Portland Architecture

Japanese Garden selects Kengo Kuma for expansion, unveils design

Rendering of Kengo Kuma's expansion design (image courtesy Japanese Garden)

BY BRIAN LIBBY

One of the world's most respected architects is designing a project for Portland, a major coup for a city that, even with its substantial array of local talent, has in the past lacked buildings by first-rate designers from outside our environs.

The Portland Japanese Garden and its upcoming expansion make an ideal project for Kengo Kuma, the Japanese architect renowned for designs such as the Suntori Museum of Art in Tokyo, the diamond-like Tiffany flagship store in Ginza, Tokyo, and the Bamboo House beside the Great Wall of China. Kuma has been entrusted with redesigning what is arguably the most prestigious building in Japan, the Kabuki-za Theater in Ginza, Tokyo which since 1889 has been a landmark known around the world.

The expansion of the Japanese Garden, the largest such garden outside of Japan, will includeconstruction of new garden spaces, a cultural and education center, gift store and a tea house that will serve the public. But first, the Garden will have to turn its attention to a capital campaign to fund the expansion. Having Kuma on board should help.

“It is a real coup for Portland that such a renowned architect has chosen the Portland Japanese Garden as his first public North American project," said Chase Rynd, president and executive director of the National Building Museum in Washington, DC. "Kengo Kuma’s leadership in the expansion will make the Garden even more of a national treasure.”

Rendering of Kengo Kuma's expansion design (image courtesy Japanese Garden)

As Jeff Jahn mentioned in his Port blog post, this is also a significant commission for Kuma, being his first in North America. And given how Portland's reputation has grown internationally in the past decade - for its livibility, its vibrant youthful culture, and landmark projects like the Aerial Tram or Wieden + Kennedy building - this kind of commission now means more to renowned architects like Kuma.

“I am honored and really excited about working with...the people at the Portland Japanese Garden," Kuma said in a statement. "They have done significant work in curating and maintaining the Garden, which is truly fantastic. Its careful growth is a very important cultural effort not only for Portland but also for the US and Japan. This is to be our first public project in North America, and I am very happy that the project carries with it tremendous importance—not just for me but for others as well. I look forward to helping the Portland Japanese Garden take shape in its next steps, and hope to contribute something of lasting beauty and value to the city of Portland.”

Suntory Museum of Art and Tiffany store, Tokyo (photos courtesy Wikipedia Commons)

In 2007 the Portland Japanese Garden began the process of creating a master site plan designed to preserve and enhance the tranquility of the existing Garden, respond to increased visitor numbers, and take advantage of opportunities in the areas of education, environmental sustainability, revenue generation through visitor amenities, and enhancing visitor and member services. In December 2010, the Garden welcomed Mr. Kuma as an architect candidate for this project.

Kuma’s vision for the Garden, as presented to the Architect Selection Committee, was to build on the contributions of original Garden designer Takuma Tono as well as the past Garden directors, while setting forth a clear path for the Garden’s future. The concepts were a seamless expression of contemporary elements solidly rooted in the fundamentals of traditional Japanese architectural design.

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Expanding the Japanese Garden - with Kengo Kuma?

Japanese Garden tea house (photo by Brian Libby)

As reported in last Thursday's Daily Journal of Commerce by Nathalie Weinstein, Portland’s Japanese Garden is in the process of selecting an architect to design an expansion of the Washington Park.

The Garden is focusing on firms in Japan for its search so that the expansion is authentic as possible, and this could result in a major Japanese architect designing in Portland. A landscape architect is also being sought to make associated improvements.

The Japanese Garden's expansion will include construction of a new administration building, gift store and a tea house that will serve Japanese cuisine and beverages. Although the Garden already has a gift store and tea house, they are located within the gates of the garden and not accessible without paying admission. The tea house, but it is only for demonstrative purposes and not meant for public use.

Rendering of Kengo Kuma's Dundee V&A design (image courtesy BBC News) 

Garden officials are already considering one candidate for the expansion commission, acclaimed Japanese architect Kengo Kuma. His portfolio includes some very impressive projects and commissions, such as the Victoria & Albert Museum satellite being built in Dundee, Scotland, for which Kuma recently won a design competition over internationally renowned firms like Snøhetta and Steven Holl Architects.

I had the opportunity to visit a completed Kuma design three years ago, and it was breathtaking: the Bamboo House, which is part of a high end luxury resort called Commune by the Great Wall planned by the ambitious Chinese husband-and-wife developers Pan Shiyi and Zhang Xin and featuring 11 private villas and a clubhouse, each designed by a leading Asian architect. The development is located in the shadow of the Great Wall, about an hour's drive north of Beijing. The Bamboo House was festooned with seemingly nothing but bamboo and glass, and even compared to houses by a variety of other top Asian architects in the development Kuma's design stood out.

Kuma's Bamboo House in China (photos by Brian Libby)

Kuma will visit Portland next week to give a lecture and present his proposed design to the Japanese Garden’s selection committee. Although the lecture is sold out, Kuma’s design will be on display at the Garden’s pavilion this Saturday, December 11, from 10AM to 4PM. The Garden is located at 611 SW Kingston Avenue, adjacent to Washington Park.

The original 5.5-acre Japanese Garden was designed by Professor Takuma Tono beginning in 1963, though the garden opened to the public in 1967.

In a study conducted by the Journal of Japanese Gardening, Portland's was ranked first out of 300 public Japanese gardens outside of Japan; it is still considered to be one of the most authentic. A traditional Japanese garden normally takes hundreds of years to evolve and mature, but the Portland Japanese Garden evolved much more quickly, fusing western speed with stately eastern expression. According to traditional design, the Japanese Garden combines three elements which represent the earth: stone represents mountains and islands for strength and support, water is the center and represents purity, and plants grace it with texture, color and growth.

Kuma (or another selected architect) wouldn't be changing the Japanese Garden itself, but the addition of these buildings has the power to transform one of the city's most sacred, inspiring places. And while there are no doubt plenty of local designers who would love to get their hands on the Japanese Garden commission, the city has long experienced a scarcity of project commissions for prestigious out-of-town architects. With Boston's Charles Rose recently unveiled expansion of the Oregon College of Art & Craft campus, a Japanese Garden commission by and for Kuma could make not only another compelling project, but a demonstration that Portland features great design from around the world.

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Getting our goats

Goats on Southeast Belmont (photo by Brian Libby)

I first received word of the phenomenon in an excited cell-phone call from my girlfriend a few days ago. "Remember that vacant lot on Belmont where the Monte Carlo burned down? There are a bunch of goats there now, grazing on the weeds. You've got to come see this."

One might have thought the presidential motorcade had just driven by given the excitement in her voice.

When I made my way to the two-acre vacant lot at Southeast 10th and Belmont, there were not only about 50 goats grazing there, just as Valarie said, but there were almost as many people gathered around the perimeter of the chain-link fence encircling the lot.

As Molly Hottle reported in Wednesday's Oregonian, the goats are owned by Georgia Stiner and her company, Goat Rental NW of suburban Damascus. They came to the Belmont lot at the behest of Vancouver realtor Killian Pacific, which is charged with maintaining the vacant lot. Initially Killian planned the usual array of gas-powered, smoke-belching, eardrum-piercing mowers and weed whackers, but the person they hired, Brett Milligan of Free Association Design, came up with this more sustainable alternative. (Milligan also works for landscape design company GreenWorks.) Not only are the goats easier on the environment, ears and nose than industrial equipment, but their digestive systems render the seeds they eat sterile, so there will be fewer weeds here next year. (Of course Milligan had to convince Killian that the goats would not cost any more than mowers. Gotta stay true to that bottom line!)

Stiner told the paper that her goats have been hired all over the metro area, sometimes at sites where loud lawn equipment can't be used and other times just when people are looking for a more sustainable solution.

On Milligan's Free Association Design blog, he also has lots of interesting knowledge to share about the goats themselves. A brief example:

"The goats themselves exhibit an amazing repertoire of behaviors, moods and proclivities (constant entertainment really); some of which seem predictable.   For example, heat has a major effect on their appetite.  As we saw in the first couple days, in warm weather they slow down and don’t eat nearly as much.   As herding animals by instinct, they tend to stick together and form social subgroups within the herd.  In a short time its easy to tell which ones are fond of each other and which ones have issues.  The patterns of how they collectively move (the repeating cycles of foraging and resting) seems unpredictable and slightly random.

