Portland Architecture

Lever Architecture's Thomas Robinson discusses PNCA's new Park Blocks residence hall

PNCA ArtHouse (rendering courtesy Lever Architecture)

BY BRIAN LIBBY

Last autumn, top honors at the annual AIA/Portland Design Awards went to a small, new Portland firm with some big credentials.

Lever Architecture, which won an Honor Award for a digital animation studio in Glendale, California, has only been in operation since 2009. But the work of its founding principal, Thomas Robinson, has long stood out. Robinson spent most of the past decade as a principal at the internationally acclaimed Portland firm Allied Works, collaborating with Brad Cloepfil on projects like the University of Michigan Museum of Art and the Seattle Art Museum.

As if the pedigree of designing for Portland's most renowned firm weren't enough, Robinson also previously worked for what is arguably the world's top firm, Herzog & de Meuron of Switzerland, which has crafted internationally praised architectural landmarks like the National Olympic Stadium (aka "The Bird's Nest") in Beijing and the Tate Modern museum in London. Robinson worked for Herzog & DeMeuron on the DeYoung Museum in San Francisco.

Robinson and Lever Architecture's latest design is a seven-story, 55,000 square foot mixed-use dormitory called ArtHouse with ground-floor retail space, on the site of the former Powell's Technical Bookstore on the North Park Blocks. The existing building there, a two-story former automobile dealership, dates to 1916 but does not have any historic-architectual protection. Powell's is a co-developer of the project, along with Project^.

Model of PNCA ArtHouse (courtesy Lever Architecture)

"It’s at this pivotal point between the pearl, downtown and Old Town/Chinatown," Robinson says. "We thought of it as a hinge, a gateway. It’s also part of Powell’s. It’s also part of the future of PNCA, expanding into the park blocks. We thought from an urban and from a cultural point of view, that was an exciting point of connection."

Robinson says he can appreciate the handsomeness of the old building and the need for responsible historic preservation in the city. "I think Emily Powell put it best in the response to the neighborhood association," Robinson explains. "She said, 'I have a very strong connection to the building. But is it working? It’s been sitting empty for two years.' To make the project work, it needed to be a new building."

If tearing down the old Powell's Technical Bookstore building gives pause, Robinson says the future of the Park Blocks and PNCA's presence there gets people excited. "There’s always been this idea with the PNCA master plan to keep students in the Pearl. Because the Pearl needs that. It really does. I think that’s why we presented to the Pearl Neighborhood Association. They were really excited, by both the concept and the building itself."

Model of PNCA ArtHouse (image courtesy Lever Architecture)

Lever's proposed design, which was received favorably in last week's Design Advice Request meeting with the city's Design Commission, features a design noteworthy in how it plays with light, both as it relates to the interior and exterior.

On the inside, deep cuts into the facade bring light far into the corridors."One of the key things was to think about bringing daylight into the corridors at level and in every direction. That in a way came first," Robinson explains. "It seems very simple, but it doesn’t even exist in many of the most luxurious condos in the Pearl. When you look at a typical quarter block plan it’s always an ‘L’. We tried to break those pieces apart to allow daylight to come in from every direction. It's basically like four buildings. If you take a quarter block…we thought, could we come up with a different way of breaking the ‘L’ up? We’ve actually been able to expand one way, and then expand another way. We could actually use the overlap space to bring more light and air in."

On the facade itself, the Lever design seeks to create depth and play of light and shadow like the neighborhood's older brick buildings, only using metal panels.

"You have these great existing buildings on the park blocks, these old brick warehouses. We asked, 'Why do people like these buildings?' One answer is the play of light on the bricks and on the fenestrations, and also just the level of detail. While we know we can’t build low-bearing brick buildings with that authenticity, but we can use some of the characteristics: the depth of the window openings, the play of light on the ridged façade."

The PNCA project, slated to achieve a Gold LEED rating, is comprised of chevron-shaped panels that Robinson says allow the building to have a more variegated surface; the light bounces and changes color as it hits the surface. "One thing the Pearl Neighborhood Association talked about is a lack of depth and fenestration on the newer generation of buildings there," Robinson adds. "That’s one thing they really liked about this project. That was a big part of it, to think about how you could use light as a material to give another level of depth…it’s taking one element, repeating that, and using it to create a sense…a type of architecture people understand."

The building is also set back from the sidewalk, in order to have room for tables and congregation of people at the street level.  "The building is not all about maximizing space," the architect adds. "It’s about being smart about creating spaces for contributing to the life of the Park Blocks at the street level. Part of that is creating setbacks so you can have outdoor seating. A condo developer would be more inclined to maximize every inch of space. We’re saying by adding this space for tables, it makes a much more attractive retail and public space. If you can have the space to sit outside, people are going to want to be there. If you put everything to the edge and there’s no space, it’s more challenging."

Another Pearl-condo tendency Robinson avoided was a tall-ceilinged first floor. "I think visually sometimes it’s nice to have a high first floor. But from the street, sometimes it’s nice that it’s not so high. If you look at some of the older buildings, they’re not so high, and in modern buildings, there’s this high first floor. From a scale point of view, that’s not always comfortable for me. I think we want to create a human scale at the first floor that’s not overwhelming. We want to make the life of the building very evident at the street entrance: framing experience and also creating experiences that you walk into and start to feel as if you’re in the frame. Really the most important space in the building is the park. I think one of the things we’re thinking about is that connection, both in how you experience the park from every level, and also how when you’re in the building you’re visually part of the park. One of the things we thought of a great example of a building that’s changed an area is the Ace Hotel. It has a very dark base but the program is very apparent close to the surface, with people in the lobby and Stumptown. We want to bring that type of life to the edge of the building."

The new PNCA building will also have an interior rain garden that processes all of the rainwater used on site, but on the ground floor rather than a rooftop. "If you look at the plan, the idea that this garden is visibly connected to the park outside was an important concept. It treats all the water that comes from the building. We thought of the garden as a still life that’s framed. We’re working with Lango Hansen to think of ways we could innovate with a rain garden, with the planting. It can become a focal point: the idea of a rain garden as something you see. We’re really excited about that. A lot of the buildings in the pearl have green roofs on them, but you don’t know it."

Meanwhile, Lever's animation studio in Glendale, California - designed for a major Hollywood movie and entertainment company which so far wishes to remain anonymous - continues to accrue accolades, not only on the design awards front but from the building's occupants and visitors. Not unlike Allied Works' Wieden + Kennedy headquarters, it's a renovation that soars above its original by cutting into the building to create connections, and then embracing natural reclaimed materials (especially wood) inside.

Glendale animation studio (photos by Jeremy Bitterman)

"It’s changed their thinking about what a workspace can be," Robinson says. "It was a windowless warehouse with parking around it. Now people are using this space on weekends for events. They’re having to coordinate who uses it. It started with a really simple premise: a space where the whole company could gather. How do you create that space but make it still seem alive when no one’s in it? We worked carefully on how the café relates to that space, to the exterior, and to the landscape. We were always making sure that spaces like the conference rooms and theaters and where people gather were entered through that space.

Having followed architecture and architects in Portland for the past 13 years or so, I'm excited about the growing presence of Lever Architecture. Though Allied Works remains arguably the city's most talented firm, not since the arrival of small shops like Works Partnership and Atelier Waechter in the 2000s has a firm broken into the handful of top designers in town to rival stalwarts like Holst, Skylab and THA Architecture.

Robinson says he chose the firm name Lever because it represents a simple tool that can have a transformative effect: a kind of hinge or fulcrum that allows motion and the easy shifting of energy. As the North Park Blocks, the Pearl and the broader city transform, it's nice to know Lever will be there to enable and to re-imagine.

 

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Metro revives headquarters hotel proposal...again

Oregon Convention Center (photo by Nancy Erz)

BY BRIAN LIBBY

If one searches on OregonLive for news stories tagged with the phrase "Portland headquarters hotel," the list of stories published since 2008 says it all: "Convention center hotel back on life support," one story reads. A few weeks later, the headline is reversed: "HQ hotel lives on," it says. But a few months later the story flipflops again with the headline, "Portland convention center hotel is dead." (Long live the convention center hotel!)

Once the local and national economies tanked, it seemed this long-proposed, long-defeated idea, championed by Mayor Sam Adams after other mayors before him, was finally...well, put to bed. It wasn't that an additional 500 rooms around the Oregon Convention Center-Rose Quarter-Memorial Coliseum cluster wouldn't be needed. Everybody pretty much agrees that all of these venues would be able to generate more frequent, larger events and generate more economic activity if there were a greater number of rooms within easy walking distance. Have you ever noticed, for example, that the NBA All-Star Game has been played in almost every city in the league except Portland? It's becuase of having too few hotel rooms nearby.

Rather than demand, the sticking point was always public subsidy. Can Portland afford to commit funds that could go to any number of needs - education, transportation - towards subsidizing large corporate hoteliers who would then stand to make a substantial profit? Is it right for Portland to subsidize a large hotel with public funds even as it takes business away from the local hotels? After all, Portland prides itself on being a shopkeeper economy: a patchwork of small businesses more than a few giant corporations. To subsidize a headquarters hotel seemed to be a step Houston or Phoenix or even Seattle would make, but not the home of Portlandia.

Now, as the Business Journal and Willamette Week have reported, the headquarters hotel is once again being promoted by Metro, the regional government overseeing Multnomah, Washington and Clackamas counties.  But this time around, using large public subsitdies is supposedly off the table.

Metro told the Business Journal's Wendy Culverwell that "ongoing interest from unidentified hotel developers signaled private-sector interest in such a project." She quotes Metro venue manager Teri Dresler saying a request for proposal to developers "will be crafted after Metro builds consensus about the project with its counterparts at the city of Portland and Multnomah County, both of which are partners." Though there may not be taxpayer money going toward development of a convention center hotel, "The city, county or Metro could provide the site for the project, or there could be small subsidies to encourage development." Culverwell also reports that Metro could select a developer and plan by the end of 2012.

There are still few details about such a plan. Where would it be located, for example? Two years ago, a site directly across from the Oregon Convention Center, between Grand Avenue and MLK Boulevard, was planned: a 600-room Westin hotel with a more than $200 million budget, designed by ZGF Architects. But it was shelved when the economy collapsed. Since then, a public plaza has been built on the site.

There have also been proposals for other nearby sites, such as the west side of MLK directly north of the convention center, or even the Portland Public Schools site north of the Rose Garden and Memorial Coliseum. I'd also suggest the city and private developers consider using the site of the Rose Quarter's massive above-ground parking garages. It would still be a less than five-minute walk to the OCC and would help transform the moribound, disastrously designed RQ property, which the public avoids like plague during non-event days.

The mere fact that this project is often called a convention-center hotel may speak to difficulties in the past with thinking about this area of town holistically. After all, this is an intersection of the convention center not only with the city's two largest arenas, but its largest shopping mall. Today the Portland Development Commission's Convention Center Urban Renewal Area includes all of these parcels, but for much of the city's recent history, these areas have been planned and considered separately. As the city and private developers have sought to re-imagine the Rose Quarter, for example, there has been little thinking about how it relates to Lloyd Center or vice-versa, even though Multnomah Boulevard leads straight from one to the other.

Regardless, a convention center hotel is just one of this area's needs. So far, despite a few modest gains, this area of town sorely lacks housing. A large hotel or two may attract larger conventions and events to the OCC and the two arenas, but this area still feels more suburban than urban. We can't put craftsman bungalows on major boulevards, but high-density condos and apartments will do a lot to address the dichotomy of business (on event days) and emptiness (on non-event days). Nobody claims the Lloyd District, the OCC or the arenas as their own, as their homes - not since the original African American neighborhoods were removed in the mid-20th Century. If more people lived there, we'd have a smaller ratio of surface parking lots and chain stores because business would cater less to short-term visitors and commuters from the suburbs and outside the Portland area.

Thankfully streetcar service is on its way, which will act as a development tool for any number of projects along Broadway, Grand and MLK. That may be the reason private hotel developers are looking to resurrect the headquarters hotel without much of any public subsidy. It goes to show: some types of subsidies are more effective than others. Maybe the right mix never was to massively subsidize one headquarters hotel, but to devote public funds to the mass transit that will transform this sea of multi-lane boulevards and chintzy chains into a true Portland neighborhood. It's not just about public funding, but about building the right mix of transit and pedestrian friendliness so they (in this case private hotel developers) will come.

Cosmopolitan Tower (rendering by LRS Architects, via DJC)

The funny thing about Metro's renewed headquarters hotel proposal is that a giant hotel may be already coming to this area, but because it would be about 300 rooms instead of 500, Metro doesn't consider it a headquarters hotel. As Lee Fehrenbacher reported in a February Daily Journal of Commerce story, developer Joe Weston has proposed what was originally a 31-story condo project before the economy's collapse, called the Cosmopolitan Tower, is now being proposed as a hotel on Grand Avenue, just a few blocks from the Oregon Convention Center. The design, by LRS Architects, is modeled on the point tower condos of Vancouver, British Columbia, although it also looks like a sibling of the Weston-developed Fox Tower (designed by TVA Architects) of the late 1990s. Regardless, the new Cosmopolitan as a hotel would be a major step towards having the 500 or so rooms said to be needed to attract major conventions.

Here's another thought, though: Portland will never be a major attractor of conventions. Its competitors, the cities that attract the most conventions - Las Vegas, Phoenix, Orlando - are all sprawled cities desperate to bring convention business with as many subsidies as it takes. Those cities are also in warm weather climates that have a leg up in attracting wintertime conventions. Perhaps massive convention center hotels are like Fortune 500 companies in Portland, or buildings by starchitects: it might be a nice boon to the economy or the culture to have more of them, or maybe what's special about the Rose City is borne from a lack of them: a smaller-scaled but more sustainable place to live, a shopkeeper economy where you chase not the biggest bucks but where you realize the smaller offerings are much more plentiful.

 

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Screened gem: Edith Green Wendell Wyatt federal building's transformation nears completion

Wyatt federal building (photo by Brian Libby)

BY BRIAN LIBBY

For most of its history, the Edith Green Wendell Wyatt federal building has been hiding in plain sight: a bland, nondescript office building across Chapman Square from City Hall. But for the past year, a remarkable transformation has been taking place as the building has had its entire facade removed and a new one of glass with metal screens (and eventually vegetation) taking its place.

Traveling regularly from home in Southeast Portland to downtown, I've watched the Wyatt for the past year with curiosity and, as of late, excitement. The new Wyatt building may be turning out as something special and exceptional, at least if the shading devices on its west facade are any indication.

The modernization of the circa-1974 Wyatt, which was funded by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act and fashioned in a partnership between James Cutler (of Cutler Anderson) and SERA Architects, is part of the Government Service Administration's design excellence program for federal buildings, which used to favor sculptural excellence but has in recent times come to focus more on sustainable design innovation. It's set to achieve LEED Platinum certification from the US Green Building Council and is expected to achieve a 55-60 percent reduction in energy use compared to a normal code-designed building as well as a 65 percent reduction in potable water consumption.

Wyatt federal building and its west-facade sun screens (photos by Brian Libby)

The 18-story, 512,474-square-foot building is not only a rebirth of the original Wyatt, but the renovation itself is flourishing today near completion after initially being left for dead. It was originally commissioned in 2005, but lost its initial funding. The project was on hold for much of 2007 and 2008 before receiving the aforementioned ARRA funds in 2009.

Originally, Cutler and SERA designed a series of vegetative fins for the west facade, but in the renewed post-2009 project, it was revamped into clusters of slender metal rods going up to the 18th floor. The architects felt they couldn't afford the risk of the vegetative facade failing. The metal shading devices, though, will have vegetation growing on them, initially just the first three floors but, as the plants grow, stretching up the rest of the facade.

Although there are also shading devices on the buidings additional exterior surfaces, it's really the west facade that is the bold gesture (to address afternoon solar orientation and the lack of a building directly across the street), resembling a gigantic succession of icycles moving up and down the building. Cutler also endeavored to ensure that the rest of the glassy walls were as simple and uncluttered as possible, which draws ones eyes all the more to the west facade.

Wyatt federal building (photos by Brian Libby)

At the same time, the signature shading devices are not the only energy-efficient or visually arresting design move at the Wyatt. For example, a new solar array on the roof will offset up to six percent of the building’s energy consumption. The rooftop is tilted to point toward optimal solar orientation, giving this boxy building an angular top. An innovative elevator system will actually generate energy as it moves downward. The design also peels back, at selected intervals, the bones of the original building to reveal its original steel and concrete. One senses that this is a building with multiple stages of history. And as if its bold look and efficient performance weren't enough, SERA led a collaborative construction effort with builder Howard S. Wright that has reduced a 27-month construction period to only 14 months. Even the most reactionary, tin-hatted critics of government spending ought to offer applause.

Just down the street from the Edith Green Wendell Wyatt building, another landmark sustainable project SERA has co-designed, the Oregon Sustainability Center (in collaboration with GBD Architects) has faced difficulty. Its funding mechanism is in question after the state declined to offer up its share of the cost, and while the OSC may be even more impressive than the Wyatt in its sustainable performance (the project is designed to meet rigid Living Building Challenge strictures for net-zero energy and water consumption), renderings show something not nearly as visually compelling as the Wyatt despite considerable improvement over its original conceptual designs.

The Wyatt, in this way, may come to symbolize a relatively rare alchemy in the architecture of Portland or beyond: a leading-edge sustainable building project that also possesses, through its innovations, a striking beauty.

 

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US Custom House sold again, this time to Boston-area firm

US Custom House (image courtesy Wikipedia Commons)

BY BRIAN LIBBY

Portland and Boston have had numerous connections over the years. The original coinflip that gave Portland its name (after the city in Maine) could alternatively have seen it named Boston. One of Portland's largest corporate headquarters is Adidas, which owns Boston area-based Reebok. Boston may be to New York what Portland is to Seattle: the smaller but sometimes scrappier of two regional cultural capitols. After the Portland Trail Blazers' greatest star, Bill Walton, parted with the franchise a couple years after winning the team won the 1977 NBA championship and he the 1978 MVP, he eventually made his way to the Boston Celtics, winning a second title there and a sixth-man-of-the-year award.

Enter Woburn, Massachusetts' Eastern Real Estate a privately held commercial real estate firm founded in 2000, with a development portfolio totaling over $1 billion. Eastern announced today  that it will acquire the United States Custom House for on NW Broadway for $4.74 million from the Government Services Administration.

In our last installment of this ongoing saga, in 2011, local developer PREM Group was unable to finalize its purchase from the government after agreeing to a $2.75 million sale in 2010; PREM had initially beat out other interested parties such as local developer Joe Weston. The dissolution of the sale may have had something to do with the amount of maintenance the building may need. As Wendy Coverwell reported in the Portland Business Journal last November, back in 1997, Sera Architects estimated the building needed $18 million to $24.3 million in repairs, in 2009 dollars.

The 78,838-square foot, four-story building encompasses a full block in the Pearl District, bounded by NW Broadway, Everett and Davis Streets, and NW Eighth Avenue. Originally built in 1901, it was designed by James Knox Taylor, who - ironically now given the current sale - had studied at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and designed many government buildings. Construction was supervised by local architect Edgar Lazarus, who also designed local/regional landmarks like Vista House at Crown Point in the Columbia River Gorge and one of the major buildings for the Lewis & Clark Exposition of 1905. The latter is particularly notable, because this world's fair marked one of the most important turning points in Portland's history: when the muddy streets, plank roads and Victorian houses of a large frontier town gave way to a major American city. The Custom House, which was listed in the National Register of Historic Places in 1974, expresses that growing ambition, with an Italian Renaissance Revival style: grafting the lines of quintessential historic city-states like Venice onto the DNA of a metropolis still in its infancy.

As its name indicates, for the building's first 67 years the US Custom Service was located there, before the agency moved next door to the post office in 1968 - itself a building now destined to be either reimagined or torn down with the letter carriers set to move out. For several years the Army Corps of Engineers had its offices in the Custom House, and then the Portland International School became one of a handful of potential candidates to nearly move in. It almost became home to the University of Oregon's Portland campus, which instead renovated the cast-iron White Stag Block along the waterfront at Naito Parkway and NW Couch Street. A major boutique hotel chain also had at one point joined the potential suitors.

In its press release, the developers seem to say the right things. “We are thrilled and honored to be the new stewards of this important piece of Portland history,” co-founder Brian Kelly of Eastern Real Estate is quoted as saying. “It is an absolute gem of the Pearl District and the city, and we look forward to the building’s active use on the North Park Blocks.” The key words there, of course, are stewards and active. But as we know, press releases and statements of intent only mean so much. And Eastern does have an interesting track record. Although their portfolio seems heavy on shopping and retail, which could easily mean a lot of ubiquitous chain stores, the company is widely known for converting the 1.2 million square foot former Wang Laboratories corporate headquarters in Lowell, Massachusetts into a multi-tenant office tower called Cross Point. On the website, the fact that the building was purchased for a mere $525,000 and sold four years later for over $100 million. So regardless of whether Eastern is successful, they not stay the owners forever.

Program-wise, the company has not yet indicated whether the Custom House will have a variety of tenants, just one, or a few. But the new owner seems to recognize that the building's value lies not in the structure itself, which needs repairs, but in its long-term value as a historic property of a large scale with the ability, like the Brewery Blocks, to attract hoardes of people. According to an Oregonian report by Elliot Njus published today, the company says tenants have not yet been determined.

The Custom House is also ideally situated on NW Broadway, the border between the tony Pearl District and the rougher but burgeoning Old Town, with downtown just a few blocks to the south. It's also just a few blocks from the trains of Union Station as well as the MAX line. It also looks out on the North Park Blocks, just across the street from a cluster of art galleries and the Museum of Contemporary Craft; 511 Broadway, itself being converted into a home for the Pacific Northwest College of Art, is also just a couple blocks down Broadway. Powell's Books and the Brewery Blocks are also an easy stroll, as are any number of cultural offerings, shops and public spaces.

GBD Architects, which has a now extensive history of green renovations in the Pearl District, such as the five-building Brewery Blocks mixed use development, the Portland Armory (now home to the Gerding Theater), and an in-progress renovation of the Meier & Frank warehouse into a headquarters for Danish wind turbine manufacturer Vestas. KPFF Consulting Engineers is also on the team.

 

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A bigger, more prominent downtown Apple store? [Sshh!]

Drawings for an alleged downtown Apple store proposal (courtesy ifoApplestore.com)

BY BRIAN LIBBY

Perhaps I should begin with an apology. I'd like to write about Apple's proposed new downtown store on Yamhill Street, across from the Pioneer Place mall. And here's hoping it happens.

After all, not only is Apple a refreshing institution of great design in their computer hardware and electronics--I love my two current Apple computers, just as I loved my Apple II Plus when it became my first computer in the early 1980s, and my partner loves her iPhone--but their stores arguably lead the nation in handsome, smart retail design.

So why the apology? Well, Apple is sensitive and secretive sometimes, so much so that those at the city and the private sector involved with the project not only won't talk about it, but won't even acknowledge Apple is involved for fear of the Cupertino, California juggernaut pulling out of the project. So hopefully any speculation or criticisms I or others offer won't doom it.

