Portland Architecture

The decade in review (part 1): renovations

photo by Sally Schoolmaster 

In looking back at the years 2000-2009 and searching for dominant themes, a handful stand out. There has been the rise of sustainable and energy-efficient design. There was the overall building boom and, within that, the proliferation of high-density condominiums and apartments; they came to both existing neighborhoods and former industrial enclaves like the Pearl District and South Waterfront. There was also a continuing commitment to mass-transit infrastructure during this decade, as seen in the additions of more MAX and streetcar lines and even an aerial tram.

Equally significant, and tied to these other dominant themes of the decade for Portland architecture, was a plethora of renovations.

The decade began with what is arguably the most extraordinary of all the decade’s rehab projects: the opening of the Wieden + Kennedy headquarters in 2000 (pictured above). I’d go so far as to say its the most compelling and singular architectural space created in Portland during the decade.

A five-story warehouse originally built in 1910 (architect unknown) and called the Fuller Paint Company building, the renovation’s design catapulted the local architect responsible, Allied Works, to the national spotlight.

As author Bart King notes in An Architectural Guidebook to Portland, “For years, pedestrians walked past this five-story building, rarely giving the boarded-up box a second look.” It spent many years as a cold storage warehouse, which led to extensive wood rot. But W+K head Dan Wieden envisioned the building, as King also notes, as a kind of cultural magnet recalling Andy Warhol’s “Factory". The ensuing design by architect Brad Cloepfil and Allied Works utterly transformed the inside, leaving virtually only the exterior of the original structure intact.

The only thing that nags at me (and this is a sensation I rarely feel about old building renovations) is that given how special the W+K building is on the inside, it might have been better to let the architects use their imagination and take more liberties with the building's exterior. This is my favorite renovation of the decade, and yet part of me wonders if W+K should have been a renovation at all. Then again, I do think somehow the way the project turned out out feels fitting for Portland: something incredible inside an unassuming package.

photo by Brian Libby 

Inside, what makes the Wieden + Kennedy building extraordinary is its central atrium (pictured at the top of this post). It acts as a social nexus for its creative employees but also brings a bounty of natural light into the interior of the building. There are catwalks circling the top of the space, and an auditorium that feels like a modernist high school gymnasium. The W+K building has a simple palette of reclaimed wood and concrete, but this is no ordinary concrete. The finish is so exquisite that it almost resembles a luxury material like marble.

As if the synergy of W+K’s creative energy and Cloepfil’s design weren’t enough to celebrate, the project was also the first of many renovations in this western portion of the Pearl District by developer Gerding Edlen.

The company would go on from W+K to redevelop the vacant Blitz-Weinhard brewery into the five-building Brewery Blocks. 

photos by Brian Libby

Although some of the buildings were new construction, the GBD Architects-designed Brewery Blocks renovated and retained the historic brew house along Burnside Street into mixed-use offices and retail, making the brewery’s circular smokestack (pictured above) a celebrated local architectural icon and a symbol of the industrial age transitioning into the age of sustainability. The Brewery Blocks were all LEED-rated by the US Green Building Council, some of the first structures in Portland to earn that distinction.

Gerding Edlen was also responsible for another of the city’s most noteworthy renovations of this decade, a building just across NW 10th Avenue from the Brewery Blocks: the Portland Armory. Renovated into the Bob and Diana Gerding Theater (also by GBD), the Armory is now home to Portland Center Stage theater company. This was the first building in the nation listed on the National Register of Historic Places to earn a top-level Platinum LEED rating. It’s a fitting tribute to Bob Gerding, co-founder of Gerding Edlen, who passed away this year after a long battle with cancer.

 photo by Brian Libby

Also in the Pearl District was another landmark of sustainable architecture and historic renovation in the 2000s: the Jean Vollum Natural Capital Center, more commonly known as the Ecotrust building for the nonprofit organization that developed the project and is headquartered there. Designed by Holst Architecture, Ecotrust was the first historic building of any kind to earn a LEED rating.

And because the City of Portland’s Office of Sustainable Development was headquartered there throughout the decade (before Mayor Adams merged it with the Portland Bureau of Planning upon taking office in early 2009), the Ecotrust building became a social and professional hub for the city’s burgeoning sustainable design community. I have attended a host of events over the last decade in one of the Ecotrust building’s conference rooms.

 photo by Brian Libby

Another Holst project in the Pearl District, the Pacific Northwest College of Art, was one of the top rehab projects of the 1990s. And during this decade, the building was repainted in an incredible way. Designer Randy Higgins, who had been at Holst when PNCA was designed, "came up with an abstract pattern of gray and chartreuse rectangles that resembles a Piet Mondrian painting," as I wrote in a Metropolis article, "giving this previously drab gray square box an exterior that not only catches the eye but also feels familiarly architectural." 

If Ecotrust was a major green renovation at the beginning of the decade, the 2000s were bookended at the other end by an equally impressive rehab: the White Stag Block in Old Town at the west edge of the Burnside Bridge. Rehabbing two historic buildings with LEED certification, the Fletcher Farr Ayotte-designed project is now home to the University of Oregon's Portland satellite campus.

 

photos by Brian Libby  

Surrounding Pioneer Courthouse Square downtown is a host of early-20th Century buildings that form the core of Portland’s architectural past, buildings like the Jackson Tower and the Pioneer Courthouse itself. One of those jewels, the A.E. Doyle-designed Meier & Frank building, also saw a spirited renovation.

The impetus was a buyout of the M&F department store chain by Macy’s, but more compelling than the facelift to the store itself was the new Nines Hotel created on the upper floors, including a central atrium and a rooftop bar that allow one to enjoy Doyle’s elegant white brick building like never before. The project was overseen by SERA Architects, a firm noted for both its sustainable and its historic preservation credentials.

photo by Brian Libby 

Also downtown there was the renovation of the former Masonic Temple on the North Park Blocks into the Portland Art Museum's Mark Building. The renovation, completed in 2005, was overseen by Ann Beha & Associates of Boston. It included sprucing up the existing large and small ballrooms there, and carving space on the south side of the building for the museum's new Jubitz Center for Modern and Contemporary Art. At the time, I wrote an Oregonian feature in which three architects - specializing in arts facilities, historic preservation and planning, respectively - evaluated the building. The consensus was that the Mark Building (pictured below) was handsome in many ways, and the added museum space was welcome, but that the overall scheme felt rather tame.

 photo by Brian Libby

All the projects I’ve mentioned so far were on the west side, but the east side of the city has also seen numerous renovations. Here, rather than Gerding Edlen, the most prominent developer was Bradley Malsin and his company, Beam Construction. Malsin first gained notice with the Diloreto Architecture-designed Eastbank Commerce Center, located at the east edge of the Morrison Bridge.

Although not a spectacular building – more like a middling old warehouse – the ECC was one of the first to demonstrate how the burgeoning creative class in Portland could bring alive the Central Eastside Industrial District. With white-hot restaurant clarklewis on the ground floor and a host of design industry tenants, the building showed a new way forward as the Central Eastside became in the 2000s not just a place for closed-off industrial buildings, but also a place for designers, artists, and artisans.

Several more Central Eastside renovations followed. Another Malsin-developed warehouse project, the Olympic Mills Commerce Center, was even larger in scale than the sizable ECC. It also showed off the talents of rising-star firm Works Partnership. Here the architects had more opportunity to craft compelling public spaces from a palette of wood and concrete. And the RiverEast Center, another successful warehouse renovation in the Central Eastside, transformed a circa-1951 warehouse at the east edge of the Hawthorne Bridge into a hub for Group Mackenzie (the architect responsible), a software company, and the Portland Boathouse.

photo by Brian Libby 

A few blocks up the street, the circa-1915 Ford Building at SE 11th Avenue at Division (pictured above) was once the only assembly plant for Ford automobiles in Oregon. Now, courtesy of Portland's Emerick Architects and a California developer, the massive 82,000 square foot brick building has new life as a flexible office and retail space intended for creative industries, from Gallery Homeland’s art exhibits to Duchess Clothier’s tailored suits.

Then there was Leftbank, the long-vacant building (or actually a trio of conjoined old buildings) on NE Broadway that was once home to the Dude Ranch jazz club. Leftbank’s most notable historic architecture is clearly the Hazelwood building, which was built in 1923 and designed by legendary Portland architect A.E. Doyle with elegant arched windows and a stately brick façade.

photo by Brian Libby 

Diloreto Architecture was once again the architect of record, although Andy Powell, a non-licensed architect, acted as a kind of hybrid designer-developer along with building owner Daniel Deutsch. Inside, Leftbank is home to architects, a microbrewery, and myriad other creative-industry tenants. In fact, the building may represent a trend in that the Leftbank has been very deliberate about the tenants it selects, seeking to make the overall space a creative hub that is greater than the sum of its parts by fostering a collective creative energy.

