Portland Architecture

Notes from the first EcoDistricts summit

What an eco-district might look like (rendering courtesy Portland Sustainability Institute)

It's the word that has been on everybody's lips this week in the architecture and sustainability communities: eco-districts.

About 300 people attended the EcoDistricts Summit 2010 at Portland State University this week to discuss the idea of accelerating sustainability gains by ramping up from individual buildings to whole neighborhoods. Activities included a series of roundtable discussions, panel sessions and skills training.

Concurrent with the sessions, the city announced the locations for its first five eco districts: Lents, South Waterfront, Portland State University, Gateway and the Lloyd district. Each of the five is already one of the Portland Development Commission's urban renewal areas, thereby allowing easier collaboration and coordination. This neighborhood-scale sustainable development will be focused on livability, green infrastructure, community decision making. 

The Portland Sustainability Institute, host for the summit, will initiate eco-district development in two districts in the coming year: Lents and Lloyd. In Lloyd there has already been a “Declaration of Cooperation” among businesses and the mall owners, and in Lents POSI is in process of hiring two people to work in Lents to “do a deeper dive on the engagement process because it’s our deepest and biggest district,” Cole explained. 

The Oregon Sustainability Center is a catalyst for PSU eco district. The building will generate all its own power and treat all its wastewater. Is there a chance for water treatment or alternative energy to serve the neighborhood beyond just the building?

At the at a Thursday meeting of the American Institute of Architects' Committee on the Environment event, Naomi Cole of PoSI broke down eco-district policy and financing into what she called “hardware” (buildings and infrastructure) and “software” (community engagement, social marketing). There are also nine performance areas: equitable development, place making, social cohesion, air quality & carbon, energy, access & mobility, water, habitat & ecosystem function, and materials management. 

"The idea is you start with an existing city, and you layer in a green infrastructure," Cole said. That can mean anything from bioswales and green streets to green buildings, community gardens and pooled alternative energy sources "People have access and mobility. You layer in habitat and natural infrastructure. It gets more green and lush."

Other cities have created such districts already, such as the Living City Block in Denver, the Green Impact Zone in Kansas City, EcoCity in Cleveland, Seattle's 2030 District, Dockside Green in Victoria, Southeast False Creek in Vancouver, and Treasure Island in San Francisco. But most all of these are new developments. To make an eco-district work in an existing urban neighborhood means dealing with barriers such as multiple owners, existing infrastructure that isn't green but not at replacement level, and a lack of assessment tools or finance mechanisms.

At the same time, Cole admitted that there is an element of unknown and that there are limited resources. “There’s hundreds of different projects that can come out of each of these eco-districts," she said. "But we don’t know what theyr’e going to look like.”

A panel discussion at the EcoDistricts Summit (photo by Brian Libby)

At the EcoDistricts summit itself, I attended a panel discussion called "Integrated Design at the District Scale" with Clark Brockman of SERA Architects; Alan Hipolito, executive director of Verde, a nonprofit devoted to promoting economic equity for disadvantaged communities; Alisdair McGregor of the internationally renowned engineering firm Arup; and Bill Reed of the Integrative Design Collaborative.

Initially there were interesting ideas explored such as Brockman's emphasis on flexibility to achieve sustainable solutions. He mentioned the GSA (Government Services Administration), with which SERA Architects is working on the Edith Green Wendell Wyatt Federal Building renovation. The GSA, Brockman said, is "driving us to this paradigm of improvement every single week." But the clients seek desired outcomes, and don't enforce rigid means of how to achieve them. That's up to the designers.

However, the talk took a somewhat unexpected turn. It was seemingly supposed to center around the collaborative process necessary between architects, builders, engineers, and building owners and occupants to achieve successful sustainable design and how this approach could be applied to whole districts. But Hipolito's presence on the panel turned the conversation in a different direction. He asked a rather bold question: "Are eco-districts just another word for gentrification?"

The crowd laughed a little, but it was a serious question: When investing dollars and attention toward a holistic combination of new buildings, green infrastructure and potentially shared power, will that simply become about attracting private-sector investment and newer, more affluent residents to a neighborhood, or will there be what Hipolito called an "equity component" to eco-districts, a promise to use such means for aiding struggling communities? After all, an eco-district can sound a lot like urban renewal to a resident who fifty years ago lost his or her home and neighborhood to initiatives like the South Auditorium district or Memorial Coliseum and the Rose Quarter. Why not make eco-districts part of an anti-poverty strategy?

In another panel discussion, John Knott, President/CEO and co-founder of Noisette Company echoed some similar concerns. "Until we all buy in and change behaviors," he said, "it doesn't matter how many green bldgs we erect. The people make the difference." Knott also pointed out how over last 30 years the US as a whole has actually been disinvesting in the social and environmental health of our cities. The health of all people, whether rich or poor, is our shared responsibility, he said. Green buildings are good, but they aren't the end-all, be-all. All must understand the unique heritage and history of a neighborhood or district, and hold forth a common vision to which they can contribute. "I heard this week that the definition of sustainability is, 'Your well being is our well being,'" he added.

Looking at the five districts chosen, three of five (PSU, SoWa and Lloyd) are in the central city, where there is already much investment. Lents and Gateway are both home to much more diverse residential communities and many economically disadvantaged households, so eco-districts there could further the work already being done by PDC with its urban renewal areas there. At the same time, these latter two neighborhoods are also key transit nodes that are already part of Metro's 2040 Plan. What about some of the other neighborhoods that are struggling, like Cully?

Panel member Bill Reed was skeptical of Hipolito's suggestion. "Equity is not a checklist item," he said. "It's a relationship." An eco-district, he added, is about access to healthy and sustainable food, soil and water. It's not social welfare.

Still, Hipolito's argument for equity in eco-districts gave me pause. I thought about  aspects of greenery and access to non-automobile transit that are already lacking in certain urban neighborhoods. Drive to outer southeast toward Gresham or outer Northeast toward the airport, and you'll find many, many neighborhoods without sidewalks. Aren't walkable neighborhoods a fundamental aspect of sustainability? Once you get outside of affluent neighborhoods like Irvington, Laurlehurst, Eastmoreland and Ladd's Addition, the tree canopy dissipates greatly. Could more sustainable good be done by, say, expanding the tree canopy city-wide, or restoring cancelled TriMet bus lines, or building sidewalks?

That said, we have to start somewhere. It makes logical sense for eco-districts to exist first in urban renewal areas for streamlining resources. And it's not as if these five districts will be the only ones; expansion will come. The knowledge gleaned and lessons learned in these first five eco-districts will also help the city and its private-sector parters do a better job with eco-districts in the years ahead. Still, Hipolito's message is a valid reminder that even the most innovative and proactive sustainable thinking and implementation has a responsibility to do more than just cut carbon, reduce energy bills or even transform concrete jungles into green infrastructure. Until people far beyond the realm of city staffers, the design industry, academia and the upper classes benefit from initiatives like eco-districts, the transformation will have been incomplete.

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Architecture + Design Festival concludes with Form Function Fashion show

An outfit by designer Adam Arnold (photo by Christy Klep)

The design awards have been handed out. The jurors have departed from Portland International Airport, most all of the events have come and gone, and the AIA staff is ready for a nap. But don't turn out the overhead lights just yet. Or if you do, note the mood lighting coming on in its place, for the Form Function Fashion show.

Scheduled for 7PM this Friday, October 29 at the Center for Architecture (403 NW Flanders), the show focuses on how we compose the immediate space around our bodies. It is about structure of built space regardless of scale. Taking its cue from other design disciplines, the show will explore a broader understanding of how the human form and proportion influence design. Does fashion build upon Louis Sullivan's notion that form follows function or does ornamentation have its rightful place enveloping our bodies as we move through architectural space?

"Architecture’s utilitarian focus is on built space to house objects, everyday items and people. It is multifunctional. Clothing, conversely, has one key purpose: to cover the body," says the event's promotional materials. "The way in which it can be done varies from designer to designer as well as from user to user. Here there is an equal interest in the individual and the collection. They only need a human form to bring them to life in everyday wearing."

Form Function Fashion was co-created by Carrie Schilling, one of the two founding principals of award-winning Portland architecture firm Works Partnership, along with Christine Taylor, Josh Elliott, and Lisa Kuhnhausen. "As part of a larger picture, I worked with the AIA this year to broaden the types of events for the A+D festival to include a collection of events that showcase different design disciplines - a film series, a photography event, a written narrative exhibit, and the fashion show," Schilling explains. "I felt that the A+D festival could start to speak to the larger creative industry in Portland if we were open to understanding the cross discipline design influences that occur between fields."

Flyer image from Form Function Fashion show

"There are quite a few parallels between fashion and architecture, but I think the most inspiring is that both fields are so intimately connected to the human form and how we move through and experience the world around us," Schilling adds. "As the schedule took shape, I was thrilled that the fashion show happened to end up as the final festival event. " 

Form Function Fashion sought designers like Adam Arnold, Liza Rietz, Dawn Sharp, Emily Ryan and Sword+Fern, all of whom Schilling says have "a strong 'architectural' style to their work: clean lines, strong forms, visual structure, etc. When the designers were contacted, we asked them to look to their collections to find pieces that they felt were the most architectural. In a way, it became a retrospective collection, not necessarily that they needed to create new pieces for this show - though I know a few of the designers are in fact, doing a few pieces just for this event."

Artists Damien Gilley and William Beck has also created a special runway for the show that acts as a spatially and structurally inspired art piece.

Tickets for Form Function Fashion are $20 ($10 for students), part of a fundraising effort for AIA/Portland's Center for Architecture, are available online or at the Center at 403 NW 11th Avenue in the Pearl District.

