Portland Architecture

Raves for Allied Works' Clyfford Still Museum in Denver

Clyfford Still Museum (photo by Peter Harholdt)

BY BRIAN LIBBY

To Los Angeles Times art critic Christopher Knight, it is "nothing less than a marvelous model for what a single-artist museum can be. Virtually every aspect of it is designed to maximize a visitor's encounter with Still's often riveting art."

For Time magazine's Amanda Bower, the building is "an island of tranquility amid the cacophony of the surrounding Denver Art Museum by Daniel Libeskind....Clyfford Still had referred to museums as 'morgues' for paintings displayed in a harsh and unchanging light, and so natural light filters through a delicate cast-in-place concrete ceiling, that from a distance looks almost like fabric suspended from the ceiling."

The recently opened Clyfford Still Museum in Denver, designed by Portland's Allied Works and its leader, Brad Cloepfil, seems to be receiving the kind of attention and accolades that can re-ignite a career.

Of course the Allied Works portfolio already includes a host of art museums, such as the Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis, the Museum of Arts and Design in New York, the Seattle Art Museum and the University of Michigan Museum of Art. For some of these projects, Cloepfil and company secured the commissions via design competitio, winning out against internationally prominent architects like Zaha Hadid (for MAD) and Herzog & DeMeuron (for St. Louis).

Clyfford Still Museum (photo by Peter Harholdt)

Yet the New York project, although praised by legendary critics like Ada Louise Huxtable in The Wall Street Journal, was always mired by controversy stemming from its transformation of the original structure there by Edward Durell Stone, informally known as the Lolipop Building. The firm seemed to stay reasonably busy during the recent Great Recession years, with not only the Michigan museum but the Booker T. Washington High School for the Performing Arts in Dallas, as well as houses and master planning work. But there were also projects that went unbuilt, be it a Fire Station One proposal in Portland or the Pacific Film Archive in Berkeley.

To see not only the Still Museum fully realized in Denver but also, at least so far (with heavyweights like Paul Goldberger and Michael Kimmelman yet to weigh in) receive high accolades, may remind potential future clients that Cloepfil is a torch-bearer of Louis Kahn-style modernism, using masonry and glass to create light-filled volumes aspiring to soulfulness.

"The best of Still’s abstractions look as inevitable as the heedless, randomly beautiful patterns of geology or flowing water. The boxy bunker designed by architect Brad Cloepfil bristles with ragged concrete fins, evoking Still’s intricate compositions," writes Bloomberg's James F. Russell. At first he seems to dislike the museum, calling it a "concrete bunker," yet to Russell that phrase apparently isn't damming. "That roughened exterior radiates an elegant gravitas," he adds. "It forms a carapace that guards Still’s cerebral work from our jangled, attention-deficit lives. Cloepfil...brings a Zen calm by framing the nine, squarish second-floor galleries in planes of concrete and painted drywall that alternately obscure and reveal, like Shoji screens. He mixes salon-style rooms with high galleries topped by a rippling scrim of concrete in which teardrop perforations delicately shower the space with shimmering daylight. Each room feels contained, so that you stop and look rather than glance and move on. The galleries still breathe because Cloepfil opened corners to diagonal vistas that gently tease you along."

"I’ve never seen another museum that paces the art-viewing experience so well," Russell adds.

Still, who grew up in Spokane, Washington, didn't have any particular connection to Denver. But his will offered his collection to an American city that would build a museum completely devoted to his work. "More than a dozen art institutions made serious attempts to convince Still's widow, Patricia, that they would be the best custodians of the work," Time's Bower writes. "She rejected them all. And so, for almost a quarter of a century, some 825 canvases and 1,575 works on paper remained in storage. Still's name and work vanished from the public eye."

But under then-Mayor John Hickenlooper (who is now Colorado's governor), Denver raised $32 million privately and finally built the $15 million structure. Although Clyfford Still is credited as the father of Abstract Expressionism, his work in this style predating titans like Jackson Pollock and Mark Rothko, by the 1950s had almost completely withdrawn from the world of gallery and museum exhibitions. He may have diminished his own reputation by removing himself from the national-international artistic conversation. But  because of Still's cantankerousness, this is also a serious art collection, much more so (as the LA Times' Knight notes) than other single-artist musuems like those devoted to Van Goh in Amsterdam or Picasso in Paris. The new Still Museum includes more than 90 percent of his life's work.

Per the artist's wishes (and in effect living up to its name), it also will not have a gift shop, cafe, or other accoutrements of the modern museum. But if it is to be a more sober, spiritual temple to art, that arguably is even better suited for Cloepfil's style. It's not to say Allied Works doesn't design spaces meant to be filled with people. The project that put Cloepfil on the architectural map, the Wieden + Kennedy headquarters in Portland, is a veritable hive of activity, with employees continuously moving around a central atrium and its catwalks. Yet Allied Works projects, at their best, use light and volume to forge transcendent space, not loudly like Daniel Liebeskind, whose museum is across the street, but by yielding, Zenlike, to the forces in and around. It's not a coincidence that Allied gets chosen for a lot of art museums, because despite Cloepfil's growing international reputation, the work itself yields to and enhances the art.

