Portland Architecture

Record 6 projects receive top honors at AIA Portland Design Awards

Digital Animation Studio, an Honor Award winner (image courtesy Lever Architecture)

BY BRIAN LIBBY

Every year for the past decade as I've covered the annual AIA/Portland Design Awards, the top prize, known as the Honor Award, has gone to one or two projects. This year, however, the jury felt far more generous. A record six projects walked away last Thursday night with the night's biggest accolade.

The winners of the Honor Award were: (1) the Legacy Emmanuel Medical Center Central Utility Plant in Northeast Portland, designed by ZGF Architects; (2) the Early Childhood Development Center in Gresham, designed by Mahlum; (3) the Tandem duplex in Southeast Portland, designed by Works Partnership Architecture, (4) J-Tea teahouse in Eugene, designed by Benjamin Waechter; (5) the Digital Animation Building and Campus in Glendale, California, by Lever Architecture; and (6) the Bud Clark Commons in Portland by Holst Architecture.

Many of these firms have been honored before, some numerous times. ZGF, for example, won last year's Honor Award for the Jaqua Center in Eugene, and has received the same prize in years past for projects like the Doernbecher Children's Hospital at OHSU. To be honest, though, winning for a hospital utility plant rather than, say, ZGF's much acclaimed Port of Portland headquarters, much have been a surprise even to the firm.

"A real achievement architecturally for such a banal program," the jury said of the Emanuel plant. "Expertly executed at every level from siding down to the detail. Subtle and evocative use of light that animates the building at night. There was a real inventiveness in the use of standardized industrial materials."

Works Partnership's Tandem project (photo by Brian Libby)

Works Partnership has won a slough of awards for its unbuilt work as well as for its B-side6 building. Of the Tandem project, which this blog covered in depth earlier this year, the jury was enamored with its "clear, strong concept," adding, "One move has a dramatic impact in a split level house type. Adventuresome use of materials for both exterior and interior.  Wonderful interior detailing and use of perforated material. " Tandem also won this year's Mayor's Award for Design Excellence.

Holst, honored this year for the Bud Clark Commons, received a Merit Award last year last year for the Ziba World Headquarters, following awards in years past for projects like the Belmont Street Lofts and Clinton Condos.

Bud Clark Commons (photo by Brian Libby)

The jury said it was impressed "by the long and rigorous process by the architect, clients and community for this building type," applauding its "beautifully and cleverly composed elevation, using one window type to create a subtly dynamic façade."  Overall, they said the project was "carefully executed at every level with a light hand," and called the courtyard "an ingenious working component of the building as both social and architectural transition space. Uplifting."

Honor Award winner Ben Waechter has only been practicing in Portland with his own firm for a few years (he previously worked for Allied Works locally as well as the Renzo Piano Building Workshop in Italy), yet by my count all three of his major projects have won AIA awards, given that J-Tea's two predecessors, the Cape Cod House and the Z-Haus, both received recognition last year. And J-Tea, like Z-Haus, was featured prominently in Dwell magazine. Waechter has to be considered on of the top up-and-coming architects in the city.

Ben Waechter's J-Tea (image courtesy Dwell magazine)

Of J-Tea, the jury commented in their traditional series of run-on sentences, "A dramatic transformation of a typical bungalow into residential and commercial space. Only four components each rendered beautifully. The canopy, the porch, the tea-walls and the tea-bar are all equally and carefully considered in relationship to the experience of tea. A nice set of transitions between the street and the interior of the tea-bar.  The plainer quality of the assemblage makes it feel like you are walking through the layers of a painting. Lively and light with minimal means."

Mahlum, the Honor Award winner for Gresham's Early Child Development Center, won a Sustainability Award last year for Hayes Freedom High School in Camas, Washington; the firm, even after Rick Potestio's departure, has established itself as a venerable leader in building green schools.

Lever Architecture, the one firm out of the five Honor Award winners winning this year for the first time, has more experience than this fact might indicate. Principal Thomas Robinson spent six years at Allied Works, the city's most acclaimed firm, including on projects like the AIA award-winning University of Michigan Museum of Art. Before that, Robinson was a senior project architect for what may be the top architecture firm in the world, Herzog & de Meuron of Basel Switzerland, where he led the development of the innovative perforated copper façade and tower structure for the New De Young Museum in San Francisco.

"Fantastic transformation of a common industrial building," the jury wrote of Lever's Animation Building. "The projected benefited from careful tectonic analysis. There is a beautiful choreography of light and space, which manifests itself that is smart and clear and ready to be abused by the animation geeks. We also like the reuse of the recycled gym floor for the floors and walls."

This year's jury also awarded five second-tier Merit Awards to five projects: (1) the Two Story Four Square house in Boise by Heide Beebe and Doug Skidmore; (2) the School of Medicine Research Building at the University of California Riverside by SRG Partnership; (3) the Interchange residence in Portland by William Kaven Architecture; (4) Director Park in Portland by ZGF; and (5) BodyVox Dance Center in Portland by BOORA Architects.

Two Story Four Square in Boise (image courtesy Beebe Skidmore)

Of these winners, Beebe and Skidmore are the newest presence. They established their firm in 2007 and were honored this year for restoring and transforming a circa 1924 home prairie/craftsman-style home on the edge of a Boise historic district.

BOORA's win for BodyVox is seemingly well deserved, given how the firm restored an old industrial building on a low budget yet created a place with warmth, function and beauty. That said, it's a project that already competed in last year's AIA Design Awards. Such was also the case for projects like Tandem and J-Tea. This practice of allowing projects that don't win one year to compete again the next is a practice I'd like to see be discontinued.

Winning a Merit Award is a major validation, and the first AIA award, for William Kaven Architecture. The firm previously made its biggest plash as part of the 11 x Design Tour in 2009, which introduced many of the city's most talented young firms and architects such as Kaven, PATH Architecture, the now-defunct SEED Architecture Studio, Ben Waechter, Design Department, and Webster Wilson. Kaven's Interchange residence, located in the Overlook neighborhood of North Portland, is a gorgeous home oriented around a courtyard in the rear and showcasing the client's art collection.

William Kaven's Interchange Residence (photo by Brian Libby)

The third-tier Citation Award went to two projects: the Everett Community College Student Fitness Center in Everett, Washington, by SRG; and the James F. Miller Theater Complex at the University of Oregon in Eugene, designed by THA Architecture. SRG, as both of their awards this year indicates, has been a relatively frequent award winner over the years, and almost always for their educational facilities. THA winning an award is no shock; the firm has won countless AIA awards over time, such as an Honor Award for a new theater at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival in Ashland.

Two more special awards were given out. The Sustainaibilty Award went to Hennebery Eddy Architects for Portland Community College's new facility in Newberg, which is set to become the first net-zero energy educational building in Oregon, and the Craftsmanship Award went to a trio of architects - Randy Stegmeier, Ryan Yadan, and Jenn Ward - for the Quiet House, which the jury hailed for its "sublime" detailing and materials. Stegmeier works at ZGF and Ward at the very talented (but so far scarcely marketed) up-and-coming Firm 151.

Five project won unbuilt prizes. The Unbuilt Merit Award went to the Overton House in Portland by Works Partnership and the Bureau of Environmental Services' Columbia Boulevard Support Facility by Skylab Architecture. Both both firms have won many AIA awards over the years. One of the three Unbuilt Citation Awards was given to another new Portland firm, Architecture Building Culture, for the Lubavitch Center in Vancouver, British Columbia. Ben Waechter's Tower House was also honored, as was Works Partnership's North Mississippi Apartments.

Overall, the award winners overwhelmingly are comprised of two project types: residential and public buildings. With just a few exceptions such as J-Tea and the Digital Animation Building, almost every winner was either a house, multifamily housing, a health care facility, or an educational or government facility. Where is the private sector? If these awards are an accurate reflection of architectural quality, the corporate world of offices is laggging behind. Which is particularly amusing given that many in this demographic comprise the 1% controlling some 20-40% of the nation's wealth that Occupy protests around the nation are now addressing. Why are nonprofits, families and budget-strapped public sector entitites committing to quality design when they have fewer resources to do so?

Meanwhile, congratulations to all of this year's winning projects and architects.

