can distinguish a hotel lobby or be designed to withstand water, chemical exposures, biohazards, and heavy industrial applications. “That’s the beauty of these systems; they can be built for any space or scenario,” Zepeda says.

Resinous floors are a good choice for areas that need to be cleaned regularly to preserve public health, including commercial kitchens, locker rooms, and restrooms. Because they are seamless and feature an integrated cove base, there’s no risk of dirt and bacteria building up and festering in caulk, corners, or grout with regular cleaning procedures.

“Say you go through an airport, and there’s carpet,” Zepeda says. “If someone loses their lunch on that carpet, there’s no way you can ever fully sanitize it. With a resinous floor you can thoroughly sanitize it.”

Color and Wellness

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The use of color in resinous flooring installations can bring energy, cheerfulness, and a sense of calm to building occupants, with a wealth of color combinations available to set the desired mood. Photo courtesy of Sherwin-Williams

Beyond LEED, other certifications focus on the livability of the built environment. The WELL Building Standard has also expanded to include the importance of low impact colors and designing for inclusivity for all. As color research has taught us, our bodies can have physical and emotional reactions to color—reds are associated with energized emotions and increased heart rate, yellows and oranges are cheerful and can encourage conversation, and blues are calming and peaceful.

Many architects and builders now favor natural hues that support human health and well-being. “Color ties into sustainability,” says Amanda Lowery, marketing manager for Sherwin-Williams High Performance Flooring. “Even seeing the colors of nature in a space without a window can give you the benefits of a connection to nature.”

In resinous flooring, the most popular colors are neutrals that mimic natural stone aggregates. Sherwin-Williams identified Universal Khaki as its Color of the Year in 2026 Colormix Forecast; it’s a neutral that adapts to different interiors without compromising durability.

“With flooring we look toward colors that are always on-trend, come from nature, impact health and wellness, or are tied to branding colors,” Lowery says. “If a space is going to be sold, you want a neutral color that can go with whatever branding comes in. But if you’re designing a build that’s staying there for a prolonged period of time, you can get more creative.”

Customized and On-Brand

The floors offer thousands of color combinations and mix-ins to accommodate any application. “Mica can offer a natural or earthy feel,” says Jason LaBouve, president and CEO of Sheboygan, Wisconsin–based Torginol, which supplies a variety of mica, quartz, and metallic flake additives for resinous flooring. “There are a lot of tasteful ways to use this.”

In spaces that might cause anxiety, like health care settings, blues brings people down to earth, Lowery says. “In waiting rooms we often see a mixture of green and blue flakes. In education we see a lot of purple, which gives you the calming benefit of the blue, plus a little bit of energy from the red. It really sparks creativity.”

Mix-ins can match any Pantone color or brand guideline. A custom flake Torginol created for the University of Maryland, for example, included a mix of gray, white, and black flakes with a pop of yellow to match its logo. Flakes and coatings can also reduce glare, add slip resistance, and provide other benefits like sound dampening.

While resinous floors may not be the first consideration in a building’s design or efforts to earn environmental certification, they can support sustainable goals by offering lasting durability and cutting waste. Torginol plans to further improve sustainability by incorporating 20% recycled glass content from disused solar panels into its products.

“Designers and architects have a vision, and it usually doesn’t start with the floor,” Lowery says. “It starts with another material we need to coordinate with. That’s the beauty of being able to customize and mix these colors in different ways.”

PROSOCO Breaks New Ground with ICC‑ES Listing

After years of pushing to raise the bar on third‑party verification, PROSOCO has reached another industry milestone, this time for anti‑graffiti and surface protection technologies.

PROSOCO has secured an Evaluation Service Listing (ESL) from the International Code Council Evaluation Service (ICC‑ES), which covers all six of its Blok‑Guard treatments as well as SafStrip and Graffiti Remover. According to the ICC-ES, “the PROSOCO anti-graffiti system is the only one currently recognized in an ICC-ES ESL.”

This listing provides nationally recognized, third party–verified compliance for non‑sacrificial anti‑graffiti systems and graffiti removers (an indicator the industry has thus far lacked), saving time for everyone from architects and consultants to building officials, developers, contractors, and owners.

The achievement is particularly satisfying for Courtney Murdock, director of project testing for AMT Labs, which handles PROSOCO’s outside testing. Murdock has been working on this project for at least a year, carving out a previously uncharted path.

“It’s very satisfying to see this come to fruition after so many months of work and correspondence with various entities involved,” she says. “It paid off with multiple rewards. We established a way forward that previously did not exist, we helped PROSOCO establish yet another first, and we verified compliance on their anti-graffiti treatments.”

What initiated Murdock’s work on the listing was the discontinuation of the Los Angeles Research Reports program, which documented preapproved building materials and products for use on construction projects in the city of Los Angeles.

When the program was discontinued around 2023, the city of Los Angeles did not replace it but instead looked to national third parties that recognize building materials, one of which is ICC-ES.

A hurdle appeared when Murdock discovered that the ICC-ES did not have an acceptance criteria for penetrating anti-graffiti treatments. She overcame that obstacle by working with an engineer for the city of Los Angeles, ICC-ES, and a certified testing lab to forge a path to approve PROSOCO’s anti-graffiti products for use in Los Angeles – and by way of doing so, she also certified the performance of the products nationwide.

What the ESL covers

The ICC‑ES Evaluation Service Listing applies to:

All products on the listing were evaluated using ASTM D7089, a widely recognized standard for assessing the performance of anti-graffiti products on concrete, masonry, and natural stone.

The ESL states that when applied to CMU, the listed coatings and removers achieved “Cleanability Level 2,” defined in ASTM D7089 as “graffiti completely removed with a commercial‑based graffiti remover and high‑pressure cold‑water wash.”

5 Sustainable Outdoor Designs for a Relaxing Time Outside

Story at a glance:

  • Outdoor furniture designs are getting more interesting, with colorful styles and long-lasting materials.
  • Everything from lighting to seating is being reinvented so people can enjoy more time outside.

From benches that encourage conversation to lighting that sets the mood, these sustainable outdoor solutions set the stage so you can spend as long as you want enjoying the great outdoors.

Here and There by Loll Designs

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Photo courtesy of Loll Designs

Duluth-based Loll Designs recently launched a new dining and lounge collection in collaboration with Michigan design studio Argenta Park. Crafted from Loll’s signature 100% recyclable high-density polyethylene (HDPE), the Here and There collection balances durability with a clean, modern aesthetic suited to commercial, hospitality, and residential environments.

The collection includes a bench, dining chair, and dining table in black, charcoal grey, fog, and sage in three sizes with or without umbrella insert options. “Inspired by early 20th century American conservationist and founder of ecology Aldo Leopold, Here and There is designed for year-round outdoor enjoyment, reminding us that protecting the environment starts with the right perspective,” says Eric Swanson, president of Loll Designs.

Outspan by KI

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Photo courtesy of KI

Leading contract furniture manufacturer KI is known for innovating across interiors in education, health care, offices, and more, but now they’ve also ventured to the great outdoors with the Outspan Outdoor Collection.