Some of the noteworthy renovations around town were more humble overhauls of small storefronts, such as The Hub and other retail projects on North Williams that transformed the entire neighborhood. The same is true on nearby North Mississippi Avenue with humble renovations like the Mississippi Studios music venue.

Looking ahead, renovations will continue to be a big part of Portland architecture, particularly as the green building community embraces even more the idea that historic preservation and sustainable design needn’t be mutually exclusive.

Recently the Portland Timbers soccer team released initial renderings of a renovation plan for PGE Park that will transform the circa-1923 A.E. Doyle-designed baseball stadium into a soccer-only facility. The new design is being provided by Ellerbe Beckett, a firm with national reach that specializes in sports stadiums.

photo by Brian Libby 

But an even bigger and more significant project still awaiting renovation is Memorial Coliseum (pictured above), which represented the biggest preservation effort for a Portland building in 2009, and arguably for the entire decade. The modernist landmark, completed in 1960 from a design by the legendary firm Skidmore, Owings and Merrill, was threatened early in 2009 with a plan to build a minor league baseball stadium on the site.

After a vigorous and community-wide protest that included not just architects but veterans, historic preservationists, green building supporters, sports fans and the arts community, the Coliseum was spared from demolition and received a listing on the National Register of Historic places. However, its ultimate fate is still being determined, as the Mayor Adams-led Stakeholder Advisory Committee vets a variety of ideas from an amusement park to a peace museum to a botanical garden. More serious proposals, such as a previously discussed Memorial Amateur Recreation Complex from developer Douglas Obletz, may still come forward. Meanwhile, the Portland Trail Blazers seem to envision a more hands-off approach that would preserve the interior seating bowl and would keep the Coliseum an arena (although one with a smaller seating capacity) as part of an overall scheme called “Jumptown”, but some remain skeptical given the team's association with Baltimore-based developer The Cordish Company and talk of early schemes involving chain entertainment inside the building.

If we’re talking about old buildings given new life, we have to also mention the buildings that could have been renovated but weren’t. The A.E. Doyle-designed Riverdale School in Southwest Portland, for example, was destroyed so a larger school could be built on the same site. The Rosefriend Apartments, one of downtown’s most beautiful historic courtyard-style apartment buildings, was also leveled so the landowner, First Christian Church, could build underground parking and their development partner, Opus Northwest, could build the Ladd Tower apartment building.

Even so, for all the crass and ill-advised demolitions of quality old buildings that took place in Portland during the decade, there are far more renovations. And while the city skyline was most changed by new towers rising in the Pearl, downtown and in South Waterfront, it is the revitalization of the existing building stock in Portland that best represents the soul of local architecture and design.

A year-end thank you to sponsors

As the year and the decade wind down and Portland Architecture approaches its fifth anniversary, this seems like a good time to acknowledge and say thank you for the generous contributions of our sponsors.

First up is BetterBricks, the commercial building initiative of the Northwest Energy Efficiency Alliance. A nonprofit organization supported by local electric utilities, BetterBricks and NEEA advocate for changes to energy-related business practices in Northwest buildings.

In this era of heightened appreciation for the impact climate change is having on our environment and our economy, energy efficiency is a crucial component in addressing these issues.  On the organization's website, BetterBricks.com, you find information, tools, training and resources to help buildings make a difference to the bottom line and the environment.

Coming up on February 11 is the annual BetterBricks Awards, which recognizes professionals across the building industry for their advocacy and design work. Nominations are still open (the deadline has been extended) and you can vote for your favorite green champion here.

A big thank-you is also due to Glacier Window and Door, local sales affiliate for high-quality brands like Loewen. Although Glacier is a sponsor, I've also had the opportunity to learn a lot from one of their reps, Michael Dugger, about what makes a high-quality window or door. There are many products out there purporting to be sustainable that have a lot less of a lifespan than the top-level windows and doors that Glacier purveys.

What's more, Glacier has not just acted as a Portland Architecture sponsor. The company has been active in supporting and underwriting activities and initiatives at the American Institute of Architect's Center For Architecture this year.

Speaking of which, although the AIA/Portland chapter is no longer a sponsor, they were the original sponsor of Portland Architecture and provided sponsorship that continued from 2005 when the blog started until spring of this year. Thanks again to Saundra Stevens and AIA. Thanks also to Homestead Images, which was a three-month sponsor this year. Homestead is run by talented photographer Matthew Ginn.

Realty professional Bob Zaikoski and his company, Portland Modern, also are due much thanks. This has been a very tough year for the real estate industry - like Great Depression tough. But Portland Modern has hung in there as a Portland Architecture sponsor, and that's greatly appreciated.

Portland Modern and Bob also represent one of the city's foremost authorities on contemporary and classic midcentury modern houses. Bob is a particular expert on the titans of local architecture history such as John Yeon, Pietro Belluschi, Saul Zaik and Robert Rummer. If you're looking for your own private Street of Eames house, call Bob.

Two furniture stores I love, Hive and Design Within Reach, are also much appreciated sponsors. Hive is the top local contemporary furniture store in town. It was founded in 2002 with the idea that good design can and should be presented in an inspired, knowledgeable and friendly manner. The store is an authorized retailer for brands like Alessi, Artemide, Carl Hansen, Cassina, Flos, Knoll and Vitra to name just a few. I'm particularly fond of the Eero Aarnio Ball Chairs.

Design Within Reach's Pearl District studio (in the base of the Wieden + Kennedy building) has been a partner in the Designs On Portland series of bimonthly talks that I host, and naturally this is the store where one finds many of the most legendary pieces of classic modern furniture: the authentic Eames chair, the Corbusier lounge, the Barcelona chair, and the Frank Lloyd Wright Barrel Chair. The store is currently having a sale of up to 50 percent off, so it's not too late to make yours a Designer Christmas.

Portland Architecture sponsorship is much cheaper than most print and internet advertising options, yet it reaches a robust audience of design professionals and enthusiasts. If you run a company or nonprofit organzation with a message to get out, please consider becoming a site sponsor in 2010.

Meanwhile, thanks again to all of Portland Architecture's generous sponsors.

Beverly comes to Hollywood

photos by Brian Libby 

Portland’s Hollywood district is home to a new mixed-use project, The Beverly Condominiums, at NE 44th Avenue and Sandy Boulevard.

Slated for LEED Silver certification, the five-story building was developed by Gerding Edlen Development, now the largest sustainable building developer in the United States. This, along with another recently completed Gerding Edlen mixed-use project, The 20 on SE Hawthorne Boulevard, represents the developer moving to Portland’s east side. In the past, Gerding principally made its name with larger west side projects such as the Brewery Blocks in the Pearl District as well as Atwater Place, The John Ross, The Meriwether and (more recently) The Ardea in South Waterfront. 

Named after a former famous resident of the Hollywood district—children’s author Beverly Cleary—The Beverly was designed by GBD Architects, Gerding’s most frequent architectural collaborator. If you put together all five Brewery Blocks, The Casey, The Gerding Theater, the OHSU Center for Health and Healing and now The Beverly, The 20 and The Ardea, that’s an incredible number of major projects between this developer and architect in the last decade-plus, all of them fairly large in scale. (And that doesn’t include the work Gerding and GBD have done together in other cities like Los Angeles and Bellevue.) I can’t think of another developer-architect partnership in this city in the current era that has been more impactful. 

The brick and wood-clad Beverly is anchored by a Whole Foods Market and Chase Bank on the first floor, with two floors of parking above. The top two floors are devoted to 53 condominiums (all one or two bedrooms), which enjoy views of Mount Hood to the east and downtown Portland looking west.

 

 

The residential units share a handsome rooftop interior courtyard that feels quite different (more intimate) compared to the massiveness of the overall building. It’s a series of small forms stacked on top of the big, broad base and middle of the structure.

Inside the condos, living areas feature hardwood floors in natural red or saddle oak and wool carpet. Kitchens are built with maple or ash cabinetry with stainless steel hardware.

For optimal indoor air quality The Beverly was built with materials emitting low or no volatile organic compounds (VOCs) or formaldehydes. The building team, led by general contractor R&H Construction, also recycled all construction waste. And The Beverly provides 100 percent storm water filtration.

When I first heard about this project, I was disheartened because constructing The Beverly meant the mid-century modern bank on this site, an elegant glass and concrete structure, had to be torn down. At the same time, there is reason to cheer this new building because of the density it adds to the Hollywood district given its relatively close-in location and its proximity to a MAX stop. The Beverly is part of Gerding Edlen's broader focus on what's commonly referred to in sustainability talk as "20-minute living," or the notion that most of the things we need (jobs, shops, services) can be found within a twenty-minute walk.

