Portland Architecture

Rallying around the ranch: A look at the Bureau of Planning & Sustainability's "Modern Historic Resources of East Portland" survey

An East Portland subdivision, circa 1930s (image courtesy City of Portland)

BY ALYSSA STARELLI

Last Friday at 8:02am, I got a call wresting me from my sleep. On the line was a reporter asking me about the significance of the East side ranch house. The City of Portland's East Side Historic Survey had just come out. Did I have any thoughts about it? Of course I did!

As explained by its authors, the objectives of this survey were three-fold. " One was to complete a reconnaissance-level historic resources survey for selected groups of properties constructed between 1935-1965 in East Portland," the introduction states. "Reconnaissance level surveys generally involve visual evaluations of properties including basic location information, descriptive features, plus an estimate of the age and architectural integrity of resources. They generally do not include assessments of historic events or individuals. The second objective was to prepare a survey report that provided the City of Portland with baseline historic resource data for future preservation planning and land use planning in the area. Objective number three was to increase the body of knowledge regarding mid-century resources in Portland."

This survey project focused on the neighborhoods of East Portland, the borders of which are generally considered to be east of 82nd Avenue. It occupies approximately 20 percent of the City of Portland, and most of this area was annexed  in the 1980s and 1990s.

East Portland survey area (image courtesy City of Portland)

Sure, I personally have an untempered affection for the ranch. I love their gambrel roofs with scalloped bargeboards, diamond mullioned windows, and dove cotes (Tally-Ho!). I'm fond of their hip-roofed, Roman-bricked, two-car garaged, and pom-pom treed lots in "Perfectville" (Lorene Park). I thrill over their vaulted and beamed ceilings, clerestory windows, and futuristic kitchens (Whispering Pines). But it's really about what these homes represent.

At a time when men were coming home from war and starting families of their own,  cramming the family into mom & pop's inner-city bungalow just didn't cut it. Portland was bursting at the seams, and building eastward. The so called cookie cutter tracts like Academy Heights built in the mid 1940s and early '50s  were a dream to strive for: an affordable, realistic, hard-earned dream. They came with individual bedrooms for the kids, a cozy family room with a picture window, a tidy kitchen for mom and a green lawn for dad. What more could a family want?

Later, as the automobile became king, lots grew larger, the footprint of homes stretched out and became the prototypical ranch: an epitome of coveted suburban living. Portland was prospering, technology was advancing, and our houses reflected this. The ranch home was a place for the family to grow, and the parents to entertain. The kitchen morphed into a well-designed laboratory with all the latest built-in gadgets. Basements were finished and outfitted with rumpus rooms and wetbars, while patios became lanais. The whole house was a family oasis! Why take a vacation when you can have a luau at home?

Concurrently, the trendsetters of Portland took their sophisticated tastes and embodied them in a modernistic style. Though still in tracts, these architect-designed homes were more privacy-oriented, with the majority of living centered towards the back of the house. The area that previously would have held a picture window was now a blank wall hiding a private courtyard. Windows moved up the wall to the clerestory, affording more light and more privacy. Ceilings jutted to the sky and mom's kitchen cabinetry practically hung from the air. Countryside living was eschewed for a more museum-like modernity, but still the suburban dream remained.

Many of these homes survive and are enjoyed and even coveted today. The East Side Historic Survey, just released by the Bureau of Sustainability and Planning, compiled this data from a select sampling of the many mid-century tracts of the East Side. Complete with photos, vintage ads, and a detailed explanation of the protypical mid-century style of architecture, the survey delves into the many builders included in each tract, the exact whereabouts, as well as the original price and specific history of neighborhood if available.

It is a document of great import as the Bureau is currently working on their Central City 2035 plan, with the intent to to "identify historic preservation policy issues, from the views of important stakeholders including the Landmarks Commission, property owners and developers, preservation advocates" and are taking into account the popularity and historic value of these neighborhoods in their plan.

Furthermore, its publication provides a resource for home owners and buyers who clamor for more information in regards to their beloved homes, but maybe most importantly, it shines a light on the historical significance of the neighborhoods and one would hope will foster a change in the perception of both East Portland and the rash of remuddling currently taking place.

Meanwhile, if you'd like to get involved in preserving these properties and other historic resources, the Bureau of Planning & Sustainability is holding two work sessions to help incorporate historic resources into the 2035 Plan. The first session took place on May 20, but there is another coming up, on Friday, June 17 from 9-11:30AM at the bureau's offices at 1900 SW Fourth Avenue.

Alyssa Starelli is a Portland realtor specializing in mid-20th century properties and a co-founder of the Midcentury Modern League

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Matthew Ginn's metro city halls project: Vancouver, Washington

Vancouver City Hall (all photos by Matthew Ginn, Homestead Images)

BY BRIAN LIBBY AND MATTHEW GINN

Last year, photographer Matthew Ginn acted as a photographic correspondent for Portland Architecture with shots of each public high school in the city. Now it's time to begin a new series, in which Ginn pictures each of the metro area's city halls.

In most cases, save perhaps for Portland, these are relatively modest buildings. But given what they represent, and that, like high schools, they comprise some of the most visible and oft-used public spaces in Portland and its environs, the 29 city hall buildings in the metro area make an ideal companion to the schools portfolio.

"I started by making a map of all the city halls nearby. Some of are what you expect (e.g. Portland, Hillsboro). Others, like Gladstone, are part of the local fire/police station. And then the smaller cities (e.g. Maywood Park, Rivergrove) just use a room at a local school," he writes by email. "Some of these cities I’d never even heard of! The best might be Johnson City, which is just a renegade trailer park, so the de facto city hall is the trailer park office."

Vancouver City Hall, built in 1966, is "really cool for a number of reasons," he says. "Its architects were Nelson, Walla & Dolle (now DSP architecture). It's strongly reflective of the era—mid-century modern style, very car-friendly, etc. Also interesting, because they’re moving city hall to the was-to-be-Columbian building in a couple of months. Made me realize that Vancouver has a lot of really interesting architecture that is overlooked."

Thanks to Matthew for taking these shots. What do all of you think of the building? To me, it has aspects of the Brutalist period of modern architecture that briefly flourished in the 1960s and '70s - big on concrete and a bit uninviting for a public building, but possessing a kind of simple grandness that is not without merit. People have similar mixed feelings of Boston City Hall, perhaps the most prominent of American City halls constructed in this period.