Designed by Brian Buchik of Room B, the collection includes seating and tables engineered for exterior performance using powder-coated steel and high-density polyethylene surfaces, creating a durable system for dining, collaboration, and gathering across campuses, workplaces, hospitality settings, and more.

“Outdoor environments have become an increasingly important part of how people learn, work, and connect,” says Angela Allen, director of product marketing at KI. “This collection allows designers and organizations to create cohesive environments that carry the same level of intention, durability, and design quality from inside to outside.”

Takeout by Buster + Punch

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Photo courtesy of Buster + Punch

London’s Buster + Punch is making outdoor evenings even more effortless with portable ambience. The Takeout portable lamp is functional and stylish, casting a warm, candle-like glow while a secondary LED canopy lights the table below. Its solid metal body, signature cross-knurling, and 14-hour rechargeable battery make it both easy to take with you and dependable, whether it’s a rooftop event, dining outside, a picnic, or any outdoor lighting need.

Takeout is available in brass or steel. “Our Takeout light brings a quality and unique design element that consumers and design professionals will consider the ‘must-have’ portable light for their indoor and outdoor spaces—no cords, no compromises, just pure Buster + Punch attitude,” says David Schlocker, president of Buster + Punch.

Nuova Guinea by Pedrali

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Photo courtesy of Pedrali

Pedrali unveiled Nuova Guinea at Salone del Mobile 2026. A natural evolution of the Guinea collection, this side chair and armchair collection is stackable, made with aluminum frames for outdoor use, and defined by a feeling of utter lightness.

Designed by Cazzaniga Mandelli Pagliarulo, Nuova Guinea has a distinct woven seat and backrest; all of the woven parts can be easily removed and replaced. The weather-resistant polypropylene yarn belts are available in two widths and color combinations in one to three colors. An elastic belt under the seat ensures strength and durability.

June by Vestre

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Photo by Vincent Laine, courtesy of Vestre

Scandinavian furniture-maker Vestre developed JUNE to offer a more classic seating solution for projects that need it. The quiet, inclusive design is at home in European cities, American parks, and heritage contexts alike. “The idea with JUNE was, ‘How can we make a bench that fits into a public park, historic university, or other spaces where the client wants something a bit more traditional, but still make that relevant to 2026 and beyond?” Kristoffer Vestre told gb&d.

Designed by Espen Voll, Tore Borgersen, and Michael Olofsson, JUNE’s oval tubes meet round legs to create a gentle, elegant silhouette. High-back and low-back options allow for flexibility and comfort, while easy to assemble modular connections enable endless layout options and quicker installation times.

With more than 200 standard colors to choose from, JUNE is a modern take on the traditional park bench designed for adaptability and longevity with long-lasting, low-emission materials.

How Flooring Shapes Acoustics in Modern Learning Environments
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Resinous Flooring Systems are Helping Architects Earn LEED Points
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Inside the Portland Museum of Art Expansion

Story at a glance:

  • LEVER is currently working with the Portland Museum of Art (PMA) on their Campus Unification and Expansion, which began in 2022 with an international design competition led by Dovetail Design Strategists.
  • To unify the campus the design removes barriers—replacing the administrative wing with a free ground floor public space traversing the site. The reimagined sculpture court becomes a light-filled, accessible plaza and celebratory entry to a new flexible performance space.

For nearly 150 years the Portland Museum of Art (PMA) in the heart of Portland, Maine, has been evolving, with multiple additions and renovations. Most recently architects at LEVER have been working with the PMA team to further unify and expand their campus.

At the heart of the project is a new 60,000-square-foot wing designed as a light-filled public commons—a “third space” where people can gather, learn, and engage with art, whether or not they are visiting an exhibition. The project is a long-term investment in the cultural and civic vitality of Portland and the future of its Arts District, the design team said.

Mass timber is a key material of the expansion and contributes to the project’s sustainability as a carbon sequestering building material. “The openness of design to Congress Square at every level reflects the PMA’s mission to create a more accessible and community-centered museum that can also be a catalyst for the development of a regional mass timber ecosystem,” says Thomas Robinson, founding principal at LEVER Architecture.

The team at LEVER says the project is a collaboration between LEVER, Simons Architects (the local architect of record), Urban Projects Collaborative (the owner’s representative), and Consigli Construction (leading mass timber strategy and pre-construction services).

The new wing is designed to be more welcoming, permeable, and accessible to all. It opens the museum outward to the city and creates free, flexible spaces for gathering and community use. The program includes galleries, a theater, restaurant, maker/studio space, classrooms, a rooftop sculpture park, community event space, administration offices, meeting rooms, and gift shop.

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Rendering courtesy of LEVER Architecture

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Rendering courtesy of LEVER Architecture

Project Details

Project: Portland Museum of Art
Architect: LEVER Architecture
Location: Portland, ME
Expected Completion: 2027
Size: 60,000 square feet
How Flooring Shapes Acoustics in Modern Learning Environments
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Resinous Flooring Systems are Helping Architects Earn LEED Points
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Portland, Maine, is a Small City with Big Ideas

Story at a glance:

Coastal views and access to nature combine with pedestrian-friendly streets home to great restaurants and bars, plus rich history, art, and architecture in Portland, Maine. People from all over find themselves drawn to this colorful, creative city on the Casco Bay—both as tourists and as transplants.

Portland may be home to just 70,000 residents, but its amenities make it feel like so much more. “Portland really punches above its weight in terms of urban feel,” says Troy Moon, sustainability director for the city. “We have a lot of cultural opportunities. There’s a really great music scene here now. There’s a really solid art scene. The restaurants, of course, are world-class.”

Portland really punches above its weight.

A commitment to nature is evident in everything the city does, too, from new developments to historic preservation to planning for the future of the waterfront. In every discussion the environment seems to come first, and the people benefit as a result.

“People have deep respect for the environment in Portland,” Moon says. “A lot of the things we do in terms of environmental policy are all about protecting the bay. We have robust stormwater requirements, and we really have an environmental ethic here, which helps contribute to the quality of life and the desire for people from other parts of the world to visit us. We’re really blessed; those environmental attributes make this a nice place to live.”

Design for Walkability

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Portland is known for its walkable streets with historic, ivy-covered brick homes. Visitors can choose from guided or self-guided walking tours, including from the Maine Historical Society. Photo by Serena Folding, courtesy of Visit Portland

The city recently updated its Land Use Codes, removing parking minimums and adding parking maximums, plus providing opportunities for more density in buildings in Transit Oriented Development zones. “Like many other communities we’ve seen across the country, we eliminated parking minimums,” says Kevin Kraft, director of planning and urban development in Portland. “We require parking nowhere in the city, but we have parking maximums. We put an upper limit on the amount of parking spaces you can provide on a site.”

The measure was widely supported and built on a 2020 regulation that said if a site was within a quarter-mile of a bus route, it did not have to provide parking. “That was almost 80% of the city’s land already, so it wasn’t a huge jump,” Kraft says. He says the city wants developers to provide parking based on true market demand, not a future or worst-case scenario.

