Portland Architecture

ZGF, McKean Lead Design Award Winners

On Friday night, the AIA/Portland chapter (a sponsor of this site) held its annual design awards gala. Ten awards were given out, seven for built projects and three for unbuilt ones.

The top award you can win from this ceremony is the 'Honor Award', which went to two projects: Zimmer Gunsul Frasca's design for the University of Oregon's Athletic Medicine Center in Eugene and Paul McKean's Neal Creek House near Hood River. The two projects couldn't be more different. One is a palace for premiere Oregon Duck athletes, bankrolled in large part by Nike co-founder Phil Knight and other affluent donors. The other is one architect's little house for himself and his family. One's by the biggest firm in town, the other by a sole practitioner.

Of the Neal Creek House, the jury commented that they were "taken by the way this building sits on the landscape and found it to be an example of elegant and innovative use of space on a very restrictive budget." The project is "humble in its concept, very tight in plan and beautifully executed with a vertical circulation for the meadow up into the house."

The UO project, said the jury, was "extremely well executed with an interesting program. It is spatially rich and complex, which is difficult to do within a purely interior space." Jurors also "appreciated the transparency within the space and how it embraced the athletic history through colors, graphics and unique branding. This clearly was an expensive project, but the money was spent very, very well." And the green-and-yellow color scheme naturally looks better than black and orange. (By the way, would somebody tell Nike that black isn't an Oregon Ducks color? And that football players don't need faux diamond plating to look tough?)

I'm also happy to see ZGF winning a top award because it's another validation of the improved caliber of design that has come out of one of the city's top firms. ZGF has been responsible for many key buildings in Portland as well as the MAX train. Head principal Bob Frasca is at the very least a minor legend. But while these designs are a collaborative affair, the UO project and other recent designs such as the Eliot Tower confirm the talents of a younger generation at ZGF headed by architects like Eugene Sandoval.

Recently a vitriol-spewing curmudgeon named John commented on this site that there is no beautiful contemporary architecture made today. Each of these projects, as well as past AIA award winners such as Rick Potestio's Lair Condominiums, Holst's Belmont Lofts, or Brad Cloepfil's 2281 Glisan building provide more than enough retort.

Aside from the two Honor Award winners, local firm Works Partnership picked up both of the Merit Awards, which are the second-tier of honors (followed by the Citation Awards). Their renovation of the Olympic Mills warehouse in the Central Eastside (pictured) dazzled the jury for its creation of several interior courtyards to introduce natural light as well as its seven-story interior stairwells clad in wood screens. Works Partnership's unbuilt Encased Houses project also won a Merit Award, and its unbuilt mixed-use housing project on NW Upshur won a Citation Award.

Works Partnership, headed by Bill Neburka and Carrie Schilling, is a young firm but has won AIA design awards before. They've also really put their stamp on the Central Eastside more than any other Portland firm with their renovations for Beam Development of the East Bank Commerce Center and its adjacent River Avenue Commerce Center, joined now by the Olympic Mills project, which dwarfs those buildings.

Rising-star architect Jeff Kovel and his firm Skylab walked away with top honors last year for their mixed-use building on 12th Avenue downtown. This year Skylab won both a Citation Award and Sustainability Award for its design of the new Nau apparel store in Bellevue. Look for Skylab to be a major player at next year's awards, either for the cool lounge they're designing atop the renovated Meier & Frank building, or the bold condo tower planned for near the Crystal Ballroom.

The Nau store actually seems somewhat tame for Skylab, but the award is an indication of the largely untapped potential of retail design in the US. If you ever go to Japan, it won't take long to notice that their retail outlets are light years ahead in terms of the theatricality of design. Then again, considering Nau's brand identity is one of woodsy integrity and high performance, the simple palette of wood and concrete is probably appropriate. After all, it works very well for design icon Apple in their retail outlets.

Other award winners: the always solid Hennebery Eddy won the latest of its numerous awards over the years for its Historic Barn at the City of Wilsonville Memorial Park. And Colab, whose portfolio includes an incredible Dubai skyscraper and, locally, the very impressive Brandon House just south of the North Mississippi area, won for its design of Split wine bar in Tualatin (pictured). Also, the Mayor's Award for Design Excellence went to the Community Campus at New Columbia by Dull Olsen Weekes, and the People's Choice Award went to another Dubai project: the massive Al Bateen Wharf Hotel + Residences by Otak.

Congrats to all the winners.