 

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Wood be king: design awards jurors assess Portland style

Tingley-Fortin Residence (photo by John Jensen)

BY BRIAN LIBBY

Last night the trio of jurors presiding over this year's AIA/Portland Design Awards gave their annual Jury Critique presentation, beginning with a discussion of their own work and then moving on to observations about local architecture.

This year’s jury was an all-female affair, consisting of Merrill Elam of Mack Scogin Merrill Elam Architects in Atlanta, Lisa Iwamoto of Iwamoto Scott Architecture in San Francisco, and Vanessa Kassabian of Norwegian firm Snøhetta’s New York office.

Although Merrill broke from tradition by only discussing one of her firm’s projects, an unbuilt cultural and popular music performance venue in Taiwan, Iwamoto and Kassabian both demonstrated a compelling array of projects from their respective portfolios.

Snøhetta's World Trade Center memorial in New York (image courtesy DesignWire)

In particular, Snøhetta’s emergence from an Oslo firm with no American built work to a major presence in New York and beyond was of interest. The firm opened its Manhattan office after receiving the coveted commission for the World Trade Center Pavilion, the only building occupying the site of the former twin towers. Then Snohetta benefited from a kind of happy accident. “Originally the intent was to open as a project office for the World Trade Center,” Kassabian explained. But after the project faced numerous delays, “In order to keep the office open we’ve taken on other work. Now we have 14 projects underway.” Among these are an art school building at Bowling Green University in Ohio, a library at North Carolina State University, and a major expansion of the landmark Mario Botta-designed San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. Snøhetta proper has also designed acclaimed international projects like the Alexandria Library in Egypt.

Although her firm designs projects of all sizes from furniture prototypes to regional master planning, Iwamoto is an expert at digital fabrication and the author of a book called Digital Fabrications: Architectural and Material Techniques. “We look at the relationship of modularity and pattern to an overall surface,” she said. With training in both engineering and architecture, she has particularly explored how thin, light materials such as fabric and paper can be made to expand and contract, to be permeable and non-permeable depending on conditions and needs.

Although each year the out-of-town jury is hampered by a lack of time and experience seeing Portland, two of three had been to the city before. And they all had good things to say about local design.

“A lot of what we saw had exquisite craftsmanship,” Iwamoto said. “I was jealous coming from San Francisco: the budget here is often 200 a square foot, but the quality and material lushness for the budgets achieved is remarkable.”

Jurors Merrill Elam, Vanessa Kassabian, Lisa Iwamoto (images courtesy AIA/Portland)

“The architecture that’s coming out of Portland is very beautiful,” Kassabian added. “We have to commend you.”

If one attends the Jury Critique from year to year, it can be interesting to hear over time how different jurors from different cities arrive at similar conclusions. This jury, for example, noted (to put things in baseball terms) Portland ability to hit singles and doubles making up for its lack of home runs.

“At first there didn’t seem to be any super innovative project that popped out above the rest,” Iwamoto explained. “As we started digging more, the true innovation seemed to happen in the subtle innovations that made certain projects sing. It was more like a celebration of a natural material, or just doing enough and not going overboard. There were a tiny handful that were really experimenting with form.” The overall level of quality, the jurors agreed, was stellar, even if it wasn’t eye candy.

Most of all – and this of course is a common refrain from year to year – the trio was taken by how much wood they saw. “We were absolutely overwhelmed with the amount we saw at all scales,” Kassabian said, “from the structure to the interiors to the exteriors to the furniture.”

“In some cases wood takes on a language that is not unfamiliar but is beautifully done, the post and beam construction,” Iwamoto added. “Houses you start to expect to see more wood. But it started to become anything, we realized as we started looking through the portfolio. Even in the large institutional projects it was used selectively as a nice way of humanizing them. Do you guys all get together and swap your wood details? How do you know how to do all that?”

The jury’s next observation, however, was a politely delivered criticism. “I think the language of the projects followed a pretty modernist idiom, but there were only a tiny handful that were really experimenting with form,” Iwamoto said. At the time, the screen was displaying an exception to the rule: a house by Skylab Architecture. Although the jury never announces winners at the annual Critique Session, they did seem to display (in support of some of their positive comments) numerous projects by that firm as well as standout projects by Ben Waechter (the Tower House), Holst Architecture (Bud Clark Commons), BOORA (BodyVox dance studio), and ZGF (the Port of Portland headquarters).

The jury also had especially kind words for public buildings, such as the Bud Clark Commons and the renovation of Portland State University’s Lincoln Hall. “We were amazed by the integrity and the quality of publicly funded projects,” Iwamoto said. “We started to wonder what is going on here in terms of wise public officials shepherding projects through the system. There were a number of projects like that."

Bud Clark Commons (photo by Brian Libby)

Showing a photo of Clark Commons, Iwamoto applauded “the very clever means to create an animated and beautiful façade, in this case just turning some of them upside down and painting them different colors.” In the case of Lincoln Hall, Kassabian added, “This one we thought was interesting because of the historical building with a modern material. This was a pretty radical change from the before, and something we thought was extremely successful.”

At the end of the night, when the floor was opened to questions, one audience member asked, if wood is the default material here, what is it in the cities these jurors work in? “”In Atlanta? Artificial stucco,” Elam said, illiciting a laugh. “We don’t have anything as pervasive. There’s a lot of synthetics going on.”

“We see a lot of glass and metal in new york. Some of the older buildings, obviously brick, but not as nice as what’s here,” Kassabian answered.

“In San Francisco, we have a variety of materials: wood, stucco, metal, glass,” Iwamoto said. “What pervades is the general sense of, ‘Don’t touch anything.’ We love our Victorians, for example. You can’t mess with them. That’s a big thing for us to overcome.”

The notion of historic preservation as a barrier was a curious thought to end on, given how the jury had praised Portland for its tendency towards adaptive reuse. Yet Iwamoto wasn’t saying we should knock our best old buildings down. (Only a few outgoing City Council members and a smattering of baseball fans believe such things.) Rather, she seemed to be expressing the idea that architects naturally embrace the opportunity to dive in: to marry new architecture with old, to use wood for more than residential floors and cabinetry, to marry landscape and building more holistically, and to seek more boldness of form than the decorated box that is the norm not only in Portland but across design circles.

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A tale of two encampments: blurring notions of temporary and permanent, home and assembly

Map of Occupy Portland encampment (by Jonathan Hill for Willamette Week)

BY BRIAN LIBBY

In this week's Willamette Week, Aaron Mesh reports on his 48 hours living in the Occupy Portland encampment and protest downtown in Chapman Square and the adjacent Lowndsale Square. But it isn't just a campout happening on these blocks, nor is it solely a protest.

As Mesh learns, the Occupy encampment has, in some respects, become its own city. He begins the encampment by visiting an engineering department to have a parcel of grass assigned to him and receive help with a makeshift shelter. He visits a library with over 200 volumes and even a librarian. There is a portion of the Occupy encampment devoted to families and children. There is a KBOO radio station, there are religious services, and a security committee.

Regardless of one's political affiliations, if one stops for a moment to look at the sheer ingenuity and cooperation going on in the Occupy Portland camps, it's a testament that - however much gridlock and standoffishness happens in the US Congress - ordinary citizens are still capable of inspiring cooperation and ingenuity. Yet you wouldn't learn this from most media outlets covering the protests. The Oregonian, for example, took the perspective of following the police blotter. This perspective represents a lot of people who pass by the Occupy camps along Third and Fourth Avenues; they react to the dirtiness of the camps and the lack of a coherent message.

Even so, one of the problems besetting Occupy Portland - the fact that it's become populated with many homeless and street people, some of whom care little about politics - may be result of its own success. The first commenter for Mesh's story writes, "Social service agencies are sending people they can't serve to the camp with the promise of free food. Newly released prisoners are making the camp their first stop in search of something to eat and drink." I can't confirm that this is true, but it would make perfect sense. Given today's economy, local shelters are being pushed to capacity and beyond. So even though Occupy is largely about how economic policy favors the top one percent of the income pyramid in the United States, the fact that homeless and needy people are being driven there for reasons other than politics becomes a detraction.