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World Trade Center facade: made in Portland by Benson

One World Trade Center (rendering courtesy Skidmore Owings & Merrill)

No, not the original World Trade Center that was destroyed by terrorists on September 11, 2001. And no, not the much lesser known World Trade Center in Portland. I'm talking about the building most of its pre-construction life known as the Freedom Tower. That's the one that is being constructed with a glass facade fabricated by Benson Glass in Portland.

Benson's rise as a world-class architectural glass manufacturer is quintessentially Portland in numerous ways. This is a city making its name in the 21st century on craft alongside design and sustainability. And Oregon's gray climate makes it a region where innovation and extensive use of glass are particularly important.

Completely unrelated: "Benson" starring Robert Guillaume

"Though you might not know Benson by name, you've certainly seen its handiwork," writes James Meyer in a profile of the company in Monday's Oregonian. "The company is responsible for the facades of many prominent buildings in Portland, including the U.S. Bancorp Tower, the new Port of Portland headquarters at the airport, the Rose Garden arena, the KOIN and Fox towers, as well as several condo towers."

Wait, there is glass on the Rose Garden arena? I thought it was all concrete.

Even so, Benson is a giant in the industry, and not just in Portland. Founded in 1926, the company is now one of the pre-eminent curtain-wall manufacturers in the world, with offices in Singapore, Manila, New York City, Chicago, Singapore, South Korea, and California.

One World Trade Center (rendering courtesy Skidmore, Owings & Merrill)

The company won the $160 million contract for One World Trade Center in 2007, designed by Skidmore Owings & Merrill with Daniel Liebeskind, then spent a year designing and testing components, including the ability to withstand explosions. Although the glass itself came from Minnesota, the pieces have been assembled in Gresham over the past two years, with about 1,000 left to go.

Restoration work has also become a major part of Benson's business. In the 2000s, Benson worked on a lot of towers, such as the Metropolitan Condos in Portland for BOORA Architects. Now that the economy is not nearly as conducive to big condo towers, Benson has turned its attention to retro-fitting and sustainable solutions.

United Nations Secretariat Building (image courtesy Wikipedia/Creative Commons)

Somewhat ironically, the company is working on restoring the facade of the United Nations Secretariat Building in New York City, co-designed by two of the top architects of the 20th Century: Le Corbusier and Oscar Niemeyer. That building, when it was constructed beginning in 1947, lost out to the Pietro Belluschi-designed Equitable Building in Portland as the first major glass curtain-walled building in the United States (as did New York's famed Lever House). 

Portland has made a sizable push in recent years to establish itself as a hotbed not only of design and sustainability, but contemporary craft - both at the hand made end and the manufacturing end. Benson embodies manufacturing as fine craft. And given that Portland is home to one of the most special midcentury glass buildings in the world, Memorial Coliseum with its one-of-a-kind, 360-degree glass view, designed by the same architect as One World Trade Center, perhaps that's fitting. Regardless, we know the WTC glass itself will be.

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ZGF's Jaqua Center leads AIA/Portland Design Awards winners

Top AIA/Portland Design Awards winner the Jaqua Center (photo by Brian Libby)

The John E. Jaqua Academic Center for Student Athletes at the University of Oregon in Eugene was the top winner at Saturday's AIA/Portland Design Awards gala. Designed by ZGF Architects, the building was this year's sole winner of the Honor Award, AIA's top prize.

Surrounded by a reflecting pool, the building is a steel and glass cube with a ventilated double-skin glass facade. Floor to ceiling glass allows natural daylight to flood the interior space and a stainless steel screen forms a layer within the glass cavity. Inside, the building is centered around a large three-story atrium that is bisected with glass-ensconced catwalks. The interior design, particularly in these public areas, utilizes a series of massive wall displays. One is made from thousands of photos of current student athletes that were etched onto metal paneling and combine to form a likeness of Albert Einstein. On another wall (pictured above), the names and likenesses of past UO athletes are etched onto square wood blocks that jut in and out of the wall.

When I visited the Jaqua Center last January with ZGF partner Eugene Sandoval, he explained how in client meetings then-Oregon football coach Mike Bellotti emphasized the desire for a building that celebrated the natural beauty of Oregon. Bellotti spoke to Sandoval of how the surrounding landscape was a recruiting tool for luring top athletes from other regions of the country, and asked for a building that would articulate that sensation.

Three built projects earned the next-tier honor, the Merit Award: the ZIBA World Headquarters by Holst Architecture, the Cape Cod House by Atelier Waechter, and the Twelve West building by ZGF Architects.

ZIBA headquarters, Merit Award winner (photo by Jeff Jahn)

The ZIBA headquarters, located in the Pearl District near Union Station, is a marvel of both natural light and office space-planning. The Holst design created a massive north-facing glass facade that bathes workspaces in illumination. "A spatially rich building on a tight budget," the jury wrote, also noting ZIBA's "beautiful use of wood and metal in a contemporary manner. [Its] interiors are clean and light filled [with] a refined, buttoned-down exterior. Looks like a great place to work."

Personally, this is one of my favorite Portland buildings of the last decade and a major moment for Holst. The firm has won countless design awards in the past, but most always for residential buildings. Here Holst created an innovative corporate headquarters that is quite dazzling. I would have voted it a co-Honor Award winner along with the Jaqua Center.

Cape Cod House, Merit Award winner (photo by Sally Schoolmaster)

Waechter's Cape Cod House was just profiled here on Portland Architecture last week. It's a fine example of how a tiny (650-square-foot) home can be utterly transformed into capital-A architecture on a relatively modest budget. Waechter's Z-Haus also won an award over the weekend, the Citation Award, which is the next tier down. I'd have rated Z-Haus over Cape Cod because of its unique series of half-levels tying together the multistory space, but there's no doubt Cape Cod is deserving as well.

ZGF was certainly the big winner at this year's Design Awards given that the mixed-use building the firm calls home also earned a Merit Award. Given how the building opened in the worst possible economic climate in 2008, it could have been a disaster for the firm and developer Gerding Edlen.

Merit Award winner 12 West (photo by Brian Libby)

As it happens, the Twelve West building is filling up with tenants, and it already boasts the title of first building in the world with vertically-integrated wind turbines. When near the building downtown or in the Pearl, I've already developed a habit of looking toward the top of Twelve West to see if the turbines are spinning.

Along with Z-Haus, the other built-project Citation Award (the third tier of awards) winner was the Flavor Paper building in Brooklyn, designed by Skylab. This is another Portland firm that has become a regular each year in the AIA/Portland Design Awards, having previously taken the Honor Award a couple years ago for the firm's 12th & Alder building and an award for the Departure Lounge atop the Meier & Frank building.

Citation Award winners Z-Haus and Flavor Paper (photos by Stephen Miller & Boone Speed)

Also this year, Skylab won an Unbuilt Citation Award for the Weave Building, which has been planned for the past year and is hopefully set to break ground after a few false starts. The Weave boasts a very striking facade that implies the notion of weaving: that of the West End and Pearl District neighborhoods it straddles and the blend of creative professionals it will provide workspace for.

When I wrote about the Weave Building in The Oregonian last year, Skylab's Jeff Kovel told me it could come to emblemize how the marriage of small creative-class spaces and distinctive architecture can be a way forward even in the worst of economic climates.

Rendering of the Weave Building, Unbuilt Citation Award winner (image courtesy Skylab)

"My hope is it really becomes an example of somebody who went out on a limb and seized an opportunity to do something special," he said. "I think that type of approach is going to become more and more critical across the board. It's going to be harder to succeed with mediocre product or ideas. The competitive environment will hopefully draw more out of people."

Two other projects also received Unbuilt Citation Awards: the David Campbell Memorial to firefighters planned for the East Bank Esplanade and designed by Whelton Architecture; and the Steel Bridge Skatepark designed by DAO Architecture.

Campbell Memorial, Unbuilt Citation Award winner (rendering courtesy Whelton Architecture)

The Campbell Memorial commission was won by Whelton in a three-team invited commission for designers who double as Portland State University instructors. The design is comprised of tall lanterns symbolizing firefighters killed in the line of duty. According to a recent Daily Journal of Commerce article, the design has been scaled back. The original, Nathalie Weinstein writes, "called for a sweeping open space along the Eastbank Esplanade, with lanterns to represent each fallen firefighter. But the area it covered was too large, and adding a new lantern for any new death could be expensive for the city and the fire department. 

"The new scheme is much smaller but retains the same poetic value as the original,” Whelton told Weinstein. “Now it’s about 6,000 to 7,000 square feet. And instead of adding new lanterns, the lantern lighting patterns will be altered monthly to reflect the historical number of firefighters who died during that month.”

Unbuilt Citation Award winner Steel Bridge Skate Park (image courtesy Ambient Light Digital Renderings)

The Steel Bridge Skate Park is described in its submission materials as "a sculptural urban space, optimized for skating, but accommodating the broader community, integrating urban design and infrastructure, architecture, landscape, recreating, and art." The Jury applauded this as "a piece of provocative placemaking that is thoughtful to the skaters and a great transformation of an underutilized 'junk' space."

Craftsmanship Award winner, a private residence (photo courtesy Stephen Cridland)

One project earned this year's Craftsmanship Award: a private residence by TVA Architects in Nevada that overlooks Lake Tahoe and the Sierra Nevada mountains. The award submission descibes how "two buildings mirror one another and are connected to one another via a boardwalk running through a graveled sculpture garden. The jury noted the project's "beautiful control of concrete, wood, glass and other materials" and its "marriage of landscape and architecture."

Hayes Freedom High, Sustainability Award winner (photo by Lincoln Barbour)

This year's Sustainability Award went to Hayes Freedom High School in Camas, Washington by Mahlum Architects. A 200-student, 20,500 square foot alternative high school named in honor of Camas graduate Denis Hayes, the building school caters to students with alternative learning styles and needs as part of a downtown campus. The Jury "appreciated how the project incorporates a comprehensive environmental approach while making an important social statement by creating a permanent home for non-traditional students" and lauded "how the project incorporates sustainability into the learning experience."