 

Viewing the block-sized building from Sandy Boulevard, I enjoyed the façade’s interplay of textures, particularly the natural wood cladding of the upper portions and how it contrasts with the brick below.

Standing on the street outside the building can look monolithic and imposing, particularly towards the back. However, because of the triangular building footprint created by Sandy Boulevard, The Beverly is at its most slender and visually appealing at the point from which it will most people will see it. What’s more, it is very difficult to make a parking garage look humane and vibrant. They’re a necessary aesthetic evil of having automobiles.

  

Naturally, were the parking garage underground and The Beverly instead a three story building with Whole Foods and Chase on the ground floor and the condos directly above, it could have made for a more attractive piece of architecture and a more pleasant experience for the casual passer by. The subterranean parking would also have added significant costs to the project, and the land cost east of the river must not have allowed it in the building’s budget. As a result, the residential units on top of the garage feel less connected to the street and the neighborhood. That makes the building feel less attractive ultimately than comparable projects like Museum Place downtown, which GBD also designed, or the Brewery Blocks that Gerding Edlen and GBD previously collaborated on (one of which has another Whole Foods).

 

To be honest, I'm not sure exactly how to judge a project like The Beverly. It earns very positive marks by a number of measuring sticks, from its sustainability to the attractiveness of its materials to the way it contributes to Hollywood’s future as a higher-density, transit oriented neighborhood. But it’s a bulky building with a parking garage enlarging what would otherwise have been a more intimately scaled mixed use building. And yet I'm also not sure if it's fair to critique a building's design based in part on what might have been in terms of program (with underground parking). In that way, perhaps this project is a reminder of both the opportunities and challenges, economically and in terms of design, along Portland’s continued path towards higher density. 

Last of the Portland Plan workshops

Photo by Brian Libby 

The final Portland Plan Community Workshop is being held Tuesday night at 6:30pm at the University of Oregon's White Stag Block in Old Town (70 NW Couch).  Round two workshops begin in spring 2010.

As with the six previous community workshops, Mayor Sam Adams will facilitate a community dialogue about how to solve some of the city's major challenges, with audience polling being conducted on a wide range of issues. 

The first six workshops have included just under 800 participants. With a city population of over 557,000 that's not a very high rate of participation, about one in every 700 citizens.  But who have attended have a 98 percent approval rating on the usefulness of the workshops.

The Portland Plan will be a strategic roadmap to ensure the city is thriving, prosperous and sustainable for all residents over the next 25 years. The Portland Plan is part of a state-mandated comprehensive plan update and will touch every neighborhood and resident as the city grows.

The last time the City developed a comprehensive plan was 1980; about 50 percent of Portlanders today were not here at that time. Because the plan will ultimately affect every resident, the City and its partners are asking for maximum community input to define priorities, develop solutions and guide investment of public dollars as we develop the plan over the next 15 months.

A city-issued press release also says  in workshops and online surveys, the top three issues facing Portland in the next 25 years are:

1. Sustainability & the Natural Environment 
2. Prosperity, Business Success & Equity 
3. Education & Skill Development 

You can also find out more about the Portland Plan online at www.PDXPlan.com or on its Facebook and Twitter pages. If you can't get to the final Portland Plan community workshop in person, it will be streaming live online and broadcast via live TV on cable access channel 30.

Placenotes Portland? It's in the cards

Looking for that perfect gift for a lover of local design and architecture, or a friend looking to visit the city? Your answer may be Placenotes.

Produced by the Austin, Texas-based Charles More Foundation, Placenotes is a boxed collection of images portraying Portland and its attractions. This is the tenth in the Moore Foundation’s Placenotes series of travel guides, and the first to feature a West Coast city.

The nonprofit Charles Moore Foundation is dedicated to teaching people about the value of good places. It published its first Placenotes guide, on Austin, in 2000, as a way to help cities tell their stories to a national audience.

Like the previous editions, Placenotes Portland is written, photographed and edited by Kevin Keim, Executive Director of the Moore Foundation. “As everywhere looks more and more like nowhere, we seek out places that make us feel as though we are somewhere," he said. "Cities, neighborhoods, the environment, parks, schools, streets, indeed the whole physical realm is what we seek to document. We feel that there are good and worthwhile places everywhere; what we do is help cities communicate that to people, both natives and visitors alike.”

Placenotes Portland came about thanks to Jonah Cohen, incoming president of the Architecture Foundation of Oregon and a longtime AFO member. While visiting Austin two years ago, he received a copy of Placenotes Austin as a gift and immediately wondered about such a guide for Portland. After getting in touch with the Moore Foundation and convincing Keim to pursue a Placenotes Portland.

Our version of Placenotes is not strictly devoted to chronicling the city's major attractions. Cohen and others from the AFO took him all over the metro area, not just Portland Proper but the Willamette Valley and destinations like the Alvar Aalto-designed Mt. Angel Abbey Library and the Frank Lloyd Wright-designed Gordon House. 

 

At the same time, some obvious choices for tourists are not included in the guide. Instead, Placenotes follows the whims and instincts of Keim. And they are good instincts. While places like Pioneer Courthouse Square, the Portland Art Museum, the Keller Fountain, the Japanese Garden and Powell's Books are included, so are less obvious selections like The Rebuilding Center, the Perfume House, the Ace Hotel, Doug Fir and the Interstate Firehouse Cultural Center.

This unexpected quirkiness is one of its main strengths, and balances out the fact that the photography is not always exactly groundbreaking (Keim, while certainly well-intentioned, is not a professional photographer).  The end result is a is a lovely little time-capsule that gets one invigorated about the collection of places and people Portland has grown, and that grow Portland.

 

Placenotes is available in the usual locations like Powells and Amazon. However, if you purchase a copy from the AFO website, the foundation will receive half of the proceeds. (I initially had difficulty finding any mention of Placenotes when I first went to the AFO website, but after Googling "Architecture Foundation of Oregon" and "Placenotes" I found the hotlink above for purchasing an AFO-held copy.)

Cheers to Cohen, the AFO and everyone involved in making Placenotes Portland a reality.

The return of Genoa

Photo by John Valls 

For many years in Portland beginning in the 1970s and continuing through the 1990s and beyond, Genoa Restaurant was not just a premiere destination for sophisticated, authentic Italian cuisine - it was the place. In a nation of Chef Boyardees, Genoa was Marcella Hazan, the grand dame.

But the restaurant at 2832 Southeast Belmont Street closed in 2008 and, by that time, despite its exquisite food, the restaurant felt like an anachronism, all worn carpet and seven-course meals.

Now, it's a pleasure to report that Genoa is not only back, but the restaurant's original location has been updated to include an adjacent cafe one is likely to frequent on a much more regular basis. 

 Photos by Brian Libby

Architecturally speaking, I'd argue the renovated restaurant (pictured above) is vastly better than the old Genoa ever was. Much as we foodies may have swooned at the arancini (fried risotto balls), the homemade pastas and all the other exquisite food at the old Genoa courtesy of great chefs like Kathy Whims and Jerry Huisinga, I never loved the interiors or layout. The kitchen was so small that a lot of wait staff duties like gathering silverware and pouring drinks were out with the diners. The curtains were closed so natural light was practically nonexistent, meaning you had either fluorescent light or near darkness. I can appreciate a fine dining restaurant trying to carve out an intimate space, but even when the food was great I'd have preferred the inside to upgrade from the textures and approach of the Carter administration.

By contrast, Genoa's new dining room (pictured immediately above and below) is beautifully rendered with wood floors, curtains and a fireplace, even as familiar bits of the old restaurant like a beautiful armoire remain. Curtains still assure the space does not have a fishbowl effect, but storefront glass allows more natural light to come through. A wall now separates the dining room from the kitchen, with the small wall that was there now removed.

Photo by John Valls 

Yet if diners want to experience an open kitchen and a more casual atmosphere with a coule of courses instead of seven, the adjacent cafe, known as Accanto, has a more open feel, both figuratively and literally speaking. The kitchen area is completely with a row of barstools surrounding the cooks. 

Overall, Accanto (pictured below) is much more in keeping with casual and more affordable restaurants of recent years that still have great food, neighborhood spots like Savoy, Cafe Castagna or Bar Mingo. You can stop there for a wild boar ragut sandwich at lunch, like I did, or even a late-morning espresso, like a few locals seem to do. There are also entrees of the same quality you'll find next door in the dining room, only available a la carte.