Two protesters at Occupy Portland (image by Tyler Clifton via Flickr)

Part of the Occupy Portland drama is based on a question that remains unanswered: how long will they remain? For the protesters, abandoning Chapman and Lownsdale squares is equated to giving up on their demands for greater financial parity and opportunity for all. For the authorities, it's a kind of tightrope walk. Most elected officials in Portland proper are left-leaning, and generally sympathetic to Occupy protesters' basic tenets. For now, individual arrests and other issues notwithstanding, they're willing to let the Occupy occupation go on.

Yet this tolerance is based on the idea that ultimately the protest, or at least the tents and tarps marking mass overnight stays in these public parks, are temporary. When and if the Occupy occupation continues on over the weeks and months, the pressure will grow on local leaders to evict them, as is already being done in Oakland, for example.

A few blocks away at Fourth and Burnside, another encampment has a different set of challenges and ambitions.  Right 2 Dream Too, also known as R2D2, is described by Amanda Eckerson of Street Roots as a "rest area for houseless members" of the community.

The effort is organized by a grassroots group called Right 2 Survive, which also organized a similar tent city in Seattle. This isn't just squatting on a vacant lot. It's being done with the owner's permission, complete with a lease and insurance. The lot isn't making its owner money sitting empty, so until or in lieu of a building being built, allowing an organized, paid-for encampment of homeless people in tents is a way to help those in deed and make some very modest income. Eckerson reports that although Right 2 Survive members endeavored to create their tent-city lot lawfully, "When they opened their doors on Oct. 11, the national day of action for homelessness, city planners came questioning their right to be there."

Comparing R2D2 and Occupy Portland, she writes, "one is an occupation of public land, the other has a lease on private land. The occupation has been given tentative permission by the city, while R2D2's occupancy is being disputed as illegal. People are virtually abandoning their homes to join the Occupy Portland movement, while members of R2D2 are reacting to the fact that they have no place to sleep."

"Despite these elements," Eckerson adds, "there is a deeper strand of solidarity that exists between these two movements. Both groups are responding to the larger inequity of our social system, the lack of access to political power, and the rights of all of us to dream."

So far, neither R2D2 nor Occupy Portland has been shut down, but it may be inevitable that both are gone within upcoming weeks or at least months. Ultimately, the Occupy encampments, be there in Portland, New York or elsewhere, have already made a significant impact on the national consciousness. Although there is much skepticism about individual protesters or people populating the  protests, a New York Times/CBS News poll released yesterday (October 25) reports that about 46 percent said Occupy reflects the sentiment of most Americans (compared with 27 percent for the Tea Party). That means that, whatever sniping about people on the front lines of the movement needing showers, the broader message has been heard. More importantly, though, at some point authorities will come back around to the fact that the Occupy encampments are bending to the point of breaking the notion of what can be permanent habitable space.

In the case of R2D, the space is private but the structures themselves - tents, handmade shelters - are meant to be temporary. If the tents are truly permanent, they become architecture, and thus subject to building codes. Even if the individual tents and other structures change, if the use of the land as encampment becomes quasi-permanent, it too could be subject to zoning and code strictures or land-use laws. What's more, the fact that R2D2 is right on Burnside, the border between Downtown and Old Town, is a kind of taunt to Portland's leaders. For years the City Council has devoted resources to curbing homelessness, with the recently opened Bud Clark Commons just the latest example of a public building meant to provide an alternative to sleeping on a park bench or, in this case, in a tent on a vacant lot. R2D2 may be simply an earnest act to provide shelter for those in need, yet it symbolized blight at the epicenter of millions of dollars of effort to stop it. As another recent Willamette Week cover story explored, for all the investments we've made in infrastructure and promoting creative-class development, there is another Portland, surrounding the central city, with no sidewalks and much higher joblessness. R2D2 is a reminder that close-in Portland can't, and shouldn't be, a perfectly pretty bubble untouched by poor people's problems.

No one can say for sure when these encampments will end, or if they will at all. Yet they each, because of this, provide a case of blurred lines between temporary and permanent space, as well as a painful reminder of the Great Recession's deep impact - or, to the select few in the increasingly targeted one percent of Americans controlling nearly half of the wealth, a lack thereof.

Talking with POSI's Rob Bennett about this week's EcoDistrict Summit

Lloyd Crossing ecodistrict plan (image courtesy Mithun)

BY BRIAN LIBBY

This week from October 26-28, the Portland Oregon Sustainability Institute will present the second annual Ecodistrict Summit, which is the premier annual conference dedicated to neighborhood-scale sustainability initiatives. Recently I spoke with the head of POSI, Rob Bennett, who previously has worked as the founding director of the city's Office of Sustainability as well as for the William J. Clinton Foundation, about the conference and the broader ecodistricts movement.

Tell me about this week's Ecodistricts conference and the issues surrounding this movement.

The conference is our major event. We felt it was important to have a learning event around this notion of green neighborhood development. It’s one we’re passionate about. We think the neighborhood is an important geography for urban sustainability. It’s small enough where you can innovate but has import and scalability opportunities to move those ideas and strategies out and replicate them.

Meanwhile there’s this explosion going on internationally along green neighborhood development. What are the good ideas? What are communities doing to green their neighborhood? How are they approaching the link between people, infrastructure and buildings?

We rarely talk about the occupant experience in buildings. In neighborhoods, the neighbor or business, it’s so critical to the functionality and the livelihood of a neighborhood. We have good examples of long standing neighborhoods like Alberta and Mississippi, and dysfunctional neighborhoods too. So we’ve got a lot of work to do in Portland and elsewhere to kind of re-inhabit the neighborhood and make it one of the most important scales of cities. If you get your neighborhood right, you get your city right. That’s what Jane Jacobs talked about.

I always find interesting the psychological dimensions of place and that how we feel about our place in it is tied often to neighborhoods. I’m a Portlander and an Oregonian, but I also live in Sunnyside and live near Burnside and 28th. I need it to thrive for me to thrive. I need to get coffee and for my kids to go to school and to buy groceries and not have to get into my car to do it. It sets your life course. If you live in a neighborhood without sidewalks or a school not within walking or biking distance, or a store without fresh food, that puts you at a disadvantage.

So at the conference, we’re going to bring together over 100 leaders and professionals from around the world who are going to share their stories. We’re breaking it into a variety of topics and look at the district scale and what’s working in exemplary neighborhoods. We’ve got cities like Nagoya, Toronto, Stockholm, Mexico city, New Orleans, Detroit and Seattle represented. It’ll be interesting to see how district cultures.

How do you address equity and the notion that some neighborhoods feel left out?

I think the fundamental premise of ecodistricts is healthy environment, healthy community. We need to take a more measured and systematic approach to how we look at the neighborhood and the combination of projects and programs we bring. So it is messy. Any time you’re talking about community development and ecological health, it’s messy. We’ve decided to shine a light on five pilot neighborhoods and take them through a systematic approach to identifying performance goals and initiatives they want to put together. You’ve got to do this with the community and the city. And it’s early days for us. This is a long play. We’d like to see a shiny neighborhood, but that doesn’t exist. So these are really kind of organizing principles and a performance specification.

Rob Bennett (image courtesy POSI)

What have you learned so far?

A couple of early lessons. We’re working in diverse districts from Lloyd and South Waterfront that are dense with high quality infrastructure, and in Gateway and Foster/Green (Lents). What’s been interesting working out in those neighborhoods is there’s not an obvious sort of consolidation of power or leadership that would stake an ecodistrict idea and own it. It literally is a knitting together of community organizations, businesses, nonprofit interests. It’s really creating a tapestry of organizations that are rowing in the same direction.

I have to admit we worried this could be a disaster. But we decided with ecodistricts it’s important to identify strategies tuned to the people living there. We are less interested in prescribing an outcome as a performance model and a process. We are very committed to ecodistrict pilots having strong performance goals. But we’re also committed to asking, ‘How do you achieve those goals and what is the most important?’ To date we’ve had success out in Gateway and Lents. There’s been a lot of enthusiasm. In the case of Lents there’s at least a dozen organizations that have signed on. They see this as a way for them to envision a healthy and a positive future. They feel like they’ve got a tremendous amount of ownership. It helps create a balance approach to city planning. It’s driven by the city almost exclusively. This creates more of a balance with the communities and their needs. We’ve been encouraged by that.