Perhaps Apple has reason to be wary. In 2005, the company proposed a flagship store along the retail row of NW 23rd Avenue. But that neighborhood is an official historic district, triggering Historic Landmarks Commission review of the design. As Fred Leeson's Monday post indicated, there is an ongoing debate about whether new architecture should conform in scale, materials and other design facets to surrounding older buidings or whether it has license to be itself. Many, myself included, feel the Commission was being a bit silly to insist on tweaks to awnings or other aspects of the proposed design on 23rd, but Apple also pulled out of the project entirely rather than enter anything resembling compromise - which, in many cases, is what good design is all about. I'd say both the Landmarks Commission and Apple itself could have done better.

Maybe now is the chance to right that wrong. Apple seems to be proposing a new store on the site of the Saks building on SW Yamhill between Fourth and Fifth Avenues. Rather than renovating the two-story Saks structure, the proposal is to demolish it in favor of a single-story, glass-fronted Apple store set back from the sidewalk to include a small plaza.

The design, by Seattle/Pennsylvania firm Bohlin Cywinski Jackson (designer of numerous previous Apple stores, including a prominent one in Manhattan), was submitted to the city on February 17 as a formal Design Advice Request, and the Design Review board will consider the plans on March 15. According to the Design Advice Request, the Apple store would have a 165-foot-wide storefront (the largest of any Apple store) and a 17.5-foot-tall interior, with 9,000 square feet of public space.

Entrance to New York Apple store (photo by Brian Libby)

The demolition or partial demolition of the Saks building seems curious. The structure obviously has a prominent location across from Pioneer Place mall, where Apple's current store exists in the underground portion. But it's not a very old building at all; Pioneer Place II, of which the building is a part, was completed in 2000. Would Apple consider replacing a 12-year-old building to be a sustainable move? Why not renovate another building closer to what it wants? Why not build from the ground up? Both options exist downtown, including a vacant city-owned lot less than three blocks away at SW Third and Taylor. If the company really wanted to get creative, it could occupy an under-utilized but grand work of architecture like the US Customs House, or at least a former warehouse in need of a rescue.

Steve Jobs himself coined the phrase, "Design is not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works." In this case, the how-it-works of design would seem to include concern for using materials wisely, and how renovation is more sustainable than demolition and rebuilding.

Don't get me wrong: I am unequivocally on the side of Apple coming to Portland and building a great store, one with more size and architectural presence than its basement lair. There were a lot of disgruntled Apple supporters in 2005 who felt the city flubbed a great opportunity to bring the company's flagship to Northwest 23rd, of which I was included. Even so, Apple would be less of a company if it couldn't stand a little criticism, be it for their gargantuan Norman Foster-designed glass donut of a headquarters planned for Cupertino, or tearing down a building with decades of life just because it's across from the downtown mall. We hold Apple to this kind of standard more than perhaps any other American corporation becuase they have stood for great design and for more than the bottom line. And as great as this store may be, and as much as the company deserves an open invitation, Apple wouldn't be Apple unless we expect them to, as the company's adverb-avoiding former slogan used to go, "Think different."

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

Randall Children's Hospital (photo by Fred Leeson)

BY FRED LEESON

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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OHSU unveils first look at riverfront Collaborative Life Sciences Building

Collaborative Life Science Building (rendering courtesy OHSU)

BY FRED LEESON

There are few opportunities left in Portland to take a flat, vacant 12-acre site and erect a cutting-edge building that will establish a new use for many decades and set a template for related development nearby.

Such was the challenge for the Collaborative Life Sciences Building, the first of potentially several new buildings that will be known as the Schnitzer Campus of Oregon Health & Science University, located on the west bank of the Willamette River just south of the Marquam Bridge.

This first piece is a 650,000-square foot structure with a 12-story tower at the north end and a five-story element at the south end, sandwiching auditorium-sized classrooms and an atrium. All three components sit on a plinth that covers 470 parking spaces and seals polluted land below left behind by prior industrial uses.

If form says anything about function, this will be a busy building, indeed.

The complex structure is a collaboration between OHSU and the Oregon University System, which includes Portland State University and Oregon State University. PSU will use the structure for biology, chemistry and pre-med classes; OSU will expand its pharmacy program and research labs; and OHSU will use the Skourtes Tower for its dental school and a biomedicine program.

Collaborative Life Sciences Building (undersized renderings courtesy OHSU)

The final design, approved by the Portland Design Commission on Jan. 19 after several public hearings extending over eight months, is a joint effort between SERA Architects of Portland and CO Architects of Los Angeles. The LA firm, which led the large-scale design, has worked on dozens of projects around the nation involving health care, medical education and science and technology.

The overall size and shape of the building changed little during the public design process, but the Design Commission lobbied successfully for a more simplified palette of exterior materials and changes to the pedestrian and bicycle circulation.

“It has been quite a journey,” Brian Newman, OHSU’s planning director, told the commission at its final hearing. “We all feel the project has improved significantly because of your participation.”

Given its size and scope, there was little public testimony at the hearings. The AIA’s Urban Design Panel submitted written testimony that was more a criticism of the city’s master plan. “Instead of a composition of urban buildings in a connected field of urban blocks, the site master planning and building design offer our city a suburban-style university campus of buildings that fail to engage with the urban fabric,” the panel said.

Given the seeming isolation of the South Waterfront location, access the building should be excellent. The Portland Streetcar will have a stop on Moody Street, and the new Milwaukie light rail line will have a station at the south end of the project. Bicycles also are likely to be a popular transportation choice, and the design affords more than 400 bike parking spaces, some outside and many under cover.

Perforated stainless steel panels, punched with holes of three sizes, break up the glassy masses of the larger structures and provide sun protection where needed.

“The building has a lot of positive energy,” said David Keltner of THA Architecture, a Design Commission member. “It’s very forward thinking.” Ben Kaiser of PATH Architecture, another commissioner, added, “It is pretty dynamic, but extremely composed.”

The complex should spring upward at a fast pace. The city allowed for the start of construction on the foundation before the final design was approved. PSU officials hoped it would be ready for undergraduate classes in the fall of 2013, but a 2014 completion date may be more likely.

EcoFlats: bike-friendly and ultra efficient on Williams Avenue

EcoFlats (photo by Ben C. Gray)

BY BRIAN LIBBY

Recently I toured the EcoFlats mixed-use apartment building, along North Williams Avenue in Portland with its co-developer, Jean-Pierre Veillet of Siteworks Design Build.

Williams Avenue, once the heart of a thriving African American community, is today well known as a popular bike route as well as a burgeoning retail area of restaurants, cafes and shops. The building deliberately aspires to cater to the cycling community and demographic. On the ground floor of the building, for example, is Hopworks Bike Bar. “Some 3,000 riders a day pass by Mr. Ettinger’s new brewpub,” the New York Times’ Linda Baker writes of Hopworks in a recent feature about the neighborhood and catering to cyclists. “It has racks for 75 bicycles and free locks, to-go entrees that fit in bicycle water-bottle cages, and dozens of handmade bicycle frames suspended over the bar areas.”

There are no automobile parking spaces for tenants, but the 18-unit building has storage for 30 bikes. “Cyclists are a great potential market for businesses that want people traveling at human-scale speed and will stop and buy something,” Roger Geller, the city’s bicycle coordinator, also told Baker.

Hopworks Bike Bar on the EcoFlats ground floor (photo by Ben C. Gray)

Eco Flats is one of 15 building projects aiming toward net-zero operations through a pilot program launched in 2009 by Energy Trust of Oregon. Co developed by Doug Shapiro, it was designed to use approximately 60 percent less energy than a building constructed to code stipulations. Veillet says actual savings have been higher, approaching 80 percent. In the ground-floor entry to the apartments via elevator, a flat-screen TV affixed to the upper wall conveys in real time the amount of energy being used by each unit as well as how much energy is being generated by a rooftop array of solar panels.

“It took two years to convince the bank, but it was filled with tenants in 30 days,” Jean-Pierre Veillet says. “This isn’t a political statement. It’s something easy we can do now that saves 80 percent of the energy.”

The building’s architect is Works Partnership, the Portland firm that has won a slough of design awards and acclaim over the past decade for both new buildings like bSide6 and renovations like the Eastbank Commerce Center. (Rick Potestio, another of the city's top architects, also contributed early in the project.) Curiously, though, you won’t find the EcoFlats in Works Partnership’s website portfolio. This doesn’t seem to be because Works has washed its hands with its client or that there was friction. It’s a successful project economically, and I would argue aesthetically as well. But Veillet (whose work includes the expansion of Portland restaurant Genoa as well as a pop-up store in Manhattan for clothier Nau, also featured in the Times), is a  blend of builder and designer, more so than just the contractor-led method the name Sitworks Design-Build would indicate.

Ecoflats (photos by Brian Libby)

“I respect Bill and Carrie as a architects. Bill is very dynamic with his design sensibility and capturing a building in the larger built environment. Carrie is brilliance in a bottle,” Veillet says of the relationship. “But EcoFlats is not a project that was fully under their control. I had the role of main contributor of funds, was heavily involved in design, ultimately responsible to the construction, and the promoter to the banks and PDC to gather their support. They are not a stamp-providing architecture firm and this one is a tweener. I provided the seed, they all helped it grow, then I trimmed the bush.”

From a visual, aesthetic point of view, EcoFlats looks just like what it is: a handsome although maybe not outright beautiful building that resembles Works projects like bSide 6 in the three dimensional quality of its façade, yet perhaps lacks the detail and rigor of a full-fledged Works Partnership piece of architecture. Yet this wasn’t something Veillet and Works fell into; at least from Veillet’s point of view, it was an intentional, pragmatic move that has resulted in exceptional efficiency yet reasonable rental rates.

EcoFlats (photos by Ben C. Gray)

What’s more, although the EcoFlats look is not a rigidly pristine one, it has a slightly rough-and-tumble quality that is not unsuccessful. The more I got to know the building, the more I came to like it.  That’s in part because of materials such as reclaimed timber used in the upstairs walkway, or ceramic-coated siding, a Japanese import that modulates the building’s temperature swings by absorbing heat or cold and ventilating it before the building core absorbs it.

I also particularly enjoyed the metal-mesh screens on the front facade and how they appear almost like drapery only more industrial. The facade here seems reminiscent to my eyes not only of Works' bSide6 but also Holst Architecture's celebrated Belmont Lofts.

And you can’t talk about the building of the EcoFlats without considering the timing: a so-called Great Recession in which government and nonprofit incentives exist for green projects but banks have been extraordinarily reluctant to lend. That Veillet was able to line up support and collaboration from the Portland Development Commission, the Energy Trust of Oregon to make his project both pencil out and receive funding is no small feat.

EcoFlats interior and back courtyard (photos by Ben C. Gray)

In the end, there are buildings that win awards for their sculptural quality, and others which find their prestige being certified by LEED or other green building rating systems, but both are a small minority of what gets built. I think of the EcoFlats as an efficient building like those with green certifications, and more than hinting at the kind of design presence on the street that turns heads, be they of passers by or design juries. If it’s more of a DIY version that wears its pragmatism on its sleeve, the EcoFlats also delivers ample helpings of both function and form, all at a time when the wheels of the building machine have been grinding at their slowest time in a generation. It’s hard not to hoist a mug of beer or pipe a bike wheelie in response.

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A model architect: Ben Waechter discusses design approach, upcoming projects

Tower House (rendering courtesy Benjamin Waechter, Architect)

BY BRIAN LIBBY

Two months ago while visiting the exhibit of AIA/Portland Design Awards submittals at Pioneer Place, there was one design that got me more excited than all the others: the Tower House by Portland architect Ben Waechter.

Initially it was the form of the unbuilt project that caught my attention: a cylindrical building on a steep hillside that seemed to resemble a miniature skyscraper or even a modernist castle more than a Pacific Northwest house. Instead of being nestled into the slope, like most houses one sees in the West Hills (where the project is scheduled to be built this spring), it sat at the bottom, untouched by the topograpy. Although there were no shades or other details that might deviate from the uniformity of the tower facade, a massive opening had been cut into one side, as if Godzilla had taken a bite.

Waechter, who has now been covered numerous times in major design publications like Dwell, has been on the Portland architectural radar ever since his Z-Haus project in 2009, which was soon followed up by the Cape Cod House in Portland, which expanded and transformed an existing home, and the J-Tea tea store in Eugene, which was an Honor Award winner at this year's AIA/Portland Design Awards. Waechter's Z-Haus was also part of the 11 x Design tour of 2009, which introduced a talented group of architects acting as their own developers.

Upon talking with Waechter last week, I came away even more impressed by how the interior relates to the exterior, and how it continues the architect's singular approach to space making.

Waechter has superlative pedigree. Not only did he work previously at Portland's most acclaimed firm of our time, Allied Works, but Waechter also spent seven years for top-level starchitect Renzo Piano. Perhaps these firms' greatest influence on Waechter is in his process: the Portland architect strongly favors using physical models to formulate his buildings rather than the much more common practice of sophisticated computer modeling.

"I prefer to do that over computer modeling because it’s more tactile and you can hold and touch it, and it’s easy to pick up and look at from different directions," Waechter says. "You can understand what’s working well and maybe more importantly what’s not working well quickly, because it’s right there. And I like working models in a sense that they can be taken apart and refashioned. It’s trying to define the issues and collecting all the criteria and being able to address that in as simple a way, or as distilled a way, as possible. Maybe more importantly, it’s about having a concept and sticking to the concept and having a clear idea about it."

Indeed, Waechter's projects are notable and compelling precisely for this reason: they have impeccable clarity, with nothing superflous, and the key idea of the design stands out. In the architect's Z-Haus, for example, the central stairway connects at half-level intervals a succession of six identically sized spaces that can be configured either as bedrooms or living rooms. Waechter often likes to provide a clear distinction between main rooms where people spend extended periods of time versus what he calls support spaces such as storage, kitchen and bathrooms. This distinction also is the organizing principal for the Tower House.

Interior rendering of the Tower House (courtesy Benjamin Waechter, Architect)

"The Tower House has a strong concept in a sense that it really can be thought of as three rooms and a building skin," he says. "the reason for doing that is to make this hierarchy between the main rooms and these support spaces. On the top there’s a living space. In the middle there’s the dining and kitchen, and below there’s the master bedroom. Those are the special rooms. The in-between space is more cellular in nature. It’s divided up just based on utility and pragmatics. The stairs need to be a certain form, then closets are inserted, then bathrooms."

"If you have a certain budget for your project, it makes sense to not spend the money equally across the project. It’s nice to concentrate your efforts on where you spend the most time," the architect continues. "But even if you have an unlimited budget, it’s nice to have hierarchy, whether it’s in your house or or office or any building. It’s nice to have big volumes of space and to feel compressed, with nice intimate spaces. It’s nice to have bright spaces and dimmer ones. You need one to emphasize the other."

These distinct rooms within the Tower House do not touch the exterior of the building. Instead, there is a buffer space - comprised of stairs and the other supporting storage, kitchen and bathroom spaces. So while you're in one of these main rooms, you're looking through a doorway through another space to the exterior wall, almost like a castle. Yet there are enough exterior windows to still bathe the interiors in natural light. The Tower House's exterior facade of ribbed, corrugted metal, the architect explains, "wraps the corner so it’s one surface. That also gives the appearance of something ribbed, like a sweater. It feels like a garment, almost. "

Both Z-Haus and the Tower House were built on spec and sold (with the help of Waechter's wife, realtor Daria Crymes) rather than for a particular client. "I think for me it’s really just a way to generate work," he says. "It’s fun in some ways because it’s a unique way of approaching a project. You’re your own client in some ways, but it also has to be marketable. Other projects take on a whole other level of interest because the owners have their own requirements. That’s a fun and interesting thing to add to the mix, to add to their needs."

I asked the architect if designing on spec causes him to incorporate market likes and wants or to design with them in mind. The answer? No and yes.

"The main driving force is not what the main market wants to see," Waechter answered. "It’s really what I think is appropriate for the site and the size of the program. But I do think a market driver is program: understanding what a lot of people are looking for as far as bedrooms and square footage. The Z-Haus is really big: 2800 square feet. That was done purposefully. The idea was to provide a lot of square footage on a small footprint and still provide outdoor space: something to accommodate a good sized family or one with a home office., proviing a higher density house with the square footage. I think we found in marketing it that actually a bigger group of people are looking for maybe the 2200 square foot house. So in that way it was too much. This one’s a ltitle smaller: 2200 square feet. This one is three bedrooms, two and ahalf bath. That kidn of model you see around a lot. That’s maybe the only criteria that’s taken from the market."

Model of the Flag House (image courtesy Benjamin Waechter, Architect)

Another Waechter project set to break ground next year, the Flag House, is for a client with a fairly large lot that sought to build a new house next to their old one. The name of the project comes from the fact that it is shaped like a flag - skinny and long on the bottom two-thirds, giving way to a wider rectangular shape at the top. Besides its shape, though, the house has a bold strategy. Although it has plenty of natural light coming deep into its interior, there are pretty much no windows on either of its long sides.

"There’s ambient light, and then there’s views," he explains. "If we put windows on the side, likely you’d be so close to your neighbor you’d feel intruded upon. This is saying, ‘Where are the views?’ Really they’re on the front or the back. It’s being aware of that and embracing that."

Back side of the Flag House (rendering coutesy Benjamin Waechter, Architect)

It all started with the site. "The existing house sits off-center of the site, enough that we were able to fashion a land division that worked. That was the first thing," Waechter explains. "We also wanted the house to engage the street, which made important to build in the pole part of the flag at the front of the lot. So the house starts out fairly slender, then it opens up to a bigger backyard. The challenge was it’s really close to the neighbors, so there’s the issue of privacy and sense of space. The solution was to not have any openings on the side walls – like, zero windows - but also treat them as exterior defining walls. Using them instead of fences. The existing house uses the new house as the defining edge to their outdoor space, almost like an urban courtyard where the backside of the neighbor’s building defines your courtyard, using the idea that a building has a stronger presence than a fence. But it still opens up to the street and the back."

In the middle, interior-most portion of the house, "There’s this double-high volume that’s top lit like a sawtooth light in a warehouse. That’s flooding the interior with natural light. It’s not dark, even though the windows are at the front and the back. It’s luminous. You end up with threes three points of light. Some houses have lots of natural light but the space is undefined. In this house, even though it’s a free flow of space, it’s directed and controlled. On the street side there’s this rec room or media room up above that looks out on the street. Your sense of space comes along and drops—sort of cascades down. It turns the corner and opens into this great room on the back. The main living space on the back is engaged with the landscape. Then as you move back into the building you move up and out and look out from the second story."

Someday perhaps Ben Waechter ought to be designing public buildings. He's that good of an architect, one you imagine bringing something fresh to art museums, courthouses and schools. Or maybe Waechter has a singular talent for single-family homes. Even if the 42-year-old were to quit at the end of next year, the handful of projects to which Tower House and Flag House would add comprises a stellar portfolio. Which is not to say that Waechter's work is flashy - just the reverse, in fact: a quiet iconoclasm that is well suited for Portland and Oregon.

 

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16-acre Con-way site in Northwest being planned as major mixed-use development

Proposed Con-way development (courtesy GBD Architects via DJC)

BY BRIAN LIBBY

Nearly a decade ago, as some of the city's most prominent developers were making the case for a new South Waterfront district, I remember asking one, Homer Williams of Williams & Dame (who co-developed both South Waterfront and most of the former Hoyt Street Yards that became the northern Pearl District) what and where the next big opportunity would be.

His answer: the approximately 20 acres owned by the Con-way trucking company near Northwest 23rd Avenue and Vaughn Street. After all, Williams reckoned, the area was very centrally located and easily accessible. It's adjacent to Interstate 405 as well as the NW 23rd shopping district and historic neighborhood.

As Angela Webber reported in Friday's Daily Journal of Commerce, representatives from GBD Architects and Spencer Consultants presented their updated plans on behalf of Con-way to the city's Design Commission last week. The multiuse development, they say, will include housing, office and retail spaces. Con-way is not planning to develop buildings itself, Webber explains, but to forge agreements with individual developers for different projects on the site. The GBD/Spencer team estimated that the district will include up to 1,500 residential units as well as 368,000 square feet of office space and 144,000 square feet of retail space - totalling some 1.9 million square feet of new development.

The fact that GBD was presenting the plans leads back to the firm's designing Con-way's offices here in 2001. If GBD were to continue as architect of all or some of this new multi-block development, it would seem to indicate that developer Gerding Edlen, which developed the Con-way offices and hired GBD, might also become involved if they aren't already. That the Con-way representatives told the Design Commission that the project is exploring an ambitious district-wide shared energy program and plans to pursue LEED for New Development certification may also point to Gerding's presence.

Con-way headquarters (image courtesy Gerding Edlen)

Although the Con-way site is, as Williams noted all those years ago, ideally situated for high density, pedestrian oriented, mixed use development, there are some concerns about its impact on local infrastructure as well as the possibility building a low-density grocery store before any mixed-use development.

Webber reports that the first project on the Con-way site, "and the only one officially announced," will be renovation of an existing warehouse building into a 40,000-square-foot grocery store. "The project will need a special consideration in the master plan, because it will be a low-density, one-story project in an area projected to be denser," Webber writes. In the Design Commission hearings, she adds, GBD's Phil Beyl said the grocery store building would eventually be torn down and replaced with a higher-density project. "But Northwest District Association member John Bradley said, 'I doubt that the grocery store will ever be torn down.' Beyl in fact admitted that the grocery store would likely remain in the area for 20 years, after design commissioner David Wark asked what would motivate a grocer to leave a successful area."

Even without the erroneous claim that it would be a temporary grocery store, it's too bad that we have an admirable seeming high-density, mixed-use urban development beginning with a project that seems more typical of low-rise development outside the central city. It's nice to save and re-use a warehouse, but does that supercede the other values and goals for high-density development? Beyl, in Webber's story, is also quoted as saying the grocery store would be "catalytic" for the development. Maybe that's true, but I would have thought that the location itself and the type of high density urban environment being created - as well as the central heating and cooling plant being discussed by the architects - would have achieved the same goal of market attractiveness. In fact, one might argue that for all the convenience and attractiveness of a grocery store as anchor retail tenant for the emerging neighborhood, doing a low-rise building here undermines the integrity of the other high density plans.

Another issue here is parking. The local neighborhood group, the Northwest District Association, is reportedly concerned that the grocery store could be approved without requiring new underground parking. Webber reports that surface parking lots currently used by some 1,000 Con-way employees would provide the land for the mixed-use development.

There is also the attendant issue of traffic and what it will do to an already choked 23rd & Vaughn intersection that gives way to Highway 30,  Interstate 405 and the Fremont Bridge.

And many of the acreage in question in this portion of heretofore industrial Northwest Portland is comprised of super-blocks rather than the 200x200-foot ones that are the norm in the rest of the city. At least in the rendering run by the DJC, the master plan does not seem to return any of these blocks, now that they'd no longer be industrial, back into regularly sized blocks. That said, the renderings at least seem to create pedestrian passageways and would have the buildings themselves designed accordingly.

Whatever quibbles there may be, honestly it's great to see that attention is being paid and even modest progress  in developing this under-utilized group of blocks, because one wants it to be a sign of progress for a local development community that has been largely inactive for years now, dating to the housing bust of 2008. Even if all we have here is a single story grocery store, the master planning process indicates that Con-way and its development partners are looking to make a move when the market comes back. (And master planning itself is a good sign, rather than piecemeal development.)