Parking was a key talking point in the city’s Climate Action Plan, too, Moon says. “We want people to get around the city without driving in cars. We’re seeing more and more people coming into Portland who may be from other parts of the country and maybe don’t feel the need to have a car.”

More housing in Transit Oriented Development Zones—highly walkable areas with access to public transportation—made good sense, Moon says. “It’s part of building that sustainable lifestyle into our codes and regulations.”

A Net Zero Future

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Photo by Serena Folding, courtesy of Visit Portland

When it comes to new buildings, material choices also have a sustainable focus, Kraft says. Portland passed a bird-safe buildings ordinance in 2024. “The purpose of the Bird Friendly Building and Design Requirements … is to reduce bird mortality from windows or other specific building features known to increase the risk of bird collisions,” reads the City Council minutes. “For non-residential buildings, larger mixed-use buildings or commercial buildings, they have to require bird-safe glass,” Kraft says. “The new project that the Roux Institute is constructing along the waterfront is going to include all bird-safe glass. We approved the tallest building in northern New England in December. It’s over 30 stories tall. That building will be designed with fully bird-safe glass.”

Five years ago the cities of Portland and South Portland joined forces to create and adopt their Climate Action Plan called One Climate Future. They are working to reduce community-wide greenhouse gas emissions by 80% by 2050 and use 100% clean energy for municipal operations by 2040, among other goals. So far the cities have installed 50 EV chargers; generated more than 63 million kWh of solar power, saving more than $5 million; and adopted the state’s first Energy Stretch Code, improving the efficiency of new buildings by 30 to 35%. In Portland part of building better included creating those Transit Oriented Zones. They also enhanced stormwater and heat mitigation requirements. All newly constructed or gut-rehabbed city buildings in Portland were required to be net zero energy or net zero energy–ready starting in 2026.

Moon grew up in Maine and has lived in Portland for 30 years. He says the city has a long history of passing policies that meet high environmental standards. “People have really come to expect that here,” he says.

Those policies protect plentiful green spaces—nearly 1,500 acres of dedicated outdoor open space and almost 50 miles of diverse trails, for example. “That includes everything from traditional manicured parks to forested areas and urban meadows we’ve established recently to promote a different approach to managing open space so we can have more habitat for pollinators,” Moon says.

The city has “probably the most comprehensive restrictions on pesticide and fertilizer use in the country,” he says, and works to prevent stormwater runoff into the bay that the local economy—from fishing to tourism—relies on.

Planning Resiliency

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Portland, Maine, boasts more than 350 years of shipping, fishing, commerce, and travel on the waterfront, combining private and public piers for a full range of commercial marine activities. Photo by Serena Folding, courtesy of Visit Portland

Building and community resilience were other big parts of the Climate Action Plan, especially given the city’s location on the water. “A lot of communities, including us, are thinking about resilient infrastructure. How do we get seawalls and roads and bridges prepared for the impacts of climate change?” Moon says.

Part of the Land Use Code rewrite included creating a new zone—the Coastal Flood Resilience Overlay Zone, Kraft says. The city looked at areas where they anticipate sea level rise impact and enacted regulations to limit what can be allowed on a building’s ground floor. “In some areas where we anticipate flooding, say five feet, the building’s first floor needs to be elevated above that point or you can’t have critical uses on the first floor.”

The city participated in developing a new flood model even before the Coastal Flood Resilience Overlay Zone. “Typically the older models either use a FEMA-based map or pick a sea level rise elevation and draw a bathtub-type line around where the height is,” Moon says. Portland uses a hydrodynamic model that incorporates many elements to figure out where flooding will occur. “We based it on 3.9 feet of sea level rise, plus a 100-year storm. So 3.9 feet of sea level rise is what we anticipate by 2100, and then add the 100-year storm on top of that.”

He says impending sea level rise is the city’s biggest challenge, and the city plans to focus on that problem heavily in the next two to three years. “We’re a coastal community getting ready to figure out what we’re going to do to prepare,” Moon says. A recent storm brought the highest tide ever recorded, with water rising to the edge, and in some places over, the popular downtown Commercial Street. Community conversations will center around what infrastructure interventions to consider and what additional changes need to be made to the Climate Action Plan.

Social resilience also makes communities stronger in times of need, Moon says, and Portland is committed to focusing there, too. “Looking at examples over time in communities that have faced disasters, research has shown that those places where people have strong social networks recover more quickly. We’re trying to use that model to engage our community in really positive ways and get people to work together,” he says.

A new program called Sustainable Neighborhoods creates opportunities for neighbors in different parts of the city to get to know each other and develop relationships that will make them more socially resilient, Moon says. As part of that, a mini grant program recently awarded up to $500 to 30 neighborhood groups with at least three people working together to propose an activity involving different neighbors. The groups did everything from host a community dinner to a pet parade to gardening activities.

While challenges lie ahead, this ongoing work is full of exciting opportunities from a planning perspective, Kraft says. “It’s a very rural state, so it’s still very car-dependent. We don’t have the same robust public transit as Boston or Chicago. But Portland being an urban center and having a good bus network—how do we continue to have smart, sustainable growth to help encourage that uptick in public transit ridership or walkability?”

How Flooring Shapes Acoustics in Modern Learning Environments
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Resinous Flooring Systems are Helping Architects Earn LEED Points
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Building the Sport of Community at Riverton Trolley Bike Park

Story at a glance:

  • The two-acre bike park is located in the Riverton neighborhood of Portland, an area that was long underutilized.
  • The community asked for a dedicated public bike park as part of many public meetings.

Portland’s first public bike park opened in May 2025. “It’s been wildly successful,” says Troy Moon, sustainability director for the city. “It’s really popular with people of all ages, bringing intergenerational groups together to enjoy an outdoor bike park,” Moon says.

The two-acre bike park is part of greater Riverton Trolley Park, itself 20 acres and a gem in the Riverton neighborhood of Portland that was long underutilized, says Ethan Hipple, director of the parks, recreation and facilities department. The area was first used by Maine’s Indigenous communities for fishing before becoming a site for a corn canning factory and then a lively amusement park at the end of a historic trolley line, according to the Portland Park Conservancy.

It was a bustling area for many years before more recently being known as a relatively undeveloped park with a few walking trails, Hipple says. “They built this park that had everything—a riverside amphitheater, casino, roller coasters, petting zoos. That existed for about 50 years, and then the automobiles came and the trolley lines went out of business.”

Hipple says the parks department started taking a more serious look at the park about five years ago, knowing it could offer more for the residential neighborhood than was there. After a series of community sessions, they learned that residents did love and want to see the walking trails improved, and many people also wanted to see a dedicated bike park, as the area has a large community of cyclists and mountain bikers. “There are a lot of people here who want to be outside; they value the outdoors. This is a place they can go to gather and connect.”

Rather than being hidden in a back corner of the park where no one could see it, this puts it front and center.

After a federal grant through the Land and Water Conservation Fund, fundraising with the Portland Parks Conservancy, and city funding, the department had $500,000 to improve walking trails and the parking lot, provide new signage, and open a dedicated bike park. They worked with Maine Trail Builders to design the course.