Another issue is we’re insisting on local governance. For Portland to meet its sustainability goals, you can’t just have climate and land use policy at one end and a green building policy at the other end. You need neighborhoods to sustain their own performance. I see this as a community organizer as Neighborhood 2.0. If we get this right and figure out governance and find a way to raise money that stays in a neighborhood, this becomes the fundamental things neighborhoods do. It isn’t pet issues. They have a fundamental responsibility to make their neighborhood better. You’re no longer suggesting it’s the responsibility of private development owners or the city. I think we all buy in to that.

Might private developers feel threatened by people organizing to decide what comes in or out of their neighborhood?

These are supposed to inform broader policy conversations, but not to create additional levels of regulatory red tape. What we’re starting is with this notion of local governance, and then looking at footprints for energy, water, etc. through community needs assessment you’d start to identify key projects that need to happen. If the neighborhood is interested in being carbon neutral by X date, you find that it’s in the energy use in buildings and the waste streams. We need to get so much more out of building retrofit strategies and for our new buildings to be high performing and maybe having a shared energy strategy. It would be a toolbox for how they meet their goals. That says nothing about red tape or additional regulations. It does provide additional information to say, ‘Our new buildings need to be higher performing than the current code.’ If there’s any regulations that were to come from ecodistricts, it would be that we’ve found ways and strategies to do higher performing buildings or infrastructure that needs to get codified citywide.

Having worked in the neighborhood system, you’re always reacting to that development proposal or that parking issue. You’re never looking upstream and saying, what do we need for our neighborhood to be more sustainable? If you get your principles right and get clear about the kind of outcomes you’re trying to achieve, when those projects come potentially you have a fuller appreciation of that project in context. At the neighborhood level now you have land use committees and those reacting to design. If you actually had neighborhood organizations acting on outcomes and not a particular project, that may help to create a more sophisticated neighborhood governance.

What’s POSI’s role in the Oregon Sustainability Center?

I would characterize our role today as provocateur and cheerleader for the project. We’re really focused on making sure it’s a good ecodistrict project with multiple benefits to the district. What happens with the program? How does it achieve its vision of achieving sustainability that teaches and inspires and is a useful community asset? We’ve certainly got the crack sustainability team figuring out how to make it net zero and talented development people. We just want there to be a robust learning program within it: things like the smart grid or the energy management systems and how that can inform other buildings at PSU, how the wastewater treatment facility can be scaled to include adjacent development. The real opportunity is to create linkage throughout the rest of the district. It really is going to require the tenants to look at how they use energy, water, and how they look at the building.

What do you see in the future for ecodistricts?

The short answer is there are sustainability solutions that cities need to implement: bike infrastructure, district energy, smart grids, increased stormwater and wastewater management at the district scale. There are a lot of tools in the toolbox. We want to be continuing to push those strategies so they have a robust business case. We’re committed to the long arc of sustainability in cities and really pushing them like we are with district energy and we are about to with bike sharing. In our partnership with PSU we hope to bring more research capability to POSI and identify and validate best practices that are being applied globally and being able to catalog those so we can move that stream of projects more quickly forward. We’re tying to be a tip of spear organization that identifies compelling projects. The more quickly we can assemble teams, the better off our mission is served.

One thing in five years that would be revolutionary for the city is figuring out this notion of better neighborhood initiative. How do you unleash power of culture and technology to have markedly more high performing and livable neighborhoods? There’s all kinds of cases like peer-to-peer car sharing: I’ve got something, I don’t use it very often. I want to be able to rent it out to my neighbors and has a benefit to me, like with GetAround. You spend $100 and install yourself in your own car. This company enables you to share your car. Your phone basically becomes a calendar tool saying when it’s available. It’s a rental mechanism and door lock. It tracks mileage, fuel. States around the country have adopted insurance policies. Whenever you’re using the car, you’re using that person’s insurance.

There’s all kinds of technology like that releases cooperation. As resources become more scarce and we become more poor, which I think is happening, the desire to have material good but for less is going to be paramount. Fruit gleaning, composting, solarizing…there’s all this energy, neighborhood-based energy to do community projects that improve livability and connectivity. We want to figure out how to capture that in a more systemic model that unleashes the technology innovators with the impulses of community building and sharing. That’s fun. I don’t know where it’s going to take us. But companies like IBM, Cisco and Nike are all very interested in this. It’s all about technology linking to have a higher quality of life.

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Mayor Adams, GBD's Andersen and SERA's Petterson on the Oregon Sustainability Center

Oregon Sustainability Center lobby (rendering courtesy GBD Architects)

BY BRIAN LIBBY

Last month in an article for Atlantic Cities, I wrote about the Oregon Sustainability Center and how Portland's (and Oregon's) investment in the project amounted to a kind of stimulus package that on a national level the government (log-jammed by a Republican-controlled House of Representatives) has abandoned.

As is often the case, I wound up with a lot more interview text than could be used in that story. So I'd like to share here a series of comments and observations from Kyle Andersen of GBD Architects and Lisa Petterson of SERA Architects, the two firms collaborating on the project, as well as Mayor Sam Adams, one of its chief proponents.

The $62 million OSC, if it goes forward, could lead to what would arguably be the world’s greenest office building, or at least the first mixed-use office to meet strictures of the Living Building Challenge. (Seattle currently has such a building under construction, but it would be smaller and with a single tenant rather than the group of tenants at the OSC.) It is designed to achieve net-zero levels of electricity and water usage. It may also become a provider of green energy for other nearby buildings, as part of one of Portland's first eco-districts. And the building may even come to transform the conservative commercial real estate market. Unlike the norm with Class-A office buildings, the Sustainability Center will ask tenants to share conference rooms and even storage space with each other instead of each tenant having their own; leases will be calculated in part on how much of it you choose to use.

My conversation with Andersen & Petterson began, however, with the notion of the Center as an incubator, able to nurture and grow Portland's broader sustainability community, both in terms of the private and public sectors. "The building is really intended to be a living laboratory," Petterson said."Think of someone at PCC taking a class in photovoltaics. They go to the OSC and they’re exposed to this wealth."

The OSC's south facade (rendering courtesy GBD Architects)

"It’s like there’s a fourth dimension, where people who have vision work well together maybe the same happens with people who share this ethic and this entrepreneurial energy," Andersen added. "There’s a story there in workforce training and businesses coming together."

Continuing the idea of the building being an investment in an industry, Sam Adams  said, "The OSC is the result of a community who was the first adopters of green building LEED approach to development and design. It’s radical common sense we’re talking about: creating buildings that are self-sufficient. The next wave I hope goes from sustainability to resilience. This will be one of the largest living buildings in the world. The point is to not be the only one or the first but to be the first of many."

Adams also addressed the building's cost, which may be - besides aesthetics - one of the main aspects of the project to draw criticism. In a time when there is already a glut of office space, the OSC would charge rents some 20 percent higher than the market rate. "Because we’re doing something that hadn’t been done before, this is an R&D prototype that will be replicable," Adams said. "It will be what building and construction should be in the future. There’s a premium to this building. But there was a premium for the first Model T, or for our first domestically made streetcar.There’s an entire strategy, an entire job creation strategy. What came first was the research in terms of how we as a region can export more to the world. Clean technology, athletic and outdoor, software development, and research & commercialization are our clusters. We have a world-class opportunity to export goods, services and get royalties. This will produce locally not just in construction but in the years to come the architects, the engineers, the workers will all be part of this. They’ll have expertise that no one else in the world has."

The OSC from an aerial perspective (rendering courtesy GBD Architects)

"We went through the same conversation 10, 11 years ago with Ecotrust," the mayor added. "It’s harder because of the recession. It’s harder because of the political climate, the need to balance budget. But standing alongside that is the need and the opportunity to gain market share. You do that by producing a product and an innovation that no one else has. Portland has been recognized as a sustainable city. We get 80 delegations a year from other cities to see how we do it. But they’re more than nipping at our heels. We don’t want to be the biggest city. I want us to be the smallest, scrappiest, most successful international city. And to do that you’ve got to invest in innovation."

One of the key ideas with the Oregon Sustainability Center is the idea of plug and play: that its technologies and materials can be changed easily over time as innovations continue. "The best spaces are precisely general," Petterson explained. "There’s enough structure that they feel strong, but enough looseness that they can change over time. "It’s adaption or lack of it that gets buildings dated. You need new technology but there’s no way to do it in an affordable way."