Patton Park Apartments, Mayor's Award winner (photo by Sally Painter)

The Mayor's Award for Design Excellence went to the Patton Park Apartments by SERA Architects. Patton Park is the first new transit oriented development to be built along the Interstate MAX light rail line. The five-story building, created for Reach Community Development includes 54 units for working families and 4,600 square feet of commercial space.

A&CMAPAC, People's Choice Award winner (photo by Kirsten Force)

This year's People's Choice Award went to Ankrom Moisan's design for the Arts & Communications Magnet Academy Performing Arts Center in Beaverton. The project includes a 400-seat theater, experimental studio, support spaces and art galleries for an award-winning magnet arts school that previously had to stage its productions in a Quonset hut.

Congratulations to all of this year's winners.

Simple forms, fine detail at Atelier Waechter's Cape Cod house

Cape Cod House, Portland (photo by Sally Schoolmaster)

Although his one-person firm, Atelier Waechter, has only produced two houses to date in Portland, Ben Waechter seems to be one of Portland’s major young architectural talents. And not just because he learned his trade working for two of the world’s most acclaimed architecture firms, Renzo Piano Buiding Workshop in Italy and Allied Works here in Portland.

Waechter’s Z-Haus, included in 2009’s 11xDesign homes tour, boasted a unique floor plan with a succession of half-levels that made the whole house feel connected even when people were on different floors. Now, the architect has seen completion of a second house in Portland. It’s called the Cape Cod House, referring to the small single-story home (originally built in 1947) that Waechter’s design transformed into a more spacious but still not oversized three-story structure.

Cape Cod House, Portland (photo by Sally Schoolmaster)

Although the house’s small original footprint (about 650 square feet) was retained, the ground floor is now a wide-open space that includes the living room, dining room and kitchen (bedrooms were moved upstairs). But the distinctive design move here and the most noticeable presence is a large floor-to-ceiling wood box that encloses the stairways (upstairs to bedrooms and the roof deck, downstairs to the basement), a bathroom and storage.

I said “floor to ceiling” but Waechter and builder Prutting & Company (a high-end East Coast construction company debuting in Portland with this project) took great care to craft the box so it stops just short of the top and bottom of the room, so as to seem like a piece of large furniture as much as interior architecture. “One literally steps into this wooden box creating a dramatic threshold between the main living space and the more private bedroom area above,” Waechter told me.

Cape Cod House, Portland (photos by Sally Schoolmaster)

I might have preferred the box be cut into in order to bring natural light to the stairway and to make the structure seem less monolithic. But the craftsmanship here and throughout the house is particularly beautiful in its details, from window casings to the flooring to fixtures. That was a mark of the Z-Haus, but it’s an even more impressive display here given that the Cape Cod House was built at a substantially smaller budget. This is an inexpensive job that feels luxurious in its attention to detail.

“Andrew Friedman was a crucial partner in making the project successful,” Waechter said. “With a lean construction budget, Andrew was able to find cost effective ways to achieve a high level of detail and quality.  The crisp and precise execution of the exterior cladding is just one example of this.  To achieve this precision with a relatively small cladding allowance, Andrew enlisted the skills of a finish carpenter to make precise edges (corner boards, window trim and cap) and then the speed of a siding company to fill the field where imperfection is less visible.”

Top: original house, bottom: roof deck (photos by Sally Schoolmaster)

After taking the stairway up one level to the Cape Cod House's two bedrooms, one can continue upward to a rooftop deck. Pitched roofs are much more common here (as well as most places), and the rainy climate means preventing leaks is always a challenge. But there's no denying that the third level, clad in wood like a patio deck with the same footprint as the rest of the house, provides a lot of additional space. The view of North and Northeast Portland isn't bad either.

And like the box on the first floor that holds the stairway, pantry and powder room, the rooftop entry is comprised of a white box that is slightly off-center from the rest of the house. In both cases, it helps the Cape Cod House to exhibit a subtle departure from the symmetry one expects to find.

Both of Waechter’s houses have boxy forms – not necessarily that of the modernist wood box that has become a little of a Dwell magazine cliché, but still solidly square. For that reason, Waechter also points to another of his designs, a tea house in Eugene (also recently completed) for J-Tea International, an importer of Taiwanese oolong teas.

 

J-Tea store, Eugene (photos by Sally Schoolmaster)

The J-Tea project transformed an existing single-family house located in a commercially zoned area into a retail space for tea sales and sampling.  The project includes three primary elements: entry canopy, porch and interior “tea walls”.  Each element is visually distinct and has a specific purpose.

The J-Tea canopy is made of white powder-coated aluminum louvers stand out against the more subdued galvanized steel structure.  The white louvers are placed below the support structure to give the impression that they are floating in space like a cloud. The porch walls, floor and roof are made from a relatively thin Port Orford cedar glue laminated beam, supported by two concrete stem walls and cantilevers at each end emphasize the entry threshold. The tea walls form a contained ring around a central tea bar creating a calm and quiet room, and are are composed of a grid of maple plywood that circumscribes the room.

Light Box project renderings (courtesy Atelier Waechter)

Meanwhile, Waechter has two more projects in progress. The Light Box in Northeast Portland is a house “sited on a uniquely shaped urban infill lot…shaped like a flag, narrow at the street and wide at the back,” the architect explains on his website, “To address the constricted nature of the site…the house generously opens up to the street and to the backyard while becoming solid along the side lot lines.

To daylight the central part of the Light Box, a double height space with light monitors was developed that floods the interior with diffuse north light eliminating concerns of solar gain and creating a gallery type ambient glow.”

Garden House rendering (courtesy Atelier Waechter)

The Garden House, also being built in Northeast Portland, was originally a dilapidated detached garage, rebuilt keeping the same footprint “but taking on a completely different form and function,” Waechter adds. Its new purpose is a what he calls a “garden room” that is “shaped as if a child had cut the silhouette from paper.”

As with the rest of the architect’s work, however, this simplicity is tempered by the sophistication executes fine details.

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Matthew Ginn's Portland Public Schools photo tour: Madison and Lincoln

Madison High School (photo by Matthew Ginn/Homestead Images)

Continuing a series that began this summer, Portland architectural photographer Matthew Ginn of Homestead Images has been visiting each of the city's public high schools.

It is a tough time for public education in general, of course. Any consideration of the architecture of these schools begins first with function: are they serving the needs of students, and are they being properly kept up? But historic preservation is also a factor here. As we saw with the demolition of Riverdale Grade School in 2009, even those buildings with the most significant architectural pedigree (Riverdale was designed by the legendary Portland architect A.E. Doyle) can be lost. While not every Portland high school Ginn has photographed in this series is of exceptional design caliber, many of these buildings are significant historic structures for a variety of architectural and social reasons.

As for Madison and Lincoln themselves, Ginn and I both felt a dichotomy. Lincoln is home to one of the most affluent student bases in the Portland Public Schools system, yet it's probably one of the least attractive visually. Madison, situated in the Roseway-Madison South area of Northeast, represents humbler zip codes but is a finer looking example of midcentury modernism. Having said that, I did enjoy learning that the architect of Lincoln High School, Hollis Johnston, also designed the massive Tillamook Blimp Hangers on the Oregon coast.

"Though both are red brick, international-style buildings of the 1950s, the architectural similarities end there," Ginn noted by email. "Madison, on the one hand, makes a statement of style with its simple right angles, long duotone facades of glass and brick, and just enough embellishment to highlight its absence in most of the design. You might or might not like the style, but it is clearly stated."

"Lincoln, on the other hand, makes virtually no statement of style whatsoever. It’s just there. The closest it comes to something cohesive and interesting is the courtyard, the least visible elevations of the whole building. It’s rather sad that the city’s best high school for academics has the worst original architecture."

Interestingly, there have been rumblings about someday constructing a new Lincoln High on a new site, but my guess is that idea was borne before the Great Recession began, and Portland Public Schools started playing a Russian roulette with closing campuses. And it wasn't that many years ago that the school system was lampooned by cartoonist Gary Trudeau in Doonesbury.

Meanwhile, as with past Ginn-PPS photo posts from this series, I am including below some information from the PPS' historic building assessments of both schools, starting with Madison. Text from the site is obviously noted with italics.

Madison High School (photo by Matthew Ginn/Homestead Images)

Madison High School (originally Northeast High) is situated in the Roseway-Madison South neighborhood of East Portland at 2735 NE 82nd Avenue. The neighborhood consists of commercial buildings and single and multi family residences. The campus occupies a sloping L shaped parcel that is bound on the north by Glenhaven Park, east by NE 82nd Avenue, south by NE Thompson Street, and west by the Rose City Golf Course. The school is located at the north end of the campus and ball fields are located along the south end of the campus. The terrain slopes steeply downward at the middle of the campus. A driveway loops around the north east side of the campus. Parking is provided directly to the south of the facility. 

Madison (originally Northeast High) is a three-story brick veneer building designed in the International style. The campus consists of the 1955 multi story brick-faced building (218A) that forms an irregular finger-shaped plan. The building consists of seven wings—four classroom wings, an auditorium wing, a cafeteria wing, and a library/gymnasium wing. The wings are separated by courtyards and form a variation on a finger plan type school. The building features International style elements such as a linear composition, bands of aluminum windows, flat roofs, overhangs, and a lack of ornamentation. These elements serve to reinforce the ideals of functionalism and minimalism. 