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Photo courtesy of City of Portland

The bike park is situated closer to the road in an area that took advantage of some of the natural terrain and flow with dips and gullies. “We felt it was cool that it was visible from the road,” Hipple says. “Rather than being hidden in a back corner of the park where no one could see it, this puts it front and center so when people are driving by they notice it’s there. That helped lead to its popularity.”

Like a lot of cities, Portland has put a lot of expensive infrastructure in parks for organized sports over the years, from soccer fields and baseball diamonds to basketball and tennis courts. Hipple says developments like these don’t require anyone to be part of a group to enjoy participating. “We’re starting to focus more on amenities that kids and adults can use outside of being part of an organized sport. They can be used any time; no adults required.”

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Photo courtesy of City of Portland

Riverton Trolley Bike Park is in a largely residential neighborhood that’s also in close proximity to a skate park, a homeless shelter, low-income housing, and a number of breweries. “It’s a really interesting mix,” Hipple says, adding that the breweries even brewed custom beers to raise funds for the park. He says the diverse nature of the area has contributed to at least a fivefold increase in park use. While the area used to have just a trickle of dog walkers, now people are there every day—walking, biking, or just hanging out.

Similarly, Hipple recalls when the parks department expanded the Portland Skatepark a few years ago, doubling its size. “It was so popular. When we held our grand opening a few of the skaters spoke about how it was less of a sport and more of a gathering spot; I think some of them called it their dojo. It’s where they go to practice and be with each other. It’s a safe space. The bike park has become that for a part of the community as well.”

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Photo courtesy of City of Portland

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Redeveloping the Heart of Historic Portland, Maine, at Old Port Square

Story at a glance:

  • The Old Port Square project is set to include Portland, Maine’s tallest building—45 Union Street tower. Construction is planned to begin in 2028.
  • Building materials chosen for 45 Union Street and its surroundings reflect the area’s heritage, from local Maine granite and brick to plentiful timber.

Life is returning to the Old Port Square district at the heart of historic Portland after decades of underutilization. The area suffered from the so-called urban renewal of the ’60s and ’70s that killed many downtowns for decades, transforming them into unapproachable megablocks, according to Jacob Soley, director of development at East Brown Cow in Portland. The area was largely fenced off from the ’80s until 2009 when East Brown Cow, the real estate developer, first bought property within the four-acre site.

Soley, a self-described history buff, is excited about the ongoing revitalization and the opportunity to bring people back to home base. The location is the center of the creation of the city dating back to the mid-to-late 1600s. “You’re at the nexus of where the energy of the city has been for all these centuries,” he says.

You’re at the nexus of where the energy of the city has been for all these centuries.

Today Old Port Square is well on its way to being a proper community hub again, hosting food trucks, live music, mobile vendors, and more in warmer months. “We really want to draw the energy in and through the site and break down the scale of that big megablock, preserving the existing street edges and the scale but extending pedestrian pathways and creating courtyards and spaces that are more in keeping with the scale of that historic Old Port fabric,” Soley says.

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The entrance to the residential and hotel lobbies at 45 Union Street connect to the pedestrian network. The tower is elevated on slender columns to provide breathing room for outdoor public spaces. Rendering courtesy of Safdie Architects

Architects, developers, and city officials have been working together for years to develop the square thoughtfully, from removing physical barriers to thoughtfully planning to bring people to the site in meaningful ways that also respects area history. Larger projects—including a design for what will be Portland’s tallest building, the 30-story 45 Union Street tower—are an exciting opportunity that is also challenging.

“You have to be especially sensitive to what happens at the ground floor,” says Sean Scensor, Safdie Architects senior partner in charge of the 45 Union Street project. “You have to make sure the bases of the buildings are very transparent and accessible with public access.”

Walkability and access are key, Scensor says, to designing successful, sustainable places people want to be in, whether that’s the tower itself or Old Port Square at large. “You want it to be activated, you want a mix of uses, you want it to thrive at all times of the day and all different seasons, so you have to encourage that sort of micro activation, micro use, and avoid what happened before where you had to circumnavigate the block,” he says, calling back to the time of fences.

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The Canal Plaza courtyard will merge indoor and outdoor with inviting cafés, lobbies, and pedestrian pathways. Rendering courtesy of Safdie Architects

Scensor says the design team, which includes Michael Boucher Landscape Architecture and Pentagram, aims to bring people in to experience the block at a much more intimate and smaller scale using landscaping and street furniture in addition to appropriate, approachable pathways.

“We’ve been working on this project with the client for almost 10 years,” Scensor says. “This isn’t just a tower project. It’s a long-term urban revitalization of the whole district. We’ve been going slowly and with care and sensitivity to re-stitch together the fabric from the damage created by mid-20th century urban renewal.”

The design for 45 Union Street features a slender tower set back from the street, using textures and materials—stone, timber—with historic context. The tower will include new residences and a hotel, culminating in a timber-and-glass pavilion with a publicly accessible sky lobby and lookout inspired by the region’s many lighthouses.

“Having grown up here, there’s an honesty and unpretentiousness around materiality in Portland surrounding architecture and the urban landscape,” Soley says. “That what the material is, what a building is, is obvious and clear and forthright in its architectural vocabulary.”

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Construction on the 45 Union Street tower in Old Port Square is expected to begin in 2028. Rendering courtesy of Safdie Architects

That notion is seen in the local materials and architectural elements chosen for 45 Union Street and its surroundings. Local Maine granite and brick pave a lot of the outdoor public spaces while timber speaks volumes in the tower design. “Maine has a long history of wood craftsmanship and forestry so there’s constant iterative thinking around how to leverage local craftsmanship and materials in a way that feels genuine and true to Portland,” Soley says.

Portland is known for its strong, robust architecture, Scensor says, with durable materials that will last a long time and stand up to the sea. The team at Safdie is committed to incorporating those materials alongside energy-efficient choices. “We’ve been looking at using insulated translucent glass claddings or external screens or louvers to cut down on the solar heat gain,” he says. “It’s this combination of integrating modern materials that are higher performing with some of the more very contextual, robust, durable materials that you see throughout the larger Old Port neighborhood.”

The team plans to use bird-friendly glass on the new tower, too. “There are so many different layers and aspects to choosing the materials and testing them and seeing what makes sense. We’ve been doing a lot of studies—wind studies, energy modeling, and looking at how daylight penetrates the building to try to get the balance right. It’s not just quantitative; it’s also a sort of qualitative judgment about how materials make you feel and how we can create a warm, pedestrian-friendly, good urban design at all levels,” Scensor says.

A challenge for everyone involved has been balancing density and activation with protecting the area’s history and keeping that authentic, small city feel, Scensor says. “How do you get that balance right? How do you bring a richness of experience and the environment and not be overwhelming to the historic fabric? How can you be in dialogue with history?”