Buildings in America consume some 40 percent of total energy used, and most all offices are using energy at the same time - during business hours. Much of that power is devoted to heating and cooling loads. For the OSC, however, there will be a battery on top that "is used to shave peak load off the building," Andersen added. "The battery is charged at night time when the demand on the grid is at its lowest. Then conversely the battery is used to power portions of the building during mid-afternoon hours when the grid is at its peak load."

The OSC viewed from the southwest (rendering courtesy GBD Architects)

"In this country we’re building power plants for three days a year," Petterson added. "The idea is we’d have a bank of batteries under a big roof, getting power from the grid at night. When it’s your peak time."

Given some of the OSC's innovations, I concluded by asking the architects for some future trends in sustainable buildings.

"All buildings are going to look different depending on where they’re at," Andersen said. "And I think you’ll see improvement in the skin. You’re creating an environment that can be stabilized. It’s the buildings going up and down that become energy pigs."

"If you think about a typical building, you change out the lighting every 10-15 years and the mechanical every 20-25, there are very few that get new skins," Petterson concured. "The buildings get replaced instead. All the embodied energy of the concrete frame is lost when you make that choice. That’s why the envelope is the critical piece."

"In the future, skins of buildings are going to sweat and breathe and open and close," Andersen said, "using things like algae and photosynthesis to create energy. They’re making spandrel glass out of that now."

There may still be reason for skepticism. Personally, although the OSC has made great strides from previous incarnations, I still do not find it exceptionally pretty (although of course renderings are easy to misjudge). The building's ability to get funding from the state legislature may also still prevent it from being constructed, especially given that Adams is not seeking a second term and thus can only cheerlead it through next year. Yet to talk particularly with its architects about the building and, by extension, the future of sustainable design and construction, is to become inspired. If the world doesn't become a tropical swamp in the future with 7 billion people living at the poles and most of today's favorite island getaways under water, it will be because of the passion and smarts of architects like these showing us a different path.

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Exhibit highlights a different kind of one percent: Northwest firms' pro bono design projects

The Sanctuary, Redmond, WA (rendering courtesy Architecture Building Culture)

BY BRIAN LIBBY

This month we've been hearing a lot about 1 percent and 99 percent. The Occupy Wall Street protest in New York and its satellite demonstrations around the country, including one here in Portland, have brought attention to how one percent of the population controls about 20 percent of the wealth, and how financial policy from both sides of the political fence has too often favored the haves over the have-nots.

A different kind of 1 percent, however, will be on exhibit beginning Thursday. “THE 1% : Design for the Public Good” is an exhibition of work by Pacific Northwest architecture firms that reserve one percent of their design time for pro bono work on behalf of nonprofits. Coordinated through The 1%, a nationwide program of the San Francisco-based nonprofit Public Architecture, the exhibit opens this Thursday (October 20) at the ADX Gallery, at 417 SE 11th Avenue in Portland.

The exhibit will include work from a variety of regional firms including Architecture Building Culture, the Portland firm organizing the event, as well as Seattle area offices CAST Architecture, Grouparchitect, The Miller Hull Partnership, ORB Architects, Perkins + Will, Schemata Workshop, VIA Architecture, Workshop for Architecture|Design, and WPA, and Portland firms SERA Architects, Lorraine Guthrie Architect, Scott Edwards Architecture and Yost Grube Hall Architecture.

Chehalem Cultural Center, Newberg (image courtesy Scott Edwards Architecture)

"This is a first attempt to get the word out to the design community and nonprofits," says Brian Cavanaugh of Architecture Building Culture. "It shows a wide range of work, from wayfinding to more traditional design work. Projects vary in scale. Some of the work isn’t necessarily glamorous, but it’s about firms committing time to these initiatives."

Cavanaugh says the 1% drive isn't about bringing paid work to the firm but it can be a side effect. "A lot of nonprofits would not even think that they would have the ability to bring an architect on board. The first I did was for an animal sanctuary. They were a client of modest means. One of their volunteers knew about the program. We made a match, and all of a sudden she’s having the services of an architect brought to bear. It can also turn into something bigger. A lot of this is in pre-design and planning, to get over the hump of, say, starting a capital campaign. It can maybe even turn into a fee-based project at some point."

Herat Health Clinic, Afghanistan (rendering courtesy Miller|Hull)

But this begs the question: with architecture firms struggling through the Great Recession, is there time for such pro-bono efforts? Cavanaugh has one suggestion about how to make it so. "For my office, we’ve adopted a policy of stopping doing design competitions," he says. "There’s a tremendous effort we’d normally put into that that we can put to bear on these. It’s a better use of our time. We can make more of an impact. We’ll take on one major pro bono project a year." His firm is currently working with a San Francisco film museum on a study for a project.

"The idea behind the name is that firms can at least pledge one percent of a staff member’s annual time. It amounts to about 20 hours in a year. In a large office, if you can get four or five people pledged, that’s not insignificant. And most offices go beyond that."

The Opening night reception is this Thursday from 6:00-10:00pm. The exhibition runs from Thursday, October 20 through Sunday October 23.

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Timberline Lodge tops AIA survey of favorite Oregon buidings

Timberline Lodge dedication, 1938 (image courtesy Friends of Timberline)

BY BRIAN LIBBY

Perhaps it's fitting that Timberline Lodge is on top given its location, just below the snowy peak of Mt. Hood. The lodge, completed by the Works Progress Administration in 1937 from a design by Gilbert Stanley Underwood (an architect with the US Treasury Department), was the biggest vote-getter in AIA Oregon's survey of architects' 100 favorite buildings for the organization's centennial.

That Timberline would be honored now is interesting timing. Today, with the economy faltering like no time since the Great Depression, many have expressed frustration that the United States has not invested more in public works projects as FDR's administration did. Yet with projects like the Oregon Sustainability Center or restorations of local landmarks like Memorial Coliseum or Centennial Mills, Portland if not the federal government has sought to continue that tradition.

"Here, to Mount Hood, will come thousands and thousands of visitors in the coming years," President Franklin Roosevelt said in his dedication speech at Timberline. "Looking east toward eastern Oregon with its great livestock raising areas, these visitors are going to visualize the relationship between the cattle ranches and the summer ranges in the forests. Looking westward and northward toward Portland and the Columbia River, with their great lumber and other wood using industries, they will understand the part which National Forest timber will play in the support of this important element of northwestern prosperity. So, I take very great pleasure in dedicating this Lodge, not only as a new adjunct of our National Forests, but also as a place to play for generations of Americans in the days to come."

"One of the reasons people go to the building," architect Joachim Grube told Oregon Architect magazine this month, "is that it was conceived in very difficult economic times for the US, and it was kind of a symbol of survival for coming out of a dark time. That adds to the magic of the place."

Timberline also represents old-world craftsmanchip in a way that no other structure in Oregon can match. It is the only 20th century public building of its size that was constructed and furnished entirely by hand, including original craftwork in wood, wrought iron, weaving, applique painting, mosaic and stained glass.

Mt. Angel Abbey Library (photo by Brian Libby)

Coming in at #2 on AIA Oregon's list was the Mount Angel Abbey Library, designed by the legendary Finnish architect Alvar Aalto and completed in 1970. This is one of only two buildings in the United States designed by Aalto, along with Baker House at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, which coincidentally was completed in 1948, just three years before Portland architect Pietro Belluschi became dean of the architecture school at MIT. One of the world's most prestigious architecture prizes, the Alvar Aalto Medal, is named after him, as is a university in Helsinki. If Aalto is not in the top tier of 20th century modern architects alongside Frank Lloyd Wright, Ludwig Mies Van Der Rohe, and Le Corbusier, he's not far off.

The AIA chose Belluschi's Equitable Building at #3, honoring what has often been called the world's first modern office building; the circa-1947 Equitable was the first major structure in the world to be built with an aluminum and glass curtain wall (narrowly beating out the United Nations headquarters for that distinction). Yet history and innovation are not the only relevant factors, for the Equitable is also quite beautiful even today.

