Portland Architecture

Highlights from the Oregon Sustainability Center feasibility study [updated]

Yesterday the consortium of public and private entities working on the proposed Oregon Sustainability Center released a draft executive summary and feasibility study.

What does that mean? Best I can tell, it's an extensive research and design process for the building, but does not guarantee that the building will be built. That's to be determined in Phase 2. This feasibility study is Phase 1.

The building was designed by GBD Architects and SERA Architects, with development from Gerding Edlen. Additional team members have included Interface Engineering, Glumac, PAE Consulting Engineers, and Hoffman Construction, with advisors from all three major universities (UO, OSU, PSU), Earth Advantage, the Energy Trust of Oregon, and Guy Battle of London-Based Mattle McCarthy Engineers.

Pictured above is a rendering of the Sustainability Center as it might look once constructed. It would be unfair to judge a building so innovative and so green on its exterior aesthetics. At the same time, it is written in the summary, "The Living Building Challenge is unique, among programs that encourage and evaluate accomplishments in sustainable design, in that it mandates beauty as well as aggressive goals for energy, water and waste systems." It certainly seems like the team has met the aggressive goals. Have they met the beauty mandate? That's a harder goal because it's of course in the eye of the beholder. Personally, I am not crazy about the look of the roof. But of course the design could continue to evolve.

Here is a portion of the text from the 14-page Sustainability Center draft executive summary that explains the process:

The project’s mission is to create a world-class center of excellence in sustainability that celebrates and nurtures the values and strengths of Oregon’s leadership in climate change, land use planning, smart growth, green building, environmental stewardship, civic engagement and social justice.

Predominantly an office building, the Center’s top floors will house a variety of non-profit, government, academic and business tenants who are working to promote sustainability. The public spaces on the first and second floor will serve as exhibit space, including interactive displays and signage that tell the story of the region’s innovations in sustainable technologies, policies and practices. A resource dashboard will let onlookers review the building’s energy and water use in real time. The lecture halls, classrooms and conference rooms on the second floor will support higher education, as well as networking for public, private and academic purposes. This area will also include a visualization lab, which will bring together researchers and community groups to solve regional issues in an experiential way. An active retail environment will anchor the first floor of the building.

The current headcount for the building includes approximately 725 weekday office users and an estimated 1,400 students and faculty, who will utilize the classrooms and conference center each day. Visitors attending events and touring the facility could range from the dozens to the hundreds, depending on the building’s daily schedule.

At the core of the project is a 220,000+ square foot urban, mixed-use high-rise located on the eastern edge of the Portland State University campus, between SW 4th and 5th Avenues and between Harrison and Montgomery Streets. The Center is also the proposed anchor for Portland’s first Eco-District, a neighborhood development strategy that combines high performance buildings with city infrastructure, to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, energy use and water use.

The building’s size is strongly influenced by the site’s capacity to generate renewable energy. The 13-story structure is predominately concrete and glass and includes one level below grade. The second floor classroom and conference center is accessible from inside the tower, as well as from a monumental exterior stair, which connects this floor to the ground floor plaza. The tower is crowned with a large structure that supports its primary solar array. Artfully shaped and strategically oriented, this distinctive structure will establish a strong presence on Portland’s skyline.

The 33,500 square foot site (currently a surface parking lot) is located on the south end of downtown Portland, on the eastern edge of the PSU campus. It is a nexus for public transit with bus, streetcar and light rail systems all immediately accessible either on-site or on surrounding streets. The design anticipates a permanent streetcar alignment that will diagonally bisect the site.

The front door to the Center will be SW Montgomery Street. Efforts are underway to transform eight blocks of Montgomery into a green street, which will celebrate creative stormwater reuse. Coupled with its display of sustainable site features, the Center’s urban design and integration with the district’s green street will create a unique and extraordinary place for individual reflection, social interaction and public events.

The current site is zoned RX (a classification for residential uses) that allows only limited commercial uses. The site also has a height restriction that limits new buildings to a maximum of 125 feet. As a result, a legislative zone change will be required, as part of the entitlement process, in order to allow the development to proceed as currently conceived. A strategy for enacting the zone change has been developed with guidance from the Bureau of Planning and Sustainability.

The Living Building Challenge is unique, among programs that encourage and evaluate accomplishments in sustainable design, in that it mandates beauty as well as aggressive goals for energy, water and waste systems. The Center has been designed in this spirit, integrating and often expressing the technical features that enable the building to perform to the highest green building standards.

UPDATE, 6/27: I'd like to respond to those who have said it was a "copout" of me to not criticize the building's look.

What I meant was that I wanted to judge the building fairly and holistically. It's very very innovative when it comes to performance and sustainability. That is worth our praise.

At the same time, I do agree with the more negative commenters that the rendering makes this look like an ugly work of corporate architecture. I'd also heard these same whisperings of concern from the city in recent weeks, that the project was turning into an Edsel.

We should also keep in mind, however, that the rendering above is just that. It's one rendering. This is not the final design, nor is it a complete look at the building.

The team putting this building together is absolutely first rate when it comes to green credentials and track record. That should not be underestimated. These people are world leaders in their field. That's why they were selected.

At the same time, I'm not sure beautiful buildings are the strong suit of GBD, SERA and Gerding Edlen. They all design handsome enough architecture, I suppose. But it's not the focus. The Oregon Sustainability Center figures to have that same set of strengths and weaknesses.

Green building is unquestionably the dominant movement in contemporary architecture today. But unlike modernism or postmodernism, it's not an aesthetic movement. It's not to say there can't be beautiful green buildings, but the guts are more the focus than they used to be. That's not a bad thing at all. Architecture absolutely has to transform in order to meet the future's energy needs. Being great green architects and being the conjurers of aesthetic beauty do not always go hand in hand.

But, having said that, it would not have been impossible to create a net-zero energy building with more than net-zero looks.

A diamond in the Pearl: visiting the 937 Condominiums

Last fall the 937 Condominiums arrived just as the housing boom that made the project possible was coming to a crashing end. The building, designed by Holst Architecture and Ankrom Moisan, opened its doors in October, a time when most other condo projects coming on line were frantically switching to rental apartments. 

While I can't tell you how sales have fared, the building itself represents one of the best highrise condo designs of this era. In fact, with apologies to other successful recent condos like BOORA Architects' The Metropolitan, THA Architecture's Atwater Place and GBD Architects' The Casey, I think 937 may be the very best.

On the outside, the building has a random window pattern resembling natural fractal patterns set against cream-colored brick. The building was designed from the outside in to maintain the integrity and bold look of the facade, so each unit has a slightly different window configuration. The randomness of the exterior glass pattern is offset by subtle symmetry, with each window spaced both vertically and horizontally from each other in the same dimensions. The brick is an attractive touch, recalling the early 20th Century architecture of downtown Portland such as the Meier & Frank building or the Jackson Tower, while the crisp clean look of the exterior and its tall, slim form is faintly comparable to modernist classics like Mies van der Rohe's Lake Shore Drive apartments in Chicago.

If we're talking about windows and 937, though, the real story may be inside. Stepping into model units of various sizes and prices throughout the building, I was struck by just how much natural light permeates each space. I've been in numerous LEED Gold and Platinum-rated buildings, including condos (The Casey was America's first Platinum condo), and I'm quite sure I've never experienced so much natural daylight as in 937. Usually to meet energy code strictures, buildings with lots of glass have to apply coatings to filter out excess sunlight that can make the glass seem dark, inside and out. Not so here. It seems clear as can be.

The bountiful daylight at 937 comes not just from windows and lots of them, but also from the form itself. This is a thinner, taller building than most all of the squatty condos in the Pearl. Looking from 937 across Glisan Street at the Elizabeth Condos, for example, one sees asquatty, dark building where units offer light on only one side, or two at best.  The units I visited in 937 all had glass on at least two sides of each unit, and often times three.

This is the second design-development collaboration between Holst Architecture and developers Patrick Kessi and Geoff Wenker, who previously worked together on the Thurman Street Lofts. It's also a partnership between Holst and Ankrom Moisan. You could perhaps say Holst did the outside and Anrom the inside, but there seems to have been more overlap than that. Considering that the inside units and outside facade work in such wonderful harmony, it's got to be a testament to how these teams worked together.

Hopefully the success of this collaboration will spur more condo developers in the future (if there are any) to employ such partnerships between studio-sized firms with the most acute design acumen and larger service firms with the ability to deliver the less sexy but very necessary aspects of a major building project.

At the same time, such success is never a given. On the Eliot Condominiums downtown, for example, an Ankrom Moisan/Zimmer Gunsul Frasca collaboration yielded a very attractive outside and some less successful interiors, with cheesy Caesar's Palace-esque chipped marble decorations yucking up an otherwise attractive contemporary look. At 937, though, everything is in harmony. There aren't crass marble countertops trying too hard too look fancy, just refined dignified interior design with a simple natural wood palette.

And while the age of luxury and booming economics may be over, some lucky affluent tenant who buys the 16th Floor penthouse at 937 will have perhaps the only condominium with its own outdoor hot tub. In this unit, a triple-wide glass door slides open to give the penthouse an opening out onto its balcony more width than a garage door. Even in a hot day such as when I visited, the cool air just pours through the space.

Although 937 doesn't wear its green credentials on its sleeve like some projects, the building is slated to earn a Platinum LEED designation.

While this is a joint design by Holst and Ankrom Moisan, 937 really ought to help elevate Holst in that it represents probably the biggest-scale work the firm has ever done. When you combine 937 with the Ziba Design headquarters finishing construction a few blocks away in the Pearl, suddenly Holst Architecture has reached a new size and scope of architecture projects in Portland. Although the firm has still designed little to nothing outside of Portland, 937 and Ziba ought to represent a kind of new beginning for John Holmes and Jeff Stuhr's firm. Could Holst become the next Brad Cloepfil, the next architects from Portland to gain a national or international following?

Two units from 937 (including the jacuzzi-stocked penthouse) will be included in the Street of Dreams home tour this August, along with The Encore (by BOORA), the Waterfront Pearl (by Vancouver's Soren Rassmussen and Portland's MCA Architects) and the Pearl Condominiums at Block 90 (by Vallaster & Corl). So you are encouraged to take a look in a few weeks when the opportunity comes. I haven't been on the Street of Dreams tour since I was a kid dragged by mom, but with the tour coming to the Pearl District, this annual symbol of all that's wrong with home building just mined, in 937, everything that is right.

Rising at Daybreak

Daybreak is a new, 30-unit cohousing community set to opens this fall near Portland's Overlook neighborhood. Residents will live in compact flats and townhouses and share the use of many community amenities like a kids' playroom and a commercial kitchen and dining room for group meals. The buildings will be two, three and four stories, all connected with exterior walkways.

The Daybreak development is actively seeking members and will hold a public tour at the Daybreak site, at 2525 North Killingsworth Street, on Saturday, June 6 from 1–4PM. Other socials and tours will be held throughout the summer including on-site tours on July 5 and August 2.

The project was designed through a collaborative process involving those residents who pursued the initial development, accomplished with the help of Seattle firm schemata Workshop as well as Portland landscape architects Lando & Associates. (I promise I won't make any Lando Calrissian jokes this time.)

A team of residents, the Daybreak website explains, “makes the design decisions or determines how to bring design decisions to the rest of the community. Our primary development goal is to execute our community vision and represent our values where appropriate in our physical space. We are striving to create a physical environment that enhances our experience of community. We wish to live in a place that values multi-generational living, namely, being kid and aging-in-place friendly. We wish to incorporate sustainable materials and systems to the extent our budget allows. We are working to integrate with and welcome our neighbors to our community through our design."

A guiding principle, say those envisioning Daybreak, is “quality over image. We are designing for high quality infrastructure and systems with insulation, moisture protection, radiant floors, and other features. The individual units are designed to be highly standardized and simple to reduce cost and provide for easy customization later.”

Re-imagined ranch: Architecture W's Stump House

The April issue of Dwell magazine has an article about the Stump House in Portland's Alberta Street area, designed by local firm Architecture W.

I wrote the article (photos here, and in the article, are by John Clark), and it's actually the second time I've covered the firm's work for the magazine. The other project (a small apartment building) was in Japan, so this house is among the first projects in Portland to bring Architecture W some attention. It's a small firm, with one partner - Brian White - working in Portland while a small office headed by his partner - Michel Weenick - is headquartered in Nagoya, Japan. But these guys are talented.

The Stump House, renovated and expanded from a run-down 1940s ranch home, was developed by a progressive local builder, Darryl Erlandson, who sought to make it as green as possible. Insulation is made from recycled blue jeans. The house utilizes a thermal solar heating system that provides hot water and warms the radiant floor, using a set of roof-mounted tubes rather than the more common flat panels. “Compared to photovoltaic panels, solar thermal achieves around 70 percent efficiency,” Erlandson told me in the article. “It’s not giving you electricity, but you get more bang 
for your buck because it’s already 
what you want it to be: heat. If you generate electricity and turn it back  into heat, there’s some loss there in 
the transition.”

White and Erlandson also decided to remove two fireplaces in the house, so to create a similar sense of a hearth they replaced them with a light well extending from a rooftop skylight through 
the second floor down to the ground. 
The well is clad in handmade ceramic 
tiles that make it resemble a chimney. Interior walls were removed between the kitchen, living room and dining area to further distribute the natural light. Most windows and public areas are also located on the north side of the home for optimal diffuse daylight. On the roof is the thermal solar heating system, as well as a green roof with plants and, on the lower portion of the roof, a vegetable garden and small seating area.

Architecture W doesn't just design houses and small residential projects, although I also once wrote a piece on White's own home, very similar in concept to the Stump House, for Western Interiors magazine. A year or two ago, the firm was a finalist for a major baseball stadium in Japan. But White and Weenick certainly have a flair for transforming homes with sensitivity, efficiency and flair.

Between workforce and luxury: visiting THA & GBD's Cyan

Yesterday I had the good fortune of being taken on a tour of the soon-to-be-completed Cyan apartments building downtown with architect Thomas Hacker of THA Architecture. Hacker's office collaborated with GBD Architects on the project developed by Gerding Edlen. The Cyan is slated to earn a Gold LEED rating from the US Green Building Council.

The project, which has smaller units than most new condos or apartments, is meant to cater to those seeking urban living at a more affordable price point. Units are about 400 to 600 square feet (mostly studios, 1-bedrooms and 2-bedrooms). You can rent a single-bedroom unit for about $1300. It's not ultra cheap, but it's a lot cheaper than you could get into most new high-density residential projects in the Pearl District or downtown.

The Cyan is a fairly blocky slab building, standing 16 stories and much of a city block. It's a more affordable way to build, but Hacker's office has given the project a distinctive look with its west-facing facade that overlooks Fourth Avenue. Portions of the facade angle inward to give the building the look of weaving, or at least the look of being a sum of many smaller pieces rather than just one big block. The building might look like a quintessentially fat stumpy Portland building were it not for this striking facade. Hacker also was explicit in giving Gerding Edlen credit for not eliminating this design from the final plans. The weave look had to be removed from the back side of the building for cost reasons, but the west facade was able to retain its signature look.

On its back, east-facing side the Cyan includes a courtyard that connects with the adjacent Pettygrove Park, an under-utilized downtown greenspace with tall trees and a mellow ambiance.

People have complained for years that enclaves like the Pearl District have catered too much to affluent buyers willing to fork over millions for condominiums. The Cyan was originally meant to be a condo too, and not a rental apartment project (the economy changed that), but regardless of whether people are buying or leasing these units, Gerding Edlen clearly got the message that Portland needs more affordable urban living options. Their staff traveled to Europe to research the kinds of housing there, and they brought back an admirable sense of wanting to replicate that kind of mid-level price point high-density living.

It's also great to see Gerding Edlen collaborating with Thomas Hacker and THA Architecture again. The partnership with GBD is a winning one too, because it brings first-rate expertise on sustainable integrated design. But Hacker, like only a few other architects in the city, has a brilliant gift for space, proportion and materials. Hacker brings poetry to GBD's big energy use reductions and other green achievements.

The photos I've taken here are of a building still in its finishing stages of construction, including chain-link fences out front. But I think one gets an idea of what the Cyan will be and how it will fit in the neighborhood -- which is quite nicely.

The Cyan also has some incredible views: of the downtown skyline on the west side (with Mt. St. Helens and the St. Johns' Bridge even visible, and to the east a view the riverfront (with Mt. Hood). I took a couple extra shots looking out the windows.

Habitat for Humanity takes the LEED with young designers' help

Although the open house to celebrate Habitat for Humanity’s first LEED-Platinum rated project was held a month ago, it’s not to late to applaud the Webster Street project.

Consisting of two duplexes (a 900 square foot two-bedroom and a 1200 square foot four-bedroom), the Webster projects are 40 percent more efficient than code requires. They are the first LEED-rated Habitat homes of any kind in Oregon, let alone Platinum-level, and two of only a handful nationwide.

The homes were built with a slough of volunteers and professionals lending their time, money and efforts: Walsh Construction, Cascadia Green Building Council, and Bank of America, among others.

But particular credit goes to the two young designers involved: Scott Mooney and David Posada.

Mooney works at THA Architecture and Posada at GBD Architects, but they became friends while attending the University of Oregon’s masters degree program for architecture (they graduated in 2005).

The homes grew out of a design competition for young architects sponsored by the Cascadia Region Green Building Council in 2007 to design a LEED-certified duplex on a lot owned by Habitat for Humanity Portland/Metro East.

“Over the course of the last 18 months, David and I have been volunteering our time on nights and weekends (independent, but with the full moral and resource support, of our respective firms) to adapt our concept into something more feasible and affordable that would allow Habitat to fully realize this unique project,” Mooney told me recently.

Habitat for Humanity already builds relatively efficient homes with Energy Star appliances and Earth Advantage sustainability methods. But the Webster Street projectm even with donated goods and services, was more expensive and required greater technical expertise and collaboration.

Stepping up, Bank of America gave $75,000 to help pay for materials, and their employees regularly volunteered to work on the construction. Just as importantly, Walsh Construction provided a pro-bono site supervisor (not usually a presence on simple Habitat homes) and recruited skilled construction-industry volunteers.

