Portland Architecture

The Architect's Questionnaire: Robert Fagliano

Robert Fagliano (image courtesy MulvannyG2)

BY LUKE AREHART

The latest installment of the Architect’s Questionnaire has been compiled with answers from Portland architect Robert Fagliano of MulvannyG2 Architects. After earning his Masters of Architecture degree from Montana State University-Bozeman, Robert went to work for local firm McBride Architects which specializes in exterior restorations among other things. Robert joined Portland firm MulvannyG2 in the summer of 1999 and has been there ever since and worked on the recently completed 16.5 million dollar remodel of the Fred Meyer store at Burlingame. For the last couple months I worked in the same office as Robert and found him to be an architect in the true sense of the word, successfully transcending the gap between the technical and the beautiful, the theory and the practice.

Portland Architecture: When did you first become interested in architecture as a possible career?

Robert Fagliano: It was probably my freshman or sophomore year in high school; my grandmother had a basement that she wanted to turn into more than just storage, so she had me draw up a kitchen area. She was very encouraging in my life and she looked at my drawing and said: ‘This is great, maybe you should be an architect.’ That planted a seed that grew in me.

Where did you study architecture and how would you rate the experience?

Montana State University. I didn’t know a whole lot about the school beforehand. My dad lived in Montana. He knew I was interested in architecture, and thought it would be a good idea to go there. They have a really well rounded design emphasis with a construction/structural component as well. It was the College of Arts and Architecture, with some well-seasoned guys teaching structures. It was a nice mix. Architecture was always something in the back of my mind; I really enjoy the technical aspects of many things. It seemed to me that architecture was a chance to explore that, and I ended up really enjoying it.

Burlingame Fred Meyer (image courtesy MulvannyG2)

What is your favorite building project that you’ve worked on?

I would like to say it’s always the current one that I’m on: you can find something interesting in everything you are working on. Astoria Heritage Square is a great project and it’s nice to be part of the process. I did enjoy the design process on the Fred Meyer Burlingame that was an interesting one; we tore it down all the way to the original structure. I really enjoyed the investigation required on that building.

At another firm I worked for, we did exterior restoration and construction on a building called Waldo Hall at Oregon State University. It was built in the early 1900’s and it was nice getting into the parts that you looked at from the outside; looking up at the eaves you would think they were stonework, but it was actually tin, a tin bender’s paradise. There were these intricately detailed tin panels that were covering the eave framing and gutters. Because of the buildings age there was lead abatement, mortar repair, re-roofing, gutter restoration, and the question, ‘What are you going to do?’ You are not going to have the artisans that did that work before available to work on it now, so it was challenging. I loved the investigation to see how the carpenters framed everything out, back then.

Walso Hall, Oregon State University (image courtesy Robert Fagliano)

Who has been an important mentor among your colleagues?

Mac McBride (McBride Architects), he used to work for SOM when there was an office in Portland. He was one of the people that taught me a lot about architecture and restoration. Bill Keefer (MulvannyG2) is a wealth of information, and also fun to talk to about technical topics. Richard Shavey formerly of (MulvannyG2) was influential. I learn by observing Brian Fleener (MulvannyG2) interacting with people. Architecture is a mix and match of being a relationship/social person and measuring that with design and technical expertise. It’s a mesh of multiple people that have to get the job done. I learn a lot from all of those folks.

What part of the job do you like best, and as an architect what do you think you most excel at?

It changes. As far as architecture goes, I like the investigation of existing buildings; I like the “archaeological dig” so to speak. There is a lot to learn, and throughout the years of built environment, there are a lot of things that we have seemingly forgotten and we find important again.  What’s old is now new, with a little repackaging, because we have forgotten about it.

Portland Building (photo by Brian Libby)

What are some Portland buildings (either new or historic) that you most admire?

Even though it gets a bad rap, I like the Portland Building’s color. I like the idea that when everything was either gray or beige, Michael Graves just went ‘Ok, we are going to throw a lot of color on this building.’ In Portland, the sky is already gray, so why not pump a little colorful life into it?  I do like the courthouse and the materials used. The Keller Fountain is actually pretty cool, I like the idea that even though it rains here most of the time, it’s a place where people can go and hang out and eat lunch.  It makes for an active place.  As a whole fabric of Portland, I like the buildings from the 1880’s that are intermixed with some of the more modern buildings, it is a nice fabric. If it were all one or the other, it would be boring.

What is your favorite building outside of Portland and besides any you’ve worked on?

Antonio Gaudi’s Casa Mila. Even the vents on the roof look like statues and art.  I like discovering a small beautiful detail that is important, when you are looking at something else.  You can walk by it ten, fifteen, twenty times and then on the twentieth time you notice something that was intended to tie you into something else on the other side of the building that you never knew about.

What would you like to see change about Portland’s built environment in the long term?

Coming from the Bay Area, I like what Portland has done controlling urban growth.  In the Bay Area, not as much as in LA, it’s just a lot of urban sprawl and you don’t know where you are unless you see that sign that says: ‘You are leaving Walnut Creek population 60,000’ or ‘Welcome to Concord population 120,000’ you don’t really know that you are actually in another area. I think Portland has the risk of doing that if we are not careful, I would hope that this thought continues.  The other side of me says that if someone is coming here and wants to buy a house and raise a family, it can make it tough with higher housing costs closer in to the city. There is a delicate balance with the whole urban growth boundary, there are pros and cons to it because you also want people to be able to have a good chance to make a better life for themselves, and not have to mortgage their grandkid for it.

How would you rate the performance of local government like the Portland Development Commission, or the development and planning bureaus?