"Unlike most art museums, the Still's program is crystal clear from the moment you walk through the grove and enter the front door," Knight writes. "Across a modest lobby, a stair rises to the second floor, where paintings lead you through nine lovely galleries, enhancing a sense of immediate intimacy with the art. Separations between rooms allow views across and down into other spaces, facilitating awareness of where you are in the building. The art experience is the program, first and last."

A decade ago, Frank Gehry's Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain ignited the "Bilbao effect," the notion that arts and culture facilities can prompt widespread economic growth for the host city. Maybe there is a little of the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame Effect in having the Still Museum in Denver. (As in, "The Rock & Roll Hall of Fame is in Cleveland? What? Why?") But right now, particularly on the heels of the Denver Art Museum expansion, the city's efforts to bring the Still Museum to Mile High elevation beside the Rockies is bringing a lot of media attention and tourism, and may be part of a long-term reconsideration of the cultural merits of this middle-American outpost.

Particularly given that Portland was once the adopted hometown of one of the only artists to rival or surpass Clyfford Still in stature as an Abstract Expressionist of the 20th Century, Mark Rothko, Denver's move ought to be worth noting. Whether it's by spearheading a Mark Rothko Museum in Portland or simply an expansion of the Portland Art Museum to include its vacant city block of property to the north of the current facility, our city can do something like Denver did to give added institutional weight to the excitement already being generated locally by so many young artists locating here. It's no easy task to raise the millions of dollars and incur the favor of power players necessary to make an artistic-architectural game changer, but if Broncos can do it, so can Trail Blazers.

 

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Jefferson Smith only mayoral candidate to question Columbia Crossing boondoggle

Jefferson Smith (image courtesy Street Roots)

BY BRIAN LIBBY

Earlier this month, the three major candidates for mayor - Eileen Brady, Charlie Hales and Jefferson Smith - gathered for the race's first debate. Although the trio showed little disagreement on issues like jobs and the economy, the difference came in the Columbia River Crossing, the proposed Interstate 5 bridge.

Despite this being a project that would cost billions, has been vehemently criticized for its design (think flat slabs of concrete), is not supported by a majority of the community and is not even sure to reduce traffic congestion, two of three candidates expressed support for its going forward.

As reported by Beth Slovic in The Oregonian, both Brady and Hales called for immediate action on the bridge, perhaps seeking support from trade unions eager to have the bridge's construction jobs. "We need to build that bridge, you guys," Brady told the crowd of 150. Hales even declared that he would start construction in his first year in office.

Eileen Brady (image courtesy EileenBrady.com)

Only Jefferson Smith, the state legislator representing east Portland, showed a sane degree of skepticism about this poster-child for pork and the highway-industrial complex. "I know I'm supposed to just say build baby, build," Smith told the debate audience. "We need a Plan B."

Perhaps it's fitting, then, that Smith shares his name with the James Stewart character in Mr. Smith Goes To Washington, the classic movie about a principled young legislator fighting corruption.

New electoral candidates are usually full of policy ideas, as evidenced by the trio's proposals for other aspects of city government. Hales, for example, suggested cutting mayor's office staff and creating a capital fund for sidewalk construction. Brady vowed to accelerate the permitting process and to bulldoze the remaining natural portions of Hayden Island for industrial purposes.

But not one of the three candidates suggested or even addressed the natural solution for the Columbia Crossing: building a local bridge to Vancouver instead, which would drastically reduce I-5 traffic by creating non-freeway alternative and also cost about half. Not one of the candidates admitted there's another elephant in the room: the fact that the Rose Quarter is the true bottleneck of this stretch of Interstate, not the Interstate Bridge over the Columbia. It's the Rose Quarter where the freeway shrinks down to two lanes in each direction precisely as it interchanges with I-84 (multi-freeway intersections always make for the worst congestion), not on the existing Interstate Bridge with twice as many lanes as as at the Rose Quarter. But perhaps for Brady and Hales, the "Plan B" that Smith spoke of us too far of a diversion from their talking points and sound bytes. It's a messy problem requiring a thoughtful solution, something that doesn't play well to what Shakespeare called "the rabble in the pit".

Charlie Hales (image courtesy Willamette Week)

Let's ask the trio of Hales, Smith and Brady what they'd do if the Marquam Bridge carrying Interstate 5 travelers were the only bridge over the Willamette River. Would they tear down the Marquam and build a replacement Marquam, or would they build a local bridge like the Hawthorne or the Morrison? On this question, it's probable that these candidates as well as other Columbia Crossing supporters would argue that it's all about federal funding, which would be possible for the CC but not for a local bridge. But in this time of Great Recession, the federal funds are far from guaranteed. Hales' promise to build in Year One of his administration, for example, is a somewhat empty one: in this political climate, and in this budget-cutting economy, a major federal commitment of funds is unlikely, especially if Das Republicans take the White House and/or Congress in 2012.

One can see Brady following the wishes of construction and trade unionists who see the Columbia Crossing as a way to go from unemployment to a job. But Hales' enthusiastic commitment to the bridge is particularly disappointing. While a member of Portland's City Council in the 1990s and early 2000s, Hales spearheaded construction of the streetcar system. After leaving office, he helped several other cities build streetcars as well. He has an established record as a leader when it comes to transportation. But if Hales is an unequivocal supporter of a woefully designed, oversized, automobile-oriented bridge that doesn't even solve the problem it heavy-handedly is being built for, it casts his past record in a different light. Supporting the streetcar seemed to indicate that Hales was a proponent of progressive, smart mass-transit-oriented development. But when you take away all but the transit part, and Hales is still cheerleading, it makes one wonder if he's quite as discriminating about what transit projects to support as it seemed when he was in City Council.