The Webster duplexes are built with metal roofs and structural insulated panels, which drastically reduce heat gain and loss through the building. Two cisterns capture rainwater for irrigation in the summer. Stone for the shared courtyard came from the driveway of the house that once stood on the site. The utility room houses a 50-gallon water heater that is so efficient it warms the house through a floor heating system while providing hot water for other uses. The homes have concrete floors with radiant heat. Countertops in the smaller home are Paperstone, richly colored and made of 100 percent post-consumer recycled paper in Hoquiam, Washington.

It’s enticing to think of a future in which Habitat for Humanity builds all of its homes to LEED specifications (certified or not) and involves real architects. Were we to pair great design and construction with the hugely beneficial efforts of Habitat, our community could help revolutionize what is already a very laudable nonprofit.

In the meantime, lets give our thanks and praise to the many professional and amateur volunteers making this project happen, but especially to Mooney and Posada for both a a transcendent design and effort.

Reed all about it: Hennebery Eddy's campus Language House

Earlier this week, on one of those surprisingly warm afternoons with temperatures pushing 80, I visited the new Spanish Language House at Reed College, designed by Hennebery Eddy Architects.

The residence hall is designed to complement the historic Woodstock Language House complex originally designed as faculty housing by legendary Portland architect A.E. Doyle in the 1920s.

Hennebery Eddy’s new building is larger than the Doyle language houses (just under 9,500 square feet with three stories), but it fits in nicely. Like the other language houses, it includes dormitories (for 16 students in this case), a kitchen/dining room, and living room-like public gathering spaces. It’s a small little environment within the campus where those studying a particular language can live together; a professor also lives in each of the language houses—like a frat house without the alcohol binging and health code violations.

On the ground floor, the $2.75 million building has large storefront glass windows, giving the Language House a slight but appropriate sense of being something other than an ordinary house. After all, it’s a hybrid residential-institutional campus building. In a similar way, the style includes several aspects of traditional pitched-roof residential style, yet the design never at all feels like a caricature of history. “Don’t design a cartoon,” Hennebery’s Alan Osbourne told me was their guiding principle in this regard.

I was also impressed by the materials here. There were oak floors throughout public areas, as well as paneling and doors with a natural wood look. Sure beat the crumbling 16-story building that served as my dorm. Like where I resided while matriculating, though, the Reed Language House is naturally ventilated, making it a very efficient building to cool and allowing a simple radiant heating system.

One of my favorite things about the design was how the architects carved usable spaces into what otherwise would be unused, pass-through areas. At windows throughout the upper hallways, and even some of the stairways, there are built-in seats where people can study or and hang out.

There is also a new central outdoor plaza connecting the new Spanish language house with the other buildings in the language complex. I saw a barbecue already set up there.

General Contractor for the project was Reimers & Jolivette, structural engineering was performed by  James G. Pierson, mechanical engineering from Hunter-Davisson, and Mayer/Reed was the landscape architect.

Hennebery Eddy has somewhat quietly won a handful of design awards over the years for projects like the Loyola Jesuit Center, and co-founding principal Tim Eddy has been active as a member of the city’s Design Commission.

A green lodge: Emerick Architects builds Portland's first stand-alone LEED Gold house

Recently I visited a new house by Emerick Architects that was designed for the firm's husband and wife principals, Brian and Melody Emerick. The Northwood Residence, as it's called, is slated for this year's was part of last year's Street of Eames modern homes tour and is, as part of a US Green Building Council pilot program, one of the first single-family home in the nation to achieve Gold LEED status.

The house, located on a one-acre parcel in the West Hills, is at the end of a windy road on a site other builders hesitated to build on for several years. A large McMansion, you see, would have had difficulty fitting here. Yet the Emericks' home feels substantial even on a comparatively smaller floorplate. And making this site work when others walked away allowed the Emericks to take advantage of a spectacular view. The property abuts 300 acres of forest Forest Park and Terwilliger Parkway and looks through the trees at a panoramic view to the east.

From outside, the house looks like a ski lodge, reminiscent of regional landmarks like Timberline Lodge. The exterior is a combination of naturally pigmented cement plaster and natural wood siding, topped by a zinc alloy roof, all of which will be desirably durable. The architects sought to showcase an alternative to the look of gyp board.

The house's mass is also broken up by making the garage a separate structure connected by an elegant covered walkway. It also slopes down the site in a way that conforms subtly to the topography. There is also an onsite stormwater treatment system.

Inside, the lodge-like feel continues with Douglas fir windows, doors and ceilings, Oregon white oak flooring, and furniture made from Red Alder by local craftspeople.  No matter where you are in the house, there is natural light pouring through. That not only eliminates the need for electric lighting, but allows the Emericks (including their two daughters) to look out at the incredible wooded view. And all the small details of material, spacing and craftsmanship feel extra sound: this is an exceptionally well built house.

Overall, both inside and out, I was impressed by how the Northwood Residence has the feel and style of traditional architecture and interiors, yet never feels the slightest bit trite or faux. The home is a modern interpretation of traditional forms, materials and spaces, yet it's crucially important that the architects achieved the right balance. Personally, I'm extremely sensitive to the appearance of faux-traditionalism or neo-historicism, and yet I loved the job the Emericks and their colleagues did here.

The home was constructed using 100 percent wind power, and 80 percent of construction waste was recycled. The design also boats minimal site disturbance; the Emericks preserved a centuries old maple tree. And the exceptionally solid building envelope, featuring 15 percent more insulation than code stipulates, in addition to extensive use of concrete, means the home will hold its thermal mass very well, keeping it cool in the summer and warm in the winter - even though the house was also built with 15 percent fewer framing materials to save cost.

Emerick Architects previously oversaw designs for the Ford Building renovation in Southeast Portland, and the firm also designed an acclaimed restoration of the Porter Building in the Pearl District and Grand Central Baking's headquarters in North Portland. 

I also enjoyed the vibe when I visited the firm's downtown Portland offices. All the employees seemed to be sitting on exercise balls instead of chairs at their desks, and a jovial B-52s album was playing in the background. Talk about a "Love Shack". Keep up the good work, gang!

Skylab moving forward with Weave

For today's Oregonian I wrote about Skylab Architecture's design and co-development of the Weave Building, and how the project is tentatively poised to move forward despite the economy.

The Weave is a little different from most commercial office projects. Rather than seeking any large anchor tenant, this is a smaller boutique project for creative companies looking at their home as an expression of what they do. As Jeff Borlaug, vice president of Norris Beggs & Simpson brokerage said in the article, "they may attract different types of users than for traditional office space." Tenants looking for more traditional office space, large companies seeking a wide floorplate to put their company (instead of taking up multiple floors), may look elsewhere or, as Borlaug said, to renovated their existing spaces instead of moving to new ones.

Certainly the Weave is not the only office space under construction. However, the other ones in town seem to have begun during more hopeful economic times or are more traditional Class-A office buildings. If the Weave does get built, though, it will be competing not only with big spaces like First & Main (designed by GBD Architects) near the Hawthorne Bridge head downtown, but also smaller but bold designs like bSide-6 (designed by Works Partnership).

I also find the Weave interesting because of its context. It would also address the southern edge of West Burnside, which has lagged behind the real estate across the street such as the Brewery Blocks and Powell's Books. The Weave, along with the under construction and much larger 12th & Washington project (developed by Gerding Edlen and designed by Zimmer Gunsul Frasca) could act as a beachhead of sorts in bringing the success of the Pearl District across Burnside. I also enjoy the mix of contemporary and historic architecture the Weave adds to. It would be located on a small, 5,000 square foot swatch of land between two historic buildings occupied by McMenamins outlets: the Crystal Ballroom and Ringler's Annex.

As often happens with stories and interviews, the quotes from architect Jeff Kovel represent a small portion of our talk. Here are some additional comments from Kovel about Skylab, the Weave and the economy as well as two more renderings of the project:

"I wouldn’t sit here and say we’re not feeling the effects of the economy…but it becomes a question of what you do with it. Our model is good in that we’re small and we’re diverse in terms of projects. Single-family residential work is very quiet, but other types of corporate work are doing well. We’re looking to actually change. We’re working on a Skylab prefabricated system and whole project delivery, like design and construction. Those are two ways we’re trying to address the market."

"You can make a lot of rationalizations for things when you don’t have the work. On one hand Skylab stayed small and I can say it was purposeful. But it was also just a matter of responding to the opportunities we had. If every project were like the weave building it would be different. For larger firms doing larger scale you need expertise in house to be able to complete the required scope. But that said, we’re able to execute something like the Weave Building with a smaller firm. I think that scale tips more on universities, hospitals."

"We spent a lot of time designing this project from the ground up in a really holistic way. We see the weave concept as not being just architectural but a concept with urban implications and also networking implications for the businesses within the building. We look at the weave as tying together the pearl and the west end, the interface between tenants and creating a stronger cohesive group than the independent parts. And then the building itself is a real integrated form consisting of different parts.

"Before we knew it was going to be office space over retail, we set out to make a building that stretched our understanding of the typical developer-driven arch approach, which I’d describe more as a decorated box than an integrated sculptural form. So in setting out to design this building, I was really interested in making the form represent the dynamic requirements of the function. Things like balconies and shading, view corridors: all those things are integrated into a single design solution."

"The sculptural pattern allows opportunities for those things to be resolved without it feeling like appendages. Part of that is in response to…people generally think that architecture needs to come at a higher cost. I think that if you are intelligent about how you mobilize all the varying components that you can create design interest through those relationships, not necessarily through expensive finishes or detailing. Part of this was about expressing the rawness of the constructed elements and using them to create the design interest. Part of what’s been successful is we’ve been able to use more off the shelf components than the way it appears. That’s been a big way to control cost, by employing typical systems in a not unusual manner."

11xDesign slideshow

The 11xDesign homes tour seemed to be a smashing success. When I visited Atelier Waechter's Z-Haus a little after noon (two hours into a seven-hour tour window), a few hundred people had already stopped by.

The same was true at Path Architecture's Park Box (pictured at left) and the other residences I visited, like SEED Architecture's SIPs residence and William Kaven's North House (pictured below with architect Daniel Kaven). 

People didn't even seem to mind that a good portion of the houses on the tour were still under construction. At the North House, I watched scores of people climb a flimsy ladder to see the second floor.

I'd like to apologize to those houses I didn't make it to, such as Web Wilson's Tabor Residence and Design Department's Tanzamook. It's hard to visit 11 residences in one day, you know? (Especially when you're working all weekend with writing deadlines.) But hopefully all stops on the tour experienced the same good crowds.

Meanwhile, Dwell magazine is running this slideshow of photos I took on Saturday's tour. Congratulations to all the firms involved.

And as always if you're an architect or designer with a project you'd like to show off, Portland Architecture is always looking for more to showcase, regardless of firm size or reputation. Please feel free to email me (brianlibby@hotmail.com) for more details.

A big condo designer changing course: Ankrom wins Vestas HQ commission

During the condo building boom of the last several years, no other Portland firm has capitalized more than Ankrom Moisan. Particularly in the Pearl District as well as in South Waterfront and in several other west coast cities, Ankrom has designed and seen built a host of multifamily housing projects.

But now, in what may be indicative of the changing climate - not just economic ups and downs but where the focus lies in architectural commissions - the firm has secured the commission to design a new American headquarters for Danish wind-turbine manufacturer Vestas. (This story was, I believe, first reported in the Daily Journal of Commerce.) This couldn't come at a better time. An article in The Economist today noted that the United States has just inched ahead of Germany to become the world's top wind-energy producer.

Provided everything goes according to plan with design review and other factors, the building is scheduled to break ground at the end of this year and open in 2011 and will house between 850 and 1,000 employees. Phase one will include 400,000 square feet of space, with an additional 200,000 square feet to come in a second phase. That kind of size means we're talking about a fairly substantial office building, or two. A site has not yet been chosen, but according to Kip Richardson of Ankrom Moisan, it's likely to be somewhere in the central city. That could mean downtown, South Waterfront, the Lloyd District, or the Pearl District.

Along with Ankrom Moisan, Vestas reportedly also interviewed Zimmer Gunsul Frasca and GBD Architects. As you'd expect from a Danish wind turbine manufacturer, Vestas expects to build a LEED Platinum-rated headquarters. GBD and ZGF might have slightly stronger green credentials, but Ankrom has also quietly beefed up its sustainability in recent years. These are all what you might call 'service firms' if using the old service firm/design firm stereotype, but all three have strong designers on board, whether it's Michael Great at Ankrom, Gene Sandoval and Braulio Baptista at ZGF, or Kyle Anderson at GBD.

I spoke briefly with Kip Richardson of Ankrom about how the Vestas commission is not only good for Ankrom, but may represent a changing climate. Ankrom has laid off numerous employees recently, like its peers.

"It’s not a secret that all the firms in town have been hit," Richardson said. "We’re down to a couple hundred from a high of 300.  A lot of our work was in housing, and a lot of that’s what drove our growth over the last 3-4 years. But it’s not just the firms doing housing that have been hit. Firms doing retail are hit hard too. Even firms doing public projects are affected. But once the government starts pumping money into the system, I think things will improve."

Asked about what the future holds for condos and higher-end multifamily housing, Richardson said he sees affordable housing as a growth area for the future. Ankrom is known for its more luxurious condos, but they've also done nearly 30 affordable housing jobs.

Vestas recently moved into a new R&D center in Denmark designed by Danish firm Arkitema, pictured at left and above. Might that project provide clues to the direction an Ankrom-designed headquarters in Portland might take?

Meanwhile, hopefully this won't be the last green-industry corporate headquarters to be built in Portland in the years ahead.

"Builderly modern": visiting the 1310 Condominiums

Last October the little-known 1310 Condominiums by Brett Crawford and Dana Ing Crawford won the Honor Award at this year’s AIA/Portland design awards. The Honor is the top prize, one of two given out along with Allied Works’ Booker T. Washington High School in Dallas. The 1310 project, which has five units total (four with one bedroom apiece at 590 square feet and one two-bedroom unit at 930 square feet), also won the AIA’s Sustainability Award. (AIA/Portland is also a sponsor of this site.)

Not long after the awards, I made the short walk across Hawthorne Boulevard to have a look, and have since been back several times.

On the first visit, Brett Crawford was there to meet me. Although I’ve never heard his name bandied about much, he has a stellar resume that includes significant time at Thomas Hacker Architects (now THA Architecture), Opsis Architecture and Works Partnership: all very much upper-echelon local firms in terms of design talent.

Crawford used the phrase “builderly modern” to describe what he and wife Dana were going for. They were looking for “a box,’ a simple rectangular building that they could redesign and convert into condos, acting as architect, developer and even general contractor. They found it in a circa-1969 condo building on SE 14th Avenue just north of Hawthorne.

The most notable thing about the renovated project is the rain-screen and sun screens covering the façade. If you were photographing 1310, the money shot would definitely be the front, where there is a compellingly detailed array of sun screens and stairs to access the different units. It’s almost like fire escape as working sculpture.

That said, before and even immediately after first seeing 1310, it initially seemed possible in my mind that, while no doubt an impressive project in its aesthetics, its do-it-yourself spirit of architect as developer, and its admirably sustainable qualities, I had the nagging sensation of skepticism over 1310 winning the very top prize. Was it really better than any other project built in the city in 2008? Even Crawford was shocked when 1310 won. "You could have knocked me over with a feather," he told the Daily Journal of Commerce shortly after winning the Honor Award.

Indeed, there is nothing outright dazzling about this urban infill project, a conversion of an old apartment building already on that site. Compared to Holst Architecture’s Clinton Condominiums a half-mile to the south on Division and 26^th, for example, with sumptuous mahogany and glass contrasting with rough COR-TEN steel, there is nothing quite so jewel-like about Brett Crawford’s project.

Yet the 1310 Condos have grown on me over time. I’m captivated by the project’s elegant simplicity, the completeness with which the Crawfords oversaw every aspect of the project from initial concept to the final escrow stage of a sale.

On his Portland Modern website, Bob Zaikoski wrote of 1310, “The completed building has an elegance resulting from its' geometry and form and a richness resulting from some very skilled layering and materials choices. The detailing and execution of the rain screen skin and also the way the stairs and the sun screen are constructed speak of an attention and pride in detail seldom found in most of the built environment.” (Portland Modern is also a sponsor of this website.)

The AIA awards jury, which gave 1310 its Honor Award, wrote, "The project clearly demonstrates the value of architecture as a transformative process. The building is strong, but also humble in its character."

The difference between 1310 and a more obviously aesthetically dazzling work of architecture reminds me of the change in scale that British sculptor Rachel Whiteread has taken with her show at the Portland Art Museum that I reviewed for last week's Oregonian. In the past, Whiteread won Britain’s coveted Turner Prize and achieved acclaim for her room-sized or even building-sized sculptures, in which Whiteread created plaster casts out of entire architectural spaces – literally giving physical form to the negative space inside buildings. Her new show at PAM is far less grand in scale, instead consisting of plaster casts made of everyday objects like poster tubes and packaging Styrofoam. As curator Bruce Guenther described to me, Whiteread’s new work boasts a hand-made quality that the grander earlier works lack, even if their scale is much less impressive.

That’s the way I feel about 1310. What’s special about this project, I think, is that it feels like a kind of hand-made architecture. Obviously the Crawfords didn’t hammer every nail and build 1310 entirely themselves. But acting as architects, developers and general contractors, they had a more intimate level of interaction with their building than most architects experience. This is not to say exceptional architecture can’t come out of big teams of collaborators, or that large-scale buildings are inherently boring. Even so, the subtlety and do-it-yourself quality of the 1310 Condominiums are part of what give the project its attractiveness.

Ultimately awards can’t be taken seriously. No matter how many times somebody tries to explain it to me, I’ll never understand how Academy voters in 1968 could select “Oliver!” for Best Picture when one of the greatest masterpieces in the entire history of cinema, 2001: A Space Odyssey, was right there for the choosing. In other words, it doesn’t matter too much that 1310 won the AIA/Portland honor award. But I see the same high-quality design and comprehensiveness of approach that captivated the jury.