Another Belluschi design checks in at #4, with the Portland Art Museum. Built in 1932, this is among the earliest of Belluschi-designed landmarks and arguably put him on the map. And, as the oft-told legend goes, the architect convinced a skeptical museum to go ahead with his modern design rather than a faux-historic Georgian style they sought thanks to the help of Frank Lloyd Wrigt, who wrote museum trustees a letter of support for Bellusci's design.

US Bancorp Tower (photo by Bradley Maule)

When Belluschi left for MIT in 1951, the renowed Chicago/New York firm Skidmore, Owings Merrill took over his Portland office, creating a host of local landmarks still relevant today. Among these is the #5 selection, the US Bancorp Tower, better known as "Big Pink," which SOM designed in collaboration with Belluschi.

Big Pink and Pioneer Courthouse Square, the #6 entry, are the lone entries from the 1980s. This was a time when postmodern architecture briely flourished. Although the Michael Graves-designed Portland Building is an icon of that time, with its colorful facade of faux garlands, Courthouse Square takes on a more quiet, enduring style. Rather than an in-your-face irreverence to the architecture, turning historical forms into cartoons, the square's design by the late Portland architect Will Martin evokes classical history with its Greco-Roman-like columns, but never crosses the line into outright caricature. That's particularly appropriate given how Pioneer Courthouse Square has a sincere role to play as Portland's principal gathering place for political rallies, concerts, Christmas tree lightings and much more.

Central Library (photo by Brian Libby)

I would have thought Central Library, the #7 choice, might take top honors in the poll. Portlanders love their libraries (the city has at times had the most library card holders per capita of any large American city) , and this Georgian-styled beauty by A.E. Doyle was lovingly restored in 1997. The American Library Association also ranked Central as one of its top 10 libraries in the nation for architecture. Perhaps the fact that architects are voting made a difference, given how most favor modernism more than the general public. Yet if that's the case, choosing Timberline #1 wouldn't make much sense.

Gordon House, in its original location (photo by Brian Libby)

Frank Lloyd Wright's sole Oregon building, the Gordon House, makes the list of top Oregon architecture at #8. It isn't nearly as ambitious as Wright's most celebrated homes, such as Fallingwater. Yet it typifies his Usonian series of houses and the notion that quality modern architecture can be applicable to the lives of people living not only in cities, but on the prairies and in small towns. It's just too bad that the Gordon House, completed in 1964, had to be moved from its original location in Charbonneau along the Willamette River. The new location at the Oregon Garden near Silverton and the act that it's now open to the public give the Gordon House more opportunity to be seen now, but Wright's design was adapted specifically to its location, with one side framing views of the river and another oriented towards views of Mt. Hood. The couple that bought the Gordon House in 2000 had never heard of Frank Lloyd Wright. (Apparently they moved to Charbonneau from The Moon.) They bought the Gordon only in hopes of tearing it down. Yeah, and I buy Picasso paintings so I can fingerpaint over the canvas.

Memorial Coliseum under construciton in 1960 (image courtesy City of Portland archives)

Luckily the #9 entry on the list, Memorial Coliseum, is still standing. Faced with demolition in 2009, the building is now set to be restored in 2012. During the fight to save the Coliseum, those with vested interests in building a baseball stadium on the site (thereby allowing PGE Park to be converted to soccer) tried to pigeonhole the building as simply a decaying eyesore - typified by the "ugly Costco" comment made by Commissioner Randy Leonard. Now, the decision by Mayor Sam Adams and others to save Memorial Coliseum is being validated by its placement on this list. Can you imagine the uproar if someone tried to tear down Timberline Lodge, or Central Library? Each era has its icons, and the Coliseum represents the very best of modernist architecture of the mid-20th century. Then again, though, I'm biased: the Coliseum is my favorite building in the city, and was a cause worth fighting for.

Watzek House (photo by Brian Libby)

Rounding out the list at #10, the John Yeon-designed Watzek House has had a good year in 2011 after earlier this year topping Portland Monthly's list of the top local houses, and also opening to public tours for the first time. Yeon was too much of a wanderer to pursue architectural fame like the better known Pietro Belluschi. But there's no denying that his talent was just as great. The Watzek is part Bauhaus, part farmhouse, with hints of Japanese and Scandinavian design. It doesn't grab you by the lapels with its greatness like Wright's Fallingwater, the sole other house to be added early to the National Register and exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art. But it charted a new way forward and veritably gave birth to Northwest Modern architecture of the midcentury, a style still celebrated today for its simple elegance.

The AIA Oregon website has not only the top 10 buildings list, but a full top 100. I was curious to see what else made the list, especially because there are no projects from the list built before 1984. If one project from more recent times was going to be included, I'd have voted for Allied Works' Wieden + Kennedy headquarters. In terms of other ommissions, I of course being an Oregon Ducks fanatic (and historian) would have also voted for Autzen Stadium. Actually, though, the highest ranking building from recent times is 12 West, designed by ZGF. Somewhat appropriately, it #12.

But enough about my selections, or the AIA's. What would you add to the list? These rankings are only fun if they prompt a conversation.

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Landmarks Commission approves Target's move-in and changes to historic Galleria building

Galleria (photo by drburtoni, via Flickr)

BY FRED LEESON

The deed is done. Target, a mega-retailer based in Minneapolis, will open one of its smallest stores ever in the former Galleria building at 921 SW Morrison Street. 

The Portland Historic Landmarks Commission on October 10 unanimously approved plans by Target and the Bill Naito Company, the building owner, to make changes to the 101-year old, full-block former retail emporium that is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

The proposal’s prospects seemed circumspect when first surfaced earlier this year because Target wanted to replace two bays of display windows on the building’s north (Alder Street) side to make loading bays that would allow supply trucks to drive into the ground floor. The trucks would pull completely into the building and roll-up style garage doors would be opened to allow their ingress and egress. It amounted to a significant impact on a building that is protected by national and local preservation laws.

Yet the benefits of the Target plan were clear. It would add a major retail magnet to the west end of the downtown retail core, and it would allow for full rental of the Galleria building after more than a decade of partial occupancy.

Although his term ended on the city’s landmarks commission last month, former chairman Art DeMuro laid out the terms of a possible agreement last summer.  He lobbied for a series of small improvements on almost every side of the building that would restore or repair damaged elements of the structure’s historic fabric. And in return, the city would allow the truck bays.

And that’s exactly how it played out. “We tried to work together to get some consistency to this building,” said Judy Van Alstyne, a property manager for the Bill Naito Co. The Portland architecture firm of Fletcher Farr Ayotte found places where latter-day ventilation louvers could be replaced with original-style wooden double-hung windows, agreed to restore two window bays that had been converted to separate storefronts and found damaged windows that could be replaced.

The most striking “historic” improvement, however, is likely to be replication of a steel-framed marquise that once was suspended over the main entrance at the center of the 10th Avenue façade. Amalia Groebe, a Fletcher Farr associate, said the new marquise with a row of light bulbs surrounding its base, was designed from photographs of the original.

Surprisingly, perhaps, she said the building’s original drawings showed a more elaborate marquise, but the version that was erected in 1911 was simpler. Value engineering, it turns out, may have a longer history than we thought.

“In this proposal, we get back a better 10th Avenue main façade,” said David Skilton, a city planner who shepherded the project and ultimately recommended its approval.

Target has elected not to use the restored main entrance on 10th Avenue as its primary entrance.  Instead, it will use a smaller doorway at the west end of the Morrison Street façade, covered with a lighter canopy similar to the one at the Brooks Brothers entrance at the east end of Morrison.

Target officials said they wanted their primary entrance to be on Morrison, a major pedestrian street and served by MAX.  They also liked that corner’s proximity to the five-level city parking garage just across Morrison to the south. Shoppers entering the main Target entrance will find a coffee shop on the ground floor and an escalator that takes them to the main store above.

Existing tenants, including Brooks Brothers, a cooking school and medical educational facilities, are expected to remain.

The building, completed in 1910 for the pioneer retail firm of Olds Wortman & King, was designed by Charles R. Aldrich, who designed some major commissions in Minneapolis before moving to Seattle in 1905. He worked for an investment firm that erected buildings in Seattle, Spokane, Portland and Los Angeles. The Olds building was the first full-block retail structure built in downtown Portland.  Its steel frame with terra cotta exterior and wide bays reflected the major retail trend of the era.