This is not necessarily an endorsement for Jefferson Smith as mayor. Over the course of the campaign in the next five and a half months, he and the other two major candidates will articulate their visions on a number of policy fronts. If Brady and Hales have disappointed and induced cringes in their embrace of the Columbia Crossing like football players running towards the wrong end zone, it's still possible they will be out in front on other issues facing the city.

In the years ahead, leadership will be needed to jump-start the building industry, to maintain Portland's role as a sustainability capitol, to bring jobs, and to prudently oversee crises like Occupy Portland or weather emergencies. And any of the candidates may be qualified in that regard. Although Smith is the Harvard graduate, Brady (a grad of Evergreen State, a top regional school) has an impressive record building New Seasons and a family history of public service (her mother was a city councilor in Illinois) and Hales (University of Virginia, also tops academically) has an impressive record as a neighborhood leader even before he became a Portland city councilor.

Still, the Columbia Crossing is not only a huge issue concerning the Portland metro area, but also a kind of litmus test. There's no question that action needs to be taken to address the bottleneck plaguing I-5 day after day from the Rose Quarter to the Columbia. It's just that taking the right action matters here - not just any action.

 

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Getting history (and design review) right in Irvington

Freiwald House B&B, Irvington (photo by chrispyworld, via Flickr)

BY FRED LEESON

The figurative architects of Portland’s newest and largest historic district – the 2,800 property Irvington neighborhood listed on the National Register of Historic Places a year ago – now have a new target in sight: reducing Portland’s costly fees for historic design reviews charged to owners wanting to make minor alterations to their historic homes.

Members of the Irving Historic Preservation Committee say the design review fee, starting at $1,050 for something as simple as replacing a front door or a single window, can be more expensive than the restoration project itself.

Committee members also fear that costly fees will encourage property owners to make repairs on the sly – avoiding the fees but also avoiding design review protections that honor historic designs and presumably protect health and safety.

“We believe in design review,” said Barbara Christopher, a preservation committee member who served as a member of the Portland Historic Landmarks Commission in the 1990s. “We believed in it strongly enough to impose it on ourselves.” Piper said her committee respects the knowledge and insight of city staffers in the Bureau of Development Services who perform historic design reviews. She said the issue is cost, not the quality of the city’s work.

Are Portland’s fees out of line?  Piper surveyed 19 cities in Oregon and 43 across nation for  comparisons. The average fee in Oregon, excluding Portland, was $29; Portland’s fee boosts the average Oregon design review fee to $70. In her national survey, Piper found that many cities charge nothing; aside from Portland, the highest minimum fees she found were $333 in San Francisco and $325 in San Jose. The only others hitting three digits were Tucson at $153 and Oklahoma City at $100.

“The survey woke us up,” said Jim Heuer, an architectural historian and Irvington Preservation Committee member. Heuer said the Portland currently counts 5,277 buildings either in historic districts or individual landmarks on the National Register – all of which require design review for exterior alternations.

That list could grow substantially in the future. Citizens are either gathering data for potential historic districts in the Buckman neighborhood and are investigating that option in at least two others.  Under  national historic standards, Heuer said 85 percent of buildings in North and Northeast Portland west of 82nd Avenue could qualify as eligible for historic protection. “This is not a modern western city,” he said of Portland. “It is an old western city.”

Piper’s committee hopes to meet with neighborhood association representatives in other parts of Portland with historic neighborhoods in an attempt to build political clout for change. They hope to raise the fees as a campaign issue in 2012 as Portland goes about electing a new mayor and two other members of the five-person City Council. After all, the council is where the buck, so to speak, eventually stops.

Starting back in the early 1990s, the City Council started raising development-related fees in an attempt to make development services self-supporting. The decision was based on the philosophy that developers should pay for their development costs, not city taxpayers. The city stayed true to that vision in the Great Recession. As development fees plummeted with the dismal economy, the city  lopped of a substantial percentage of its Development Services staff. 

Heuer noted that some development fees, such as building permits and plans for new buildings, are rightly expenses charged to developers. But he said design review in neighborhoods is intended to protect the historic fabric of entire districts that citizens and tourists enjoy – not just the property owner in question. He cited a national listing that ranked Portland ninth in the United States for “noteworthy neighborhoods” recognized for their quality of life and “visitor experience.” Still, the fight over design review fees is not likely to be an easy one, given the city’s budget constraints.

“The reality is that the district is here to stay,” said Irvington’s Christopher. “There will be more of them. Ignoring the problem is not a rational way to run a government.”

Although there was little opposition from residents to creation of the Irvington National Historic District, worries about fees were one the few objections voiced at the time.

Piper has turned her attention to trying to lower design review fees, but has no regrets about having helped create the district. “Not at all,” she said. “No way. I’d dread to see what would have happened in the last three years if we had not done this. For the most part, people in the neighborhood like it.”