The 1310 Condos will also be part of an upcoming home tour called 11xDesign, featuring several projects around Portland both designed and developed by small firms and sole practitioners, including Path Architecture, SUM Design Studio, Ben Waechter, William Kaven, Design Department, Building Arts Workshop,  SEED Architecture, and Kevin Cavenaugh. I'll be writing a separate post on the tour shortly.

Portland Public Market, Melvin Mark propose Morrison bridgehead project

The effort to build an indoor year-round public market in Portland has undergone several iterations. The historic 511 Broadway building, now set to be occupied by the Pacific Northwest College of Art, was one proposed site. So was the Greyhound terminus and a few other locations. Now the proposed James Beard Public Market could be located at the west end of the Morrison Bridge as part of a new highrise project with developer Melvin Mark.

The land in question is currently owned by Multnomah County, which seeks a possible sale to help raise funds for a future new courthouse.  It's right across Naito Parkway from Waterfront Park, and would also have easy parking and access by mass transit (a MAX stop is a few feet away).

In a recent email to supporters of the market, organizers Ron Paul and Amelia Hard wrote, "Picture two graceful pavilions nestled into the arcs of the cloverleaf ramps, connected by a market hall under the bridge; the design will allow for a large number of permanent vendor stalls as well as seasonal day tables...The ground floor arcade, filled with fresh food and flowers, will beckon guests toward a covered pedestrian bridge crossing the MAX tracks and leading to a grand entrance between the two pavilions."

The Melvin Mark developed highrise that Paul and Hard speak of is dependent, of course, on the market rebounding. But the rendering you see here is credited to SERA Architects. In addition to the market coming, SERA would have a major skyscraper on the downtown skyline, right in front. The public market would exist in pavilions on either side of the bridge ramp.

As if this proposal weren't bold enough, the project also proposes to move the Portlandia statue from the Portland Building and place it in front of the new building and market. That would allow the statue to face out at the river instead of being somewhat obstructed where it is. Even so, that'd be a major blemish to the Portland Building, which no matter how many Portlanders dislike it occupies a major place in architectural history as America's first major postmodern building.

It's too early to comment much on the proposed building itself, because this is apparently just one of several designs being considered. Chances are it would be a nice enough office building, admirably sustainable and somewhat handsome without being revolutionary or outright gorgeous. But there might be the possibility for inspiring and highly functional design accessed by many thousands or even millions over the years through the public market. And besides architecture or design, the market would have the opportunity to substantially reinvigorate both the waterfront and the under-developed portion of downtown between the Morrison and Steel bridges.

The Beard Public Market has had several ups and downs over the years without ever quite settling on a home. Might this be the time and place to produce the produce?

Around the curve: a visit to The Encore

Last week when I arrived at The Encore condos, developer Hoyt Street Properties’ latest building in the former Hoyt Street Yards parcel being converted over the years into Pearl District urbanity, there was a freight train stuck just a few yards from Union Station, keeping traffic on either side of the tracks backed up for a half-hour.

Perhaps that was a fitting omen, for The Encore has had some rotten luck. It was conceived during the housing boom and now, as the economy tumbles, has had difficulty filling the building with sales and occupants. There was also a construction worker killed injured in an accident on the job during the summer, and a water leak that pushed completion back. Hoyt has put on hold the condo building across the street, slowing the development of a neighborhood outside the Encore. And then there’s that train. When I was there, the horns and bells were pretty loud. Luckily Hoyt Street has lobbied the government to create a “quiet zone” in which trains aren’t legally required to blow their horns upon arrival, but that effort is a red-taped work in progress. (Update: The quiet zone been approved and will begin in Fall 2009.)

Even so, there is plenty to like about the building. At 16 stories with 177 units, it’s one of only a few in Portland defined by its noticeable curve, calling to mind Zimmer Gunsul Frasca’s Bonneville Power Administration headquarters in the Lloyd District or the Marriott Hotel along the waterfront near the Hawthorne Bridge.

Designed by BOORA Architects, the Encore’s curving shape looks better to me from what I’d call the back of the building, the outer curve facing what will be The Fields park and the Pearl District. Here the large balconies, which buyers will enjoy because they stretch from bedroom to living area, give the building a pleasing geometry of moving planes. I’m not as crazy about the building’s look facing Naito Parkway and the riverfront, however. There are high quality materials being used, but somehow the look feels heavy and perhaps a little too much like a corporate or institutional building.

This is the second building that BOORA has completed for Hoyt Street, following The Metropolitan. If this were a beauty contest based solely on exterior aesthetics, The Metropolitan would get my vote without a moment’s hesitation. When I first saw the Encore during its final stages of construction a few weeks ago during a tour of the nearby Ziba headquarters being built, my first impression wasn’t very good. But I’ve warmed up since taking a closer look at the inside and outside.

Not only are the units nicely appointed inside, as you’d expect for lofts and condos selling in this prime Pearl District real estate, with nearly ten-foot-high ceilings and rich, elegant materials, but the views are stellar. The Encore looks out at the river, the Fremont Bridge, the coming Fields park, and Centennial Mills to one side, and the river and downtown on the other. I was particularly struck, standing there inside one of the units in my socks (so as not to blemish the wood floors), it felt like I could reach out and grab the old Mills. When renovation is complete on those historic structures, the view will be even better. What’s more, because it sits on the park, the view won’t be diminished by future post-recession buildings.

Right now the Encore sits on the Pearl’s frontier, where hard hats are still more common than trendy newsboy caps. Yet this will someday be a corner of the Pearl with its own distinct feel. Hoyt, working with a BOORA master plan, ultimately intends to create a cluster of taller, more contemporary buildings here than they built previously in the more industrial-aesthetic Pearl. In that way, I think the Metropolitan and the Encore both represent a sort of Pearl within the Pearl that is still coming together. Not everything has gone according to plan, whether it’s the economy or the traffic circle Hoyt Street wanted for where Naito Parkway meets the Encore and its other condos. Even so, it’ll be interesting to see how this neighborhood comes together.

That is SUM condo

For the last several years, the corner of SE 45th and Stark has been a surface parking lot. Today it's three new townhouse style condos designed and developed by Matt Loosemore and Eric Hoffman's SUM Design Studio.

The site slopes slightly to the south, which enabled the architects to place parking in back discreetly; the parking area also acts as a bioswale (with native plants) collecting rainwater runoff from the building.

In the front, "We created a design theme of wrapping materials across different planes throughout the exterior and interior of the building," Hoffman said by email. That includes 4½-inch clear cedar siding wrapping corners of the building, concrete wrapping horizontally and vertically up the façade and metal parapet that wraps horizontally across the top and vertically down the front.

Hoffman also says SUM made a point of using construction that would stand the test of time. For example, plywood instead of oriented strand board under the exterior siding.  The units also feature double wall construction with double-layer insulation for sound insulation, steel reinforced walls and floors.

Although not LEED certified, the project includes numerous green features (beside the rainwater collection and added insulation with dual-pane windows), such as low-VOC paint, bamboo floors, permeable driveway pavement, and a 94% efficiency HVAC system.

Like the work of many emerging small firms, SUM have created a nice little fabric building, something modern that nevertheless fits well into its surrounding context of neighborhood single-family homes, even as, on a busier residential street, it provides added density. Lots of modern housing projects in Portland's historic neighborhoods earn criticism because neighbors don't like the extra height or the look of the design. This project ought to earn kudos.

Meanwhile, keep an eye out for Hoffman and Loosemore in the future, and not just because Loosemore has a faintly Brad Pitt quality. These guys epitomize modest but high quality infill design-development.

More from the Williams corridor: Visiting Sakura Urban Concepts' Hakoya Lofts

Although we all know the market for condominiums is not what it was a year or even six months ago, many projects were well underway as the housing market and broader economy began sliding. But while it's not the best fiscal climate for projects like the Hakoya Lofts on North Williams Avenue at Shaver, which recently completed, the array of small housing and mixed-use projects in this area of close-in North Portland's Boise-Elliot neighborhood continues to impress. This is the most active area in the city for small architecture firms and development companies to make projects happen.

The Hakoya Lofts, intended as condos and now rental apartments, were developed and more or less designed by Sakura Urban Concepts. The head of Sakura is Taka Nakagawa. Born and raised in Nagoya, Japan, Nakagawa relocated to the United States several years ago, first in Los Angeles and now in Portland. Initially here he was the general contractor for Quality Homes, which renovated numerous historic houses here, particularly in the Irvington neighborhood. Nakagawa is not an architect, but he acts as the creative director for Sakura and comes up with the look of their properties, which are then completed with the help of a separate architecture firm, DMS Architects.

Visiting the Hakyoa Lofts recently with Nakagawa and colleague Eli Haworth of Sakura, I was struck by the simplicity of this mixed-use building. I like this project a lot. A favorite feature, which doesn't necessarily show up well in the photos, was how the upper stories are gently cantilevered over the nearly all-glass first floor. Not that Hakoya is at this level, but it reminded me just a little of the seminal Villa Savoye by Le Corbusier, outside Paris.

Ultimately the Hakoya Lofts lack that level of refinement, not only in comparison to a legend like Corbusier but also in comparison to the work by other small firms rising in Portland, such as Path Architecture's Williams Five condos. The Hakoya Lofts aren't clunky, but perhaps the fact that the design concept has to be translated, more or less, from Nakagawa to DMS, means that the ultimate level of detail and refinement is hard to achieve. I don't know much about DMS (their portfolio is mostly single and multi-family housing), but I wonder if either having an in-house architect at Sakura or a veteran architect to help guide Nakagawa's concepts might help Sakura's projects take that extra step. At the same time, DMS may be just as much of an up-and-comer as Sakura. And any criticism I may have of the tiny details comes within the context of liking Hakoya and Sakura without reservation.

The upstairs units have one window that actually is a glass garage door, allowing the space to be flooded with natural light and fresh air. The Hakoya Lofts, like most all of of Sakura's work, is sustainably designed with energy efficiency in mind. There are solar hot water heating panels, radiant floor heating, dual flush toilets, all natural linoleum and bamboo flooring, and low VOC finishes.

Hakoya also has completed a few other projects in the area. On Martin Luther King Boulevard near Russell Street is the Black & White Building, with 10,000 square feet of renovated retail/commercial space from an old concrete box of a building. Behind that is the Mado House, a four-plex that offers a residential scale and rich materials in keeping with the neighborhood, but adds needed density. Sakura also has done remodels of older homes, and Oregon Home magazine named their house in Irvington as one of its best renovations of 2006.

Sarkura, which also comes with its own YouTube video courtesy of realtor (oh, sorry, "Realtor") David Krause, could easily be included in the new wave of architects and developers coming of age in Portland, such as the aforementioned Path Architecture as well as William Kaven, Seed Architecture, Kevin Cavenaugh, Architecure W, and several others. For all the large condo towers that have risen here in recent years, I'm most excited about what's happening at a smaller scale in Portland's existing neighborhoods.

The mark of Ben Waechter's Z-haus and Portland's new wave

Ben Waechter comes to Portland with an impressive resume. He's spent the last decade working for two of the world's most famous architects: first Brad Cloepfil at Allied Works here in town and then the Renzo Piano Building Workshop in Genoa, Italy. Raised in Eugene and educated at the University of Oregon, Waechter came back to Portland to set out on his own. 

The Z-haus, a two-unit rowhouse on Northeast Mallory Street (near MLK and Fremont), is Waechter's first built project, and it's impressive.

Before arriving, I wasn't sure what I thought of the front facade based on the picture I saw. It seemed tall and almost commercial-looking for a residential street, with garages in the front that are not the most desirable urbanistic choice. However, the Z-haus looks better and better the more you see it - particularly on the inside.

The project is similar to the 'skinny houses' or narrow-lot houses that comprised the City of Portland's 'Living Smart' competition a couple years ago, but the two residences are one structure instead of two. That makes the building look a lot better proportionally. It's not two little beanpoles.

The building is both set back from the street to reduce the appearance of bulk and set back from the property line on the other side to allow more of a backyard. As a result, the building went taller - 4 stories. That created the issue of disconnection between the different levels. If you're a kid in the 4th floor bedroom, how are you gonna ask mom and dad to come tuck you in when they're three levels down watching Desperate Housewives?

Here's where Waechter made a smart decision about layout: each of the four upstairs rooms is only a half-level up from the last, with the rooms occupying alternately front and back portions of the building. Whatever level you're on, you can see and talk to the people on a level upstairs or downstairs.

The other impressive thing about the interior rooms is that they're all identically sized and, with the use of a long sliding door, can be made into either bedrooms or public spaces like a family room or den. I've seen bedrooms that can be made into public areas, and public areas that could be converted into bedrooms, but before the Z-haus I'd never seen residential spaces that were exactly half-and-half. If the sliding door is closed, it feels like a bedroom room. If it's open, it feels like a family room. I love that you could literally have any combination: four extra living rooms, three bedrooms and a TV room, you name it.

The combination of the half-level progression back and forth up the house with the flexibility of every space makes the Z-haus unique in that it's a very pure architectural idea that's been carried out into a very usable, flexible reality.

As you'd expect, the house is also pretty sustainable, utilizing radiant floor heating and Earth Advantage-approved insulation. Because the windows are well placed at corners of rooms where they can bounce sunlight deep into interior spaces, it's also possible to go all day without any electric lights on - although Ben had them on at the suggestion of the realtors.

Did I mention this place is for sale? Neither unit is cheap at $500,000 apiece, but that's actually a nice deal considering each unit has 2,800 square feet and the house offers views of both Mt. Hood from the front and downtown from the back. And the house also demonstrates first-rate craftsmanship, from the unique terra cotta bathrooms (where shower, wall and floor are all one material) to white oak floors. I usually dislike the look of oak, but it looks great here - warming up the space with subtle red and orange tones.

Although having garages and driveways in front is not the most attractive move either for the home or the neighborhood, here I think Ben had his developer's hat on more than the architect's hat. Whether we like it or not, the market seems to favor homes with a place to put your car. That said, the picture of the Z-haus's frontage in the top picture of this post doesn't do justice to the landscaping that will soften the look once it grows to maturity. The driveway is a series of concrete slabs with about a third of the volume taken up by soft natural ground, where lots of Corsican mint has been planted. [Note: this paragraph I added later after reading some of the post's initial comments.]

Ben Waechter is the latest in what seems to be a new wave of talented small firms and sole practitioners, particularly those working in close-in Northeast and North Portland. There is also Path Architecture, Sakura Urban Concepts,  William Kaven, Paul McKean, Building Arts Workshop, Brett Crawford, SUM Design Studio and Seed Architecture, among others. They're already changing the Williams Avenue corridor, and It'll be interesting to see where these firms go from there in the years ahead.

Meanwhile, even if he didn't have the Cloepfil/Piano pedigree behind him, the Z-haus makes me excited to watch Ben's career unfold.

OCAC unveils new Charles Rose-designed campus buildings

Recently the Oregon College of Art and Craft broke ground on its first of numerous new buildings by Charles Rose Architects of the Boston area (with COLAB Architecture + Urban Design of Portland - our city's biggest design presence in Dubai), the Drawing/Painting and Photography studio building.

The two-story DPP provides just under 15,000 square feet and is designed to meet LEED Silver specifications. There about 6,200 square feet for drawing and painting upstairs in the spaces with most of the natural light, while the lower floor adds another 5,600 square feet of studio space for darkrooms, photography studios, a digital photo lab, and expandable classroom spaces.

Slated to open in summer 2009, the DPP will also be linked to existing and future buildings by a central spine of stairways and ramps around a series of lush courtyards designed in collaboration with Murase Associates landscape architecture. BOORA Architects of Portland created the master plan from which the whole affair operates.

The LEED Silver target will be centered around five key areas: site development, water savings, energy efficiency, materials selection and indoor air quality. I'd be curious to know: why not Platinum or Gold? Presumably cost, of course. But boldly reinventing yourself, as OCAC seeks, might have come out bolder with Platinum. Even so, one ought not to be dismissive of LEED Silver. Or has it really come to this in Portland?

The original 9.5-acre OCAC campus, about two-thirds of the way to Beaverton out on Barnes Road, was designed by seminal local architect John Storrs (known also for Salishan on the Oregon coast) and landscape architect Barbara Fealy.

It must have presented an interesting challenge for Rose, COLAB and company, because to me the original campus is both architecturally significant and a bit of a dump. Well, dump is too strong of a word. But it's surprisingly rustic feeling for an urban art school, although admittedly by design. In fact, the seclusion of OCAC is ultimately part of its charm. I can't wait to see how the feel of the campus changes with the new buildings, of which there will be more in the years ahead.

Following Path Architecture

Most who are already familiar with Path Architecture, the firm headed by Corey Martin and Ben Kaiser, may associate it with two projects along Williams Avenue that were planned before the economic downturn and never came to fruition: the Backbridge Lofts and Backbridge Station. The firm is not only still active after those setbacks, but is seeing projects get built.

Two projects I visited are currently under construction (both houses), while the Williams Five condominium project (some of which has gone rental) has recently seen completion. Yesterday I visited the project with Corey Martin, the principal designer. Although a relatively modest project, this five-unit building uses a simple wood, glass and masonry palette to fine effect that both ties in with the residential historic vernacular and stands alone from it.

Martin got his start working for Brad Cloepfil and Allied Works Architecture on projects like the exquisite 2281 Glisan building; although not seeking to wrestle credit away from Cloepfil, he called Allied's Maryhill Overlook sculpture at the Maryhill Museum in Washingon "my baby."

Especially impressive at Williams Five, which includes three condos and two storefront live-work units, is the distribution of light. Martin favors big corner windows that use the adjacent walls to "wash" the space, as he describes it, with illumination.

Also peculiar but successful inside some of the units is a portion of the second floor made of metal grating, which is employed to help distribute light from the large ground floor, floor-to-ceiling sliding doors into the upper portions of the space. The grating wouldn't be very comfy on the toes, but it does indeed help render artificial lights totally unnecessary in daytime. I was there on a very foggy morning and there was plenty of light.