We are dealing with people, and I think they are doing the best they can with what they have. Over the last few years they have maybe been short staffed. Its difficult going through all the red tape, and this might be the case when jurisdictions have multiple departments.  I’ve dealt with a lot of jurisdictions, and it can seem like the right hand doesn’t know what the left hand is doing. I don’t believe they are maliciously intending to do that, but communication breakdown happens.  If you go through a jurisdiction to get your permits, you’d hope that everybody that needed to actually see the drawings has seen them and made their comments.  You come out with the building permit, and you’ve dealt with things.  The goal is to limit the surprises in the field.  

Sometimes an inspector will say: ‘Hey you’ve got to fix this now, even though the department had a chance to give comments but they didn’t.’ Now we are raising a concern, and unfortunately now we are under construction. That puts everyone in a bad position, the architect, the owner, and the contractor.  As the architect you really try and resolve any issues ahead of time. There is always going to be something, and when it does come up the best thing to do is immediately work on the resolution.

Would you rather live in a South Waterfront condo, a craftsman bungalow in Laurelhurst, a warehouse loft in the North Mississippi district or a mid-century ranch in the West Hills?

For me, where I am in my life right now I have four kids, we’re in a ranch style home out in Beaverton, and I like the schools my kids attend.  Another reason for me, why we have stayed there, is when I was a little kid, I moved around a lot, so I don’t want to move around a lot for my kids.  But I’ve always thought it would be fun to live in a loft, but there is not a chance I would do that right now.

Who is a famous architect you’d like to see design a building in Portland?

Well, he can’t anymore, but I would love to have Antonio Gaudi do something here.

Which would you rather be responsible for: an ugly LEED platinum building or a beautiful modernist energy hog?

With the LEED movement, there are a lot of good aspects to it; there also seems to be some fanaticism with it that is unwarranted.  When an agenda is pushed and everyone pushing thinks they are exactly right and moving down that path, there are probably some things that we are not accurate on, probably some things we don’t have exactly right, and the “path” can become the agenda as we push reason aside. To answer the question I would rather be responsible for an “ugly” LEED platinum building.  Those “ugly” LEED platinum buildings once they are out there, gain acceptance from people.  Some begin to look at them and say ‘Hey, that is actually not that ugly.’ People get used to what they see over and over. That doesn’t mean that we should push something that is ugly just to get acceptance from people. No architect is planning on doing an “ugly” LEED building, they’re planning on designing a form that tries to mesh with and utilize creation; to benefit from the environment that we are given, and mold it into the built environment we are creating.  In an attempt to take advantage of any sustainable practice that we can; the process is done by an architectural-engineering back and forth.  But once you figure out that it works and the components work, then you start being able to mold it into something that is art.

Snowflake under microscop (image courtesy snowcrystals.com)

Name something besides architecture (sneakers, furniture, umbrellas) you love the design of.

Snowflakes. I’ve seen pictures of snowflakes under a microscope, and every single one of them is different, awe inspiring.  If you think about a snow storm, whether or not you are going to find one snowflake exactly like another, you have to go through a whole lot of snowflakes to actually determine that, and then you still haven’t gone through the snowflakes in…Detroit. The beauty is they are all different geometric masterpieces, that’s amazing to me. Buckminster Fuller explored the natural world resulting in the geodesic dome; the inventors of the helicopter mimicked the dragonfly, that kind of stuff really interests me. Design in nature that you can see and zoom into; the more you zoom in, the more interesting it gets.

What are three of your all-time favorite movies?

“Braveheart”, “Facing the Giants”, and “Elf”

 

Advertisement

Mark Rothko, Oregon skies, and staying or going

1921 high school photo of Mark Rothko (courtesy Multnomah County Library, via PORT)

BY BRIAN LIBBY

The Portland Art Museum has hosted countless blockbuster exhibitions over the past two decades, from "Imperial Tombs of China" in 1996 to "Hesse: A Princely German Collection" in 2005. But the museum's Mark Rothko retrospective, which opened February 18, is a different kind of blockbuster.

For starters, it's curated by the museum itself (specifically chief curator Bruce Guenther) rather than just a traveling show begun elsewhere. What's more, the show also features the one Portland visual artist to achieve international superstardom, for Rothko stands alongside Jackson Pollock and Clyfford Still as one of the great abstract expressionist painters exploding onto the scene after World War II and one of the great American artists of all-time.

The Rothko exhibition at PAM would be enough of a must-see for his historical significance alone, not to mention the arresting, engrossing power of his canvasses: fields of vibrant color and layered paint that not only possess great aesthetic beauty, but also act as spiritual portals - staring into the Rothko works you see in your mind what you want to see, or fear seeing, or never expect to see. For me, it's the continually changing Oregon skies that I see in Rothko's work: the dark gray and deep blue of his later works evoking our rainy season, the vivid tones of his late '40s and early '50s paintings calling to mind the horizon at dusk.

Mark Rothko, Untitled (Museum of Modern Art)

Yet the exhibit itself also gives us the chance to ask: Would Rothko have to leave Portland today in order to achieve the same level of acclaim?

Rothko's family immigrated to the United States from Russia (but what's now Latvia) in 1913 to escape Jewish persecution in the final years of the Czarist regime. But within months of arriving in Portland, where two of Rothko's uncles set up clothing businesses, his father died. Leaning on his mother for support, the 10-year-old Rothko enrolled in a local school and, despite having to learn English as his fourth language, his intelligence allowed him to skip two grades. He graduated from Lincoln High School in 1921. He received a scholarship to Yale University, but dropped out after a year and moved to New York, embracing his career as an artist.