 Photos by Brian Libby

The team behind Genoa's rebirth included architecture firm Works Partnership and the design-build company Siteworks as well as Fix, an interdisciplinary design studio. I liked the simple layout of the restaurant, although what may have stood out most, at least to my eyes, was the richness of the materials, some of which were older salvaged materials and others that were newer and polished. [Note: I originally did not include Fix in my list of design credit along with Works and Siteworks - apologies for that. There are also several subcontractors whom I may not have mentioned.]

The bar at Accanto, for example, is made with live-edge walnut (pictured below), meaning it undulates with the tree's remaining knots and crevices. But Jean-Pierre Veillet, owner of Siteworks, also combined the walnut with steel, part of a series of subtle contrasts throughout the space such as the black and white tiles on the kitchen's back wall, the steel mirror and the kumaru wood floors, and the open and secluded halves of the restaurant itself.

 Photo by Jean-Pierre Veillet

Wood makes a lot of different appearances. Another favorite material I saw was a salvaged set of double doors (pictured above) in the Genoa dining room that originally were part of a church. Accanto also has a wall in back clad in wood with built-in bookshelves, and the ceiling is festooned with slats of wood that partially but not entirely cover the ceiling rafters behind it.

 Photo by Brian Libby

Veillet, a native Portlander, has an interesting history. Trained as an artist at the Pacific Northwest College of Art, he later taught sculpture there for eight years and now funds a scholarship at the school. You can see the ongoing artistic love in some of the first-rate artworks Veillet has lent to Accanto, such as a portrait called "Same Ol' Same Ol'" by legendary local painter Arvie Smith at the front of the restaurant and an original Chuck Close artwork on the way to the bathroom. Veillet's portfolio also includes design-build services for retail clients like the Lizard Lounge clothing store in the Pearl District.

A "Design Statement" Viellet emailed explains, "With his firm, Siteworks, Veillet has taken his background in site-specific art and mixed it with a serious shot of writing, poetry, and experience to produce spaces that communicate with people through objects, design, and elegance."

 Photo by Angel Franco/New York Times

Another of his projects, a temporary store for the clothing company Nau, was featured last month in the New York Times. In that piece, Eric Wilson wrote:

"The green movement in fashion, in which designers do go on about hugging the planet with their biodynamic cotton henleys, would appear to be at odds with the 'pop up' shop movement in fashion, in which the very same designers open temporary stores, lavishly redecorate them and then, when they close a few weeks later, toss all the fixtures, lights and displays to the curb."

Mr. Veillet said his idea was to create a space using materials that were almost entirely rooted in New York City’s waste stream — fallen tree limbs found on the street, timber and metal pipes from derelict Brooklyn factories and piles of discarded cardboard boxes — so that when the store closes, at least the garbage won’t be new."

Veillet and Works Partnership also have another project in the works, a series of what they're calling "eco flats", or low-cost, high-density, multifamily housing units, on Williams Avenue.

US Green Building Council president visits Mercy Corps for LEED Platinum ceremony, tour

 Photo by Jeff Amram

Last week, US Green Building Council president Rick Fedrizzi was at the new Mercy Corps headquarters to personally award the building its Platinum certification, the highest possible in the Council's LEED (Leadership in Energy & Environmental Design) rating system for green buildings.

"Fabulous. Fabulous. Terrific," Fedrizzi said of the building, which was designed by THA Architecture and received an assist from consultants Green Building Services, engineering from Glumac and construction by Walsh. "This is always exciting for me. We talked sixteen years ago when we started the LEED system about how people would someday celebrate their buildings like this. This is a really beautiful space. And a building like this is teaching lessons you can take around the world."

"It is not easy to do LEED Platinum," added Fedrizzi (pictured at left in the shot below). "And I've actually seen LEED Platinum achieved but done wrong. But this building is what LEED Platinum should be all about. It will be a beacon."

 Photo by Caitlin Carlson

"We needed a home that reflected our values and our mission," said Mercy Corps president Neil Kenny Guyer (pictured at right in the above shot) as he accepted the Platinum plaque (which is actually glass) from Fedrizzi, "a place where we could make an impact. We know that climate change discriminates. It affects the poorest first."

"But we knew we got it right the first day [after moving in]," Guyer added, "seeing people meeting on the stairwell with smiles on their faces."

Photo by Jeff Amram 

The Mercy Corps headquarters is comprised half of a historic existing building, the circa 1892 Skidmore Fountain Building (also known as the Packer-Scott Building), and half from a new building, making one unified space. A lot of structural work had to be done to get the Skidmore Fountain Buidling structurally sound and up to current seismic codes, especially when one of its walls was removed to connect the new and old buildings. "“If you had a really strong breeze, this thing would have fallen over,” Ashton Walsh of Walsh Construction told the Daily Journal of Commerce.

The building includes offices for Mercy Corps as well as an Action Center, which the organization describes as "a social studies lab for school groups and a newsroom for everyone. It's an interactive exhibit space dedicated to providing up-to-date, compelling stories from around the world. It's a place where programs -- casual, short-term university seminars, impromptu panel discussions and guest lecturers -- encourage conversation about the issues of the day."

 Photo by Jeff Amram

In order to get the design approved by the city's Historic Landmarks Commission, the exterior of the new half of the building needed to fit in aesthetically with the old Skidmore Fountain building's red brick façade.

THA Architects managed to walk a fine line in this regard, because the new half of the Mercy Corps headquarters feels thoroughly modern even as it is connected to the historic half. The newer portion feels like the repeating of a rhythm, neither a trite neo-historic caricature of old architecture nor a jarring incongruent departure.

The new half of the building's two most visible sides, the east-facing riverfront side and the south-facing one that looks out at Ankeny Plaza, are also distinctive in their use of glass. The riverfront facade takes its cue from Mercy Corps' mission. In researching the client and the project, the architects learned that a connecting thread between the many world cultures the agency serves is just that - thread and weaving. So the glassy riverfront facade faintly resembles a weaving, but again without resorting to postmodern silliness.

Photo courtesy THA Architecture 

The south-facing facade (pictured above) is one of the most important for any green building, because that's where you manage changing solar light, so as to bring in the illumination and warmth when it's needed in the winter and keep it out when it's unwanted in summer. Instead of the usual light shelves one sees on many a green  building facade (horizontal exterior shades extending out at every floor), the THA design utilizes a patchwork of small rectangular shades that are tilted at an angle. Standing inside the building, it made for a dazzling experience watching the winter sun come into the space. And the array of shades also creates a compelling look for the facade of this otherwise boxy building. I love it when beautiful form is born from very useful function.

Inside, the heart of the building, as Neil Kenny Guyer mentioned, is an open stairway that looks and feels like a kind of geometric DNA double-helix. Wood stair treads salvaged from the original building were combined with a light steel stair structure, giving the area both texture and transparency. This is the very middle, interior-most portion of the building, and it's still teeming with natural light.

 

Photos by Jeff Amram 

Overall I am a big fan of the Mercy Corps building, but came away with two relatively small criticisms:

While standing in the new half of the building filled with Mercy Corps workers' cubicles, I was surprised to see that the executive offices were placed along the north and south facades and walled off on the inside with drywall. This means that only a select few will have access to natural light from the building's exterior. It's of course largely moot in terms of light distribution because this same area benefits from an all-glass east facade looking out at the river. But this configuration is still surprisingly indicative of an older, less egalitarian way of laying out administrative offices for executives and rank-and-file employees. I'd have expected either the executive offices along the building perimeter to be walled with glass on the inside, so the light and views are distributed into the space, or to have open desk configurations along the perimeter and executive offices in the middle of the space. During the tour, THA principal William Dann explained that interior-wall glass for these perimeter offices was too expensive, and that Mercy Corps didn't want to be extravagant with budget given the extreme needs of the people around the world the agency serves. But if that's the case, why not put the executives in the middle and the larger amount of regular employees along the glassy perimeter?

Photo by Jeff Amram 

My other disappointment was with the Mercy Corps Action Center, located on the ground floor of the older Skidmore Fountain Building portion of the headquarters. This is a space for the public to come and learn more about Mercy Corps and the needs of people the agency serves. It was designed not by THA, but by noted exhibit designer Edwin Schlossberg (husband of Caroline Kennedy, JFK's daughter).

To its credit, the Action Center has on display some of the tools and equipment Mercy Corps provides around the world, such as an easy-to-build tent dwelling and a rollable donut-shaped water carrier. Most of the space consists of TVs where one watches video about Mercy Corps' efforts and is encouraged to take actions such as contacting a member of Congress.