Apparently the clientele buying in at Williams Five speaks to the coolness of the architecture. Although the live-work spaces are unsold, recently arrived tenants in the other units include a successful rock band promoter and two artists.

Only about eight blocks away, Path also has a luxury duplex overlooking Unthank Park in North Portland. One of these homes Martin will occupy himself, and I believe the other is already spoken for by a top professional photographer. This project has a look of protruding glass boxes that resembles Holst Architecture's under-construction Sunrose Condominiums on SE 28th and Burnside. Even as I was briefly perusing the half-built house, somebody stopped to inquire about the project and ask if any units were available. This on a day the Dow-Jones dropped another several hundred points.

In Southeast Portland a few blocks south of Hawthorne Boulevard, Path is in the final stages of construction on a wood-ensconced three story house that gently cantilevers over its ground-floor portion to rise and reveal views of downtown that can be enjoyed on a rooftop deck. Who says you have to build a pitched roof?

You never know which small firms are going to rise from smaller projects into big-time commissions. A few years ago I believed firms like Colab and Emmons Architects would be doing condo towers and office buildings by now because of their talent, but so far despite continued success the big jobs haven't turned out that way. Which is fine, because design quality of course isn't measured by size and scale of projects.

Even so, Path Architecture is a very promising firm with not only impressive talent but the hutzpah to develop their own work much of the time. Before long in addition to the projects mentioned above, they'll also be building a medium-sized new mixed use building in the burgeoning North Mississippi neighborhood, and hopefully more than we even can say now. I'll be continuing to follow their path for awhile.

Prism on Division: Visiting the Clinton Condominiums

When they last completed a building together, Holst Architecture and developer Randy Rapaport (along with a couple key co-developers) produced the Belmont Street Lofts. Five years later, it's still among the most compelling and attractive mid-sized condo projects in Portland, if not the very best.

Now, final work is being completed on the team's long-awaited follow up: the Clinton Condominiums.

The process has been a long and somewhat arduous one, with a nearly two-year construction process, some squabbles between architect and developer, and a housing market very different from the boom in which the Clinton was planned.

But now that the building is complete, all seems to be forgiven. "I loved working creatively with John Holmes," Rapaport said of Holst's co-principal when I visited the Clinton last week. "I wanted to challenge him to stretch what was possible in Portland."

Rapaport is not a designer, and as a client, he might not be right for everyone. Like me, he's a bit neurotic and verbose. Much has been made of this late-40s man’'s penchant for indie rock and skateboards. But more importantly, Rapaport relishes the idea of inspiring and empowering architects to do their best work, and he is willing to commit to the budget, materials and design work to make it happen. And the results speak for themselves. After all, like its predecessor on Belmont, the Clinton is quite beautiful.

In such a downturned economy, he and Holst could have value-engineered all the best aspects of the building away. But they didn't. Right now the building’s 27 units are 70 percent sold, but even if it gets completely filled, Rapaport says he'll take a loss. Better that than dumb-down the building, he says.

Among the residents so far at the Clinton are a renowned scientist just retired from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the founder of an award-winning coffee company. There is also a yoga studio and a bakery on the ground floor: Little t American Bakery, which I can tell you from personal experience makes an exquisite New Orleans style Mufaletta sandwich.

At the street level, what's quickly noticeable is the Clinton's mahogany trim framing floor-to-ceiling windows. Touring the building last week with Randy Rapaport, he told me the supplier ran out of the original wood intended to be used, Meranti, so they were upgraded to mahogany.

Looking upward at the condos on floors two through four, the signature element is an assortment of translucent green glass panels that are placed in a somewhat random pattern and at varying widths. It gives the building, especially at night, the look of a jewel or prism with organic sides and angles glimmering in different directions.

On the sides of the building, the Clinton is clad in core-ten Cor-ten steel, which is designed to rust over time. With the angular, complex looking glass front facade, the Cor-ten provides a noticeable counterbalance of simple form and rough texture. Cor-ten seems to be a popular material these days, and the Clinton is far from the first to use it. Even so, it's a nice addition and further evidence that every detail was attended to.

Inside, the Clinton's inside units are first rate, with gorgeous walnut trim throughout and wide open loft-like spaces but bedrooms that can be closed off. There's a sea of white glass tile in the bathroom as well. Looking out at southeast Portland just over the treetops, the top floor views are quite different from what you get in a condo tower, but one feels much more part of the urban fabric down a little lower.

On the corner where the Clinton sits at 26th and Division, the surrounding buildings seem incongruent: a dingy Plaid Pantry store, and an abandoned small warehouse. Just a block to the south, though, you have the cozy and inviting Clinton Street neighborhood that includes a couple terrific restaurants (Savoy, Dot's) and the Clinton Street Theater. Besides, I think the Clinton will set in motion changes for this stretch of Division. Which is not to say there isn't value in a less polished blue-collar urban neighborhood, as this area has been traditionally. I hope the Reel 'Em Inn tavern a block down Division, for example, stays put. It's a mix of old and new, dingy and pristine, that makes for a good neighborhood.  

In the years since they first collaborated with Rapaport and his co-developers on the Belmont, Holst has made some major strides. This is a firm that operated for years without having a completed building project, and now they have a lot of the most compelling work in town. In addition to the Clinton coming on line now, the gorgeous 937 project in the Pearl is nearing completion. And Holst recently broke ground on the new Ziba Design headquarters. Aside from a condo in Hood River, they've yet to expand very much out of Portland. But along with Allied Works, Works Partnership, Skylab, Rick Potestio, Thomas Hacker and a few others, Holst is unquestionably one of the best firms in town.

Meanwhile, Rapaport is looking to drum up community interest in what may be his next project: a 2,000-seat music venue. Rapaport either is or may be partnering with Brad Malsin and Beam Development on this, according to reports in Willamette Week and the Southeast Examiner. But it's all, as I understand it, in the talking stage now. The venue would be in the Central Eastside very close to the neighborhood's I-5 exit ramp.

To be designed by Works Partnership, the venue would seem to occupy a workable niche between smaller venues like the Roseland Theater (1200 seats) or Crystal Ballroom (1500 seats) and the larger Schnitzer Concert Hall (2700 seats).  Rapaport told me it'd be likely to have a kind of opera house design, with upper seating directly on top of the lower seats for optimum intimacy, and a cube-like form on the outside. He also says he's been more vocal about this project than he normally would for a hypothetical development because he believes a public project should get the public's input before it's built more than a private residence.

Meanwhile, next time you're on Southeast Division or in the adjacent Clinton neighborhood, have a look at its new condo namesake.

NW 23rd Avenue garage opposed again: psycho neighbors or a principled stand?

In today's Oregonian, Fred Leeson reports that the Northwest District Association has again gone on record opposing developer Richard Singer's plan for a Holst Architecture-designed garage at NW 23rd and Irving.

The city's Historic Landmarks Commission is reviewing the plan and is expected to address it at their next meeting, on August 11.

This latest redesign, available for viewing here in PDF, comes after the city council urged a confidential mediation between the developer and the neighborhood group. This after previous efforts to find an acceptible version of the garage failed. This time, Singer and Holst cut the amount of cars the garage would hold from 103 to 87, and made the two story building nine feet shorter. It looks pretty much like a storefront for two buildings. But the site faces Irving instead of 23rd, putting it more on the border with the ressidential portion of the area. Juliet Hyams, president of the NW District Association, told Leeson the garage was still too big and that t was a "troubling precedent". 

It's true the garage project would demolish what's left of a house once owned by Julia Hoffman, founder of the Oregon College of Art and Craft, and mother of the founder of Hoffman Construction. (Singer has offered to contribute $25,000 for its removal.) But it seems to be the idea of a garage at all on this site or in this area that's really troubling to them. Is that fair?

I want to be careful about how I characterize the two sides, because it would be wrong to single out residents of a historic neighborhood for wanting to protect its character or questioning a move that caters to cars in such a pedestrian and transit-friendly development. Or to vilify a developer that's tried good-faith negotiations and has hired one of the best architecture firms in town to do the job.

(Singer and Holst are also partnered on the "checkerboard" building renovation downtown that I wrote about yesterday, but it's only coincidence that I'm writing about their efforts two days straight. The two projects are completely unrelated in my mind.)

My personal feeling, however, at least based on what I read is that this is just nuts, and I really side with the garage builders.

When I drive anywhere near NW 23rd, there is such terrible traffic, not only on 23rd and 21st (the other principal retail corridor here) but all the residential side streets, that it always seems ludicrous that there wasn't a garage built a decade ago. I'm not talking about some concrete behemoth like some of the Smart Park garages downtown, but some storefront-like garage that used to be common here and in many parts of the city. That's precisely what Singer and Holst have proposed.

It's true no garage will satisfy all the cars that want to shop on 23rd. But does that necessarily mean the district should essentially look at the traffic problem, cover its ears, and shout, "La-la-la, I'm not listening!"?

In fact, if I lived in the 23rd Avenue area, I'd want the garage even more. Here in Southeast I live next to a popular restaurant and a dance studio, both of which make it often difficult to park in front of or even near my house. If I lived in Northwest, it'd be 10 times worse, in which case I'd practically pray for a 20-story stack of concrete if it'd get these people from infesting every inch of curb. And by the way, in case someone thinks this is all about gas-guzzling, pollution-spewing cars, won't people of the future with electric or fuel cell powered cars need somewhere to park as well?

It will also be interesting to see how the Landmarks Commission tackles this. Rather than the look of the garage itself, it seems like they'll be tackling whether there can or should be a garage at all. Still, garage supporters might want to add a few doilies or a pitched roof to the design just to be safe. That way the historic district's original architecture can be properly caricatured.

But again, I don't want to make this post a rant. I've done enough of that lately, whether it's against immigration foes or the idea of destroying my beloved Checkerboard building. If I'm just a dummy too given to automobile use to fully appreciate the principled, brave stand the Northwest District Association is taking, I urge someone to make that case (politely of course). There are plenty of times I'd side with neighbors of a historic district against a developer wanting to add a parking garage. I'd like to think, in fact, that I'd be on their side an overwhelming majority of the time. But I just don't get what's so awful about this garage, or why it isn't ridiculously overdue.

If you'd like to submit your comments to the Historic Landmarks Commission before their ruling on the garage, email Tim Heron of the City at tim.heron@ci.portland.or.us.

Skylab tower cuts 18 stories (but still looks great)

As Mike Thelin previously reported on his Burnside Blog for Portland Spaces, Skylab Architecture (previously known as Skylab Design) has unveiled a redesigned version of its proposed 27-story office and condo project at West Burnside and 13th that is only 9 stories. As you can surely guess, the down-turned condo market is to blame. But now the 409 tower, as it's officially known, will be an office building with ground-floor retail. Even so, the look remains dramatic, with an angular and jewel like facade of metal and glass.

I've always loved boxy modern architecture, from Mies Van Der Rohe's Farnsworth House to Holst's upcoming Ziba Design headquarters in the Pearl. However, the technologies available to architects today are really making for a new era of contemporary architecture in which facades can jut and jive in countless directions. And I don't mean the billowy blobs of sculpted titanium that Frank Gehry has employed to great success (Guggenheim Bilbao, Disney Concert Hall) and hideous failure (Experience Music Project). I'm talking about real buildings that people live and work in. These spaces are beginning take on more dramatic geometry while keeping useful things Gehry doesn't, like windows and floors. It's a kind of post-postmodern modernism, if you will: retaining modernism's beauty and integrity but postmodernism's greater sense of playfulness and formal variety.

The other question about this bold new tower, assuming it gets built, is how it might change the career of Skylab lead architect and founder Jeff Kovel. When I wrote an Oregonian cover story for the A&E a couple months ago on the top people in the local architecture scene, Jeff was one of the automatic people I put on the list right away along with Brad Cloepfil, John Holmes of Holst, Bill Neburka and Carrie Schilling of Works Partnership, and Gene Sandoval of ZGF. But Skylab has largely paid its bills doing houses and boutique retail/food & drink outlets. Might their tower at 13th and Burnside, diminutive as it compared to the building's 27-story predecessor, be what pushes Skylab into bigger commissions for larger clients and developers?

Jeff Kovel has had to scratch and claw his way up the ladder by self-generating and developing some of Skylab's most significant work. "I started this company from scratch without clients at 26," the architect told me for the Oregonian story. "That’s a path that’s different than leaving a company you’ve been a partner at for 20 years and starting an architecture firm. I guess you could say fluidly in the sense that it’s been a sequential process. Each project opens us up to a new audience. We’ve been able to sort of reverse engineer the theory to it."

Back when it was still going to be 27 stories, the idea behind Skylab's 409 tower was to have some combination of condo and hotel. But, as Jeff prophetically put it then, "The financial landscape has been changing, and we’ve been nimble and able to change with it. Things are taking a little longer now, but I think it’s for the better. There’s no way we’re not going to build something on that site, but will it be six months or three years? But we’re holding onto the land. I think we can perform really well at that scale. The reality is there isn’t a lot of opportunity being handed to people in this town. I’ve been very forward about going after it. That’s a distinction between most of us in town. Half of our best projects we were developer architect. That’s been a way to accelerate the firm but it’s also a logical step. So much of being an architect seems to be about being to holistically able to problem solve and create."

I wouldn't want Skylab to stop developing or co-developing its own projects. But once the condo market returns (and I'm sure it will), isn't it about time some big local developer handed the keys to Jeff and his crew?

Best large condo in Portland? Visiting The Metropolitan (and pondering The Casey, 937)

Yesterday I had an appointment with a couple who live in The Metropolitan, the Jeff Lamb and BOORA Architects designed (and Hoyt Street Properties-developed) Pearl District condominium on Lovejoy between Jamison Square and Tanner Springs parks. (Their unit is being considered for a home magazine article.) 

This was the second or third time I've visited the building, and only reinforced my feeling that The Metropolitan is one of the best looking large-scale condos in Portland, if not the best. (I'm leaving smaller scale condo gems like Holst's Belmont Lofts and Rick Potestio's Lair Condos out of the equation.)

It's hard to get much of a feel for the inside of these buildings because they're all more or less the same: ground floor lobby, condo units above, with a dark interior hallway. Usually there's also some kind of public gathering space inside with a big TV and some sofas. The units almost invariably feature ample floor-to-ceiling glass and an open floor plan with some pretty nice finishes. In the unit I visited, the homeowners had upgraded their finish options to add a lot of marble, which would not be my taste, but the view looking out at the Fremont Bridge and the Pearl was spectacular. The other thing I can say about the building's interior is that, at least as far as this unit was concerned, the building didn't seem to have those long, thin bowling alley lane-shaped units that have lots of light at the perimeter by the window and film noir-type shadows in the innermost portion of the space.

Even so, I find myself judging today's condos almost overwhelmingly by what they look like on the outside. And I like The Metropolitan's look a lot. First there's the white exterior, which feels not only refreshingly crisp and modern, and a nice alternative to all the grey, beige buildings nearby, but also hearkens back to the white-toned historic buildings surrounding Pioneer Courthouse Square, such as the Meier & Frank building and the Jackson tower. In our often rainy climate, I think white buildings are a great choice. I also like how the Metropolitan seems to offer a different look from every side, and an attractive one. There is no pretty front and ugly backside, like the Fox Tower, for example.

With The Metropolitan coming online as well as The Casey by GBD Architects (and Gerding Edlen Development) and the Holst Architecture-designed 937, I'm beginning to think we're seeing a new era of Pearl District architecture that's an improvement on the buildings built in this neighborhood over the past decade.

I wasn't sure about The Casey at first, with its almost orange-toned precast concrete panel system. And I've gone on record numerous times in the past an ambivalence about the aesthetics of GBD buildings despite their hugely impressive green credentials.

But ultimately I've decided I like The Casey a lot. The fact that it's a quarter-block building helps it achieve a proper scale much more easily than a block-sized building, but the composition is compelling regardless of that. In the past few months I've happened to catch sight of The Casey from vantage points in other tall condos or from the West Hills, and it always stands out distinctly on the skyline. As does The Metropolitan.

937 is the only one of these three that's still under construction, but I think it's looking fabulous. The white or cream-colored brick is something new and elegant for the Pearl, and its size, which I believe is a half-block with a tall, long skinny tower, makes for a compelling shape.

Really, though, it's the random pattern of the window glazing and a series of red balconies that really give the building a terrific look on the outside. To me it looks like Mies van der Rohe on fractals. As 937 has been going through construction I've heard some skeptical remarks from others in the building community: that it's not exceptional in the details of its construction, or that the stalled housing market will make this not such a good investment for the developer.

But you know what? If The Metropolitan is the best looking condominium in the Pearl District, which I think it is, that title might be soon wrestled away by 937. It also continues Holst Architecture's rise. A few years ago Holst was hired by developer John Carroll for the Edge Lofts, but wound up getting switched out in favor of GBD when the program shifted from offices to condos. 937 is another collaboration, this time with Ankrom Moisan Associated Architects doing the interiors. (I'm guessing the division of labor wasn't this simple, but for practical purposes I'll characterize it this way.)

What do the rest of you think: are these latest incarnations of Pearl condos better than their predecessors? What are the best buildings in the district?

OHSU Targets South Waterfront For 'Life Sciences Collaborative'

In today's Daily Journal of Commerce, Tyler Graf reports that Oregon Health & Sciences University is seeking to turn its approximately 20 acres of riverfront property just south of the Marquam Bridge (and on the northern edge of the South Waterfront condo forest) into a collaborative project with the state's other major universities (UO, PSU, OSU, UP, OIT) called the Life Sciences Collaborative.

The new Collaborative center would house programs and research efforts and would also provide space to private research firms. It would be approximately 300,000 square feet. OHSU and its partners are seeking $250 million from the state board of higher education to fund construction. In Graf's article, the Los Angeles architecture firm Perkins + Will is mentioned as "working on the project," although I'm not sure if that means they've already been chosen for this one. Perkins + Will previously designed the Patient Care Facility at OHSU next to the upper aerial tram station. It's pretty nice looking, I think, although inevitably a bit bland and corporate.