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

City Council to discuss Coliseum restoration Thursday, supporters encouraged

Coliseum for 2009 Rose Parade (photo by Jeremy Bitterman)

BY BRIAN LIBBY

This Thursday, Mayor Sam Adams will present to Portland's City Council the plan to restore historic Memorial Coliseum. The price tag for the project is currently projected to be $30.5 million, which includes more than $17 million in public funds via the city's Oregon Convention Center urban renewal district. The Portland Winterhawks would kick in $10 million and historic tax credits would cover $3.4 million. These are non-binding numbers, and negotiations are expected to continue.

But let's be clear: it's time to restore this building, both as a cultural treasure and as a catalyst for high-density development in the city's most important east-side urban core. This isn't just about Memorial Coliseum, but about revitalizing the entire Rose Quarter development with a world-renowned midcentury modern arena as its epicenter.

Given the economy's continuing sluggishness and the reduced funding available for numerous government programs from schools to transit, one can understand skepticism about a large public investment. Yet, as Adams knows, it takes stimulus to jump-start an economy, not austerity measures. What's more, the city's investment is just that: a use of urban renewal funds to, well, renew a key urban place in the city - just as the fund was set up to do by the Portland Development Commission several decades ago.

Coliseum's north and west facades (photo by Brian Libby)

Adams has taken some heat for the Coliseum restoration plan from people outside of the architecture, sustainability, business and development communities who question why Portland needs two arenas next door to each other, or from people who preferred the Coliseum be torn down for a Portland Beavers baseball stadium.

The Beavers and their approximately 1,800 season ticket holders (in 2009) would not have comprised a sound economic development strategy for the Rose Quarter, especially during the majority of the year that isn't baseball season. It's truly unfortunate the team wasn't able to find a way to build a stadium elsewhere in the metro area - Beaverton, Clackamas, Lents and Vancouver all rejected overtures - yet a busy multipurpose arena like the Coliseum is much more of a continuous revenue stream for the city. It hosts over 150 events per year, as much as the Rose Garden - only with smaller crowds.

Because the two arenas are differently sized - the Rose Garden at approximately 20,000 and the Coliseum being downsized to about 8,000 - they each fill a different economic niche. Portland doesn't have another arena of the Coliseum's size, so we'd eventually have to build a new one. And a from-the-ground-up arena would cost far, far more than this $30 million restoration - only $17 million of which is coming from city money anyway - not to mention all the carbon and embodied energy that would be lost if the Coliseum were torn down.

Then, of course, there is the fact that Memorial Coliseum is both a major landmark of 20th century modern architecture and a veterans memorial. As its listing on the National Register of Historic Places indicates, the Coliseum is architecturally unique: the only major arena in the world with a 360-degree view to the outside. The Coliseum is the equivalent of four city blocks in size, but stands on just four columns. Although its boxy class form is beautiful to some and banal to others, what's really special about the design - like much contemporary architecture - is the volume of space it creates.

Unfortunately, there is a huge disconnect between the Coliseum's greatest attribute and the public that has visited the building for generations. Instead of celebrating the uniqueness of a major interior arena with a matchless view to the outside - a Roman Coliseum encased in a modernist glass box - the Memorial Coliseum operators have for decades closed off the incredible view of the Willamette and downtown Portland with a fabric curtain. As a result, thousands of Oregonians grew up with the same experience (or lack thereof) I did: going to countless concerts and Blazer games over the 1970s, 80s and 90s without ever experiencing the building as it was intended.

Memorial Coliseum in 1960 (photo by Julius Schulman, from Modernism Rediscovered)

When I talk about the open-curtain setting of the Coliseum with its view through the glass, it isn't just a case of an art-and-architecture writer getting misty eyed over some obscure design move the public can't appreciate or that goes against prudent budget consciousness.

The open curtain gives Memorial Coliseum the chance to transcend ordinary arenas and become the kind of truly unique public gathering place that defines and empowers a city. How many other cities have a giant indoor arena that makes you feel like you're outdoors? Zero.

That uniqueness has economic value as well as social value. A building that can attract people not just because of what's booked there but as an experience in itself is a building that can be routinely booked, bringing a revenue stream to this city-owned structure.

What's more, saving and restoring Memorial Coliseum is the ultimate demonstration of how Portland does things differently. No other city has saved a large arena next door to the one that replaced it. But no other city in the 1980s was throwing itself into a light rail system. No other city in the 1970s was ripping out freeways and passing bottle bills. Just as it has done with sustainability and urban planning, not to mention the Portlandia-celebrated culture being cultivated here, Portland makes up for its lack of wealth and size with pioneering initiatives that often become the new normal in the rest of the United States. And in a time of both environmental disaster and economic gloom, Memorial Coliseum can represent a commitment to progressive values: of investing ecomically in new projects to bring jobs, and protecting our region's greatest cultural assets.

Of course there are questions that remain with regard to the deal. Council members may be concerned with how the $17 million from the Oregon Convention Center urban renewal area might take away from funds meant to improve Martin Luther King Boulevard. And urban renewal dollars must legally include about 30 percent set aside from affordable housing. Can we fit this into the Rose Quarter mix along with the arenas?

That said, the Coliseum can act as a catalyst that will allow high-density housing as part of its mix and prompt private development. It will act as a sister venue to the Convention Center that will help attract larger bookings. The Coliseum will catalyze the Rose Quarter: a gem that lends energy to surrounding developments.