A recent New York Times op-ed by the Brookings Institute's Christoper Leinberger recently noted that long term trends in the economic recovery favor such pedestrian friendly places.

"In the late 1990s, high-end outer suburbs contained most of the expensive housing in the United States," Leinberger writes. "Today, the most expensive housing is in the high-density, pedestrian-friendly neighborhoods of the center city and inner suburbs... Simply put, there has been a profound structural shift — a reversal of what took place in the 1950s, when drivable suburbs boomed and flourished as center cities emptied and withered. The shift is durable and lasting because of a major demographic event: the convergence of the two largest generations in American history, the baby boomers (born between 1946 and 1964) and the millennials (born between 1979 and 1996), which today represent half of the total population. Many boomers are now empty nesters and approaching retirement. Generally this means that they will downsize their housing in the near future. Boomers want to live in a walkable urban downtown, a suburban town center or a small town, according to a recent survey by the National Association of Realtors. The millennials are just now beginning to emerge from the nest — at least those who can afford to live on their own. This coming-of-age cohort also favors urban downtowns and suburban town centers — for lifestyle reasons and the convenience of not having to own cars. Over all, only 12 percent of future homebuyers want the drivable suburban-fringe houses that are in such oversupply."

Maybe we're not out of the economic cold, but this would seem to indicate somebody is going to build a campfire.

It's only too bad that, given how clusters of empty blocks this centrally located come along rarely, that the master plan doesn't seem to include the possibility of public space, such as a school or a park. A new Lincoln High School has been suggested for this area, for example. A school, community center or other communal asset would help make this development an essential part of the city by having an essential sense of place. It would help put a there there, so to speak: a focal point where the iconic bridge meets a neighborhood of historic homes and retail strips to the south, and undustrial sanctuary to the north. At this point, though, even just a bunch of apartments and shops sounds like a nice start - a nice spark.

 

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Active on Ankeny: new housing by Colab Architecture

Ankeny Lofts (photo by Timothy Park)

BY BRIAN LIBBY

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

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

Interiors at the Ankeny Lofts (photos by Timothy Park)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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What will become of Centennial Mills?

Centennial Mills (image courtesy Portland Development Commission)

BY BRIAN LIBBY

Last Monday (July 27), Portland Development Commission chair Scott Andrews and Mayor Sam Adams posted an open letter to PDC's Centennial Mills website. In the wake of the city's contract with Los Angeles developer LAB Holding to redevelop the site broken and each side accusing the other, Centennial Mills needs a new champion.

"We are looking for public service-minded investors to take on a wonderfully iconic but challenging project in a public and private joint venture," the letter begins. "The site, which was purchased by the Portland Development Commission in 2000, represents one of the last vestiges of early 20th-century riverfront industry in Portland. This authentic collection of concrete and wood-frame buildings, mills and warehouses, docks and wharf structures—4.75 acres in total—presents a special opportunity for Portland to celebrate its industrial and economic heritage. However... the poor condition of the Centennial Mills facility presents numerous challenges for redevelopment. That is why we are making this direct appeal. Formal site development plans aren’t necessary; the first step is simply to initiate a conversation about your interest in the site."

The letter goes on to describe "globally-competitive companies" such as Vestas, Standard Insurance, ZGF Architects, Ziba Design, Wieden+Kennedy, Shop Igniter and Urban Airship, that collectively demonstrate "the competitive advantage that a downtown Portland headquarters provides in attracting  creative talent and in leveraging Portland’s reputation as a leading center of innovation."

There are a few different ways to interpret the erosion of the original PDC-LAB Holding deal from 2008, which the developer won over a handful of other proposals. First there is the economy. 2008 was precisely the time in which our 2000s economic boom gave way to the Great Recession. The parameters of what makes a viable deal have changed. Second, PDC changed the structure of the agreement in April, requiring the developer lease at least 50 percent of the property to tenants in “traded sectors” and newly identified industry clusters. This was a departure from the conglomeration of restaurants and retail establishments LAB Holding proposed in the competition stage. What's more, LAB Holding justifiably complained that the change from PDC was simply dictated to them without any back-and-forth conversation. This may be typical of PDC and an indication of its own institutional barriers against successful economic development. Too often PDC seems to say to developers, "Do it our way, or you're out," singing the song of public-private partnership but not at all making it an equal dialogue.

But lest we blame PDC for the failed deal, they also note that LAB never lined up tenants or capital for their idea. What's more, I'm skeptical of a development plan that was centered around just one area: food. LAB's development was to include restaurants, cooking school facilities, and markets, all devoted to cuisine. Whether it's here or in the Rose Quarter, where a district devoted to sports is being planned, I think cities are better off not defining these developments so rigidly. Real places don't need themes. That's the thinking that goes into buiding malls and casinos.

"Either way, it's for the best," wrote The Oregonian's Anna Griffin in a July 19 column. "Portland needs new jobs more than new entertainment options, and the glossy renderings LAB architects produced look more like a Disneyland recreation than actual historic preservation."

Griffin also recently toured the facility, writing: "A walk through the century-old mill, actually an interconnected 11-building complex on Naito Parkway between the Broadway and Fremont bridges, tells the story of modern American manufacturing. Back when it opened, clipper ships docked at the plant, and men turned Eastern Oregon grain into flour for the world using little more than their own muscle. The mill survived the Great Depression and boomed in the 1940s and '50s, when conveyor belts and electronic monitoring systems gradually replaced gravity and sheer manpower."

"In the 1970s and '80s," Griffin continues, "grain processing began shifting overseas, where building codes and public health requirements were looser, and to U.S. factories that were easier for trucks to reach. The city bought the mill in 2000 for $7.7 million; the final owners left behind machinery, files, office equipment, old bills and more grain than you could eat in a lifetime. Much of that remains, ghostly, grainy hints of the days when American ingenuity ruled the world and Portland was known as an industrial hub rather than a cultural hotspot. It's no wonder Mayor Tom Potter and his City Council colleagues agreed to reconsider city plans for the mill in 2004, despite prescient warnings about the potential cost and logistical difficulties of any renovation. This is a branch of our history that we've almost lost entirely."

Centennial Mills (image courtesy Portland Development Commission)

Although adding jobs is a widely agreed-upon priority in the city right now given the still-moribound economy and high unemployment rates, not everyone is happy about PDC's shifting goals at Centennial Mills. In a letter to PDC, Patricia Gardner of the The Pearl District Neighborhood Association writes, "Our primary concern with the 'redirection' of Centennial Mills is that this project will end up another Albers Mills: a building fully of office users and zero public life," she wrote. The PDC call for new investors, she added, "is exceedingly troubling in this regard. None of the businesses you name, while all terrific Portland businesses, have crated the type of public spaces that the community is expecting in this site."

Whereas before the recession the thinking was that Centennial Mills should become a resource for attracting visitors to the River District, the Development Commission seems to clearly believe now that not only are jobs more important than additional retail (for which there is already a glut of space), but that private-sector growth is more important in these times than public space. It's in one sense a pragmatic, logical conclusion. Yet it also would, as Gardner notes, take away a major opportunity for people in the Pearl and River Districts to connect in a physical, palpable way with the Willamette River.

After Tom McCall Waterfront Park reaches its northern terminus at the Steel Bridge, downtown and the west side lose the ability to interact with and reach the waterside. For all the development that has happened in the Pearl over the past decade, the district is only now beginning to fill out its northern and eastern edges at the Fremont Bridge and the Willamette. For years designers and developers (particularly from Hoyt Street Properties, which owns the parcels nearest Centennial Mills along Naito Parkway and the river) have been anticipating a path leading from the boardwalks of Jamison Square and Tanner Springs, through the to-be-built Fields Park open space, and over Naito Parkway to Centennial Mills. The northern Pearl at this northeast edge where the bridge meets the river is more isolated from the central city, without many storefront retail opportunities. Centennial Mills could have been a place for the still burgeoning Pearl's residents to go shopping or to stretch their legs at the waterside.

Regardless of whether one believes offices and company headquarters should be half, all or none of Centennial Mills, there is the broader question of investment. If LAB Holding isn't going to develop the site, who is? Developers from Seattle and Baltimore vied for the Mills contract back in 2008, but again, that was a very different economic climate. Are there local or regional developers willing to renovate this old, dilapidated structure and gamble that its relative isolation can be overcome by the character of the mills themselves and the riverfront location?

Numerous moribound developments in other cities have seen new investment come from outside American shores. In Toledo, Ohio, the New York Times recently reported that the long moribound Marina District along the Maumee River was being revived by investments from two Chinese developers, who plan to turn the former industrial area into a riverfront residential, office, retail and entertainment district. The Times also reported on an infusion of development dollars resurrecting the CityCenterDC project in Washington, which was able to move forward because of a recent $620 million equity investment by the real estate arm of the Persian Gulf state of Qatar. The $700 million complex under construction in the heart of Washington  is envisioned as a modern-day Rockefeller Center, with a public plaza and a park.

These two developments not only are going forward with foreign investment, but also, notably, are a mix of uses. It begs the question with Centennial Mills: does it have to be just a corporate headquarters or just retail? Just buildings and not a plaza or park? Wouldn't mixed use, the mantra that has shaped most of central Portland, be the right....well, mix?

If one development fizzles due largely to economics and another one seeks to prosper in its place, all amidst a still shaky economy, you wouldn't expect it to get bigger. Yet a stumbling block for Centennial Mills may also be the continuing presence of the Portland Police Bureau's horse paddock next door. It takes up a sizable portion of the 4.75-acre site. What if the bureau were to remove these equine storage sheds and open up this riverfront space more fully? Perhaps then Centennial Mills could more easily become a large enough presence in its own right to attract not just a few residents across Naito Parkway but a real destination for workers, shoppers and those at leisure. Griffin understandably argues that the time has come to downsize our expectations for this site. "The time is coming for an unhappy, unavoidable compromise," she writes, "for something that provides public access to the river and preserves the memory of the mill but is far less ambitious or design-heavy than Portlanders expect." Yet having more real estate to make something might help the district more easily reach critical mass.

Regardless, let's just be sure that while changing the plan with Centennial Mills toward more of an office setting is understandable, we can't sacrifice too much of the architecture itself. Indeed, these buildings are difficult structural challenges, but they are also a resource. With an adjacent northern Pearl District full of new construction, these historic buildings are all the more essential as an injection of the past. However difficult the current economic conditions, in the long term, a city that respects and continually reimagines its built past will prosper. And given that even the greenest new construction still uses exponentially more resources, carbon and embodied energy than renovated old buildings, Centennial Mills must be part of our future if Portland is to be the sustainable capitol it seeks.

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Miller Hull Partnership's new Vancouver Community Library enhances the city's revitalization

Vancouver Library (photo courtesy Miller Hull Partnership)

BY BRIAN LIBBY

Over the past decade, Portland’s suburb across the Columbia River, Vancouver, has made impressive strides to establish a vibrant, pedestrian friendly downtown. Public and private projects alike, such as Esther Short Park and a Hilton hotel that was the nation’s first LEED-rated lodging, have helped create a sense of place. So will a capping of Interstate 5 in the downtown area for which the city held a design competition last year. The next piece of the puzzle is the grand opening of the new Vancouver Community Library, set for July 17.

Located on the southeast corner of Evergreen Boulevard and C Street in downtown Vancouver, at the site of the future, privately funded Library Square development, the building is expected to attract a million visitors per year.

Vancouver Library atrium, exterior (photos courtesy Miller Hull)

Vancouver Community Library was designed by The Miller Hull Partnership of Seattle, for which this kind of public project (especially one designed sustainably) seems an ideal commission. The firm’s project manager, Adin Dunning, is a Vancouver native, and the Miller Hull Partnership is the recipient of the National Firm Award from the American Institute of Architects. The firm has received over 200 design awards and was listed by Architect magazine earlier this year as the #22 architecture firm in America.

Miller Hull’s portfolio includes a slough of award-winning public projects, including sustainable architecture dating back to the early 1980s. More recently, there are projects like the LOTT Clean Water Alliance Regional Services Center, which was included in this year’s AIA Committee on the Environment Top 10 Green Projects list, the striking 1310 Union condominiums the Seattle Center Fisher Pavilion (also a COTE Top 10 honoree in 2003), the Willamette River Water Treatment Plant in Portland, and the Tillamook Forest Center west of the city. Their upcoming design for the Columbia Springs Environmental Education Center, also in Vancouver, is on target for net-zero energy usage, producing more energy than it consumes.

“The essence of their practice and the genius of their work is collaboration,” writes former AIA president Thomas Penney, “which blossoms in a straightforward, elegant architecture that delights the eye and elevates the soul. Enlightened stewards, equally faithful to their profession and the public realm, theirs is a model of best practice where nature is a co-equal giver of form, guiding the art and science of craft in the service of the architect’s ultimate client, the planet earth.”

The Vancouver Library, comprising approximately 83,000 square feet on five levels, will have more than twice the 11,000 square feet of space for books at the current library. The new facility includes numerous children’s spaces, including a 4,000 square-foot early learning center, one of the largest in the country. There are also numerous computer terminals (about 100), three community meeting rooms available for outside group use, classroom and study areas, and an automated book-sorting system and capacity for 385,000 volumes. The new library also will include a used bookstore operated by the Friends of the Library, and small café.

Library exterior, roof deck, child learning area (photos courtesy Miller Hull)

Project cost for the library is approximately $38 million, which includes a $5 million private anonymous donation. Primary funding is from a 2006 library facilities bond measure. “Library Square” developer Killian Pacific donated Land for the library.

The building boasts numerous sustainable methods and materials, culminating in a projected 33 reduction in energy use compared to a building designed to code. A green roof reduces the heat-island effect, while exterior shading on south-facing side reduces heat gain.  Interior finishes are low-VOC for better indoor air quality, while recycled materials such as eco-resin panels are used in interior spaces and on casework as well as a concrete structure incorporating recycled content.

Vancouver library atrium (photo by Brian Libby)

Vancouver Library exterior (photo courtesy Miller Hull Partnership)

The building is teeming with natural light. Each floor is open to the atrium in order to take advantage of natural daylight and views. This also capitalizes on natural daylight with north-facing windows and a south facing atrium that provides passive cooling in summer by allowing heat inside the building to rise and be exhausted at the top via the stack effect. The fifth floor features a 4,086 square-foot terrace with views of Vancouver, the river, and Mt. Hood

From the exterior, the building is very handsome, if a little corporate-boxy and monolithic. It also seems to lact a truly intuitive main entrance. Yet the clarity and beauty of its materials and a sense of airy openness help elevate the overall experience. In addition to its palette of glass and concrete, the exterior uses a terra cotta paneling system that echoes the brick of the historic Academy building across Evergreen Boulevard. It’s a much richer, more dignified brown tone of terra-cotta panel than the orange panels used by other recent building projects like the Casey Condominiums in Portland’s Pearl District.

Standing inside the library's massive atrium, one gets not only of a massive, glassy volume of space, but a wonderful cross-sectional sense of the library’s stacks of books, people and activity. This is a compelling gathering place for a burgeoning city with a renewed urban core, one where community is embodied by openness and connection to the outside.

The Portland area has an impressive collection of regional and neibhborhood libraries. The city's Central Library, a stately Georgian landmark from 1913 designed by A.E. Doyle, is perhaps the most well loved and most widely used public facilities in the nation - particularly after a 1997 renovation overseen by Fletcher Farr Ayotte. Central Library and the Woodstock Branch Library, the latter designed by Thomas Hacker's firm, THA Architecture, were both included in a list by the American Library Assocation and the American Institute of Architects of the top 10 libraries in the nation. THA also has designed several other quietly wonderful libraries in the area, such as the Hillsdale Branch Library and the Beaverton City Library.

Vancouver Community Library fits nicely into this tradition. Like THA's work, it has moments of grandness, particularly the view out over the multistory atrium. If it ranks a close second to THA's library in overall poetry of form, Vancouver is those buildings' equal in its sustainability and its open, naturally lit environments. And as with Miller Hull's past portfolio, this feels like a simple, clean-lined work of architecture that was squarely and generously designed with its occupants in mind. And though the coating on the windows can, depending on the time of day, sometimes diminish this effect, the Vancouver Library uses transparency to communicate and reveal a kind of simple social machine, with levels of activity available to see for anyone passing by.

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City rescinds riverfront Fire Station 21 commission, admits flawed selection process [updated]

Portland Fire & Rescue Station 21 site (image courtesy Whelton Architecture)

BY BRIAN LIBBY

Last month, the City of Portland announced that Whelton Architecture had been selected to design its newest fire station and one of its most prominent: Station 21 at the east end of the Hawthorn Bridge along the Willamette River. The contract was to include a new 10,000 square foot boathouse for the fire bureau. Whelton Architecture had previously won the commission to design the David Campbell memorial outside the station.

But this week, as reported by Angela Webber in the Daily Journal of Commerce, the city announced it was rescinding that award to re-interview and reconsider the four short-listed candidates. (Ten firms responded to the initial request for proposals issued by the city.)

The decision to retract the commision follows a a letter of protest sent by William Hart, a principal at Carleton Hart Architecture, one of the four shortlisted firms.

David Whelton memorial design rendering (courtesy Whelton Architecture)

In his letter, Hart said the selection process did not follow the one outlined in the city’s request for proposals. Once a short list of four firms was selected (including Hennebery Eddy Architects and Peck Smiley Ettlin Architects along with Whelton and Carleton Hart), the city had stipulated the four firms would “start from zero” at the interview phase. But, as Webber explains, "documents from the selection process showed that proposal-phase scores relating to diversity and cost were carried through to the interview phase and adjusted for some firms, though those issues were not even discussed in Carleton Hart’s interview."

The city acknowledged its mistake by rescinding the award. “We’re going back to where (the process) deviated from the process outlined in the RFP,”  Abby Coppock, management analyst for the city’s Office and Management and Finance, told Webber.

On the surface, this is simply the discovery of a procedural error that may either lead to Carleton Hart winning the job, Whelton being re-commissioned, or perhaps another firm. Yet it's tempting to consider the larger meaning here, or at least the surrounding set of conditions.

First, there is the added importance of and emphasis on public commissions during and beyond the Great Recession. According to the American Institute of Architects' latest Architecture Billings Index, released yesterday, demand for architectural design fell to a new yearly low in May. The Index, which indicates construction volume, decreased slightly to 47.2 last month from 47.6 in April. The benchmark for the index is 50, so any number above that indicates an increase in  billings and anything below a decrease.  April was the first month in 2011 that the index moved below 50. The regional buildings index was at it highest in the Northeast at 51.2, followed by the Midwest at 51.1, the South at 48.3, and the West at 47.7. So the West is experiencing the slowest growth in the nation. And most of the lost revenue and commissions in recent years have come from the private sector. It makes jobs like a city fire station all the more important, especially to small firms like Whelton and Carleton Hart.

Second, one may use this confusion over the Fire Station 21 commission to look at the city's RFP process overall. Does Portland have a system that encourages the city's most talented firms to apply for public commissions? Whelton is a talented firm, and part of the city's criteria or goal ought to be to give young architects with talent opportunity to forward their careers. They also did a great job with the winning Campbell memorial that will be built adjacent to Station 21. But most of Whelton's experience consists of single-famiy home additions and design competition entries, and all from approximately the last five years. Carleton Hart has more experience, with projects dating back to the mid-1990s. Carleton Hart designed the renovations of Fire Stations 8, 19 and 20 for the City of Portland in 2003-2004. Yet its last local AIA design award came in 1998.

This question about RFPs and Fire Station 21 also comes after the city's competition for the David Campbell Memorial was criticized for only allowing Portland State University architecture instructors to compete.

It's entirely possible that either Whelton or Carleton Hart would design a superbly beautiful, sustainable fire station. Yet do this RFP process or the city's RFP and RFQ (request for qualifications) processes overall truly reflect a commitment to hiring Portland's most acclaimed and experienced firms?

Besides the Fire Station 21 commission, it's important to assure that opportunities for city buildings, be they through the Portland Development Commission or various city bureaus, meet a variety of design excellence standards. If Portland is to become the international design capitol it seeks as part of a broader effort to establish itself as a souce of creative-class innovation, we've got to make city projects superlative and beyond reproach.

"It's really an amazing site and an amazing opportunity to craft something for the city,"  Aaron Whelton of Whelton Architecture told the DJC's Webber when his firm's Station 21 commission was announced in May. "It's unique in its context. I don't think there are any other buildings nearly as prominent along the east bank."

CORRECTION NOTE: The original version of this post incorrectly stated that Carleton Hart had not designed a fire station before; apologies for the error.

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Opening day at the Bud Clark Commons

Bud Clark Commons (photo by Brian Libby)

BY BRIAN LIBBY

On this first day it was open to the homeless, the day center of the Bud Clark Commons was filled with people at every table: some awaiting services, some to eat or get a haircut, others there just to read the newspaper and enjoy being off the street.

"Is that TV available to watch," one denizen asked a staff member, referring to a flat-screen monitor on the wall with its power switched off.

"No, that's going to give information about the services that are availalble," the staff member told her.

The $47 million Bud Clark Commons is a residential building for homeless and low-income people, located along NW Broadway in Old Town beside Union Station and the Greyhound bus depot. The shelter opened June 10, the day center today and permanent housing June 21. Clark Commons is a cornerstone of the city’s ambitious 10 Year Plan to End Homelessess. It's a noble endeavor, if difficult to truly achieve. The way the Clark Common provides something more bonafide: a place to regain one's dignity through simple basic addressing of everyday needs like shelter and food, as well as dignity. And that's what transitioning out of homelessness is all about. The Commons is a partnership between the Portland Housing Bureau, the Housing Authority of Portland, Transition Projects Inc., and Multnomah County.

Upper floors of the eight-story building feature 130 studio apartments for the chronically homeless. Transition Projects Inc. will have a 90-bed men's shelter downstairs and operate a day-resource center open to those not living or staying at The Commons.

Bud Clark Commons (photos by Brian Libby)

Just under $30 million for the project comes from the River District Urban Renewal Area. Its borders include most of the Pearl District, which has previously seen construction of countless condominium towers geared toward residents in upper income brackets. At the same time, the River District URA includes much of Old Town and even patches of downtown, all areas of lesser investment and subject to numerous social-service building projects over the past decade from the Union Gospel Mission to Central City Concern's Richard L. Harris Building (formerly 8 NW 8th).

Designed by Holst Architecture, Bud Clark Commons uses wood, glass and bits of color to enliven the simple brick of its upper facade. Walking along Broadway, one meets at ground level a long succession of floor-to-ceiling glass. The corners along Broadway do not serve as entrance; instead one enters the day center in the back of the building, through a courtyard. Here and in other areas at ground level, Holst utilizes a series of patterned screens to not only add privacy but texture.

Bud Clark Commons (photos by Brian Libby)

The building's mass is broken up by using two opposing light and dark shades of brick on the front and back halves. The darker brick portion on the back of the building also is cantilevered slightly, and the architects cut into a portion of the Broadway-side facade to allow a deck. All of which helps again give a sense of lightness to what, in other architects' hands, might have been a utilitarian, plainly institutional looking building.

Clark Commons is anticipating a LEED Platnium rating from the US Green Building Council. Its sustainable features include natural ventilation, solar-powered hot water delivery, a high-performance exterior envelope, bioswales, greywater reccling, energy-efficient lighting, a green roof and low-flow plumbing fixtures. It was also developed from a brownfield site.