Scensor says the firm has learned a lot from their own projects in other parts of the world, from Singapore to Montreal to Savannah. “We’ve done very contextual historic interventions in those cities that we think really enriched the sense of place there, even incorporating contemporary structures and more density into the historic context, so that’s been instructive,” he says. “We’ve learned from our experiences, but I think that’s quite a challenge, striking that balance. If you get it right, it’s what people love about cities. It’s that there’s action and activity and this ability to have a rich social experience by being in proximity with each other. There are a lot of unexpected and joyful moments that come out of that that we hope to be setting the stage for.”

Construction on the 45 Union Street tower is expected to begin in 2028. Also on the site, Safdie previously completed the Old Port Square Garage, one of the first solar-powered garages in Maine, and local architects completed two adaptive reuse projects of 19th century historic buildings, converting them into ground level retail and The Docent’s Collection. A two-and-a-half megawatt solar farm in Sidney, Maine, offsets most of the electrical power needs within Old Port Square.

As plans for 45 Union Street continue, Soley says a great building is one that stands the test of time. “When we’re gone we want this to be something that has made a statement and has been thoughtfully created within the urban fabric that exists here in Portland.”

Scensor says the team thinks on a generational timeline, whether that’s at Old Port Square or on any other project. “In this day and age longevity itself is a kind of sustainability. Every structure carries an environmental cost, so we have to be very careful and intentional and disciplined about what we choose to build.”

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An Architect’s Guide to the Evolving Aesthetics of Decorative Concrete

Story at a glance:

  • Decorative concrete is a term used to define concrete that is treated with special pigments, textures, finishes, and performance enhancers to ensure both aesthetic appeal and long-term performance.
  • These products are used for both architectural and commercial purposes, including residential applications like floors, walls, facades, precast, pavements, and other spaces, where the user desires a concrete product with aesthetic appeal and sufficient functionality.
  • Decorative concrete enables the user to attain uniform color, high-quality appearance, and good workability of the concrete product, all of which are achieved with the use of special pigments, admixtures, and finishers.

Mark Langen has been working with concrete since 1980, exploring everything from the needs of shotcrete to the growing world of specialty concrete. For anyone thinking concrete is one thing, he can assure you—concrete can be almost anything.

As western region manager at Interstar Materials, a Saint-Gobain Construction Chemicals company and a sister company of Chryso, Langen has seen decorative concrete be used everywhere from the finest hotels to tourist streets in major cities. We recently caught up with Langen, as well as another concrete expert Christopher Roumie, Chryso North America product manager, to explore the types of decorative concrete and their endless possibilities.

What is decorative concrete?

Mark Langen: Decorative concrete is concrete that is different in aesthetics, different in appearance, and different in texture. It’s used to enhance projects—houses, major hotels, malls, things of that nature—to break up the mundane, standard gray concrete you might think of.

There’s no end to what can be done with decorative concrete really. I’ve seen some incredible things done with it. At the end of the day it can accent something, or it can be a focal point. It could be visually very attractive and still be concrete—still very functional, and it can last for a long time.

Christopher Roumie: Decorative concrete can combine aesthetics and performance. It’s a versatile way of bringing the architect’s vision to life. Colors, texture, patterns—all of that helps conveying vision, story, place, etc, whatever the design grammar needs to be, while also ensuring durability.

How have you seen demand for decorative concrete evolve?

ML: With homes, for example, it can add value because of the curb appeal. To do a driveway in a normal home you can increase the aesthetic of the house quite easily. In a lot of cases, when people start to do the cost comparisons, they find out they could do a color driveway or an exposed aggregate driveway—one of the nicer decorative concrete finishes you could use for a reasonable cost.

When people see the possibilities that are available their imaginations can start to run wild. A lot of municipalities and cities use decorative concrete to enhance the downtown core. Some amazing things are done with colored concrete in parks and even decorative concrete crosswalks. There are cities that will use more color or texture to identify features within their cities. The sky is the limit.

I’ve seen a huge uptick over the last 25 years in decorative concrete. 
I think why it’s increased so much is that contractors are more comfortable providing it, and owners and architects see the possibilities.

CR: Decorative concrete has come a long way over the years. As any industry evolves many different products and techniques are incorporated into its progression, and the decorative concrete industry is no different. From the use of fizzy sodas or petroleum-based products as the first surface retarders for exposed aggregate concrete to an industry leading brand like Chryso Top-Cast, Chryso and Interstar are always innovating ways to make concrete better, more visually appealing and more environmentally friendly.

As part of Saint-Gobain, our business aligns with the group’s commitment to achieving net-zero carbon emissions by 2050 and to promoting the emergence of a low-carbon economy in the countries where it operates. This involves all aspects of the entire building, and decorative solutions remain basic to those goals. The first thing you see isn’t a net zero building; it’s a visually appealing building that happens to be net zero.

Different markets have different demands, but generally, approximately 3% of all ready-mix concrete is treated as decorative. In some geographies that number is even higher, for example, in the Pacific Southwest. Decorative concrete is everywhere. This is expected to grow over the years as owners and developers are looking for their project to stand out from the others, and one of the easiest ways to do that is through the use of decorative concrete.

What are some of the most interesting architectural uses you’ve seen?

ML: In Calgary there is an underpass under one of the main roads that simulates a river using decorative concrete. They simulated this river and trout in different colors; they’re hanging on the wall as you drive by. It uses a number of different colors. They did that many years ago, and it still looks spectacular.

Some architects have specified decorative concrete for skate parks. We’ve had architects want to specify it for water parks, using colored concrete or some exposed aggregate, maybe some stained concrete. That’s the nice thing about concrete; you can use a bold color, a color of stain, or there are colored sealers or you can stamp different patterns in it. You can even give it an antique quality. Whatever people dream, we can figure out how to do it with concrete.

Some hotels have done precast panels that hang on the side of the hotel utilizing colors, stamped concrete or different textures. In Arizona, for example, all of their bridges are more of the natural color to blend in with the natural rock in the area. A project earlier last year was the first integrally colored bridge in Scottsdale using a concrete color. Combined with those projects are walkways and bicycle bridges, driveways and parks.

Concrete is so versatile in other ways. There was a TV series called “The Last of Us” that was filmed partly in Western Canada. The production people requested a walled city that the characters entered. They made a whole facade out of concrete to look old, appearing it had been through a war. That was all basically using color and stain and other special effects. It was an incredible undertaking.

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Photo courtesy of Chryso

Where can decorative concrete be used?

CR: Anywhere concrete is used, decorative concrete can be used. We see this every day in ready-mix concrete, for all kinds of projects: residential, commercial, industrial, and even infrastructure. In the precast concrete market especially, decorative concrete is used for building facades, bridge elements, and even structures that you aren’t even aware of, such as modular precast restroom facilities in public spaces.

Decorative concrete is very prevalent, often blending into the background of our everyday lives. If you need high visibility in high passage zones (i.e. schools and public places), concrete offers visibility, aesthetics, recognition, and the resistance you need. If you need wayfinding, decorative concrete can help you guide where to go. If you are working on infrastructure, you can make it more interesting than just gray concrete and make it part of the existing landscape in a more intentional way.