The building has undergone many changes over the years, but its basic shape, exterior materials and footprint have survived. Aldrich would have no trouble recognizing it were he to be reincarnated someday down the road as a Target shopper.

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

Steve Jobs: the first Portlandian?

Steve Jobs, 1982 (image courtesy Elephant Journal)

BY BRIAN LIBBY

Steve Jobs didn't come to Portland for youthful retirement. But his inspired drop-out from college may be an indication of a larger collective spirit.

In the days and weeks after an iconic figure's death, it's natural to join in on the veneration, and to feel some sense of broader connection. Since  Jobs' death was announced last week, we've seen comparisons to Thomas Edison and Henry Ford, heard tributes calling him the most original and forward thinking of corporate CEOs. And long before his death, Jobs also came to represent the value and necessity of counter-intuitive thinking: that customers cannot always express what they need, for example, or that changing your mind is a sign of strength rather than weakness.

Here in Portland, Jobs' ties to the city have already been celebrated: that he was Reed College's most famous dropout, for example - leaving after just six months, but not actually leaving - and that the metro area's sizable tech industry owes much of its life to Apple. But maybe there's something larger in Jobs' life to sieze upon as somehow quintessentially our own. Was he, in fact, the first Portlandian?

One of the most oft-repeated lines from the Portlandia TV show is a fake slogan for the city: "Where young people go to retire." The joke is meant to alternately mock and celebrate the fact that young people have moved here in droves despite traditional motives, such as the availability of employment (or lack thereof), being veritable non-factors or even a discouragment. But what if we turned around that idea? What if Portland isn't where young people go to "retire", but to opt out of the traditional path?

In a photo from 1982 (seen at the top of this post), Jobs - by then a multimillionaire - was shown in his largely empty living room. "All you needed was a cup of tea, a light, and your stereo, you know, and that’s what I had," he said later. Jobs spent several years living in an unrenovated old mansion, and even at the time of his death was residing in an unremarkable suburban Palo Alto house. He was following his passion, which happened to make him rich and famous. Everything else was secondary. And trophies demonstrating your wealth and superiority were superflous. I can't help but wonder if that ideology is inherent to this place.

In an Oregonian essay from 1995, columnist David Sarasohn called this region "The Gore-Tex Vortex", suggesting that it wasn't just the rainy climate that left Oregon unspoiled and gave birth to a more democratic place with raincoats outnumbering pinstriped suits.

Sarasohn cited a Depression-era Works Progress Aministration guide to the state that read, "Oregon is still the most unspoiled and uncluttered spot in America, and partly because the gold rushes of California and Alaska left it undisturbed." The same, he argued, was true at the end of the 20th century, with aerospace and cyberspace industries in California and Seattle making stampedes on either side of us.

"The most famous legend of the Oregon settlement is about the fork in the road west, with the sign pointing to Oregon and the gold dust trail leading to California," Sarahson added. "The moral, allegedly, is that the people who could read came to Oregon....Actually, the real moral is that people who wanted to be rich and famous went to California--and still do....In the great population shifts across America, from the conquistadors to the condominiums, there have been two separate, contradictory urges: one set of migrants wants to get rich, and the other set wants to get away. One urge leads to California, the other to Oregon."

Steve Jobs didn't come to Oregon to build Apple into a corporate juggernaut. He came here to become inspired. And perhaps appropriately, given the theme of taking the less-traveled road and not the gold-dusted path, Jobs famously dropped out of Reed College after six months, only to find greater inspiration on his own at that same school.

"I naively chose a college that was almost as expensive as Stanford, and all of my working-class parents’ savings were being spent on my college tuition," Jobs recalled in a 2005 commencement speech at Stanford. "After six months, I couldn’t see the value in it. I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life and no idea how college was going to help me figure it out. And here I was spending all of the money my parents had saved their entire life. So I decided to drop out and trust that it would all work out OK. It was pretty scary at the time, but looking back it was one of the best decisions I ever made. The minute I dropped out I could stop taking the required classes that didn’t interest me, and begin dropping in on the ones that looked interesting."

"Reed College at that time offered perhaps the best calligraphy instruction in the country. Throughout the campus every poster, every label on every drawer, was beautifully hand calligraphed. Because I had dropped out and didn’t have to take the normal classes, I decided to take a calligraphy class to learn how to do this. I learned about serif and san serif typefaces, about varying the amount of space between different letter combinations, about what makes great typography great. It was beautiful, historical, artistically subtle in a way that science can’t capture, and I found it fascinating."

Reed College (photo by Brian Libby)

"None of this had even a hope of any practical application in my life. But ten years later, when we were designing the first Macintosh computer, it all came back to me. It was the first computer with beautiful typography. If I had never dropped out, I would have never dropped in on this calligraphy class, and personal computers might not have the wonderful typography that they do. Of course it was impossible to connect the dots looking forward when I was in college. But it was very, very clear looking backwards ten years later."

"Again, you can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something — your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.”

Jobs and his connection with Portland and Reed and the dropout's path remind me of "Portlandia"

When "Portlandia" first premiered earlier this year, I was struck most not by the satires fashioned on the show, which were often funny and spot-on, but by certain responses in the media. In The New Yorker, for example, Meredith Blake wrote of the city's "peculiar combination of self-seriousness and prolonged adolescence." Another New Yorker writer, John Seabrook, described Portland as a city where people "pretend not to care about money and worldly ambition."

Clearly, even when you write for what is hands down the nation's smartest magazine, it's possible to completely miss the point.

It isn't that the quintessential Portlandian seeks to be without money or rejects ambition. Rather, it's that these are not the driving force. Steve Jobs understood that the path to innovation and fulfilment is not always a direct one. Sometimes, you have to allow for and be open to a calligraphy class - other some other inspiration - that will change how you view the world.

This confusing with means and ends by those who would judge Portlandians, in turn, also reminds me of one of Jobs' most famous quotes, on the inherent nature of design. "Design is not just what it looks like and feels like," he said. "Design is how it works." If you're a 25-year-old Harvard grad working now as a barista instead of in a cubicle, that's just the superficial, surface level description of what you're doing. Maybe being a barista is your own caligraphy class.

"More than any of his other accomplishments, his creations or his branding brilliance, the thing I admired most about him was that he loved what he did," writes Jeanette Mulvey in Business News Diary. "His excitement and enthusiasm was often called charisma, charm and drive. Ultimately, though, he was really just a guy who found his niche and worked it for everything it was worth. Finding a way to do what you love – even if that something is cutting grass or towing cars – is the secret to being great at what you do."

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Knowing your skyline: 1911's Yeon Building

Yeon Building (photo by Bradley Maule)

BY BRADLEY MAULE

EDITOR'S NOTE: This is the second in a series by writer-photographer Bradley Maule on buildings that have held the distinction of being the tallest in Portland.

In the years following 1905's Lewis & Clark Centennial Expo, Portland was a veritable boomtown, and the downtown skyline rose in step with the population. The circa-1907 Wells Fargo building's reign as the tallest in town lasted but a few short years, when the name Yeon left its first notable imprint on Portland architecture, on the corner of SW 5th & Alder.

The 15-story Yeon Building, completed a century ago in 1911, came not from the same famous desk as the Watzek House and the Visitors Information Center by John Yeon, but his father, John Baptiste Yeon. The elder Yeon made a fortune in the lumber industry and wanted to give back to his adopted city, something he expected "should help Portland by appearing as well as possible," wrote The Oregonian on August 21, 1910.

Yeon hired San Francisco's Reid & Reid architects, who had already designed The Oregonian's original (pre-Belluschi) offices and who would a year later design the Jackson Tower (née the Oregon Journal Building), to maximize both the terra cotta craze and the city's 200-foot height limit. The Reid brothers crafted an exterior of bright white to stand out even more than the cream colored terra cotta popular elsewhere, including Wells Fargo.

Yeon Building (photos by Bradley Maule)

With a three-story colonnade featuring ionic columns to accentuate the height, the building was topped with a cornice which has since been removed, leaving the armament form seen today. At the behest of Yeon himself, the cornice extended around all four sides of the building (as opposed to only the two which faced the street, as was common), and like the Jackson Tower, had built-in electrical wiring for evening accent lighting. The University of Oregon Libraries' digital collection has a number of Yeon Building photos prior to the cornice's removal here.