Rothko would return to Portland in 1933 for what became his first museum exhibition, at the Portland Art Museum. It also included works by his pre-teen art class students at a New York Jewish community center. But by this time, he was unquestionably more New Yorker than Portlander. As the Great Depression raged, Rothko's career began to flourish because he lived amongst a fertile environment of fellow artists there. It's not that there weren't artists in Portland; the acclaimed Oregon painter Carl Morris was creating murals and canvasses of both romantic realism and, later, abstraction comparable to Rothko's. Yet Portland in the 1930s would have lacked the truly varied, vibrant art community of the Big Apple. It was in New York in the years just after World War II that Rothko had his breakthrough, dropping the symbolic and representational paintings of his career thus far and embracing the abstraction for which his name would be made.

Mark Rothko, Untitled (Three Nudes), 1947 (National Gallery of Art)

It's fair to say that Rothko wouldn't have become Rothko had he stayed in Portland. After all, his representational paintings before the move to outright abstraction in 1947 are good but not great. Only in his abstract fields of color, after decades in NYC, did Rothko and his work become immortal.

But would the move to New York be essential today? Or more to the point, would it be so necessary to leave Portland? If an artist of comparable talent to Rothko lived here in Portland now, could he or she achieve the same level of superstardom Rothko did by leaving, only by staying instead?

My native's bias (and that of having gone to New York and come back) notwithstanding, I think so. Even aside from anything Portland may have done since Rothko's time to become a more cosmopolitan city with a robust artist community, the Internet and social media have created immeasurably more avenues for creative output of any kind to be seen.

It's not to say New York and Los Angeles won't always have the biggest media spotlight, or that Portland artists don't migrate there to get famous today. Director/performance artist/writer Miranda July is but the latest example. But our biggest cultural capitols no longer enjoy such domination over second-tier cities because they are no longer the only alternative. In Rothko's heyday in the first two decades after World War II, even Los Angeles was viewed as a backwater burg compared to NYC; it took Andy Warhol's first show, then the emergence of artists like Ed Ruscha to make California cool. Maybe Portland won't always have the kind of oversized pop-cultural footprint for its size that the city enjoys today, but it also feels far different from some isolated colony from which one must return to civilization.

Mark Rothko, Untitled, 1969 (courtesy National Gallery of Art)

Although Rothko might not have become anywhere near as famous had he stayed in Portland, I wonder if he might have lived longer. Rothko committed suicide in 1970, and maybe his depression could not have been swayed by any change of scenery or environment. After all, that which makes his post-1947 paintings so exceptionally powerful is the sense that he and other abstract expressionists were, however non-representational their forms may have been, giving visual outlet to the knot of sorrow and post-traumatic stress of World War II and the Holocaust. Maybe without being in New York Rothko would not have tapped in to that historical weight so strongly. Maybe he never would have had the epiphany that led from a good-but-not-great painter of symbols and scenes becoming a superlatively great abstract painter. But in Portland he would have had greater distance from historical burdens. He might have looked out at Mt. Hood and the natural world surrounding Portland more resonantly than nature visits Manhattan, and perhaps just that little difference might have allowed him to move on from the pain. Maybe he could have returned to Portland from New York in the late 1960s, when his canvases were beginning to foreshadow Rothko's increasingly hopeless outlook in their desaturated, enveloping darkness.

"(I spent my) youth in front of the endless space of the landscape of Oregon lying covered by wintery snows, in front of the monumental emptiness that is nothingness and at the same time part of it all," Rothko said of his time here. What if he'd spent the 1970s exploring more vibrant hues again in the Rose City?

Admittedly it's a pipe dream. And as Randy Gragg writes in a Portland Monthly article about Rothko and the PAM exhibit, we in this city may be too quick to claim favorite sons not born here and only residing here for a portion of their lives. Maybe Rothko never cared that much about Portland. Yet one sees in his canvases - in their limitless voids - the influence of a climate where the outdoors is always nearby, where clouds can roll through in spring especially with striking theatricality, piercing the gray with crystal blues and whites and yellows. One thinks of the line of generations Rothko is part of at Lincoln High alone, with Looney Tunes voice artist Mel Blanc and Simpsons creator Matt Groening walking the same halls, each a part of an iconic animated world. One thinks of Rothko in his early days painting the Willamette River from the West Hills, and wonders if he didn't have to go quite so early - from this city or from this Earth.

Kurt Cobain famously quoted the Neil Young lyric "It's better to burn out than fade away" in his suicide note. We tend to chalk up great artists' suicides to a romantic notion of the line between brilliance and madness. But personally, I feel less attracted to Young and Cobain's vision about death than Woody Allen's. Asked if he wanted to achieve immortality through his art, Allen said he'd rather achieve immortality through not dying.

Maybe the alchemy of Rothko's abstract paintings wouldn't have lasted even he had lived, but I like to imagine Rothko returning to Portland later in his life, if he hadn't committed suicide, like legendary architect Pietro Belluschi did. Freed from the expectations of hugely scaled, high-profile commissions during his years in Cambridge, Massachusetts (as dean of MIT's architecture school) like the Pan-Am Building or Lincoln Center in New York (two name two Belluschi commissions of the 1960s), he returned to Portland and designed an exceptional late-career portfolio of churches and houses.

