PCC Willow Creek

At Portland Community College’s Willow Creek campus, a new academic building and transit-oriented plaza celebrate sustainability and innovation. An installation highlighting water reuse takes the form of three buoy tubes at the center of this plaza. Each buoy tube slips through an opening in the plaza to an underground cistern that is fed by runoff from the building’s roof. As water fills the cistern, the tubes slowly rise. As water is siphoned out of the cistern, the poles recede back into the ground.