Bud Clark Commons (photos by Brian Libby)

Standing on Broadway outside the Clark Commons, one can see this stretch of Broadway transforming. Directly across the street is the massive downtown US Postal Service facility that ultimately will be vacated, bringing a major redevelopment opportunity. Just across the intersection is the historic 511 Broadway building, which belongs to the Pacific Northwest College of Art and will be renovated soon from an Allied Works design. There is also a new streetcar line set to go over the adjacent Broadway Bridge, and just down Broadway is the US Customs House, another historic property being renovated. All told, the Clark Commons is part of a larger shift for this stretch of Broadway that will make this once destitute area part of the true center of the city.

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Spelling out a second attempt in the Alphabet District

Rendering of revised 21st & Flanders project (courtesy Myhre Group)

BY FRED LEESON

A Beaverton developer hoping to pack more than two dozen apartments on a 5,000 square- foot lot in Northwest Portland’s historic Alphabet District has changed design teams and given a preliminary look at the revised plan to the city’s Historic Landmarks Commission.

Dennis Sackhoff, head of Creston Homes LLC, dropped the Lake Oswego-based OTAK firm and hired Myhre Group after the commission criticized Sackhoff’s first plan last December. The new version proposes 26 units on the site at 2124 N.W. Flanders St., down slightly from 28 in the first plan.

The Myhre Group plan, outlined by one of its principals, Don Sowieja, appears to have a better chance of winning a green light from the commission, which is charged with making sure that new developments are “compatible” with the historic district.

The previous plan for the site

The original OTAK plan showed an unusual side entry, which allowed room for 28 units, the maximum allowed by the zoning code. The revised version offers a traditional central entry as part of a symmetrical facade facing on Flanders. The new version includes a brick face, double-hung windows and a simple but traditionally-styled cornice atop the third story.

“We looked at it afresh,” Soweija told the commission at an informal design advice meeting on May 9. His presentation included a detailed packet showing numerous apartment buildings of larger, smaller and comparable size, mostly standing cheek-to-jowl in the historic district.

Indeed, side setbacks will be the key issue assuming that Sackhoff seeks formal approval. City zoning rules mandate setbacks as wide as 14 feet, depending on the size of the side walls. On a 50 by 100 lot, that would leave designers with only 22 feet to work with.

Sowieja’s plan calls for setbacks as narrow as 5 feet and as wide as 8 feet, a pattern that he says is consistent in the neighborhood. But that thought rankles members of the Northwest District Association, which is among Portland’s most zealous neighborhood land-use watchdog groups. “It creates a canyon of shadows,” said Joy Strand, who lives two lots east of the proposed building. “No light gets into that slot.” She added that residents in neighboring buildings would have to keep their shades pulled to maintain privacy.

Don Genasci, a Northwest Portland architect and architecture professor, said contemporary residents want more natural light. He also said the proposed building would adversely affect the two older apartment buildings adjacent to it, making it “seriously as odds with preservation of the Northwest Alphabet District.”

The original building on the site (photo by Fred leeson)

In response to a commission question, Soweija said he never considered designing a building as narrow as 22 feet, but he said he “could show how it would not work” if the commission wanted such a study.

Widening the setbacks would eliminate the possibility of double-loaded central hallways, Soweija said, eliminating the symmetry that the commission seemed to want after examining the original proposal. Although no formal votes are taken at advisory meetings, Soweija appears likely to prevail on the setbacks once a formal application is filed.

If so, it means destruction for a much-modified and regrettably misunderstood house on the lot now. It was built for Nathan Simon, a Portland lawyer, in 1895, and backed up to a house built for his more prominent brother, Joseph Simon, that faces on N.W. Everett St., now nicely restored. Joseph Simon, who held titles as U.S. senator and Portland mayor, was one of the most notable Oregon political figures in the late 19th and early 20th Centuries. He headed the “Simon faction” of the Republican Party, which battled fiercely against the “Mitchell faction” headed by John H. Mitchell, who also served – ignominiously in the end – in the U.S. Senate.

In their era, senators were elected by state legislators, not by popular vote. Historians view the Simon-versus-Mitchell battles as heavily corrupt by modern standards, which led reformers to pass the “Oregon System “ in which the public voted in “advisory” elections for senators. Rather than jamb their thumbs in the eyes of voters, legislators went along with the advisory results. The system helped lead to passage of the 17th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution in 1913 that provided for direct election.

Mike Ryerson, a Northwest Portland historian and journalist, said proponents of the historic district adopted in 1988 missed the significance of the Nathan Simon house, and had the wrong year of its construction. As a result, it was listed as a “non-contributing” building in the district, which allows demolition without any public review.

The house was modified several times over the decades, although it retains some of its original details. Today it contains 17 rental units, some as small as 100 square feet.

The new building as now proposed would contain 26 studio and one-bedroom apartments, ranging in size from 300 to 520 square feet on three floors above a daylight basement. “Although they are small,” Soweija said, “they are not microscopic in our view.”

Back in December, when the landmarks commission criticized the first plan, the developer make remarks critical of both the commission and the neighborhood association watchdogs. For whatever reason, Sackhoff did not attend the May 9 hearing.

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

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Oregon Sustainability Center team seeks feedback on schematic design [updated]

Oregon Sustainability Center final schematic design

BY BRIAN LIBBY

The design team for the Oregon Sustainability Center, led by GBD Architects and SERA Architects with Gerding Edlen Development, has released schematic designs for the approximately $64 million, eight-story project. They are seeking public comment for the design, including an event this Wednesday (May 11) 6PM, at the AIA Center For Architecture. The final design is expected to be approved in August or September.

As highlighted in the OSC's executive summary, 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." It will be home to a variety of non-profit, government, academic and business tenants who are working to promote sustainability. Public spaces on the first and second floors will also serve as exhibit space, to "tell the story of the region’s innovations in sustainable technologies, policies and practices. Lecture halls, classrooms and conference rooms on the second floor will support higher education, as well as networking for public, private and academic purposes." Lower levels will also include a visualization lab, which will "bring together researchers and community groups to solve regional issues in an experiential way."

Lobby of OSC as rendered in schematic design

Jill Sherman, project manager for Gerding Edlen, told Sustainable Business Oregon that comments collected will be considered and incorporated during the design and development process before construction begins on the building. "There's still quite a bit of design work to do before we're through," Sherman added.

The project is designed to meet strictures of the Living Building Challenge, although it will not be the first in Portland. That designation goes to the vastly less expensive June Key Delta Center in North Portland.

Besides finalizing the design, the OSC is still ironing out a number of agreements, such as co-ownership between the Oregon University System and the City of Portland, and added fundraising for the project from corporate sponsors and other  sources. Financing for the OSC will  come from tax-increment financing and bonds, new market tax credits, Energy Trust contributions, as well as the various parties' budgets.

Oregon Sustainability Center final schematic design

Given that the designers explicitly have asked for feedback, readers here are extra encouraged to write in with likes and dislikes about the project.

Personally, I like the look of these schematic designs vastly, vastly more than what earlier renderings showed. In the past, the Oregon Sustainability Center seemed as if it was destined to resemble a gigantic lipstick container with a fake leaf on top. The cringe-inducing aesthetics seemed like a threat to the entire endeavor, undermining all the innovative work done by a talented integrated design team with some of the best sustainable building expertiese and experience in the world.

Aesthetics, when extrapolated and considered only on their own, can sometimes seem superficial. But they're just not. We have to be inspired spiritually and emotionally by both our natural and physical environments. It's why beautiful regions like the Northwest with young cities like Seattle and Portland are so much more attractive to millions of Americans who have decided to leave rust-belt cities like Cleveland and Detroit. Similarly, if you build the greenest building in the world and it's inescapably ugly, people won't want to congregate there.

Oregon Sustainability Center final schematic design

A few weeks ago, I had the opportunity to interview one of the pioneers of the green building movement in America, Bob Berkebile of BNIM Architects in Kansas City, for a  profile in Architecture Week magazine. Berkebile was a contributor to the formation of the US Green Building Council's LEED system that is commonplace today, and a leading thinker about design who regularly speaks to architects and builders all over the world. Berkebile, to my mild surprise, agreed that the importance of aesthetic beauty has in the past been too eschewed, as if the fundamental balance of form and function no longer mattered in the quest to end global warming. But that's changing.

"I think we can no longer accept either side of that equation," Berkebile said. We just have to define design and beauty more holistically than we did before. The starchitects have to accept doing beautiful buildings with high performance. And the people in the green building community have to realize if a building doesn’t touch your heart and soul, you’re not going to get the level of change we need."

"A lot of the early high performance buildings were ugly," Berkebile adds. "And so there was, for a  time, a reaction from great designers saying, 'See? Who wants that? We want a beautiful building.' I hold the belief that if a building is designed such that it does damage upstream or downstream, if it doesn’t generate its own energy and so forth, it’s not beautiful. The trick, I think, is how can we design in such a way that the first reaction someone has is to say, ‘beautiful.’ Then they discover that it’s a great place to be. They get all the data and discover it generates more energy and clean water than it needs. The transparency allows you to see more of the building’s operating systems than we do. It would be a little like the difference between being on a powerboat versus a sailboat. You see all the moving parts on a sailboat and you get a real sense of the relationship to the water and the wind. In a way I think that’s the kind of elegance we’re reaching for."

An earlier-stage design rendering of the OSC

The Oregon Sustainaibility Center now has a chance to more fully complete and live up to the promise of its innovative functional capacity. It's not only set to be one of the most energy and water-efficient buildings in the world, but its schematic design shows a much more compelling form. Gone is the impression of a rote office tower with stilts at the bottom and an oversized roof on top.

Now the renderings illustrate a conglomeration of offices and public spaces draped in glass and a living wall, each side different from the other in order to address different solar orientation and other aspects of climate and topography. It incoporates a streetcar moving through its base not with the sense of something removed to make way, but instead as a kind of nimble dancer that is perched and placed tightly yet elegantly. And one gets a stronger sense of a center to the building, particularly on the ground floor, that floods the building with natural light.

There may still be room for improvement. The curves have given way to some sharp angles, and the overall composition is still busy. And I remain disappointed that the OSC didn't select an existing building to renovate instead of favoring new constrution - somthing  like the Solomon Federal Courthouse or the US Customs House, both of which could have been had for cheap and are gorgeous historical works of architecture in need of saviors. After all, renovating existing buildings will always be more sustainable than starting from scratch. In that respect, even upon receiving the coveted Living Building designation, the OSC will not be as sustainable as it could have been. Would there have been perhaps fewer innovations to make technologically in that prescribed old-building shell? Maybe. Yet this project, after all, is supposed to be about innovation. Why not figure out how to re-imagine our existing building stock as net-zero? And besides, between historic buildings rigidly preserved according to how they were built, and old buildings that get torn down, there needs to be a happy medium wherein aged architecture is reconfigured as a hybrid of past and future.

Yet the OSC team has already shown a remarkable openness to feedback and an ability to improve, and for that kudos are due. Even if we get architecture more impressive in its performance than its look, the OSC has made impressive strides in more completely fulfilling the equation that Berkebile cites, one that remains, as ever in architecture, an indivisible relationship between how it works and how it touches us.

NOTE: The aerial shot of the Oregon Sustainability Center was replaced with a newer image after the original posting.

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Apartments at Sixth and Couch reflect a changing Lower Burnside

NE Sixth & Couch project (rendering courtesy Vallaster Corl)

BY FRED LEESON

Certain locations in Portland speak directly to specific architectural eras.  Most Portlanders won’t remember the public demonstrations and police arrests that greeted developer Phil Morford’s row houses in the early 1980s in Northwest Portland.  Without a memory of the stately homes they replaced, the row houses seem totally benign to a contemporary viewer.

At least for now, no one can drive past the condo towers of the South Waterfront district without thinking of the condo boom and ensuing bust of the late 1990s and early 21st Century.

Portland’s lower East Burnside neighborhood may well represent the next “signature” era of Portland design. The proportions are different and the materials likely cheaper. But the aesthetic is clearly emerging.

“It’s a newly developing area,” said Christine Caruso, a city planner, as she introduced a new project to the Portland Design Commission on April 21. She singled out the chunky B Side 6, the Noble Rot building and the Jupiter Hotel as examples. “It’s a really vibrant area with a lot of different things going on.”

NE Sixth & Couch project (rendering courtesy Vallaster Corl)

The latest going on is a half-block apartment and ground-floor retail project designed by Vallaster Corl Architects, to be erected for a Lake Oswego developer at 521 and 532 NE Davis Street, which is a half block facing on NE Sixth Ave. between Davis and Couch.  Like an earlier Vallaester Corl design on SW Jefferson Street across town, the Sixth & Couch Apartments look much like two buildings, with a five-story façade facing Couch and a four stories facing on Sixth. 

Overall, plans call for 11 ground-floor retail spaces and 70 apartments above, mostly studios and one-bedrooms. On-site parking will be available for 23 cars, and an indoor storage room for 70 bicycles also will include facilities for minor bike repairs and cleaning. A rooftop deck for tenants on the shorter wing is to include a fire pit, benches and planters. The project will be the first to add new retail space on Couch, which is now part of the recently finished Burnside-Couch one-way couplet between the Burnside Bridge and 14th Avenue. 

The design shows heavy doses of metal panels on the Couch façade, tempered on Sixth  with treated softwood panels sold under the brand name Accoya. Schuyler Smith of Vallaster Corl said Accoya has been used extensively in Europe and New Zealand, but is just being introduced in the United States. The Accoya to be used here is sustainably-grown pine, treated with a non-toxic vinegar-like acid that presumably makes it resistant to rot and mold. It will be used on the lower wing along with light-colored metal panels.

On the taller wing, the vertical metal panels are charcoal, playing off against silverish horizontal panels.  In an effort to create a playful rhythm, none of the darker columns extends completely from ground-level to the parapet.  The storefront system – appropriately, no doubt – is aluminum.

The metal panels will join a growing collection of metal on new, lower East Burnside buildings.  The one-story Trio Club at 909 E Burnside, which will replace the circa-1960 Googie-style former  Denny’s restaurant  also includes metal panels as a key façade element.

NE Sixth & Couch project (rendering courtesy Vallaster Corl)

On the Couch apartments, Design Commission members wondered how well  the Accoya wood  will stand up to graffiti and to the inevitable nicks and scratches at the ground floor. Andrew Jansky, one commission member, said the sample provided was so soft he could dent it with a fingernail. In response to those concerns, Smith and Ryan Austin, who represented Vallaster Corl at the hearing, agreed to replace the Accoya with fiber cement panels  at the pedestrian level of the Davis Street frontage, which contains a loading zone and an emergency exit stair tower.

Other comments from the commission were favorable. Commission Chair Gwen Millius, encouraged the design team to make the retail spaces flexible so that two or three could be combined for a single occupant. 

Otherwise, it seems like a high-quality project with good materials, well-thought out,” said Commission Member David Wark. The commission approved the plan with a 6-0 vote.

There was no public testimony in favor or in opposition to the project.  Two early 20th-Century apartment buildings that stand in the way are in the final stages of demolition. 

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

 

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Bold dream to brick bona-fide: Skylab shelves Weave for Blackbox

Blackbox building, 13th & Burnside (photo by Brian Libby)

BY BRIAN LIBBY

For much of the Great Recession in Portland, particularly in the bottomed-out days of late 2008 and early 2009, one unbuilt project seemed to represent hope for a future in which we were not only building again, but building beautifully and smartly. Now that the economy has rebounded, the building has morphed into a more modest adaptive-reuse project. It's tempting to find symbolism in the more modest project moving forward, but it's arguable what that symbolism might be: of DIY adaptability and perseverance, of local creative-class hives taking root throughout the city, or of an architectural dream deferred indefinitely. Luckily, we're trading one likable project for another.

The Weave building, designed and co-developed by Skylab Architecture, was first announced in 2008 as a LEED-rated, 27-story mixed-use tower with residences and office space. Later, the concept was downsized to a ten-story office tower with ground-floor retail. But by June of last year, the project became stalled as developers and the Portland Development Commission were unsuccessful in finding tenants as the local economy continued to drag.

Now, the firm has more modest but practical plans for the site, at West Burnside Street and SW 13th Avenue: the Blackbox building, an adaptive re-use of the existing 10,000-square-foot building. It will include five retail spaces along with second-floor office space.

The Blackbox renovation isn't nearly as ambitious as the Weave, nor could it match the visual sexiness of the Weave's renderings. Even so, Skylab principal Jeff Kovel insists that going from Weave to Blackbox isn't a step backward, but a practical sidestep. Besides, he adds, the Weave isn't truly dead.

Weave Building rendering (courtesy Skylab Architecture)

"The Blackbox is the Weave conceptually, just in a smaller package," he explained by email. "The current market just isn't fit for financing a Weave scale building. We have built the Blackbox project in a way as to leave the maximum flexibility in place , so that we will be able to redevelop down the road , should the stars align."

"We have shifted our approach to align with a changing market. We have put together a project that is going to have a very positive effect on our urban fabric in a short time frame."

The Blackbox, Kovel explains, is more of a descendent of the successful 12th & Alder building that previously won Skylab an AIA/Portland design award and has been economically successful with tenants like Gruner restaurant.

"The vibe at the 12th Alder building is creative and collaborative, in part due to the fact that we're constantly surrounded by a few small, like-minded businesses like ourselves," Kovel said in a press release. "We wanted to extend this concept deeper into the West End."

Here is a video Skylab produced to show the Blackbox design:

Co-developed with a company called Project^, the Blackbox's tenants will include Swedish urban work wear company Dunderdon, local leatherwear company Tanner Goods, Seattle-based menswear boutique Blackbird and women's boutique Phlox. Skylab and Project Ecological Development will occupy the second-floor offices.

The Weave, particularly in its initial 27-story version, would have made a substantial addition to Portland's skyline and helped extend the migration of Pearl District-energy and investment across Burnside. The site is across from both the Brewery Blocks as well as the cluster of renovated retail storefronts near the venerable Jake's Crawfish on the West End and the new 12 West tower. And the building's facade would have provided a bolder architectural look than the Brewery Blocks, which were more successful and focused on street-level placemaking and energy efficiency.

That said, the Blackbox project indeed reflects Skylab's DNA, perhaps better than the Weave. Rather than a daydream, it's an achievable reality that recalls past Skylab renovation projects like the Doug Fir Lounge at the Jupiter Hotel, and the Departure Lounge atop the Nines Hotel. Skylab has a uniquely futuristic, sexy design style that feels part disco and part Stanley Kubrick. It applies particularly well, if counter-intuitively, to giving old buildings new life.

Blackbox building, 13th & Burnside (photo by Brian Libby)

It would be a shame if Skylab never realizes a from-the-ground-up building project like the Weave. The firm has long been part of a small unofficial fraternity of Portland's most admired and talked about designers' designers, along with names like Holst, Allied Works, Works Partnership and a few others.

Admittedly, the Weave always seemed like an unlikely building to come to fruition. A 27-story tower conceived amidst the worst economic times since the Great Depression? Yet one wanted to believe. Or more specifically, I wanted to believe. I wrote about the Weave on this blog, and last year in an optimistically-toned Oregonian story with the headline, "Economy doesn't deter architect."

"This is a really defining time, and how you respond is important in terms of defining yourself," Kovel said in that story. "We think the building is going to be a landmark along the Burnside corridor.""

Even then, it was a surprise to hear that the Weave was going forward. Yet it was worth it at the time, perhaps, to cast off skepticism about it coming to fruition because its design, both in its excellence and in its timing, seemed to offer architectural and development hope when the local building professions were taking a beating.

Every city has a history of unbuilt projects that might have changed history. I think of a Frank Lloyd Wright skyscraper in New York's Bowery that never came to fruition. Or, closer to home, an apartment tower in Portland conceived in the 1970s by local architect Robert Oshatz. It too would have been gorgeous. Each of these comes with the allure of what might have been, and, like The Weave, the promise of a beautiful rendering.

Yet it would be unfair to judge the Blackbox project on what it isn't. Instead, think of the upside, such as the fact that a lovely brick turn-of-the-20th Century building has been rescued from demolition. Portland's design genius has never been in its tallest towers anyway, but in the fabric of modest buildings that add up, with our emphasis on pedestrians and mass transit, to something greater than the some of its parts.

If the Weave represented the promise of the 2000s' economic boom and the crash to reality of the Great Recession, the Blackbox can perhaps become an emblem of the less ambitious but more successful constellation of rehab projects all over the city now housing clusters of creative companies, such as the Ford Building on Southeast 12th and Division, or the Leftbank on Northeast Broadway. It's a reminder that design is about imagination and dreams, as the Weave provided, but also about creating everyday spaces where we can live, work and play, full of light and creative energy. If it doesn't occupy a magazine cover like its predecessor might have, the Blackbox will be quintessentially Portland.

And hopefully, what Kovel told me about the Weave in that Oregonian story will still hold true with the Blackbox: "My hope is it really becomes an example of somebody who went out on a limb and seized an opportunity to do something special," he said. "I think that type of approach is going to become more and more critical across the board. It's going to be harder to succeed with mediocre product or ideas. The competitive environment will hopefully draw more out of people."

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From Satyricon to Macdonald Center with LRS Architects

Macdonald Center rendering (courtesy LRS Architects)

BY FRED LEESON

Portland’s Old Town neighborhood will lose a piece of history soon with demolition of the three-story Hotel West, circa 1900, at 127 NW Sixth Avenue. In the past couple decades, it was better known as home of the Satyricon rock club, although until last December its upper two floors still provided single-room occupancy units for low-income tenants. 

In its place will rise a seven-story, brick-faced building designed by LRS Architects that will contain 42 studio apartments for low-income residents and ground-floor community service space. It will be operated by the non-profit Macdonald Center, based in the adjacent building to the south, which has a mission of keeping low-income and elderly off the streets.

Greg Mitchell, an associate at LRS, said the Macdonald Center studied the old building carefully with an eye toward renovation rather than demolition. But he said the Macdonald’s needs and liabilities of the unbraced masonry structure made renovation impractical. “There was no way to adapt the building to the need,” he told the Portland Design Commission on April 7. “The need was greater. We knew we had to go vertical with the project.”

Babes In Toyland at Satyricon (photo by David Ackerman)

Still, Mitchell hoped to “echo” some of the features of the old hotel. His plan incorporated the arched entry with five keystones that was once the main entrance to the hotel. He also proposed saving keystones over the second and third floors of the old building and incorporating them into the new second and third-floor window frames.  

Although the building does not fall within the boundaries of the neighborhood’s historic district, LRS clearly wants a building that feels appropriate in the neighborhood context. The design commission has jurisdiction to review the plans because the site falls in the boundaries of a city urban renewal area.  

The plan with its historical touches was endorsed by the Old Town-Chinatown Neighborhood Association. Paul Verhoeven, its land-use chair (not to be confused with the director of the movie "Basic Instinct"), said the association disliked seeing old buildings come down, but he said the neighborhood needs more quality housing.  He also said the number of unbraced buildings in Old Town is “downright scary.”  Verhoeven added that the association liked the plan to keep the historical elements in the new façade.

Satyricon (photo courtesy Emillie & Lloyd, via Flickr)

Alas, the design commission did not.  It urged LRS to come back with a new scheme that eliminates the arched entry and the keystones.  