City Council is expected to begin discussion of the Memorial Coliseum restoration at approximately 2PM this Thursday (November 17). If you feel as I do about this masterful building, please consider coming to City Hall and making your voice heard. Or if you can't make it to provide testimony in person, please consider writing today to Mayor Adams (MayorSam@portlandoregon.gov) and his fellow City Council members (Amanda Fritz, amanda@portlandoregon.gov; Nick Fish, Nick@portlandoregon.gov; Dan Saltzman, dan@portlandoregon.gov; Randy Leonard, randy@portlandoregon.cov.

 

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Active on Ankeny: new housing by Colab Architecture

Ankeny Lofts (photo by Timothy Park)

BY BRIAN LIBBY

The autumn sun was shining brightly last week as I met architect Mark Engberg of Colab Architecture + Urban Design and Duncan McDonnell of general contractor Rainier Pacific for a tour of the Ankeny Lofts, a new two-building residential development on Southeast Ankeny Street. The site is just a few blocks from the commercial area at 28th Avenue, where projects like Kevin Cavenaugh's Box + 1 Lofts and Holst Architecture's Sunrose Condominiums rose in the 2000s boom along with popular destinations like the Laurelhurst Theater. Works Partnership's recent AIA award-winning duplex, the Tandem, is also nearby.

The 24 by 100-foot site includes two separate buildings, each containing two loft units. The front building is zoned to allow commercial or residential, so it's ideal live-work space. The rear building, although blocked from the street by the other structure, looks out at a private courtyard. Another new residential building is going in next door, and Engberg and McDonnell say they have talked with architects of that project about continuing the courtyard on their property to create one larger shared outdoor space.

Interiors at the Ankeny Lofts (photos by Timothy Park)

Both buildings are clad in tongue and groove cedar siding and, to a lesser extent metal panels. Sustainable features include green roofs and pervious pavers; all stormwater will be treated on site.

Standing inside, I liked the contrasting light and dark tones slected for the surfaces and walls, and how - as the loft classification would indicate - the spaces were wide open. The front building seems a little bit more successful in distributing windows to multiple sides, whereas the back units rely more on one double-height glass front and can become dark in the rear of the units.

The decision to build two separate structure instead of one larger building is a curious one at first. It seems like a potentially more expensive option. But the design and construction team found that zoning and permitting were much easier when designing one or two-unit structures than a multi-unit apartment building, as were the loans.

Top: site diagram (courtesy Colab); bottom: Ankeny Lofts (photo by Brian Libby)

On the outside, these are handsome structures that combine the texture of their cedar facades with the form of intersecting rectangles not entirely dissimilar from the Colab-designed Brandon House that was featured as the HGTV cable channel's "Dream House" in 2003.

The firm has always had a unique mix of local and national projects. Colab was the local firm partnering with Boston-area architect Charles Rose for an expansion at the Oregon College of Art & Craft. They also have designed numerous projects in the middle east, including an unbuilt tower in Dubai and a housing development in Cairo.

Top: Brandon House, bottom: Cairo Houses (courtesy Colab)

The Ankeny project seems successful not only architecturally but economically. To get any project financed over the past three years has been extraordinarily difficult. And if there is indeed a string of projects happening along this street, it has to be a good sign for the local market. These are rental units, not for-sale condos, but all four of the units were rented by the time the project construction was complete.

A project coming next door to the Ankeny Lofts (photo and design by Webster Wilson)

"I think the project is most important as a larger multi-project area of courtyards between buildings," Engberg said later, via email. "If we can pull that off I'll be very pleased. The courtyard idea crossing multiple lots and owners will be very unique in Portland."

And if critical mass can be achieved with the completion of numerous projects along this stretch of Ankeny as planned, it could be evidence that the market is slowly picking up: not with massive block-sized condo or office towers in the Pearl and South Waterfront, but in the smaller form of infill lots across the city. Even when the economy was booming, these types of projects were often the most compelling works of architecture.

 

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A different PATH: Corey Martin joins forces with THA Architecture

Corey Martin at the Butler Residence (photo by Brian Libby)

BY BRIAN LIBBY

It happens in practically every creative person's career: the moment when one must choose between continuing with a successful small operation or joining a bigger one; between a nimble independence and buying in to something larger than yourself.

It could be an indie-rock band signing with a major label, or a filmmaker popular on the festival circuit signing on with a big Hollywood studio. It could be a professional athlete in free agency deciding between re-signing with his scrappy small-market squad or moving to a deep pocketed year-in-year-out winner in a big city like the Yankees or Lakers. It's not a matter of right or wrong so much as a particular fit, or lack thereof, and as specific as a glass slipper.

For Corey Martin, it was one common to the profession: a choice between sticking with the small firm with which your name was made, PATH Architecture, versus joining a larger firm like, in this case, THA Architecture. For THA themselves, it was a matter of reaching out before you were even sure you wanted to reach out - a quick move nearly a decade in the making.

In the past few years, Martin has designed under the PATH banner a succession of beautiful single-family houses such as the Butler Residence, as well as mixed-use condo units. He also co-founded 11xDesign, a consortium of small Portland firms developing their own projects with a popular 2009 homes tour of the same name. As I've written about previously both on this blog and elsewhere, the group seemed to signify a new generation of talented, relatively young architects taking their place, including not only PATH but firms and architects like Ben Waechter, William Kaven Architecture, and Webster Wilson.