What else should architects know about decorative concrete?

ML: Concrete is a natural product. It’s rock, sand, cement, and water. You mix it up, and the result is concrete. From there, if you want it to be colored, if you want it to be stamped, you can change it. The thing is, sometimes people aren’t aware that, because it’s natural, there are variations in it, just like a marble countertop. Sometimes people tend to think that decorative concrete, like colored concrete, should look like it’s painted. It is a natural product, and that’s what enhances the beauty of it. Concrete countertops, concrete floors and the variation is what gives it its appeal. But sometimes people don’t like that.

The one thing I would recommend is that architects learn a little bit more about concrete. Something we run into regularly in the industry is that when you supply concrete, there are certain procedures that have to take place. Concrete doesn’t cure in five minutes. You have to get the moisture out of it, concrete fully cures in 28 days. In some projects they would put up the walls and they’ll want to do a decorative concrete floor, but they never scheduled how it’s going to be done and everyone’s in a big rush. Yes, you can make it cure a little bit faster with admixtures, but depending on what the decorative concrete is and the location, it needs to be approached properly.

It is a natural product, and that’s what enhances the beauty of it.

I would encourage architects to get better educated. We have a lot of people who are very experienced, and we do different concrete schools for our customers in different areas. If someone calls and says, “Do you have a specification for colored concrete?” We do have that, and we’ll give them the procedures for how to do that. We also have an architectural guide we’ve developed that explains what they need to do, what they can’t do, and so forth. Sometimes architects will go online and they’ll cut and paste some irreputable information. If architects want an accurate specification, we give them the procedures for how to do that. When you do the proper planning the job is far more successful.

Because we’re also an admixture company, I should note that there are different admixtures that have to be used throughout the country. For example, in the northern United States and Canada you have to use a product to protect it from freeze and thaw. In Arizona that’s different. There are different admixtures that can be used throughout the country to enhance the job, and sometimes architects just need a little bit more information.

And decorative concrete is not only popular in North America, but it’s all over the world. We see a lot of decorative concrete in the Caribbean and Mexico and even throughout South America.

CR: Decorative concrete can be as unique as your vision, so if you want to do something different, or special, or truly add curb appeal, using decorative concrete is one of the most impactful ways to do so.

Secondly, there are contractors who place decorative concrete for a living, so speak with those professionals and work with them for your project. They’ll appreciate the upfront collaboration and advise you on how something can or can’t be done, and they could even suggest a different and better way. These professionals work with decorative concrete all day; they know the materials.

And finally, when color is not specified for a project, the concrete’s color has already been decided for you: gray. Nothing wrong with gray concrete, but would that walkway or drive lane or facade have a different look or appeal if it had some vibrancy to it? Gray concrete is everywhere, and your project should have something other than just plain gray. Color shouldn’t be an afterthought but part of the vision.

What are Chryso’s decorative concrete solutions?

CR: Chryso has many solutions to produce decorative concrete. One example is integral pigments through our sister company, Interstar. These products can create a multitude of colors for any project. Earth tones are very popular, but we also see how white, blues, greens, purples, and lots of other different aspects of the color spectrum can also be incorporated integrally through the concrete matrix.

Additionally, Chryso’s line of surface retarders for fresh concrete called Chryso Top-Cast, when applied, prevents the set of the topmost layer of mortar on the concrete surface. Various depths of etch can be used to expose the stone and sand in the concrete matrix, creating a unique appearance for any project.

What are the challenges of decorative concrete?

CR: Concrete is one of the most widely used building materials ever developed, and if properly proportioned, mixed, placed, finished, and cured properly, it can last longer than any other building material out there. That said, decorative concrete is no different. The only additional step is to ensure everyone’s expectations are met for the final visual that’s expected. The selected company, products, and finishing techniques for a project need to be used during pre-placement approval or on a mockup panel. Having an approved sample onsite that everyone agrees to is going to be representative of the final finish and appearance, it is a crucial step that often gets missed but is easily remedied.

What is the future of decorative concrete?

ML: There will always be decorative concrete. Consider new neighborhoods being constructed or new shopping centers. They want it to look good so a lot of times they will incorporate decorative concrete. A lot of the big-box stores, for example, have colored concrete. Walmart, Lowe’s, and Target all have incorporated decorative concrete into their overall themes, whether it be as concrete panels on the outside of the walls or on the floor for better aesthetic appeal. It enhances the experience when people go into those places, so they don’t feel like they’re going into a parking garage. Many of these companies spend a lot of money to design the interior of their stores. They want a floor that is maintenance-free, nice to look at, safe, and easy to clean. Concrete does that very well.

In the last 25 years decorative concrete has never decreased in volume. The technology to do decorative concrete has improved. Some of the products we’ve developed in the company have improved. If you talk about stamped concrete, for example, you can do some very, very nice things with it. You can make it look like wooden slats; you can do flagstone. And in the colored concrete medium, there are also paving stones and retaining walls. When you start to look at the possibilities, you can do a retaining wall, and even a sidewalk to match your house or building. There are a lot of things you can do with a little bit of imagination.

Helical Beaming: How to Save Walls While Saving Money

Story at a glance:

  • Many viable repair strategies exist to extend a building’s life, allowing contractors to stabilize the walls, redistribute loads, and address localized failures while preserving the original facade.
  • Helical beaming can be used to restore load-bearing capacity over openings, or it can also be used as a temporary shoring means, allowing for longer than typical spans without shoring posts.
  • Helical beaming is appropriate for sagging lintels, lintel replacement, flashing repair at shelf angles, and situations where an owner needs to create or enlarge an opening in a masonry wall.

The greenest building, as the saying goes, is the one already standing. It’s a simple idea: Every building that gets torn down and replaced requires vast amounts of new materials and generates construction waste.

The scale of the challenge is significant. Close to 2 million commercial buildings in the US are more than 50 years old—a number that grows by one every year. A significant portion of those buildings feature brick facades that are showing their age: sagging lintels, failing flashing, corroded shelf angles, and masonry that has lost some or all of its load-bearing capacity. Left unaddressed, these conditions create genuine life safety concerns. Chunks of masonry falling from a deteriorating facade are rare, but when they happen, the liability for building owners and contractors is consequential.

The traditional response to these conditions has been time-tested and resource-intensive: Shore up the wall with posts, corbel out the masonry above an opening, remove and replace entire courses of brick, or in the most extreme cases, demo the facade and start over. Each of these approaches requires significant labor, generates debris, consumes new materials, and produces results that can be disruptive to building occupants for weeks or months.

For a building industry increasingly accountable for the full environmental impact of its work—embodied carbon included—these approaches carry a cost that goes beyond the job estimate. Yet every year contractors and building owners choose demolition or wholesale reconstruction for aging masonry facades—not because it’s the best option, but because they don’t realize how many viable repair strategies exist to extend a building’s life. At the heart of many of these strategies is a common goal: restoring structural integrity without tearing down and replacing the entirety of the existing structure.