David Wark, one design commission member, said the ground floor design was “fractured” by trying to include the arched entrance as well as a traditional storefront system within the confines of a 50-foot frontage.  He said the historic elements were “underscaled and out of proportion” with the taller building.  He encouraged LRS to simplify the design by extending the storefront system. 

David Keltner, another commissioner, agreed.  He said new buildings in old neighborhoods can be compatible with,  yet clearly differentiated from,  their older neighbors.  He, too, said recreating the historic fabric from the Hotel West was a detriment to the massing of the new structure and thus out of context.

1989 Nirvana performance at Satyricon (photo by David Ackerman)

When trying to add historical elements to new buildings, Keltner said, “You don’t have a clear understanding of what’s what, and what is historical.”

And speaking of historical, although it may be a grubby, grungy history, Satyricon had plenty of it. This is the club where Nirvana played numerous times in Portland, for example, and where Kurt Cobain met Courtney Love. Last year Marty Hughley of The Oregonian published this series of recollections about the club.

Men's room at Satyricon, circa 1982 (image courtesy urinal.net)

Mitchell said the ground-floor frontage poses difficult challenges. Its 50-foot width is the only entry/exit access for the community service space and for the apartments above. His first plan also included a niche for natural gas meters, shielded by a wrought-iron grill, since gas service equipment can no longer extend into the sidewalk right-of-way as it did at the old building. The design commission urged him to move the utility gear inside somewhere as another means of simplifying the streetscape.

LRS is scheduled to return to the design commission with revisions on May 5. Mitchell said the Macdonald Center is on a tight timeline to meet funding commitments for the project, so it hopes to avoid further delay. Assuming that it prevails on the ground-floor revisions, the design commission showed no signs of wanting to be a further obstacle.  

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

 

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Second impressions of Matthew Knight Arena after Federer vs. Nadal

Rafael Nadal vs. Roger Federer, Knight Arena (photo by Brian Libby)

BY BRIAN LIBBY

Tuesday was my second trip to Matthew Knight Arena in Eugene since its January opening, and the first time seeing an event or experiencing the building with a full house.

The event was a fun one: Roger Federer, greatest tennis player of all-time, playing an exhibition match against the second-greatest player of our time and an all-time great in his own right, Rafael Nadal. As if that weren't enough, Maria Sharapova played Vika Azarenka, and they all got together for a mixed-doubles match that was crashed by my favorite tennis player of all time, John McEnroe. Oh, and the top two Oregon Duck quarterbacks of the modern era, Joey Harrington and Dennis Dixon, served as honorary line judges. What a blast!

The $227 million, TVA Architects-designed Knight Arena is a huge complex, with practice courts adjacent to the 12,000 seat arena and surrounding glass-ensconced concourse. Even so, I was surprised to find that those concourses felt quite cramped in the time before the event. The effect was helped greatly by the fact that Knight Arena has three main entrance/exit points: people weren't clogged in one place. Even so, moving around the concourse (we made three laps to kill time before the match), one couldn't help but wonder if the design could have loosened the belt, so to speak. For such an arena, it was hard to move - even long before the event filled to capacity.

Federer vs. Nadal, Knight Arena, 3/8/11 (photos by Brian Libby)

The glass facade covering much of the Knight Arena exterior is amongst its best attributes. Architect Robert Thompson of TVA Architects has said that Memorial Coliseum was the arena's biggest architectural inspiration, which is a wonderful honor to the landmark Portland glass palace. At the same time, the gorgeous expanses of glass left me wanting more. A substantial portion of the facade is not glass, because the design puts stairways and elevators for accessing the top of the seating bowl on the edge of the building. Even with this configuration, I'd have liked to see more glass. Why not a glass stairway and elevator to give the building the complete, Coliseum-like transparency it seems to want?

That said, watching sport inside Matthew Knight Arena was a major treat. (And it was especially nice seeing tennis instead of basketball so Oregon's hideous painted basketball court was hidden away.) As with Autzen Stadium, there just doesn't seem to be a bad seat in the house. I was sitting about halfway up the seating bowl, in the corner, and felt like I had a superlative spot. The interior arena-proper was designed by Ellerbe Beckett, the firm that also designed the Autzen expansion (from 41,000 to 55,000 seats) in 2002. Ellerbe is, along with HOK, arguably the nation's most prolific and accomplished designer of American sports arenas and stadiums. It shows up in the practical, functional success of both Knight Arena and Autzen Stadium. For all the enjoyment one gets out of a glass facade, or a striking exterior form, these are first and foremost places to watch sports and entertainment. And both of UO's major gathering places are now truly wonderful architectural spaces for being a spectator.

Roger Federer at Knight Arena (photos by Brian Libby)

Visiting Knight Arena this second time, and first for an event with an audience, I also developed a better sense of the building's integration with the rest of the campus. There is a pathway leading from the back of the arena directly into the fabric of the campus, with Hayward Field just down the street amidst a host of dorms and campus buildings.

Has anyone else out there been to a basketball game or other event at Knight? What's your review of the architecture, both aesthetically and practically speaking?

One final impression after the night at Knight: As impressive as this arena and the Jaqua Center (built last year) are, they illuminate all the more for the University of Oregon to upgrade its standard dormitories. On the walk to Knight Arena, I passed dorms with concrete facades chipped away to reveal the rebar underneath. It's right now a tale of two students at UO, the athlete and the academic, with one in the equivalent of a new Cadillac and the other in a broken down Plymouth. Hopefully in the long run these impressive sports palaces will be merely the first step in a more egalitarian architectural facelift for the university.

 

Landmarks Commission approves SERA-designed Blanchet House expansion

Rendering of proposed Blanchet House project (courtesy SERA Architects)

BY FRED LEESON

After 12 years of searching and planning, the biggest free food kitchen in Oregon won approval this week to build a new, four-story Blanchet House at 439 N.W. Third Ave., a half block east from its existing location.

Members of the Portland Historic Landmarks Commission and Blanchet House board members exchanged polite smiles and words of thanks after the 6-0 approving vote, but the smiles were passive-aggressive reminders of hard feelings on both sides of the table during the final months of design.

The new building, designed by SERA Architects, needed landmarks commission approval because it sits within the New Chinatown/Japantown Historic District.   Hard feelings between the commission and Blanchet no doubt started much earlier when the commission declined to approve demolition of an existing one-story building on the site, forcing Blanchet to win an appeal to City Council to allow destruction of the Kiernan Building.

It took several trips by the SERA design team and Blanchet to satisfy the landmarks commission with plans for the new building, which is expected to cost approximately $10 million.  Blanchet directors thought the process was taking too long and costing them too much money to achieve design changes suggested by the landmarks commission.

“We can’t be too fancy for our benefactors,” Blanchet’s president, Rich Ulring, told the commission earlier this month when he expressed  frustration over the delays.  “The city needs us.  I need to have some common sense.  You need to think about costs.”

The building grew from three stories to four since the first public discussion before the commission last year.  As a result of commission discussions, SERA designers eliminated a glass corner that was deemed  too modern for the historic district, strengthened the cornice, standardized window shapes, swapped  casement windows in favor of double-hung, muted the hue of exterior brick, switched from an aluminum to a wood store-front system on the ground floor and added gentle decoration to metal balconies on upper floors. 

Perhaps motivated by a spirit of compromise, the commission gave in a couple cost-saving measures.  It allowed the street frontages to be clad in so-called Norman brick, which is about half again as long as a standard brick.  The commission also allowed the rear walls that face on a parking lot to be surfaced with a less-expensive stucco-like, painted concrete finish.

Initial Blanchet House design (courtesy SERA Architects)

If Blanchet board members thought the process was too slow and costly, landmarks commission members were privately surprised that the Blanchet members cared so little for the fabric of the neighborhood and the appearance of a building that likely will stand for a century or more.

In a sense, it was a battle of white hats versus white hats.  Blanchet:  We’re here to feed and house the largest number of needy people we can at no government expense.  Landmarks: We’re here to preserve and enhance the special characteristics of the historic district.

After the final vote, Landmarks Chairman Art DeMuro, a man noted for diplomatic skills as well as his background as a developer sitting on the other side of the table, offered a brief speech that must have still sounded foreign to Blanchet ears.  He said the commission’s job is not to review the mission of a building or its owner’s non-profit status.  “We have a mission to protect the historic resources of the community,” he said.  “We need to be blind to the applicant and the mission.”

Blanchet House hopes to demolish the Kiernan and complete its new building by summer of 2012.  When it opens, hungry people awaiting  meals will be able to wait inside instead of on the sidewalk outside.  The Blanchet House will be the last soup kitchen in the Old Town vicinity to provide inside waiting space, thus ending the sidewalk lines that have dotted what used to be called Skid Road since World War II.

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

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A quest to restore Portland's oldest surviving commercial building

 

Hallock-McMillen building (photo by Fred Leeson)

BY FRED LEESON

Interior detective work and old photographs are revealing the architectural secrets of Portland’s oldest surviving commercial building.

Developer John Russell bought the Hallock-McMillen building at 237 S.W. Naito Parkway late last year after a 30-year quest to acquire what can only be described as a well-hidden landmark. Major exterior changes in the 1940s and 1950s stripped the skinny, two-story building of all but shreds of its original 1857 appearance.

That’s about to change. Russell, working with Emerick Architects, is working on plans to restore the Hallock-McMillen to its original appearance as the city’s first masonry and cast-iron structure. A preliminary set of plans has been submitted to the Portland Historic Landmarks Commission, which must approve exterior renovation plans.

Emerick says interior demolition has established the original location of windows and doors on the south side of the building which were were stuccoed over many years ago. He also said the northern pilaster on the Naito façade has been discovered, which gives designers an exact understanding of brick dimensions on the two pilasters that originally framed the east façade.

Blow-ups from old photographs also give a general view of the cast iron details used in the original three cast-iron arches on the east façade. William J. Hawkins III, Portland’s expert on cast iron architecture and author of Classic Houses of Portland: 1850-1950, is using the photographic history to replicate designs of the cast-iron arches and their decorations. He also has drawn an elevation study showing the original east façade.

Elevation of Hallock-McMillen building (courtesy Emerick Architects)

Emerick says the building was erected in 1857 by Absalom Hallock, Portland’s first professional architect, who had arrived in Portland in 1850. Hallock also represented Phoenix Cast Iron Works of San Francisco, where the original cast iron no doubt originated. Emerick said Hallock lived and worked in the building for approximately 20 years, before it devolved into many subsequent manufacturing and commercial uses. Russell intends to remodel the interior into office space.

A small single-story addition was erected many years later at the rear of the building. Russell hopes to add a recessed, second story to that addition which would allow room for an elevator. Emerick said the original south façade was painted brick, later covered by at least an inch of concrete stucco. “We’re trying to explore ways to remove that,” he told the landmarks commission.

The more ornate east face was composed of brick, cast iron and smooth cement plaster, Emerick said. The entry doors and upstairs windows were deeply recessed to allow opening and closure of iron bi-fold shutters intended to protect the building in case of fire. Emerick said he’d like to recreate the shutters, but they would not be operable.

Russell’s acquisition gives him ownership of five contiguous buildings, including the full frontage on S.W. Oak between Naito and First Avenue, as well as the building immediately north of the Hallock-McMillen. Russell started those acquisitions in the early 1970s, when he bought and renovated the Dielschneider Building at 71 S.W. Oak.

It is likely that the final design will include internal passageways connecting some of the buildings and some sharing of mechanical systems. “The key to making all five of them work successfully is the Hallock-McMillen Building,” Russell said.

The renovation is expected to get started later this year and take less than a year to complete.

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

 

Japanese Garden selects Kengo Kuma for expansion, unveils design

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

BY BRIAN LIBBY

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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A first visit to Matthew Knight Arena

Matthew Knight Arena (photo by Brian Libby)

BY BRIAN LIBBY

On the eve of the Oregon Ducks' all time biggest sporting moment from more than 115 years of athletic competition, the BCS national championship football game, yesterday I was part of a gaggle of reporters, bloggers and radio deejays invited on a tour of the all but complete Matthew Knight Arena in Eugene.

The LEED Gold-rated arena, a new home for coach Dana Altman's basketball team and replacement for the venerable MacArthur Court, acts as a new front door for the university, literally oriented toward a new freeway exit that will deposit drivers beside its 1776 Franklin Boulevard address.

Although one thinks of this as a TVA Architects project, there are actually quite a few different architecture firms involved. Ellerbe Becket, the Kansas City-based sports facility specialist, designed the interior arena itself: the basketball court and the surrounding seats. TVA Architects designed building around the arena proper, as I understand it. But then there was another firm, the acclaimed sustainability-oriented, Chicago-based Perkins + Will, that designed the three different private clubs. A lot of cooks were working on this broth, but all with respective talents.

Given that MacArthur Court  is such an historic, beloved presence (it was the oldest basketball arena in America as of the closure of the original Boston Garden), it's natural for fans to compare Matt Court (as Knight Arena is nicknamed) and Mac Court.

Courtside at Matthew Knight Arena (photos by Brian Libby)

The architects did a fabulous job of recreating the intimacy of Mac Court at Knight Arena. At the new place, like the old one, seats are placed right up against the hardwood - so much so that Knight Arena couldn't host a hockey game. In a surprisingly democratic architectural move given the norm in stadium and arena building, Knight Arena has no skyboxes. Think about that: the University is giving up the opportunity to reap millions in sky box revenue in order to preserve the integrity of sports attendance as a communal event where every fan is equal.

Also to Phil Knight's credit, the architects reported that on his first tour of the space, the Nike co-founder asked to be taken to the worst seat in the arena to make sure it was still good. When Autzen Stadium was expanded nine years ago, I heard a similar story about Knight.

Founders Club inside Knight Arena (photo by David Piper, Addicted to Quack)

That said, this egalitarian spirit does not extend to the luxurious spaces reserved for donors. Here segregation by income and donation level is the game plan. There is the MacArthur Club for one level of donors, the Founders Club for higher-level donors, and private suites built for Phil Knight and Pat Kilkenny, respectively. It must feel strange to have given, say, $10,000 to the Oregon Athletic Department, invited to the MacArthur Club for a game, and then watch as the higher rollers go next door where the granite and leather finishes are nicer, and where you, the generous Oregon donor, is not allowed. For all the wonderful democratic, all-for-one attitude in the arena, the back of the house is just the opposite: Your Mercedes could be scoffed at by the Rolls Royce or the Gulfstream.

Luckily the building is admirable when it comes to another kind of value: sustainability. Despite the aforementioned LEED rating, Knight Arena is projected to use about 30 percent less energy than a building constructed to code. (Hoffman Construction is the general contractor.)

The concourse surrounding the arena is a sumptuous space teeming with natural light from the glassy exterior facade. Here one also notices the rich, white oak paneling that clads the arena bowl. One can also see the wood of the curving bowl from outside the building, which recalls the gorgeous, luminous transparency of Memorial Coliseum.

Knight Arena concourse (photo by Brian Libby)

Another great move with respect to transparency is the fact that as one crosses the threshold Knight Arena from any of its multiple entrances, it's possible to see into the seating bowl through its entrances in the concourse. In fact, the massive Jumbotron-style scoreboard sits at more or less eye level with the street (the arena is sunken into the ground), so you could actually get a sense of what's happening inside the very moment you step into the building.

There is, as you can see in the accompanying photos, a substantial amount of glass along the perimeter of the building, especially the long northern facade facing Franklin Boulevard and the nearby all-glass Jaqua Center. That really benefits the concourse, which practically doesn't even need artificial light during the daytime. What's more, the glassiness of the facade allows one to feel a connection with the university. From the upper concourse at the top of the seating bowl, you can look out at Hayward Field, the UO campus and even Autzen Stadium across the Willamette River. At ground level, the east facade looks directly out onto the campus dorms.

Knight Arena northern facade (photo by Brian Libby)

It's because the transparency is such a success in the concourse, however, that I wish there was more natural light allowed into the arena itself. A few years ago I wrote an Architecture Week article about a new arena at the University of Virginia. Tritely neo-classical in style, seeking to meld with UVA's magnificent Thomas Jefferson-designed campus, it would not hold a candle to Matthew Knight Arena in overall architecture. Yet that arena brought a great deal of natural light onto the basketball court itself. Something similar could be said about recent football stadiums like Lucas Oil Stadium, the home of the Indianapolis Colts. Its form is hideous, like some kind of overgrown barn. But the stadium's end zones feature giant walls of glass.

Natural light isn't just more pleasant for spectators. The quality of natural light and our ability to perceive in it can never be fully replicated by artificial light. In other words, athletes will actually perform better in natural light, just as studies have shown students to achieve higher average test scores in naturally lit classrooms and workers to be more productive when they're in a space with windows.

Nighttime at Knight (photo courtesy TVA Architects)

On the outside, the glass facades help mitigate another formal difficulty with the building. Because there is an attached building with practice courts on one side, and the Alumni Center abutting the arena on the other, the complex has a monolithic quality. The arena itself would have seemed large, but now the whole development seems huge.

And while the aluminum cladding on the outside has an understated elegance, it's also, at least to my eyes, rather dark and drab for such a rainy climate. (This is the same reaction I had to the cladding on the TVA-designed John Ross Condominiums in Portland's South Waterfront.) Given that TVA was also the architect of the Nike World Campus in Beaverton, I found myself wondering if a similarly white facade would have made the building feel lighter.

Knight Arena, Ford Alumni Center (photos by Brian Libby)

The interior concourse, besides benefitting from the glass facades and the connections it brings to the outside, also shows off the attention to detail on Matthew Knight Arena. Take a look upward at the building's massively high ceilings, and you won't find the tangle of mechanical and electrical equipment that have become common to most buildings. One notices the craftsmanship and detail in the white oak wraparound facade as well, and the scrapbook-like murals featuring great moments in Ducks basketball history.

Then there is the court itself, the hardwood. Nike created a special pattern printed onto the wood: a crown of tall forest trees. And just in case one doesn't recognize the imagery, text at center court reads in large script, "DEEP IN THE WOODS". I find the whole patterning affect highly distasteful. Natural wood is one of the beautiful subtle textural details of the game of basketball. The texture of the grain is celebrated in this arena in the white oak wraparound concourse. But then the hardwood itself is covered in a faux printed pattern.

That's right: Nike actually created a pattern of fake wood that covers up the real wood.

"Kilkenny Floor" at Knight Arena (photo by Brian Libby)

Many of my fellow Duck fans seem to be excited about the unique look of the tree-crown imagery. Indeed, there is nothing else like it in any basketball court I've ever seen at the high school, college or professional level. So if you're reading this rant against the tree crowned court and find it simply the equivalent of an old man saying, "These kids today with their hula hoops and their bell-bottom slacks!", then I hear you.

What I will argue more definitively against is the various text covering the court.

In one of Knight Arena's private clubs, there is a photo of the MacArthur Court playing surface with the familiar Oregon 'O' logo at center court and the name "OREGON" in all caps below it. Now, it says, "MATT", in a massive new logo for the arena. One wants to applaud the use of the late Matthew Knight's name in the arena - it's a loving gesture from his father, who bankrolled the $200 million building. But does "MATT" really need to usurp "OREGON" at center court? What's next, changing the name on the jerseys?

The hardwood itself is also named "Pat Kilkenny Floor" as a nod to the the former athletic director and a millionaire longtime booster who joined Knight in funding the arena. Besides the name "PAT KILKENNY FLOOR" scripted on the court, there is a trio of little drawings inscribed with his name that are personal references to things like his home in San Diego. Again, it's not to say Oregon shouldn't be very thankful that two gargantuanly affluent alumni have gifted one of the better arenas in America to the university. But I find the floor a bit meretricious.

Just as MacArthur Court comparisons are inevitable, so too does one think of Memorial Coliseum when looking at Knight Arena. I admit my own bias in this regard, having fought to save the Coliseum. But just as I wondered about more natural light in the arena itself based on the Coliseum's beautiful example, when I came through the doors Knight Arena yesterday at its western entry I noticed many more columns in this fraction of the building alone (approximately six to eight by my count) than in all of Memorial Coliseum (four). As a result, the concourse, while certainly much larger and wider than tiny little MacArthur Court's, is not the wide open space it could be. There are also columns lining the glass facade from the inside, like a fence blocking the view. Why not do more to place structural support for the building in its roof system, so the glass curtain wall can be more enjoyed?

Knight Arena concourse views out and up (photos by Brian Libby)

Again, these criticisms come in the context of finding Matthew Knight Arena an exceptionally wonderful place to see a basketball game, and a very impressive building from its sustainability to its beautiful materials to the detailed construction.

Although TVA and co-founding principal Robert Thompson have designed some big projects in the past like the Nike Campus and the Fox Tower, Knight Arena is seemingly the culmination of a career. And while the project architect who led our tour confessed an ambivalence about "some football game" on Monday night, Thompson, like Knight, is an Oregon alumnus and a fan. I know the architect, an AIA Fellow, took great pride and care to make sure this building is a palace to make Duck fans, players and staff happy for generations.

Expanding the Japanese Garden - with Kengo Kuma?

Japanese Garden tea house (photo by Brian Libby)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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ZGF Architects' Gene Sandoval talks about UO's Casanova Center expansion

Rendering of planned Casanova Center expansion (image courtesy ZGF/UO)

Today is the final day before the biggest football game in the history of the state of Oregon, with the Ducks heading into tomorrow's annual Civil War against archrival Oregon State with a slot in the national championship game on the line. Oregon has been playing football since 1894, and in 116 years the team has never come close to a moment like this: a potentially perfect season atop the college football world.

Taking a few moments from my fetal position on the floor, where I'm writing with nervous tension over my beloved Ducks once-in-several-lifetimes opportunity, I spoke by phone with ZGF Architects partner Gene Sandoval about the ambitious new architecture planned for the land surrounding Autzen Stadium. Sandoval assures me that tomorrow's game is actually not a once-in-several-lifetimes moment, because the coalescence of head coach Chip Kelly's genius with benefactor Phil Knight's riches and ambition will mean a very bright future for the program.

Alternately known as an expansion to the existing Casanova Center and as a "football operations center" of its own, the new building will be series of glass and metal boxes meant to evoke the nature of football itself.

Rendering of planned Casanova Center expansion (image courtesy ZGF)

Featured in the expansion, which will wrap around the north and west sides of the Casanova Center, will be a new 25,000-square-foot weight room, an enhanced grass football practice field as well as the addition of two new synthetic turf practice fields, and a full-service dining facility available to all University athletes, students and staff.

The ground floor of the six-story center will feature a lobby and reception area celebrating Ducks football history program, giving way to a centralized football operations center upstairs that will include nine dedicated football position meeting rooms, two team video theaters, offense and defense strategy rooms as well as a larger conference suite for the entire coaching staff. The centralized area will be flanked by office and locker facilities for coaches, staff and student-athletes. Additional amenities will include a players' lounge, a recruiting center to host prospective student-athletes, dedicated areas to accommodate professional scouts, a media interview room as well as an advanced video editing and distribution center.

A new outdoor courtyard and plaza to the west of the Casanova Center is designed in the center of the complex, uniting the expansion with the existing Cas Center and Moshofsky Center.

Rendering of planned Casanova Center expansion (image courtesy ZGF)

"The idea of the building  is about collective strength that comes from individuals," Sandoval said. "So it’s a series of stacked boxes, like Lego boxes, that make a form. We want to celebrate each piece and make it sing. In some ways that’s analogous to a team: they all have different positions, but it’s about making a congruent entity."