Although common knowledge says that goats will eat anything, they undeniably have specific preferences when it comes to vegetation.  They selectively graze rather than mow; covering the terrain many times over in the process of eating it down.  The field seems to offer a culinary menu similar to a stocked refrigerator or pantry.  There are those things that get eagerly consumed at a fast rate (in this case seasonally procured fresh green clover, grass and blooming flowers), followed by things that are less immediately appetizing – like desiccated seed stalks and thistles.  They’re edible, but not delicious.

This menu is affected by weather conditions and seasons.  As other contemporary applied research in herding/grazing practices has demonstrated, by simply modifying the timing of grazing to optimum specifics of local conditions, massive regenerative effects can be achieved.   A key question for us right now, is when is the best two times of year to bring the goats to this site."

 

More than the sustainability of the goat-grazing, though, I find it interesting the degree to which people have flocked to see the goats on Belmont.

Goats on Southeast Belmont (photo by Brian Libby)

After all, if you think about it, you can see animals anytime at the Oregon Zoo, and much more exotic ones at that. But I personally never go to the zoo. It seems depressing to keep animals native to Africa, Asia or elsewhere in the world locked up in cages in rainy Portland. Granted zoo officials have endeavored over the decades to make the enclosures more habitat-friendly. But I'll never forget the site on my last zoo visit of an elephant gently but persistently butting its head against the bars of its cage. It's still a prison for them.

In the case of the goats grazing on Belmont or the other bits of nature sprouting into the city like chicken coops, it feels more natural because these are animals already in abundant numbers in the agricultural areas surrounding Portland. It may feel like a bit of a novelty to have goats munching grass with the downtown skyline visible in the background, but not so absurd as having giraffes and lions. And it doesn't feel as contrived or over-nostalgic as an animal presence like the police department's officers riding horseback. The goats may not be completely free to roam, but they're basically being allowed to do what goats do: eat and hang out.

Graphic courtesy David Badders/The Oregonian

These farm animals are slowly but persistently helping to break down traditional barriers between urban and rural locales. The same thing is happening with the green infrastructure being introduced into the city by way of small bits of nature like bioswales and eco roofs. The old notion of the city was as a concrete jungle, devoid of greenery. But it doesn't have to be that way. Slowly, over time, we can introduce more and more of the natural world back into the city, uncovering old creeks and swales initially buried in concrete and inviting birds and mammals back into our zip codes. It's not to suggest that we should all be joining hands and singing "Kum-ba-ya" over a few goats chewing weeds, but clearly people respond to having a little nature around them.

"They've been out here two weeks," Milligan told The Oregonian. "I thought things would kind of die down in terms of public interest, but it hasn't at all." My girlfriend has even started leaving home early in the morning to make sure she gets to visit the goats.

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Director Park: a great summer piazza, but what about winter?

Director Park (photo by Brian Libby) 

The block behind the Fox Tower has traveled a circuitous route to become Simon and Helen Director Park.

Developer Tom Moyer, owner of the block, sought to redevelop it since the 1970s. Downtown parking magnate Greg Goodman proposed to turn the block into a 550-space, 12-story parking structure in 1995, which was to be called the Park Avenue Plaza. In 1998, Moyer and ex-Portland mayor/Oregon governor Neil Goldschmidt proposed not only turning this parcel into a park, but razing several consecutive buildings along the street for greenspace as part of a larger plan to connect the North and South Park Blocks.

Director Park is the compromise, although an attractive one and mostly very well done. It is first and foremost a 700-car underground parking garage, as one is reminded from the numerous above-ground entry structures here. But this is also a piazza where people can congregate at outdoor tables and kids can play in a fountain. On two sides of the park, granite paving blurs the line between park and adjacent street, giving off a pleasant European feel. The most striking feature, however, is Director Park's 1,000 square foot glass awning. (More on that later.)

At one point this was to be called Marilyn Moyer Park, after Tom Moyer's deceased wife. He had previously donated $1 million to the park and requested the name in her memory. Moyer also, of course, donated the land for Director Park itself. But the city and its public steering committee later decided to give away naming rights in exchange for further funding. Jordan Schnitzer, from the wealthy local family whose name dots many institutions, donated $1.97 million for the plaza and asked city commissioners to name it for his maternal grandparents, Simon and Helen Director, Russian and Polish immigrants who met in Portland in 1916. I wonder if that decision has to do not only with finances but also with the fact that Moyer's Park Avenue West Tower, now partially constructed across the street from Director Park, effectively killed the chance to extend the Park Blocks.

With all due respect to the memory of Marilyn Moyer and of Simon and Helen Director, I don't like to see public spaces simply named after whomever the biggest donor wants. It seemed more fitting when these spaces were named after those who have led or contributed to the city in a substantial way, such as former governor Tom McCall (after whom Waterfront Park is named) or the late gallerist William Jamison (after whom Jamison Square in the Pearl is named). Marilyn Moyer also already has the Marilyn Moyer Meditation Chapel at The Grotto named after her, and while this is the first naming honor to go to Simon and Helen Director, it is about the 100th thing named after a member of the Schnitzer family. 

Instead of Director Park, what if we'd called it Bill Walton Square, after the hero of the Blazers' lone championship? Or Mel Blanc Park, after the virtuoso cartoon voice artist who came from Portland. Name it Dick Bogle Plaza, after the former City Council member who recently passed. Dedicate it to James Beard, the father of TV food chefs. Or Clark Gable Square after the actor who once lived in Portland. Or Mark Rothko Park after the legendary painter who got his start here. Or if news turns out for the worst, what about even Kyron Horman Piazza?

Director Park (photo by Brian Libby) 

Director Park comes with impressive designer pedigree. It's a partnership between Portland firm ZGF Architects and celebrated landscape architect Laurie Olin.

The involvement of ZGF in this park, because of its glass canopy, recalls another design by the firm that I love: the glass canopy at Portland International Airport. It's one of my favorite works of architecture and engineering in the city. ZGF also recently completed the Jaqua Center at the University of Oregon in Eugene, another glassy marvel, as well as its own headquarters as part of the 12 West building. Suddenly ZGF is doing much of the most interesting glass work in the city and beyond.

A Harvard graduate who has taught and chaired landscape architecture departments at the University of Pennsylvania and Harvard since 1976, Olin's eponymous firm received the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Award for Landscape Design in 2008. Earlier this year Olin was on the winning team in the competition to design the new United States Embassy in London with architects KieranTimberlake. Olin is also a Guggenheim Fellow and was recently inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

Olin's list of past projects is hugely impressive. In New York he worked on Bryant Park and Battery Park City as well as a renovation of Columbus Circle. Olin also collaborated with celebrated architects Daniel Liebeskind on the Jewish Memorial in Berlin and Richard Meier on the Getty Museum in Los Angeles. In short, Olin is another star landscape architect contributing to Portland, joining the ranks of Lawrence Halprin, Peter Walker, and the Olmsted brothers.

 

 

Director Park (photos by Brian Libby) 

This summer, the public has flocked to Director Park. A World Cup soccer match between England and the USA filled the park with revelers to watch on a giant-screen TV. Tonight there is a viewing party for the masterful Vincente Minnelli musical An American In Paris with Gene Kelly. And during the several times I have visited Director Park, there have always been people there. Particularly I think people gravitate to the tables and chairs dotting Director, the simplest of design moves but something noticeably lacking in Pioneer Courthouse Square. What's more, for all the wonderful energy of the downtown food cart scene, there are very few places to sit down and eat your lunch. The 10th Avenue food cart pod is just a couple blocks from Director, making it an ideal spot to eat.

Actually, though, you can eat without leaving the park at all. One of Tom Moyer's provisions for donating the land above the underground parking for a park was that 30 percent of the space be devoted to commercial activity. Enter Violetta, a smart little cafe that makes some of the best corn dogs I've ever tasted. The kitchen is adjacent to the glass canopy, encouraging visitors to sit back and people watch in the piazza.

