communitecture ARCHITECTURE | PLANNING | DESIGN
  • ON THE BOARDS
  • Updates
  • Projects
    • Commercial | Cultural >
      • Portland VOZ
      • The ReBuilding Center
      • Capaces Leadership Institute (PCUN)
      • Nella Mixed Use
      • Communitecture Headquarters
      • Bobwhite Theatre
      • Our Table Farmstand
      • Portland Community Media (PCM)
      • Hazel Dell Commons
      • Sisters of the Road
      • Mandal Temple
      • Pistils Nursery
      • Whistler Olympics
      • SE Portland Office Space
    • Multifamily | Cohousing >
      • Cully Green Cohousing
      • Mason St. Townhomes
      • Multifamily Adaptive Reuse
      • Pardee Commons
      • Sabin Green
      • Peninsula Park Commons
      • Nella Mixed Use
      • Ruth's Littlest Village
      • Woolsey Corner
      • Cully Grove
      • Next Step CoHousing Village
      • The Claire Apartments
      • Northwood Apartments
      • Norma Infill CoHousing
      • Bloom Family Village
    • ADU | Accessory Buildings >
      • Going Street Micro-Village
      • Clements ADU
      • Barta Urban Earthship
      • Sabin Green ADU
      • Raisman Basement Conversion
      • Busse ADU
      • Keating ADU / House Lift
      • Brick Accessory Building
      • Phillips Straw Bale ADU
      • Bender-Early Art Studio
      • Sellwood ADU
      • Endicott Playhouse
      • Buckholdt Art Studio
      • Bloom Car Barn
      • Skyberry Farm Studio
    • Villages | Masterplanning >
      • Bells Mountain Agrihoods
      • Mare Island Regional Resilience Resource
      • Residential Infill Projects
      • Veteran's Village
      • Bay City Masterplan
      • OUR EcoVillage
      • Atlan Permaculture Village
      • Dignity Village
      • Breitenbush Hot Springs Residential Village
      • Gira Sol Permaculture Village
      • Army Corps Sustainable Vision
      • Olinda Kaona
      • Big Bend Hot Springs Retreat
      • Trackers Earth
    • Social Justice >
      • Veteran's Village
      • Dignity Village
      • Street Roots Office
      • Kenton Women's Village
      • R2DToo
      • Tiny Home Code Innovations
      • The ReBuilding Center
      • Sisters of the Road
      • Capaces Leadership Institute (PCUN)
      • Various Houseless Villages
    • Residential >
      • St. Johns Additions & Remodel
      • Hamilton Home Remodel
      • Runyard Home & ADU
      • Granger Low Energy Home
      • Semenza Victorian Addition
      • Bloom Main House
      • Magill Kitchen & Remodel
      • Rastogi Hillside Remodel
      • Maribona Addition
      • Saxena Victorian Remodel
    • Straw Bale | Natural Building >
      • Errol Heights Strawbale Home
      • Barta Urban Earthship
      • Molecule House
      • Ridgefield Straw Bale
      • Ferbel-Azcarate Addition
      • Foster-Platt Straw Bale
      • Baker McCracken Straw Bale
      • Reid Mosier Straw Bale
      • Carter Estacada Straw Bale
      • Phillips Straw Bale ADU
      • Lake County Straw Bale
    • Public Spaces >
      • Duncan Placemaking- Station St.
      • Duncan Placemaking- Whistler Street
      • Couch Park Time Sculpture
      • A Park for the Tsimshian Tribe
      • Bay City Masterplan
      • Mare Island Regional Resilience Resource
      • Hazel Dell Commons- Eco Park
      • Latourette Park
      • Selah Vista Public Park
      • Tillamook Downtown
      • Oceanside Vision
      • Redwood College
      • Center for Sustainability Education
    • Education | Institutional >
      • The University of The Trees (aka Moksha Hills)
      • Hoquarton Interpretive Museum
      • New Day School
      • Institute of Noetic Sciences (IONS)
      • Swallowtail School
      • Center for Sustainability Education
      • Redwood College
      • Forest Grove Community School
      • The Earth School
    • Permaculture >
      • Hillsboro Farm & Buildings
      • Our Table COOP Farm
      • Acceptance: A Transformational Place
      • SE Portland Permaculture Village
      • SE Foster Permaculture Homestead
      • SE Portland Office Space
      • Audubon Society Bioswale
      • The Earth School
      • White House Food Forest
      • Atlan Permaculture Village
      • Tryon Life Community Farm
      • Gira Sol Permaculture Village
      • Institute of Noetic Sciences (IONS)
      • Center for Sustainability Education
      • Soter Vineyards
      • Regenerative Design Institute (RDI)
      • Larned Family Permaculture Site
      • Block Repair Project
      • Big Bend Hot Springs Retreat
      • Kailash Ecovillage
      • Trackers Earth
      • Barbara Walker Memorial Park
    • Events | Installations >
      • Pickathon Music Festival
      • Nest Project, Earth Dance
      • Beloved Art & Music Festival
      • Convention Booth
      • The Labyrinth Project
  • About
  • Team
  • Press
  • Contact
Mark Lakeman 
Principal / Designer | trout@communitecture.net
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Mark designs, draws, writes, speaks, and builds with equal amounts of pleasure.  His creative satisfaction comes from helping heal the world and loving well.  Mark does this through collaborative design projects and a broad range of creative facilitation avenues.  He enjoys witnessing the creative emergence of other individuals, whether through creating new public spaces in communities which lack them, or listening to someone find their voice. 