OHSU has a mixed record as architectural patron. The Casey Eye Institute on the Marquam campus was originally a design by the legendary architect Richard Meier, but his firm pulled out before the final design, which I believe is by GBD Architects. The BICC computer library from the early 1980s was designed by Thomas Hacker Architects and included contributions from both Brad Cloepfil and Rick Potestio, who worked for Hacker at the time. The BICC is a real gem that stands the test of time pretty well.

In the South Waterfront, OHSU and its development partners initially seemed to be going with Brad Cloepfil and Allied Works when the neighborhood was being proposed, but then they went with GBD. Cloepfil has been on record numerous times, most recently in a Bright Lights talk with Randy Gragg of Portland Spaces, as using phrases like "bait and switch" to describe what happened with OHSU. Still, GBD's resulting building, the Center for Health and Healing, is probably my favorite building they have done.

Regardless, having something built between the Marqam and Ross Island bridges will provide the connection South Waterfront needs to downtown. Once this Schnitzer campus is built, SoWa will feel less isolated.

Luxurious Dining & Decor at Lucier

At the south end of Riverplace along the Willamette, beside the new Strand Standard condos, sits the new Lucier restaurant, a very high-end dining establishment with a sizable investment in its architecture and interiors. I visited Lucier last week as part of a press lunch. Hopefully it won't seem like I'm writing this post in exchange for the complimentary striped bass carpaccio with slivered foie gras, which was one of about ten different small plates we had over a four hour meal.

(I particularly recommend the delicious Michima Ranch Ribeye and the Spring Pea Risotto, but maybe that's me. The chef has an obsession, by the way, with micro greens and veggies. Gordon Ramsay would say that's very 1990s.)

The exterior, like the Strand condos, is designed by Ankrom Moisan Associated Architects. It's got floor to ceiling glass and a slanted flat roof that makes it feel a bit like a ship. The back portion also has a wood-paneled curvy cube. The restaurant's 7,600 square foot interior was designed by New York firm Alvarez + Brock, which also designed Le Cirque. The press release has this to say about their design:

"One-of-a-kind features within Lucier include a marble wall milled with abstract swimming designs, a shimmering indoor canal lined with iridescent gold tiles, oversized chandeliers made from bronze tubes of varying heights, hand blown glass sculptures by local artists and a diamond-faceted metal dome meant to replicate the peaks of Mount Hood."

Being inside, I marveled at the beauty of the materials and design, especially the hanging chandeliers made from hundreds of individually hanging tubes that undulate gently. There's even a small waterway that meanders like a creek through the restaurant floor. And that gold dome is something else too, although it separates the bartender from bar patrons, which seems like an unwise move. Still, virtually every surface in this place is made of a luxurious material. It's very impressive, although some might say it also borders on the ridiculous. Will Oregonians go for it?

Obviously Portland like any big city has some affluent types who will flock here, as will others for their prom night or once-a-year birthday dinner at a destination restaurant. It's not Lucier's responsibility to craft their own demographic, of course. It'll be interesting to see how such a fancy place fares, but you've got to admit there aren't many riverfront restaurants except for a satellite of the Newport Bay chain plopped on the water a few feet away from Lucier. Call me crazy, but I don't think of these two as direct competitors.

Although this is possibly the swankiest restaurant I've ever been inside (at least in Portland), I found it curious to know that the proprietor, Chris Dussin, got his start founding the Old Spaghetti Factory and later Fenouil in the Pearl District, while his grandfather started that downtown hipster-stronghold of a watering hole, the Virginia Cafe. Lucier is of course most like Fenouil, both of which have a bit of a corporate feel despite the luxury.

Visiting Lucier (which is named for Etienne Lucier, the man who started Oregon's first independent farm), one also is inspired to ponder what the other most impressive restaurant interiors in Portland may be. We're certainly not the kings of high style with a culture that favors Birkenstocks and shorts, and many of the best restaurants here keep their style unpretentious. That's even more so now with the current generation of fine dining establishments, where often there cement floors to go with your Kobe beef. The first place that comes to mind as an impressive, luxurious restaurant space, though, is definitely the Allied Works-designed Bluehour. What other ones am I forgetting?

No Ordinary Boathouse: Mulvanny G2 Unveils Waterfront Portland City Storage

It was over a year ago that developer Derek Hanna announced plans for a unique dry boat-storage structure shaped like a long cylindrical tower overlooking the Willamette from a riverside spot just south of OMSI on the east bank. The single-tower was a mere rendering based on a German auto storage tower by the Palis company. Now, Hanna's architects at Mulvanny G2 in Portland have revealed the real design.

It's not a single tower anymore, but Portland City Storage has the opportunity to occupy a very prominent if not iconic position along the waterfront. Meeting yesterday with lead designer Eric Cugnart of MG2 (lead designer of the Adidas Village and One Waterfront Place for BOORA before switching firms) as well as principals John Flynn and Gary Larson, I learned the 350-boat facility's design has gone through five or six iterations. "We sort of discovered the program as we went," Flynn told me. The project now consists of two towers, with the front of each tower set back at the front corner.

Cugnart is particularly proficient when it comes to facades, such as the colorful Adidas design and some work for BOORA on the Hatfield US Courthouse. For this project, the budget was much lower. It's also a transitional building between industrial warehouses and something more ambitiously architectural. The Portland City Storage boat storage buildings will be clad in a transparent polycarbonate and layers corrugated translucent fiberglass. For the most part, the structures will be translucent but not transparent. But there will also be glass portions that allow viewers to peek inside at the boats stacked about 100 feet high on several levels with a giant forklift. Larson cited a building by the great Herzog & De Meuron for a dance company in London as an inspiration, with its "partial revelation" of the goings-on inside, which will also include office spaces and a cafe.

The project is also shooting for a Gold LEED rating and one of its distinguishing features is a series of vertical wind turbines and hopes to achieve a "net-zero" energy metering. The project also will harvest its own rainwater to save 20,000 gallons of potable water per month, which will also be a visible part of the project as the two cut-out portions of the front facade will feature collecting pools for the rainwater that recall the upcoming World Trade Center memorial, "Reflecting Absence". It's also much better environmentally for the Willamette River to not have these boats rusting and leaking away in the water.

Also noteworthy is that the river's greenway trail will be continued to cross the storage buildings at the front in an elevated path overlooking the river. The boat launch will be directly underneath the elevated path, so you can stand there and watch the boats slipped down mechanically.

There are other large boat-storage facilities throughout the United States, but this project is unique in how it's also a real work of architecture that people and not just boats will occupy. It will be situated beside the Ross Island Bridge (just across from the undeveloped area north of South Waterfront) between Ross Island Sand & Gravel to the south with the Portland Opera headquarters (formerly KPTV studios) and OMSI to the north. Groundbreaking is expected for this summer with complete buildout in summer 2010.

Casey Becomes First LEED Platinum Condo

The Casey Condominiums in the Pearl District have been certified by the US Green Building Council at the top 'platinum' level of LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design). That makes the Gerding Edlen-developed, GBD Architects designed building the first high-rise condominium residence in the country to reach this highest standard of green building.

This is Gerding and GBD's third LEED platinum project, following the Gerding Theater (the nation’s first platinum historic renovation and performing arts center), and Oregon Health Science University’s Center for Health & Healing (the nation’s first and largest LEED platinum medical office building). Gerding Edlen also has 38 LEED projects in its portfolio, more than any other developer in the country.

The Casey achieved all of the 55 LEED credits it applied for, exceeding the 52 required for platinum. The building incorporates reduced usage of fossil fuels; sustainable, regional, renewable and low-VOC materials; water-efficient fixtures and appliances; glazing to reduce glare and heat gain; an eco-roof for storm water management and to reduce the heat island effect; efficient mechanical equipment; a solar PV system to provide renewable energy to the building; and ERVs (Energy Recovery Ventilators) in each unit that recover exhausted (waste) heat and use it to preheat incoming fresh air. These features are expected to achieve a 52 percent energy savings over a code-compliant building.

The Casey is also one of three high-rises across the country participating in a pilot Energy Star for High Rise Multifamily Building rating system.  Multifamily high-rise structures are a unique hybrid of residential and commercial, and currently have no clear methodology for establishing high performance under the Energy Star labeling program. The Energy Trust of Oregon, which is coordinating the pilot rating system on behalf of the EPA, is using the Casey to inform the development of this new standard.

The Portland Mercury's Matt Davis once called the sight of The Casey's colorful precast panels "puke curry". But it's got matchless green qualities, and it's also a wonderful precedent for Pearl condos to be built on a quarter-block. It's not necessarily my favorite visually, but I'd withhold any comments about Indian food or gastro-intestinal problems. Architecture also needs a lot more color. And I think The Casey still looks better than most Portland condos in large part because of this quarter-block scale, which proportionally seems favorable to most half-block or full-block behemoths out there.

Congrats to Gerding and GBD on another piece of platinum for their mantle.

Emmons Architects' Deschutes Brewery and the Magic of Chainsaw Art

Last week at architect Stuart Emmons' invitation I visited the new Deschutes Brewery brew pub on Southwest 11th Avenue near the Brewery Blocks. The building was a familiar one: the former Jim Stevens Auto Body building, where my car was repaired a few years ago after being hit by a Tri-Met bus. I was very happy with the body work, but I think most people will get more out of this building now that Deschutes is here. The pub is right next door to Portland Center Stage's Gerding Theater at the Armory, so this would make an ideal pre- or post-theater stop. (As would, admittedly, any number of other nearby outlets from Sushiland to Henry's Tavern to Pizza Schmizza.)

The goal, Emmons says, was to create a brewpub that was in between two other local pubs' styles: the sleekness of Holst Architecture's Bridgeport brewpub remodel and the homey, lived in quality of McMenamins' approximately 10,000 local pubs. And inside, that's how it seemed. You could tell there was a real architect behind the design in terms of the spatial arrangements. There is lots of character to the place, but I had a sense of the vast wide open space being divided into a series of room-like smaller spaces without the overall sense of light and vastness being taken away.

There was also a lot of fun had on this project in terms of textures and accoutrements. Numerous light fixtures are of the vintage, wrought-iron variety. Like a salon-style art gallery show or the tons of mirrors on the walls at traditional French brasseries, Deschutes is covered with tons of gilded frames, some with historic photos of the building and Portland, others with kitschy drawings and artifacts. What I particularly enjoyed was how even the air ducts were enclosed in gilded frames at their wall openings. There is also lots of raw Douglas fir used throughout the space to give it an appropriately rustic feeling without seeming chintzy. This brewpub feels new, but lived in.

The best part of the new Deschutes brewpub, though -- besides their copious supply of Mirror Pond ale -- may be the cornucopia of chain saw carvings on the entry to each dining room. Emmons tells me the artist works without any drawings or guide; he merely creates with his chainsaw in an impromptu fashion the array of owls, goats and other wildlife. I can't say it's the most sophisticated, refined sculpture I've ever encountered. But God help me: I love it. There are actually some pretty delicate, artful carvings to these chainsaw works. Maybe next the guy could do a chainsaw Portlandia, or perhaps a statue of Tom Potter as a going away present.

Meanwhile, look for Emmons Architects to have an increased presence in town. Educated at Harvard's Graduate School of Design, Stuart has long been one of the better architects in town; his Fire Station 1 design competition entry with Hennebery Eddy was terrific, and now the firm is designing a courthouse in Gresham. Gerding Edlen is actually a co-developer of the Deschutes site; here's hoping Emmons may eventually be designing one of their condos when the market comes back. The Deschutes looks terrific, but Stuart should also be doing bigger better jobs than brewpubs - the brilliance of the accompanying chainsaw art not withstanding. Actually, though, can't you just imagine some of this artwork in the lobby of some ultra-modern condo?

Visiting PNCA's 511 Broadway Building

Today I took a tour of the circa-1916 federal building at 511 NW Broadway that is being taken over by the Pacific Northwest College of Art with the school's president, Tom Manley, and communications director Becca Biggs. The tour was a few minutes late getting started, which actually was good news, because after passing through the security x-ray machines, I was free to peruse the ground floor lobby a little bit on my own.

511 is going to be a magnificent space for PNCA, which was evident as soon as I entered the thin but cavernously high-ceilinged lobby. There is marble everywhere, lots of ornate detailing, and even ceiling panels that have tons of artful workmanship put into them. Upstairs doors and door panels are clad in unpainted stained wood; the doors even have these frosted-glass windows that look they should have the name "Philip Marlowe" stenciled on them. And there is lots and lots of space here. PNCA ought to have plenty of room to grow.

Wherever you go in this building there are wonderful little tarnished gems. It looks pretty drab and dreary right now, of course. The building has federal agency offices upstairs and some Department of Immigration services on the ground floor. The main activity in this grand entrance area, though, is chitchatting between security guards, building maintenance and housekeeping staff. Plenty of working offices still remain here; those were off limits. But there are lots of empty rooms and spaces that we were able to see upstairs - dark places with low ceilings walls that will be removed.

Although this is a historic building to which certain strictures will apply in terms of preserving the original structure, it has already been changed numerous times. I believe originally the building was for the Postal Service. Both on the ground floor and upstairs, there seem to be many, many opportunities to knock down walls and raise ceilings. In fact, to do so would appear to better honor the original architecture than the current interiors do. Over time this grand building was made into somewhat drab offices. But the bones here are incredible. In fact, there's plenty of flesh and skin to go along with it.

While it's a big heavy building that will hold its thermal mass well (staying cool in the summer and warm in the winter), and it can seem imposing from the street with a lack of transparency, this is actually meant to be a building teeming with natural light. There are numerous huge skylights that were actually covered during various renovations; all of which, needless to say, will be made back into skylights.

There is also quite a nice view or, to be more specific, many different view corridors and framed looks at Portland. That includes a rooftop that could someday be a spectacular hangout or party spot, and which my tour guides and I got to glimpse for a few minutes. One side looks down on the post office across Hoyt Street and Union Station just across Broadway, with the Broadway Bridge, the Willamette River, and the Pearl District in the background. The other side looks toward downtown. Even though it's really just some leftover space adjacent to the rooftop mechanical systems, this could be a special little place to have a party or woo a potential donor (or both).

Merely a serviceable renovation of this building as a new building for PNCA would be great news for architecture in Portland on its own. It's got a lot of great stuff to keep. But as previously mentioned, the architect for 511's renovation will be Allied Works and Brad Cloepfil, which makes the notion of a modern building emerging from this dusty, hulk of an old building an extra intriguing one. As Manley and I were walking down a marble back stairway talking about what Allied might do, I said, "This could be Wieden + Kennedy 2." Manley corrected me and said, "No, this building has a lot more to the original than the Wieden + Kennedy building ever did." So it will be interesting to see how Brad and Allied bring the building alive and how much of that is just opening and cleaning it up versus introducing certain material or spacial modernity inside as well.

511 occupies a strange presence, or at least it has until now. It's a wonderful early 20th century work of architecture on one of the more prominent streets in the center of the city. Yet because it's been closed to the public for so long and kept a very discreet profile, it seems a whole generation has gone by without even the architecture enthusiasts and practitioners among us noticing much that the building is really there. In a few years, that's going to change in a big way. And with the post office being vacated, freeing up that land to re-development (although hopefully some of the original building stays), with a MAX line soon to be going nearby, this whole area seems poised to really go through a metamorphosis over the next decade.

Of course the Portland Public Market had also sought 511 Broadway as a home for itself, and I hope there is a place for them in this area. That said, having now been inside this grand old building, I don't see it as a place for a public market with produce and salami and artisan goods for sale. As has been bandied about in the comments following some of my previous posts about this issue, I think a better home for the public market would be the current Greyhound station two blocks east of 511 - contingent, of course, on the bus company's willingness to move. Or if not the Greyhound station, it seems there are a lot of other nearby parcels with potential for the market, which I'll bet a lot of hungry PNCA students would like to patronize, as would the condo residents.

And as I understand it, in addition to PNCA being able to renovate the 511 building itself, the back parking lot is eventually going to be converted to a new segment of the North Park Blocks. The budget doesn't appear to be there for it now, but if the funds were to become available, what kind of landscape architectural wonder might be conjured there, between PNCA and a renovated post office site at the new edge of the Park Blocks?

Congratulations, PNCA. You've just won a landmark of a new home, and then some.

Zooming to A New Art Center

A couple years ago, while attending a Third Angle classical music performance, I met a woman named Carole Zoom and her husband Brett, both recent Eugene transplants. We've stayed in touch since then, which is easy because they're culture vultures who enjoy making it to plays, film screenings and concerts. Brett is also an accomplished journalist who has written frequently about architecture for publications like the Wall Street Journal and Los Angeles Times, for whom he did a nice Thom Mayne profile last year.

Back in Eugene, Carole did something terrific for the local arts community. She bought a building, rented it out (at a reduced rate) to local nonprofit arts organizations as the Midtown Art Center, and then negotiated to sell them the building. (Carole is also an artist and photographer.)

And now, Carole is looking to do the same in Portland. In a recent email she writes:

In Eugene in 2005 I purchased a building with my personal nestegg in order to consolidate eight arts organizations under one roof, allow them shared infrastructure so that they could use more of their money for their missions. The Eugene Ballet took leadership on the nonprofit side and pulled together the tenants for the 14,000 sqare foot building. Our arrangement allowed them reduced rent for 3 years so that they could do a capital campaign to purchase the building from me in 3 years. That building is now used by the Eugene Ballet and seven other arts organizations, and they are purchasing the building from me this summer.

I am searching now for tenants in Portland for a similar set up. My goal is to buy a building in summer large enough for numerous nonprofits to use and work together to raise funds to purchase it from me as their fundraising allows. I am not rich and am not able to give the building to nonprofits, but I want my investment to work for justice in the community.

She wrote me recently asking if I knew of a building that might be suitable. My immediate first thought was the downtown building on SW 10th Avenue with the colored checkerboard panels. It's been vacant for years despite an ideal location; I've heard it's not in great shape, but I still think for the right tenant it could be a real landmark. Carole looked into it, but found the building has been taken off the market. (Does anyone know the story?)