Some, myself included, wondered before Director Park's construction whether it would mean too much public space clustered together in this portion of downtown with Pioneer Courthouse Square and the North South Park Blocks each only a block away. So far, though, I think Director has carved a niche for itself as a different kind of park space from the others nearby. This isn't a wide open expanse like Pioneer, nor is it an intimate tree-lined setting like the Blocks. Director is the place to sip espresso at an outdoor table on a sunny afternoon. "It's growing on me," one prominent Portland artist and curator told me of Director Park yesterday as I found him at one such table chatting with a friend.

Materials also help make the park what it is. The light granite surface creates a series of subtle but attractive patterns. Better yet are the wood benches placed along two sides and around the perimeter of the fountain. 

 

Director Park (photos by Brian Libby)  

Much as Director Park has impressed with its instant success at place-making, its complementary feel to nearby Pioneer Courthouse Square and the many fine details of the design, I am plagued by a lingering worry that the design will only work in the summer. Specifically, I'm skeptical of the glass canopy. It feels too tall and skinny to keep away the rain. Although I'm admittedly yet to test this theory, I'm concerned that during the long rainy months Director Park's signature canopy will be a place people hope to congregate only to find that the drops are still hitting them. 

For many years I've yearned for Portland to have a winter-garden, a partially or fully enclosed glass structure where people can still enjoy the sensation of being outdoors (natural light, air) yet protected from the elements. When you're inside Memorial Coliseum's concourse (outside the seating bowl) this sensation comes through dramatically, but the MC is not a place where the public can congregate freely without a ticketed event. As Director Park was being designed and built, I had great hope that it would serve that role: Portland's public indoor-outdoor winter garden. I hope I'm wrong about Director Park, that the canopy isn't really too tall and thin to be that kind of year-round space.

Director Park (photo by Brian Libby) 

What's more, I realize the canopy isn't the only criterion for judging Director Park. Visiting there in recent days, it felt like the congregating point of downtown Portland as much as beloved Pioneer Courthouse Square if not even more. And if Moyer's Park Avenue West Tower eventually finishes construction, the park will be bookended with retail including a new Nike Town store in that building as well as, hopefully, a re-opened Guild Theatre on the west side of the park.

It's because of this kind of good feeling about the design of Portland's newest downtown public space, though, that one wants it to last throughout the year.

OHSU nursing school finally gets its courtyard

Rendering of future OHSU School of Nursing Courtyard, courtesy OrangeWall Studios 

In the early 1990s, Thomas Hacker Architects (now THA Architecture) designed two major buildings for Oregon Health & Science University's Marquam Hill campus, the Biomedical Information and Communications Center (BICC) in 1991 and the School of Nursing in 1992.

As the nation's first fully computerized research library, and with a more striking form, the BICC received more fanfare. The concrete-framed building, clad in limestone and marble, has a glass block and aluminum window system that had not been attempted before. The project also reflected an array of talent working for Hacker at the time, including Brad Cloepfil, Rick Potestio, Elizabeth Williams, and John Cava.

“The BICC and School of Nursing derive strength from their finely tailored, structural integrity, which sets them apart from the current fashion for fragmented designs,” wrote Architecture magazine's Deborah Dietsch. “Thomas Hacker's buildings at OHSU not only offer a sign of health within their university setting, but within contemporary architectural design."

The School of Nursing building, on the other hand, never received as much celebration for its design, but that may be in part because the U-shaped building never saw construction of the courtyard at its center.

Now, 28 years later, and just in time for the school's 100th anniversary, a new courtyard design has been generated by architect Gary Hartill and his Portland firm, OrangeWall Studios after a private donation to the school has made going forward with construction possible. Shapiro Didway Landscape Architecture and Ken Diener of KJD Architecture also collaborated with OrangeWall on the design.

Rendering of future OHSU School of Nursing Courtyard, courtesy OrangeWall Studios 

Hartill was an unconventional choice, not because of a lack of talent but because he was an architect asked to bid on what would become his first such courtyard design.

"We were working on another project for OHSU ad they liked the design sensibilities," Hartill recalled in a recent phone interview. "They said, ‘We’ve got this courtyard.’ I said, ‘I’m not a landscape architect.’ And they said, ‘Design is design.’" The OrangeWall submission wound up beating out talented firms like Murase Associates (which was originally set to provide the landscape design when the building was first built, before budget problems ended that portion of the project) and Walker Macy. "We got it because we had a different perspective."

Part of that perspective was Hartill's advocacy for creating a master plan for the building as part of a holistic design process. As a result, the building facade is getting pressure washed and repainted, and the school is looking at a green roof for the building.

Rendering of future OHSU School of Nursing Courtyard, courtesy OrangeWall Studios    

To generate the courtyard design, "We talked to staff, faculty, emeritus alumni, students," the architect continues. "All of them had diff points of view but it came down to the same theme: They wanted a place of respite from the stress of the academic/medical world, and a unifying space that could encourage interaction.  Most people eat lunch at their desks now. There aren’t a lot of social spaces that invite interaction. For me that became the kicking off point for driving the design. How do we create a connection between the organization and rigor of the architecture? That drove a more fluid design. "

The clients, Hartill adds, "talked about the emotive components of nursing. Healing is about more than knowledge and data. It was a human connection. So if nursing is a combo of pragmatic and emotional components, how can that be incorporated into the design? The DNA strand became the organizing element. It binds all of these different elements to create something greater.

A new briese soleil shades the south facing elevation while glass canopies on the south side of the court provide protection from the rain. Rain gardens are activated by the weather collecting roofwater from the upper roofs and directing through the planters before returning the balance to the earth. The double helix of the DNA strand creates the symbolic and formal basis for the organization of the elements.

A native Portlander, Hartill initially was enrolled to study at the Oregon School of Design only to see it close; he instead attended Portland State and today speaks of well of what he sees as a holistic approach to design at the school. He later worked at Waterleaf Architecture + Interiors and then spent several years at ZGF Architects; his final project there was the Eliot Tower. Since forming OrangeWall Studios seven years ago, Hartill has worked largely on residential projects, including several homes for executives at local ad agency Wieden + Kennedy. But the OHSU School of Nursing courtyard is indicative of the broadened practice he would like to achieve for OrangeWall.

The School of Nursing courtyard is expected to begin construction in 2011.

Building playgrounds and removing barriers

Students at The Hand in Hand School, image courtesy Project OPENmotion 

One is in Israel, one in Portland. One has already been completed using tree branches. The other is seeking funding for its manufacture. But both are a testament to how design can be a compelling progressive force that unites people.

First, there is the project William Fritts and his partner Michelle Ricker, through their nonprofit organization Project OPENmotion, saw completed recently at The Hand in Hand School in Jerusalem. Hand in Hand is a bilingual school where Arabic, Christian and Jewish kids learn together and are taught in both Hebrew and Arabic. Fritts and Ricker tapped 12 graduate design students from the nearby Bezalel Academy, the top architecture and Design University in Israel, to corral the children and teachers and get their input on the design through a four-day workshop to generate the design and construction.

Building a playground at The Hand in Hand school, image courtesy Project OPENmotion 

"We first scoured the Jerusalem municipal tree cutting grinding facility and recycling center for the raw materials, which cost no more than the diesel to run the delivery truck from the center to the school," Fritts explains. "We used the collected sticks, branches, yucca fronds, irrigation tubing and tarps as the foundation design constraint. The K-12 kids toured us around their campus and told us of their dreams for making the place more 'playable'. The girls wanted places to chat and the boys wanted to kick a ball yet get out of the sun too. From that we all designed then built two “igloo” structures, two shade structures, a swinging hammock bench and two soccer goals. These were mostly made by the hands of over fifty K-12 kids as we guided and loosely directed."

"What we heard from both the K-12 kids and the graduate students was amazing," Fritts continues. "The little kids came in on the second and third day saying they had started gathering similar free materials in their neighborhoods to start building places to play with their friends at home. They were so happy that they could do this for free; it had not previously occurred to them. The graduate students, who were all Jewish, were struck by the way the kids from cross-cultural roots could create and work side by side in harmony with no idea that they couldn’t. Most of them had never spoken to an Arabic person before, much less an Arabic child. They said, 'If there is hope for peace in the Middle East it will come from this place and from these sorts of activities together.' This of course brought waves of emotion to us."