Gus Van Sant also has left Portland at times only to return, and to remain rooted in community here - staging films locally and getting involved in charity. An aging Rothko could also have done similarly - mentored the city's art community, and perhaps attracted some of the major buyers Portland otherwise largely lacks even today. As it happens, the visual art scene is thriving here, but having Rothko as a part of the everyday fabric might have been transformative or at least impactful. If he was willing to teach art to children at a community center in New York for so long, how many people here might have been touched? Luckily though, as this comprehensive and exceptional Portland Art Museum retrospective reminds, there are always the paintings themselves. The collection is borrowed from a variety of museums and private collections, so it's not something that can remain here for long. But hopefully in time the museum, or another one here, will have a broader permanent collection of Rothkos of its own.

Not just pickling: incubating a new-old Portland (and American) economy

Sign in Oui Presse cafe, Portland (photo by Brian Libby)

BY BRIAN LIBBY

For all the economic activity that has come as a result of globalization and free trade zones, Americans for decades have lamented the loss of the country's manufacturing base and attendant jobs lost to factories overseas. Whether it's Apple iPods, Nike sneakers or any number of other goods, they're made somewhere beyond US shores. But what if there's not a silver lining for the domestic economy, but one which Portland has already embraced?

In Sunday's New York Times Magazine, Adam Davidson explores how craft manufacturing is emerging as a niche for the United States that could actually become a much larger segment of the economy. "Don't Mock the Artisanal-Pickle Makers" is the title of the article, and Davidson's focus is how Brooklyn has become a "ground zero" of the artisanal universe. But of course Portland is the unspoken juggernaut here.

Although Brooklyn is a burough of New York City and thus gets media attention even more easily than our over-exposed city, Brooklyn's rise of both hipsters and an artisanal economy has already been referred to in the New York Observer as a "Portlandification." There too, as on the TV show "Portlandia", the focus has been on style more than economics. Aren't these people in their earnest, quirky enthusiam funny? But People seem to get so wary of or mocking about hipsters that they lose sight of what hipsters are doing - which, it turns out, may be inventing or reinventing a whole new economy. When you don't have to sit in a cubicle anymore and have decided instead to make ans sell something yourself, why not grow that Amish beard you've always wanted?

Instead of the high-volume, low-margin commodity business of giant corporations and manufacturers, who turn out millions of units of soda pop, bicycles or beef jerky, Davidson argues in the Times, making things by hand taps into an increasinly savvy world market whose collective middle and upper-middle classes will pay more for things unique and of quality. "Contrary to popular belief, the revival of craft manufacturing isn't just a fad," he writes. He cites not just the usual pickled foods or clothing or specialty consumer items like candles or bikes, but also companies making precision parts for rockets or helicopters.

What's more, Davidson discusses a "happines index" of note, that "once people reach some level of comfort, they are willing - even eager - to trade in potential earnings at a lucrative but uninspiring job for less (but comfortable) pay at more satisfying work. Much as we may desire more Fortune 500 companies to bring jobs to an under-employed metro area, the reason the city is seeing a migration of college-educated, creative-industry denizens is that Portland has earned the distinction of being a different kind of place, where making money may still be important, but not at the price of a saccharine lifestyle of automobile gridlock and eyesore strip malls. It's not where you'll get rich, the thinking goes, but where you'll have a life on your own terms.

And just as important as being a hive of artisanal manufacturing and small businesses without such domination by or dependence upon a few corporate juggernauts, Portland is a place without the burden of history and generations of old money. This point was made by New Yorker turned Portlander William Deresiewicz in an American Scholar essay called "A Jew in Portland."

"When Barack Obama was inaugurated, in a great national celebration, about a year after I returned from the Northeast to live here, my strongest feeling was one of remoteness from the event, a sense that American history was happening, as it almost always has, somewhere else," Deresiewicz writes. "In the East, you feel as if you’re in the midst of things. Portlanders feel as if they’re in the midst of things, but not the things I’m talking about." He goes on to describe an encounter:

"I was gardening one morning when a blissful hippie couple happened by. 'Hey,' they said, 'how’s your day going?' Then they praised the perennials, savored the look of the mulch, and urged me with a smile to have a peaceful afternoon. As they strolled on down the street, I realized what they’d been doing. They’d been 'sending positive energy into the universe.' How sweet, I thought, and how remarkably naive. What kind of place—and a city, no less—allows you to remain so innocent of history that you can wander through the world on such terms? And yet I remain, and just, perhaps, for these very reasons. New York may be the city of my past, but Portland—green, self-limiting, communitarian—is, I believe, the city of our future. Or at least it needs to be, if we’re going to have a future. As any student of American history can tell you, you reach the new by releasing the old. And as any student of another place can tell you—I mean a certain strip of land between the Jordan and the sea—too much memory can kill you."

It's not to say that Portland's advantage is in its flakey, naive ignorance of the weight of history. But as Deresiewicz argues, the country has taken notice that Portland may not be just a stylish fad, but a pioneer in a new-old way of things.

Ecotrust Building (photo by Brian Libby)

If that's the case, though, what does that mean for architecture? Locally, it would seem to mean a continuation of a trend long since begun with the Great Recession: not so many big projects like half-block condominium towers or office buildings  - espcially in the private sector - but more modestly sized ones. In recent years burgeoning neighborhoods like the South Waterfront have been maligned as million-dollar boondoggles because some of their big condos have been foreclosed upon. That neighborhood, like the Pearl District before it, was still a good idea. Sprawl and a lack of density would have been the alternative. But what we may be poised to add now is more foothills to these and other mountains: littler building projects dwarved individually by the behemoths, but collectively larger and better integrated with the urban fabric. More so than new construction, though, the artisanal economy seems rooted in the existing old buidings they renovated into new-economy hives, such as Portland's Ford Building, the Leftbank Building, or the Ecotrust Building.