Now, however, Martin has accepted an offer from THA Architecture, the firm formerly known as Thomas Hacker Architects and with a portfolio of acclaimed and award-winning public buildings: several libraries throughout the metro area, as well as many museum and college campus projects throughout the west coast. A few years ago Hacker's Woodstock Branch Library, just to name one example, was listed as one of the one of the top 10 library designs in the United States in a publication jointly released by the American Institute of Architects and the American Library Association. Hacker himself is also a hugely significant presence in Oregon architecture over the past quarter-century or more as a connector: he worked under the legendary architect Louis Kahn in Philadelphia before coming to the University of Oregon to teach and later to Portland to practice. Top local architects of today such as Brad Cloepfil,  Rick Potestio and Nancy Merryman got their start working under Thomas Hacker, studying under him, or both. And as it happens, Corey Martin previously worked under Potestio and Cloepfil.

That Martin is joining THA as a design principal is somewhat rare; usually they are promoted to that leadership level from within. Perhaps it begs the question: did THA feel it was lacking something? But in an interview recently with a group from Hacker's office, including Martin and Hacker along with principals David Keltner and Jonah Cohen, they say the marriage was more one of mutual appreciation and the opportunity for growth, all within the context of Hacker eventually moving closer over time to retirement.

Mercy Corps Action Center (photo by Jeff Amram for THA Architeture)

"For years now we’ve been working on a plan to continue the office beyond me," Hacker says. We have people who have dedicated their lives to this. I’ve always wanted the office to exist to support them for the future."

Until now, Hacker was content with Keltner and the other architects on board, as were they. But in the past year, after and amidst some lean times for the industry, THA got busy. The firm has always prided itself on avoiding the sometimes ultra-long hours architects work, allowing a higher quality of life for its staff not as an alternative to producing quality designs, but as an enabler of it. But the increasing workload was starting to change that.

About this same time, Hacker happened upon Martin and PATH's Butler Residence, and couldn't stop raving. "I literally couldn’t believe my eyes when I saw it. I thought it was unbelievable. I felt stupid. I had no idea this kind of work was being done. The spatial order and the lack of barrier between inside and outside – that feeling that everything is involved with everything else spatially: it was thrilling for me. It was one of those times you realize as a member of a community that there’s freshness and a new breath of fresh life in the system."

As it happened, Keltner and Martin had long been friends after briefly working together for Rick Potestio. When Keltner heard Hacker rave about Martin's work, the idea was floated about bringing him on.

"Corey was doing such beautiful and compelling work. In the back of my mind I sort of dreamed that we’d get to work together," Keltner says. "So for us [at THA] it seemed not like, ‘Let’s start a search for more design leadership,’ but a way to sort of work with one particular individual. It’s not like we would go looking elsewhere. Frankly we thought of Corey first and then realized, ‘This is a role we should actually be thinking about."

What did they like about PATH and Martin's work? "It has a kind of spare simplicity that’s incredibly thoughtful, but without the presence of ego," Keltner adds. "You don’t see someone trying to make a big splash, but it’s elegant and perfect. That’s what our office aspires to: a kind of egoless approach to truth and beauty."

PATH's Park Box duplex (photo by Brian Libby)

Even so, Martin explains, "To be honest it was a very hard decision. PATH is doing well. We have a lot of work. Surprisingly we’ve weathered a storm. But it was about survival. I’ve always really tried to hold a high standard with the work I’ve accepted. That’s very hard as a two person or even as 15-person firm. But it’s always been a struggle. It consumes you. My work and my life are not separate. My wife and my kid do not see me. These guys are talking about another way of operating: something sustainable, not just in doing a building, but in sustaining your life. And it was about being part of something bigger than me."

"I’d got the call from other firms. This was different. When David called me, he didn’t talk about what it was that he was offering. He was curious. Would I even consider it? The story he told was interesting. He backed up and talked about the internal process going on: figuring out a way to make sure the firm outlasts Tom’s leadership. It was about a process of unfolding. That was pretty humbling and pretty interesting to me."

Martin was - like most any architect - attracted to the opportunity to design public spaces of the sort that have long been part of Hacker's portfolio, be it the Mercy Corps headquarters and visitors center downtown, a theater in Ashland for the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, or the College of Education complex in Eugene at the U of O. That the opportunity to do such work means giving up some of the autonomy that co-leading PATH afforded is, he believes, an inevitable series of pros and cons.

"In a way I’ll be stepping away from all the things that I do as a partner in a small firm: bookkeeping, hiring, firing. Now I can focus on doing great work," Martin added. "My dad was a great insight into that. I was nervous, to be honest. I wondered, can I cut it? He said, 'You’ve got to detach from that. It’s all space and light and form.'"

He sees similarity in the intent of efforts like 11xDesign and Hacker's ongoing culture of mentorship and collaboration within the firm. "The idea of 11 by design was we were all designers and developers. We were all risk takers. It was also about meeting together to see how we could create a Portland style, letting go of our egos to try and bring each other up and letting go of the ego. I mean, we know good design has some ego. But the idea that that could be nurtured is really similar to 11xDesign philosophy."