The building is constructed of reinforced concrete with a red brick veneer. Bricks are arranged in courses of eight and nine stretchers separated by a single header course. The building features a linear composition and asymmetrical plan. The horizontal massing of the building is emphasized by flat roofs with metal coping along the parapet. Bands of fixed and hopper metal sash windows provide the fenestration. 

Concrete shading devices are located over the south elevation windows, which further accentuate the horizontal massing of the building. The building has a concrete pier foundation. The primary entrance, which is located along the SE classroom wing, is recessed within the north (front) wall of the building. The wall above bears the school’s name in metal letters. The entrance is marked by two sets of double metal doors with side lights and transoms. A breezeway with structural frames that forms a four-point arch extends between the NE classroom and SE classroom wings, to the west of the main entrance.

Madison High School (photo by Matthew Ginn/Homestead Images)

Other ornamentation includes walls of projecting brick arranged in a Flemish bond pattern. The single story building located along the east (side) elevation of the SE classroom wing and the walkway wall between the cafeteria and northeast music wings feature this decorative brick work. The wall between the music wing and cafeteria wing encloses a covered walkway on the north (front) side and features glass block windows. The frames of the walkway, like the breezeway between the NE and SE classroom wings, form a four point arch. This arch is utilized for structural systems within prominent interior spaces.  

The principal entrance opens into a lobby located along the administrative office. The office is marked by a wall of fixed metal sash windows. The lobby is illuminated by windows surrounding the entrance and features brick walls and an elevated ceiling supported by a single concrete column. Corridors extend east-west through the classroom wings and north-south through the auditorium wing and library/gymnasium wing. The corridors feature recessed lockers and drinking fountain alcoves.

Madison High School (photo by Matthew Ginn/Homestead Images)

The auditorium wing features a concourse that is lit by a wall of fixed windows and supported by a series of concrete columns. The auditorium features roman brick and wood trimmed walls.  The auditorium also features WPA murals, which were originally located in Rose City Park School.  The murals, entitled "The Columbia River Pioneer Migration" were painted by Oregon artist Maria Gangle. The cafeteria features exposed steel frames that form a four-point arch and walls of fixed lights at the north (front) and south (rear) ends of the room. The gymnasium also features exposed steel frames that form a four-point arch, as well as plexiglass skylights. Structural features, such as the steel frames, add to the spatial aesthetics of school spaces. The library, located within the gymnasium wing, features large ceiling beams and one wall of fixed metal sash windows. 

Madison was constructed during a period of modernization and new construction initiated by Portland Public Schools (PPS) after World War II. In 1945, the citizens of Portland approved a ballot measure that provided $5,000,000 over five years to construct, improve, and rehabilitate its public school buildings. The ballot measure provided some of the initial funds that enabled PPS to respond to the explosive growth in school-age children that had occurred in the city as a result of the arrival of defense plant workers and their families, as well as the deferred maintenance arising from the lack of funds during the depression. In 1950 the site for Madison (or Northeast High) at N. Emerald was acquired for $109,076 and the building was constructed for $4.3 million. 

For the new building program, PPS adopted the call of architects and school planners across the country for new types of schools. Nationally known architects including Richard Neutra, the Walter Gropius led Architects Collective, and the Perkins Will architectural firm promoted new school types that reflected both evolving educational practices and design philosophies. Emphasizing the need for economy and rapid construction, the designers adopted new materials that were standardized and mass produced including steel, plywood, glass block, and aluminum. In many buildings, architects achieved flexibility through the building’s structure by employing non-load-bearing partitions walls and zoned ventilation and heating systems. Folding walls and moveable cabinets provided additional flexibility intended to enable teachers to rearrange rooms based on lesson plan and activities.

Madison High School (photo by Matthew Ginn/Homestead Images)

The architects of Madison High School, Glen Stanton Architects, adopted the building program and principles that dominated the discourse for school design during the second half of the twentieth century. A native of Iowa, Glenn Stanton graduated from the University of Oregon and received his M.A. from Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Stanton worked with Portland architect Morris H. Whitehouse and eventually became a partner in the firm of Whitehouse, Stanton & Church. In 1935, Stanton opened his own firm, Glen Stanton and Associates. Stanton later entered into partnership with Hollis Johnston. The firm designed a number of notable structures such as building for the Lewis & Clark College Campus and the Stadium Branch of the U.S. Nation Bank. Stanton was also known for supervising the restoration of the McLoughlin House (1846) in Oregon City, which was one of the early architectural preservation projects in the state. Glenn Stanton designed at least two Portland public school buildings, Mount Tabor Middle School and Madison High. 

Madison High School retains integrity of location, design, setting, materials, workmanship, feeling, and association with its plan and exterior and interior finishes. The 1955 International style influenced school is recommended as eligible for the National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) for its association with the PPS program of post-war construction. The school is a strong example of the educational principles that drove the design of schools during this era; therefore, it is eligible for listing in the NRHP under Criterion A. 

And now Lincoln:

Lincoln High School (photo by Matthew Ginn/Homestead Images)

Lincoln High School is located at 1600 SW Salmon St. in the Goose Hollow neighborhood of southwest Portland.  The 11 acre property, which includes the main school building and two portable classroom buildings, is bounded the north side bounded by SW Salmon Street, on the east by SW 14th Avenue and west by SW 18th  Avenue as well as an artificial surface football field and oval track to the west of the main building.  Development in the surrounding areas consists primarily of commercial uses, surface parking lots, as well as I-405, which passes immediately to the east.

The two-story brick face and reinforced concrete building, constructed in 1951, exhibits a low horizontal massing and a U-shaped plan.  The building features a flat roof and the fenestration consists of repeating rows of single pane, large light windows.  Overall, the building exhibits minimal architectural embellishments but still conveys the various components of the school by clearly differentiating between the classrooms and the double-height gymnasium and auditorium that largely lacks windows. A below ground level cafeteria provides easy access to the field.  A grassy courtyard is formed between the two arms of the U-shape massing and a circular concrete planting bed, the latter of which is formerly the site of a fountain and still contains a welded bronze sculpture by Thomas Hardy dedicated in 1960.  The courtyard is terraced with the slope descending from east to west toward the building.  A surface parking lot is located near the southeast corner of the property. 

Lincoln High School (photo by Matthew Ginn/Homestead Images)

The school's principal access into the building is situated on the north side of the building.  The concrete paved plaza on the north side of the school affords access to the two separate main entrances.  Each entrance is marked by a concrete column lined entry, but the two entries are separated by a long raised planting bed.  Each entry exhibits two sets of double doors and concrete columns that exhibit horizontal channels and a raised panel.

To the east and west of the entries are one story brick-faced projections that extend from the two story main building.  The brickwork of these projections and the rest of the school is a mixed common bond that is largely composed of stretchers interspersed by randomly laid headers.  The windows for these projections as well as for most of the main building consist of bands of metal, three part windows with a bottom hopper.  Each set of windows is separated by a vertical brick-faced column.  A concrete balustrade to the north of the main entrances overlooks the football field.

Lincoln High School (photo by Matthew Ginn/Homestead Images)

Immediately below the plaza is the plate glass-faced entry into the cafeteria.  Two double doors and single entry provide access into the cafeteria from the field level.  Each of the classroom fingers that extend from the main part of the building are clearly classrooms as they exhibit similar types of windows as those found on the main entrance.  The auditorium and gymnasium, however, exhibit different exterior treatments as they both largely lack window openings and feature a double-height volume that is ultimately taller than the classroom wings.  The school features three floors with a portion of the bottom floor lying below ground due to changes in the site’s topography. 

Unlike most finger-plan schools constructed in Portland in the 1950s, the gymnasium and auditorium are not as segregated from the classrooms.  The gymnasium, for instance, is situated between rows of classrooms and is principally accessed via the main corridor and not from the outside. The auditorium is accessed through a faux-wood and stone foyer that exhibits paneled reveals. The interior of the auditorium features its original seating and balcony and the stage is framed by a wood paneled reveal similar to that found in the foyer. The gymnasium features a drop ceiling and ceramic tile walls. 

The most significant alterations to the school occurred in 2000 when the main office was expanded to the south.  The exterior of this addition presents a different type of window pattern as that found on the school as each bank consists of four sets of four pane windows that are not separated by a brick column.  A new entrance was also added to the south side of the south classroom finger in 2000. The two-story entrance leads into a vestibule and elevator to the second floor. The building retains its integrity of design, materials, location, association, feeling, workmanship, and setting.

Lincoln High School (photo by Matthew Ginn/Homestead Images)

When the original Lincoln High School was erected at the corner of Market and Park in 1911, the building took up an entire block and was praised for its innovative, efficient, and attractive design.  Following World War II, however, the building could no longer adequately serve a growing number of high school students.  As early as 1945, PPS purchased the so-called “Kamm Tract” for $250,000 for use as the site for a new high school. 

By 1950, PPS had retained Portland architect Hollis E. Johnston to develop plans for the new high school that would eventually cost over $2.5 million dollars. Johnston, a graduate of Jefferson High School in Portland and the University of Oregon Architecture School, was an experienced designer of schools and other public facilities.  Johnston worked with several prominent architects including Lawrence & Holford and Sutton & Whitney before establishing a solo practice in 1930.  During the depression Johnston served as chief consulting architect for the U.S. Corps of Engineers on the Bonneville Dam Project. He subsequently worked with Herman Brookman before founding the firm of Stanton & Johnston with A. Glenn Stanton. After the War, Johnston reestablished his own practice.  Johnston is known for his work on the Portland Town Club (1931) the Watson/Eastman house (1928), and the Tillamook Blimp Hangers.

Lincoln High School (photo by Matthew Ginn/Homestead Images)

The first high school constructed in Portland after World War II, Lincoln’s classrooms featured extensive built-ins that included sinks, slots for bulky rolls of paper, and coat storage. Many buildings incorporated interior courtyards which facilitated access to the outdoors and expanded the opportunities for passive ventilation and daylighting. 