Even corporate America and government are recognizing the groundswell of new seedlings replacing the old-growth ecosystem. In today's New York Times, Christine Negroni reports on the historic Town Hall in Stamford, Connecticut being turned into a startup incubator, with the bill being paid for renovations of the building largely by local corporate aviation company Sikorsky in exchange for access to or first pass at entrepreneurs' new ideas. Negroni also cites the Oregon Sustainability Center in Portland as an additional example of cities investing in business incubators.

Although the Sustainability Center may turn out to more than pay for itself in economic actitivy and sustainable-industry innovation, it's also a hugely expensive building project that will come with lease rates significantly above market rate. I worry that this will wind up as a very innovative demonstration project for green design and construction but fail as an incubator. The same could easily be true for Stamford's transformation of its Town Hall. The whole thing feels too institutional to capture and enable startup companies.

I'd give a better shot at success to the more informal Portland Incubator Experiment (PIE) being hosted by Wieden + Kennedy ad agency in its Pearl District headquarters. When I visited their space in the building, one of PIE's co-founders talked about how the right environment was a balance of support and informality: the chance for entrepreneurs to come together and exchange ideas, both with each other and with some of the big corporations and investors to which W+K has access, but also to kick their shoes off and order a pizza - to make the architetual space their own. After all, the space that birthed the original computer industry revolution in the 1960s and '70s was the informal home garage. Would a young Steve Jobs have relocated his new Apple company to an office tower in downtown San Francisco, with government officials and fat-cat corporate types looking on, even if he could?

Ultimately what will help Portland succeed - or Brooklyn or Bellingham or Birmingham - is having more garages, not more gilded incubators. Here's perhaps where the sustainability revolution Portland has long since led meets the artisanal economy it seems to be a large part of: in embracing old buildings of character, be they warehouses or old Victorian houses for their most emblematic headquarters. It's not just how you make artisan piclkles, but where.

 

Advertisement

Visiting Legacy Emanuel Medical Center's new Randall Children's Hospital

Randall Children's Hospital (photo by Fred Leeson)

BY FRED LEESON

If big new buildings are a reasonable measure, the boom in today’s wobbly economy is health care.

Just as construction begins on the $300-plus million Collaborative Life Sciences Center in Portland’s South Waterfront district, work is finished on the $245 million Randall Children’s Hospital on the Legacy Emanuel Medical Center campus. At nine stories and more than 300,000 square feet, it is the largest and costliest project in close-in North/Northeast Portland neighborhoods for decades.

Emanuel threw a party on Feb. 11 to show off the new building, designed by the Portland-based firm ZGF Architects. Visitors by the hundreds lined up to tour the new structure, which is sleek and shiny on the outside and spacious, airy, and colorful on the inside. ZGF has carved itself a niche in the children’s hospital realm, having done comparable projects in Denver, Los Angeles, Chicago, Texas and Saskatchewan.

Like college campuses, big medical complexes evolve over time with new buildings and seemingly-continuous remodeling as demands, services and technology change. Good Samaritan and the Providence complexes in Portland clearly have adopted general aesthetic schemes that create some continuity among buildings. Good Sam has used red bricks to unify its campus while Providence has stayed with light brown/orange masonry in a nod to its original Art Deco –tinged building.

Opening party at Randall Children's Hospital (photo by Fred Leeson)

Emanuel, alas, is all over the map. Anyone looking for design cues sees a befuddling mixture of gray masonry dating from the 1910s and 1920s to a peculiar space-agey looking structure, now the day surgery center, that must be late 1960s or early 1970s. Throw in a modern parking garage with bright orange-painted steel beams and perforated metal cladding that says, “Erector Set.”

Faced with this eclectic mish-mash, ZGF obviously opted to add to the mix with something irrepressibly modern, shiny and sleek rather than to pull from existing cues. As clearly the tallest and biggest structure on the campus, it likely will set the tone for future expansions, whenever they occur.

As a historical footnote, it is worth remembering that the commercial heart of the old community of Albina was leveled early in the 1970s for an urban renewal project, the centerpiece of which was to be an Emanuel Hospital expansion. Alas, not long after the the once-thriving- but- run-down neighborhood business center was demolished, Congress slashed federal funding for the Emanuel project and it never happened. A sizable portion of that land still sits vacant at N. Williams and Russell Street as a parking lot; the medical center’s subsequent improvements, including the new children’s hospital, all moved in other directions.

Randall's site at Emmanuel Hospital (photo by Fred Leeson)

Had the Albina commercial center been allowed to continue in existence, it no doubt would have seen the same kind of entrepreneurial revitalization we see today on N. Mississippi and numerous other vital neighborhood centers. But to the eyes of city officials at the time, the buildings were old and run-down and demolition was the easiest, quickest option. Sadly, the commercial center included numerous steet-car-era buildings with storefronts topped by housing….exactly the kinds of structures that New Urbanists now see as a key to urban vitality.

I once asked the late George McMath, a guiding light for architectural preservation in Portland and first chairman of the Portland Historic Landmarks Commission, whether there had been any serious discussion about saving the commercial heart of old Albina. McMath told me there was little interest in the African-American community – of which Albina was the heart – in favor of preservation. And he said -- rightly so, no doubt-- that any such momentum had to come from the community itself.

The upshot is that a historic and interesting piece of Portland was obliterated and still sits vacant today. Think about that as you drive past the vacant lot on your way to see the new hospital. Fortunately, our society no longer engages in “bulldozer” urban renewal, and the Emanuel site is one good reason why. One would hope we would know how to do it better today.