Mark’s life-long dedication to building community through design began at his roots.  Both of his parents are activist architects and planners, and from the start they infused him with a sense of creative civic possibility.  From his father’s work to create Portland’s Pioneer Square, to his mother’s investigations of the public spaces in Medieval and Neolithic villages, they both taught him to see constructive possibilities that can emerge when place is a reflection of the people who live there.  Design can destroy the world, or it can save it, help us savor it, and make the human world worthy of our people. 

Mark’s early mentors included Will Martin, the iconic architect of Pioneer Square, and numerous other creative leaders in the Portland of the 1970s.  After receiving his Bachelor of Architecture degree from University of Oregon and completing a brief early career in corporate architecture, Mark traveled the world for 7 years in order to visit and learn from numerous cultures.  Upon his return, Mark initiated communitecture, The City Repair Project movement, and the Planet Repair Institute (PRI) in order to contribute to the restoration of vital urban patterns of design participation in Portland and beyond.  As a product of Portland itself, Mark stands on broad, strong shoulders in his dedication to evolving the power of design and the design community itself. 

Mark brings the village everywhere he goes.


Dylan Thomas
Project Manager / Designer | dylan@communitecture.net
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Dylan is an architectural designer from South Carolina, currently based in Portland, Oregon. He has worked on residential and commercial projects in Oregon, Washington, California and beyond. His favorite architectural projects are ADU’s and basement remodels which empower home owners to provide more housing stock while improving their existing residence and preserving the charm of Portland’s neighborhoods.

While in architectural study at Clemson University, he studied abroad in Barcelona, Spain--sketching the architecture of Gaudi, speaking Spanish, and traveling outside of Spain in the Netherlands and Germany to study city planning and pedestrian infrastructure. He later had the chance to see the provocative works of architects and spatial thinkers from around the world when his entry for the 2008 Venice Architecture Biennale was exhibited in the Arsenale in Italy.

For masters study at Syracuse University, Dylan was selected for a two-year long research project using GIS to reimagine the city of Syracuse (one of the U.S.’s many shrinking cities) using data-informed approaches to urban planning. He also spent a Summer at the school’s NYC global campus.
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Currently, Dylan is a sleeping pod advocate, urban cycling enthusiast, and culinary day-dreamer. He is an active member and project leader with Open Architecture Collaborative-Portland and PDX Village Coalition since the Summer of 2015. In this work, he engages architects, concerned citizens, builders, social workers, and artists in volunteer projects that advocate for housing the Houseless, teach DIY builders how to use reclaimed materials, and make design services accessible to marginalized communities.

Darshan Rivka Whittle (they/them)
IT Administrator | darshan@communitecture.net
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Among Darshan’s core drives are community, connection, communication, and healing.  Striving to help facilitate more of those things in their personal life and in the world, they’ve been a monk (teaching meditation internationally from 2005-2007), a trained massage therapist (graduating from East West College in 2008, but never seeking a license or to practice), a Peer Mentor at PSU, and an active member in various communities in Portland.  They have a BA in sociology, graduating summa cum laude from PSU.

Since moving to Portland in 2007, Darshan has been self-employed as a software developer, mostly focusing on mobile and web apps.  They founded their software company, Darshan Computing, LLC after the significant success of their first Android app.  They also founded and briefly ran (for about two years) a meditation instruction business here in Portland.

When not working at
communitecture or on their software business, they are often making music, reading, exercising, and connecting with friends and community.
Vale Larson-Brasted (he/him)
Architect,  LEED AP BD+C | vale@communitecture.net
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Vale has had a lifelong interest in the natural and built environment, and how people relate to place. He is a native Oregonian, and after graduating from the University of Oregon with a Bachelors of Architecture, he lived extensively in New York City and San Francisco. He has had the fortune to travel broadly, always curious to see and experience what makes places meaningful for people.  

He brings a wide range of experience and skills to the design team at communitecture. Beyond being a licensed Architect in Oregon and Washington, with almost two decades of architectural design experience, he has a background that ranges from community development planning to building envelope assessments. From a sustainable design perspective, he brings passive and active (PV) solar design skills and is a LEED BD+C Accredited Professional.

Vale is also a seasoned artist with experience in furniture design, welding, woodworking and oil painting.  The visual and industrial arts have been strong influences in his design sense and aesthetic. These artistic endeavors have also all contributed to his understanding of the merger between the natural and built environment. Lately he has been most interested in the manipulation and engineering of recycled materials into functional pieces, whether it be a fence, screen or piece of furniture.
In his free time, Vale likes to venture outdoors.  Whether by taking long hikes, or touring by bicycle, or exploring rivers in his kayak, or trudging up mountain slopes on snowshoes. All throughout the varied terrain that the northwest has to offer.

Chanon Billington (pronounced Shuh-non)
Admin Support / Bookkeeper | chanon@communitecture.net
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Chanon has worked in a myriad of creative studios including Architecture, Landscape Architecture, product design, and post-production film music.  She handles the billing, the copier jamming, and the snack inventory with diligence and aplomb. Chanon reads, bakes, and tends to her precious cat in her spare time while resisting becoming a cliché.     
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