Whether these structures will stand the test of time with future generations is of course unknown, but we should never be hasty in tearing down 50-year-old buildings before a proper historical context has had the chance to present itself. Time and time again, generations seek to tear down half-century-old structures while heaping praise on 100-year-old ones: sometimes with proper justification, but too often with ill advised haste. Here's hoping, whether it's an actual city hall or takes on a new role, that Vancouver's government center sticks around, concrete an dall.

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Making historic preservation (hopefully) part of the 2035 Plan

Ecotrust Natural Capital Center (photo by Brian Libby)

BY FRED LEESON

A couple dozen of Portland’s top advocates for neighborhood and historic preservation spent a few hours on May 20 trying to tell city planners about preservation issues that should be included in the city’s unfolding Central City 2035 plan.

Whether the planners were listening is another matter.

Indeed, a variety of public symposia have been unfolding since last June, without any detailed discussion of preservation’s role. And last week’s meeting might never have happened without lobbying from the preservation community.

Chet Orloff, a prominent Portland historian and chair of a citizen advisory group, called the session “by far the most informative” of the symposia so far. “I want to make sure this is a strong element of the Central City plan,” he said at the conclusion.

The city’s emphasis, however, is more about growth than it is about preservation and respect for context. “Achieving density for economic and housing goals is essential,” said Troy Doss, a city planner. “I’m not going to lie to you….no-build is not an option.”

Memorial Coliseum (photo by Brian Libby)

None of the preservation advocates was pushing no-build, however. Instead, they talked about how some city policies work against preservation, and about steps the city could take to encourage preservation as well as sensitive infill. Key issues they raised included:

• Assistance for bracing unreinforced masonry buildings. Without seismic bracing, Nicholas Starin, a city planner warned, “Historic areas are what’s going to be reduced to rubble.” Jack Bookwalter, a retired preservation planner who spent much of his career in California, said that state is far ahead of Oregon in offering grants loans and tax abatement for seismic bracing. Anne Naito Campbell, whose family owns several properties in Old Town, said they recently sold one because renovation costs were prohibitive. “You can make all the rules you want,” she said, “but if you can’t afford to do it, you’re going to have a lot of vacant, dangerous buildings.”

• Zoning height revisions. Patricia Gardner, a Pearl District activist, said base zone heights for new buildings are unrealistic in historic districts. She cited a 350 maximum height in Old Town and a 175 permissible maximum in the Pearl. She said those heights are “completely disconnected from the historic fabric,” and put additional development pressure on low-scale historic buildings. She also urged the city to push for density increases in areas with less historical significance, such as the Lloyd District.

• An updated historic resources inventory. Portland’s existing historic inventory dates to the middle 1980s. City boundaries have expanded greatly since then, and a whole new generation of modern architecture has become “historic” within the 50-year rules of the National Park Service. Paul Falsetto, a member of the AIA’s historic resources committee, said Portland has national models in buildings by notables such as Pietro Belluschi and Skidmore Owings Merrill. “We need to be extraordinarily mindful of those buildings,” he said.

• Design guidelines. Advocates said older design guidelines in historic districts that have them need to be updated, and that guidelines need to be developed for historic districts that lack them. There are no city funds available now or ostensibly in the near future to do that work. Christine Yun, an architect working on a proposed Buckman Historic District, suggested that citizens could be encouraged to do the planning legwork for review and possible adoption by the city.

• Cultural sensitivity. Advocates said planners need to recognize the city’s diverse cultural history, even if the buildings are not outstanding architectural landmarks. Cathy Galbraith, director of the Bosco-Milligan Foundation, has developed an extensive inventory of buildings significant in the city’s African-American history that could be threatened by future highway and other development. Denyse McGriff, one of two Oregon advisors to the National Trust for Historic Preservation, said the city needs to start recognizing the importance of its Hispanic population, too.

• Public resources. Peter Meijer, a former member of the Portland Landmarks Commission, said the city government needs to be a better steward of its own historic buildings, monuments, fountains and parks. The Parks Bureau has done a survey of its significant architectural resources, but many other city bureaus have not. Meijer, who was driving force behind placing Memorial Coliseum on the National Register of Historic Places, also noted that he is completing a similar application for the neo-historic Portland Building designed by Michael Graves.

Comments from the May 20 session will be reduced to writing and a follow-up meeting has been scheduled for June 17. “Obviously, there is a lot to chew on,” said Starin, one of the planners. Doss seemed less concerned about what he’d heard. “One of the things that really struck me,” he said in his concluding remarks, “is that buildings now considered landmarks were inconsistent with the fabric around them when they were built.” He cited the Coliseum and the Portland Building as examples. “We have to be mindful that we have to balance those things.”

A draft plan is expected in the fall, and could be headed for City Council consideration sometime next year.

Fred Leeson is a Portland journalist and president of the Bosco-Milligan Foundation and its Architectural Heritage Center.

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MulvannyG2's Jerry Lee, Presidential Volunteer Service Award recipient, talks about giving back

Jerry Lee (image courtesy MulvannyG2)

BY BRIAN LIBBY

One day he's a Portland kid delivering newspapers and the next, a few decades later, he's being recognized by President Obama as a leading example of serving his community. The recipe for his success? "If you’re benevolent and kind, it pays back," Jerry Lee said in a recent phone interview.

MulvannyG2 Architecture’s Seattle-based Chairman of the Board, Lee received a 2011 Gold Level Presidential Volunteer Service Award presented by the President's Council on Service and Civic Participation. “Your volunteer service demonstrates the kind of commitment to your community that moves America a step closer to its great promise,” Obama stated in his congratulatory letter to Lee.

Lee, who originally hails from Portland and studied at the University of Oregon, has logged more than 500 hours of community service in the last 12 months alone. He is a member of Seattle Children’s Hospital Foundation’s “Circle of Care” and as a board member of the College Success Foundation. He is a board member for Susan G. Komen for the Cure, The Martinez Foundation, and the Bellevue Arts Museum. Lee also actively supports the Seattle Art Museum and Communities in Schools/Seattle, as well as Kin On Community Health Care and Nikkei Concerns, both elderly care facilities serving the Pacific Northwest.

Lee says his father first taught him the value of generosity. "We lived at Second and Yamhill and my dad had a grocery store there for 35 years," he recalls. "It was basically full of pensioners. I remember my mother getting upset at my father at all the IOUs in the register. Dad pretty much fronted the bill until their Social Security checks came. When hungry people came in, dad gave them food to eat. Sometimes at our dinner table there were transients. In the 35 years they had their business, they never were robbed once. There was no graffiti. I’ve always felt that dad’s goodwill was a kind of halo that was protected around the store. I think that kind of philosophy was what I took in the business world."