While indicative of the post-war design principles and retaining its historical integrity, Lincoln High School does not appear to be eligible for the National Register of Historic Places. The overall architectural design, structural composition, and building materials used for the school were commonly reflected in most high and elementary schools of the period.  Other high schools constructed in the post-war period in Portland, such as Wilson and Madison, better reflect the experimentation with building materials, school planning, and overall design. The school represented a major commission for Hollis Johnston, but other buildings already listed on the National Register better reflect his mastery of modern structural materials and architectural composition. 

Thanks again to Matthew Ginn for taking these accompanying photos.

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Getting our goats

Goats on Southeast Belmont (photo by Brian Libby)

I first received word of the phenomenon in an excited cell-phone call from my girlfriend a few days ago. "Remember that vacant lot on Belmont where the Monte Carlo burned down? There are a bunch of goats there now, grazing on the weeds. You've got to come see this."

One might have thought the presidential motorcade had just driven by given the excitement in her voice.

When I made my way to the two-acre vacant lot at Southeast 10th and Belmont, there were not only about 50 goats grazing there, just as Valarie said, but there were almost as many people gathered around the perimeter of the chain-link fence encircling the lot.

As Molly Hottle reported in Wednesday's Oregonian, the goats are owned by Georgia Stiner and her company, Goat Rental NW of suburban Damascus. They came to the Belmont lot at the behest of Vancouver realtor Killian Pacific, which is charged with maintaining the vacant lot. Initially Killian planned the usual array of gas-powered, smoke-belching, eardrum-piercing mowers and weed whackers, but the person they hired, Brett Milligan of Free Association Design, came up with this more sustainable alternative. (Milligan also works for landscape design company GreenWorks.) Not only are the goats easier on the environment, ears and nose than industrial equipment, but their digestive systems render the seeds they eat sterile, so there will be fewer weeds here next year. (Of course Milligan had to convince Killian that the goats would not cost any more than mowers. Gotta stay true to that bottom line!)

Stiner told the paper that her goats have been hired all over the metro area, sometimes at sites where loud lawn equipment can't be used and other times just when people are looking for a more sustainable solution.

On Milligan's Free Association Design blog, he also has lots of interesting knowledge to share about the goats themselves. A brief example:

"The goats themselves exhibit an amazing repertoire of behaviors, moods and proclivities (constant entertainment really); some of which seem predictable.   For example, heat has a major effect on their appetite.  As we saw in the first couple days, in warm weather they slow down and don’t eat nearly as much.   As herding animals by instinct, they tend to stick together and form social subgroups within the herd.  In a short time its easy to tell which ones are fond of each other and which ones have issues.  The patterns of how they collectively move (the repeating cycles of foraging and resting) seems unpredictable and slightly random.

Although common knowledge says that goats will eat anything, they undeniably have specific preferences when it comes to vegetation.  They selectively graze rather than mow; covering the terrain many times over in the process of eating it down.  The field seems to offer a culinary menu similar to a stocked refrigerator or pantry.  There are those things that get eagerly consumed at a fast rate (in this case seasonally procured fresh green clover, grass and blooming flowers), followed by things that are less immediately appetizing – like desiccated seed stalks and thistles.  They’re edible, but not delicious.

This menu is affected by weather conditions and seasons.  As other contemporary applied research in herding/grazing practices has demonstrated, by simply modifying the timing of grazing to optimum specifics of local conditions, massive regenerative effects can be achieved.   A key question for us right now, is when is the best two times of year to bring the goats to this site."

 

More than the sustainability of the goat-grazing, though, I find it interesting the degree to which people have flocked to see the goats on Belmont.

Goats on Southeast Belmont (photo by Brian Libby)

After all, if you think about it, you can see animals anytime at the Oregon Zoo, and much more exotic ones at that. But I personally never go to the zoo. It seems depressing to keep animals native to Africa, Asia or elsewhere in the world locked up in cages in rainy Portland. Granted zoo officials have endeavored over the decades to make the enclosures more habitat-friendly. But I'll never forget the site on my last zoo visit of an elephant gently but persistently butting its head against the bars of its cage. It's still a prison for them.

In the case of the goats grazing on Belmont or the other bits of nature sprouting into the city like chicken coops, it feels more natural because these are animals already in abundant numbers in the agricultural areas surrounding Portland. It may feel like a bit of a novelty to have goats munching grass with the downtown skyline visible in the background, but not so absurd as having giraffes and lions. And it doesn't feel as contrived or over-nostalgic as an animal presence like the police department's officers riding horseback. The goats may not be completely free to roam, but they're basically being allowed to do what goats do: eat and hang out.

Graphic courtesy David Badders/The Oregonian

These farm animals are slowly but persistently helping to break down traditional barriers between urban and rural locales. The same thing is happening with the green infrastructure being introduced into the city by way of small bits of nature like bioswales and eco roofs. The old notion of the city was as a concrete jungle, devoid of greenery. But it doesn't have to be that way. Slowly, over time, we can introduce more and more of the natural world back into the city, uncovering old creeks and swales initially buried in concrete and inviting birds and mammals back into our zip codes. It's not to suggest that we should all be joining hands and singing "Kum-ba-ya" over a few goats chewing weeds, but clearly people respond to having a little nature around them.

"They've been out here two weeks," Milligan told The Oregonian. "I thought things would kind of die down in terms of public interest, but it hasn't at all." My girlfriend has even started leaving home early in the morning to make sure she gets to visit the goats.

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Talking green energy, commerce with author-activist Paul Hawken

Paul Hawken (image courtesy Clarkson University)

Paul Hawken is one of America’s most respected environmental thinkers, as well as a successful entrepreneur, journalist, and best-selling author devoted to changing the relationship between business and the environment, and between human and living systems.

Hawken has founded numerous ecologically-oriented businesses while continually writing and teaching about the impact of commerce upon the environment, often consulted by world leaders on economic development and environmental policy. Hawken also coined the term “comprehensive outcome”, or full-cost accounting (that takes environmental considerations into economic calculations) as well as the concept of triple bottom line standards for sustainability.

He is the author of six books, including The Next Economy, Growing a Business (subject of a 17-part PBS series) Natural Capitalism: Creating the Next Industrial Revolution with Amory Lovins (described by President Bill Clinton as one of the five most important books in the world today), and the landmark The Ecology of Commerce, the latter of which was voted in 1998 as the #1 college text on business and the environment.

I spoke with Hawken a few months ago after he addressed the Sustainable Industries Economic Forum in Portland.

Q: A recent study found this region could achieve most of its future power needs over the next 20 years through energy efficiency. What do you see as the accompanying challenges and opportunities carrying forth this message to the public?

A: I think the demand side is still not well understood. 20 percent of all oil consumed was during the Bush administration, 50 percent during the last 20 years. But sometimes energy efficiency measures like double-glazing and insulation and sealants just don’t carry the day. You can’t write a big press release about a breakthrough in a sealant. Demand side is also very decentralized, so you’re not going to get a charismatic corporation that’s going to soar its stock values.

But the most energy we’ll ever get in the whole US is from building retrofits. It’s not going to be any other source. There is no other source that can supply as much energy as that, because it pays every year, delivers energy every year in the classic megawatt way. 

So why isn’t the retrofitting wave bigger, or why don’t people fully understand the opportunity?

What I see missing is a real lack of organization and communication that really collages jobs, energy, security and prosperity. That circle has not been drawn up in such a way that the so-called person on the street without background in any of those areas can understand that is the way towards security, saving money, and creating jobs—those cascading benefits. People touch upon it, everyone from President Clinton to Van Jones. They talk about it in ways that are true and helpful and even inspiring. But I think it takes more than that to actually really make the case. It takes hard data, hard metrics, hard measurements that really show everything from individuals to institutions to governments to businesses and building owners and really where the money is.

There’s no job that creates more dollars per job than retrofits. It’s mostly labor and little material: it’s more labor intensive than material intensive. And yet the amount of energy per hour or per unit of work put in is the highest yield of any type of activity, including creating new power plants. Right now it’s just a lost opportunity.

In the building industry, a lot of attention has gone to new buildings, to living buildings, to Platinum this and that. But we can only build so many new buildings. We don’t even really need so many new buildings. The technology that we really need to be most interested in is retrofit technology. How do we make existing buildings as efficient as the best LEED Platinum building, or better? How do we make the first net-zero retrofitted buildings? Those opportunities are, I think, lacking because the case hasn’t been made well at a national, congressional levels or any other levels. It has been made, but I don’t think it’s been made in a very compelling way. 

As I recall in the Northwest, saved energy costs 1.4 cents a kilowatt-hour. In California it’s 1.3 cents a kilowatt-hour because of variations in temperature and climate. So where can you get energy for 1.4 cents a kilowatt-hour? Nowhere in the world. And yet, there it is, and there’s more of that here than any other form of energy.

I just feel like whether it’s a coalition of groups, with businesses and nonprofits…there needs to be a coming together of people who want to do it, care about it, benefit from it, and really make the case powerfully, intensely and passionately so the public understands that we have, basically, five Saudi Arabias (worth of equivalent energy to oil) sitting in our buildings.

How much does the average person need to reduce his or her energy consumption?

Well, In order for us to make this transition, we cannot go over 2000 watts per person. That’s your total energy budget for the day. [The 2005 US average is 7,885.9 watts.]

People want to make a contribution yet often face disincentives. A renter, for example, living with drafty windows and an old furnace, may be bound by an owner unwilling to make those upgrades. Or a company’s efforts to green its supply chain can face a number of impediments.