The building will be clad in glass and metal, hoping to strike a balance between protection and openness. "The exterior envrolope takes on the notion of armor and pads, so it’s going to be a black suit of armor," Sandoval added. "But it’s translucent armor. It’s glass. There is this sort of play between strength and accessibility. We’re formidable but open. All the ground floor is glass and all the meeting rooms. It’s about texturing and layering."

"We intentionally situated the ground floor so it's all public rooms and transparent, to invite people into the bilding. All the rooms that needed privacy are elevated about 30 feet up. They become this notion of the cloister, where you can go and reflect and learn and strategize."

Although most of the new square footage is devoted to the football program, this will free up substantial space in the existing Casanova Center for other sports.

"It’s not just about football. It’s about building a sports community," the architect continued. "But this building does represent Chip Kelly’s notion of football: we build our own future. We’re all about the best and the latest. We’re open to anything that makes us better. He’s an amazing man. And he’s also very savvy. Chip is really about changing and reinventing football, not only in terms of strategy with offense or defense but the way he trains people. And he needs a place for this. It’s really a pedagogy. The building is about supporting chip Kelly and the mission of moving forward. And built into it is the flexibility to change over time."

Fire station, garage and handball court to creative-class hub: Emerick Architects' Fire Station No. 7

Fire Station No. 7 (photo by Brian Libby)

The former fire station at Southeast 11th and Stark, originally built in 1927 as the home of Engine Company No. 7, has become the latest in a series of creative-services enclaves.

The project was developed by Venerable Properties, which has renovated countless old buildings around town such as White Stag Block in Old Town for the University of Oregon, and designed by Emerick Architects, whose portfolio includes renovations like the Ford Building, also an historic Southeast Portland industrial building turned into a home for creative industries (designers, yoga and martial arts instructors, an art gallery, a photographer's studio).

Fire Station No. 7, designed by the same architect as the historic Belmont Firehouse about 20 blocks away that has become a fire bureau museum, has been added to and changed numerous times over the years. In the 1930s, a handball court of all things became the first addition. "I guess handball was pretty big then," laughed Emerick Architects' Brian Emerick in a recent phone interview. "It had a lit up scoreboard and everything." In the 1970s the structure was expanded and turned into a repair center/garage serving the entire Fire Bureau staff. In the 1980’s the City sold the building and it was subsequently used as an automotive garage until abandoned a few years ago. As a result, the current renovation involved not just the original 1927 structures, but the adjacent automotive shop dating to the Nixon era.

Original Engine Company No. 7 building, 1927 (image courtesy Emerick Architects)

The adjacent shop addition was completely revamped to become the new headquarters for Bremik Construction, while the original Fire Station has become home to a variety of companies, including a salon, a research and development group, a marketing company, and a designer of smart phones apps.

Although both the original building and the garage addition were already listed on the National Register, the addition "non contributing" to the historic architecture so the architects had more liberties in this portion.

Bremik Construction interior (photo by Brian Libby)

"The original was more about adaptive reuse," Emerick added. "The Bremik building was trying to find some cool factor in the fabric and being more radical about how we changed it. If you can imagine a '70s auto garage, that's really where the opportunity was to re-appropriate. There were some timber elements in the ceiling we were able to highlight, and the way the handball court was captured was an interesting story. It was all wall to wall Douglas fir in that part of the building, so we were able to sandblast the paint off and leave it as just a big volume and add the inset boxes – the offices that sit inside. We also felt like it was important to revisit the [garage's] façade because it was poorly done with t-111 siding. We wanted it to be more compatible with the original fire station and more engaging as a storefront."

Fire Station No. 7/Bremik Construction (photos by Sally Painter)

As a result, the fire station seems like merely a cleaned up version of its same self from the outside, while a wall of storefront glass makes the garage a more attractive and inviting building than it ever was in the first place. And inside the Bremik headquarters (the company served as contractor for this and the fire station), there is a rich palette of wood and a sense of fun that comes from the remnants of the handball court.

Over the years, character defining elements such as 12’ tall carriage doors and cast iron lighting had been lost and original steel sash windows replaced.  The design approach was to rebuild these and restore the building’s iconic neighborhood status, while creatively dividing the interior into viable suites that respected the original layout. Downstairs, this was accomplished using the new massive operable carriage doors as an engaging storefront system for retail.

Upstairs at Fire Station No. 7 (photo by Brian Libby)

Upstairs, the original building used to contain highly segregated firefighters' quarters: not as in segregation between black and white or Duck and Beaver fans, but fire captains from the rank-and-file firefighters. There were even two separate stairways side by side separated by a wall. Here the architects mostly just opened things up, including a skylight that hadn't been in use but now floods the space with natural illumination.

If we're talking about a fire house being renovated, it begs the question: what about the fire pole? Are there Apple R&D people or phone-app designers sliding down the pole on their way to finding a cappuccino or a yoga class?

The good news is that at least one of the fire poles remains, but the bad news is that it had to be enclosed at the top and bottom with glass to prevent people from actually sliding down the old thing.

Fire pole at Fire Station No. 7 (photo by Brian Libby)

Rigid insulation beyond code values over the maintenance garage roof allowed the building to maintain its old growth timber framing, which doubles as a spectacular finished ceiling in the space.  Single pane aluminum windows and garage doors were replaced with insulated double glazed wood units.  High efficiency gas fired units replaced an old oil boiler, and a shared central chilled water system, made a leap in heating and cooling performance efficiency. Operable casement windows were maintained in the original building to allow for natural ventilation. Because the site primarily faces north and east, it is protected from the southern solar exposure and winter winds.

The architect also credits his developer for the vision to see historic projects renovated the right way, often spending the extra dollar to build quality even if it takes longer to recover the costs - not out of some selfless altruism on the part of Venerable head Art DeMuro (who also is a member of the city's Historic Landmarks Commission) but because ultimately it's better for business.

"We've been working with them for a decade and I can say Venerable’s very unique as a developer," Emerick explains. "They’re long-term owners in every project they do. So sometimes they’re willing to spend more to get things right when it pencils out in the long term. It can lead to a higher level of quality and authenticity in the product, and that adds value. The projects lease up even in tough times. With the fire station, they actually had a tough time getting a loan for that. And they even had Bremik on board as an anchor tenant taking up have the real estate space. But now that the project’s finished, the building’s pretty much leased out."

Bremerick Construction interior (photos by Sally Painter)

This is just the latest case of an old Portland industrial building becoming home to a cluster of creative industries, following examples like the aforementioned Ford Building as well as the Olympic Mills Commerce Center in the Central Eastside and the Leftbank Building on Northeast Broadway.

"There’s an authenticity of the history that’s also been reinvented too," Emerick said. "I think that’s an appealing combination. And southeast is a hotbed of creativity. It seems a lot of the artists and the providers for the building trades have moved over. It’s funny: people look to places like South Waterfront for growth, but the Central Eastside is what’s interesting to me.  Part of the transformation is being driven by the changes in the industry itself. It’s still an industrial sanctuary, but most heavy industry isn’t able to use that kind of property effectively. Many of them have moved out to the ‘burbs. The B&O warehouse was full of artists working there without heat even before they renovated it."

Getting to know YU, Portland's new contemporary art center

Future YU Contemporary (rendering courtesy YU/Accelerated Development)

For the last several years the Yale Union Laundry building at 800 SE 10th Avenue, a striking brick Italian Renaissance space built in 1908 and listed on the National Registry of Historic Places, has sat empty. But now, it is poised to become the major contemporary art center Portland has more or less lacked since the closing of the Portland Center for the Visual Arts closed in 1987.

A few days ago organizers of the new YU Contemporary art center unveiled their vision: to transform the 40,000 square foot building between Belmont and Morrison Sreets into a dedicated contemporary art center.

Yale Union Laundry Building (photo by Brian Libby)

“The thinking is that while generalist institutions such as the Portland Art Museum serve the widest possible audience,” explains The Oregonian’s DK Row, “a dedicated center focused only on the most challenging level of contemporary art serves the art community specifically. Unlike smaller art institutions like Disjecta or the now-defunct Portland Art Center focused on local artists’, it would feature a mix of national, international and local artists. Unlike the Portland Institute for Contemporary Art’s Time-Based Art Festival, it would have a year round presence.

For most arts institutions, the biggest financial challenge is architectural: building and paying for a physical home. Disjecta tried to renovate the prominent Templeton Building at the east Burnside bridge head, but instead wound up relocating to a warehouse in North Portland. (Not that there's anything wrong with that.) PICA started with donated exhibit space in the Wieden + Kennedy building, but gave it up several years ago to focus its resources on the TBA Fest each September.

Percival, Knapp and Jamison (photo by Lincoln Barbour, Portland Monthly)

YU was founded by Curtis Knapp, a 37-year-old musician and indie record producer, and his longtime friend Aaron Flint Jamison, a 31-year-old artist and publisher. Knapp’s record label, Marriage Records, has helped launch successful indie bands like Dirty Projectors, while a book of poetry he created with Tom Blood won a 2008 Oregon Book Award. Jamison founded and published the art journal Veneer and has held residencies across Europe and the US. 

If you’re thinking these guys sound a little inexperienced to be founding a major contemporary arts center, they knew it too. But Knapp and Jamison had something very important going for them. In donor-poor Portland, they found a patron willing to buy the Yale Union Laundry Building and lease it back to them rent-free and put of hundreds of thousands more in capital to help them get started. Next, the pair hired Sandra Percival, an arts veteran with the experience they lacked. Percival, a Portland native, is former executive director of New Langton Arts in San Francisco and was also director of Public Art Development Trust in London as part of a 30-year career. 

According to a report by Randy Gragg in Portland Monthly, the trio engaged local BOORA Architects to create a feasibility study for former home of Perfect Fit-McDonald upholstery company, and hope to build “a $7.2 million historical renovation with galleries, a bookstore/café, and a 100-seat flex space, all of it aiming for a LEED Platinum designation courtesy of features like a geothermal heating system tapped from an aquifer running beneath the building.” Row’s story also says there will be a recording studio, retail and office spaces, and a recording studio.

Yale Union Building (photos by Brian Libby)

YU has already introduced a rendering of a glass courtyard occupying the Morrison Street side of the old building, enabling YU to offer a more inviting, transparent counterbalance to the solidity of the original brick building.

That said, even just the Italian Renaissance former laundry and upholstery building is ideal for displaying art with its bounty of natural light and vast, wide-open spaces—particularly upstairs. Gragg writes that “…everyone who strolls the rhythmically windowed length of the Yale Union Laundry Building’s second-floor room seems to leave with the same infectious hope.”

The YU principals seem to understand the need to proceed gradually, thoughtfully and methodically. After all, most successful nonprofit arts organizations, for all the importance of a physical space to call home, start with a mission that predates and prefigures the migration there. YU can’t just fall into having a building and expect the art institution that follows to fall into place in terms of funding, public interest or quality.

"Overall, it's obvious that the 14,000 sqare feet of exhibition space is its strongest card in YU's deck so far, also meaning that the actual programming, institutional organization and general institutional vision seem under developed and hazy at best (they are seeking input)," writes Jeff Jahn of PORT. "The column-free upper gallery is reminiscent of both a larger version of the PCVA and the even vaster Mass MoCA great hall. It's a space that artists will hunger for. Only the Geffen Contemporary offers a similar theater for ambition on the West Coast, though only very adept artists could hope to handle such a space."

YU lower (top) and upper floors (photos by Lincoln Barbour, Portland Monthly)

It’s easy to get excited about the possibility of Portland having the serious, internationally renowned contemporary art center it has lacked since the days when PCVA was bringing here the likes of Donald Judd. And the success of YU could help to invigorate a the lower sections of Belmont and Morrison between the building and the bridge, which has already shown signs of flourishing with arts organizations like Oregon Ballet Theater and Zoomtopia as well as eateries like the beloved Bunk Sandwiches.

“We already have a great foundation in the building,” Percival told Gragg. “When people walk in, they stop worrying about the problems and start talking about the possibilities.”

Works Partnership Architecture's tract home redux in Ridgefield

Prototype A, Ridgefield, Washington (photo by Chris Hodney)

A tract-home subdivision 25 miles from downtown Portland in Ridgefield, Washington is not usually the place to find award winning architects plying their trade. But that's precisely why Works Partnership Architecture accepted an offer from Ryan Zygar and Tamarack Homes to try and build a contemporary home within the strictures of affordability and speed necessary to the client and the home building industry.

As profiled in Residential Architect magazine by  Meghan Drueding, the completed spec home, totaling 1,904 square feet and now for sale for $327,000, took 70 days from start to finish, including design time. Known as Prototype A, it features an upside-down floor plan with the primary living spaces and a master suite placed above a ground floor garage and two additional bedrooms. Designers and principals Bill Neburka and Carrie Schilling also chose to pull apart the two halves second floor to create a private courtyard. This gives rooms extra opportunities for natural light and cross-ventilation.

Looking at the house from the street front, it doesn't provide a lot of glass and transparency to integrate the private sphere with the neighborhood outside. The garage is front and center, which is never the best choice from an urbanistic perspective. But this is arguably a reflection not of Works' design decisions so much as the environment in which the house is being built, and what the market expects in terms of two-car garages over front porches. I'm not saying this house should be some new-urbanist cliche in which smiling families wave across their porch swings to one another, but it is unfortunate that subdivisions always seem to favor car storage so prominently at the expense of porches or other integrations with the public realm.

At the same time, the design also does something clever. It combines the traditional form of a pitched roof with the above-the-ground outdoor space delivered by flat-roofed designs. This way the house, while modern, fits in well with the McMansions or more modest traditional looking tract homes in this realm even as it stands out from them.

Still, the fact that Works and the builder made this striking design happen within market confines is impressive. "Zygar wanted to challenge himself and his staff to build a different kind of house for the same cost, in the same amount of time, and using the same materials and techniques as a standard production home," Drueding writes.

Of the architects, she adds, "Used to creating custom homes, they found they had to adjust their drawings to dovetail with typical production building methods. 'It was a great education for us, understanding how these houses get built,' Neburka says. Adds Schilling, 'It’s fast, inexpensive, and efficient.'"

Prototype A, Ridgefield, Washington (photo by Shawn St. Peter)

If the home sells in an acceptable amount of time and for an amount close to the asking price, perhaps it may convince other builders to construct houses using Prototype A's blueprint. After all, most home builders don't necessarily have anything against modern design so much as they believe the market wants traditionally styled homes. However, every trend is cyclical, and history has shown there are times when contemporary design can register on a broad scale.

In early and especially mid-20th century, ranch houses became popular for their blend of old and new forms, and many contemporary subdivisions by builders such as Joseph Eichler in California and Robert Rummer here in Portland saw dozens of contemporary houses snatched up by middle class families. What's more, the functional quality of modern homes became a way of life, eschewing the warren of small rooms common to Victorian houses in favor of greater openness. Today even if a suburban house has a traditional looking exterior, its great room is decidedly of today.

Prototype A, Ridgefield, Washington (photos by Chris Hodney)

Creating a popular contemporary home plan that is replicated by other builders doesn't require just a good design, but a business partner willing to make it happen and the interest of the public. As has been the case with the trend of prefab homes as celebrated in Dwell magazine and elsewhere, the good design and the first prototype are just the first of several steps necessary to achieve the large scale of home after home being built.

Hopefully Prototype A, if its design is as compelling as it looks in these photos, will prove its success over time by being more than a prototype.

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Anticipating an office-building thaw

Park Avenue West (rendering courtesy TVA Architects)

It's not to say we're through the difficulty just yet. Unemployment remains high, both nationally and especially in Oregon. Development in downtown has lately been symbolized by a giant hole in the ground where the Park Avenue West tower was supposed to be built before construction stalled. And investments or other help from the federal government may be coming to a halt after Tuesday's elections.

But there are also signs of a thaw. On the national level, the Labor Department said today that the American economy showed a net gain of 151,000 jobs last month. (Yet the fickle electorate remained restless.) And here in Portland, Jeff Manning reported in Wednesday's Oregonian that not only may developer Tom Moyer's Park Avenue West by TVA Architects finally be resuscitated, but new downtown office towers are being pitched to meet increasing demand. After all, the city has a downtown office vacancy rate of less than 10 percent. And several large tenants may be looking for new space.

"Because we've been in such a difficult economic environment for a couple years, people haven't wanted to play a lot of offense," David Squire, managing director of the Grubb & Ellis commercial real estate office in Portland, told Manning. "But if you look at the numbers, it's tight out there. If you're a large user needing 50,000 square feet or more, you're out of options." 

Among those said to be looking for new space of this size are the Miller Nash law firm and KPFF Consulting Engineers. Iberdrola Renewables is looking for at least 100,000 square feet, Manning reports, and the Army Corps of Engineers needs 125,000. Although new office buildings like First & Main One Main Place have arrived recently, they've been offset by the emptying out of the Edith Green Wendell Wyatt federal building for renovations.

If any new office buildings see groundbreaking in the year ahead, two of the likeliest seem to be planned for the West End.

Manning reports Harsch Development, headed by Jordan Schnitzer, is looking at building a new 15-story office tower at the intersection of Southwest 10th Avenue and Stark Street, on a surface parking lot adjacent to the former Federal Reserve building. This would be an ideal location given the energy of the block across 10th Avenue that includes the Ace Hotel, Kenny & Zuke's Deli, and Living Room Theaters, not to mention Powell's Books and the Brewery Blocks two blocks north.

Twelve West building (photo by Brian Libby)

Developer Gerding Edlen may also be considering a project called 11 West, at the corner of Southwest 12th Avenue and Washington Street on a City Center Parking surface lot. The adjacent building, the ZGF Architects-designed 12 West mixed-use tower, Gerding developed in partnership with City Center Parking on one of the company's other surface lots. It has become the most successful major buiding project of the past two years, with a host of office, retail and housing tenants accrued even amidst the Great Recession. It also was named to the AIA Committee on the Environment's national Top 10 Green Projects list. Given that 12 West enjoys first-rate sustainability credentials, with its LEED Platinum rating and the nation's first-ever use of wind turbines on a high-density urban tower, perhaps Gerding has shown (as they did with the Brewery Blocks) that top level sustainability gives companies and developers a proven market advantage.

However, when I spoke with Gerding Edlen leader Mark Edlen this morning by phone (I happened to be interviewing him for another story), he called a groundbreaking announcement for 11 West "premature". If the economy really is picking up, Edlen knows it is a tentative, slow recovery at best. And he knows there is still a giant sink hole a block away from Pioneer Courthouse Square that is yet to be filled with steel and glass, let alone tenants.

One Waterfront Place (rendering courtesy Winkler Naito Development)

One other potential project was mentioned in Manning's story, one that has been in gestation now for nearly a decade: One Waterfront Place. I remember seeing a presentation on this building as far back as the Greenbuild conference in 2002. Developed by Jim Winkler and Bob Naito, the 12-story, 250,000 square-foot building would be constructed on a site at Northwest Naito Parkway just north of the Broadway Bridge with a LEED Platinum rating.

Given how a new streetcar line is being planned to cross the bridge and much development is planned for the Rose Quarter, One Waterfront could be ideally positioned. But that's something which was said of the building many years before. That's the thing about the speculative office market, I guess. Anything we say before ground is broken is just that: speculation.

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Simple forms, fine detail at Atelier Waechter's Cape Cod house

Cape Cod House, Portland (photo by Sally Schoolmaster)

Although his one-person firm, Atelier Waechter, has only produced two houses to date in Portland, Ben Waechter seems to be one of Portland’s major young architectural talents. And not just because he learned his trade working for two of the world’s most acclaimed architecture firms, Renzo Piano Buiding Workshop in Italy and Allied Works here in Portland.

Waechter’s Z-Haus, included in 2009’s 11xDesign homes tour, boasted a unique floor plan with a succession of half-levels that made the whole house feel connected even when people were on different floors. Now, the architect has seen completion of a second house in Portland. It’s called the Cape Cod House, referring to the small single-story home (originally built in 1947) that Waechter’s design transformed into a more spacious but still not oversized three-story structure.

Cape Cod House, Portland (photo by Sally Schoolmaster)

Although the house’s small original footprint (about 650 square feet) was retained, the ground floor is now a wide-open space that includes the living room, dining room and kitchen (bedrooms were moved upstairs). But the distinctive design move here and the most noticeable presence is a large floor-to-ceiling wood box that encloses the stairways (upstairs to bedrooms and the roof deck, downstairs to the basement), a bathroom and storage.

I said “floor to ceiling” but Waechter and builder Prutting & Company (a high-end East Coast construction company debuting in Portland with this project) took great care to craft the box so it stops just short of the top and bottom of the room, so as to seem like a piece of large furniture as much as interior architecture. “One literally steps into this wooden box creating a dramatic threshold between the main living space and the more private bedroom area above,” Waechter told me.

Cape Cod House, Portland (photos by Sally Schoolmaster)

I might have preferred the box be cut into in order to bring natural light to the stairway and to make the structure seem less monolithic. But the craftsmanship here and throughout the house is particularly beautiful in its details, from window casings to the flooring to fixtures. That was a mark of the Z-Haus, but it’s an even more impressive display here given that the Cape Cod House was built at a substantially smaller budget. This is an inexpensive job that feels luxurious in its attention to detail.

“Andrew Friedman was a crucial partner in making the project successful,” Waechter said. “With a lean construction budget, Andrew was able to find cost effective ways to achieve a high level of detail and quality.  The crisp and precise execution of the exterior cladding is just one example of this.  To achieve this precision with a relatively small cladding allowance, Andrew enlisted the skills of a finish carpenter to make precise edges (corner boards, window trim and cap) and then the speed of a siding company to fill the field where imperfection is less visible.”

Top: original house, bottom: roof deck (photos by Sally Schoolmaster)

After taking the stairway up one level to the Cape Cod House's two bedrooms, one can continue upward to a rooftop deck. Pitched roofs are much more common here (as well as most places), and the rainy climate means preventing leaks is always a challenge. But there's no denying that the third level, clad in wood like a patio deck with the same footprint as the rest of the house, provides a lot of additional space. The view of North and Northeast Portland isn't bad either.

And like the box on the first floor that holds the stairway, pantry and powder room, the rooftop entry is comprised of a white box that is slightly off-center from the rest of the house. In both cases, it helps the Cape Cod House to exhibit a subtle departure from the symmetry one expects to find.

Both of Waechter’s houses have boxy forms – not necessarily that of the modernist wood box that has become a little of a Dwell magazine cliché, but still solidly square. For that reason, Waechter also points to another of his designs, a tea house in Eugene (also recently completed) for J-Tea International, an importer of Taiwanese oolong teas.

 

J-Tea store, Eugene (photos by Sally Schoolmaster)

The J-Tea project transformed an existing single-family house located in a commercially zoned area into a retail space for tea sales and sampling.  The project includes three primary elements: entry canopy, porch and interior “tea walls”.  Each element is visually distinct and has a specific purpose.

The J-Tea canopy is made of white powder-coated aluminum louvers stand out against the more subdued galvanized steel structure.  The white louvers are placed below the support structure to give the impression that they are floating in space like a cloud. The porch walls, floor and roof are made from a relatively thin Port Orford cedar glue laminated beam, supported by two concrete stem walls and cantilevers at each end emphasize the entry threshold. The tea walls form a contained ring around a central tea bar creating a calm and quiet room, and are are composed of a grid of maple plywood that circumscribes the room.