Another thought I had was for Carole to partner with Oregon Ballet Theater to expand their building on Southeast Morrison between Belmont and Morrison, as originally planned several years ago in a Holst Architecture-designed plan. All these years later, OBT is still occupying the same drab old former bank building with nothing to indicate an arts organization is there save for the sign on the side. It's a great location: just a block away from Grand Avenue (where a streetcar line will eventually be) and the Morrison Bridge east terminus, yet with a little bit cheaper real estate than you'd have across the river on the west side. And yet this area is already well on its way to transforming into a denser and more vibrant urban place.

Carole Zoom is no millionaire philanthopist, but it's clear she's ready and able to make this project happen. Her project could end up being some simple conversion of an old building, as was the case in Eugene. But it could also be something more. What site and architect might best work with Carole to provide not only a home for some worthy art nonprofits, but do so in a wonderful package?

I'm afraid I missed writing this post before Carole's informational meeting about the building held last Wednesday. But I will pass on more information from Carole as it becomes available.

PNCA's At It Again: Going From Rent to Own at Cloepfil-Redesigned Goodman Building

It's another week, time for the Pacific Northwest College of Art to secure ownership of major Pearl District real estate at little or no cost. They can't keep it up at this pace, surely, but fresh off the news a few days ago of securing the 511 Broadway building, the school has reached an agreement with the family of the late Edith Goodman, the building's owner, to purchase the school's home since 1997 on an full block between Northwest 12 and 13th Avenues, Johnson and Kearney Streets. The agreement is accompanied by announcement from PNCA of accompanying financial news, summarized thusly (as Alton Brown would say) by DK Row:

The college also publicly launched a historic capital campaign targeting $32 million in pledges by the end of June 2009, when the college celebrates its centennial. The campaign, which has quietly raised $26 million, went public Saturday with the announcement of three lead campaign gifts of $1 million each from PNCA board president Al Solheim, the Harold and Arlene Schnitzer CARE Foundation and the Maybelle Clark MacDonald Fund. The MacDonald donation is a challenge gift, contingent on whether the college raises an additional $3 million.

Renovated a decade ago by Holst Architecture, the Goodman Building has always been a nice environment, I think, particularly its huge open space in the middle. I've been to award ceremonies there, Japanese DJ concerts, a French philosopher's lecture, a design forum, art exhibits, but all the while the renovated old warehouse itself, with its exposed structure and simple white aesthetics, is itself a particularly nice piece of any experience. From an artist's or curator's standpoint in some of the exhibit spaces, maybe there is more that could be done, but I still like the building a lot. And that's before we even talk about the exterior paint job created by Randy Higgins (above), which is a transcription of an Arthur Rimbaud poem into a language of differently sized squares and rectangles.

According to D.K. Row's Oregonian article, Allied Works will oversee design for the $12 million "light" (says PNCA) re-renovation. That's on top of Brad Cloepfil's firm already being selected by PNCA for the 511 Broadway building (pictured at left). So in effect, for all of the huge commissions that Allied has received over the past several years, for art museums in St. Louis, New York, Seattle, Ann Arbor and Denver, not to mention the Wieden & Kennedy job before those, PNCA will be the Cloepfil client with repeat business for his firm. And though it may not be for a few years, I'm betting PNCA isn't done acquiring buildings with these two, wonderful a foundation (pardon the pun) as they may be. How about a ground-up building for PNCA on some of the post office's surface parking lot in the back? Or perhaps something further north, out by the Fremont Bridge and Centennial Mill?

Artist Hub on 82nd: Visiting Milepost 5

If developers Ted Gilbert and Beam Development, the architects at Works Partnership and creative director Gavin Shettler have anything to say about it, 82nd Avenue in Portland may no longer be seen as the armpit of Portland with its an unpleasant melange of traffic, big-box chain stores and prostitutes.

Recently I made the trek out to 82nd near Burnside to see Milepost 5, an ambitious but welcome live-work development intended for artists and other creative types. The  development consists of two renovated buildings: a new just completed structure designed by Works that consists of for-sale loft condos and work space, and a to-be-renovated old brick retirement home next door, Baptist Manor, that will offer rental units to live and work in. Both the old and new structures will also endeavor to create a strong sense of community and collaboration.

The completed building by Works provides the best eye candy, and it's where I'd want to live. But older Manor building has lots of spaces with tremendous potential, such as a huge industrial-sized kitchen, and immediately adjacent to it a former church sanctuary, complete with pews, that would make a terrific screening room. There's also a wrap-around courtyard that the kitchen looks out onto, which would make a great restaurant with outdoor seating.

I don't think a painting or sculpture is required as proof when one signs the lease or mortgage agreement, but it's easy to imagine a group of young, creative people here -- some staying for many years and others just passing through. Most of the for-sale units are somewhat affordable, too. A 443-square foot loft spaces starts at $134,995, although naturally it's on the east side of the building, which sits on busy 82nd. Milepost 5 does look out on a lovely park, though. And for those considering such a dwelling but iffy about the location (I sure would be), keep in mind that the place is just a few blocks from the 82nd Avenue Max station.

The hiring of Gavin Shettler, who for the last few years led the nonprofit but now defunct Portland Art Center, is particularly nice to see. Shettler will be exhibiting art in several of the uninhabited units each month, and he'll also organize a lot of other events there. It's great to see him having landed on his feet after the unfortunate PAC closing. Kudos should also go to Gilbert, commissioner Sam Adams and others behind the scene making this happen.

If you move into the for-rent older building, though, where there are 70 years of history as a retirement home, be prepared for the occasional ghost. While Shettler and I toured the space, one room had a locked door and the audible sound of a TV inside. Everyone has long since moved out and there weren't any employees scheduled to work that day. I half expected Jack Nicholson to peek his head through the door and say, "Heeeeerrr's Johnny!" Considering this is an artists' enclave now, I fully expect this to be put to creative purposes.

PDC Board Approves LAB Holding Selection For Centennial Mill

The Portland Development Commission's board of directors has accepted and approved the recommendation of developer LAB Holding for the Centennial Mills project.  It was a unanimous vote and represents the final step in the process of selecting a development team following a recommendation by the Centennial Mills Evaluation Committee and Executive Director Warner. 

“The Centennial Mills site is a key catalytic redevelopment project for both Portland’s waterfront and the North Downtown area,” said PDC Chairman Mark Rosenbaum.  “We are in good hands with LAB Holding and the Board feels confident the company will deliver an extraordinary project for those who work, live and enjoy downtown."

The PDC board received a lot of criticism for going against the recommendation of its evaluation committee on the still-moribound Burnside Bridgehead. You could say they learned from their mistake, but a more accurate answer is probably that they trusted LAB's finances more than the recommended Beam Construction for the Bridgehead job.

Regardless of this decision by the board, a future issue should arguably still be the makeup of that board. The members seem to come much more from financial and business backgrounds than anything related to design. In the long run, whether LAB was the right choice here or not, that's got to change.

With the board's approval, the next step is for PDC and LAB to negotiate a formal Disposition and Development agreement. But the disposition of the economy will surely also figure into when this new Centennial Mills site will really get built.

And for goodness sake, it's past time for LAB and its CEO, Shaheen Sadeghi, to start working not just with PDC, but also to form a real relationship with Hoyt Street Properties, the developer who has built pretty much everything directly across Naito Parkway from the Mills. There's a great deal to figure out about how this isolated site will interconnect with the Pearl, not to mention the as-yet unbuilt northernmost portions of the Pearl near the Fremont Bridge.

Meanwhile, to borrow from 'The Price Is Right' announcer Rod Roddy, Shaheen Sadeghi, come on down!

Kevin Cavenaugh Plans 14-Unit Housing Development By 13 Designers

Over the last several months, one of Portland’s most accomplished designer-developers, Kevin Cavenaugh, has been at Harvard University as part of a Loeb Fellowship, just as then-Oregonian architecture critic Randy Gragg did the prior academic year.

In the past, Cavenaugh has been responsible for the Rocket building on Burnside (the red one with the sunscreen panels featuring individual artworks and Rocket restaurant on top), the Ode to Rose’s mixed use building on Northeast Fremont (a local AIA award winner, with Fife restaurant on the ground floor), and another very successful mixed use project at Southeast 28th and Ankeny housing Noble Rot wine bar. Trained as an architect and previously employed at Fletcher Farr Ayotte, Kevin is not a registered architect and thus it is never his name listed as the architect of record on the documents, but they are definitely his buildings.

I wrote about Kevin a few years ago for a Metropolis magazine story about architects who develop their own projects. “Architects: Looking for the Perfect Client?” the headline asked. “Hire yourself!”

Recently I got a call from Kevin, still back in Cambridge until later this spring. His new project, or projects, would easily be his most ambitious yet.

On a site in Southwest Portland just south of downtown at the corner of Water Avenue and Arthur Street, an ideal location but with difficult hilly terrain, virtually no parking and limited access, Kevin is envisioning having built 14 different housing units – almost all of them by different designers. The details have changed a little bit over the few times we’ve talked and emailed, but I believe the latest would be to have Kevin design two himself, then divide the remaining 12 units equally between six Harvard Graduate School of Design students and six more established architects.

The Harvard students, as I understand it, would be graduating this spring and would probably consist largely of those with whom Kevin has already formed relationships with in lecturing about his plan as part of his Loeb Fellowship presentations. This is the text of a flyer he sent out at Harvard:

...1-WAY TICKET to PORTLAND. I am a Loeb Fellow at Harvard's GSD seeking a few select graduating designers to DESIGN AND BUILD fourteen small parcels with me in downtown Portland, OR. The project will showcase the finest in contemporary urban architecture from the nation's most promising young designers. Starting this summer, each participant will take full control over his/her development. I will help line up bank financing and construction services, but you ultimately you will need YOUR OWN MONEY to secure a loan. I will mentor you through the design and development process, but you will take on both the risks and rewards associated with your project. THIS IS NOT A JOB! 

As for the six established architects, I think that idea is still being hammered out. Kevin and I both agreed that it would be nice to bring in some admired out-of-town designers. Much talent as there is in Portland, I don’t think our design community is challenged much by work in town by out-of-town firms. However, I’d also love to see at least one of those spots reserved for a local. It’s Kevin’s decision, obviously, but I have imagined it being someone with demonstrated high quality residential experience, yet also someone for whom this project would represent a serious opportunity.

Kevin would surely appreciate more ideas about how to shape this process and the ultimate product. What advice might we give this onetime FFA intern who metamorphosed into the most interesting DIY designer-developer in a place already known for just that kind of maverick spirit?

Oh, and is it overly naive to wonder about a bigger developer ever taking on this kind of riskier but potentially far more appealing development?

PDC Evaluation Committee Chooses LAB Holding For Centennial Mills

Late Tuesday afternoon has come word from the Portland Development Commission from its Centennial Mills Evaluation Committee that LAB Holding of Costa Mesa, California is the recommended development team - the winner in a three team race against developers Nitze-Stagen of Seattle and the Cordish Company of Baltimore to turn around this decaying local landmark.

You can read the press release here, but it doesn't say too much yet about the decision. Before reading any comments coming up in Wednesday's papers, I'd assume the less ambitious, and therefore less costly, nature of the LAB proposal weighed in the developers' favor given the downturning economy and so forth. One would assume the Nitze-Stagen proposal finished second. I know The Oregonian's editors and numerous commenters here felt strongly that the Nitze-Stagen proposal, including a design team led by Zimmer Gunsul Frasca, was a good one. I also remember hearing more than one person say they weren't blown away by LAB's proposal in person several days ago. I'm still not completely sure which of these two I favored. Nitze-Stagen and ZGF seemed to have the highest quality plan, but maybe it was a little too ambitious. I'm not necessarily displeased to think that the original Centennial Mills buildings will seemingly be more prominent now that the LAB proposal has been chosen.

What's next? PDC says: "Executive Director Warner will now present the recommendation to the PDC Board of Commissioners at the March 26 Commission Meeting. If the Board approves the recommendation, PDC and LAB Holding, LLC will begin negotiation toward a Disposition and Development Agreement." So speak to the Board or forever hold your peace (except in cyberspace).

Of course as we've learned with projects like Burnside Bridgehead, all this may be moot anyway. We may be several years from seeing something completed there. And if something does get built, the design may change along the way. In fact, that's certain. It's only a question of how much.

In the days ahead, we'll want to look back on this process and whether it was a successful one. How do people feel so far?

One other caveat: It's not a done deal that the PDC board will go along with the evaluation committee's decision. In the case of Burnside Bridgehead, for example, they rejected the decision and went with Opus Northwest over Beam Construction, the latter of which was, if I remember correctly, the committee's recommendation. However, I think it's more likely this time around that the board will agree with the committee, because the board is more apt, as they were with the Bridgehead, to be financially minded -- and the LAB proposal is much less ambitious in terms of what it would ask of public investment and what would be physically built there.

And aside from what was the most appropriate decision for PDC to make given economic and other realities, which plan was best from a pure design standpoint?

PNCA Lands 511 Broadway Building From Feds

The US Department of Education and the General Services Administration have approved the Pacific Northwest College of Art's application to acquire the heretofore federal building at 511 NW Broadway.

This is a big win for PNCA, which will stretch its campus from the Pearl District in to Old Town and, along the way, put a much bigger stamp on Portland's culture. PNCA is quickly becoming the RISD (Rhode Island School of Design) of the West Coast.

The 511 project is also noteworthy in that it could finally provide another opportunity for Brad Cloepfil and Allied Works to participate in a hometown project. Cloepfil has already worked on PNCA's master planning. I mean, why wouldn't they hire him for 511? Besides, 511 could be a similar opportunity to Cloepfil's Wieden + Kennedy building: a historic structure that has a modern, light-filled interior.

This also puts NW Broadway itself on a higher plane in terms of this ugly but important stretch of real estate's future. Some developers have been waiting for a silly one-way couplet on Burnside and Couch to jump-start their projects. (The boarded up Burger King, anyone?) It seems very possible that this street, with the 511 building and the recently opened DeSoto building (home to several galleries), is about to be transformed.

The feds' decision may also be a blow to the Portland Public Market, which also sought 511 as a home. I hope this doesn't bring the market closer to relocating into Union Station itself, which doesn't seem right to me. Where can we put the produce? I liked one commenter's suggestion to a previous blog post of mine: Put the public market in Memorial Coliseum and make it a retail hub (although not for big-box stores).

Meanwhile, fresh on the heels of their Idea Studios that brought James Turrell and Jacques Rancierre here, PNCA has followed a couple of singles with a home run.

The Governor and The Sliver

Today on a walk downtown,  I happened upon two spruced up old buildings with goings on.

The Governor Hotel on SW Tenth Avenue, across from the Galleria building, is coming upon its 100th anniversary. To celebrate, the hotel is having an open house this Sunday, March 9, from 12:30 to 4:30PM. It's a chance to see inside places you'd normally have to pay for, in the form of overnight lodging.

Built in 1909, the Governor was originally called the Seward Hotel and was designed by William Knighton, who also was the first State Architect for the State of Oregon.

As explained in a history of the hotel on its website, "The Seward featured Knighton's signature details still seen in the ornate art deco 'gargoyles' that surround the original building's facade and the bell-shaped architectural details seen throughout the hotel's original woodwork, column panels and even fireplace mantles."

In its more downtrodden days before its renovation, filmmaker Gus Van Sant shot a scene or two from his superlative movie My Own Private Idaho with River Phoenix and Keanu Reeves (and Tom Peterson in a non-speaking role; no Gloria, though). Several scenes from the rapturously bad Madonna movie Body of Evidence were too (hope those hot candle wax stains came out).

Not to be outdone, the adjacent Princeton Building, which the hotel took over a few years ago, also played host as a location for The Temp, a more forgettable movie with Timothy Hutton, unofficial 'Actress of the 70s' Faye Dunaway, Twin Peaks' Lara Flynn Boyle, and a character actor I like, Oliver Platt.

As I've written before, though, I was disappointed a few years ago when the Governor Hotel moved its entrance to the Princeton Building side on 11th Avenue. It brought them more space, but shoulnd't you really enter the Governor through the Governor?

Still, overall I'm very glad the hotel exists as a work of architecture -- and one of the city's minor gems, to say the very least. I also have a fond memory of once, several years ago, having breakfast with the now deceased architect James Freed, designer of the Holocaust Museum in Washington, DC after he spoke at a lecture series I helped work on for the AIA in 2001.

A few blocks away at the Gerding Theater, formerly known as the Portland Armory, the renovated structure finally seems to be getting its 'Sliver Park', a water feature and plantings along the north side. Designed by Murase Associates, it's a nice little water runoff retention system that relies on a few simple stone blocks and a modest series of waterfalls created by how that side of the building grades slighty downward towards 10th. (Coincidentally, the Armory was another renovation project that moved its front entrance to the back.)

There are still a couple of orange cones there, and the plantings have barely grown at all yet. But my first impression is that it's a lovely little place, however not even close to being a "park". We're talking about a couple of benches, a bioswale and a few long slabs of stone with a tiny strip of moving water. It's a terrific sidewalk area - just not a park. Looks to me like some nice design work and some over-hyped marketing. And while I'm griping about this nicely done project, what took so long? After all, the building was finished quite a while ago. Still, if there's anything Murase projects do well, it's creating a serene, contemplative space. Perhaps that's a fitting indication not to quabble over details of timing and labeling that will eventually wash away over time like the very rainwater (sniff, sniff) passing through the sliver's stone and bioswale.

Holst Transforms Decrepit Downtown Motel Into Hotel Modera (Updated)

The old Days Inn Portland City Center is currently undergoing a transformation into an upscale boutique hotel called Hotel Modera that will also bring the work of one of the city’s best firms, Holst Architecture, to downtown.

    The intent is to embrace the original mid-century modern original architecture. The five-story hotel has 174 rooms and suites and takes up nearly an entire city block between SW Fifth and Sixth and Columbia and Clay.  It will feature an outdoor courtyard that includes a “living wall” of vegetation, fire pits and plenty of seating.  The plaza courtyard will integrate the indoors with the outdoors and is intended to provide guests and Portlanders with a place to gather and unwind in downtown. It’s also a big improvement on the ugly surface parking lot that’s been there.