William Fritts and Michelle Ricker, founders of Project OPENmotion 

Fritts was trained as an architect and worked in the profession for 10 years, including work on the Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station in Antarctica, then later stints at Portland's GBD Architects and furniture manufacturer Herman Miller. After receiving an MBA, he started the interior environments and furniture company Intelligent Design in 2001; the company's first main project was providing all the furniture for the Seattle Public Library, designed by Rem Koolhaas. Later in the decade, Fritts switched focus to sustainable design and in 2007 and started the company Solidcore.

Fritts says Ricker is really the visionary behind project, which she conceived. Her expertise is in health and diet (she's a registered     dietitian) and tackling childhood obesity. The founder of a company called New and You, she has worked in a wide array of health, exercise and nutrition positions in clinical and executive levels and often lectures internationally on these topics of expertise.

Fritts says today Project OpenMotion takes up about a quarter of his time."We call OPENmotion an initiative for now," he explains. "We select four to five relevant projects per year that have the greatest potential impact on local community building, kids health effect and green design teaching using simple, found materials."

OPENmotion's current projects include a playground for the TEDxAustin festival next February, an installation for the Design Museum in Holon, Israel, and one at Wow and Flutterville here in Portland. Fritts says they are also in discussion with the Architecture + Design Museum in Los Angeles, where he is a board member.

Harper Goldberg, photo by Benjamin Brink, courtesy The Oregonian 

The other inspiring playground was inspired by one four-year-old little girl, Harper Goldberg. When she was just a few weeks old, her parents discovered that Harper suffers from Emanuel Syndrome, an exceedingly rare disorder with only 200 or so documented cases worldwide that causes severe developmental delays, rendering her unable to walk or talk.

Harper loves her neighborhood park, but she can't use the slide or climb on the play structure. But her parents hope to transform a portion of North Portland's Arbor Lodge Park into a place where Harper and children of all abilities can play together. Harper's father, Cody Goldberg, has led an effort to build a playground North Portland's Arbor Lodge Park that is accessible to children (and adults) of all abilities.

Goldberg envisions an all-inclusive play structure by Boundless Playgrounds, a Connecticut company that integrates wheelchair- and walker-friendly elements into play equipment. He was inspired by a similar structure in Washington Park, the only one of its kind in Portland. Goldberg and his wife approached the Portland Bureau of Parks and Recreation and were advised to approach their local Arbor Lodge Neighborhood Association first. When they did, "I attended in January and in February made a presentation asking if they would endorse the concept," Goldberg recalled in a phone interview. "That night they actually voted overwhelmingly to support it and said they’d like to make it a priority for the community."

Since then, the Goldbergs have formed a nonprofit organization to help raise funds for the park. After a May 2 article about the effort in The Oregonian, "We got a flood of donations even though we hadn’t started our capitol campaign," Goldberg added. RFPs have since been sent out to find an entity to build the customized playground by Boundless Playgrounds and create an appropriate setting. They hope to have the playground completed in time for Harper's birthday next year on July 8 (which she happens to share with my grandma).

Play facility by Boundless Playgrounds at Hoover Elementary School, Medford 

How will the playground look? Goldberg says it will not just be accessible but inclusive. "The key difference between accessible and inclusive is it invites people of all abilities to get everywhere. Someone in a wheelchair can get to the same point where someone climbing a wall together. You can play togethet no matter what your abilities are. The keys are ramped access to the highest point and smoothed surfacing, usually rubberized. There are also a lot of other play elements. We're adding some of these spacially interesting designs that kids with autism are said to respond to, for example. There are these cool looking mosaic tiles that have play elements on them. There’s a lot of other play elements at a level for someone in a wheel chair, like a raised sandbox."

"What’s important for us about this project is first and foremost it’s giving our daughter a place to play. But in the broader sense, it’s sending a message to all people that inclusion is important. It’s inviting people of all needs into everything that’s happening."

North Portland Community Works, a local nonprofit serving organizations in the area, is providing fiscal sponsorship, or legal and tax-exempt status, to Cody's organization, Harper's Playground, which he started this year. The project is expected to cost about $200,000, based on $100,000 for the equipment, $40-50,000 for surfacing, and other expenses. Harper's Playground has received a $10,000 pledge from Reliable Credit Association, but overall only 7.5 percent of the cost has been raised. Here's hoping they capture the rest of their needed funds soon.

Goldberg has also come to believe that the playground sought for Harper and other special needs kids overlaps with larger issues of what's called universal or barrier-free design. "It starts for us with Harper and other children with other needs, but it’s grown to the Elderly and adults with special needs," he says. "Most elders would benefit from a sloping ramp to the top, to be able to engage with their grandchildren. It goes a lot further. As a person who grew up able bodied, I could play everywhere I wanted. I think all projects should now be universally designed."

Ecoroofs: for the birds?

Photo by Brian Libby 

Two weeks ago I attended an open house at the Audubon Society of Portland, a chance to meet and see up close the organization's educational birds, those injured or otherwise unable to survive in the wild now used to teach about habitat and conservation - such as Jack the Sparrowhawk, Julio the Great Horned Owl, Aristophanes the Raven, and Ruby the Turkey Vulture.

Some of these are not birds ever likely to be common to urban landscapes, even those with a massive forest inside city limits like Portland. Even so, it was such an inspiring site to see these magnificent birds up close that it got me wondering about efforts to re-introduce nature and wildlife into the city through ecoroofs, bioswales and greenspaces.

Portland has become a national leader for ecoroofs, particularly ones that are designed to capture stormwater. But what if the city's collection of green roofs could, once expanded, go a step further and actually become a functional habitat for birds and wildlife - part of a green infrastructure in the city? Ecoroofs do a lot for buildings themselves, insulating them better and reducing energy bills, besides capturing stormwater to prevent runoff. But it wouldn't take much for them to be bird magnets as well.

As it happens, March is being promoted as "Ecoroof Month" by the City of Portland, the Audubon Society of Portland, and the Urban Greenspaces Institute. Events will include "Ecoroof Portland," a free two-day event this Friday and Saturday (March 12-13), as well as an ecoroof tour of South Waterfront on March 27, lectures on March 30 and 31 by London ecoroof expert Dusty Gedge, and an ecoroof tour of downtown Portland on March 31.

As Bob Sallinger, conservation director for the Audubon Society of Portland notes in the organization's wonderfully titled newsletter, the  The Warbler, there are already 200 ecoroofs in Portland, and the city has set a goal of increasing vegetated rooftops to cover at least 39 acres by 2013. An incentive program initiated by the city in 2009 provides property owners with up to $5 per square foot to install ecoroofs. According to the City's ecoroof website Buildings can also receive bonus FAR (floor area ratio) based on three ranges of ecoroof coverage in relation to the building’s footprint: 10-30%, 30-60% and 60% or greater earns one, two and three square feet of additional floor area per square foot of ecoroof respectively.

Multnomah County Central Library ecoroof, photo courtesy Jaysonphoto via Flickr 

Chicago is the only American city with more ecoroof area then Portland, with 534,000 square feet of ecoroof space compared to the Rose City's 423,000 as of 2009. But how are we doing compared to Europe, where ecoroof building leads the world and dates to the 1970s? We've got a lot of catching up to do.

For example, the metro area in Stuttgart, Germany, home of the exquisite Mercedes-Benz brand, has 10.7 million square feet of estimated ecoroof area. Dusseldorf, Germany's overall metro area has 7.86 million square feet. Basel, Switzerland - just the city, not its metro area - had 7.53 million square feet of ecoroof area as of 2007. London has 5.38 million, not including its suburbs and exurbs.

"Portland is particularly well positioned to learn from the European experience with ecoroofs and the emerging trend of biodiverse ecoroofs," writes Jim Labbe of the Audubon Society, also in The Warbler. "Efforts in the United Kingdom, Germany and Switzerland clearly indicate an ecoroof building boom is possible with the right public policies in place. These include adequate incentives and regulation to strongly encourage or require ecoroofs on new development where technically feasible. However we also need local research to help improve designs of biodiverse ecoroofs adapted to our unique climate, flora and fauna."