Rendering of Gashora Girls Academy site plan

Mulvanny G2, for which Lee has worked for more than 35 years, has designed numerous pro-bono projects over the years. The latest example is the Gashora Girls Academy in Rwanda, which opened in February. An upper-secondary boarding school for 270 girls, In addition to offering high quality college-prep academics, the Gashora Girls Academy is focused on eliminating the impediments that exist to girls receiving an education. They are provided nutritious meals, mental and emotional support, access to healthcare, and a supportive learning environment with optimal conditions for assuring their future success. The 30-acre campus overlooks Lake Milayi and includes student dormitories, a dining hall with attached kitchen, science and technology labs, an art/mixed media center, and sports fields.

So what made Lee want to become an architect? Why was design the route to carrying on the benevolence he saw in his father?

"When I was a kid down at Shattuck school, I had a friend, an immigrant from Hong Kong. We hung out a lot together, but he never invited me to his home," Lee remembers. "In the seventh grade I finally went over there, to a place at Second and Alder. On the second floor there was this big floor space, and all these immigrants had plywood sheets that they lived on temporarily maybe 10 by 12 feet. My friend and his sister and mother and father lived there. I was just appalled. I came back and told my mom, 'I want to become an architect and design homes for immigrant housing when I grow up.' That’s what started my path."

When Lee first started at Mulvanny as a draftsman in the 1980s, "I ran the blueprint machine and swept the floors, at the bottom of the totem pole," he recalls. Today, as a head of the firm, he is far from a top-down leader. He says his Asian heritage, viewed through his parents' example, was about hard work as well as family. "We’ve always blended our culture with our business practice," he explains. "Finance and profits are all good, but I think we take a different philosophy: that if you do the job right, profits are a byproduct."

That starts with a happily company family. "We have breakfast every Friday morning together. I think it’s important we break bread together with our co-workers. You’re never going to sit with the same guy every Friday. We try to make them like ‘Family Feud’ or ‘Hollywood Squares’ or ‘Survivor’. We’ve even taught the Macarena and had lessens in setting places at the table. We try to get together for bowling, or a ball game. It’s important to involve the family, including spouses. I think because of it we have a tendency to work together. The Chinese philosophy says if you put a bundle of sticks together you can’t break it like you could just one stick. Together we can make mountains move."

Redmond City Hall (image courtesy Public Art 4 Culture)

Still, Jerry Lee seems to be an extra big stick. Or, to mix metaphors with help from Reggie Jackson, Lee may be the straw that stirs the drink. Certainly there are projects for which he holds pride as an architect. In our conversation, Lee cited projects like Redmond City Hall, and talked about how the firm has expanded continually over the years, including an office in his hometown that has designed a number of award-winning projects.

Yet it always comes back to his giving spirit - not just a convenient giving, but one with true force and meaning. Consider a final story from Lee:

“I had an Ichiro signed baseball bat I got in 2001, which I loved. But my dad says if you give something to charity, it should be something you treasure, not just something you’re looking to get rid of. So I donated it to Komen Foundation for an auction fundraiser. It raised $1,000. Not long after that, a friend of mine gave me a birthday present. It was a signed jersey from Wayne Gretzky, the world’s greatest hockey player. He wanted to give something back that was as good as the Ichiro bat. But the year after I donated that jersey to Komen  and it raised $10,000. USA Today was part of the sponsorship campaign that year, and they printed a picture of the jersey. Six months later I got this big box in the mail, and it was a signed jersey and a letter from Wayne Gretzky saying, you can’t give this one away.’”

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PSU, partnering with Paris school, wins grant to build Haiti orphanages

An orphan in Haiti (photo by Jan Sochor)

BY BRIAN LIBBY

The Partner University Fund, an initiative of the French Embassy of the US to promote innovative collaborations in research and education between French and American universities, has selected for funding a proposed three-year partnership between Portland State University's Department of Architecture and the Ecole Speciale d’Architecture de Paris.

The $485,000 grant will allow the two schools to collaboratively design and build two orphanages in Haiti during the first two years of the partnership. The third year of the partnership will feature a cultural and educational exchange in which Portland State University architecture and engineering students will study at the Ecole in Paris and the Parisian students will come to Portland, involving approximately 140 students.

Haiti was chosen as the focus of the collaboration because of the need for rebuilding in the earthquake-ravaged country, and both programs will bring unique strengths and specialties that are expected to complement each other: the Ecole Special d’Architecture de Paris specializes in emergency architecture, and the Department of Architecture of Portland State University focuses on field work and community engagement.

Ecole Speciale d'Architecture, Paris (photo courtesy Wikipedia Commons)

The Ecole Speciale d'Architecture was founded in 1865 by engineer Emile Trélat as reaction against the educational monopoly of Beaux-Arts architecture. Since its beginning, the school has included innovative courses such as domestic hygiene and urban public health. It was officially recognized as providing "public utility" in 1870, and recognized by the state as an institution of higher education in 1934. Notable students and staff have included Robert Mallet-Stevens, who was with Le Corbusier widely regarded as the most influential figure in French architecture in the period between the two World Wars; Farah Pahlavi, wife of the former Shaw of Iran; and August Perret, whose post-WWII reconstruction of Le Havre in Paris was declared by UNESCO one of the World Heritage Sites.

On the PSU side, the initiative continues the work of professor Sergio Palleroni, who previously was awarded the American Institute of Architects 2011 Latrobe Prize for a research proposal looking into the role architects play in public interest projects.

“This is a wonderful recognition of Sergio's initiatives and the enthusiasm he has brought to the outreach efforts that distinguish the architecture program at PSU," John Blumthal, principal at Yost Grube Hall architects and a board member for Architects without Borders. "I believe the student experiences made possible by this grant will influence the life-long direction of professional careers and provide these prospective architects a global perspective for their work that they would not gain in any other way.”

"This project has Sergio's name written all over it: the innovative design of the curriculum to meet a tremendous and urgent need, the dense cultural and design experience afforded to the students, and an implicit trust in everyone involved," said Megan McMorran, Director of Programming/Operations, Action Center at Mercy Corps.

