Saul Zaik: mid-century master and Energizer bunny of Portland architects

This month Portland Modern, realtor Bob Zaikoski’s website, is featuring a profile that Bob and I wrote about architect Saul Zaik, FAIA.

Portland Modern is a sponsor of this site, but this post is not intended to be extra promotion. Rather, I’m writing this to spread the word about Zaik, an 82 year old architect of great significance who, despite still coming to work everyday, confesses to feeling like an “invisible man” compared to the presence he once had on the local architectural scene. If I were a young architect, I'd be taking this guy out to lunch and soaking up Zaik's knowledge like it was au jus for my French dip sandwich.

Zaik has practiced continuously here since 1952, creating a portfolio that’s extensive as it is impressive. Early in his career, he was influenced by legendary local architects like Pietro Belluschi, John Yeon, Van Evra Bailey, John Storrs and others. Zaik was part of the “14^th Street Gang”, a group of practitioners in the generation immediately following Belluschi and Yeon who distinguished themselves with exceptional mid-century modern houses.

The article is too long to reproduce here, and Bob has a huge collection of photographs that were taken and digitized from Zaik’s personal collection, so it's worth going to the source. Even so, I’d like to share a few extra thoughts.

Zaik has had a few different partners over the years but has always run or co-run some kind of small firm, save for the start he got working in the Portland office of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill not long after graduating from the University of Oregon.

Single family residences and vacation homes have comprised the majority of the Zaik portfolio, and a couple of houses are particularly celebrated.

Best known of these is probably the Zidell House, which was designed and built in 1970 for shipping magnate Arnold Zidell. It’s octagonal in shape and built around a 48-foot ship’s mast (seen at left in an archive photo).

“He was a crazy guy, Zidell,” Zaik told us for the article. “The mast idea was his. He came in with that thing and said, 'I want to make it round.' It was built like an umbrella or a ski-lift tower—just bolted on. At one point he wanted to make it rotate.”

An earlier house from 1956, the Feldman House, is also a gem; it was included in last year’s Street of Eames tour and is pictured below in a shot I took earlier this year while visiting with Zaik, Zaikoski and a group of designers from Path Architecture.

 

Originally built for Philip Feldman, heir to the Mt. Hood Borax Company, the structure has a cantilevered, low-pitched gable roof and cedar siding. Its combination of ample glass and broad overhanging eaves is quintessential Northwest Modern in the tradition of Zaik’s forebears, Belluschi and Yeon.

The same could be said of Zaik’s own house, built in 1959, which the architect and his wife still occupy. (The picture below was taken the same afternoon as the Feldman House visit.) Nestled into a northwest Portland hillside near Skyline Boulevard, it has two distinct boxy spaces connected by a walkway, allowing light to permeate the space and retain a human scale to the residence.

Zaik has also designed apartments and condominiums, banks, shopping centers, schools, medical buildings and commercial buildings. When Nike was first looking to build a campus in the 1980, the company came to Zaik with a location near Wilsonville in mind (the job later went to Thompson/Vaivoda, now TVA Architects, and a location in Beaverton was chosen instead). Zaik also designed lots of homes and buildings at two forward-thinking landmarks, Sunriver and Salishan.

Although he has always worked in a contemporary architectural language, Zaik also has a special touch when it comes to fitting in with historic architeture. In 1968 his firm designed an addition to Timberline Lodge (pictured below in an archive photo) that is vastly more congruent with the original then the Wy’ East Day Lodge constructed later. Zaik has also done lodge buildings at Crater Lake that, like the Timberline work, express historic forms with a contemporary palette of clean lines. Restoration has also been a specialty. Zaik helped oversee the restoration of historic Vista House at Crown Point in the Columbia Gorge.

It’s patronizing to remark how an 82-year-old guy still has a lot of energy, but during the several visits Bob and I had with Zaik at his office, I always noticed how he practically would leap for a ringing phone, palpably excited at the prospect of a new client. Zaik could have sat at home collecting Social Security since before the Clinton administration began, but he has a contagious enthusiasm for architecture. Last week when I was on the 11xDesign homes tour, there Zaik was checking out all the houses; he’s a big fan of the emerging architects and firms. And lest that comment about his lurching for the phone paint a picture of a designer merely hungry for business, it was equally clear that Zaik was happy as a clam talking architecture with us for hours.

But it needn’t be over, especially if you ask Saul. Anybody need a house designed by an outright living legend of Portland architecture?

(Meanwhile, here are three more shots of Zaik's home and two more of the Feldman.)

Comments

[henry]

Brain: I truly appreciate you taking the time to delve into the career and many projects in which Saul Zaik was the guiding hand on design and execution not to mention his love of competitive skiing, mostly at Mt. Hood with his buddy and colleague George McMath. I had the pleasure of working with Saul on a few projects while the firm was called Zaik/Miller/DiBeneditto; Vista House and the Shore Acres State Park Visitor’s Center south of Charleston, Oregon. In all cases Saul was the architect’s architect with a great dedication to the client and the outcome of the work. There was never any ego at stake or points to be hammered on, just good fun and chatter about architecture and its intent and unintentional consequences! Saul has some great stories about Portland architect Herman (Tear-it-Out) Brookman who turned Saul onto many projects and was a influence on Saul’s sense of classical architecture and it’s details and materials. The stories about his dinner in Portland with Michael Graves, Pietro Belluschi and John Storrs is a treasure trove of insight in which Belluschi nailed Graves for the design of the Portland Building. Saul has a good grasp of the profession, its past and future and with the recent passing in the last few years of George McMath, Benny DiBeneditto and John Storrs, Saul is not just the energizer bunny but a survivor. I’ve asked Saul when he plans to retire so he and his wife, Chris, can travel and enjoy life. His answer is never, they’ll find me sprawled out over my drafting table! I’m looking forward to our next project together!

[ka]

Saul Zaik's work is timeless - thank you for taking the time to share this story and images with us. we should be proud to have his work as a part of our history in Portland - the challenge for our younger designers is to maintain that inspiration and beauty.

[stewart mccollom]

There is a little gem of a house Saul did in Ashland long after he had moved on from doing private homes. He did it for an old friend!!!