Holst created a new motor entrance and lobby off SW Clay Street to accommodate for the condemnation of the SW 6th Street motor entrance due to the new TriMet MAX light rail lines that will run adjacent to the hotel. Led by project manager Kevin Valk, the architects chose to extend the lobby out of the SW Clay Street entrance and design a courtyard with the extra space.

Through the Percentage for Art Program, TriMet has commissioned Michihiro Kosuge to install his artwork on the downtown transit mall.  This will include three sculptures fronting the courtyard of Hotel Modera. The artwork will be created from granite that has been recycled from a fountain that previously existed along the bus mall.

Specific green features of Hotel Modera include a stormwater filtration system in the courtyard, upgraded windows and HVAC, occupancy sensors, added insulation to exterior building shell, and a new reflective roofing to reduce heating island effect.

Perhaps Holst’s biggest project planned to break ground this year, however, is the new Pearl District headquarters for Ziba Design. More on that soon. But for now, it’s great to see that eyesore of a motel downtown be re-imagined, and by Holst to boot.

UPDATE 2/29: It just occurred to me that there are a couple other aging chain hotels in the downtown area that would seem ideal candidates for such a makeover. How about the Sheraton along the waterfront beside the Morrison Bridge? Although my parents spent their wedding night there 40 years ago, I never have once heard of anyone else staying there or even going there.

Perhaps another riverfront hotel, the Marriott, could also stand an upgrade. In its way, it's kind of an iconic building for Portland given its scale and site. But even Bob Frasca of Zimmer Gunsul Frasca, who designed it, has said it's not exactly the firm's proudest accomplishment. What could they do to give this place a fantastic design makeover?

UPDATE 3/5: I've replaced the images with larger, sharper ones.

More Scrutiny of Centennial Mills Plans: Nitze-Stagen Emerges

An editorial in today's Oregonian argues for the development proposal by Nitze-Stagen of Seattle (with Portland's Zimmer Gunsul Frasca as architect) to be the choice for Centennial Mills.

"It challenges the city to create an incubator for its next incarnation," the editors write. (I assume their speaking metaphorically, and not about hatching preemies.) "By bringing to the bursting-its-banks Pearl a heady mix of people with actual neighborhood jobs, it might even make the area something more than an oasis for archly cash-mered retirees." (Cash-mered: get it? Like cashmere.)

Indeed, the Nitze-Stagen proposal has a lot to like. There is a piazza for a farmer's market, a central square to show off the original buildings, a small forested park which, like nearby Tanner Springs Park, uncovers and symbolically resurrects the waterway that used to be there. There are also shops, studios, a hotel, restaurant, and more.

If there's any consensus developed so far, it's that nobody seems to like the proposal by the Baltimore-based Cordish Company -- at least for this site. The paper says their proposal is "so much fun we're already reaching for our dancing shoes." (Who gets that excited about a House of Blues or Hard Rock Cafe chain outlet? I wonder if some aging Baby Boomers with an outdated sense of cool wrote this editorial. Luckily their next point is a much better one.) "But it's ill-conceived for this site. Portland has wanted for years to develop an entertainment district around the Rose Garden. Cordish should be pitching Paul Allen, not the Portland Development Commission."

Really the Centennial Mills proposals seems to come down to those by Nitze-Stagen and LAB Holdings. They both preserve the majority of the mill buildings, unlike Cordish. The Nitze-Stagen is unquestionably more ambitious than LAB's. But with the economy tanking and ample evidence across the Willamette at the languishing Burnside Bridgehead site that an ambitious plan isn't guaranteed of ever getting built, it's definitely arguable that the LAB proposal is a far more realistic one. That said, I wouldn't choose LAB or any other plan simply out of feasibility. You do have to dream just a bit, don't you?

What's more, the LAB proposal would maintain the original mill buildings as the centerpiece of the site, while the Nitze-Stagen one would make them foothills to mountainous tall buildings planned on either side.

Nitze-Stagen has more of a local advantage. As a Seattle developer working with a Portland firm, they'd be better tuned to the nuances of our city. This would also give ZGF a foothold in the Pearl District they've never had before. I could certainly enjoy having some more architecture crafted by Eugene Sandoval and company at ZGF, especially considering how the perennially biggest firm in town has elevated its design quality in the last few years.

According to their proposal, Nitze-Stagen is also partnering with acclaimed landscape architect Peter Walker, who did the master planning for the area of the Pearl across Naito Parkway from Centennial Mills. Walker also designed the very popular Jamison Square Park and the adjacent boardwalk that would conceivably pass through Fields Park and over Naito to the mills. Having Walker on board for this project would give the area some continuity from a very capable hand.

But with Centennial Mills, I also come back to the structure of the RFP process itself. Instead of choosing three developers to make proposals, why can't we choose a qualified developer, but leave the design process and selection more open-ended? Why can't there be a competition to generate a design and not just a developer with a design and architect they've already chosen?

Also, considering that with Burnside Bridgehead PDC chose the developer team, Opus Northwest, mostly on the basis of financial resources and stability, can we feel comfortable that they'll use the right reasoning this time around? Who are the people who'll ultimately make this decision -- and how much do they really understand design compared to balance sheets?

Personally, I'm not completely ready to say whether I would choose the Nitze-Stagen or LAB Holdings proposal. Both would have their advantages and disadvantages. I'm starting to warm to Nitze-Stagen's after initially favoring LAB's, but considering that Nitze-Stagen's proposal took so long to load (34 megabytes!) I had to leave the computer for awhile, I haven't made it through the proposal (or the others) in its entirety.

What's the word around the campfire from the rest of you out there reading these proposals?

A First Look at Centennial Mills Development Finalists: Would Less Be More?

A few days ago, following a national search for a developer of the Centennial Mills site, the Portland Development Commission announced its three finalist proposals. They come from LAB Holding of Costa Mesa, California; the Cordish Company of Baltimore (a.k.a. "Balmer"); and Nitze-Stagen of Seattle.

I’m not an expert on all of the criteria PDC was asking for. I also haven’t yet given a meticulous run-through of all the details surrounding each of these three proposals. But after reading about each in The Oregonian and online, my personal first impulse is that I’m disappointed by at least two of the three candidates.

Both Nitze-Stagen and especially the Cordish Company are proposing several very large buildings on the site that would overwhelm the original Centennial Mills structures or wipe them away all together. In the latter case, looking at the Cordish proposal, I can’t see any of the old mill buildings. (Maybe they're not the right fit for a Hard Rock Cafe.) Nitze-Stagen’s proposal seems to retain more of the buildings, but there are tall thin towers surrounding them.

For that basic reason, my first impulse is that I much prefer the LAB Holding proposal (shown in the photo at top). They’re calling it SEED and, according to Stephen Beaven’s report in The Oregonian, would focus on restaurants, entertainment, green retailers and open space.  Their basic proposal is based around food, and I like how the were cheeky enough to include a famous old Brillat-Savarin quote, "Tell me what you eat, and I will tell you what you are", that began each episode of the original Japanese Iron Chef.

The wildly different scales and ambitions here are reflected in the cost. LAB is proposing a $57.4 project, largely financed privately. Cordish has a $368 million development in mind, with $107 million in public subsidies. Nitze-Stagen’s plan is harder to decipher: according to the paper, they would pay PDC up to $8 million for the land but also require an as-yet-undetermined (very clever, guys) amount of public financing.

As a design enthusiast, I’d be willing to support the more expensive plans if they seemed like the better ones. But at least in the Cordish and Nitze-Stagen renderings, I just see a collection of somewhat banal looking modern buildings. And what’s more, they’d be fairly tall structures sitting right on the waterfront. Even if the zoning allows it, is this what we want?

Here’s another thing that makes me skeptical: Yesterday I happened to be interviewing Tiffany Sweitzer, head of Hoyt Street Properties, which owns and is developing all of the condos and greenspace directly across from the Centennial Mills site. Sweitzer told me that none of the three developers approached her company to talk about how the massive greenspace, condo towers and boardwalk would connect with Centennial Mills. If I’d have been one of the developers going for this job, this would be one of the first calls I’d have made. Are the three finalists PDC selected really telling us that they have zero interest in integrating their proposals with the surrounding urban fabric?

I don’t mean to go on record at this point saying I unequivocally love the LAB Holding proposal. You can’t do that from one rendering and a few bullet points in the paper about their proposal. And if I did, that choice would be a process of elimination.

There are individual things to like in all three of these proposals. I like the central piazza proposed by Nitze-Stagen and the inclusion of local institutions such as OMSI or even Portland Public Schools. Cordish would include a waterfront ampitheater and an extension of the Willamette River Greenway Trail. LAB would have a public market there, which would finally end a search for a home that’d make the Israelites blush.

More than anything, I wonder if the intent is to squeeze too much into this Centennial Mills site in an effort to make it viable. Everybody talks about it being green, or putting a maritime museum there, but it seems like they’re just throwing in as many ideas as possible, like leftover veggies from the fridge into a soup pot. And unless they’re holding something back, I don’t see any evidence that any of the three developers has made great design a priority.

All three developers will present their proposals and answer questions at an open house from 6-9PM Wednesday, February 20, at the Pacific Northwest College of Art (1241 NW Johnson).

The Case of the Irvington Squire

In this ongoing era of Portland’s sometimes stressful densification in historic neighborhoods, the latest proposed building project to draw the ire of neighbors and the attention of city regulators is at the corner of 15th Avenue and Hancock Street in historic Irvington.

Called the Irvington Squire, the project would add 18 condominiums in a quarter-block building of potentially six stories and 71 feet. That’s a size within ‘RH’ zoning code strictures. The neighborhood is asking for 55 feet. However, Irvington is designated as a ‘Historic Conservation District’ and there is an effort underway to give the neighborhood additional protection as a full fledged Historic District. What’s the difference? I really don’t quite grasp it myself. But the bottom line seems to be that this building is within the range it’s legally allowed to be, but that the city may still have some leeway in approving or not approving the project.

“The Historic Design Guidelines clearly would preclude such a building,” one Irvington resident who is against the Squire, Jim Heuer, said by email. “The very big question is can the Historic Design Guidelines trump zoning? Based on the first Landmarks Commission review of this project, the Commissioners are divided as to whether they have the right to turn down a building that would be permitted by the zoning in the absence of the Historic Design Guidelines.  Which, of course, raises the question: why have a Historic Landmarks Commission and Historic Design Guidelines?”

Clearly some people in Irvington are concerned not just about this project, but about  density in the neighborhood in general. A flier sent out by the Irvington Community Association last month for a meeting about the building had as its major headline, “Is Irvington about to become ‘Pearlington’?”

I think that particular quote is being a bit silly. Density is coming to historic neighborhoods, and that's not necessarily a bad thing. The Pearl is a success story, not a cautionary tale. Granted, Irvington is a place of single and two-story homes, but it's also adjacent to the Broadway-Weidler shopping/retail area. Even if the Squire itself should be rejected, Irvington should get some high-density condos as long as the city continues growing. No matter what tax bracket most Irvingtonites are in, their neighborhood shouldn't be immune from the future.

The Squire would be sited next door to the Gustav Freiwald House (currently home to The Lion & The Rose bed and breakfast), which is listed on the National Register. Some would argue the Freiwald would be dwarfed by the Squire. However, there are numerous taller buildings nearby, such as highrise housing one block over at 14th and Hancock.

The project comes courtesy of a Lake Oswego developer and is designed by a small Portland firm, Perkins Architectural. The design is a neo-historic style that seeks to ape some of the historic architecture nearby. This also brings up the continual argument of whether neo-historic honors or patronizes the actual historic architecture nearby. I, as regular readers know, definitely prefer modern design, but I can’t tell you that the Perkins design for the Irvington Squire is some pitiful work of cartoonishly faux design, either. Although as the project's opponents point out, it could probably benefit from greater setbacks and landscaping.

But Heuer had this to say: "One of the many objections that people had was that in this case 'faux historic' architectural style was an insult to the neighborhood, as it assumed that a grotesquely oversized building could be made palatable to the community by dressing it up with some cornices.  Further it was suggested that if a modern building had to be constructed next to the Queen Anne Styled Freiwald House, it should be minimally ornamented to provide an unobtrusive backdrop to the ornate historic structure."

What do you make of the Squire and its right to land in Irvington?

A Great Move By Powells

When I started writing the Portland Architecture blog three years ago this month, the very first post (after the one that said, "Welcome to the blog") was about Powells Books.

I've long felt that the store, considering its cultural landmark status here and how it anchors the Brewery Blocks area as a gate between downtown and the Pearl District, has a responsibility to make their buildings better. Granted, no one wants Portland to lose the rough edges that balance out its more glossy new condo buildings. But having a single-story building along Burnside with a shabby facade isn't good enough for Powells.

Now, the nation's largest new-used bookseller is stepping up with a plan to renovate the store's entrance and principal rooms at the Southeast corner entrance by 2010.

Of course not all renovations are created equal, and while it's exciting to imagine a new front door and more space, I'm not at all a fan of the architecture that Powells favored in its last renovation, of the Northwest corner in 2000, which has a very bland and neo-traditional look that seems counter to the spirit of Powells and Portland. I'm not saying they need some clean-lined modernist look with no grit or enduring power to it, but there ought to be a happy medium, ya know?

Powells' entrance also sits at a very key corner, of Burnside and Southwest 10th. If they're renovating and expanding that building, it will also be important to integrate it with the surrounding environment. There's talk of making Burnside and Couch into one-way couplets (an idea I'm vehemently against). How might that affect the architectural decisions? Is there a way to do something special with that intersection? I once heard architect extraordinaire Rick Potestio suggest some kind of plaza there with the buildings themselves curved to create some kind of grand circular public space. At the very least, Powells seems better served with widened sidewalks on a two-way Burnside than being hemmed in by two one-way streets.

Regardless of Burnside's plan, though, we're finally getting a fixed-up Powells, and I'm excited to see how second-generation Powells head Emily Powell puts her stamp on the job. And Emily, just on the outside chance that you read this, how about opening up the dialog about who you hire as an architect?

TVA Unveils Revised UO Arena Design

Bob Thompson and his firm, TVA Architects, have released a new design for the University of Oregon's arena that is more transparent -- arguably making it, to the project's benefit, a little more like Portland's Memorial Colisseum and less like the Rose Garden.

I was a fan of the previous, more boxy design, but this clearly seems to be a step up. There will be a lot more light entering the arena now, especially at the perimeter. A building of this massive scale needs to be transparent, I think, to avoid the common problem of being a closed-off, monolithic presence on the landscape.

One of the new features beside the glassier exerior and more curving form, according to a report in today's Oregonian, will be a wooden seating bowl that harkens back to Duck fans' beloved Mac Court. This would also add some greater natural materiality to TVA's work, which is always very sleek and modern.

Naturally there are still a lot of questions to be answered, from financing for the arena to priorities at the UO given that overall academic performance there is in decline. There may also be further opportunities to integrate the building with its environment. That said, as both a Duck fan and design enthusiast I'm overall very pleased.

Originally I had several other images to show of the arena design, but UO is being silly about releasing them and has pulled TVA's reigns.  When the university eases off its paranoia and takes a chill pill, I'll try to post some more.

More High Density Growing Pains: Award Winning Up-And-Comer Works Partnership's Latest Critized as 'Brutal'

An article by Tyler Graf in yesterday's Daily Journal of Commerce highlights a seemingly controversial new condo project near Montgomery Park at NW Upshur and 26th.

The site occupies an entire block in this borderline zone (along with the adjacent Vaughn Street) between residential and industrial areas. It is to be six stories in a neighborhood with mostly smaller two and three-story ones. In the DJC article, neighbors from the La Torre condominiums next door to the project, including Academy Award winning animator Joan Gratz, express worry and even a little hostility. She even is quoted as saying, "It makes you wonder what (architecture) school they went to," and complains that the development would "block views, create street congestion and tower over the sleepy hillside."

I'd paraphrase that as another day in the more or less healthy development of a city.

One thing I didn't get from the DJC article is the important context that the firm designing this project is an especially good one: Works Partnership. They've won multiple AIA awards over the last couple of years, and their hand has been all over the Central Eastside with renovations of the East Bank Commerce Center and the more recently rehabbed B&O Warehouse. Their B-Side6 office building planned for lower East Burnside is turning lots of heads for its powerfully bold look. They're definitely one of my favorite firms in town.

This has also become such a broken record in Portland: a project comes along that goes to the allowable height limit on a key street or at a key intersection, but it turns out that allowable height feels incongruent and too high for some of the nearby neighbors. It's not to say they some of these neighbor complaints don't have merit, but too often I think these people criticize the design simply because they haven't come to terms with how the new building's perfectly allowable scale is going to change their patch of the urban fabric. But cities change, and Portland is on a multi-decade path of big growth. Too much of it is happening on the suburban outskirts anyway. Even with the Urban Growth Boundary, we're not preventing sprawl. We're just slowing it down a little more. This latest project on Upshur is just the latest example of a worthy project that also represents growing pains.

I exchanged email with Bill Neburka of Works Partnership, and he stressed that the design process is an ongoing one, but that they've worked hard to involve the neighbors and do much more than they're required to in order to meet La Torre and other neighbors' concerns. (He also stressed that the attached images are very preliminary.) Here's more of Neburka's comments:

"Our office and the developer, George Hale, have made great efforts to incorporate the La Torre residents' concerns into the massing of the building, including an overall reconfiguration to shift mass away from that condo building and provide additional light and air not required (by any measure of) the zoning code.  Minimum required setback we have looked to increase that up to almost double. The La Torre condominium itself does not meet the current set-back requirements of its CS zoning (abutting a residential zone), and we are trying to be mindful of this existing condition.  We have met with the NW neighborhood association twice, are scheduled to meet with the La Torre condo association on Saturday, and have another meeting set up with the neighborhood association next Thursday. We have stated many times that it is our intent that this building contributes to the Northwest neighborhood and the city of Portland in a positive way.  This is a big building, but it is a very valuable city-block sized site (40,000 square feet) with existing high-density zoning.

In conjunction with larger format apartments, this courtyard typology has explicitly been encouraged by the planning department and public officials as a way to increase the density of the central city and and encourage family oriented living without sacrificing overall livability. I think the idea that a 100,000+ sf building is going to resemble a single family house or a semi-detached rowhouse is really unreasonable.