An Arts Award and A Cover Story

Two more accolades to report on this week: First, Zimmer Gunsul Frasca has received a 2007 Governor's Arts Award from the Oregon Arts Commission. Here's the blurb from the press release:

"The firm has a long history of to integrating artists into its design teams, not just because a percent for art program mandates it, but also because the ZGF architects truly appreciate what artists bring to their projects. It has worked with the Regional Arts & Culture Council on numerous public art projects and often hired artists without any public art requirement. ZGF has also taken a leadership position with RACC's new Work for Art workplace giving program. ZGF was an early adopter of the program and consistently raises the most money each year out of the dozens of workplaces large and small that participate in Work for Art."

The award seems only peripherally related to design itself, specifically as it relates to art, but as it happens ZGF also seems to be doing good work, brought about by a nice balance of old principals like Bob Frasca with an influx of young designers. However, take the honor as you will; a fellow honoree was Oregon Art Beat, which has the sensibility (in my biased opinion) of a well meaning but out of slightly touch yokel.

Meanwhile, Portland's own Brad Cloepfil has his name on the cover of this month's Metropolis magazine as one of "4 Emerging Stars" (the others being Piero Lissoni, Bernard Khoury and Kieran Timberlake). The title of Andrew Blum's piece is "The Elementalist" and the subheading crows, "Brad Cloepfil's emerging body of work may symbolize a shift away from glib shape-making toward a more timeless and lasting architecture."

I'll bet that is music to Brad's ears. I first interviewed him five years ago for Architecture Week magazine, and I remember in that piece him talking firmly about how postmodernism was "an aberration" in the otherwise continuing history of modern architecture. He very much saw Allied Works as a continuation of what people like Louis Kahn and Mario Botta (for whom Brad worked) were already long since doing. When I profiled him for the NY Times a couple years later, the message was all the more about using a language that is elemental and timeless.

Blum also delves into past/current projects of Allied's like the Seattle Art Museum, the Museum of Arts & Design, and our own Wieden + Kennedy building.

Speaking of W+K, if you get a copy of the magazine, make sure to check out the full-page photo of its interior by Sally Schoolmaster. (I believe Allied used Sally for a few different projects, and I have long thought her work is first-rate.) In my copy, the photo was mistakenly placed after another article, isolated by itself. But it's a gorgeous shot that shows a panoramic view of the building's remilled timbers, angular concrete and natural light.

One of Allied Works' upcoming projects is an office building for Disney. Coincidentally, there was also an article in today's Oregonian about how the Portland office market is heating up. Apparently, a new crop of office building projects from a variety of developers could eventually be in the works. How about an Allied office building in Portland to carry on the tradition of the Standard Plaza and Big Pink?

Not likely, though, of course. These are mostly conservative business people putting these projects together, people thinking real estate and profit margin more than timeless architecture. I'm afraid they probably wouldn't be anywhere near aware enough of architecture to understand the opportunity that exists design-wise; they'll surely go with a service-oriented firm and an on-time, on-budget focus. The best you can hope for is that it'll be sustainable; at least green design the mainstream is starting to get.

PNCA Receives $15 Million Gift

The Pacific Northwest College of Art announced it has received a $15 million donation from local philanthropist Hallie Ford, which the school will use mostly to fund a visiting artist program.

The donation dwarfs PNCA's previous high of about $500,000 a few years ago. And while the funds won't be used on architecture per se, the donation speaks to the school's increasing presence in the community. Under the leadership of president Tom Manley, PNCA is striving mightily to form the heart of Portland's art and design scene.

As such, there's plenty of reason to imagine what the future might hold for PNCA in terms of brick and mortar.

One of PNCA's ongoing collaborators and supporters is local star architect Brad Cloepfil of Allied Works, who has conducted master planning for the school. One would think Allied would have an inside track if the school were to design and build new facilities.

At the same time, PNCA has what I think is a very cool building in the Pearl District, a converted warehouse space which Holst Architecture (including then-employee Randy Higgins) designed several years ago. PNCA doesn't own the building, though. It's owned by a member of the Goodman family, the parking magnates. That ought to change. I'd like to think some kind of deal could be worked out where the building is sold to the school at below-market value.

PNCA has also considered moving its campus to elsewhere in Northwest Portland, such as Old Town or the northern Pearl District near the Fremont Bridge. This would be exciting in that it'd give the school a chance to express itself and custom-design its digs, but I think they've got an ideal location now. The question to me is more one of how PNCA could leverage some of the nearby space for expansion down the road. And might we eventually, finally, get a new Allied Works building in Portland out of it?

Either way, I think the Pearl District is much better for having a kind of institutional/artistic ground zero, something to balance out all the condos and to really act as a gathering place for hometown and out-of-town creative minds.