Willamette River from THA's Atwater Place (photo by Brian Libby)

"There’s a judgment thing that has to happen with leadership," Hacker adds. "In the early days of this office, one of the most diff things was to make decisions in an amount of time that allowed you to prosper. It’s very hard in an office, especially when you’re the only design lead. You often have to make decisions before you’re comfortable that you’ve got there. That’s one thing that took me years to learn how to do. Before that the office was financially unstable because you couldn’t take the proper amount of time to make every decision you wanted to. We talk about lack of ego but Corey’s right that you have to be strong enough and see all the possibilities and make the choice to move forward."

And if Martin changes the THA style, that's fine with its founder. Just don't mistake the addition of Martin as a sign of weakness or insecurity - just the opposite. "One of the most important things is to understand this firm will change its direction to some extent because of Corey and his talents and values. It won’t be the same firm in five years, but in a good way. We like to have a design dialogue. We don’t have individual studios but work as a team on different projects. Corey will bring a voice that is really stimulating. And the more that happens, the better. We feel our work is fresher and more alive right now than it’s been for a long time, actually. But I would say that we do need Corey to come. It’s a matter of the life and natural evolution of place. You need people with a new eye to come in sometimes and stimulate it. It’s not a bad thing. It’s a really good thing."

After covering Hacker's work for more than a decade and PATH's for roughly half that time, the news of Martin's transition was a surprise that seemed less surprising the more I thought about it. Yes, it's disappointing to imagine the partnership between Martin and Ben Kaiser breaking up after not only some beautiful houses, but the promise of larger-scale work in the future. However, PATH, Martin says, will continue without him. And it's not at all without value for a young small-firm architect to infuse a larger firm with energy and talent. Besides, THA Architecture is not some corporate behemoth of a firm producing a succession of bland buildings. They are not at all the service-firm stereotype of with a business model built on practical capability more than design talent.

Hacker once told me in a past interview that one of Louis Kahn's most important lessons to him was about how to integrate private architectural practice with teaching, creating a culture of mentorship and academic-style studio critique within a profitable architecture-firm. If Martin can become a part of that, influencing architects working with him just as Hacker and some of his disciples like Potesio and Cloepfil have done, it will more than outweigh the lost potential of the small firm he leaves behind. And while surely PATH would have graduated from single-family homes and small condos to larger-scale work, it's only fitting that a talent like Martin have a chance to design not just for the tiny percentage of people affluent to comission bold, spacious houses but for the public via our communally shared schools, museums, churches, nonprofits and libraries. If I were Martin, I wouldn't have said yes to many firms. Perhaps only three or four out of scores. But when THA came calling, he made the right call.

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Time-based architecture: PICA to occupy "checkerboard" building downtown

415 SW 10th (photo by Brian Libby)

BY BRIAN LIBBY

Not only has the local arts organization known for its TBA Festival (as in "Time Based Art") found a new home, but the move means a beloved Portland building's future is no longer TBA (as in "to be announced").

As Marty Hughley reports in Monday's Oregonian, the building at 415 SW 10th Avenue that has despite its distinctive multicolored checkerboard-patterned facade remained vacant for more than a decade will now become the Portland Institute for Contemporary Art's headquarters.

Assuming PICA has no plans to radically alter the building's exterior, this is a win-win for arts in Portland. It's giving the Institute a real home, and incorporating a bit of "The Works", its popular TBA Fest temporary headquarters, into daily operations. At the same time, although 415 is considered a decaying eyesore by some, it is a beloved midcentury building that transcends its unremarkable mid-20th century materials and decaying condition.

PICA has long had its offices in the Wieden + Kennedy headquarters, dating back to the building's renovation and opening in 2000. But it was always at the pleasure of W+K rather than being a true PICA home. What's more, the visual art exhibit space that PICA began with there was phased out several years ago. Although the 415 building isn't really big enough to host most of the major TBA Fest events happening each September, according to Hughley's article, the Institute will offer some small public events there. For now, PICA actually is only leasing the top floor, about 10,000 square feet of space including a roof-top patio above Southwest 11th Avenue. "The institute’s library will be expanded and events such as working residencies, film screenings, panel discussions and dinners will provide other opportunities for community engagement," Hughley reports.

A few years ago, Richard Singer, the developer who owns the 415 building, had looked to renovate it with a plan by Holst Architecture that, while dazzling in its design, would have radically altered the facade and its multicolored panels. But that plan, for a renovated mixed-use building, was abandoned when the Great Recession arrived in 2008. Neither PICA nor Singer indicated, at least in Hughley's article, whether such changes would be made. But the Institute seems to have a sense that the building in its present state is special and beloved, even if it isn't a work of irreplacable architectural history.  “It’s very iconic, in an understated way,” PICA executive director Victoria Frey said of the building in Hughley's article.

415 SW 10th (photo by Brian Libby)

Frey also said that renovations will begin right away, with a goal of PICA occupying the building by the end of December. That too would seem to indicate the facade will not be destroyed.

Moving to 415 SW 10th puts PICA at an emerging arts-and-culture epicenter. Just around the corner is the Ace Hotel, with its adjacent Cleaners storefront for special events right next door. Across the street is Living Room Theaters and Powells Books is a block to the north.