The award, and Palleroni's continuing efforts, also indicate a broader identity in design and art for which Portland State University is distinguishing itself. PSU professor and acclaimed artist Harrell Fletcher has quickly upped the reputation of the school's art department through his focus on art as social practice: not just making objects or installations in galleries or public spaces, but using art and artful thinking to stimulate conversations and highlight a wide spectrum of social needs. It's an ideal fit for Portland, where we lack a sizable old-money class to invest in art and design, but have carved out a different kind of currency through connections and social awareness.

What's more, the partnership between PSU's architecture department, a decade ago fighting for its very right to exist, and a prestigious institution like the Ecole Speciale d’Architecture de Paris will only enhance the reputation of this university, which is now evolving from a middling commuter school to an urban university at the forefront of a worldwide conversation about design, art and the roles they play.

Spelling out a second attempt in the Alphabet District

Rendering of revised 21st & Flanders project (courtesy Myhre Group)

BY FRED LEESON

A Beaverton developer hoping to pack more than two dozen apartments on a 5,000 square- foot lot in Northwest Portland’s historic Alphabet District has changed design teams and given a preliminary look at the revised plan to the city’s Historic Landmarks Commission.

Dennis Sackhoff, head of Creston Homes LLC, dropped the Lake Oswego-based OTAK firm and hired Myhre Group after the commission criticized Sackhoff’s first plan last December. The new version proposes 26 units on the site at 2124 N.W. Flanders St., down slightly from 28 in the first plan.

The Myhre Group plan, outlined by one of its principals, Don Sowieja, appears to have a better chance of winning a green light from the commission, which is charged with making sure that new developments are “compatible” with the historic district.

The previous plan for the site

The original OTAK plan showed an unusual side entry, which allowed room for 28 units, the maximum allowed by the zoning code. The revised version offers a traditional central entry as part of a symmetrical facade facing on Flanders. The new version includes a brick face, double-hung windows and a simple but traditionally-styled cornice atop the third story.

“We looked at it afresh,” Soweija told the commission at an informal design advice meeting on May 9. His presentation included a detailed packet showing numerous apartment buildings of larger, smaller and comparable size, mostly standing cheek-to-jowl in the historic district.

Indeed, side setbacks will be the key issue assuming that Sackhoff seeks formal approval. City zoning rules mandate setbacks as wide as 14 feet, depending on the size of the side walls. On a 50 by 100 lot, that would leave designers with only 22 feet to work with.

Sowieja’s plan calls for setbacks as narrow as 5 feet and as wide as 8 feet, a pattern that he says is consistent in the neighborhood. But that thought rankles members of the Northwest District Association, which is among Portland’s most zealous neighborhood land-use watchdog groups. “It creates a canyon of shadows,” said Joy Strand, who lives two lots east of the proposed building. “No light gets into that slot.” She added that residents in neighboring buildings would have to keep their shades pulled to maintain privacy.

Don Genasci, a Northwest Portland architect and architecture professor, said contemporary residents want more natural light. He also said the proposed building would adversely affect the two older apartment buildings adjacent to it, making it “seriously as odds with preservation of the Northwest Alphabet District.”

The original building on the site (photo by Fred leeson)

In response to a commission question, Soweija said he never considered designing a building as narrow as 22 feet, but he said he “could show how it would not work” if the commission wanted such a study.

Widening the setbacks would eliminate the possibility of double-loaded central hallways, Soweija said, eliminating the symmetry that the commission seemed to want after examining the original proposal. Although no formal votes are taken at advisory meetings, Soweija appears likely to prevail on the setbacks once a formal application is filed.

If so, it means destruction for a much-modified and regrettably misunderstood house on the lot now. It was built for Nathan Simon, a Portland lawyer, in 1895, and backed up to a house built for his more prominent brother, Joseph Simon, that faces on N.W. Everett St., now nicely restored. Joseph Simon, who held titles as U.S. senator and Portland mayor, was one of the most notable Oregon political figures in the late 19th and early 20th Centuries. He headed the “Simon faction” of the Republican Party, which battled fiercely against the “Mitchell faction” headed by John H. Mitchell, who also served – ignominiously in the end – in the U.S. Senate.

In their era, senators were elected by state legislators, not by popular vote. Historians view the Simon-versus-Mitchell battles as heavily corrupt by modern standards, which led reformers to pass the “Oregon System “ in which the public voted in “advisory” elections for senators. Rather than jamb their thumbs in the eyes of voters, legislators went along with the advisory results. The system helped lead to passage of the 17th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution in 1913 that provided for direct election.

Mike Ryerson, a Northwest Portland historian and journalist, said proponents of the historic district adopted in 1988 missed the significance of the Nathan Simon house, and had the wrong year of its construction. As a result, it was listed as a “non-contributing” building in the district, which allows demolition without any public review.

The house was modified several times over the decades, although it retains some of its original details. Today it contains 17 rental units, some as small as 100 square feet.

The new building as now proposed would contain 26 studio and one-bedroom apartments, ranging in size from 300 to 520 square feet on three floors above a daylight basement. “Although they are small,” Soweija said, “they are not microscopic in our view.”

Back in December, when the landmarks commission criticized the first plan, the developer make remarks critical of both the commission and the neighborhood association watchdogs. For whatever reason, Sackhoff did not attend the May 9 hearing.

Fred Leeson is a Portland journalist and president of the Bosco-Milligan Foundation and its Architectrual Heritage Center.

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Crossroads of city and nature: discussing "The Forest At Fountainbleu" at PAM

"The Forest At Fountainbleu" (1864) by Virgile Narcisse Diaz de la Peña

BY BRIAN LIBBY

This Thursday (May 12) at 6PM at the Portland Art Museum, as part of the continuing Artist Talk series - in which local artists choose a work from the permanent collection that he or she loves and discusses why - I will have the honor of talking about a painting called "The Forest At Fountainbleu" by the French artist Virgile Narcisse Diaz de la Peña. Past speakers in the Artist Talk series have included Storm Tharp, MK Guth, Arcy Douglass, Jeff Jahn, Nan Curtis, Matt McCormick, Kristan Kennedy, Namita Wiggers, Jelly Helm and Jeffry Mitchell.

Although its exact year of provenance seems unknown (it is listed as 1864 in the museum, 1854 or 1859 in other academic sources), the painting has an arresting power over me. Although it's truly contemporary art in the Jubitz Center that attracts most of my attention, from the abstract desert views of local virtuoso James Lavadour to the blocky prints of Ellsworth Kelly and kaliedoscopic provocations by Gilbert & George, I always make a special stop in the museum's Belluschi Building to see this painting.