Advertisement

Compact, efficient comfort: visiting the Harpoon House

Harpoon House (photo courtesy Design For Occupancy)

BY BRIAN LIBBY

If I were to use the phrase, "700 square foot residence," one might expect it to be an apartment. And indeed, just a few years ago Matt Kirkpatrick and Katherine Bovee lived in a Southeast Portland apartment of that size. But now, they live in and own a 704-square foot house, complete with a basement, a root cellar, an outdoor deck, and a vegetable and herb garden. It's a far cry from the average modern American house, which was 2,349 square feet in 2004, although the Harpoon House is not too dissimilar in size to the average in 1950 for a single-family house: 983 square feet.

Tall and thin like a small wood-ensconced tower at 16 feet long, 28 feet wide and 28 feet tall, the Harpoon House is also a striking design, like a geometric sculpture born from our rainy, woodsy climate. By this point the Harpoon House, designed by Kirkpatrick's firm, Design For Occupancy, has been covered in magazines from Dwell to Portland Monthly. But recently, I paid my own visit to the project and came away just as impressed.

Our area has long been known for Northwest Modern homes, dating back to the designs of John Yeon and Pietro Belluschi in the 1930s that fist blended Bauhaus-style glass boxes with the wood construction, pitched roofs and overhangs appropriate to the Oregon climate and other influences such as Japanese and Scandinavian design. The Harpoon House is a departure from that tradition in some ways, being multistory with a flat roof. But it's all Northwest in spirit. Belluschi and Yeon would have built this way - efficient and compact yet still soulfully woodsy Oregon - were they working architects today.

Built on a 50-by-50-foot lot that previously was the side yard of the house next door, the Harpoon is a series of stacked spaces; one walks up a half-flight of stairs to the combined living-dining area with windows wrapping around a wall of built-in shelving. Upstairs just one doorless bedroom space in which the double bed sits at eye level above an open closet. Half of the upstairs was reserved for an outdoor deck, which is partially enclosed by lattice-like wood that drapes its perimeter and completes the rectangular shape of the tower. Recalling minimalist sculptor Donald Judd, the rigidry of the open-box geometry guides the eye not just to its outer shape, but the volumes inside.

Views from the bedroom and kitchen (photos by Brian Libby)

Now that some time has passed since the Harpoon House's initial construction, its exterior wood has been allowed to age, something usually undesirable (and why wood exteriors are usually painted rather than stained). The result is a constantly changing surface with nuanced beauty. "Early in the process when developing the initial concept for our house we were really interested in the idea of aging gracefully," Matt Kirkpatrick writes on the Harpoon House's blog, "and that certain materials, when allowed to show their age, can be extremely long lived with very little maintenance. I’ve been noticing lately that this aging has begun to happen in a very visible way."

As if the Harpoon weren't impressive enough as beautiful architecture and demonstratively compact, not-so-big living, it's also the recipient of the top-level Platinum LEED designation from the US Green Building Council. Its features include a 433-square-foot eco roof, which diverts rainwater runoff in winter and keeps heat out in summer, and structurally insulated panels that provide efficient insulation. Windows are triple-pane and the wood floors are FSC-certified.

Living room at Harpoon House (photo by Brian Libby)

"Sustainability at Harpoon House is not: a green-washed interior, a checklist of eco-gadgets, an exorbitant budget or a pat on the back," Kirkpatrick writes on the Harpoon House website. "Sustainability means smart design and an integrated approach to planning, designing, building and living. Our house went counter to many of the assumptions that LEED for homes takes (heating load too small for mini-split heat pumps, no landscape irrigation), but through a few appeals we were able to proceed. Its exciting that despite the setbacks, and without currently having any power generation, smart design was able win us a Platinum rating."

That said, Kirkpatrick and Bovee have been considering solar power for their roof, which would compete for space with the eco-roof plants but, according to research by Portland State University, may actually aid some of the native plants by providing extra shade. "We are looking at a 1.785KW array that will cover about a quarter of our total energy needs, and this has a total installed cost of roughly $11,500," Kirkpatrick writes. But after incentives from the Energy Trust of Oregon as well as federal and state government tax credits, the solar panel will only cost about $2,200. It would provide about one-fourth of the house's total energy needs, and the payback would be about 10 years, meaning in a decade a quarter of their power will be free.

The homeowners also note that with their Buckman neighborhood seeking to become a national historic district, they feel compelled to invest in the solar array now, fearing the new strictures would add layers of cost and red tape that would make the panel setup unfeasible afterward. Which is unfortunate to read, because historic districts also do great amounts of good in preserving architectural character in neighborhoods. Can't there be a balance struck between preserving history and allowing modernity to be placed on top of it? Before the days of cable and satellite television, plenty of old houses used to have TV antennas mounted on their roofs, and they didn't break historic-district rules. Solar panels ought to be the same way.

Harpoon House (photo by Lincoln Barbour for Portland Monthly) 

In a continuing era where there is a glut of inefficient, oversized builder homes sitting vacant on the margins of the metro area, the Harpoon House is a lesson in the smarter residential architecture we'll need more of, in Portland and beyond. Its approximately $225,000 budget would be affordable to most in the middle class, but within that budget there are significant investments in the kind of efficient materials and methods that will make the Harpoon's true cost of ownership even smaller, even though the per-square-foot cost here is quite high. But again, consider that Bovee and Kirkpatrick barely spend any money to heat and zero to cool their home - and with all the space left over by building up instead of out, there's even a garden outside to feed them.

"In many ways, it’s hedonistic,” Kirkpatrick says in the Dwell article. “We get all the things that are great about owning a house without the extra baggage of a bigger place."