Yeon Building (photo by Bradley Maule)

Higher still than the cornice, a rooftop flagpole extended the building's pinnacle another 60 feet. It's been flag-less for years, but Urban Renaissance Group's Portland office, who manages the building for New York's Jonathan Rose Companies, says there are plans to reinstall a flag as part of the building's current renovations being overseen by Portland's SERA Architects. The renovations include a green retrofit and a re-imagining of the first floor retail space. This space will be occupied come February by Vancouver-based First Independent Bank, who sold the building to Rose Companies after foreclosing on its previous owner, negotiating the retail space as part of the sale.

Yeon Building (photos by Bradley Maule)

Decades before John Yeon left his indelible mark on the style regarded as Northwest Regional, his father's regard for the Northwest region was exemplified perhaps no better than by his financial contribution to and supervision of the historic Columbia River Highway's construction. John B Yeon State Park, 30 miles east of Portland in the Gorge, has several hiking trails directly across the river from Beacon Rock. The younger Yeon, among his landscape preservation achievements, purchased a 75-acre riverfront property directly across from Multnomah Falls, and created a landscape of lawns, meadows, wetlands and trails called The Shire (officially now The Shire: John Yeon Preserve for Landscape Studies under the U of O). Fittingly, the Friends of the Columbia Gorge house their offices in the Yeon Building.

The one hundred year old Yeon Building was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1994. Its ongoing renovation and green retrofit will go even farther toward its preservation.

Yeon Building (photos by Bradley Maule)

Brad Maule is a photographer living in Southeast Portland. His web site is PortlandUrbanResource.com.

 

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Imagining density, close-in and on the urban margins

"Scenario A" from Benson Blocks BOMA workshop (rendering courtesy PSU)

BY BRIAN LIBBY

Two articles from the Daily Journal of Commerce illustrate the variety of ways - but not the only ones - that development can move forward amidst the persistent Great Recession.

As Angela Webber reports in one story, six Portland State University real estate students presented proposals last Wednesday for a 14-acre site between Northeast Sandy Boulevard, Interstate 84, and 20th Avenue called the Benson Blocks.

Though broken down into two potential proposals, "modest" and "robust" (depending on the economic conditions), each is a mix of high-density housing and retail. The larger plan includes condos and hotels, for example, while the smaller one sticks to rental apartments (both would include senior housing). Other properties proposed in various plans include an urban Costco store, a YMCA, and a new Portland Community College campus with potential for student apartments.

The presentations (available via PDF here) were made to local members the Building Owners and Managers Association, who in turned offered the students feedback. The proposals were also made in cooperation with the owner of this 14-acre site, Joe Weston, who also owns a variety of properties throughout Portland.

Kyle Brown, one of the students working on the Benson Blocks plan, told Webbber his biggest lesson was “how much parking can influence a development’s financial pro forma.” Both proposals called for underground parking and stand-alone parking structures. “It’s the biggest influence, which is kind of a bummer,” Brown said. “That’s the way things have to be built.”

Map of the Benson Blocks study (image courtesy PSU)

That said, the "robust" proposal also included a Sandy Boulevard streetcar, which could be a reality one day given the Portland transportation bureau's plans to move lines outward from the MLK/Grand loop currently being constructed.

Having constructive dialogue between students and members of the development community is certainly something to applaud. What's more, focusing these efforts on one large swatch of property makes things easier in terms of imagining broad multi-block place making.

Yet given how a streetcar line is currently coming to woefully under-utilized Grand and MLK area, one can't help but wonder if such a brainstorming session might have been applied here. After all, local developers would be the first to concede that following the streetcar is a recipe for business success, not simply hoping it comes in 15 years. The central eastside has blossomed over the past decade yet without the boom-and-bust cycle of the Pearl District. How could that district be enhanced, possibly with housing and office space, without overrunning its existing character? MLK and Grand are major thoroughfares, yet planners ultimately hope to create a more pedestrian friendly environment here. What's the right mix of traffic calming, transit and mixed-use buildings?

What's more, I can't help but feel that looking at one 14-acre parcel of land is somewhat of a copout. True urban infill development is difficult precisely because there are countless parcels owned by different people. If we're truly trying to teach real estate students to approach development intelligently, why not have them tackle the real problem and not simply dream within an easier exception?

Living in Southeast, I pass down MLK and Grand on a regular basis, and it's always a disappointment to encounter multistory mixed-use buildings with the upper floor windows boarded up. It would have been perhaps more educational for both the students and for us to have them look at a messier problem but one with help (via the new streetcar line) seemingly on the way.

Come to think of it, Portland already has another large, multi-block development that's been struggling to come up with a compelling vision and the right economic critical mass for half a decade: the Burnside Bridgehead. After initially selecting one developer, the Portland Development Commission ultimately moved to parcel out the parcels in a multi-developer format. Certainly there are economies of scale to be reaped from coordinating multiple buildings in one huge development, yet there is also an added challenge in keeping this house of cards together. Successful developments of this size such as Gerding-Edlen Development's Brewery Blocks may be the exception to the rule. And should the exception be the focus of student dreams?

Meanwhile, the DJC's Nick Bjork reports that the group o 28 local policy makers responsible for presenting recommendations to the Metro Council unanimously support "a modest urban growth boundary expansion" for the Portland-metro area. "But about two-thirds of the group’s members went further," Bjork writes, "and asked that the council also require residential zoning in those expanded areas to be as dense as most Portland neighborhoods."

Urban Growth Boundary map (image courtesy Metro)

This may be a case of one step forward and at least one step backward. Kudos for those trying to make the margins of the metro area's boundaries more walkable, sustainable, desnse and transit-oriented. Yet it also has to be said: why are we expanding the boundaries at a time when both the home building and office markets are at historically low levels? Yes, there are thousands moving to Portland each month. But given the world-renowned fertile farmland being plowed to expand the growth boundary, and the countless swatches of land available throughout the area, why in the world would we loosen the belt?

If we are going to expand the boundary, however, Allison Arieff's opinion piece in Sunday's New York Times, called "Shifting the Suburban Paradigm," might be a timely read. Arieff argues that the single-family homebuilding industry isn't doing nearly enough to respond to the changing needs and conditions involving single family homes. Too often, Arieff writes, home builders have responded to the Great Recession by creating new marketing plans instead of new products.

"We’re beyond the point of a fresh coat of paint and a new sales pitch. If we’re going to continue to hold on to the single-family home, we need to transform it," Arieff writes. "There is a demand for smaller, more energy-efficient homes in less car-dependent neighborhoods; all aspects of the industry, from designers to lenders to planners to consumers, should meet it. In this era of anti-government fervor, subsidizing the American Dream isn’t an option; transforming it is the only one we’ve got."

"I don’t care if we’re talking Le Corbusier, Cape Cods or Corinthian columns," Arieff (who previously was editor-in-chief of Dwell magazine) continues. "We can’t make any progress in housing until we stop thinking about the home as decorative object and begin considering it as part of a larger whole. How does it work on the street? In the neighborhood? How is it served by transit? Is it adaptable, allowing for the housing of extended families or the hosting of an entrepreneurial endeavor? Can the owner build an accessory dwelling (a.k.a. granny flat) to do so? (Most zoning, homeowners’ associations and CCRs don’t allow for it currently.) What needs to happen to zoning, to financing, to our very notions of resale value to change the suburban condition — and by extension, the American Dream as we know it?"

When I posted this article to Facebook, however, local architect Joseph Readdy added a perceptive critique. "Allison Arieff makes some excellent points about the buildings, but doesn't address the issue of urban form that makes suburbia so unsustainable," he wrote. "Bright green cities won't be made by addressing building efficiencies alone. The public realm counts, too."

Indeed, if we look at existing suburbs for infill growth, there is an opportunity - a necessity, actually - to examine how the traffic and the isolation can be improved. Suburbs, be they in Oregon or anywhere else, were designed for the automobile. Can they be retrofitted to make options for getting around other than driving? It's not enough to have a MAX station two miles away, or for the surface parking lots to trade a few of their stalls for extra landscaping and a bioswale. Readdy is right that we have to think not just of how to retrofit a house, but an entire suburb, and to do it with a carrot more than a stick: a way that makes people want to live there, and able to.

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