Coming to a Coffee Table Near You: BOORA TBA Projects Featured In Taschen Architecture Series

One of my favorite publishers in any genre, but especially among architecture and design books, is Taschen. They bring design, art and nostalgia to the masses in smart, elegant packaging and with eclectic taste ranging from surf photography to ancient architectural theory to Japanese advertising posters. And recently, the publisher has been pressing a series of titles focusing on architecture in individual countries. Previous editions focused on design Meccas like Holland. Now, the US edition is out, and it features one Portland representative: BOORA Architects' designs for the Portland Institute of Contemporary Art's Time-Based Art Festival in 2004 and 2005.

In 2004, it was a temporary 200-seat theater, cabaret stage, bar and cafe, using recycled and other simple materials: scaffolding, pegboard, plastic buckets. In 2005, BOORA produced an event complex (pictured in these official shots supplied by the architect - no amatueur photos here) by creatively using scaffolding and orange plastic temporary fencing and a few lights and plants.That one was particularly impressive visually, comparable to the Maryhill Double project near Maryhill Museum in Washington by Annie Han and Daniel Mihalyo of Lead Pencil Studio.

The book is called simply Architecture in the United States, and it features "15 to 20 architects--from the firmly established to the up and coming--with the focus on how they have contributed to the very recent architecture in the chosen nation." About the TBA project, author Philip Jodidio writes, "The involvement of BOORA, including hundreds of hours of free design and execution work, represents an explicit acceptance of the fact that architects cannot content themselves with building 'timeless' structures for wealthy patrons. The temporary and effervescent nature of this initiative might in a sense be closer to performance art than to architecture in the usual sense, but it underlines the ways in which contemporary architecture has evolved."

So how come we get a kind of mini-landmark, a local structure that transcends the usual constraints of budget and formula to become something far more impressive than the sum of its parts, and it's only around for about ten days? I'm mostly joking. I mean, our neighbors in Seattle have more so-called architectural gems or landmarks, but I'd certainly wish for the facade of the Experience Music Project to disappear eventually (although I love Hendrix and the museum).

I would love to see someone take the BOORA/TBA projects and turn them into some kind of recurring presence. Maybe the sight of those orange buckets, scaffolding and plastic mesh fencing could become the physical identity of some art or theater group that stages performances in all kinds of unexpected places by bringing the architecture along as a kit of parts.

One other funny thing about the recent publication of Architecture in the United States is that, as I understand it from reading a recent newspaper report, PICA has decided to go with an existing brick-and-mortar space for its after-hours eat/drink/entertainment venue: the Wonder Ballroom and adjacent Cafe Wonder in Northeast Portland. It's great to see TBA heading to Northeast, and perhaps it's asking too much of BOORA to design these kinds of spaces every year. But it's also a little sad to think of these temporary spaces missing from this year's TBA, because their design and construction was itself the embodiment of time-based art.

Incidentally, one of the other Taschen titles I own is called Modernism Rediscovered and consists of architectural photographs by midcentury legend Julius Schulman. The one photo in that book of a Portland building is of Memorial Colisseum. I must say, though, that it does look good. And some of its bones, in an odd way, remind me a little of the scaffolding of BOORA's 2005 event complex.

8NW8 Wins Inaugural Terner Prize

The inaugural I. Donald Terner Prize was awarded on January 31 to the 8NW8 affordable housing project designed by SERA Architects and developed by Central City Concern.

The Terner Prize, which comes with a $25,000 award (dinner on CCC, anyone?), recognizes successful and innovative affordable housing projects and their leadership teams. It’s administered by the Center for Community Innovation at the University of California, Berkeley. Massachusetts congressman Barney Frank was the keynote speaker at a symposium and luncheon in Washington, DC to honor the winning teams.

“In terms of what it provides its residents—attractive space that nurtures a sense of community—8NW8 is heartening,” said Terner Prize Jurist John King, urban design and architecture reporter for the San Francisco Chronicle. “But it’s also a real contribution to the urban streetscape and skyline of a city with markedly high standards. Anyone who passes by the building benefits, whether they someday draw on its services or not.”

8NW8 created 180 units of transitional and permanent affordable housing; 120 SRO units serve residents earning 30% or below the average median income and 60 studio apartments serve residents earning 50% or below. I wrote about this project a couple years ago, and remember talking with Paul Jeffreys and John Echlin there about the building’s durable and innovative construction methods. I also love the curving glass frontage at ground level. There's a nice whimsy to this building, but also a quiet dignity achieved through its solid, earth toned materials.

Congratulations to SERA, general contractor Walsh Construction and Central City Concern.