There’s obviously disincentives. As a renter, maybe you’d be able to justify it if you thought about it, but you don’t really have the metrics to really understand what the payback would be if you were to change out the windows and the fueling system. What would be absolutely necessary to me is to get those incentives lined up so it’s a no-brainer, so the payoffs and the rate of return on investment are there. Right now the banks have their knickers all tied together. And so it seems to me that we have to look at what former governor John Kitzhaber has proposed here, and others, which is inter-generational financing. Basically we’re talking about spending money to save a lot of energy in the future and create jobs now. And yet nobody will finance it. A select few like Shorebank will, but it also tells you what everybody else is doing. 

But the financial benefit is there.

If you look at the whole systems numbers, there is reward there. There is savings. There is a return on investment that is better than a CD or probably any equity investment. You’d have been better off changing out that furnace or those windows. It just isn’t apparent. 

Looking ahead, what kind of future do you see for solar, wind and other alternative energy markets? Or what barriers do you see for those industries in making positive progress?

I think you’ll see a real growth in solar thermal, excepting that the siting issues are so complicated. It’s going to be slowed down by that. I think you’re seeing some breakthroughs in terms of storage, whether it’s molten salts or others. So I think solar thermal is going to be hampered by the fact that it’s centralized. Centralized means big footprint, and big footprint means permitting issues and all that sort of stuff.

What about wind?

I think wind is going to continue to get better and better, but it’s already running against what you’d call the best limit. You’re not going to get a lot more efficiency out of them. You can only make them bigger, which has its own problems. And there are some technologies coming that will be effective. But the biggest movement you’re going to see, or are seeing, is in solar photovoltaics.

But not necessarily silicon-based photovoltaics?

A square meter of land receives the same amount of energy in a year as a barrel of oil. Sunshine could power the whole world with 70 minutes a day. We have more capacity to make solar than the world needs.

Five and a half days of newsprint printed in the world, if it was printed as solar film, would be enough to substitute for all the energy needed in the world, once you get it up and wired. That’s how close we are.

But I think you’re going to see a move away from silicon because it’s too expensive and it’s too energy intensive, and towards thin film. On the PV side, you need intense energy to make it. It’s not really renewable and sustainable. It’s kind of like a dirty little secret.

There’s still a place for silicon panels because they can approach 100 percent efficiency. But you’re going to see thin-film probably creep out to about 12 or 14 percent over the next 10 years or sooner. But the cost of production is severely reduced versus silicon with very little heat and cheaper materials. What we’re working on is a little different from all those. It is thin film, and it’s printed like Nanosolar, but it can be self-assembled, all of the semiconductors are nontoxic, there’s no heat at all. Right now we’re looking at raw material production costs for a finished a panel at about 75 bucks. There’s nothing to it. You don’t need something that weights 15 pounds to collect a square meter of photon-particle waves. 

I don’t think there’s any question that within five years solar power will be the cheapest electricity in the world. No question. I put hydro aside, because what really is the price of hydroelectricity? What do we really lose in the Columbia in the Snake with salmon runs? The meter is cheaper, but putting that aside, whether it’s renewable or non-renewable, I think the cheapest energy in the world is going to be solar photovoltaic. And I think it’s thin-film technology that more than any other that will be able to ramp up the quickest in terms of replacing carbon-based energy. You still have storage problems with solar, but if I were a betting man, I’d put my money on solar photovoltaic.

How low on fossil fuels is the world getting today?

20 percent of all oil consumed was during the Bush administration, 50 percent during the last 20 years. The biggest oil field discovered 30 years ago. It took 31 years to bring that field up in the Caspian Sea. Now there’s a field in Brazil. It’s 16,000 feet down. There’s almost a mile of salt. We’re talking 200-300 billion dollars to get down there, and it’ll be gone in 16 months.

But we also need fossil fuels to make the transition away from. We’re in the “red green dilemma”. We’re going deeper to get water, we need more electricity and fuel. As we materialize in the world, we need more copper, zinc, iron. The problem is we’re in the marginal areas in terms of minerals as well. The first class mines have been mined out. These demands…the faster we go, the faster we’re going nowhere. It’s taking more energy just to stay where we are. The transition has to be really well thought about.

What you said about hydroelectric power and uncalculated environmental costs resembles a term you first coined several years ago, the “comprehensive outcome” principle: - taking account of the entire result of an event or process to all parties, not just the immediate participants.  Has much progress has been made in this kind of economic reform?

I think progress is being made everywhere. I think the question is whether the rate is speeding up as fast as the rate of degradation. The answer still is no. That increased understanding, though quite phenomenal, is masked heavily by the media. If you watch it, you’d think nothing’s changed. Because it is advertiser-driven. It’s masked heavily by the US Congress. Are we up a creek without a paddle? I don’t think that’s true. If those are your sole sources of information, I can understand the confusion. What I see in my work with governement, NGOs and corporations is an explosion of understanding and literacy that is systemic, that is systems based, that is looking at, as you say, comprehensive outcome. I see a generation coming out of specialized schools like Bainbridge and more non-traditional high schools and coming out with clear understandings of the problems at hand.

What do you enjoy the most about your job and what, if anything, keeps you awake at night?

It’s always great to go out in the world, like today, to meet people and find out that prior books had helped people. When you’re writing, you’re alone and sometimes it’s kind of a lonely thing. But the thing that probably most excites me is working with John Warner and Janine Benyus called OneSun. There are 1.6 billion people in the world who don’t have electricity, and we think we can provide a very inexpensive form of electricity that, with microfinance, would cost them pennies a day to run all the basic needs they would have in terms of a laptop and cell phone and lights and ceiling fan and whatever else. That’s the most exciting thing right now. What I love right now is the singularity of what I’m doing.

If we fail, which we might, at least I’ll still feel good about it. I’d rather fail at something important than succeed at something that’s trivial. But I think we will succeed. And we’re having a lot of fun doing it.

The capacity for human beings to mobilize can be quite astonishing. I work in a building that was built by Bechtel during World War II for shipbuilding. At a certain point they were turning out one per day, a 7 thousand ton steel boat, using unskilled workers, no computers, just blueprints and pencils. That capacity is there. What’s missing is that sense of peril or imperative that would drive us to do that. I say, “Bring it on.” We have the capacity and the science to do this.

 

Rip City jewel: Blazers return to Memorial Coliseum for exhibition

Gametime approaches Monday at Memorial Coliseum (photo by Brian Libby)

As game time neared on Monday night, a bright early evening sunset bathed Memorial Coliseum with light. Fans poured into the 50-year-old arena to see basketball, but they did not abandon the picturesque sight of the sunset over downtown Portland by walking inside.

It was a losing effort for Rip City in this exhibition game against the Utah Jazz, with Deron Williams and company jumping out to a 7-0 early lead and winning by nine points. Even so, the mood inside the building was one of casual fun. Longtime Blazers radio announcer and emcee Bill Schonely sang "God Bless America" and "America the Beautiful" after explaining to the crowd that 2010 is the 50th anniversary of Memorial Coliseum - "and it's a veterans Memorial Coliseum," he added, indicating that the entire building is the memorial: not just the plaques outside.

Memorial Coliseum Monday night (photo by Brian Libby)

No doubt the building remains in disrepair. Nothing is structurally wrong, but the routine maintenance the city and the Blazers might conceivably have pursued years ago is still waiting to be done. There is an unnecessary second glass wall at the entrance blocking views of the bowl. There is crass cross bracing on the outer west side of the arena. Yet as basketball fans enjoyed an NBA game in what may be the world's only arena with a 360-degree glass view, it was easy to see how special Memorial Coliseum is, and to envision it as the centerpiece of the Rose Garden's future.

Outside the Coliseum after the game, the building glowed like a jewel box. Nearby, surface parking garages along Broadway and Interstate did just the opposite, acting as vacuums of energy and aesthetics. Last night it was clear as ever, standing in the Rose Quarter after dark, that the key to activating this parcel is to make everything on the ground just that: active. Let's bury the parking underground and surround the Coliseum and Rose Garden with greenery, with small local businesses, and with housing. Let's not dismantle the glowing jewel box but address the stacks of concrete and carbon monoxide beside it.

Memorial Coliseum concourse (photos by Brian Libby)

Meanwhile, though, Monday night was a moment to stop and savor the survival of one of the most unique, beautiful and historic buildings built in Portland or the United States during the 20th century. And as Bill Schonely reminded us, it was a moment to remember and honor our veterans by letting the Glass Palace glow.

Memorial Coliseum Monday night (photo by Brian Libby)

Guest post: a jail for South Waterfront?

Atwater Place and Meriwether Condominiums, South Waterfront (photo by Brian Libby)

Editor's note: Fred Leeson is a veteran Portland journalist who spent many years at The Oregonian and still contributes to the paper. He is also the author of Rose City Justice: A Legal History of Portland, Oregon. Here Leeson reports on a new holding facility for the federal government being considered by the design commisison.

As developers poured billions of dollars into the South Waterfront District in the past several years, chances are they never dreamed the new “gateway” to the high-rise condo village would be a jail.

Thanks the Homeland Security Administration, that appears to be more than a small likelihood. A plan working its way through the city design system would convert a blockish, four-story building at 4310 SW Macadam Ave., into a holding tank for an unspecified number of arrestees held by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

A new three-story wing added to the south end of the building would provide offices for 150 workers,  an indoor gym for their recreational pleasure, plus underground parking for 106 ICE fleet vehicles. Employees would be urged to use public transportation.

Reading through the city staff report on the project, there is no mention of a  jail, only office space.  But key elements of the design include a 360-degree security fence, a  bullet-proof guardshack and turning room for 55-passenger buses.  Clearly, it’s not your ordinary office project.

And not your ordinary block, either.  GBD Architects has to plan in advance for as-yet undesigned changes to SW Bancroft Street  on the north and SW Moody Street to the west. On the south side, the Oregon Department of Transportation owns  the adjacent lot – for which no purpose yet exists. Not to mention a 17-foot drop in elevation from north to south.