Light Box project renderings (courtesy Atelier Waechter)

Meanwhile, Waechter has two more projects in progress. The Light Box in Northeast Portland is a house “sited on a uniquely shaped urban infill lot…shaped like a flag, narrow at the street and wide at the back,” the architect explains on his website, “To address the constricted nature of the site…the house generously opens up to the street and to the backyard while becoming solid along the side lot lines.

To daylight the central part of the Light Box, a double height space with light monitors was developed that floods the interior with diffuse north light eliminating concerns of solar gain and creating a gallery type ambient glow.”

Garden House rendering (courtesy Atelier Waechter)

The Garden House, also being built in Northeast Portland, was originally a dilapidated detached garage, rebuilt keeping the same footprint “but taking on a completely different form and function,” Waechter adds. Its new purpose is a what he calls a “garden room” that is “shaped as if a child had cut the silhouette from paper.”

As with the rest of the architect’s work, however, this simplicity is tempered by the sophistication executes fine details.

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Hillside origami: OCAC's campus expansions

New OCAC  buildings (photo by John Linden, courtesy Charles Rose Architects)

This past Saturday saw the official dedication of two new buildings at the Oregon College of Art & Craft: the Jean Vollum Drawing, Painting and Photography Building (DPP) and the Bonnie Laing-Malcolmson Thesis Studios. On the eve of that unveiling last Friday, I visited the buildings for the first time for a tour led by the architect, Charles Rose of the eponymous Boston-based firm Charles Rose Architects.

The two buildings, connected by a covered walkway that recalls old Sixties school architecture and even Frank Lloyd Wright's Fallingwater, are nestled into the hillside campus on its northwest edge, allowing expansive views of the coast range. They also sit beside the original OCAC buildings, designed by the late Oregon architect John Storrs.

Although Storrs is deservedly celebrated as one of the most talented local 20th century architects, with his portfolio including landmarks like Salishan Resort on the coast and the World Forestry Center in Portland, these nine OCAC buildings are modest bits of architecture: simple single story buildings with cedar siding, designed in collaboration with a landscape architect Barbara Fealy's campus plan. They are not meant to be grand, but to integrate easily with the topography of the hilly wooded site.

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Vollum building interior (photo by John Linden, courtesy Charles Rose Architects)

Rose's challenge in designing these new buildings was not only to create facilities for teaching and practicing art, but to simultaneously respect the understated original buildings and forge a more grander architectural identity for the school's future: to stand tall without crowding its parents out of the picture. Meanwhile, there was an existing campus master plan by BOORA Architects to fit into, and a series of additional buildings to follow, all of which had to achieve LEED strictures for sustainability. (Local firm Colab Architecture was an architectural consultant to Rose's firm.)

On the outside, the buildings are defined largely by their natural wood exterior, which extends to the underside of the awnings, extending the natural palette of the original Storrs and Fealy campus. Rose may be from Boston, but he knows that Northwest modernism enlivens simple forms with the texture and life of natural materials, especially wood.

OCAC Vollum building (photos by Brian Libby)

These buildings are full of angular geometry. With origami-like folding roof forms, the new Vollum and Laing-Malcolmson buildings have the shape of pointy gems nestled into the hillside. Perusing a recent book about the firm by Princeton Architectural Press called (appropriately) Charles Rose, Architect, it's clear many of these moves, from the wood cladding to the pointy angles to the origami roofs, are common to the architect's portfolio. Architecture is always part functional space-making and, over time, a chance to express and refine a more personal visual language unique to that firm or architect.

If you look at the OCAC buildings through the lens of Rose's past projects like the Shapiro Campus Center at Brandeis University in Massachusetts or the Camp Paint Rock center for underprivileged teens in rural Wyoming, they seem part of a continuous visual language.

Atlantic Center for the Arts, New Smyrna Beach, Florida (photo courtesy Charles Rose Architects)

As it happens, though, and as the OCAC must have seen, Rose's buildings are well suited for such a hilly site and a client conscious about protecting the landscape. They march to their own geometric steps, but they follow and take their cues from the contours of the topography. 

A couple of years ago Rose took aim in an interview at the boxy, minimalist forms of celebrated Portland architect Brad Cloepfil. I think of it as an unimportant difference: one guy is more inclined towards squares and rectangles, the other toward triangles. Rose has hinted that boxiness is somehow less authentically of the now because it's a rehashing of 20th century modernism, particular Mies Van der Rohe. But it's really all geometry, and all contemporary.

Classroom in Vollum building (photo by John Linden, courtesy Charles Rose Architects)

Inside the larger Vollum building, a series of classrooms are laid out successively with a common shared hallway to the right. That simple layout is enlivened by how the classrooms share a crisscrossing array of interior skylights that extend the angular jewel-like visual pattern of the architecture. When I visited with Rose, it was hard not to stop and stare at how light seemed to bounce not just from outside to inside and back, but almost ricochet as if in a prism. It felt rather dazzling.

At the same time, I wonder if the prism-like skylights are the best solution for the artists and teachers using the space. The ceiling creates visual noise for people who are trying to focus on their own paintings, drawings and photography. The light coming into these spaces can be uneven, creating bright spots under the skylight and darker spots under the ceiling. The light fixtures and the apparatus they hang from also seem a little bit cumbersome. 

Skylight in Vollum building (photo by John Linden, courtesy Charles Rose Architects)

The best natural light, which very much affects human behavior and performance in classrooms, workplaces and other architectural spaces, is diffuse and even. I can't help but wonder if, despite Rose's criticism of Cloepfil for being boringly boxy, the skylights don't work as well as simpler, more functional daylighting design. When I visited, the teachers were already well acquainted with the interior shade used to block their skylights. But as you can see, I'm conflicted in this respect

Even so, this quibble comes in the broader context of this being a handsome set of buildings that successfully integrate with the existing buildings and hillside environment. They feel of the Northwest, attentive to light and natural materials. And while Portland has many talented architecture firms that could also have done well with the OCAC commission, the city is enriched for having the contributions of architects from other places, talented people who can challenge our design thinking with fresh perspective.

OCAC map and renderings of future library (courtesy Charles Rose Architects)

And it's a good thing Rose's firm got this right, because they're just getting started at OCAC. To follow will be a new library and a new student center with an auditorium. OCAC started out as an artist's colony and grew into an art school over time. But after years of respectful dormancy, OCAC is coming alive as craft itself has become newly relevant in contemporary culture. Across regional and natural boundaries there is a renewed interest in making things well again, in a way that extends from hand craftsmanship to enlightened manufacturing techniques - something far from just knitting and pottery. The emergence of the Museum of Contemporary Craft in its Pearl District location in recent years is but one local example, as is the joint master's of fine arts program in applied craft in design that OCAC recently created in partnership with the Pacific Northwest College of Art.

OCAC is now three years into its second century, and the anniversary seems to have been, if not an outright wake-up call, at least a healthy re-invigoration that will help the school fully take advantage of an opportune moment to increase its role in the ongoing conversation about what constitutes art, craft and design and how these disciplines overlap.

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Portland's way, but not right away: Burger King at Broadway & Burnside finally gone

Abandoned Burger King at Broadway & Burnside (photo by Jason McHuff via Flickr) 

For all the development that happened during the last decade's economic boom years, a major eyesore and symbol of destitution has remained for years at one of the most prominent intersections in the city of Portland, at Broadway and Burnside: a boarded up Burger King. But last Tuesday, the long-vacant fast food franchise, first built in 1978, finally disappeared. It wasn't flame broiled or fried like a slab of ground beef, but demolition crews were certainly doing this, to borrow from a past BK slogan, our way if not right away.

As Lost Oregon blogger John Chilson notes, this Burger King was actually once lauded for its design. The local chapter of the American Institute of Architects actually gave the this Whopper of a fast-food outlet a design award in 1978. And if you look at it a certain way, noticing the sloping overhangs, it does kind of gently recall northwest modernism, or at least a bastardized form rendered in 70s corporate fast food form.

The same Burger King in 1978 (image courtesy John Chilson, Lost Oregon blog) 

More than any design award, though, this Burger King was long renowned for its less than ideal urban vibe. Apparently lots of drug dealers, prostitutes and petty thieves appreciated the royal treatment having a burger their way (unless it's fried, of course). One commenter on Chilson's blog recalls working there in the 1980s:

Great education in real life for a teen, I must say. Working the register left you open to threats, propositions, lost international tourists with travelers’ checks, crazy people, and shifty money-changers.

People were always trying to reach in and grab the till drawer at the drive-through–one of my coworkers kept a section of broom handle at that station so she could beat them on the arm. I just slammed the window as hard as I could. I also remember a coworker defending herself with a pot of hot coffee (yikes).

Addicts would nod off in the back dining area, and homeless would sleep there as well (most of the dining room, and the bathrooms, were completely out of the line of sight of the front counter–how stupid a design is that?!).

I had to clean the bathrooms sometimes and it was a real horror show. The mirrors were broken quite often, and there would be urine-soaked clothes laying around, and razor stubble from street guys trying to keep clean in there. Needles, flooding, you name it.

We used to slip the 'waste' (food that had been sitting longer for X number of minutes) to the homeless. The managers forbid us to give it to those in need, so there was an extra incentive to do it. That place is loaded with bad karma.

And that wasn't even the worst of it. Also in the '80s, a transient was crushed to death in the hydraulic trash compactor. "Supposedly, the man crawled in looking for thrown-away food (or possible just a place to sleep it off) when an employee threw a bag of garbage on top of him and flipped the switch," Chilson explains. "Although the homeless man’s cries were heard almost immediately, it was too late."

Burger King actually vacated this particular franchise in about 2002. Why has it sat vacant for eight years? After all, it's not as if there wasn't a very robust economic boom that could have revitalized this prominent street corner with housing, retail, office space or some mixed-use combination.

Rendering of future Broadway Recovery Center (image courtesy SERA Architects) 

Regardless, now the BK site will be transformed into a $19 million health clinic, The Broadway Recovery Center, run by Central City Concern and expected to open in 15 months. The three-story, 44,000-square-foot building, designed by Portland's SERA Architects, would be adjacent to the Richard L. Harris Building,  which houses the Old Town Clinic. The plan is to eventually knock down walls between the buildings. In one location, Central City Concern would then own two buildings and run programs offering health care for as many as 40,000 patient visits a year.

As The Oregonian's Tom Hallman reported, the first moments of demolition last Tuesday garnered cheers from the assembled crowd, which included Congressman David Wu. (Hopefully this is a kinder, gentler, more justified version of the architectural blood lust thrust at Memorial Coliseum.) But if you look at the comments section from this post (which admittedly I should remember never to do), it's not universally celebrated. Some feel the addition of more social services for the homeless and addicted will actually be worse than a boarded up burger shack.

"We don't need more of these losers in our city," writes the (unsurprisingly) anonymous commenter 'PDX97204'. "How much more do you want to spend on these people? And how many more from out of the area do you want to attract to our community?"

Another commenter believes the $19 million Central City Concern is devoting to this project a relative waste. "I wonder how many jobs would be created if they would have made Portland 19 million dollars easier to navigate, attracting new employers, and just plan being more customer/business friendly toward residents when delivering their services," writes commenter 'tombdragon'.

Rendering of future Broadway Recovery Center (image courtesy SERA Architects) 

Luckily these are just common misconceptions. The City of Portland doesn't control, and can't control, how many transients and homeless people come here. Portland has a mild climate that may attract those at the bottom of the social spectrum, and a liberal political climate given to progressive social services that help people in need. If doing so is wrong, let's not rush to make it right. What's more, although perhaps Portland's economic development climate is another conversation entirely, it's not as if that $19 million could magically be moved from a nonprofit into some sort of kettle reserved for business incentives and tax breaks. In fact, one would expect downtown and Old Town businesses to be glad for this treatment center. If Portland really does have a problem with too many destitute panhandlers, drug dealers, perennial alcoholics and transients, a new facility like this is the way to handle the problem.

Somewhat ironically, Central City Concern actually was founded in 1979, within a year of the Burger King opening at Burnside and Broadway. It's just a coincidence, naturally, but perhaps it collectively says something about the late 1970s in Portland and beyond: a time when downtowns were crumbling as the middle class continued a suburban exodus. In the '80s, the franchise might have fared better if it sold rot-gut alcohol or crack cocaine. Funnily enough, the BK franchise itself was an example of suburban, automobile-oriented America coming to downtown Portland. Other fast food franchises like McDonald's exist downtown, but they are built into mixed-use buildings. The Burger King at Broadway and Burnside was, on the other hand, a standard single-story, drive-through fast food franchise, no matter its local design award. Clearly the award wasn't for urban place-making.

Today, though, the boarded-up Burger King at Broadway and Burnside may be an indicator that, despite the decades of under-performing and the current cloudy economic climate, the NW Broadway corridor may finally be transforming into something better. Pacific Northwest College of Art is renovating 511 Broadway, one grand old piece of architecture down the street. The moribund Daisy Kingdom Building has been renovated into an art-gallery hub (rechristened as the DeSoto Buiding). NW Broadway is the border between the Pearl District and Old Town/Chinatown, and while the Pearl has long been thriving with art galleries, condos and restaurants, Old Town and Chinatown are showing new signs of life as well. Some local businesses remain concerned that there is too much clustering of social services in Old Town, and it's true that no city should seek to ghettoize its less fortunate. Successful urban planning is about creating a mix, a melting pot. And with Powells Books just two blocks up Burnside and Pioneer Courthouse Square a five-minute walk away from the old Burger King site, it's not as if Old Town is some wasteland of people without mailing addresses or healthy livers. It's called a city, and replacing industrial fast food with social services is what Portland, like any progressive place, is all about.

Oh, and fried burgers are way better than flame broiled. If you're missing your Whopper fix, I recommend a far superior cheeseburger a couple blocks away at Fuller's Coffee Shop.

One room at a time with Hiromi Ogawa

Architect Hiromi Ogawa (photo by Brian Libby) 

Not only are fewer people buying and building single-family homes amidst these tough economic times, but even when the economy was booming less then ten percent of these projects designed by architects. But architect Hiromi Ogawa and her eponymous firm have sought to carve out a market niche by helping clients with limited budgets to imagine expanded and remodeled homes that are planned together but may be carried out separately, sometimes with years in between.

Earlier this week I visited an Ogawa-designed project in North Portland: an expansion of a small two-bedroom cottage that adds two additional bedrooms and a bathroom. Built by Lorence Brothers Construction, this particular project is obviously a case of Ogawa taking it more than one room at a time, but the principle remains. The homeowners eventually will gut the interior of the original portion of the home and, with Ogawa's help, re-imagine the space. But for now, this is a traditional cottage with a modern extension in back.

 

 

Ogawa's project seen from front, back and in model form (top and bottom photos by Brian Libby, middle photo by Hromi Ogawa) 
 

"The project to me shows the possibilities of modern expansion on a typical Portland home," Ogawa told me, "for people who want to stay where they are, but explore design options and improve the architectural fabric of their neighborhood."

Although Ogawa takes pride more in helping the clients find a style they're happy with than crafting one of her own, the contrast between the old and new portions of the house reflects her outlook as a designer: honest and simple. The rear addition is flat-roofed in a contemporary fashion, but in order to bring in ample natural light from the north (the ideal direction for best light), the roof is slightly tilted to make room for a band of clerestory windows along the perimeter. In so doing, the gentle slant of the flat roof ties with the pitched roof of the original little cottage.

Top: windows in master bedroom, right: reading nook in hallway (photos by Hiromi Ogawa)  

Window placement was also carefully approached. Along the central hallway spine is a floor-to-ceiling sliding glass door that looks out onto a future deck. The bedroom, bathroom and master bedroom all share the same aforementioned strip of upper windows, while in the bathroom a playful tall, thin band of glass bisects the shower space. In the master bedroom, where one seeks the most privacy, there are two corner windows counter-intuitively placed at floor level. Here the glass is about natural light, while in public areas such as the hallway and in the dining room of the cottage bordering the new addition, the glass allows the proper views outside one expects.

The interior was built using sustainable materials like cork flooring, a hemlock ceiling and durable Douglas fir windows. The owners and also worked with Clean Energy Works to improve the existing house's insulation and seal the exterior from leaks or drafts.

Ogawa was born in Tokyo and received her B.A. in Architecture from Cornell University in 1997. In 2001 Ogawa received the Eidlitz Fellowship to study design in Paris. Before starting this practice in 2003, she worked for a selection of firms in the Bay Area, including Swatt Architects and Esherick Homsey Dodge Davis. A licensed architect in Oregon and California, she holds a position as adjunct professor of design in the architecture department at Portland State University.

 

 

Top to bottom: bathroom, bedroom, master bedroom (photos by Brian Libby)   

Her partner in the firm, Lynn Fisher, is based in the Bay Area and hods an urban studies degree from Stanford University as well as a master's degree in architecture from Rice University. Before joining Hiromi Ogawa Architects in 2006, Lynn also worked for San Francisco's Esherick Homsey Dodge Davis. She is a licensed architect in California. She is also a LEED-accredited professional, with a strong interest in and knowledge of sustainable design.

Ogawa, like many women in the architecture, runs her practice while raising a family with her husband and son. But that also makes her an empathetic designer as her firm focuses on working with families seeking to enliven Portland's small older neighborhood houses in a way that gently fuses modern style with a respect for the past, by letting each one be distinct.

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Courtyard by Kaven: visiting the Interchange residence

Interchange residence (photo by Daniel Kaven) 

When last seen, William Kaven Architecture was completing the three-unit North House condominium on Vancouver Avenue in North Portland, a striking part of the 11 x Design tour of contemporary homes that were developed by the architects designing them. That project earned raves from many design enthusiasts but incurred displeasure from some neighbors who felt the site was appropriate only for single-family housing and traditional style.

Now, William Kaven - the firm owned by brothers Daniel Kaven and Trevor William Lewis, and named for their grandfather - is back with the Interchange residence. A single family home located in the Overlook neighborhood of North Portland, the Interchange takes its name and, to a degree, its inspiration from the tangle of freeway overpasses just west of the neighborhood. The client was a recent divorcee who also saw the house as the beginning of a new life.

 

  

Interchange residence (photos by Brian Libby)   

The Interchange residence has a simple floor plan that wraps around a courtyard on three sides in the back of the house. Here floor-to-ceiling glass gives the living room, kitchen, study and master bedroom a bevy of natural light. Large sliding glass doors also help break down barriers between inside and outside, a trademark of northwest modernism.

The exterior palette includes a combination of metal siding and white masonry. Daniel Kaven has a background in photography that predates his architectural career, and that seems to have given the firm's collective work a valuable sense of proportion and materials. There are just a few key ingredients in the look of the house, but they move and undulate from the facade in a way that animates it without seeming loud.

This house does retain one aspect of the North House that I found less successful: a minimum of windows on the ground level. If a contemporary-styled home is built in a neighborhood of traditional bungalows and cottages, it doesn't necessarily have any responsibility to ape any of those forms to fit in. But I believe that large front windows are a kind of unofficial good-neighbor policy. When you don't have them, it can seem like you're closing yourself off from the life of the neighborhood and the street.

Interchange residence (photo by Daniel Kaven) 

But don't get me wrong: The front window issue is a small one, and I'm an unequivocal William Kaven Architecture fan. And while they're designing houses and small condos now, there may be bigger projects from Kaven in the future. Lewis doubles as an architect for ZGF, the city's biggest firm, where he has gained experience that will hopefully allow Kaven to compete for larger institutional projects.

What's more, I've found the firms that participated in the 11xDesign tour to have a collective spirit of collaboration that is refreshing. "As the city has become infused with new talent, a small group of promising and accomplished designer-developers have banded together in a hybrid of traditional architectural or development practice. Small firms and sole practitioners here like Path Architecture, Atelier Waechter, and Building Arts Workshop still operate as individual businesses, and even compete for buyers. But they share research, marketing and design ideas; they’ve become a community," I wrote in Dwell in 2009. "The 11xDesign tour is just one of several shared efforts. Of course they still want to succeed badly, and they’re not without ego. That’s why these tiny firms are going forward with houses, condos and row homes during the worst economic slump since the Great Depression, when the city’s larger developers have long since ended their building boom."

Splitting the split-level: Works Partnership's tandemDUO

Stairway at TandemDuo (photo by Brian Libby) 

Last year Portland firm Works Partnership Architecture won two local AIA awards for unbuilt designs, one for a workforce housing tower and the other for a duplex. The latter, called "tandemDUO", has since been completed. (The liberties taken with upper and lower cases are theirs, not mine.)

Situated at the corner of Southeast 28th and Pine, tandemDUO takes advantage of a nexus of nearby restaurants, bars, a grocery store, Music Millennium record store and the Laurelhurst Theater. It's also one of numerous contemporary projects in the area to be built in recent years, such as Kevin Cavenaugh's Box + One Lofts and Holst Architecture's Sunrose Condominiums.

Top: model of tandemDUO, bottom: sectional image, courtesy Works Partnership Architecture 

In their application for last year's design award, Works Partnership described tandemDUO as a new interpretation of the split level house:

"The mid-century post war split level suburban house offers inspiration for the current urban in-fill lot.  Those models were located on larger lots and their configurations allowed for gracious views across and through to the slightly offset levels.  The urban in-fill lots in close-in Portland have been most recently been dotted with skinny lot housing with basic stacked rooms over a street facing garage.  

Finding the essential spatial beauty in the split level concept pulls from Le Corbusier’s Villa Carthage  - The main living areas hover above the ground plane and the internal spaces interlock and stack to culminate in an exterior roof garden that looks out across the neighborhood.

Capitalizing on the cues the split level provides, we have taken those traditional spaces and shuffled them like a deck of cards.  The internal rooms stack and shift vertically; finger- jointing together around a central staircase.  Any one space is always just a half level above or below the other.  The stair acts as a screen and a light source; tying the spaces together.  The big house becomes small but experientially expanded by the gracious views across and through."

Visiting the house several weeks ago, I was most struck by how the stairway acts as a spine from which adjoining rooms are interspersed on either side at half-level intervals. As with the Z-Haus in North Portland by architect Ben Waechter, which has a similar half-level succession, you can stand in the stairway and look up or down at two different floors of the house. It makes for a special kind of architectural connection, almost like watching a split screen or televisions at once.

 
 

(photos by Brian Libby)  

Whereas the Z-Haus stairway was broken down into zigzagging sections of stair treads that correspond to each level, tandemDUO has one long continuous stairway, for a more dramatic effect. In fact, the walls of the stairway become a transparent, almost sculptural form, with no drywall and just the wood frames left exposed. When I first entered the house, I thought, "Wait a minute. I thought they told me the construction was finished." But the more time I spent there, the more I found myself quietly mesmerized by the semi-permeable walls and perforated steel stair treads, which not only have a tactile quality but help distribute natural light.