Depending on the distress condition present, supplemental lateral or gravity anchoring may be required. Some remediation options could include friction-based Stitch-Tie helical anchors, adhesive-based Grout-Tie anchors, or brass expansion-type Grip-Tie anchors. Anchor selection is highly dependent on the conditions present; field testing is always recommended when anchoring into existing masonry to ensure the most appropriate anchor is selected.

Within the bed joints, Stitch-Tie Bar supplementary horizontal joint reinforcement could also be used where vertical or stair-stepped cracking is present. The new joint reinforcement is laid within the bed joints, spanning the crack, reconnecting, or “stitching” the two sections of the masonry facade back together, allowing the weakened wall section to move together as one.

These repair strategies allow contractors to stabilize the walls, redistribute loads, and address localized failures while preserving the original facade. When any masonry repair is performed, the underlying root cause must also be addressed. If only the symptoms are fixed, there is a possibility that the distress to the facade could return in the future.

These approaches minimize material use and generally reduce disruption by having a shorter repair cycle than full removal and replacement. With the construction industry emphasizing embodied carbon and resource conservation, masonry restoration is a better option in many cases.

Among the various repair strategies, an application of the Stitch-Tie Bar supplemental horizontal joint reinforcement is a particularly efficient and underutilized option, called helical masonry beaming, or helical beaming, for short. Like crack-stitching, it uses the Stitch-Tie Bar within the bed joints of the masonry, but the joints are further reinforced. Two rows of two helical bars are inserted into the joints with SureGrout, a cementitious grout. When the grout begins to cure, a composite beam is formed within the existing masonry facade.

This application can be used to restore load-bearing capacity over openings, or it can also be used as a temporary shoring means, allowing for longer than typical spans without shoring posts. This approach leaves the surrounding masonry largely untouched, where repairs can possibly be performed at a fraction of the cost of conventional repairs. For an industry committed to both performance and sustainability, it is one of the most practical tools available.

Where to Use Helical Beaming

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Photo courtesy of PROSOCO

The applications are broader than many contractors realize. Helical beaming is appropriate for sagging lintels, lintel replacement, flashing repair at shelf angles, and situations where an owner needs to create or enlarge an opening in a masonry wall. In multi-wythe construction (common in older commercial buildings), the beaming can be installed on both the interior and exterior wythes to further increase capacity. The technique is also limited to a maximum span of 11 feet, 10 inches, though experienced practitioners have developed workarounds for situations that fall just outside that boundary.

Critically, the repairs are virtually invisible post-installation. The bars are set back into the mortar joint, and the slot is repointed with mortar matched to the existing wall. A trained eye standing at arm’s length would have difficulty identifying where the work was done. For historic buildings, another category where preservation is inherently the most sustainable choice, this is not a minor advantage.

When the Textbook Doesn’t Quite Apply

Real buildings don’t always cooperate with standard specifications. A recent job led by my colleague John Montecalvo, a technical specialist who has made it something of a personal mission to expand helical beaming’s reach, illustrates both the technique’s flexibility and the ways it can be customized with some creative problem-solving on the job.

Standard helical beaming practice calls for at least 20 inches of wall on each side of an opening to give the beam adequate bearing. On this particular job, the left side of the opening had 20 inches and then some. The right side did not. A conventional repair approach would have treated that asymmetry as a hard stop—time to bring in shoring posts, remove more brick, and absorb the added cost and complexity. Montecalvo took a different approach; he cut into the side wall perpendicular to the opening to pick up the required bearing distance, then bent the Stitch-Tie Bars to run along the side wall before continuing across the span.

The solution worked. When Montecalvo later presented photos of the repair to a gathering of the International Concrete Repair Institute in Massachusetts, the response from the room was something close to disbelief. “They didn’t know something like this could be done,” he says. It’s a reaction that speaks to both the ingenuity of the solution and the broader awareness gap that still surrounds the technique. A method capable of solving problems that most contractors assume are intractable remains largely unknown to the professionals who could benefit most from it.

The Numbers are Hard to Dispute

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Photo courtesy of PROSOCO

Beyond its environmental case, helical beaming makes a compelling economic argument. Replacing a steel lintel and three courses of brick using conventional methods runs approximately $195 per lineal foot. Helical masonry beaming on the same repair runs at approximately $70 per lineal foot—less than half the cost. On a single 5-foot window opening, that’s the difference between a $975 repair and a $350 one. Scale that across a full facade restoration, and the savings become a significant line item in any project budget.

The labor savings are equally meaningful. Conventional methods require shoring posts positioned every few feet, which limits the size of materials that can be installed and increases the complexity and the safety risk of the work. Helical beaming can often span an opening entirely without shoring, giving crews unobstructed access and substantially reducing time on the wall.

There is also a less obvious benefit when it comes to water management. Flashing repairs performed without beaming typically require sheet products that must be overlapped where shoring posts interrupt the installation. Each lap is a potential point of water intrusion. Helical beaming eliminates the need for those posts, allowing for longer, uninterrupted flashing runs and fewer vulnerabilities in the building envelope.

The Real Barrier is Awareness

If helical beaming is so effective, so economical, and so aligned with the principles of sustainable building practice, why isn’t it more widely used? The honest answer is inertia. Restoration crews default to what they were trained on. Most were trained on shoring posts and corbelling, because those were the dominant methods when their mentors learned the trade. Helical beaming has been available as a technique for years, but it hasn’t been widely taught in training programs, and it rarely comes up in continuing education for the architects and contractors who specify and execute restoration work.

That is beginning to change. The volume of inquiries reaching the engineers and technical specialists who work with this method grows week over week. Contractors who have used it once tend to use it again because the results speak for themselves, and the economics are difficult to walk away from once you’ve seen them firsthand. The reaction in that Massachusetts conference room—the genuine surprise that a technique this effective existed and that most of the room had never heard of it—is becoming a familiar scene at industry gatherings.

A Sustainability Case that Doesn’t Require a Rebate

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Photo courtesy of PROSOCO

The green building conversation has, understandably, been dominated for years by energy performance: insulation values, air barrier continuity, HVAC efficiency, and renewable energy generation. These remain critical. But as the industry matures in its understanding of whole-building environmental impact, the embodied carbon embedded within existing structures, and the value of preserving it, is coming into sharper focus.

The greenest building really is the one already standing, especially when it can be repaired and kept in service rather than being replaced. Every brick in a standing wall represents energy that was already spent: to mine the raw materials, fire the kiln, transport the product, and lay it in place. Tearing that wall down and replacing it doesn’t just cost money. It costs carbon. Restoration anchoring and horizontal joint reinforcement applications like crack-stitching and helical beaming keep those bricks in place, preventing that embedded energy from becoming waste while also giving the building decades of additional service life.

The New Standard for Multifamily Access Just Needs a Smartphone

Story at a glance:

  • As a leading innovator in electronic access control, Salto pushed to see how they could remove hardware from an entry point entirely.
  • Salto developed a smart intercom system eliminates hardware by utilizing the ubiquitous smartphone.