I hesitate to go into too much explanation in this post, on the eve of the museum talk. But perhaps it's worth noting that a central aspect of my love for "The Forest At Fountainbleu" is how it seems to lie at numerous types of intersections. In art history, it is part of the Barbizon School of French landscape paintings, a precursor to Impressionism that was similarly based on painters painting in open air before their subjects, abandoning the symbolism of meticuous academic painting from previous centuries for a kind of snapshot-style that relies more on the immediate surroundings - not unlike photography, which was becoming promenent for the first time during these same years.

The Barbizon painters, such as Theodore Rousseau and Diaz, most often painted in or near the Fountainbleu Forest. It was far enough outside Paris to bring a communion with nature, but close enough to visit with only an hour or two of travel - a close getaway. And you see this in Diaz's painting at the Portland Art Museum. In the center of the frame is a rickety dirt road leading to the horizon, bracketed by trees. Although firmly part of the broader Romantic movement, it's not as idealistic and manicured a version of nature as an English painter like John Constable might have chosen. You see nature in its beauty but also how it is being impacted by the encroach of development. And it's not a fuzzy soft-focused work of Impressionism either, even though its simplicity - the almost T shape of the central road and the horizon line - possesses a hint of abstraction.

This tension or dichotomy betwen nature and city has always been a particular area of interest for me. I grew up in a small Oregon town, McMinnville (which was then more of a truly tiny agricultural town, not tourist friendly wine country), and then at age 18 attended college at New York University.

Farm outside McMinnville, Oregon, 1994 (photo inferior to "Fountainbleu" by Brian Libby)

When I arrived in Manhattan that first freshman fall in 1990, it was my first time in the city. I'd never bothered (or been able) to visit first before choosing the school, so it was a veritable plunge into the deep end of urbanity's pool without quite knowing how to swim. In the long run it turned out to be the best thing I ever did, but in the short run it made for a culture shock that gave way to a romantic yearning for Oregon that I'd never had in all the years of backpacking with my parents through the Cascades growing up. Yet when I finally did return to pastoral McMinnville, it felt too small and isolated, with no good pizza or movie theaters or galleries. So that push-pull between the thrilling energy and vibrant cultural melting pot of a city and the nurturing, even spiritual beauty of nature is one that has always resonated with me deeply. "The Forest At Fountainbleu" speaks directly to this.

The Thursday talk goes from 6 to 8PM, but I don't expect to be talking for even half that time. Happy hour refreshments will be served by the good people at PAM, and hopefully I'll have the chance to listen as much as speak when it comes to "Fountainbleu", its inspirations and effects.

Oregon Sustainability Center team seeks feedback on schematic design [updated]

Oregon Sustainability Center final schematic design

BY BRIAN LIBBY

The design team for the Oregon Sustainability Center, led by GBD Architects and SERA Architects with Gerding Edlen Development, has released schematic designs for the approximately $64 million, eight-story project. They are seeking public comment for the design, including an event this Wednesday (May 11) 6PM, at the AIA Center For Architecture. The final design is expected to be approved in August or September.

As highlighted in the OSC's executive summary, the project’s mission is "to create a world-class center of excellence in sustainability that celebrates and nurtures the values and strengths of Oregon’s leadership in climate change, land use planning, smart growth, green building, environmental stewardship, civic engagement and social justice." It will be home to a variety of non-profit, government, academic and business tenants who are working to promote sustainability. Public spaces on the first and second floors will also serve as exhibit space, to "tell the story of the region’s innovations in sustainable technologies, policies and practices. Lecture halls, classrooms and conference rooms on the second floor will support higher education, as well as networking for public, private and academic purposes." Lower levels will also include a visualization lab, which will "bring together researchers and community groups to solve regional issues in an experiential way."

Lobby of OSC as rendered in schematic design

Jill Sherman, project manager for Gerding Edlen, told Sustainable Business Oregon that comments collected will be considered and incorporated during the design and development process before construction begins on the building. "There's still quite a bit of design work to do before we're through," Sherman added.

The project is designed to meet strictures of the Living Building Challenge, although it will not be the first in Portland. That designation goes to the vastly less expensive June Key Delta Center in North Portland.

Besides finalizing the design, the OSC is still ironing out a number of agreements, such as co-ownership between the Oregon University System and the City of Portland, and added fundraising for the project from corporate sponsors and other  sources. Financing for the OSC will  come from tax-increment financing and bonds, new market tax credits, Energy Trust contributions, as well as the various parties' budgets.

Oregon Sustainability Center final schematic design

Given that the designers explicitly have asked for feedback, readers here are extra encouraged to write in with likes and dislikes about the project.

Personally, I like the look of these schematic designs vastly, vastly more than what earlier renderings showed. In the past, the Oregon Sustainability Center seemed as if it was destined to resemble a gigantic lipstick container with a fake leaf on top. The cringe-inducing aesthetics seemed like a threat to the entire endeavor, undermining all the innovative work done by a talented integrated design team with some of the best sustainable building expertiese and experience in the world.

Aesthetics, when extrapolated and considered only on their own, can sometimes seem superficial. But they're just not. We have to be inspired spiritually and emotionally by both our natural and physical environments. It's why beautiful regions like the Northwest with young cities like Seattle and Portland are so much more attractive to millions of Americans who have decided to leave rust-belt cities like Cleveland and Detroit. Similarly, if you build the greenest building in the world and it's inescapably ugly, people won't want to congregate there.

Oregon Sustainability Center final schematic design

A few weeks ago, I had the opportunity to interview one of the pioneers of the green building movement in America, Bob Berkebile of BNIM Architects in Kansas City, for a  profile in Architecture Week magazine. Berkebile was a contributor to the formation of the US Green Building Council's LEED system that is commonplace today, and a leading thinker about design who regularly speaks to architects and builders all over the world. Berkebile, to my mild surprise, agreed that the importance of aesthetic beauty has in the past been too eschewed, as if the fundamental balance of form and function no longer mattered in the quest to end global warming. But that's changing.

"I think we can no longer accept either side of that equation," Berkebile said. We just have to define design and beauty more holistically than we did before. The starchitects have to accept doing beautiful buildings with high performance. And the people in the green building community have to realize if a building doesn’t touch your heart and soul, you’re not going to get the level of change we need."