 

Advertisements

The Architect's Questionnaire: Steve Ewoldt

Architect Steve Ewoldt of artifekt (photo courtesy Steven Ewoldt)

BY LUKE AREHART

Editor's note: After a nearly three year absence, the Architect’s Questionnaire is back, written by contributor Luke Arehardt. The intent is for this to become a regular series again, in which architects around Portland answer a template of questions. We lead off with Portland architect Steve Ewoldt, owner of Artifekt architecture + interiors. Steve has been a Portland resident for nearly 19 years and after receiving his master’s of architecture degree from the University of Oregon, has been the owner of a collection of firms, such as Spytype Architecture and Thircle. Ewoldt has produced projects of all scales ranging from small retail shops to veterinary clinics to historic renovations of iconic architecture, notably John Yeon-designed Rose Festival Foundation headquarters at Waterfront Park.

Portland Architecture: When did you first become interested in architecture as a possible career?

Steve Ewoldt: In high school I drew a lot, and was always pushed to go into architecture, but I didn’t want to. I was more of a computers guy, so I started out in aerospace engineering at the University of Kansas and found it instantly pretty dull, and definitely with less drawing than architects get to do, or the creative drawing that I wanted to do. So I switched majors and switched schools and went to the University of Nebraska, where I am from, and went into architecture and loved it. I knew that I had made the right decision. It has always given me new things to be curious about.

Where did you study architecture and how would you rate the experience?

University of Nebraska, bachelor's degree in architectural studies with an English minor and University of Oregon, for a master's in architecture, both were perfect. After getting out of aerospace engineering and almost by default thinking everyone has been talking about this architecture thing, that I should just do it.  I knew about architecture, but I hadn’t really explored it as a career because I thought my interests were to be found down another avenue.  It was a great undergraduate degree. Then I worked for a few years and tuned what I wanted, and where I wanted to be, and what I wanted to explore and U of O was the right solution for that.

I also have always been trying to be creative drawing and writing, and when you get into architecture school, you start getting pounded into submission with the all nighters and drawing and ideas and models…making, that some of the prose gets left by the wayside.  So I would take a lot of English classes to keep writing, and some film classes to keep creative.  I still do a lot of creative writing, and I have a children’s book that I’m trying to sell.

What is your favorite building project that you’ve worked on?

The Rose Festival Foundation was a really fun project. Huge opportunity, the overall experience was interesting because the client was the water bureau; they were the general contractor as well, keeping a lot of the work in house.  There were other interest groups like the Friends of John Yeon, the building is now on the National Register of Historic Places.  The tenant was the Rose Festival Foundation, so there were all of these competing interests wrapped into a potential powder keg and we were trying to manage everybody’s expectations and realities and the gravity of having this building that everybody knows and cares about and nobody wants to ruin it, so to speak.  It was stressful and challenging, but I think it ended up being a very successful project.

Rose Festival Foundation headquarters (image courtesy Wikipedia Commons)

Who has been an important mentor among your colleagues?

Gary Larson (Mulvanny G2), Mark Engberg (Colab), and Richard Brown (Richard Brown Architects).  As a sole practitioner I felt that was something I was missing, having somebody in the office that was older and wiser than me, that could ground me when I felt like I was floating, at least help me know where the ground is. I still get a lot of comfort touching base with these guys, knowing that architects at all levels have some of the same challenges I have.

What part of the job do you like best, and as an architect what do you think you most excel at?

The part that I enjoy the most is the drawing, by hand, getting the pens and pencils back out and really exploring the tactile arena. It seems to happen less and less for me every year when expectations are more productivity and efficiency and getting things done on ridiculously restrictive budgets. The drawing and the exploration and the real process seems to be left by the wayside, and that’s the part I enjoy the most, making sure that you are confident that the right solution has been achieved, and for me, process is the only thing that can make sure that it has happened correctly. I have found that I am becoming better and better at finding solutions for projects that have unique situations whether they are code, zoning or planning issues. I find myself being hired more and more to manage the process of land reviews. Neighborhood associations are powerful in Portland, and have a lot of sway in the process; I’ve discovered that I can be very successful in making sure that everybody’s expectations are met, especially when the expectations seem to be moving in different directions. I’ve been in Portland long enough that I know a lot of the players in land use review, historic districts, and neighborhood associations. At this point I have been before just about every neighborhood, whether I’m on the board, which I was in Overlook when I lived there, or on the other side of the table as an architect presenting a project and fielding questions and anger and angst and suspicion. Since I have seen both sides of the coin, I‘ve become pretty good at that.  I do enjoy working with people and clients to guide them through the perilous straits of design review. Also, I would enjoy it most if I could just draw all the time…and be paid to do it.

What are some Portland buildings (either new or historic) that you most admire?

Bank of California building. The little bits and pieces and surprises that it holds, I’ve always liked that building. Whether the architecture is good or not, I am drawn to buildings in this climate that have some color to them because we gray out so often. There is a building by the art museum at 1140 SW 11th that has big yellow-orange cross bracing that are exposed, I don’t think it’s a great building in particular, but it always makes me happy because it’s so bright and colorful and playful and it stays luminous in this weather.  The house that I like most is the Maegley House in Arlington Heights; I ride my bike by on the way to work every day and it’s amazing.

What is your favorite building outside of Portland and besides any you’ve worked on?

Sagrada Familia in Barcelona by Gaudi, because it’s awesome and because it’s not done yet; and has such great history and mythology wrapped up in it. It’s a magical building.