The video terminals have educational value, of course. Yet I'd like to have seen more of an experiential design approach taken, as was done with the "Real.Life" exhibit at the Medical Teams International facility in Tigard. There you can stand under a simulated 25-foot tsunami wave (like the one that ravaged southeast Asia), or amidst a recreation of Mexico City's garbage-dump, a Ugandan refugee camp, and a Romanian orphanage. The Medical Teams International exhibit is emotionally evocative as it is educational; the Mercy Corps video terminals can be helpful to get one to take action, but any of this could also be done on the organization's website. In this day and age, providing someone with a screen full of information seems a little bit of an outdated concept when they can do so with even a cell phone.

Even so, the Mercy Corps building seems architecturally like a major success. Locating in still-gritty Old Town and renovating a historic structure wasn't the easiest course for the agency, but as Ralph DiNola of Green Building Services wrote in a blog post about the project, "Mercy Corps’ decision to consolidate several offices and locate in this part of the city catalyzes redevelopment momentum and revitalizes this re-emerging neighborhood. Directly adjacent to downtown, the urban locale leverages existing infrastructure, offers employees an array of alternative transportation options and concentrates development to protect agricultural and natural habitats in the outlying areas while infusing the adjacent district with long-term investment and ownership."

Indeed, I love the idea that when one comes west across the Burnside Bridge into downtown, the crossing is bookended by the University of Oregon's White Stag Block on the north side and the Mercy Corps headquarters to the south. Admittedly, it's also a neighborhood teeming with homeless people, but that's all the more reason why it's great to see these entities embracing Portland's urbanity, both in terms of amenities and challenges. 

Photo by Jeff Amram 

As with the rest of the THA Architecture (formerly Thomas Hacker Architects) portfolio, including projects like the Woodstock and Hillsdale libraries in Portland, or their theater for the Oregon Shakespeare Festival in Ashland, this is not contemporary design meant to grab you by the lapels and call attention to itself. The Mercy Corps headquarters is a quintessentially Portland building in that it's a good neighbor, a piece of the urban fabric that fits well within its context. Yet a lot of buildings that fit well into their context are a design bore, forgettable as soon as one passes them. The Mercy Corps headquarters is, like Fedrizzi says, a beacon. It walks a deft balance between sober and dazzling, which seems entirely fitting as a physical embodiment of the client and the city.

Halprin book release party this Saturday

 

This Saturday brings a celebration for the publication of the book Where The Revolution Began: Lawrence and Anna Halprin and the Reinvention of Public Space, published by Spacemaker Press.

In the Ziba World Headquarters atrium (1044 NW Ninth Ave.) at 2PM, there will be a host of people and artists articulating the Halprin legacy as seen in this book: Portland Commissioner Nick Fish will emcee, followed by a performance from violinist Ron Blessinger of Third Angle Ensemble, with dancers Linda K. Johnson, Tere Mathern, Cydney Wilkes, and Linda Austin. There will also be a screening of The City Dance of Lawrence and Anna Halprin, a documentary about the September 2008 performance in Halprin’s Portland plazas. Admission is free.

Between 1963 and 1970, Lawrence Halprin and Associates realized the Portland Open Space Sequence—a quartet of public plazas in Portland, Oregon, that redefined the city and set a bold new precedent for urban landscape architecture. Composed of the Lovejoy Fountain, Pettygrove Park, and Forecourt Fountain (latter renamed Ira Keller Fountain), plus the lesser known Source Fountain, the plazas were a dynamic collage of striking concrete forms, gushing water, and alpine flora that, in their seamless mix of nature and theater, created a playful metaphorical watershed coursing through the central city.

  

Where the Revolution Began is the story of how these plazas came to be. Born of the creative experimentation and collaboration between Halprin and his wife, pioneering choreographer/dancer Anna Halprin, the Portland Open Space Sequence came to life in the unlikely setting of the city’s first scrape-and-rebuild urban renewal project. But Halprin defied the conventions of both American urban renewal and midcentury modernism, designing the kind of inviting, exuberant public space that hadn’t been seen since Renaissance Rome’s Trevi Fountain and Piazza Navonna.

For Halprin, who died in October at age 93, the plazas became the first step in a career-long exploration of sequential works of landscape design, from the Haas Promenade in Jerusalem to the Roosevelt Memorial in Washington, D.C. For Portland, Halprin’s work marked the beginning of a tradition of remaking the city around interactive public spaces such as the famed Pioneer Courthouse Square. And for landscape architecture, the plazas laid the earliest foundations for the ecologically and socially responsive urbanism on the rise today.

Replete with historic photographs and Halprin’s own notebook drawings (two of which are shown in this post - of the Keller and Lovejoy Fountains), Where the Revolution Began is the historically complete document of how this pivotal moment in urban landscape history came to be, from concept to fruition.

The book includes essays by three experts on the Halprins: John Beardsley, author of Earthworks and Beyond: Contemporary Art in the Landscape and Gardens of Revelation: Environments by Visionary Artists; Janice Ross, director of the Dance Division at Stanford University and author of Anna Halprin: Experience as Dance ; and Randy Gragg, editor in chief of Portland Spaces and Portland Monthly magazines.

Photographs in Where the Revolution Began are by Susan Seubert, who has photographed for publications like National Geographic Traveler and the New York Times.

 

In Beardsley's essay, he writes:

"The 'transitional figure' in history is a well worn cliche, but in Lawrence Halprin's case, the term emphatically and revealingly applies. Halprin is widely recognized as one of the preeminent designers of the postwar era, when landscape architecture finally reckoned with the formal, social, and technological implications of modernism."

"Halprin used a language of streamlines forms, asymmetrical geometries, and spatial ambiguity characteristic of much high modernist art. He likewise shared the faith they displayed in the socially transformative power of functionalist design...But Halprin [also] articulated some of the earliest and most forceful environmentalist challenges to modernism."

"Halprin...recognized ecology as a social as well as a biological construct; ecological health, in his mind, encompassed humans in addition to the rest of the biotic community. Halprin's engagement with urban renewal, a feature of his work both in Portland and Seattle, was at once the legacy of modernist aspirations for social improvement and a critique of the way modernism was rending the physical fabric of American cities."

I'm just hoping that I'm feeling happy enough from a Ducks win in the Civil War to go to the book event on Saturday, and not too depressed by a Beaver win to engage in human contact. Either way, though, I heartily recommend purchasing a copy of the book.

Another look at Burnside Bridgehead

 

The Portland Development Commission will host a public workshop this evening (Wednesday, November 25) to engage community members about potential uses of the four-acre Burnside Bridgehead site.

The workshop will be held from 5:30 p.m. to 8:00 p.m. in the atrium of the Olympic Mills Commerce Center, 107 SE Washington Street. A second workshop, slated for winter 2010, will offer attendees a chance to comment and provide input on the draft Framework Plan.    

“Fresh perspectives make the ordinary extraordinary,” said project consultant Will Bruder. “The team is very eager to have a two-way conversation with community members about what they want for this site.” That Bruder (a very talented Phoenix architect now teaching at PSU) is involved bodes well for this development, especially given what a cluster-@$*& Burnside Bridgehead was originally, when PDC's board awarded the development contract to national developer Opus, against the wishes of the advisory committee that selected local developer Beam.

And speaking of which, an additional element of the Framework process is PDC’s partnership with Beam Development on Burnside Bridgehead going forward. In February, Beam agreed to serve as PDC’s strategic advisor for the Framework Plan, providing development advice in exchange for the opportunity to develop a minimum of 20 percent of the site.   The Burnside Bridgehead Citizen Advisory Committee, which meets monthly, will provide significant input and comment to the project team. 

Expected to occur over the next six months, the planning process will culminate in the release of a Burnside Bridgehead Framework Plan in March 2010.  This high-level guidebook to redevelopment will include the refinement and clarification of public goals and objectives for the property and identify key opportunities and constraints on the site.

The Burnside Bridgehead site is identified in the City of Portland’s recently adopted “Economic Development Strategy, a Five-Year Plan for Promoting Job Creation and Economic Growth” as a key catalytic site within the Central City for the creation of a significant mixed-use gateway development. The Burnside Bridgehead Framework Plan project is a six-month process that will culminate in the release of the Framework Plan, a high-level guidebook to redevelopment that will direct and guide the creation of this mixed-use gateway.  

This Plan includes the refinement and clarification of public goals and objectives for the property and the identification of key opportunities and constraints on the site.  The process is also intended to answer remaining questions about the site including the reuse potential of the Convention Plaza building, changes in capacity of the site given upcoming transportation infrastructure improvements such as the Burnside-Couch couplet and the Eastside Streetcar, and the appropriateness, and direction, of phasing development within the project area.