“We probably picked one of the most complicated locations in the city to squeeze a building onto,” GBD’s Doug Skille told the Portland Design Commission on October 7.

Whether GBD and Homeland Security eventually succeed on the difficult site likely will be determined by the Portland City Council. The South Portland Neighborhood Association, one of the city’s most vigilant in the realm of land-use, is likely to appeal the slow but inevitable approval by the Design Commission.

“Obviously, it doesn’t fit,” said James Davis, South Portland’s land-use chair.  Davis has seen all the South Waterfront projects through the planning stages in the past 10 years, many of which drew neighborhood objections . “This is the first time I’ve seen a project that doesn’t fit.”

The Design Commission’s role isn’t to debate the use of the revamped building, but to assure that it meets as many of the city’s multitudinous design guidelines as possible. But the difficult site led the new chair, Gwen Millius, to ponder, “It makes me wonder what the rejected sites were. Were they under water?  How could they have been any worse?”

Homeland Security officials were likely present in the room, but none testified.  Their attraction likely was drawn by a concrete vault in the existing building composed of 18-inch concrete walls reinforced by steel rebar.  This is where the unspecified number of holding cells would be built.

The existing building was erected in 1982 as a bank transfer station, serviced by armored trucks and surrounded by a security fence. As GBD architect Agustin Enriquez noted, security is nothing new at 4310 SW Macadam. And Homeland Security has specific requirements. “Security issues are big issues for them,” Enriquez said.

According to The Nation magazine, Homeland Security has some 186 holding tanks around the nation.  The magazine’s list says the agency currently uses the old Federal Building at 511 N.W. Broadway, which is destined to become the new home of the Pacific Northwest College of Art.

“They want a facility to hold people as long as they want to hold people without justice, until civil removal from this country,” Davis said.

Ben Kaiser, a Design Commission member, said, “It’s too bad a jail is the gateway to the South Waterfront. Basically, it doesn’t make sense.”

He said the bullet-proof guardshack in a three-lane drive way was the “biggest giveaway” of the building’s “ominous” presence. “It sets the tenor for the building. It sets the tenor for the South Waterfront,” he said.  

Kaiser asked whether the guard station could be moved to the main entrance, giving the building a more civil appearance. Enriquez said he would discuss it with Homeland Security, but he said the agency has definite ideas about its requirements.

GBD tentatively is scheduled to return to the Design Commission for further discussion of the project on Nov. 4 at 1:30 p.m.  The commission meetings are held in Room 2500 at 1900 SW Fourth Avenue. 

 

Hope buried underground: TMT Development kiboshes Guild Theatre renovation

Guild Theatre (photo by Jen McCabe via Flickr)

If they wind up tearing down the Guild Theater, as now seems likely, I know just what movie to show as a final act: Citizen Kane, the story of a titan's less than gracious decline.

Developer Tom Moyer and his company, TMT Development, have a long history in Portland. For the past 20 years they have built and managed properties like the Fox Tower, the Broadway Building (more commonly known as the Ban Roll-On Building for its deodorant-like top), and the Studio Building.

But these are difficult times for the developer. The company's latest project, the $150 million, 33-story Park Avenue West tower, saw its construction halted after beginning in 2008. For the past several months, the site has existed as a massive hole in the ground, arguably the biggest symbol of downtown Portland's once booming design and construction industry grinding to a halt. Major tenants have abandoned the project, and TMT will be lucky to eventually build a smaller tower and probably still lose lots of money on it along the way.

On the personal front, Tom Moyer is also facing felony charges that he funneled campaign contributions to a candidate in Portland's mayoral race (an unwitting Jim Francesconi) in 2003 under the names of two other people. The 91-year-old developer could face five years in prison.

That's why it is all the more distressing to read David Stabler's report in today's Oregonian that TMT has declined the proposal by Opera Theater Oregon and a host of arts partners (such as Chamber Music Northwest, Third Angle New Music Ensemble and the Portland Cello Project) to renovate the vacant Guild Theatre. It could have been a bright spot, at least culturally if not financially.

Halted Park Avenue West construction site (photo by Micah Escamilla for The Oregonian)

Opera Theater Oregon, led by Katie Taylor, estimated it would take $1 million to $2.5 million fore renovating and upgrading the space. That's far less expensive, for example, than the $30.7 million that Portland State University spent on renovating Lincoln Performance Hall. But Taylor was asking TMT for 20 years of free rent to offset the costs OTO would have spent renovating TMT's building. And apparently that doesn't "pencil out".

Although Moyer's nonprofit donations have helped build public resources like the Marilyn Moyer Meditation Chapel at The Grotto and Director Park (between his Fox Tower and the Guild), he and TMT aren't in the business of charity. Why should they be obligated to give a tenant free rent? What about the other plans they might have for the rest of that building?

But the Guild Theatre is more or less the last single-screen movie theater in Portland. It represents a long cultural history here that is all but gone. Ironically, TMT also eradicated two of the other surviving movie theaters for its Fox and Broadway buildings: the Fox and Broadway theaters after which the buildings were named. What is this guy, a movie hater? Perhaps some early nickelodeon or silent film rubbed Moyer the wrong way in his childhood. Or should TMT really be called TNT?

What's more, I'd argue that because a stalled TMT development (Park Avenue West) has now remained a civic eyesore for so long, the developer could have made acquiescence to the aspiring Guild renovators a sort of penance. Any city needs its developers and builders to survive and prosper, but historic preservation and support for the arts are also part of a holistic urban mix.

Guild Theatre seats (photo by Brian Libby)

If TMT isn't going to let a grassroots array of arts leaders renovate the company's now long-empty historic theater on their own nickel, I'd certainly love to hear what the developer does have planned for the Guild. What is it that TMT has planned that would be a superior investment for the community and for the developer?

Relatedly, if TMT isn't going to lease the Guild as a renovated theater, one must draw the conclusion that eventually the space will be demolished. Do Moyer and TMT really want to add the stain of eradicating the last such theater in Portland to its cataclysmal failed tower and the felony charge?

This is not meant to vilify the developer or Moyer personally. Again, for most of their existence, both developer and company have been solid citizens. Even so, in a time of economic doldrums with little good news on the development and arts fronts, the Guild renovation proposal was a feel-good story around which the arts community was beginning to rally. It's too bad that it could contribute to a once proud but now sullied reputation.

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Recovery favors city centers over CityCenters

Machineworks building, Portland (image courtesy Grubb & Ellis)

In Oregon we've been hard hit by the Great Recession. Unemployment in the state was at 10.6 percent as of July, higher than the national average of 9.5 percent. Here in Portland particularly, we do great at attracting new residents with the city's quality of life, but job creation for them has been lacking.

Even so, once again there are signs that the physical makeup of the Portland metropolitan area, particularly the Urban Growth Boundary, will help us survive and someday even prosper again when other sprawled out cities and regions continue to grapple.

In Monday's Oregonian, Jeff Manning reported that Microsoft has leased over 12,000 square feet of office space in the Pearl District, the ninth floor of the MachineWorks office building at Northwest 14th Avenue and Northrup Street. 

Microsoft's lease comes six weeks after Vestas, the Danish wind turbine manufacturer, announced plans to build its North American headquarters in the old Meier & Frank delivery depot building at Northwest 14th Avenue and Everett Street. Also on 14th, WDC Properties is building its Overton office building, a $17.8 million project. And a $47 million affordable-housing apartment project on Northwest 14th Avenue between Northwest Quimby and Raleigh streets is also underway. Developed by Turtle Island Development, it will host the Pearl District's first public school.

"It was bad as recent as this summer," developer Mark Madden of WDC said of the Pearl District development picture in Manning's article. "Now, the private sector has come back and started leasing again."

It would be a mistake to view the construction itself as a key to Portland's economy; rather it should be viewed as a sign of the broader economy hopefully thawing. After all, when you base your economy solely on construction and tourism, and you allow the city to sprawl out endlessly, you have an unsustainable approach.

Take the Sunday story in The New York Times, reporting that Las Vegas is suffering its deepest economic slide since the 1940s. "Even as city leaders remain hopeful that gambling revenues will rebound with the nation’s economy, experts project that it will not be enough to make up for an even deeper realignment that has taken place in the course of this recession: the collapse of the construction industry, which was the other economic pillar of the city and the state," Adam Nagourney writes.

CityCenter development, Las Vegas (photo by Robert Polidori for The New Yorker) 

Las Vegas isn't alone in facing economic doldrums of the highest order. And it's not to say that only sprawled out cities are experiencing tough times. Yet it seems some of the first places to recover from the Great Recession may be compact central cities. Here in Portland, the real estate market's slide has perhaps leveled the playing field for leases in comparison to the outskirts of the suburbs. When you compare the Pearl District to, say, Tualatin or Hillsboro, if the rents are comparable for offices you get a lot healthier, happier workforce in a place that's pedestrian friendly and connected to culture. You don't have to rely on Applebee's and McDonald's for lunch, and you don't have to sit parked on the freeway.

Manning's Oregonian article reports that Microsoft "joins a growing cast of technology companies that have taken space in downtown or in the Pearl. Companies that in an earlier era wouldn't have thought twice about locating anywhere but the technology hotbeds of Washington County are increasingly open to locating in the Central City. Dozens of technology startups and larger outfits like Tripwire and Jive Software have chosen downtown. Google opened its first Portland office late this summer."

The question of economics and urban growth boundaries also reminds me of a lecture I attended last week by German architect and writer Ulf Meyer, who spoke as part of the Transformational Lecture Series hosted by the Cascadia Green Building Council and the University of Oregon.