Photo by Brian Libby 

"By investing in and expanding biodiverse ecoroofs in Portland, we can dramatically expand urban habitat diversity, enrich our local and neotropical bird populations, and help keep nature nearby in our densest neighborhoods."

In 2006 I wrote an article for Metropolis magazine about Tanner Springs Park and its design by German landscape architect Herbert Dreiseitl, which was indicative of an an emerging philosophy regarding wild-life protection in a high-density urban setting. "Instead of just setting aside one or two larger parcels on the outskirts of the city, Portland planners favor also introducing small pockets of nature throughout," I wrote back then. “We’ve done a lousy job of protecting nature in the city until very recently,” added Mike Houck, urban naturalist for the Audubon Society of Portland and director of the nonprofit Urban Greenspaces Institute. “This is a new phenomenon.”

In seeking to become a sustainable capitol, can Portland also become an innovator for nature in the city? Sure, if the Europeans haven't beaten us there first. But Portland also boasts something these older European cities perhaps don't, or at least not in as much supply: enough space, and enough of a connection with the surrounding natural landscape, to enjoy a more substantial connection between city and nature. In that way, the urban growth boundary is as important as ecoroofs. But as with urban planning, it takes both macro and micro level design and implementation to make the unified whole work successfully - a unified plan for growth, and means to make it happen block by block, or in this case, roof by roof and park by park.

Halprin book release party this Saturday

 

This Saturday brings a celebration for the publication of the book Where The Revolution Began: Lawrence and Anna Halprin and the Reinvention of Public Space, published by Spacemaker Press.

In the Ziba World Headquarters atrium (1044 NW Ninth Ave.) at 2PM, there will be a host of people and artists articulating the Halprin legacy as seen in this book: Portland Commissioner Nick Fish will emcee, followed by a performance from violinist Ron Blessinger of Third Angle Ensemble, with dancers Linda K. Johnson, Tere Mathern, Cydney Wilkes, and Linda Austin. There will also be a screening of The City Dance of Lawrence and Anna Halprin, a documentary about the September 2008 performance in Halprin’s Portland plazas. Admission is free.

Between 1963 and 1970, Lawrence Halprin and Associates realized the Portland Open Space Sequence—a quartet of public plazas in Portland, Oregon, that redefined the city and set a bold new precedent for urban landscape architecture. Composed of the Lovejoy Fountain, Pettygrove Park, and Forecourt Fountain (latter renamed Ira Keller Fountain), plus the lesser known Source Fountain, the plazas were a dynamic collage of striking concrete forms, gushing water, and alpine flora that, in their seamless mix of nature and theater, created a playful metaphorical watershed coursing through the central city.

  

Where the Revolution Began is the story of how these plazas came to be. Born of the creative experimentation and collaboration between Halprin and his wife, pioneering choreographer/dancer Anna Halprin, the Portland Open Space Sequence came to life in the unlikely setting of the city’s first scrape-and-rebuild urban renewal project. But Halprin defied the conventions of both American urban renewal and midcentury modernism, designing the kind of inviting, exuberant public space that hadn’t been seen since Renaissance Rome’s Trevi Fountain and Piazza Navonna.

For Halprin, who died in October at age 93, the plazas became the first step in a career-long exploration of sequential works of landscape design, from the Haas Promenade in Jerusalem to the Roosevelt Memorial in Washington, D.C. For Portland, Halprin’s work marked the beginning of a tradition of remaking the city around interactive public spaces such as the famed Pioneer Courthouse Square. And for landscape architecture, the plazas laid the earliest foundations for the ecologically and socially responsive urbanism on the rise today.

Replete with historic photographs and Halprin’s own notebook drawings (two of which are shown in this post - of the Keller and Lovejoy Fountains), Where the Revolution Began is the historically complete document of how this pivotal moment in urban landscape history came to be, from concept to fruition.

The book includes essays by three experts on the Halprins: John Beardsley, author of Earthworks and Beyond: Contemporary Art in the Landscape and Gardens of Revelation: Environments by Visionary Artists; Janice Ross, director of the Dance Division at Stanford University and author of Anna Halprin: Experience as Dance ; and Randy Gragg, editor in chief of Portland Spaces and Portland Monthly magazines.

Photographs in Where the Revolution Began are by Susan Seubert, who has photographed for publications like National Geographic Traveler and the New York Times.

 

In Beardsley's essay, he writes:

"The 'transitional figure' in history is a well worn cliche, but in Lawrence Halprin's case, the term emphatically and revealingly applies. Halprin is widely recognized as one of the preeminent designers of the postwar era, when landscape architecture finally reckoned with the formal, social, and technological implications of modernism."

"Halprin used a language of streamlines forms, asymmetrical geometries, and spatial ambiguity characteristic of much high modernist art. He likewise shared the faith they displayed in the socially transformative power of functionalist design...But Halprin [also] articulated some of the earliest and most forceful environmentalist challenges to modernism."

"Halprin...recognized ecology as a social as well as a biological construct; ecological health, in his mind, encompassed humans in addition to the rest of the biotic community. Halprin's engagement with urban renewal, a feature of his work both in Portland and Seattle, was at once the legacy of modernist aspirations for social improvement and a critique of the way modernism was rending the physical fabric of American cities."

I'm just hoping that I'm feeling happy enough from a Ducks win in the Civil War to go to the book event on Saturday, and not too depressed by a Beaver win to engage in human contact. Either way, though, I heartily recommend purchasing a copy of the book.

Gragg on Halprin: "My eyes are all teary"

As many in the design and architecture community have already learned, the legendary landscape architect Lawrence Halprin passed away on Sunday, October 25.

The Harvard-educated Halprin helped revolutionize public and open space design in the 1970s, with his attention to works that functioned well on a human scale and encouraged interaction, very much in the egalitarian tradition of parks and public realms created by Frederick Law Olmsted and his sons. Portland, where the Olmsted brothers designed the North and South Park Blocks, and where Halprin designed two fountains (the Keller Fountain and Lovejoy Fountain), was the common thread. Halprin also worked on the transit mall in downtown Portland, the landmark Sea Ranch project in Northern California, the Franklin Delano Roosevelt memorial in Washington, DC, and much more.

Randy Gragg (pictured at left), the longtime Oregonian architecture critic who now is editor of Portland Monthly and Portland Spaces magazines, is an authority on Halprin and a big fan. Last year he helped bring to fruition "The City Dance of Lawrence and Anna Halprin" with choreographer Linda K. Johnson, and currently Gragg is working on a book about the designer, due in December. Recently I interviewed Gragg by email about his thoughts on Halprin and his passing.

Me: Did you ever get to meet Halprin personally? If so, what was that (or what was he) like?

Randy: I met with Larry on four different occasions over the last few years. The first three times, he was very weak and a bit spacey. During a hospital stay for minor surgery a couple of years before, he had contracted a virus that nearly killed him. Nevertheless he was still working finishing up projects in Yosemite and San Francisco. He was very gracious but his memory of the specifics of he work in Portland was not strong.

The last time I interviewed him, I had done a lot of archive research both at the PDC and at larry’s archive at Penn and I came armed with lots of letters and pictures. As well, I understand he had changed his meds. He was an entirely different person. Still gracious, but full of memories prompted by the artifacts and pleasantly combative about anything he thought I was misinterpreting. It was really fun and I saw the fiber of the man he once was: The very typical successful visionary – part seducer, part iron will, and no doubt.  

You seem to have developed a particular interest in the Halprins even amongst the broad array of people you've covered. What is it about Halprin that looms so large for you?

Boy, I sure did: years of my life and, now a book: "Where the Revolution Began: Lawrence and Anna Halprin and the Reinvention of Public Space". We’re having a big release party December 5.

So I knew the fountains from history and visiting my first few weeks in Portland back in 1990. But it was landscape architect Peter Walker who really alerted me to the profundity of their influence—particularly Lovejoy – on the history of landscape architecture: Nature meets theater in the city. My first major piece on Larry was back in 2003, inspired by developer John Russell’s efforts to prune the trees around Keller Fountain and Pettygrove Park.

My friend, the choreographer Linda K. Johnson, sent me a book on the work of Larry’s wife, Anna Halprin, who is often credited as the inventor of Postmodernism in dance, was developing her most influential work at the time Portland’s plazas were being designed. And suddenly I was hooked on these two characters and what the Portland work really meant: to landscape history, urbanism, and dance. 