The second workshop, slated for early 2010, will offer attendees a chance to comment and provide input to a draft Framework Plan.

A new home for ZGF, a new era for the West End: visiting 12 West

For much of the last decade, the Pearl District has seen a succession of mixed-use condos built within the neighborhood while just across Burnside, the West End has, aside from a small project here or there, remained relatively stagnant. That changed, however, with the construction of the 12 West tower at SW 12th and Washington.

The economy has changed the dynamics of a continuing march of new towers. There may not be a building boom west of Burnside in the coming years to match what happened in the Pearl during the last 10 years. Perhaps that's all the more reason, though, that 12 West will help to anchor this relatively sleepy portion of downtown. With the arrival of the Ace Hotel nearby, as well as retail and restaurants such as the Living Room Theaters and Kenny & Zuke's Delicatessen, the West End is starting to feel more alive.

 

The 22-story building has ground-floor retail, 17 floors of apartments and a few floors of underground parking. But my focus on the three visits I've made to the building since it opened earlier this fall has been the anchor tenant, ZGF Architects, which occupies the first few floors.

From the street one enters the massive 85,000 square foot ZGF headquarters through a multi-story foyer, in which the stairway leading to the firm's upstairs offices is suspended from the ceiling on steel cables. The stairway appears to almost float within the massive volumed and naturally lit space.

Inside, the lobby is equally striking. Sitting at a sofa near the front desk, one looks through a variety of spaces that can change, expand and contract. To the left is an outdoor deck carved into the interior building. Looking forward through the lobby, there is a glass walled conference room in which the walls have been festooned with thousands of ZGF's old project slides (pictured below) as well as a series of sliding wood doors that can create both large and intimate settings. The front desk is separated from a work area by a long metal-mesh curtain, the kind used for fireplaces only about 20 times bigger.

Because the language of concrete, glass and wood is nice and simple, the designers embraced their opportunities to put their work forward. Besides the project slides occupying one wall, throughout the rest of the office there was also renderings and drawings of in-progress work pinned to the wall. Like the Holst Architecture-designed Ziba headquarters, or BOORA's recent redesign of its offices, the interior of these offices becomes a blank canvass that gives way to a kind of continually changing mass-media scrapbook.

On top of the building there is a spectacular view (pictured below) from a rooftop deck and party area. But the biggest attraction up here may be 12 West's array of wind turbines. These are historic, by the way: the first wind turbines anywhere in America (if not the world) to be used on top of a building in a high-density urban setting. It sounds inherently wrong to say, because so many projects around the world involving building-integrated turbines have been announced. how could this be the first? But ZGF's rooftop turbine array is a pioneer in actually getting mounted on a building. The turbines will ultimately provide only about one percent of the building's power. But one percent of a 22-story building's energy use is not a small amount. What's more, other aspects of the building's integrated design include thermal solar hot water and an ultra efficient building envelope. 

The turbines are part of an overall sustainable design and construction effort that will earn 12 West a top-level Platinum LEED designation from the US Green Building Council.

The $137 million building was developed by Gerding Edlen, the company behind all five of the Brewery Blocks, the Gerding Theater and The Wieden + Kennedy building in the Pearl, not to mention numerous towers in the South Waterfront district as well as projects Los Angeles and Bellevue. The land for 12 West, however, belonged to the Goodman family, owners of the City Center Parking garages and numerous surface parking lots throughout the urban core. Thus, the 12 West project represents not only Gerding Edlen taking their Brewery Blocks model west across Burnside, but also - and perhaps more importantly - the Goodmans beginning to develop their surface lots. In a city like Portland aspiring to high density, there is little excuse for surface parking lots scattered throughout the city center. Luckily that is starting to change.

Given how the economy has tumbled, I might worry a little about ZGF living up to this Grand Palais of an architectural office. Can they design enough hospitals, airports and academic buildings to pay the mortgage? I say this not out of any inside knowledge of ZGF. Or if I do have inside knowledge of the firm, it's that ZGF seems to be at a high level when it comes to producing quality design.

The firm has been a very big one in Portland (the biggest, actually) for many years. But in recent times the caliber of design has taken a step forward. There are talented younger-generation architects like Gene Sandoval at ZGF, but also the influence of old-guard architects like Robert Frasca. I just hope that the economic climate and this huge office allow ZGF to continue prospering. With work happening around the world, though, and a track record of several decades, the future seems bright for ZGF. They seem to occupy a rarified air of large firms with international scope and attention, firms like KPF (Kohn Pedersen Fox) , SOM (Skidmore Owings Merrill) and HOK (Hellmuth, Obata + Kassabaum). Apparently you need a three-name acronym to qualify.

Last Friday I happened to visit the 12 West building on a cloudy, rainy day at dusk. Any photographer would tell you it was time to put the camera away and wait for bright afternoon or morning sunshine. But I kept snapping pictures of 12 West as I stood outside, and I think that was because the building had a noticeable glow even in this low light. The ultra high-efficiency glass used on the facade not only brings lots of natural light into the building, but it also gives 12 West a sense of transparency that helps humanize its somewhat monolithic form. It doesn't just reflect light like a mirror, but actually seems to hold that illumination like a jewel box.

 

 

 

At first the facade seemed to me like a lesser version of ZGF's other recent local tower, The Eliot (located at SW 10th and Jefferson behind the Portland Art Museum). The randomness of the facade patterns in the Eliot initially seemed more striking. But ultimately I've come to appreciate 12 West's balance between randomness and clarity. The Eliot, it turns out, has come to feel like a first draft of 12 West's facade. It's true the Elliot has more human-scaled spaces at ground level (such as brownstones and a glass-walled cafe), but that project also benefits in that regard from bordering a pedestrian street. There are also a series of indentations in the 12 West facade where balconies or windows break up the mass of this behemoth, creating the sense that the glass curtain wall is just that - a gentle curtain over the building. Even though 12 West is bigger than the Eliot, to me it feels lighter.

I am not quite ready to say 12 West is a gorgeous composition up there with the best recent local towers, such as 937 or The Metropolitan. Honestly, I need more time to contemplate a building fully. Part of me feels at first glance that it could somehow be a bit more elegant, yet there is an honesty and clarity of expression that I also admire. Besides, there have been times I've written about a building a few weeks or months after it was completed only to see my opinion change over time. I want to keep my mind open about it a little longer.

I can tell you, though, that 12 West makes a very nice addition to the downtown skyline. It represents the continuing tradition of quality that marks both the architect and developer. If 12 West is part of the end of a booming era, it's a nice way for Gerding Edlen, ZGF and Portland itself to go out. Increasingly our city is going to have people living vertically in condos and apartments, and if I were to do so, I can scarcely think of a better location or glass-ensconced setting in which to live.

We'll leave the light off for ya': Melvin Mark, Russell lead BOMA Office Energy Showdown winners

The Building Owners and Managers Association (BOMA) has announced the winners of Portland’s 2009 Office Energy Showdown. Now in its third year, the Showdown recognizes Portland-area office buildings that have made significant achievements in energy efficiency.

Participation saw a nearly 30 percent increase in the number of participants from the previous year and added nearly four million square-feet of office space to the friendly competition.

Winners were chosen from among 32 properties, representing over 11 million square-feet of office real estate. Challenged to assess their buildings’ energy performance, all participants demonstrated market leadership in quantifying their energy use and establishing baseline data that can be used to track future gains in operating efficiency.

The Grand Prize winner, which receives the “Power Broker” trophy for a property, team, or company achieving an outstanding accomplishment in all-around energy performance was the Melvin Mark Companies, a commercial real estate broker. Melvin Mark's portfolio includes the Sunset Center at Tanasbourne as well as the Columbia Square (pictured above) and Crown Plaza buildings downtown.

Three projects were also singled out for demonstrating the highest energy performance ratings. 1st Place went to the 200 Market Building, managed by the Russell Development Company. 2nd Place was the Gus Solomon Courthouse, managed by the General Services Administration (which probably uses little energy by virtue of being largely empty), and 3rd Place went to the Kruse Woods V project, managed by Shorenstein.

Then there were awards for 'Greatest Improvement', for the properties demonstrating the most significant gains in energy performance rating over the year. 1st place went to the ODS Tower in downtown Portland managed by Ashforth Pacific (now if they could only do something about the hideous sculpture in the front of the building) and designed by ZGF. 2nd Place was Montgomery Park, the Northwest Portland landmark managed by Bill Naito Company. 3rd Place was a tie between the Liberty Centre (Ashforth Pacific) and 1915 Amberglen, managed by KG Investments Management.

