Street of Eames Tour Returns

I think we can all agree that the Street of Eames tour is a welcome event. Last year's tour featured some excellent local midcentury-modern single family homes, and on April 14 comes this year's follow-up. Best of all, the whole thing is a fundraiser for after-school programs for homeless and low-income children at Chapman Elementary.

At least four of the six homes in this years tour are occupied by their designers, all talented architects and nice people. Two of them, Joachim Grube and Ned Vaivoda, are veteran principals from Yost Grube Hall and AIA Fellows (a kind of lifetime achievement recognition). The home of Grube (pronounced GROO-buh, I believe), a German native, is cloaked in wood, with a warm but modern feel that is the very definition of Northwest modernism. Beautiful stuff.

The home of Vaivoda, who used to be a principal at Thomson Vaivoda, is more pristine (similar to the TVA aesthetic), but no less impressive. Years ago, I was contacted by a Hollywood location scout looking for modern architecture in Portland. I directed her to Vaivoda's house. It didn't wind up being used, but it would have been great.

Another, Jeff Kovel, is the head of white-hot local firm Skylab. His home occupies the upper portion of a mixed use building downtown that won the top AIA award this year. Of course Skylab's design for (and development of) Doug Fir restaurant was a home run that deservedly got lots of press. Skylab's also designing a space in the larger Meier & Frank building rehab.

Brian White, co-head of Architecture W (another big AIA award winner), transformed a dilapidated ranch house in the West Hills in to a sublime Hybrid House, as he calls it for the tour. I wrote about this house in Western Interiors magazine a year or two ago, and after that Dwell magazine also profiled White's home. If you go, check out the wall of channel glass in the stairway, and the deck overlooking the forest. At the same time, I like that this house isn't stuffy: it feels like real people live here. (As White, his wife and kids do.) All you residential developers looking to build the next great condo in Portland should go introduce yourself to Architecture W. If you see what they've done in Japan in addition to White's house here, you'd be drawing up a contract.

There's also a circa-1971 home designed by the late Portland architect Richard Ritz, who also frequently wrote about architecture in Portland. Ritz's posthumously published biographical dictionary, Architects of Oregon, is a valuable resource for an architecture writer like yours truly. To be honest, I don't know much more about this house (I wish there were more info on the website), but the photos look great.

The final house was designed within a year of Ritz's, in 1972, by Edgar Waehrer. It's another one overlooking Forest Park with a spectacular view. The owners, creative director Ben Watson and painter Claudio Tschopp, did a fabulous job with the makeover, which is very white inside to allow beautifully colored light and a view of the trees that looks like a massive work of fractal art. I wrote about this home previously too, in Dwell magazine. It's a lovely home.

I'll definitely be there for the tour on April 14, and encourage others to as well. Even if you don't go, buy a ticket and support after-school education at Chapman. Coincidentally again, I recently did an interview with the head of the nonprofit Afterschool Alliance, Jodi Grant, and it's clear that after-school education is one of those causes no one can really question. It's an investment in kids, helps assure a more level playing field, and gives kids a chance to learn in a different manner from classroom work, with immersion and participation, as well as to enjoy a variety of enriching cultural and athletic pursuits. It's making good on that whole "it takes a village to raise a child" proverb.

And for lovers of local architecture, this is a rare chance to see residential design that is usually private property. Some of Portland's best architecture lies in the residential realm, so this is a special treat.

Comments

[pdx2m2]

The Richard Ritz house in the tour belongs to Stan Boles of BOORA..recently remodeled and published in Portland Monthly recently

[Mika]

Thanks for the info... I just saw the ad for this event in Dwell, and we are considering coming down from BC to see it! Thanks for adding a little more detailed info than the street of Eames site!