On my Loeb Fellowship, I spent a lot more time researching and when I returned I burrowed into the PDC’s archives. And, whoa, there was this incredible story of the reemergence – and battle over – public space in Portland. You don’t get to Waterfront Park or Pioneer Square or Jamison Square or Tanner Creek Park or South Waterfront’s ambition’s to knit habitat to high-density urbanism. Mike Houck will probably disagree, but I really believe the whole idea of “nature in the city” – in a true urban sense -- begins with Halprin. To put it how Houck might: Halprin put a fucking watershed in fucking downtown; sure, it was a fucking metaphor, but it still fucking matters because it planted a seed in people’s fucking brains.

Any memories of being in Halprin-designed space in Portland like the fountain that particularly stand out for you?

Well, last year’s performance, The City Dance of Lawrence and Anna Halprin, is the mother of all memories: about 1000 people watching incredible dances choreographed by Tere Mathern, Cydney Wilkes, Linda Austin and Linda K Johnson all to music by Third Angle Ensemble. I still get chills and tears watching the video – which we’ll screen at the December book event. Linda K, Ron and I – and Third Angle’s board – worked for a solid year on that project and I’ve never had a more fulfilling group experience in my life. It still blows me away that most of those people who came that sunny Sunday afternoon lined up – for like 20 minutes – at the end for the final piece to join hands and circle the little Source Fountain. My eyes are all teary writing this. 

The South Auditorium district overall seems to have a controversial history and mixed success given what was torn down to build this area, etc. How might this area of town be re-imagined in the future in a way that really makes the Halprin fountain an oft-visited centerpiece again?

Well, I don’t get all misty over the neighborhood that was lost. There were a few OK buildings that got torn down and, yes, some people were displaced. But the record shows the PDC did a pretty good job in finding them homes, mostly better homes, according to interviews I read. Keep in mind, Portland’s neighborhood movement was spawned in Lair Hill as activists banded together to fight further expansion of the urban renewal area southward. Healthy cities are self-correcting.

As for the South Auditorium’s mixed successes urbanistically, it really is one of the MOST successful urban renewal districts in the country from that period. For one, it got finished. Two, the apartments always fetched top dollar and eventually sold for a record amount when they were converted to condos. The area is much loved by those who live there. You can’t say that about many mid-century American urban renewal areas.

The offices directly adjacent to the plazas have had a more mixed history, but that’s because the owners have done a shitty job of marketing them. Could the area be improved? Sure. The retail never flourished because the original developers and the architects, Skidmore Owings Merrill, didn’t understand what we know about urban retail today: It needs to be in a retail district. They thought the apartments and the cars going down First Avene would be enough, but the parking and signage is too hidden, the cars going too fast, and there’s not enough residents to support the retail alone. Had the orginal design put the retail over on fourth, it’d be a different story.

Looking ahead, I actually LIKE that these are somewhat hidden spaces. They’re special and don’t need Project for Public Spaces kiosks and flower ladies and crap hanging from the light poles. Would changing some adjacent uses help? Sure. While I personally would love to have an office or even live in the office spaces adjacent to Lovejoy Fountain – they’re the most Miesian spaces in town, absolutely beautiful, particularly on the east side of Lovejoy—they probably could be replaced with more intensive development to put some more eyes on the plaza (as long as the great Hot Pot place is saved!) . And the retail around the little Source Fountain totally needs to be rethought.

But the real jeopardy ahead, to me, is the upcoming Lincoln Street redo for MAX and the Montgomery “green street.” So remember, people, Larry Halprin’s fountain plaza sequence is the FIRST green street, and to go into Houck speak again, DON’T FUCK WITH IT. The designers on these projects need to act respectfully and keep their faddish bioswales and grass clumps well away. It’s OK for a little rainwater to trickle into the pipes through the wonderful drainage system Larry integrated into the concrete scoring (even if most of the time, it’s plugged up, due to poor maintenance). It’s history. It’s metaphor. It changed the city for good and great ways.

Celebrating (and learning from) Pioneer Courthouse Square

It is probably the most popular urban space in Portland. It's been America's 4th best public square by the Project for Public Spaces. The American Planning Association named the square one of its 10 Great Public Spaces along with landmarks like Central Park in New York and Santa Monica Beach.

This year marks the 25th anniversary of Pioneer Courthouse Square's completion. To celebrate, AIA/Portland (a sponsor of this site) and Portland Spaces magazine are collaborating on a March exhibit at the Center For Architecture called "Pioneering the Square."

It's no coincidence that this is an exceptionally successful public space, for Pioneer Courthouse Square came about through an international design competition. For all the simple enduring quality of the square, from its gentle curving stairs that double as seating to the series of columns that play with postmodernism much more successfully than Michael Graves's Portland Building down the street, Pioneer Courthouse Square could have been an ugly disaster. But the competition received 162 different submissions, including finalists from around the country: New York, Philadelphia, San Francisco, Los Angeles and Portland. However it was actually a local team, led by the late Portland architect Will Martin, that won the job.

At one point after the competition, there was a ridiculous effort to enclose the square and make it a private space out of concern there would be too many transients there. It's true today if you go to PCS, there are a lot of unshowered people playing hackey sack, but they have as much right to Portland's living room as anyone else. Thank goodness this plan never went through, in part because of an indignant former governor Tom McCall standing up for Martin's design.

It's really too bad there haven't been many design competitions since. The competition for the Portland Building seemed to scare away the notion for many years. Then we had a terrific competition for the tram, but then the city made an ill-advised move to back away from a design competition for Fire Station 1 after THA Architecture won the job. Today we're having teams of developers and architects vie for public projects like the Sustainability Center for Excellence and, a couple years ago, Burnside Bridgehead. But those aren't design competitions. They choose a team before a design is ever produced, and the teams are usually led by developers, not the architects.

Another legendary politician but one now disgraced, former Portland Mayor Neil Goldschmidt, was also key. In 1975, while mayor, he negotiated directly with the Meier & Frank store to sell the parcel to the city instead of using it for a parking garage.

Pioneer Courthouse Square also might not have been created were it not for the MAX line. It was this project that kick started the idea of a public square downtown, and TriMet funds for an information center and transit stops provided key dollars.

And speaking of funding, one of the wonderful little features about Pioneer Courthouse Square shows how citizens stood up to make it possible. The square's brick surface is embedded with the names of thousands of citizens (one on each brick) who donated money.

The bricks and the TriMet funding reveal how Pioneer Courthouse Square was almost derailed out of budget concerns. But you know how much this priceless landmark cost? About $3 million for the land and $4.3 million to build. That would be pocket change today for an urban development. This was something I often kept in mind when foes of the Portland Aerial Tram were citing this very successful transit project as a boondoggle.

Sometimes I get tired of all the countless events that are held in the square, especially in the summer. Do we really need Scientologists in their yellow circus tents trying to convert people? Do I have to hear that lowest-common-denominator rock music at noon on summer days? On the reverse side, Pioneer Courthouse Square's security and rules can be excessive in my opinion. I was once prevented from using a tripod there, for example.

But those criticisms are relatively small compared to the pride, thankfulness and enjoyment the square generates. Portland may not have many landmark buildings by famous architects like our urban West Coast neighbors to the north and south. But Pioneer Courthouse Square epitomizes the veritable jewelry box of beautiful public spaces in this city, from Lawrence Halprin's fountain at Keller Auditorium to Peter Walker's Jamison Square Park. the Olmsted brothers' Park Blocks, and much more.

The "Pioneering The Square" exhibit at the CFA, put together by Portland Spaces editor Randy Gragg with an assist from researcher Audrey Alverson, will feature not only Will Martin's original model and drawings, but many of the plans that didn't make the final cut. Mayor Terry Shrunk, for example, proposed a two-block square in the 1960s. And then there were the other finalists. How differently might our living room have looked?

The exhibit officially opens tomorrow with a First Thursday early-evening reception from 5:30 to 8:30pm.

Confluence with freeway: Johnpaul Jones & Maya Lin's land bridge

Although I haven't yet had the good fortune to visit the new land bridge over State Route 14 in Vancouver, designed by Seattle architect Johnpaul Jones as part of the Maya Lin-overseen Confluence Project, my photographer friend Katy Cannatelli was there for the official opening on August 23 and took these photos.