If they'd needed to break the tie, I'd have disqualified Liberty Centre for spelling "Centre" like Canadians. That said, Liberty Centre is also noteworthy in that it was originally to be a design by internationally renowned architect Cesar Pelli, before ultimately being designed by Portland's GBD Architects.

Design afficionados (or "designistas", as developer Dennis Wilde has called them) may snicker that many of these buildings are visually unattractive or, in some cases, located in some far-off suburban office park surrounded by surface parking lots. I mean, you never hear someone say, "Have you seen that Kruse Woods V office building in Lake Oswego? What a gorgeous work of architecture! What is that, Koolhaas? Piano, Meier?" But energy efficiency is one of the biggest movements of our time, and part of a regional effort to reduce the need for coal-fired power plants by cutting our power addiction. What some of these projects lack in looks or location, they admirably atone for by being as efficient as they can be.

Latest Designs on Portland talk: working in China

This fall China has been on the brain of Portland's art and design community. Taking a cue from the Portland Art Museum's "China Design Now" exhibit, which surveys the latest in design, fashion and graphic design from China, the next installment in our Designs On Portland discussion series will feature three local architects with experience across the Pacific in the land of Mao and Ming.

Scheduled for Thursday at 6:30pm at Design Within Reach (1200 NW Everett), the talk will feature Robert Packard of ZGF Architects, Gary Reddick of V3 Studio, and Rick Potestio.

ZFG has quietly designed numerous projects in China, such as the Silo City Residential District in Beijing, an 8.6 million square foot LEED-rated residential district ; the 900,000 square foot FuWai Cardiovascular Hospital in Beijing; and a 600,000 square foot expansion of the Beijing Children's Hospital.

V3 Studio and Reddick's previous firm, Sienna Architecture, have been hired to design a number of buildings and master plans such as the five-building Jinan Olympic Park complex in Jinan, China (shown in rendering form at the top of this post and directly above).

Potestio hasn't designed a building in China, but the architect, professor and urban planner has traveled extensively in China and conducted charrettes there to generate designs for housing projects in three Chinese cities.

More than simply looking at the work these architects have done, the hope is that our conversation will delve into the challenges and opportunities facing Portland architects as they seek out and procure work in China.

The speed of development there can be staggeringly quick, for example. That's appealing to an architect used to seeing projects languish on the drawing board, but not so appealing when you're asked, for example, to only design a project through the design-development stage and then hand over the blueprints to a different architect who will see your baby through to construction. At the same time, the government itself can help or hinder a project.

Two years ago I interviewed an engineer, Steve Burrows, from the renowned engineering firm Arup, about working in China; his firm worked on the Bird's Nest national stadium and the Rem Koolhaas-designed CCTV Tower (the latter of which is pictured above in a shot I took in 2007 when the building was under construction). When I asked him about the Chinese government's attitude about the stadium being constructed, Burrows had this to say:

"From the top of Chinese political leadership down they were going to do this. They could have found us not compliant with Chinese code and made us go through the infinite loop of proving the unprovable. But they always found a way to keep it moving forward. There was always an attitude of, 'There must be a way.'"

But what happens when it's not a national landmark like the Bird's Nest? Notice Burrows indicated that Chinese code can be problematic a lot of the time, bogging down a project indefinitely.

We also hope to talk about the challenge of China discovering - or rediscovering, to put it more accurately - its own architectural vernacular. As wonderful as much of the new Chinese architecture from recent years has been, most of it seems to have been designed by western architects. Or even when it is designed by Chinese architects, it looks western. How does China preserve the history and tradition of its architectural past even as its ultra dense population goes from courtyard-like hutong villages to highrise residential towers?

As always, the discussion is hosted and sponsored by Design Within Reach.

Hillsdale Terrace: debating the "inescapable stigma" of public housing [updated]

In the opinion section of today's Oregonian, architect Michael Willis takes a heartfelt stand against the ongoing stigma of public housing.

The Willis essay is actually a response to a previous op-ed piece written by Ray Hallberg, who criticized the Housing Authority of Portland for applying for $40 million in federal money to tear down the 39-year-old, 60-unit Hillsdale Terrace in Southwest Portland (pictured above and below) and build 100 units of new public housing.

"Families in public housing projects blend poorly or not at all with the larger community," Hallberg wrote. "Project schoolchildren are marked by their peers as 'from the project' and tend to self-segregate. Rightly or wrongly, there is an inescapable stigma attached to the tenants of public housing projects."

"Such projects have been identified nationally as social failures since the 1960s," Hallberg added. "The larger the project, the larger the failure."

To Michael Willis, this isn't just an attack against the Hillsdale Terrace project that his firm, Michael Willis Architects, is designing. Or the numerous public housing projects the firm has designed in the past, in Portland as well as San Francisco, New Orleans, Oakland and several other cities. It's also a personal affront, because Willis grew up in a public housing project in St. Louis.

"We are most proud of the work we've done for HAP in Portland, reconnecting former public housing communities into the surrounding neighborhood fabric in ways that value both the residents of the newly built housing and their neighbors," Willis writes. "Please go to North Alberta Street and Vancouver Avenue to see Humboldt Gardens or to North Portland's Portsmouth neighborhood to see New Columbia. And if there are still issues to be resolved between neighbors, that's called real life. At least it will be in the context of neighbor-to-neighbor, not as neighbor-to-stigmatized people from the projects."

I find this an interesting debate, and one that is perhaps settled by design.

For starters, Hallberg is not merely some crackpot. He is a retired builder and developer as well as a member of the Homebuilders Association of Metropolitan Portland's Oregon Housing Hall of Fame, and previously served on the board of the Housing Authority of Portland.

And Hallberg has a strong point when it comes to evaluating the success of public housing projects of the past. You don't have to live in New York or Chicago to remember the common phenomenon in the 1960s and 70s of affordable housing towers that were meant to lift people out of poverty but often, as Hallberg noted, resulted in crime-ridden places and the notion that the struggling poor population was being segregated away from the rest of society.

He remembers when Hillsdale Terrace once engendered such controversy upon its original construction. "In the late 1960s, HAP proposed the Hillsdale Terrace apartments at 100 units. The plan triggered immediate, intense neighborhood resistance because no one wants a public housing project next door," Hallberg (pictured at left) writes. "There were many neighborhood meetings, including a full house in the Wilson High School auditorium. There were two hearings before then-Mayor Terry Schrunk's City Council. Finally, the plans was approved -- at 60 units -- and built in 1970."

Even so, times have changed. I don't think investing in a contemporary re-design for Hillsdale Terrace will elicit feelings of class-based discrimination, and today's public housing projects are designed to better integrate with an existing urban fabric. In other words, Hallberg is at least partially correct that no segment of the population should be isolated from the rest of a community. But I think Willis is correct that the time is past for public housing projects to be viewed merely as highrise slums that will mark residents ad doomed black sheep.

Of course, there is also a racial and class element to this particular debate. Hallberg is Caucasian and Willis is African American. Hallberg was a successful developer, while Willis was raised in just the kind of "projects" that are supposed to earn the "inescapable stigma" Hallberg writes about.

Ultimately I side with Willis in arguing we can re-make public housing so that it's beneficial to lifting people out of poverty. But Hallberg's reminder that such public investment to help the poor doesn't always run smoothly or without societal downsides.

UPDATE, 11/18/09: In an additional Oregonian op-ed the paper published online, Rick Nitti, director of the Hillsdale nonprofit social service agency Neighborhood House, has this to say:

"Hallberg argues that 'building a segregated, dense community of low-income families is exactly what HAP should not do. I agree with his premise but disagree with his conclusion. A newly developed Hillsdale Terrace will create a geography of opportunity for disadvantaged families with access to jobs, health care, services and resources, and good schools for their children."

"As someone who lived in the shadows of Chicago's Cabrini Green, I know first-hand what bad policy it is to isolate our poor in communities of poverty. The evidence is clear. Integrating low-income families in middle-class neighborhoods where they gain access to higher-performing schools and more job opportunities and are exposed to less crime and social distress has demonstrated increases in opportunity and reduced the effects of poverty."

"Building a new Hillsdale Terrace that is a model for sustainable development and is designed to reflect the surrounding neighborhood's character will help transform what is now a distressed pocket into a mixed-income community that instills pride and dignity among its residents."

Opportunity abounds with abatement: A conversation with PDC's John Warner about workforce housing

Imagine if there was a way to put the Portland area's countless unemployed architects and construction workers back to work. And while you're imagining, suppose this plan stemmed from an already-existing city program that has simply been shelved for the last four years. And finally, imagine that this endeavor would not cost the city money but in fact do the opposite: create a long-term revenue stream.