Sagrada Familia, Barcelona (image courtesy gaudidesigner.com)

What would you like to see change about Portland’s built environment in the long term?

Navigating through neighborhood associations and design reviews, my vibe is that even though it is empowering for the neighborhoods to have so much say and it’s important because it is their neighborhood and their fabric that they want to contribute to, some of it waters down some of the things that we get, and we end up getting design by committee a lot.  I remember on the south waterfront, when they wanted to do the Vancouver style needle towers that were tall and skinny, there was a lot of resistance to tall, and it was a huge missed opportunity for Portland and what we got was mediocre, shorter, fatter buildings which probably had to do with economics.  Style and a unique Portland signature personality I don’t think is really here, it’s all pretty middle of the road, vanilla stuff.  I’d love to see some big names get hired to do signature architecture. The three types of architects: the service architects, the product architects and the idea architects, I’d love to see more idea architects actually get hired and get to do projects that may not be that great of building per se, but great architecture for a city.

How would you rate the performance of local government like the Portland Development Commission, or the development and planning bureaus?

I believe they could do a lot more to gear toward the architect who has to deal with the code, and make it a little more user friendly as opposed to sitting in line for more limited hours. You can’t work on a permit on Monday or after noon on Tuesday through Friday so from 7:30 or 8 to 12:00pm is the only time that you can work on a building permit down there as an architect. You could submit it to the process, but the last couple years have done some pretty heavy damage down there with bodies being lost, time being whittled down and cost going up on a lot of things from revisions to private meetings with them to ask design advice. All that stuff is now costing money and we get pinched because we have to translate that to our clients: ‘we don’t know which way this is going to fall, but it’s going to cost you 400 dollars to find out.’ Then we have to explain why we don’t know. The process is changing on us, where before we could rely on the city/governmental entities for advice and for support, now we have to pay for that and it’s something that we can’t really absorb every time.  It used to feel like more of a team, and now it feels like more of a service.

Would you rather live in a South Waterfront condo, a craftsman bungalow in Laurelhurst, a warehouse loft in the North Mississippi district or a mid-century ranch in the West Hills?

I live in a ranch in the West Hills and I like it.  It’s quiet when I need it.

Who is a famous architect you’d like to see design a building in Portland?

Whether you like what he does or don’t like what he does, it would be a pretty big coup for Portland to get a Frank Gehry building, some of the big Euros would be fun to have, it would be great for Portland to have a Norman Foster or a Rem Koolhaas.  Something big, a Zaha Hadid would be a nice building to have, with a lot of color, no gray concrete.

Which would you rather be responsible for: an ugly LEED platinum building or a beautiful modernist energy hog?

Beautiful modernist energy hog, a thousand times over.  Any publicity is good publicity, those LEED buildings tend to be a little boring.

Furniture design by Ewoldt (images courtesy Artifect)

Name something besides architecture (sneakers, furniture, umbrellas) you love the design of.

Furniture and good objects that are designed well, whether that’s a good metal mini scale or a nice hand tool that is crafted really well.  I design and build furniture as well, so good furniture is something I can get behind. I also design board games of all things, I have one I’m trying to get produced now called “What the Flock”…it’s a bird game.

What are three of your all-time favorite movies?

"The Empire Strikes Back", "Baraka", and "His Girl Friday"

 

Advertisements

Local groundswell for industry-wide 2030 Challenge

2030 Challenge targets (image courtesy Architecture 2030)

BY BRIAN LIBBY

As many now know, buildings are the primary source of energy demand and the main user of materials that produce by-product greenhouse gases. But since its creation in 2002, led by architect Ed Mazria, the 2030 Challenge (administered by the Architecture 2030 nonprofit organization) has steadily gained steam as a primary collective effort of architects to address climate change. Its simple rallying point is to for all buildings within 18 years of now to be net-zero in energy and other resource usage – to become carbon neutral at least.

The challenge asks all architects who sign on to commit to all new buildings, developments and major renovations they design being at least 60 percent lower than their regional or national code performance standards for fossil fuel and greenhouse gas emissions. At least half of this should be renovation of existing buildings.

The fossil-fuel reduction standard for all new buildings and major renovations is set to be increased to 70% in 2015, then 80% in 2020, 90% in 2025 and finally carbon neutrality by 2030. By which time—assuming the Mayans turn out to be wrong—I’ll be 58 years old.

Portland’s architecture and building community has played a pioneering role in advancing sustainable building, from having the most LEED-rated buildings per capita of virtually any US city much of the past decade to today taking a leading role in eco-districts and other expanding scales of change.

Representatives from about 35 Portland firms have signed on to the 2030 Challenge, including not only small firms and practitioners such as In Situ Architecture, Emily Refi, Atelier Z and Communitecture but also larger ones such as Ankrom Moisan, YGH, SERA Architects, Mahlum and GBD Architects, not to mention Award winning design studios and firms such as THA Architecture, Opsis and Hennebery Eddy and contractors like Green Hammer and even realtors such as Living Room, Redside and Realty Trust. (You can read the full list here.)

Another sign of commitment is how local organizations are leading the charge. Starting next week on February 10, for example, the Portland chapter of the American Institute of Architects will begin offering a 10-class series for architects seeking to become part of 2030 philosopy and practice. Classes will meet from 8AM-noon the second Friday of each month at the Center for Architecture (403 NW 11th Avenue). Registration ends at 5PM Friday, February 3, but should you read this post after that magic hour, your carriage need not necessarily turn into an organic pumpkin: last minute add-ons will be taken as space is available. Before long, phrases like "thermal envelope" and "load reduction" will be second nature.

Advertisement