The world’s earliest locks appeared in Egypt more than 4,000 years ago. Known as pin tumbler locks, they were made mostly of wood and included a bolt and pins that dropped into a hole to prevent a door from opening. A large wooden key then pushed the pins up and opened the door. Generations of human ingenuity not only required better security for homes and businesses than these early locks but also improved upon the simple design. In fact, in today’s world, using a key to unlock a door is practically passé.

As an innovator in electronic access control, Salto’s research and development team wondered if the next big thing in security could remove hardware from an entry point entirely and rely instead on something everyone carries around all the time: a smartphone.

“Each step in the history of access management stripped away a layer—a piece of hardware or a physical token—to get closer to a frictionless experience,” says Jeff Roberts, director of business development for Salto North America. “Smart intercoms were a big step; they moved the platform to the cloud, but they still left a piece of hardware at the door. The industry already proved you can manage access from the cloud and put video calling on a resident’s phone. The question remained: Does the visitor side of the experience still need dedicated hardware? We think the answer is no.”

The company’s solution—Salto XS4 Com with iGO—is a cloud-based smart door intercom that has eliminated the mounted panel from the entry point. What sets the intercom apart is iGO, a small identifier—either a polycarbonate plate (about 4 by 6 inches) or sticker for metal or glass—placed at the door. The vandalism-proof plate or sticker contains a QR code and NFC tag that transform a user’s smartphone into the intercom. iGO’s plate and sticker are available in multiple language versions and include braille.

BYOD: Bring Your Own Device

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The visitor’s and resident’s phones are the intercom. Photo courtesy of Salto

Designers strive to make green buildings more energy- and materials-efficient as well as minimize their embodied carbon and waste. For these reasons components and systems are scrutinized before specification. However, Roberts notes the intercom has historically avoided scrutiny because it is a necessary part of the entry package.

“There’s real material there: wiring runs, mounted panels, power connections, and a replacement cycle every several years,” he says. “The most sustainable version of any building system is the one with the fewest parts. If you can deliver the same experience with a cloud platform and QR code instead of a wired panel, that’s not an incremental improvement; that’s an entire category of material removed from the building.”

When a visitor approaches an entry using XS4 Com with iGO, rather than operating what can be an intimidating panel system, he or she scans or taps the iGO plate or sticker at the door. A Progressive Web App (PWA) then opens in the visitor’s browser. PWAs perform like a native app on a device without being downloaded from an app store. A video call is initiated to the resident, who taps his or her smartphone to unlock the door. (Visitors and residents must be using iOS 16, Android 12, or newer operating systems.)

Removing hardware doesn’t mean removing rigor.

“The smartest hardware in the system just walked through the front door,” Roberts says. “Every resident and every visitor already carries a smart device with a screen, camera, mic, and data connection. By building the system around those existing devices—not just as a companion app alongside the access hardware—you remove an entire class of manufactured objects from the building’s life cycle.”

XS4 Com with iGO not only eliminates the physical intercom panel that is produced, shipped, mounted, powered, maintained, and eventually discarded, but it also removes conduit runs and rough-in coordination with an electrician. Fewer trades and material deliveries result in less time and money on a construction project.

Eliminating Hardware, Improving Security

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A small identifier on the door—iGO—initiates a visitor’s smartphone to open a web app and video call the resident for entry. Photo courtesy of Salto

XS4 Com ties into the building’s broader access system—locks, credentials, and entry points—with Homelok, Salto’s residential access management platform, via a single cloud dashboard. XS4 Com with iGO also can be used in commercial buildings, like offices, health care, education, and hospitality. It integrates with the Salto KS access control system for commercial buildings. Regardless of building type there are no limits on the number of users per unit or the number of floors, entrances, units, or site admins. “Scaling a cloud-based system with no entry panel means adding a few more QR codes,” Roberts says. “The economics of reduction gets better the bigger the building gets.”

Salto maintains strict security protocols to ensure building entry points remain safe. Geofencing confirms the visitor is standing at the entry point when a resident is called; access cannot be triggered from down the street. Video calls to residents use WebRTC, or Web Real-Time Communication, which contains mandatory encryption using Datagram Transport Layer Security, a protocol that prevents eavesdropping, tampering, and message forgery.

“Removing hardware doesn’t mean removing rigor,” Roberts says. “The platform is ISO 27001-certified [the international standard for Information Security Management Systems] and GDPR-compliant [the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation] with end-to-end encryption on every video call. The fewer physical components in a system, the fewer attack surfaces.”

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The platform maintains rigorous security standards, including ISO 27001 certification, end-to-end encryption, and geofencing. Photo courtesy of Salto

A building owner or property manager controls and updates the XS4 Com system via the cloud. He or she no longer has to re-key a unit after a renter moves out; instead, an update is made in the cloud interface. This results in a lower maintenance footprint for the building’s operating life.

XS4 Com with iGO is one element of a modern access control system that is futureproofing buildings by requiring no hardware and less labor. But, according to Roberts, this is only the beginning of how technology continues to enhance access control.

“The end state of access technology is no barriers at all—no keys, no cards, no panels, no codes—just you and the door, and the door knows who you are. Your identity becomes your access credential,” Roberts says. “iGO is a step on that path. The physical infrastructure between a person and entry keeps shrinking. At some point it will reach zero. That’s the future we’re building toward.”

Inside the Mass Timber Massivhaus Student Housing, Designed by OPAL

Story at a glance:

  • Student housing and services can now be found inside this high-performance, timber-structure building that meets passive house standards.
  • The design fosters connectivity consistent with the Maine college’s emphasis on reinforcing community.

The new College of the Atlantic student housing represents a paradigm shift in both building construction and housing model for the institution. As a small college without significant space for new development, a construction assembly type that could be assembled rapidly was required, while still upholding the highest standards for sustainability, for which the institution is known.

Iterating on OPAL’s previously designed Davis Center for Human Ecology, the design team selected an all mass timber structure, paired with wood infill walls, and wood fiber insulation; an all-wood assembly, sequestering biogenic carbon, at passive house level energy performance—one of the first of its kind.

The 11,700-square-foot building is set to be net zero in energy usage and is designed with an unwavering approach to maximize total decarbonization across all assemblies and systems. Further, the design locates the building on a previously developed site, limiting ecosystem impact, and utilizes bird-safe glazing throughout, to reinforce local habitat.

The design seeks to maximize the scale and connectivity of the first-floor kitchen and meeting spaces, consistent with the college’s emphasis on reinforcing community. The communal kitchen is designed to allow for both large and small groups to cook together, with ample area to convene and eat, along with personalized, connected storage for every student.

The sleeping rooms themselves are a mix of single and double occupancy, all with exposed structure on the walls and ceilings, highlighting the beauty, and simplicity, of the unique structural system.

Project Details

Project: Massivhaus at College of the Atlantic
Architect: OPAL Architecture
Location: Bar Harbor, ME
Completion: March 2024
Size: 11,600 square feet
Contractor: Allied Cook
Civil Engineer: Hedefine
Structural Engineer: Thornton Tomasetti
MEP Engineer: Taitem
Landscape: Coplon Associates
Mass Timber Installation: NotchSB 
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