This isn't mere architectural pixie dust or pie-in-the-sky optimism. It comes from a conversation I had recently with John Warner, who manages housing development and workforce housing policy for the Portland Development Commission. Warner met me at a coffee house near PDC with a binder full of stats and graphics, but the message was more emotionally resonant: that we can do more to stimulate housing and jobs as well as great architecture without exhausting city coffers.

For thirty years until a 2005 moratorium was put in place, the city utilized the New Multiple Unit Housing Property Tax Exemption program to stimulate multifamily housing in the central city. It was geared towards residents too well off to qualify for low-income housing but not affluent enough to be able to afford to live here. Exemplified by projects such as the Sitka Apartments in the Pearl District (pictured at right) or Shaver Green in North Portland (apologies - these turned out to be affordable housing projects) these programs help create close-in housing for working people like cops, teachers, social workers and firefighters.

Prior to the 2005 moratorium, both the New Multiple-Unit Housing program and the Transit Supportive and Residential Development programs provided a 10-year tax exemption on the improvement value of a new multifamily or mixed-use project in the central city and in PDC-designated urban renewal areas as well as light rail station areas outside the central city. They were intended to provide an incentive for high-density residential and mixed-use development in Portland’s centers and other transit-oriented areas so that the city can accommodate new population growth, improve the housing-jobs balance, and support public transit, particularly the regional light rail system.

Tax abatement programs such as these not only help make the central city a viable destination for more than just the richest and poorest populations, but also lead to increased tax revenue by growing the overall tax base. It's worth it to offer discounts to projects that bring more middle income people into the heart of the city.

But because these workforce housing programs have in the past been used in relatively tony areas like the Pearl District, there is also a stigma: that people already well off are getting tax breaks they don't deserve, while some granny in Lents or a minimum-wage worker in Parkrose is having to pay their property taxes in full.

This misleading appearance of unfairness seems to be why the moratorium was placed on the New Multiple Unit Housing and Transit Supportive development programs in 2005. The tax exemption, heretofore intended for middle class/workforce housing, was re-directed to low-income housing projects.

It may sound fairer for the city to devote its limited housing funds to the neediest people, and build all low-income housing. Why give tax breaks for fancy condo towers?

But it's not that simple; in fact, such a notion is misleading. Nationwide, low-income housing already receives vastly more funds than workforce housing. Certainly I'm not arguing that there shouldn't be strict attention to providing low-income housing. It's just that if low-income housing is already relatively stable in its funding mechanisms, why cut off workforce housing when it's the neediest and most neglected in terms of city financial support?

It's also middle-income housing that can have the most impact on the places where it is built. Healthy urban areas are places where people from a variety of income levels live and work in a manner that promotes the overall economic growth. I mean, it's great to help a homeless person get off the streets into a single-room-occupancy residence. That's our responsibility as a caring society. However, it's workforce housing projects that will bring people into the central city to patronize restaurants and shops, reduce crime and traffic, contribute to the tax base and make the whole economy prosper.

Now, Warner says, the city is preparing to re-evaluate these tax-abatement programs. Over the next year, we could see them made active again. And that's a good thing.

“The tool is sitting in the tool shed," Warner explains. "All we have to do is pick it up. We could have the design and construction communities back to work. It’s a catalyst.”

Warner and PDC are proposing a 15-year fund that is contributed to by employers, foundations, and the city. The goal is 20 projects (with 3,400 households) built during that time. All of the money would be paid back but in the meantime it would induce $1.1 billion in total development.

Portland has enjoyed a relatively low cost of living compared to other West Coast cities, which have experienced greater crisis of affordability in their centers. In places like San Francisco, for example, you have to be J.R. Ewing to live within five miles of the Transamerica building or the COIT tower. That's not quite the case in Portland, but things are changing here.  Simply in order to stay even with the current standard of living, you'd need annual income growth of 4.7 percent. Most people I know get a 3 percent annual cost-of-living raise at most.

“A rational consumer will not choose to live here," Warner says. "So you have to trade on people’s irrational exuberance.” It's a good thing we have all that beautiful scenery and all those yummy food carts. Otherwise Portland could become a lot more like Cleveland than we're prepared to admit.

Recently I wrote a blog post about the proposed workforce housing project envisioned by Works Partnership and developer Randy Rapaport. The project, which won an unbuilt-design award from the American Institute of Architects last month, would require the kind of workforce-housing funds the city previously provided (before the 2005 moratorium) in order to get built. And this is true with countless projects across the city that haven't even been conceived of yet. Tax abatement could be putting architects and building-industry workers back on the job.

PDC owns many land parcels around Portland that could be turned into workforce housing projects if the abatement moratorium were to end. And again, this wouldn't be a strain to the city's tax coffers, but would actually increase them over time by growing the tax base to include more taxpayers. Wouldn't it be nice to see more construction cranes in the air next year? It could happen if we bring the abatement program (which was on the books for 30 years) back.

If the city's tax abatement programs for workforce housing are re-instated, there's only one more thing I'd like to see done: the instigation of a design excellence program at PDC that helps assure commissions are given to the city's most talented architects, and not simply those who have the most experience or have an inside track with the agency. Part of what was exciting about seeing the Works-Rapaport project was that it combined affordability and location with superlative architecture. That hasn't always been the case with PDC-oriented projects. Some of them are outright ugly. So while the economic and social factors are more than enough to make workforce housing programs worthwhile, we also needn't give up the opportunity to direct such projects to the best designers.

Even so, in such a devastating economy for the design and building community, there may be a growing sense of urgency about putting workforce housing programs back on city books. Of course we have to be protective of the city budget, but I'd do this in a heartbeat.

Envisioning a new Muslim Community Center in North Portland

Recently I got together with the architects from local firm Architecture Office to hear about a proposed design for the Muslim Community Center of Portland.

The mosque would be home to the city's oldest Islamic congregation, formed in 1969, and is to be located on North Vancouver Avenue just south of Killingsworth. Although North and Northeast Portland have burgeoned with gentrification and added economic investment over the last decade, and the area is home to many churches, the Muslim Community Center could become something more: not just a place of worship, but a gathering place for people of all cultures and religions.

 
 

The design has a contemporary look that recalls (its minaret notwithstanding) Pietro Belluschi's mid-century Portland churches. There's also an aspect of the inward-focused courtyard style of traditional Islamic architecture that is being turned on its head here with a public garden facing Killingsworth and a garden on the roof.

“While their growing numbers are being increasingly augmented by immigrants, this is a historically home-grown community with deep roots in the African and African American populations of north and northeast Portland--devoted to a mission of outreach and education for Muslims and non-Muslims alike,” says Garrett Martin, one of partner with Architecture Office along with David Suttle and Dave Hurley, all pictured below. Martin also teaches architecture at Portland State University.  “This sense of openness and homegrown Islam has led them to seek from us a modern mosque for a new, progressive expression of American Islam.”

The 12,000 square foot design includes men’s and women’s prayer halls (separated visually at the request of the women, but still sharing the same space) with the requisite mihrab (niche facing Mecca), minbar (imam's platform), a large informal community hall, classrooms, ritual wudu (washing) spaces, and a series of courtyards which open the facility to the street, providing space for the community's Saturday bazaars and overflow space for the three main eid holidays each year.  Along with the minaret, Martin says, “these are traditional elements found in most mosques around the world, just reinterpreted in a slightly new idiom.”

“In our research and conversations with Koran scholars and members of the community,” Martin adds, “we discovered that simplicity and humility are extremely important qualities sought for mosques, yet often historically overlooked for the sake of the individual glorification of a rich patron.”

The architects’ design is a series of continuously unfolding masonry layers, at times protecting and at other times opening up to embrace the surroundings or provide focused passages of daylight.  There are also places where these layers are perforated in an updated interpretation of the ornate stonework screens of Islamic architecture.  These serve a practical function, providing sunshades on the more exposed faces, while tying the building to its traditions and providing a diffuse counterpart to some of the more focused apertures and light-shafts.

 

The building is also situated at an angle to the street grid and instead is placed onto a q'ibla, or Mecca-facing axis, allowing frequent prayer to occur anywhere in the facility, by merely facing a room's end wall.  A portion of the minaret folds off this axis and back onto the street grid, symbolically calling the greater city to prayer, while pulling daylight onto the minbar inside.

“The masonry layers also serve an environmental function,” Martin says, “providing thermal mass for more passive heating and cooling strategies, while an operably skylit internal courtyard is conceived as a potential heat-chimney.”

The Muslim Community Center is currently in a fundraising campaign, and word is that the campaign is running short of its targeted goals. But, the architect says, “This community is actually trying to make a social difference, to emphasize connections and understanding across religions and cultures,  through the very architecture of the building proposed.”