The $12.25 million project is the second of seven Confluence Projects scattered across Washington and, to a much lesser extent, Oregon. The closest to Portland besides this are the Sandy River site just east of Troutdale and a site in Ridgefield, Washington that marks the confluence of the Willamette and Columbia rivers (10 miles away). Even so, it's obviously a treat to have Maya Lin and in this case Jones working on designs that commemorate the heritage of the river and of Native American cultures settled along it in the generations before Lewis & Clark.

In the case of the land bridge in Vancouver, Jones, who is of Cherokee and Choctaw Indian dissent and also in 1998 was chosen as the lead design consultant for the Smithsonian Museum of the American Indian, worked closely with numerous tribes to incoporporate their architectural and cultural heritage into the structure.

As you can see in Katy's images, many of the small details comprise the most interesting part of the bridge, such as stenciled cutouts based on Native American characters and symbols that cast wonderful little shadows.

Jones also had a difficult challenge with this bridge: to honor the heritage of indigenous tribal design without creating a caricature. It's also a little weird, though, at least in my mind, that a structure aspiring to be quasi-sacred given the Confluence inspiration and the metaphorical value of a bridge is ultimately spanning a highway full of commuting cars belching carbon monoxide. Wasn't there a body of water this bridge could have, well, bridged?

Even so, any nitpicking comes in the context of being glad to have the Confluence projects happening, and to have talents like Jones and especially Lin on the job.

Halprin "City Dance" series begins tonight with Gragg-Abbott discussion

Tonight at 6PM at Jimmy Mak’s jazz club as part of the continuing Bright Lights discussion series, Portland Spaces editor Randy Gragg will be discussing the legacy of the South Auditorium District with Portland State University urban studies professor Carl Abbott. South Auditorium represents the Portland Development Commission's first project(s) after its founding 50 years ago, in 1958.

But this isn’t just a talk of half-century-old urban renewal, or the mild wonders of Keller Auditorium. Gragg writes:

"A boisterous new child fed by huge federal grants and loans, its first project was to clear 84 acres of downtown to create an entirely new kind of city in the South Auditorium District. Out with the old: dozens of businesses and hundreds of low-income apartments filled with Portland's most diverse ethnic community, but deemed a "slum." In with the new: offices, apartment towers, and three landmark fountain plazas designed by renowned landscape architect Lawrence Halprin.

Many American cities tried similar projects; few did it as successfully as Portland. But how do the losses and gains of the PDC's first undertaking look a half-century later?"

Tonight’s discussion is the first event of "The City Dance of Lawrence and Anna Halprin," a weeklong celebration of Lawrence Halprin's plazas in South Auditorium and the pivotal collaboration with his wife, renowned choreographer Anna Halprin, that influenced the designs.

Tonight at the Northwest Film Center brings two films on Anna Halprin, Jacqueline Caux’s documentary “Out of Boundaries” and Andy Abrams’ "Returning Home". Also, this Friday at noon the City Club of Portland will host Charles Birnbaum, director of The Cultural Landscapes Foundation in Washington, DC, who will speak on Lawrence Halprin's landscapes in Portland and elsewhere and the growing national movement to recognize and preserve historical landscapes. 

This Friday from 4:30–6:30 p.m., starting at the Ira Keller Fountain at SW 3rd Avenue and Clay Street, there will be walking tours of Portland’s Halprin-designed plazas with Gragg and Anna Halprin biographer Janice Ross.

And this Sunday (Sept. 14) from 1-4PM comes “The City Dance of Lawrence and Anna Halprin”, again at the Keller Fountain. This will be a concert by Third Angle New Music Ensemble that combines “a celebration of Portland's most architecturally significant space, the radical music of the late 1960's minimalist movement and postmodern dance”.

Halprin grew up in New York and spent three of his teenage years in Palestine on a kibbutz. After studying plant sciences at Cornell as an undergrad, he moved on to learn design at Harvard under the legendary Walter Gropius, Marcel Brewer, and  landscape architect Christopher Tunnard. He then apprenticed under renowned landscape architect Thomas Church, collaborating on the seminal Dewey Donnell Garden in Sonoma County and helping to develop the contemporary California Style garden concept, Halprin opened his own office in 1949.

Halprin's work is acclaimed for attention to human scale and the social impact of his designs. He was the creative force behind the interactive, 'playable' civic fountains most common in the 1970s, most notably in Portland’s fountain outside the Keller.

Legendary as he is (the American Society of Landscape Architects gave him its first ASLA Design Medal for lifetime achievement), Halprin's work has fallen victim to neglect in some cities, and others argue his designs are now outdated. There's a whole lot of concrete in our own big Halprin fountain, for example. We probably wouldn't build it that way today. But that's also what makes the work more valuable as history. Besides, you can trust Randy and Carl Abbott to articulate Halprin's genius tonight.

Lango Hansen & Metro Unveil Three Design Options for Lone Fir Memorial

Local landscape architecture firm Lango Hansen, who also designed the Hotel Modera courtyard (with Holst Architecture) that I wrote about recently on this blog and in The Oregonian, has unveiled three design options in a Metro-sponsored effort to re-introduce part of Lone Fir Cemetery in Southeast Portland. The agency is seeking public comment on which design is best.

Some background: Several years ago, when the Multnomah Building was planned to be demolished, there was concern that this corner of the cemetery would be developed as a mixed use building, which many locals strongly opposed because it was believed that the land belonged to the cemetery and there were still remains on the site. Multnomah County and Metro conducted an archaeological investigation, and it proved true. Since then, the property has been put on the National Register of Historic Places, as is the rest of the cemetery, and Metro is leading the effort to create a new design for the site that will be a memorial for the Chinese workers believed to be buried there. There will also be a contemplative garden with interpretive elements reflecting the cemetery's history and cultural diversity.

Another historical aspect of the property is that there were several mental patients buried on the site. A Dr. Hawthorne, for whom Hawthorne Boulevard is named, saw to their burial when these patients' families washed their hands of responsibility (mental illness was often hidden away by polite society in these days).

The three Lango Hansen design options are largely about how much of a memorial exists. The firm has provided narrative for each of the three options, listed as follows:

"Option 1 illustrates a long rectangular lawn with a memorial similar to the historic cemetery trellis, located at the east end of the project area. In front of the trellis a small bubbling fountain is proposed on a stone paving pad. The trellis and lawn are separated from the Morrison Street sidewalk by a band low shrubs and perennials to mitigate traffic noise. On the north side of the lawn a serpentine decomposed granite path meanders through a band of low shrubs and perennials providing pedestrian connections between the project site and the rest of the cemetery. A contemplative stone seating circle is located along this path, surrounded by cherry trees, in the location of where the remains were found."

"At the pedestrian entry off of SE 20th and Morrison, a grouping of four raised planters with low stone walls, similar to the walls found in the cemetery, provide a place for seating and colorful perennial plantings. A gateway feature, similar in design to the trellis, is flanked by these planters. This gateway could have side panels containing interpretive information about the cemetery for the public."

"In Option 2 the trellis on the east side of the project area is expanded in length, and the memorial more explicitly acknowledges the Chinese workers as well as Dr. Hawthorne’s patients. The Chinese memorial contains elements similar to a traditional Chinese cemetery altar, such as stone placement with the Chinese inscription “You are with us” and a funerary burner for offerings. The funerary burner could be a metaphoric work of art rather than an actual burner. These elements are placed in front of the trellis structure, with a large pine planted behind them. A larger paving pad surrounding the Chinese memorial acknowledges by name Dr. Hawthorne’s patients that were buried in the area. At the north end of the trellis a small cemetery maintenance building is proposed, which could be visually mitigated with plantings."

"In this scheme the lawn is contained by an elliptical path and is raised at the west end by a low basalt wall that would seep water. This water feature is a focal point in a pedestrian plaza at the intersection of 20th and Morrison. The plaza also contains a grove of cherry trees with benches and interpretive kiosks. Low growing shrubs create a separation of the lawn area from the sidewalk at SE Morrison Street."