"A lot of the early high performance buildings were ugly," Berkebile adds. "And so there was, for a  time, a reaction from great designers saying, 'See? Who wants that? We want a beautiful building.' I hold the belief that if a building is designed such that it does damage upstream or downstream, if it doesn’t generate its own energy and so forth, it’s not beautiful. The trick, I think, is how can we design in such a way that the first reaction someone has is to say, ‘beautiful.’ Then they discover that it’s a great place to be. They get all the data and discover it generates more energy and clean water than it needs. The transparency allows you to see more of the building’s operating systems than we do. It would be a little like the difference between being on a powerboat versus a sailboat. You see all the moving parts on a sailboat and you get a real sense of the relationship to the water and the wind. In a way I think that’s the kind of elegance we’re reaching for."

An earlier-stage design rendering of the OSC

The Oregon Sustainaibility Center now has a chance to more fully complete and live up to the promise of its innovative functional capacity. It's not only set to be one of the most energy and water-efficient buildings in the world, but its schematic design shows a much more compelling form. Gone is the impression of a rote office tower with stilts at the bottom and an oversized roof on top.

Now the renderings illustrate a conglomeration of offices and public spaces draped in glass and a living wall, each side different from the other in order to address different solar orientation and other aspects of climate and topography. It incoporates a streetcar moving through its base not with the sense of something removed to make way, but instead as a kind of nimble dancer that is perched and placed tightly yet elegantly. And one gets a stronger sense of a center to the building, particularly on the ground floor, that floods the building with natural light.

There may still be room for improvement. The curves have given way to some sharp angles, and the overall composition is still busy. And I remain disappointed that the OSC didn't select an existing building to renovate instead of favoring new constrution - somthing  like the Solomon Federal Courthouse or the US Customs House, both of which could have been had for cheap and are gorgeous historical works of architecture in need of saviors. After all, renovating existing buildings will always be more sustainable than starting from scratch. In that respect, even upon receiving the coveted Living Building designation, the OSC will not be as sustainable as it could have been. Would there have been perhaps fewer innovations to make technologically in that prescribed old-building shell? Maybe. Yet this project, after all, is supposed to be about innovation. Why not figure out how to re-imagine our existing building stock as net-zero? And besides, between historic buildings rigidly preserved according to how they were built, and old buildings that get torn down, there needs to be a happy medium wherein aged architecture is reconfigured as a hybrid of past and future.

Yet the OSC team has already shown a remarkable openness to feedback and an ability to improve, and for that kudos are due. Even if we get architecture more impressive in its performance than its look, the OSC has made impressive strides in more completely fulfilling the equation that Berkebile cites, one that remains, as ever in architecture, an indivisible relationship between how it works and how it touches us.

NOTE: The aerial shot of the Oregon Sustainability Center was replaced with a newer image after the original posting.

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Masterpiece on Skyline Boulevard: visiting the Watzek House

Watzek House living room (photo by Brian Libby)

BY BRIAN LIBBY

The occasion was a first-ever public tour of the Aubrey Watzek house in Portland's West Hills as part of its ranking atop Portland Monthly magazine's greatest homes list. The moment was something greater: a coming out party, and a time to marvel at a spectacularly sublime work of architecture that too many locals haven't had the chance to know, let alone visit.

Built in 1937, the Watzek House was designed by a brilliant, 25-year-old high-school dropout: John Yeon. It would go on to be twice exhibited at New York's Museum of Modern Art. Initially, credit for the design was erroneously given to Pietro Belluschi and the firm he headed, the office of late Portland architect A.E. Doyle. The Belluschi/Doyle office had acted as architect of record because Yeon, always an iconoclast, never wanted an office of his own. Yeon was an outsider all his career and life, forgoing the traditional rise up the ranks that Belluschi later took in order to forge his own fusion of architeture, landscape and construction. Yeon never became as famous as Belluschi, but the Watzek is an enduring reminder that he was arguably Portland's most all-time talented designer.

The Watzek House not only had the honor of the MoMA exhibition, but in 1974 it became only the second house in America - after Frank Lloyd Wright's Fallingwater - to be added to the National Register of Historic Places before the traditional fifty-year "historic" threshhold had been reached. It's that good.

Watzek House east facade (photo by Brian Libby)

Make no mistake, though: despite the drama inherent to its eastern facade, where a floor-to-ceiling glass wall gives way to thin exterior columns beneath a pitched roof perfectly in symmetry with Mt. Hood, this is not a lavish mansion by today's standards. Instead, it's a quintessentially modest Northwest home that draws from Japanese and Scandinavian architecture even as its wood and courtyard and form embody its American and regional agricultural roots - the plain old farm barn.

"Architects, if they didn't do an out-right violent, modern building, they would do some little thing that would show that they respected their-- they'd put a little dormer, maybe or something, just tip their hats slightly to the tradition into which they were intruding," Yeon said in a 1983 oral history interview with the Smithsonian. "And, it's absolute nonsense to me. If it was really an important environment, with continuity, I would do all-out, every effort, to be as inconspicuous as possible. And that doesn't mean it has to be dull."

The tour I attended last Saturday was led by Richard Brown, who lived in the Watzek House for 38 years before bequeathing it to the University of Oregon. He couldn't accept the risk that someone might buy and change the house after his death (Brown is 75). So as of 2009, the house is owned by the University of Oregon. Until now it has remained off limits to the public. But UO has announced it will soon begin giving monthly tours. This is a great gift for Portland, for it has much to teach and inspire.

Watzek House courtyard and bedroom (photos by Brian Libby)

The Watzek House is an early modernist residence that eschews the boxiness of modern architects emerging at the time such as Mies Van Der Rohe (whose landmark Barcelona Pavilion dates to 1929) and Walter Gropius. Its pitched roof is both a practical and stylistic refutation: flat roofs in Oregon generally leak rainwater. But the decision also gives the house a Scandinavian feel, which was one of Yeon's most pronounced influences - he visited Sweden, Czekoslovakia and Germany before embarking on the design, and pronounced Stockholm his favorite. The pronounced use of wood inside and out reflects that tradition, as well as the Northwest's. That said, the house is no closed off cabin either. Floor to ceiling glass, particularly in the living room and dining room, provides a dramatically cinematic view - looking out at Mt. Hood from one and getting an up-close view of the surrounding trees in the other.