Meyer was there to talk sustainability, and he showed a slideshow of projects his firm has designed around the world. But his real interest was urban planning. "In the last 60 years, the US population has doubled, and the urbanized population has tripled," he sais. "Yet urban density went down dramatically." Meyer offered a graphic of Detroit as example. Even as the city has all but emptied over recent decades, a crumbled shell of its once robust self, Detroit still in the 2000s continued to sprawl at its edges. How can there not be a connection?

Meyer is a big fan of Portland's urban growth boundary, but he believes we haven't been disciplined enough in fostering true density. "Portland is the laboratory nationwide but has to deal with the same problems," he said, noting expansion at the edges of our suburbs. "I actually think you should shrink it now. You could also disallow parking garages, disallow mono-functional single –use buildings. Why not prohibit one-story buildings altogether? We have restrictions to prohibit the height of tall buildings, but I think prohibiting low buildings should happen instead."

Some will take issue with the boldest of Meyer's suggestions. If we have nothing but tall buildings, it will change quality of life here. Part of feeling connected with the exquisite natural environment in Oregon, and part of what we enjoy in the United States, is the chance to have a sense of space, both personally and in terms of neighborhoods.

At the same time, Meyer is far more right than wrong. Even if the construction industry were to rebound - and one certainly hopes that it does - it would do as much harm as good for the region to build subdivisions and strip malls on the outskirts of the city. These speculative developments rob central cities of their vitality and prolong economic downturns like this one.

Partially completed subdivision near Fort Myers, Florida (courtesy Google Earth/Boston Globe)

Recently a reader sent me a hotlink to an extraordinary series of satellite images from The Boston Globe showing subdivisions in Florida. This state, too, has been hard hit by boom-and-bust cycle of building subdivisions. And for all the difficulty faced in the Portland area, with too many skilled workers and not enough jobs, it's key that we have maintained a sense of place, anchored by a healthy central city.

Back in Las Vegas, the big new development opened recently is called "CityCenter". It is the biggest construction project in the history of Las Vegas. It has three hotels, two condominium towers, a shopping mall, a convention center, a couple of dozen restaurants, a private monorail, and a casino. But rather than being an antidote to or a break from the kitschy themed casinos built over the past decades, made to ape Paris or Venice or New York like architectural zombies with escalators, fake lakes and slot machines, City Center is basically more of the same. Notice the missing space between the words - it seems like but doesn't actually say "city center".

"Whether or not the buildings themselves succeed in striking a blow against Vegas kitsch, CityCenter certainly fails to live up to the claim implicit in its name—the hope that it is going to give Las Vegas, the place of ultimate sprawl, a genuine urban focus," wrote architecture critic Paul Goldberger in The New Yorker. "As urban planning, it doesn’t go much farther than Caesars Palace. CityCenter is laid out not for pedestrians but as a machine for moving vast numbers of cars efficiently. There are wide ramps coming off the Las Vegas Strip, auto turnarounds, and porte cochères—all good for traffic flow but hardly what you would call urban open space. Its planners have crammed more square footage into a tighter space than anyone else has managed in Las Vegas, and that may make this place seem like an antidote to sprawl. But it still isn’t much of a center, or much of a city. Indeed, as you drive around the site, you suddenly wonder if CityCenter only appears to be different from the rest of the Strip."

Here in Portland, we don't have CityCenter, but we do have city center. We aren't going to break any records for the scale of a single project or the volume of them in total. But healthy economics isn't about breaking records. That's what America did in the 2000s. The only problem is, what goes up always comes down (no matter what Allen Greenspan tells you). Portland has, in effect, become the tortoise to Las Vegas's hare. Microsoft taking a floor in the MachineWorks building won't generate any national headlines, nor will the Overton office building. Even so, as development thaws here, it remains burnt to a crisp in our adult Disneyland in the desert.

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Hillside origami: OCAC's campus expansions

New OCAC  buildings (photo by John Linden, courtesy Charles Rose Architects)

This past Saturday saw the official dedication of two new buildings at the Oregon College of Art & Craft: the Jean Vollum Drawing, Painting and Photography Building (DPP) and the Bonnie Laing-Malcolmson Thesis Studios. On the eve of that unveiling last Friday, I visited the buildings for the first time for a tour led by the architect, Charles Rose of the eponymous Boston-based firm Charles Rose Architects.

The two buildings, connected by a covered walkway that recalls old Sixties school architecture and even Frank Lloyd Wright's Fallingwater, are nestled into the hillside campus on its northwest edge, allowing expansive views of the coast range. They also sit beside the original OCAC buildings, designed by the late Oregon architect John Storrs.

Although Storrs is deservedly celebrated as one of the most talented local 20th century architects, with his portfolio including landmarks like Salishan Resort on the coast and the World Forestry Center in Portland, these nine OCAC buildings are modest bits of architecture: simple single story buildings with cedar siding, designed in collaboration with a landscape architect Barbara Fealy's campus plan. They are not meant to be grand, but to integrate easily with the topography of the hilly wooded site.

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Vollum building interior (photo by John Linden, courtesy Charles Rose Architects)

Rose's challenge in designing these new buildings was not only to create facilities for teaching and practicing art, but to simultaneously respect the understated original buildings and forge a more grander architectural identity for the school's future: to stand tall without crowding its parents out of the picture. Meanwhile, there was an existing campus master plan by BOORA Architects to fit into, and a series of additional buildings to follow, all of which had to achieve LEED strictures for sustainability. (Local firm Colab Architecture was an architectural consultant to Rose's firm.)

On the outside, the buildings are defined largely by their natural wood exterior, which extends to the underside of the awnings, extending the natural palette of the original Storrs and Fealy campus. Rose may be from Boston, but he knows that Northwest modernism enlivens simple forms with the texture and life of natural materials, especially wood.

OCAC Vollum building (photos by Brian Libby)

These buildings are full of angular geometry. With origami-like folding roof forms, the new Vollum and Laing-Malcolmson buildings have the shape of pointy gems nestled into the hillside. Perusing a recent book about the firm by Princeton Architectural Press called (appropriately) Charles Rose, Architect, it's clear many of these moves, from the wood cladding to the pointy angles to the origami roofs, are common to the architect's portfolio. Architecture is always part functional space-making and, over time, a chance to express and refine a more personal visual language unique to that firm or architect.

If you look at the OCAC buildings through the lens of Rose's past projects like the Shapiro Campus Center at Brandeis University in Massachusetts or the Camp Paint Rock center for underprivileged teens in rural Wyoming, they seem part of a continuous visual language.

Atlantic Center for the Arts, New Smyrna Beach, Florida (photo courtesy Charles Rose Architects)

As it happens, though, and as the OCAC must have seen, Rose's buildings are well suited for such a hilly site and a client conscious about protecting the landscape. They march to their own geometric steps, but they follow and take their cues from the contours of the topography. 

A couple of years ago Rose took aim in an interview at the boxy, minimalist forms of celebrated Portland architect Brad Cloepfil. I think of it as an unimportant difference: one guy is more inclined towards squares and rectangles, the other toward triangles. Rose has hinted that boxiness is somehow less authentically of the now because it's a rehashing of 20th century modernism, particular Mies Van der Rohe. But it's really all geometry, and all contemporary.

Classroom in Vollum building (photo by John Linden, courtesy Charles Rose Architects)

Inside the larger Vollum building, a series of classrooms are laid out successively with a common shared hallway to the right. That simple layout is enlivened by how the classrooms share a crisscrossing array of interior skylights that extend the angular jewel-like visual pattern of the architecture. When I visited with Rose, it was hard not to stop and stare at how light seemed to bounce not just from outside to inside and back, but almost ricochet as if in a prism. It felt rather dazzling.

At the same time, I wonder if the prism-like skylights are the best solution for the artists and teachers using the space. The ceiling creates visual noise for people who are trying to focus on their own paintings, drawings and photography. The light coming into these spaces can be uneven, creating bright spots under the skylight and darker spots under the ceiling. The light fixtures and the apparatus they hang from also seem a little bit cumbersome. 

Skylight in Vollum building (photo by John Linden, courtesy Charles Rose Architects)

The best natural light, which very much affects human behavior and performance in classrooms, workplaces and other architectural spaces, is diffuse and even. I can't help but wonder if, despite Rose's criticism of Cloepfil for being boringly boxy, the skylights don't work as well as simpler, more functional daylighting design. When I visited, the teachers were already well acquainted with the interior shade used to block their skylights. But as you can see, I'm conflicted in this respect

Even so, this quibble comes in the broader context of this being a handsome set of buildings that successfully integrate with the existing buildings and hillside environment. They feel of the Northwest, attentive to light and natural materials. And while Portland has many talented architecture firms that could also have done well with the OCAC commission, the city is enriched for having the contributions of architects from other places, talented people who can challenge our design thinking with fresh perspective.

OCAC map and renderings of future library (courtesy Charles Rose Architects)

And it's a good thing Rose's firm got this right, because they're just getting started at OCAC. To follow will be a new library and a new student center with an auditorium. OCAC started out as an artist's colony and grew into an art school over time. But after years of respectful dormancy, OCAC is coming alive as craft itself has become newly relevant in contemporary culture. Across regional and natural boundaries there is a renewed interest in making things well again, in a way that extends from hand craftsmanship to enlightened manufacturing techniques - something far from just knitting and pottery. The emergence of the Museum of Contemporary Craft in its Pearl District location in recent years is but one local example, as is the joint master's of fine arts program in applied craft in design that OCAC recently created in partnership with the Pacific Northwest College of Art.

OCAC is now three years into its second century, and the anniversary seems to have been, if not an outright wake-up call, at least a healthy re-invigoration that will help the school fully take advantage of an opportune moment to increase its role in the ongoing conversation about what constitutes art, craft and design and how these disciplines overlap.

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