"Historically, the Chinese cemetery contained a path down the center, running east/west. Option 3’s scheme recalls that path, but puts a slight curve in it, connecting the pedestrian entry at SE 20th and Morrison to  two separate memorials at the east end of the project area. The path could illustrate a time line of the cemetery or give voice to the rich history of the cemetery, by the use of inscribed stones set in the lawn, crossing the path at intervals, and becoming the interpretive element. The memorial to the Chinese workers is located in the northeast corner of the property and contains a” stone mountain”, similar to those in classical Chinese gardens, potentially using stone from the Guangdong province where the Chinese workers were from. The paving around this memorial could be a stone mosaic, and the entire memorial is proposed to be surrounded by plants of Chinese origin. To the south of this memorial a stone paving circle, nestled within northwest native plantings is proposed with interpretive elements acknowledging Dr. Hawthorne’s patients."

"At the pedestrian entry at SE 20th and Morrison an entry sculpture is proposed as well as a low mound containing a grove of cherry trees which leads into the site. The mound is backed by low basalt rubble walls similar to those inside the cemetery. Two basalt columns with an interpretive panel form a gateway to the cemetery at what was the west edge of the Chinese cemetery."

This project has come about through a grass roots effort over the past 5 years by Friends of Lone Fir, Buckman Community Association, the Consolidated Chinese Benevolent Society, neighbors and interested local citizens.

On Metro's website, there is additional information about the options as well as the opportunity for public input. Personally, I prefer the option that provides separate Chinese and Dr. Hawthorne memorials, but I also like the pathway going through the middle of the space. You don't want this solemn cemetery becoming an athletic field, after all. Meanwhile, congrats to Lango Hansen on a fine set of options.

Jamison Square Reconsidered

When I wrote last week about Randy Gragg’s interview with Brad Cloepfil, the one issue that seemed controversial, or that readers really seemed to disagree with Brad on, was his position on Jamison Square Park in the Pearl District. “It’s a theme park,” Brad said of Jamison “It’s an urban artifice. You could have done something so much more elegant.” He told Randy that the Peter Walker design tried too hard to program a particular type of setting: one of children, families and dogs frolicking near the fountain. Cloepfil lives in the Pearl District near Jamison, but he said he completely avoids the park.

However, an overwhelming majority of people whom I’ve talked to and commented here seem to like this Peter Walker-designed landscape a lot. “I like Cloepfil but he is wide off the mark on Jamison Square,” one commenter said. “Jamison Square is an extremely succesful urban space. In my mind it is incredible how well it functions.”

Although the central attraction is a wide swath of stone blocks from which water flows before gathering in a small pool below and then draining, Jamison also has the ambiance of outdoor diners from Fenouil restaurant overlooking the park. There are also the wonderful Kenny Scharff “Tiki totems” on the west side of the block, and a boardwalk on the east side. The boardwalk also continues north toward and through Tanner Springs Park. It’s a multifaceted experience.

At times in the past I, like Brad, have avoided spending much time there because it’s a little louder environment than I prefer. I like parks with lots of places to sit contemplatively under a canopy of trees. Even so, it may be short-changing Jamison to say that can’t happen here. The trees have started to fill in and grow up on the park, and although it’s a slow process of course, I was really struck visiting Jamison last night at how there really is a marked transformation happening in this respect. Trees really make all the difference in any park.

What’s more, I think Jamison Square has to be considered as a companion to Tanner Springs. The latter is a much quieter space, and thus the two parks seem to work well together. If one heads to Jamison on a sunny afternoon and it’s resembling Romper Room with lots of water-born kid fun, one can go to Tanner and read that dog-eared copy of Proust or meditate over the finer points of, say, Mounds versus Almond Joy or Amanda Fritz against Jim Middaugh.

One thing that City of Portland chief urban design strategist Arun Jain (my guest at tonight's "Designs on Portland" discussion series) told me lately seems relevant to a Jamison debate as well: there's a big difference between people's feelings and emotions about design versus empirical evidence and fact. I think in the past I've been guilty of dismissing Jamison because it's not necessarily the kind of place I would ordinarily spend a lot of time. But I'm hugely sun-phobic (my Nordic skin burns in mere moments) and don't hang out in direct-light open spaces that much anyway, which makes my own ability to evaluate the design objectively somewhat skewed.

As we’ll soon reach the ten-year anniversary of Jamison following its 2000 opening, how do the rest of you use and/or evaluate the square? What do you like and dislike about it? And is one of the other commenters to my Cloepfil post that started this discussion right in saying that Jamison is not only successful, but overtaking Pioneer Courthouse Square as Portland’s living room? In the latter case, I’d say not. But Jamison may indeed be the city’s family room. Although if that's the case, I don't know what that makes Waterfront Park: the city's great room? Its den? Its front lawn?

Greenworks and Ankrom Moisan-Led Team Among Metro Integrating Habitats Competition Winners

Last month Metro held its Integrating Habitats competition, and although I’m late in writing about it, wanted to touch upon at least one of the winners.

The purpose of Integrating Habitats was to generate designs that integrate built and natural environments. According to metro, winners would “redefine the current language and standards of environmental sustainability by fostering balance between conservation and development, maximizing biodiversity and safeguarding water quality for this generation and those to come."

The jury included Stuttgart/Los Angeles architect Stefan Behnisch; University of Michigan landscape architecture professor Joan Nassauer; Tom Schueler, founder of the Center for Watershed Protection in Maryland; Metropolis magazine editor Susan Szenasy; Portland developer Jim Winkler; and David Yocca, director of the Conservation Design Forum in Elmhurst, Illinois.

In the commercial category, a collaborative group from Portland was the winner. Team members came from Greenworks, Ankrom Moisan Associated Architects, ESA Adolphson, SWCA Environmental Consultants, and Bruce Rodgers Design Illustration. The submittal, which drew from Metro’s 2040 Growth Concept and Portland’s Peak Oil Task Force 2007 Report, involved a lowland hardwood forest habitat interface with a big-box green home center, parking, and remnant wetlands.

"We were drawn to Category 2 because it is a type of project (big-box) that is not typically known for sustainability," Greenworks' Jason King told me. "It was mostly a parking problem. We also asked ourselves, "How will design and development change due to peak oil?  How can we design now to respond to the future variability? Our aim was a project that could be viable, one a developer would look at and say 'We could build this.'" 

King also, in his email to me, quoted the landscape urbanism theorist Charles Waldheim: "Landscape replaces architecture as the basic building block of contemporary urbanism... Landscape has become both the lens through which the contemporary city is represented and the medium through which it is constructed."

Among the plans are for unwanted yard and food wastes to be brought on site and transformed into compost. Stormwater collected and cleansed with technologies that replicate wetland processes and habitats. Economically, they explain, “our development model taps into Portland’s leading market for sustainable building practices and lifestyles, and fosters community by creating service- oriented building centers near regional and town centers to meet the challenges of post peak-oil conditions. Through daylighting, façade articulation and site responsive features, the architecture provides a contrasting experience that will attract nearby shoppers from adjacent big box developments for the engaging experience the site will offer them.”

To me this isn't a radical re-invention of the big-box store. It's really just about breaking down the bulk of the store, stopping the roof from being an eyesore and a heat island by landscaping the top and sloping one edge down. And then it's making the surface parking lot softer around the edges.

I wonder if an even greener solution, which for all I know the competition brief didn't allow, might be to put another store next to the big box where the surface parking lot would go, and have the two side-by-side stores share the cost of putting parking underground. You could still integrate nature in but get rid of that ugly surface car lot instead of window dressing it.

Having said that, I would love to pull up at this instead of the hideous, life-sucking environment of the Jantzen Beach Center Target store and its sea of asphalt I visited a couple weekends ago. There are empty buildings all over there, and to walk from Target to, say, Barnes & Noble or Old Navy next door, there's no place to go for a pedestrian except for over grass berms and along the asphalt right next to the cars. If they could clear out all the people and valuables first, I'd have no problem with them demolishing almost the entire Hayden Island shopping area and start over...with stuff like this (and connected by MAX).

You can read more about this winning commercial entry on the Greenworks site. Also, the winning entries for the competition were on display in the Bureau of Development Services at 1900 S.W. Fourth Avenue throughout April, and I believe they'll be shown somewhere else in May - more on that shortly.