As explained in a case study of the Watzek produced by the University of Oregon, "The exterior walls of the living part of the house are fir siding on a balloon frame stud wall. The garage is made of 4x6 nominal T&G lumber, stacked horizontally and held in place with steel pins. The exterior finish is translucent, and enhances the silver-gray color of the naturally aged wood. The interior finishes vary by room, but are different species of wood and plaster. The composition of the house is a series of rooms, arranged by function and degree of privacy, around a garden courtyard which is full of native plants."

The house is also remarkably innovative. It includes double-pane windows, which had scarcely even been invented in the mid-1930s. Yeon also made the innovative decision to place cupboard like vents in the wall, separate from the glass, that fold out discretely to bring in outside air; this would become a Yeon trademark that also found its way into Pietro Belluschi-designed homes. Gutters and downspouts are also hidden from view in order to preserve the integrity of the exterior forms.

Watzek House hallway and dining room (photos by Brian Libby)

When stepping into the dining room, my mind suddenly flashed to the end of Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey, when an elderly Dave Bowman (Kier Dullea) is shown in a kind of gilded cage provided by the unseen aliens: antique furniture atop a glowing white glass floor. Usually modern houses come with modern furniture: a Barcelona chair, an Eames lounge, perhaps an Arne Jacobsen egg chair. In the Watzek House, though, there are antiques. And the juxtaposition works surprisingly well. I think it's because Yeon's design sense, as well as the time in which the house was designed, seemed less of an outright reinvention than international-style modernism and more of a handed baton from the past into the future.

Like Frank Lloyd Wright, Yeon wanted to control not only the design but the interiors and furnishings - every detail a client would allow. He even chose the fabric for the curtains. The result is not some monomaniacal act, but a synthesis. Every last detail of this house is part of the unified whole. I noticed this most of all in the exquisite living room, where square wood panels in alternating grain patterns extend up the wallsto form the ceiling. That whole room feels not so much like interior architeture as an art installation.

Yeon being Yeon, the landscape outside the house is as important as the house. On the east facade with the Hood view, for example, the hill slopes downward so as to reveal the Watzek with added drama and more of a panoramic vista. In the courtyard, a pond and natural plantings add serenity. " I remember in grammar school," Yeon says in the oral history, "we had to stand up and give a little talk on what we were going to be when we grow up and I think I said I might be an artist or a florist." He also explored set design as a young student, as if architecture is truly an orchestration of nature, building and natural drama.

Watzek east facade (photo by Brian Libby)

"They're all kinds of things make a difference in the architecture from one place to another and one time to another, but there's always been regional differences," Yeon adds. "Architecture in Denver doesn't look like the architecture in Portland, or Kansas City and so on. That's not what interests me, that isn't what I mean by regional architecture. Those are inevitable changes from living conditions or economy or even climate. But I insist on thinking that it's a deliberate effort to interpret the specific landscape. In that, I may be way out on a limb by myself, but that's what is thrilling to me."

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An urban barn raising

MFA students from PNCA/OCAC barn building (photo by Brian Libby)

BY BRIAN LIBBY

The very phrase seems somehow so very Portland, as if would inspire writers for the Portlandia TV show to immediately stand up and take notice: an urban barn raising.

That was the event I attended Saturday at the Bison Building, headquarters for the MFA program in Applied Craft and Design offered jointly by the Pacific Northwest College of Art and the Oregon College of Art & Craft. The barnraising - both the construction and the collaboration necessary to pull it off - was headed by grad student Billy Rueck.

How do you build a barn inside a building? Well, it was a small barn and a big building. The Bison, located on NE 10th Avenue near Glisan, consists of two warehouses next to each other. In one warehouse, a vast empty space allows students and faculty room to experiement. The other warehouse is a hive of different student studios. In one, I noticed an artist working with several reclaimed old teddy bears. From the ceiling was suspended a wood sculpture that seemed like a model of Noah's ark made with sticks, which turned out to be the result of a lesson from artist Patrick Dougherty, who designed the "nest" (a small meeting room made from woven sticks) at advertising agency Wieden + Kennedy. And in the back is an old Airstream trailer that serves as the office for JP Reuer, head of the MFA program.

Whiteboard diagram and wide view at Bison Biulding barn raising (photos by Brian Libby)

"Connecting design thinking to design doing," the program's website explains, the Applied Craft and Design MFA is grounded in hands-on making, entrepreneurial strategies, and social and environmental engagement." Students work one-on-one with "designers, makers, and scholars in a self-directed curriculum that challenges them to bring to life the full strength of their ideas and skills." It's a cross-disciplinary studio environment "in which the workshop is a lab to collaboratively explore design and making processes."

As it happens, this Friday, May 6, the Applied Craft and Design program will be having an exhibit of first-year students'  work from 6-10PM, which includes Rueck's finished barn. The Bison Building is located at 421 NE 10th between Flanders and Glisan.

Barn raisings, traditional ones at least, are interesting in they are half construction, half community event. Common in 18th and 19th century America and Canada, traditional barn raising were events in which everyone living in a small village would join together (often a mandatory act) to assemble a barn for one of its households. A barn was often the largest and first structure built by a new settling farm family, and the most expensive. And while not everyone participated in the design, the gathering of materials and other acts before the raising itself, these final-act raisings by an entire community helped create one of its initial and fundamental acts of social welfare.

Barn raising in DeKalb County, Indiana, 1900 (image courtesy Wikipedia Commons)

Contemporary popular culture has often ridiculed barn raisings as quintessentially antiquated acts, part of the accoutrements of agrarian society - particularly Amish and Menonnite ones - along with overalls, long beards and horse drawn buggies. Yet, like a modern Habitat for Humanity construction job rendered with time-lapse speed, a barn raising is a gift of labor to those in need.

It reminds me of a comment that political strategist James Carville makes in the D.A. Pennebaker documentary The War Room, about Bill Clinton's 1992 presidential race. Clinton has just won the presidency, and Carville, manager of the campaign, is thanking his staff in the Little Rock campaign headquarters. “Outside of love," he says, breaking into tears, "the most precious thing you can give of yourself is your labor…you people showed you could be trusted.”

MFA students, barn builders (photos by Brian Libby)

In the case of the urban barn raising I attended, it admittedly wasn't a highly populated community event. Only a few students, faculty and mentors were there in the Bison Building warehouse working on the project between bites of Voodoo Donuts. Yet if PNCA and OCAC indeed seek to provide a laboratory for collaboratively exploring design and making, reviving such old-time endeavor as a barn raising could not be more ideal. (That said, I do wish updating the MFA program blog was an equally focused endeavor. There was nothing about the barn raising on the site.)