It is, of course, a modern building that looks to modulate the scale of its mass through a series of screened exterior zones/facades and glass connector bars.  The final material selection has not been determined. We are looking at a wide variety of materials to form a simple palette, from metal to wood to brick. I have no idea where the DJC writer came up with reflective metal.  We will try to achieve a subtle richness and variation from whatever the final palette is. But we have worked earnestly to create the beginnings of a relevant piece of fabric architecture, rather than pandering to a knee-jerk historicism that would be both insincere and patronizing to the many beautiful (truly) historical residential buildings in the Northwest."

If one wants to take on a condo project that doesn't fit with the neighborhood, a better target might be the nouveau historic building planned -- and being fought -- in Irvington.

What Ever Happened to Burnside Bridgehead?

Remember a few years ago when there was a big to-do over which developer would win the Portland Development Commission's RFP contract for the Burnside Bridgehead? You can be forgiven if it's a foggy memory by now. In fact, it was a full four years ago that PDC first floated the idea of having a big-box retail outlet there, before withdrawing the plan amidst widespread community uproar against it.

As I read in Lee Perlman's Southeast Examiner report, but has also been reported in bigger media outlets, the winner of the Bridgehead development rights, Opus Northwest, has been unable to find a non-big-box anchor tenant. They're now asking PDC for more "flexibility" in choosing one. According to the article I read, an Opus representative told members at a Buckman Community Association meeting that while it won't be Wal-Mart or Home Depot, it ought rightfully to be able to be something popular like Ikea. It seems to me that's just a way of pointing out that people's feelings about retailers are not all the same, and trying to use that as a wedge to get approval for big-box scaled retailers there.

Opus, unlike the two other developer finalists for the Bridgehead job, also has in its plan improvements paid for by PDC to facilitate Northeast Couch as part of a new couplet with Burnside, as per Commissioner Sam Adams' proposal. Other causes for delay cited Opus says have been PDC's fault: securing zoning changes for the property and relocating tenants of the Convention Plaza office buildings on the site. PDC, according to Lee Perlman's Examiner article, has conceded some blame on this. But the other big factors are "the collapse of the condominium market and other changes in the marketplace, rendering Opus's original development plan unfeasible."

Let me ask you this: If we had to choose between an Opus-developed Burnside Bridgehead that supplants their original plan with a big-box retailer or having PDC select a new developer, what would our answer be? On one hand, you can't blame Opus for the market changing, or for delays on the PDC side. Yet I can't help but wonder if Gerding Edlen or Beam Development could make something interesting and more architecturally compelling happen here without, say, a Lowe's occupying one of the most prime riverfront spots in the central city. If PDC were to select a new developer, it might further delay something happening here. And regardless of how one feels about Opus, might there be a risk that kicking them out undermines the integrity of such a city-sponsored selection process? What kind of message does that send to companies vying for, say, the Centennial Mills development rights?

Personally, I think if the original plan no longer works economically, even by Opus's admission, then PDC should hold some kind of intervention to jump-start things in terms of ideas and brainstorming. With all this dour economic, legal and real estate talk, it's easy to forget what an incredible site this is, right along Burnside and MLK and the bridge and the river, all directly across from Downtown, Old Town, and the Pearl. What kind of use do we want there? What works? But it may also have been a mistake to put developers first and their designs second, as this RFP process did. What if we were to have some other kind of setup that favored both economics and design.

I also can't help but wonder if there necessarily should be one developer handling all of this big Bridgehead development. Why not parcel it out to a few different ones working in tandem? After all, too often these big developers tend to have one firm design a cluster of buildings in these big developments. It's an understandable from the developer's point of view, but in terms of the good of the city I'd much rather see a variety of different firms working here on a variety of building types.

One other bit of interesting news I picked up in Perlman's article. At the aforementioned Buckman Community Association meeting, Bruce Wood of Opus said his company is negotiating with a potential 8,000 square foot performing arts hall, and a 25,000 square foot museum. Who might they be? If there's a new museum planning to set up shop there, or an existing one planning to move, that ought to be significant news in and of itself. Portland really needs a major contemporary art museum. It's terrific having all these young arts organizations here like the Portland Art Center, Organism and Disjecta celebrating the huge influx of emerging artists to the city. But any major urban city worth its stripe has a contemporary art museum. That should be on Portland's big-item wish list along with a new concert hall, relocating the east bank freeway, and a robust network of streetcars.

No Overlooking SERA's NewInterstate Condo

Being that it’s the first new condo infill project along the Interstate Avenue corridor with its still relatively newfangled MAX line, The Overlook probably will not (despite its name) fail to be noticed. If the renderings and the look of it during late-period construction provide an accurate picture, the project -- situated next to the St. Stanislaus Catholic church (they put on the wonderful Polish Festival each September), and developed by one of its members -- also seems to have the potential to be some very nice architecture.

Speaking about The Overlook by email, Kurt Schultz of SERA Architects, the firm behind the project, emphasized that sales prices had to be kept affordable for entry-level buyers, who comprised The Overlook’s target demographic. He also said the design sought to capture the spirit of Interstate Avenue, which has a handful of surviving mid-century modern old motor hotels that survive today, several decades after Interstate 5’s construction rendered this onetime main highway into a regular old city street. (And a very, very slow one to drive now if you choose a car over MAX.) Schultz also mentioned the influence of housing projects in Switzerland by the likes of Baumshlager and Eberle: very crisp, boxy minimalist stuff. (John Echlin, a leading principal at SERA, worked previously in Switzerland, but apparently isn't neutral about the design aesthetic there.)

The Overlook project is composed of a floating ‘box’ containing the residential units with the units facing north and south, “with extensive glazing for optimal daylighting and more controlled openings on the east and west facing an alley and Interstate,” the architect added.

Material wise, SERA is using screen grilles (and balcony railings) made out of colored Trex boards on the upper floors, “for longevity and sustainability to filter the light and protect private balconies from the noise of Interstate, which creates interesting degrees of solid and filtered voids on the east and west sides.” Trex is a composite of wood and plastic usually used in decking. The screens are not on the building in the photos here that I took, but apparently will be soon. The ground floor is clad in vertical standing seam metal wall panels.

The ground floor will have a retail space on one corner and the condo’s lobby on the other. Each glazed corner entry is set back significantly to accentuate the sense that the three stories above are floating from the rest of the mass.

Although the project is not seeking LEED certification, SERA designed it to meet the standards of a LEED ‘Silver’ building.

The dedication of the project was actually last week, but The Overlook is actually set to be completed next year.

So will this project be remembered as a tipping point for condo-building on Interstate, or will the somewhat stagnant economy make it a stand-alone building for awhile, like Cascadian Court in the Lloyd District? Either way, I’m cautiously very encouraged by what I see of the building coming together. Some of the material I saw on the back of the building looked a little weird at first glance, like something synthetic trying to look natural. But overall this seems very handsome, particularly for a project on a tight budget.

A Second Look at the City's Courtyard Housing Competition

Last month when I wrote about the City of Portland planning department's Courtyard Housing competition, it was mainly to announce that winners were about to be announced, as well as to look at the role such a housing type could play in the city's ongoing densification.

Today I decided to have a closer look at the competition winners and to go back and look at the comments to my own post after the winners were announced.

The biggest question mark, both for the competition and for the city itself as courtyard housing potentially goes forward, is what the shared open space is really for. Is it a place for people to park their cars, and then for kids to play on as an afterthought? Or is the courtyard meant to be a green space without autos or a concrete/asphalt surface?

The city has a difficult balancing act to pull off in a situation like this. They have to be pragmatic about what the market wants (or its perception) and what developers are likely to build. Indications from the buying public is that they usually strongly prefer having off-street parking, so developers naturally respond to that and the city in turn. But when you have a design competition involving courtyards, as many people have pointed out, that traditionally refers more to a green open space.

A large motivating factor for the city in holding the courtyard housing competition is to provide affordable housing options for families. That means more bedrooms and open space outside. So the better family option, you could argue, is courtyards with greenery, not asphalt. And for those of us who are looking at these designs not as possible future dwellings of our own, but merely as additions to the city we judge aesthetically, a true courtyard without the parking-first mentality is a much more attractive looking space. But if you're a developer looking to bet your business on a multi-unit project like this, removing on-site parking could be a major gamble.

Looking at the entries, I quicly felt torn about what my criteria should be. My natural inclination was to search for images of good-looking architecture. It's more fun to look at nice sculptural aspects of architecture than to ponder site plans and stormwater treatment strategies. Yet that's of course a much different means of valuation than it would be for someone expecting to live or build there.

For example, looking at the Inner Portland category (there was also an outer category), I liked the second and third place (the Merit and Citation) award winners pictured above better aesthetically than the top prize winner, the honor award (pictured below). The Merit and Citation winners had more clean-lined, handsome architecture to them, although the top Honor award winner was arguably at a more appropriate scale for a starter family home and seemingly of rougher, cheaper materials. So it's hard for me to say I disagree for the jury, even as I feel pretty sure I know I would prefer at least a couple of the runners up as better looking additions to the city.

Having said all this, the real issue may not be aesthetics or even planning, but the process of getting developers to build these designs. On its website FAQ, the competition text says, "The City of Portland intends to facilitate built projects based on the winning designs, potentially through means such as providing funding to aid in adapting designs to actual building sites and through encouraging developers to partner with winning designers in an anticipated design-build competition." Will this fulfill the promise of better designed high-density architecture? After all, that's the whole point.

AIA Center Opens With Yeon Exhibit

After a series of delays that saw its original early-fall opening pushed back, the new AIA/Portland Center for Architecture is throwing open the doors of its new Pearl District home at NW 11th and Flanders.

The first exhibit will be a retrospective on John Yeon, who ranks with Pietro Belluschi, A.E. Doyle and John Storrs among the top Portland architects of the 20th Century. Unlike those designers, however, Yeon's principal focus was houses. But Yeon certainly made his mark there. Throughout Portland and the Oregon coast are several gems he designed. Organized by Randy Gragg, the former Oregonian architecture critic and founding editor of the new Portland Spaces magazine making its debut in January, this AIA/CFA exhibit is based largely on Yeon's 1977 retrospective at the Portland Art Museum. (Wow, they used to do exhibits on design at PAM?) But Randy has also added numerous drawings, writings and new photographs that haven't been exhibited before.

Randy also wrote an essay for Arcade, the fine Seattle-based regional architecture magazine, about Yeon. I particularly enjoyed this passage about Yeon's talent seen in the circa-1937 Watzek House now owned by the University of Oregon that still stands in the West Hills:

"The house seamlessly blends a vast array of Modernist technical and formal innovations with a cunning use of historical precedent. Camouflaged in rough-sawn fir siding and fronted by a seeming bland (but studiously abstract) entrance, the house immediately opens to a world of breathtaking detail and craftsmanship, from the courtyard garden to the final crescendo of a floor-to-ceiling, glazed view of Mount Hood.

Published internationally and exhibited next to Frank Lloyd Wright’s Falling Water in the Museum of Modern Art’s 10th Anniversary exhibit, the house became one of the major icons of an the emerging West Coast interpretation of Modernism, the “Northwest Regional Style.” Yet in his radical reconfiguration of a veritable catalog of spatial effects and formal details from the architecture and landscape design of the past, he presages the most sophisticated notions of Postmodernism. Synthesizing elements of everything from urban Chinese gardens to the theatrics of Karl Friederich Schinkel, Yeon’s goal was to architecturally dramatize the procession from nature to culture and back."

In the months and years ahead after Yeon's exhibit, look for the CFA to be a gathering place for the design community in a way that the old AIA headquarters, for all its cool surfaces, probably didn't have. The AIA gallery should be more of a real player now in the local art scene, showcasing the efforts of great local architects past and present. And any number of art and community voices should consider the Center a gathering place for meetings, entertainment, and engagement.

(AIA/Portland is also a sponsor of this website.)

"In the Land of Influence", the opening Yeon retrospective, officially opens tomorrow with First Thursday, which given the AIA's new location closer to the hub of Pearl galleries should significantly add to its foot traffic. I used to work at the AIA in its SW Fourth Avenue location years ago, and there were some very nice exhibits that went largely unseen by the larger local art community. That should change now. If you're like me, and prefer to do your gallery hopping outside of First Thursday, the Yeon exhibit is actually up now.

A First Look at UO's White Stag Block

Earlier this week I toured the cluster of three buildings in Old Town at the edge of the Burnside Bridge being renovated into a new home for the University of Oregon's Portland Center, the White Stag block, under the design supervision of Fletcher Farr Ayotte.

Comprised of the White Stag Building (1907), the Skidmore Block (1889) and the Bickel Block (1883), the new UO home is in its late stages of construction now, with a move-in planned for February. Inside there will be numerous classrooms, offices, and meeting spaces, all connected with lots of wide-open public spaces that double as introducer of natural light.

But that's only the start of the green features (appropriate for UO, by the way). Rainwater harvesting will allow gray-water to be used for all toilets and urinals, reducing water usage by 86 percent. The building will also be 30 percent more energy-efficient than ASHRAE code standards. That is very, very impressive for an old cluster of buildings on the National Register with lots of restrictions for reconstruction. Photovoltaic solar panels will also be installed on the roof, presumably beside the 'Made In Oregon' sign.

And speaking of the sign, I'm told that could change slightly. The deer is restricted, and even the typeface and size. However, 'Made' could possibly changed to 'University of'', which seems a fair move since the 'Made in Oregon' text isn't original. Actually, neither is the White Stag brand that most people remember. Originally it was a sign for White Satin sugar. Apparently somewhere there is an old photo of Roy Rogers riding his horse Trigger across the Burnside Bridge during the Rose Parade with the White Satin sign in the background.

Although it's hard to tell with the hard hats, dust and hammering still going on, it clearly seemed like the middle portion between the buildings with nicely preserved brick cladding a kind of mini-winter garden, and a ceiling atrium flooding the space with illumination, will be an extra special place to be. I also liked the studio space reserved for architecture classes on the southeast corner of the White Stag building, where big look out onto the eternally under construction Burnside bridge.

Of the three buildings, the White Stag one seems the least interesting, with a very simple brick palette that seems like it could have come from any time in the 20th Century, but both the Bickel and Skidmore buildings are wonderful examples of classic late 19th century Portland architecture with handsome detailing and color. That the mostly front Naito Parkway and Waterfront Park gives the project the chance not only to re-invigorate Old Town, but the waterfront as well.

As such, I was disappointed to hear that the main entrance to the Portland Center will be on Couch Street, not on Naito Parkway as the architecture seems to indicate. However, it sounds like a future renovation could easily restore the entrance at the front of the building where it belongs. And even if it doesn't, it's clear that this project will be a real catalyst for this area, achieving laudable historic preservation in prime downtown real estate while setting up the most downtrodden area in the central city for a real renaissance.

It's all so nice, I can almost make myself forget that the UO's football team has arguably suffered its most tragic season in its entire 113-year history.

PNCA vs. Public Market and the Emergence of NW Broadway

It's really a shame: the 511 Building on Northwest Broadway, ideally situated just a few blocks north of Downtown between the Pearl District and Old Town, has undergone a tug of war between two very worthy candidates.

First the Portland Public Market somewhat abruptly went for the striking Italian Renaissance structure, abandoning its previous plan to target Union Station. (I never could completely wrap my head around the idea of a public market in a train station anyway.) The Pacific Northwest College of Art then eyed 511 for its rapidly expanding school. When the Portland Development Commission held the reins, it looked like the market might have an inside track. But PNCA smartly targeted the federal government, which owns the building, and now might not only get the building but get it for free - and a renovation by Brad Cloepfil and Allied Works to boot.

The circa-1918 building does indeed seem well suited for both parties. PNCA would be several blocks from its existing building, which doesn't make for much of a campus. But the school only rents its current home, so PNCA could eventually give that one up. (That'd be a shame, by the way. I love the big warehouse they occupy.) The market only would have needed the ground floor, and in their proposal for 511 it looks as though housing would have gone above.

Which begs the question: is there any way a public market could go on the ground floor of 511 and have PNCA classes above?

There are actually two similar buildings anticipating future uses and tenants on this stretch of NW Broadway, the other of course being the US Customs House just down the street and its comparable French Renaissance/Italian Revival style. It was built in 1901 and expanded in 1938.

A couple years ago the General Services Administration decided to give up the Customs House, and the University of Oregon had its sights on the place. But the GSA favored a hotel developer over the UO, which seemed very uncool then and does today in my mind. Meanwhile, the developer hasn't moved any closer to putting a hotel on the property. Why not let the market occupy the ground floor of that building? I'd guess that many visitors to a potential hotel there would find a big market underneath an added attraction.

This stretch of NW Broadway, moving from Burnside Street north to the Broadway Bridge past Union Station and the post office, has long been under-utilized. It's not to say there are lots of vacancies here; you have various dance clubs, restaurant suppliers, and various other modest small businesses. But it seems like there could be so much more "On Broadway", as the George Benson song goes. Perhaps the greatest symbol here is the boarded-up Burger King at the corner of Broadway and Burnside, seemingly one of the more important intersections in the city but largely wasted. Even if the Burger King were still churning out Whoppers it'd be a shame to have a single-story fast food restaurant here.

One can only assume that if Portland continues developing its central city at roughly the same pace it has over the last 20 years (or even slower for that matter), NW Broadway will ultimately be transformed into a grander avenue befitting its location. A revitalized Union Station, a hotel, condos, an art school, and a public market are just some of the possibilities. Can we make it all fit? I bet those PNCA kids would enjoy shopping at the market, as would future high-speed rail passengers at Union Station.

And while we're at it, an even bigger property -- the post office across from Union Station -- could very well change over and be redeveloped. It could be another Brewery Blocks, or if we screw up, another Burnside Bridgehead.

Today NW Broadway seems almost like a sink hole that you hop over when moving between the Pearl and Old Town or Downtown. I hope that PNCA and the public market people aren't just stuck in a game of musical chairs, but can both occupy a place on this encouragingly transforming street.