That the Institute could move to this ideally situated downtown building may also be at least in part a silver lining to the troubled economy. "Frey declined to disclose financial figures of the lease agreement but said that PICA will be getting the space for far below market rate in the neighborhood," Hughley reports, "because Singer Properties has no other pending development plans for the building. A budget for the renovations has not been determined, she said, but a large portion of construction materials and services are being donated by the contractors -- Andersen Construction, Howard S. Wright, Lease Crutcher Lewis and Walsh Construction."

If PICA can continue to raise proper funds, one can't help but wonder about the organization ultimately occupying all of the building, or at least all but its ground floor. Singer has been unable to fill the building for pretty much all of the past decade, even as the economy and particularly real estate were at the height of their boom times. PICA, while not deep pocketed, is world-renowned for its TBA fest and could use the second floor of this three-story building for the permanent exhibition space it has woefully lacked for years. I'd love to eventually see a capital campaign by PICA to purchase the building outright or at least secure a long-term lease that would allow it to think of the biulding as a quasi-permanent home.

Although there are still unanswered questions about the building's renovation and the ultimate presence PICA will have there, reading Hughley's article this morning had me leaping out of what is otherwise a near-catatonic daily morning wakeup stupor. I was excited imagining PICA becoming a relevant presence again in the 11 months of the year when TBA is not in progress, taking its rightful place again as a year round organization committed to visual arts as well as performing arts.

And after years of advocating, counter-intuitively to some, that this delightful if pedigree-less little gem be preserved, that a member of the arts community would save the Checkerboard rather than the real estate community seems only fitting. Sometimes to create singular architecture you've got to be creative enough see the potential of what is hiding in plain sight.

 

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Historic Preservation League completes new guidelines for "compatible infill design"

Blagen Block, Old Town (photo by Brian Libby)

BY FRED LEESON

After roughly a year of study and discussion, the Historic Preservation League of Oregon has completed its guidelines for “compatible infill design” for new buildings that might surface in any of 123 Oregon historic districts listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

The HPLO, a non-profit state-wide preservation advocacy group that partners with many local preservation organizations, crafted seven guidelines in an attempt to preserve the character of historic districts and to minimize trauma for developers and architects hoping to erect new buildings within historic boundaries.

At their best, the guidelines should give developers and designers a reasonable feel for how go to about building something new in a historic district. At their worst, they might leave designers and local governments somewhat confused about what should work and what shouldn’t when messing with historic turf.

The final version closely follows a draft issued last summer. It is compiled in a colorful 12-page pamphlet, available at www.HistoricPreservationLeague.org, that includes helpful photographs and diagrams to assist with explanations.

The most compelling guideline comes first.  It declares “the district is the resource, not individual parts.” It urges that new construction protect the overall integrity of a district, and suggests that designers need to look at the district as a whole when thinking about heights, setbacks, massing and fenestration.

US National Bank, downtown (photo by Brian Libby)

“It’s a paradigm shift about how people want to build in a district,” said Paul Falsetto, chair of the Portland AIA’s Historic Resources Committee, who also was an active volunteer in the HPLO study. He said many architects look at a vacant site and think about what they want to do, rather than getting “a sense of the district as a whole.”

“This to me seemed so logical,” said Natalie Perrin, referring to the first principle.  Perrin is an architectural historian and preservationist who chaired the HPLO infill committee.  She drew analogies to a building missing a piece of ornament and to a vacant lot being a missing tooth in larger whole.

The second guideline states that new construction should reinforce the historic significance of the district. The HPLO urges developers and designers to study the history of the district, much of which can be learned from National Trust applications, to understand what is significant about its past and its buildings.

Falsetto said the first two guidelines are intended to give architects and developers a feel for the territory in which they are working. The third, fourth and fifth guidelines speak more directly to design, encompassing such items as massing, heights, floor area ratios and, where possible, sharing modern amenities with neighboring old buildings, such as mechanical systems, structural stability and ADA requirements. They also urge that infill should be compatible yet distinct from historic fabric, and that exterior patterns of fenestration, setbacks, materials and texture should “reflect district characteristics.”

These design-oriented guidelines are where subjective debate will arise. And they will be more difficult to administer in smaller local jurisdictions where building departments lack officials with historic design expertise or background. A building that is compatible yet distinct, according to the guidelines, should be identified through signs or interpretative materials to relate them to the context of the district, but should not stand out on wacky style grounds alone.

“We did not want to stymie good design,” Perrin said.  “We wanted to leave it open to interpretation and leave room for flexibility.”

The final two guidelines address preservation or mitigation of archeological resources, and a plea that old buildings in historic districts NOT be demolished to create infill opportunities. “Properties deemed ‘contributing’ in the National Register nomination or through subsequent research or rehabilitation must not be removed or rendered non-contributing to make way for new construction,” the HPLO urges. That sentence speaks directly to the Dirty Duck Tavern in Portland, which the City Council allowed to be torn down to make way for a new Blanchet House, now under construction in the Chinatown historic district.

Falsetto said he thinks the guidelines are easily read and understood.  He hopes that local governments will review them and adopt them as part of municipal codes as they see fit.  If nothing else, they give lay preservationists throughout Oregon reasonable tools for evaluating infill proposals as they come forth, and for seeking changes if those proposals fall below acceptable standards.

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

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