Yes, today architectural design is more high-tech than ever. Frank Gehry started using CATIA software intended for NASA well over a decade ago. From e-coated glass to structurally insulated panels, building materials are rapidly becoming able to deliver efficiency and sustainability without compromising aesthetics. Yet there is also a parallel trend, a rediscovery of hands-on craft. It's not just for grandmothers making afghans, or hippies making clunky pottery and cobb benches.

That a student might build a barn with wood, hammers and nails, and a few fellow students, only twelve blocks from the river that bisects the center of a city of over a million, and then someday go on to work with sophisticated BIM (building-integrated management) design tools, is arguably the type of yin-yang we need on a broader scale: a future of invention that is rooted in the fundamental, always relevent lessons of the past.

 

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This one's for Minoru Yamasaki

World Trade Center from Empire State Building, 1998 (photo by Brian Libby)

BY BRIAN LIBBY

A few months after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, I had the opportunity to interview the celebrated architect Cesar Pelli, whose firm designed (among many other buildings) the World Financial Center, surrounding the World Trade Center.

Although Pelli professed understandable shock and horror at the destruction, when I asked him how he saw the New York skyline with the twin towers gone, his answer shocked me, even if it made a certain amount of sense:

"An interesting change has taken place," Pelli said in the ensuing Salon interview. "Up until September 11, the World Trade Center towers completely dominated the composition. Now that they're gone, you realize that this is still a composition of very large buildings. They just don't seem so tiny anymore. In some ways, all of those other buildings have gained a great deal by being restored to their previous relationship to each other and the city. So I have real mixed emotions. Of course it was a terrible act that caused their disappearance. But beyond that, I have to say I believe downtown Manhattan looks handsomer and more humane than it did before."

Certainly both then and now, Pelli knew more about architecture than I could ever hope to. And yet I couldn't dismiss a voice growing louder and louder in my mind, saying: "Bullshit!"

Last night as the world learned that Osama Bin Laden, mastermind of the 9/11 attacks, had been killed, I thought of the World Trade Center. It goes without saying, of course, that the real tragedy on that morning was the nearly 3,000 people killed in New York, Washington and Pennsylvania. Yet as an ex-New Yorker, I resented Pelli's assertion that the skyline was better off.

Throughout their nearly 30-year history, the World Trade Center towers drew a mix of responses from architects and the general populace. As the tallest buildings in a city of tall buildings, they stood out. They came to represent no only America's economic might, but also the sometimes blunt nature of modern architecture. The towers stood on a superblock, for example, that disrupted the integrity of New York's street grid. Critic Lewis Mumford described it and other new skyscrapers as "just glass-and-metal filing cabinets", and an "example of the purposeless giantism and technological exhibitionism that are now eviscerating the living tissue of every great city."

Yet I'd argue that both Pelli and Mumford were wrong. Mumford failed to see the World Trade Center towers' minimalist aesthetics as a juxtaposition against the detail of great buildings nearby like the Woolworth Building. Besides, the buildings were constructed in a time of great minimalist art; a blanker canvass does not denote missing artistry. That the WTC was more Donald Judd than Louis Sullivan were part of their genius. The towers were like a negative space that made one see the positive space with fresh eyes. Pelli also missed how the very height of the twin towers acted as a unifying force for the otherwise chaotic conglomeration of buidings. As novelist Don Delillo wrote in his landmark novel Underworld, the towers were a "…curtained sheer, of reflecting glass and anodized aluminum." Tall as the buildings were, they were a reflection of all that surrounded: a kind of mirror onto which our hopes and fears were projected. After all, that's why Al Qaeda selected them for attack.

Incidentally, this is also where I think the World Trade Center is, at least tangentially, relevant to a conversation about Portland Architeture. Several weeks ago I took a visitor from India on a tour of downtown. Upon coming to the Wells Fargo Tower, the city's tallest building, she asked why a work from 40 years ago was still unmatched in height. I told her that the Wells Fargo had inspired the city to enact a height limit, amidst fears that the city was being colonized by massive monoliths that didn't fit the local architectural vernacular and blocked views of Mt. Hood. Although a polite woman, I sensed she was stifling laughter. Why would a city restrict buidings to only about 50 stories? Wasn't that an over-reaction to midcentury skyscrapers? I found it hard to disagree. Portland is not a city conditioned geographically, or in terms of population, for 110-story buildings like the WTC. Our design genius lies in our small blocks and pedestrian orientation. But our insistence on the height limit feels to me a tad provincial.

The designer of the World Trade Center, a native of our Pacific Northwest region named Minoru Yamasaki, was born in 1912 in Seattle to first-generation Japanese immigrants. He graduated from Garfield High School and put himself through the University of Washington by working summers in Alaskan fish canneries, graduating in 1934. After receiving a master's in architecture at New York University (which is also, coincidentally, my alma-mater), he narrowly avoided being sent to a Japanese internment camp during World War II because of the protestations of the Detroit architecture firm he was working for at the time.

As Jane Hadley of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer wrote in an article shortly after the 9/11 attacks, Yamasaki favored a modernist style despite his love of traditional Japanese architecture because to him, "it represented serenity and world peace -- a tragic irony in light of Tuesday's destruction by terrorists of his most famous creation. He wanted the World Trade Center to be 'a monument to world peace' and said it should represent 'man's belief in humanity, his need for individual dignity, his beliefs in the cooperation of men and through cooperation, his ability to find greatness."

Minoru Yamasaki died of cancer in 1986; he did not live to see the World Trade Center destroyed by Osama Bin Laden's plan. As we prepare to recognize the 10th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, and today as we celebrate the killing of Bin Laden, I'd like to see his most prominent work of architecture take on a revised history, something that even the great architecture critics of their day could not see without a few decades of historical context: that these twin towers did not disrupt the urban fabric of New York: they embodied it.

"She found a hidden city above the grid of fever streets," Delillo writes in Underworld. "Ten million bobbing heads that ride above the tideline of taxi stripes , all brainwaved differently, and yes the street bounds in idiosyncrasy, in the human veer, but you have to go to the roof level to see the thing distinct, preserved in masonry and brass. She looked across the crowded sky of ventilators and antennas and suddenly there's a quirk, some unaccountable gesture that isolates itself."

“'I think of it as one, not two,' she said. 'Even though there are clearly two towers. It’s a single entity, isn’t it?'”