The exterior has the two residential units adjoined like two people locked arm-in-arm. But these are not twins. Although the units are identical in spatial layout, because one faces 28th to the east and the other Pine to the north, the facades are different. They share certain forms such as a garage and a balcony with perforated steel, and the same material combinations of wood, masonry, glass, and weathered steel, but each is differently articulated.

tandemDUO exterior (photo by Brian Libby) 

I love the idea of the interlocking boxes, and proportionally tandemDUO seems to work well. If I have a criticism, it's that the the exterior looks just a little bit clunky, with a few too many of these materials interwoven together. But overall, I still liked the project a lot, especially inside with the aforementioned half-level configuration. The entire square footage also feels bathed in natural light. And while garages don't necessarily make the best neighbors at street level (a visible front door and porch is ideal), it is slightly sunken into the ground to be more discreet, and the elevated height of living spaces above the garage give one a more tranquil removal from the business of the neighborhood.

The project was developed by David Mink of DPM Development and built by Tamarack Construction.

Redeveloping the Rose Quarter: can Portland really trust Paul Allen?

Image courtesy ManhattanGathering.wordpresscom 

First of all, I'll be the first to admit that I may be way, way more passionate about Blazers basketball than the average person reading this architecture blog.

But it's a funny coincidence that the front page of today's Oregonian leads with a story by Ryan Frank called "Cultivating the Rose Quarter" on the morning after Blazers owner Paul Allen has inexplicably, ruinously, crazily fired general manager Kevin Pritchard, a veritable folk hero to Blazer fans who also is considered by NBA officials across the league as one of the best.

Consider this opening passage about Allen and the Rose Quarter in Frank's article:

"On a summer day in 1993, Portland Mayor Vera Katz and Trail Blazers owner Paul Allen piloted backhoes to unearth the city's next riverfront district.

Katz and Allen celebrated the team's new $262 million arena. But just as important, executives said, the team planned to dig up nearby parking lots and building restaurants, shops and more.

Seventeen years later, Allen and the Blazers enjoy a successful home court in the Rose Garden. But the surrounding district is still a garden of blacktop."

Clearly the firing of Kevin Pritchard and the ongoing issue of redeveloping the Rose Quarter are two separate stories. But they both have caused a great amount of bad blood amongst Portlanders. The connecting thread? Paul Allen.

It's true that for more than a year, as I and others in the Friends of Memorial Coliseum group have fought to preserve that building, the Trail Blazers franchise ultimately became an ally in the preservation effort. The team initially gave lukewarm approval to Merritt Paulson and Mayor Adams's plan to demolish the Coliseum, but then both parties backed away and the Blazers created a plan to preserve the building. They deserve full credit for that. When the two other finalists in the Stakeholder Advisory Committee process proposed projects that would more or less destroy the interior (MARC) or the interior and exterior (VMAAC), the Blazer plan offered the one sensible redevelopment of the Coliseum as arena.

Image courtesy Flickr.com 

But the Trail Blazers don't have to be the only entity to preserve the Coliseum. And even if they do continue to act as manager of the arena on behalf of the City of Portland (which owns the building), does that mean we should give Paul Allen's company the chance to redevelop the rest of the Rose Quarter?

The hideous and horribly functioning present state of the Rose Quarter would be reason enough not to let Allen's company be the redeveloper or overseer of this redevelopment. When you add to it the fact that they've aligned with the Cordish Company as developer, whose experience is in suburban-style, national-chain-heavy environments, that is at least strike two. But when you add to this toxic brew an owner who is increasingly seen  as an isolated, arrogant, out-of-touch, vicious, insensitive owner, it becomes a very, very difficult case to make that his anti-Midas touch should be allowed to blemish anything else here.

It pains me to write a lot of this, because I actually have a very positive opinion of the other people in the Blazers front office in Portland. In the past year of the Memorial Coliseum preservation campaign, I've had the opportunity to get to know J.E. Isaac, the Trail Blazers senior vice president of business affairs; Sarah Mensah, the team's chief marketing officer; and Bill Evans, the director of corporate communications. All three have struck me as good people who care about the local community and want to do right by our city. Unlike Allen, they live in the Portland area and have invested themselves here. But these poor folks have been wronged by Allen and Vulcan as much as the rest of us. It's too bad they work for a modern-day Howard Hughes.

Again, I know some of you reading this will see only my anger and emotion over the firing yesterday of general manager Kevin Pritchard. But there is indeed a legitimate, sober case to be made that the Pritchard incident is but the latest in a long, nearly two-decade-long string of disappointing management decisions by the organizations Paul Allen leads.

The Rose Quarter lies in the heart of central Portland. It is the largest and most important transit hub on the east side, and it has festered as a vast landscape of concrete and empty restaurants for too long. The district doesn't just need a facelift, but an utter transformation, with a vibrant riverfront scene, a mix of uses (including housing), and capable designers. It needs a planning process tied to the adjoining neighborhoods and city fabric (as Barry Johnson wrote in his excellent recent post on the Rose Quarter.)  And it needs a development team who commands unequivocal faith and possesses the utmost integrity. Does that sound like a job for Paul Allen?

Rose festival indeed: a sneak peak at OCAC's expansion

OCAC under construction, photo by Jeff Jahn 

Jeff Jahn at PORT has made two tours of the Oregon College of Art & Craft's under-construction Drawing/Painting and Photography studio building. And the loquacious art critic/curator/artist likes what he sees.

"Though the early drawings didn't excite me," Jahn writes, "after two tours it's now looking like the most exciting new piece of architecture in Portland since the aerial tram. It has what it takes to do a truly superb architecture; a great site, client and an ambitious international designer who's design thoroughly caries outs its concept from the sidewalks to the roof and the elevator shaft."

OCAC under construction, photo by Jeff Jahn 

Designed by Massachusetts-based Charles Rose Architects with an assist from Portland's COLAB Architecture + Urban Design, the two-story, 15,000 square foot DPP is expected to meet LEED Silver specifications. It includes facilities for drawing and painting upstairs in the spaces with most of the natural light, while the lower floor adds studio space for darkrooms, photography studios, a digital photo lab, and expandable classroom spaces.

The buildings are also distinctive for their triangular roof forms, which are a functional effort to divert rainwater into just two collectors, which empty into bioswales for wastewater treatment. The triangular and sloping roof forms recall other Rose projects like the Atlantic Center for the Arts in New Smyrna Beach, Florida or the Currier Center for the Performing Arts in Putney, Vermont.

 Atlantic Center for the Arts, New Smyrna Beach, Florida, image courtesy Charles Rose Architects 

Putney Center, Putney, Vermont, image courtesy Charles Rose Architects 

"Much more than simply a cool building, it asks the school and Portland in general to live up to even higher ideals of art, design and ecology," Jahn says of Rose's OCAC project. "Great architecture and design challenges us, and Portland as an innovative, high quality human-scaled city deserves to be challenged."

The DPP (which the school managed to raise the funds for amidst the worst of the Great Recession) 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 the venerable landscape architecture firm Murase Associates. BOORA Architects of Portland created the 15-year, three-part master plan.

OCAC under construction, Photo by Jeff Jahn 

As Jahn notes, it is rare in Portland for clients - be they private developers or public institutions - to pick architects from outside of Portland. When they have, at least with the famous "starchitect" names, it has ended badly. Richard Meier was originally set to design the Casey Eye Institute at OHSU. Frank Gehry was to design a senior housing project in old town. Cesar Pelli was supposed to design the Liberty Center office tower in the Lloyd District. They all fell through. "Rose is a perfect choice with his eco-focus approach and track record of excellent arts campuses," Jahn argues. "Basically, he specializes in designing creativity conducive environments. "

I haven't yet visited OCAC to see the Rose-design project; I was waiting for the work to be completed before Jeff scooped me. But looking at his photos, it seems that Rose and his firm did a deft job of honoring the original architecture, designed by the great Oregon architect John Storrs (also responsible for the World Forestry Center and Salishan resort), while also being very much of its time and tied to Rose's portfolio.

Cultural incubator: visiting The Lumber Room [updated]

Photo by Brian Libby 

It's a small renovation project that has been in progress for a whopping six years - usually not a good sign. It's a private space not open to the public. And it's designed by someone who is not technically a licensed architect. Yet the Lumber room is a welcome, impressive space that provides a key connection for Portland's burgeoning art and design communities.

The Lumber Room is interesting in that its program is a blend of public and private space, residential and exhibition. Owned and spearheaded by one of the city's foremost art collectors, Sarah Miller Meigs, it will serve as a residence for for visiting artists, a space for lectures by notable cultural figures, a gathering hub for major collectors and art enthusiasts, and a showcase for Meigs' hugely impressive contemporary art collection. When I visited the space last week as part of an opening reception for the Lumber Room's first artist in residence, Leoni Guyer, there were museum-caliber works on the wall by Tracey Emin, Agnes Martin, Donald Judd, Louise Bourgeois and Kiki Smith.

Meigs, who lives in Corvallis (her husband teaches at Oregon State University), is the heir the founders of the Stimson Lumber Company. Although the Lumber Room name takes its cue from a book of essays by Nicholson Baker, The Size of Thoughts: Essays and Other Lumber (in which "lumber" is a term roughly meaning the physical embodiment of ideas and expression), it also made a nice nod to the family business that has helped to bankroll this nearly matchless private local art collection (the Schnitzer family being probably the only Oregonian with one greater).

Meigs hired designer Randy Higgins of Vizwerks to handle architectural responsibilities and tapped Nicole Misiti of the local strategic branding firm Felt Hat to design interior furnishings and a business branding strategy.

Photo by Brian Libby 

Higgins is trained as an architect (with an architecture degree from the University of Washington), but not registered as such. He was one of the three original partners of Holst Architecture, and was highly involved in some key early projects there for clients like the Pacific Northwest College of Art and the Oregon Ballet Theater. I've known Randy for several years, and he's also one of the smartest, most intellectually capable people I've ever met; the guy quotes ancient philosophers and architects at the drop of a hat. (You can also read this previous post about him: "Audience With Higgins" from February 2008.)

[In full disclosure, Randy Higgins and I are both part of leading the Friends of Memorial Coliseum, the grassroots group seeking to preserve the building and its interior. Another member of that group, Don Rood, is a partner in The Felt Hat along with Misiti. So you can take my word about The Lumber Room with a grain of salt because of those connections. But I hope it's clear that I wouldn't be writing about the project, and praising it, unless I was sincere and the project was deserving on its own merits - which it is.]

Ironically, for all the time it took to complete the project, what I responded to was its simplicity. The space, part of a building constructed in 1924 as an auto repair garage. More recently, it was a large condo, owned by esteemed local art collector Ed Cauduro.

The Lumber Room's main exhibit space overlooking Ninth Avenue in the Pearl District (just above Elizabeth Leach Gallery) benefits from high ceilings and a minimal amount of columns. The wood ceiling rafters are left exposed, as are the wood floors. But like most any gallery, it's just a big, white-walled open space: a platform for Meigs' collection.

Photo by Brian Libby 

A restaurant-quality open kitchen serves as the connecting spine with the more intimately scaled portions of the Lumber Room, a trio of smaller bedroom-sized rooms and a deck looking out at the Pearl. These three small rooms border each other in part with glass walls, allowing one to stand in one room and look through the other two out to the view outside.

In conversation with Randy Higgins, he emphasized that the overriding narrative was one of nothingness. Because the Lumber Room is viewed principally as an artist-in-residence and exhibit space, Higgins and Misiti sought to make the architecture and interiors disappear in deference to both the art and also to allow visiting artists to leave the outside world behind.

"What Sarah is giving to an artist is that, unlike other residencies, there is no expectation. It’s intentionally wide open. It sounds paradoxical, but what she was giving was nothing," he said.

Citing writer Lewis Hyde, Higgins spoke of the "gift economy" (based on Hyde's 1983 book The Gift) and the notion that the Lumber Room was a place to make art or to not make art - that was its value. Most residency programs trade the lodging for a promised piece of art or a speech. Here, the idea is for the Lumber Room to be an incubator, a retreat - or whatever else (within reason - no Zach Randolph stuff) the visitor decides.

"It's when someone is allowed to have certain thoughts that may or may not lead anywhere," Higgins added. "If they produce, great, but if not, it’s the having the thoughts that’s valuable. To me, that’s what inquiry is about. Without preconceptions, you accept wherever it leads. That’s what Sara's trying to provide for these artists."

"It's a show residency about nothing!" 

Because the theme of the design is taking the visitor out of everyday surroundings and into a void-like space for viewing art or engaging in conversation, the designers sought to create architecture and interiors that also disappeared but, at the same time, had stories of their own, and thought put into every detail. Yet these intentions are deliberately subtle and hidden. A series of skylights, for example, seem to be well placed in relation to the entry stairway and the rest of the exhibit space; but it turns out that they're lined up with particular celestial constellations. Yet it's also not a familiar pastiche of top-selling building products like ipe wood or granite countertops.

"As a designer, when I look at buildings, I see catalog sheets: all the different products that went into it. It’s the diff between seeing a couch and seeing a Corbusier couch," Higgins says. "It’s like Robert Irwin talks about: seeing is forgetting the name of the thing seen.  Subconsciously we’re conditioned…a lot of people get paid a lot of money to get you conditioned to see names. So we didn’t just pick a different style. Everything had to be considered in context."

The Lumber Room, along with a handful of other projects such as the paint job at PNCA he created out of a Rimbaud poem translated into a language of squares and rectangles, represents a turning point in Higgins career, out of architecture into a kind of design practice that is at once more rigidly research-based yet also with practical, people-oriented outcomes over conceptual gestures.

"I liken spaces to reading a book," Higgins says. "The only way you can read it is if all the words are spelled correctly and the type is laid out correctly – so the book disappears. Otherwise it breaks the trance. But the art of the typographer is understanding how to put that all together in a way where if you want to become conscious of a page, it rewards that consciousness. You tell the stories of buildings the same way, so that it goes away but, if someone wants to pay attention to it, it’s able to reward beyond the attention given. You want people to stop asking questions long before the answers run out."

As DK Row's April 24 story in The Oregonian about the Lumber Room addressed, the six years weren't due only to Higgins' meticulousness. 

"One reason is that Meigs likes to take her time. She doesn't buy art impulsively. She is also married, the mother of two children and lives in Corvallis. Another reason is that even though Meigs and her team intended to finish the project within, say, two or three years, after a while, they realized: What's the rush? 

'Doing things right takes time,' Misiti says. 

Looking back, Meigs did not labor over her choice of designers because she found like-minded brains, people who more accurately approach their jobs as forums for personal expression and share an almost obsessive tendency to ruminate over the meaning and beauty of every object.

In other words, dozens of books were consumed, and countless debates, talks and meetings were held over coffee and meals, because Meigs, et al., weren't just tearing down walls and painting over Cauduro's old condo. They intended to create a perfectly crafted work of art that would house other works of art and welcome people who made art."

Photo by Brian Libby  

Row also talked with Portland Art Museum head curator Bruce Guenther about the importance of such a space. "This space will be different from a museum, galleries and colleges that bring in influential artists and others for a day or a week," he said. "It's not publicly accessible, yet it will enrich public life because of its programs and Sarah's willingness to make the space available to others." 

Portland has a fairly respected generalist museum, it has numerous fine commercial galleries, academic venues and especially a burgeoning community of young artists. The Lumber Room can be a small but important piece the city lacks: facilities for artists, designers and other creatives from outside the city to come and spend time. This space will work ideally with programs like the Pacific Northwest College of Art's Ford Institute for Visual Education, which has brought a variety of visiting artists to town. The Lumber Room will help make Portland more of a destination for talented people. Meigs, Row writes, "plans to bring individuals only a connected patron can: artists, designers and other collectors from across the country, perhaps the world, for weeks-long residencies, lectures, private events and even exhibitions. Her artists and guests will stay at the sleek, minimal two-floor condo space that can be altered to suit its various uses. Once there, they'll work in an almost ideal setting of refinement, art and silence."

In that way, the project is much more than the sum of its lumber floors, columns and rafters-especially if you go looking for the complex detail behind the surface layer of familiar wood floored, white-walled simplicity.

Curves and collisions: visiting the Eyebrow House

Photo by Brian Libby 

A recent visit to the Eyebrow House served as proof that first impressions can be misleading.

I had just arrived at the Southeast Portland house near Mt. Tabor with the home's architect, Edgar Papazian of Doon Architecture, and at first glance it seemed, while quite striking, to be a bit of a clunky mishmash of an old home and curvy post-'90s design. There was a huge half-oval window on the second floor that was incongruent with the little cottage's perpendicular and triangular forms. A new metal roof was colliding with an existing old shingle roof.

But the more of the project I saw, and the more I got talking to Papazian, the more the Eyebrow House won me over.

Papazian and his wife came to Portland two years ago from New York City, where he worked for some of the nation's most acclaimed firms. At Polshek Partnership, he worked on high-profile designs like the William Jefferson Clinton Presidential Center in Little Rock and the New York Hall of Science. With Japanese firm SANAA and Gensler, he worked on the highly praised New Museum of Contemporary Art. His tenure also included time in the office of César Pelli.

Photos by Brian Libby   

Papazian, who was born in St. Etienne, France and grew up on Long Island, is also a double Ivy Leaguer, earning a bachelor's degree in art-in-architecture from Columbia University and a masters in architecture from Yale University, where he won the Drawing Prize and the James Gamble Rogers Scholarship.

Stealth House, Doon Architecture, photo courtesy Edgar Papazian 

Also while in New York, Papazian, who is of Armenian descent, became acquainted with the leadership of the Armenian Genocide Museum and Memorial and produced a proposed design. The museum was at the time getting ready to renovate an old classical-revival style bank building in Washington, DC, and Papazian designed a very striking expansion for the museum next door that looked a little bit as if the Hindenburg crashed into the original building.

Proposal for Armenian Genocide Museum of America, courtesy Doon Architecture 

Architectural collisions are a part of Papazian's design DNA, and they also help explain the Eyebrow House. In the past decade, we've seen a wave of new architecture in Portland, but so much of it at the scale of single-family homes and mixed-use neighborhood condo buildings have been boxy buildings with slatted natural wood. That look can be gorgeous, Papazian says, but he wanted to do something different. And the Eyebrow House's small budget helped drive that ingenuity.

The curve one sees on the front of the Eyebrow House extends inside and throughout the house. Inside, a double-sided bookshelf separating the foyer and kitchen/dining room is curved and fastened to the wall with rivets; the same goes for a living room fireplace. It gives the interior a ship's cabin feel.

Photos by Brian Libby  

The original home had two small bedrooms facing the backyard, which Papazian removed and converted into the new kitchen/dining room. This space also overlooks the back yard through floor to ceiling glass.

Papazian also designed a roofed and walled-in deck that cantilevers out from the house and makes for a beautiful and usable indoor-outdoor space. From a sculptural design standpoint, this is my favorite part of the project. Standing in the backyard, the house seems to have been blown wide open like two French doors to let everything - light, air - inside.

Photos by Brian Libby

The back of the house also has a curving half-oval window, which makes the exterior of the project seem more holistically done when you see that the curves are on both sides.

The two second-floor bedrooms each look out through the curving roof, which forms the ceiling of each space. It's corrugated metal, recalling the old Quonset huts of the early to mid-20th Century. Maybe the curving corrugated metal and the curve of the new roof seem strange there, but to be in these rooms, with the light reflecting off the folds of the metal, is a very pleasant experience.

Photos by Brian Libby  

The interior is also decorated with several paintings by Papazian's mother, Janet Gasson, an abstract expressionist who has worked from the 1970s and '80s through today. His mother's paintings also seem to provide an influence for Papazian, for her paintings, while abstract, have clear hints of human, anthropomorphic forms. 

Painting in Eyebrow House by Janet Gasson, photo by Edgar Papazian 

In that way, I can see the curves he added to this otherwise boxy little house as a way of introducing organic forms to the geometric. It's the same principle that, on a much larger scale, makes Memorial Coliseum special: the juxtaposition of geometric (the glass box) and organic (the curving concrete seating bowl) forms.

And while Papazian is a New York transplant who has only been in the city for two years, something about the Eyebrow House feels very Portland to me, in the same way that the Rebuilding Center does. It's that sense of a building being stitched together with old parts in a way that doesn't even attempt to be spotless but has character to spare. This is a low-budget home renovation that refused to be quiet about it.

Eyebrow House rendering, Doon Architecture 

Citroen SM 

Two things that have nothing to do with architecture also helped me appreciate the Eyebrow House. If you look at the drawings of the project, the architect has quietly placed his all-time favorite automobile in the driveway, a late '60s Citroen, a car that looked like no other and largely because of its curvy, sloping form.

And inside the house, beside the architecture books and the artwork, are books about Papazian's favorite movie (and mine): Star Wars. The Eyebrow House is a little bit like the Millennium Falcon: certainly not pristine, but attractive precisely for its bolted-together personality and the hutzpah of its owner. And looking out the window of one of the Eyebrow House bedrooms looks a little like the view out the cockpit from Han Solo's ship.

Image from Star Wars: view from Millennium Falcon in hyperspace 

So if you are like me and see that first image of the Eyebrow House with skepticism, don't fool yourself so easily. Have a close look at Papazian's work, because it's far more complex, interesting, and informed than just putting a Quanset roof on an old cottage.

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Skylab going HOMB

Images courtesy Skylab Architecture and Method Homes 

Skylab Architecture has established itself as one of Portland’s most admired design firms with projects like Doug Fir, the 12th + Alder mixed use project (winner of the top local AIA design award in 2007, the Honor Award), the upcoming Weave building on Burnside, NAU retail stores (also an AIA award winner) the Hoke Residence (made famous as a key location the first “Twilight” movie), and the Departure Lounge atop the Nines Hotel.

Now, the firm headed by Jeff Kovel has become involved with designing…manufactured homes?

FEMA trailer, not by Skylab or Method 

Granted these aren’t the trailer-park eyesores of yesteryear or even the nicer if traditional manufactured-home style prevalent today. My brother-in-law in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania selling modular and manufactured homes doesn’t offer anything like what Skylab and partner Method Homes of Seattle have in mind: the HOMB.

Kovel, speaking recently over coffee, said the intent with HOMB is to create well designed single family homes that in the past only the wealthy could afford, “to create an avenue that doesn’t exist right now: to bring architecture to a broader market.”

  

The modular design of the HOMB, which can be customized and configured in numerous different layouts and design, is based on and built using a series of 100 square foot triangles. Skylab experimented with a variety of different patterns that could be alternatives to the simple box construction of a traditional manufactured home. By erecting the homes on site from these triangular structural pieces, there are countless ways for each client to determine a proper size, layout, and budget. And because these are more than just boxes, there is the chance to embrace more design choices such as double-height living rooms.

“You set your budget, and you build only what you need,” Kovel adds. “Single family home project delivery is flawed, because budgets vary until it’s built. That doesn’t happen with this plan. You’ve eliminated 60 percent of the potential (cost) problem, and you still have this kit of parts to play with. We’re creating a system rather than a single piece that’s designed.”

 

To keep budgets down (HOMBs sell for approximately $160 per square foot), Kovel and Method worked to reduce what is ordinarily a 16-month building process down to six months. The design-construction partners have also embraced digital production capabilities to construct the chassis of each house, basically creating assembly process instead of measure-and-cut. This allows for greater cost control with fixed building, delivery, and installation expenses. It also affords developers the opportunity to build as they go, reducing risk, and potentially trading a one-size-fits-all for custom building for clients.

The idea is that an entire neighborhood could be constructed of HOMBs, and yet there would not be that stereotypical Levittown ubiquity of house after house that’s alike. Houses could be built to different scales in a HOMB neighborhood, but the houses would fit together despite varying sizes out of shared stylistic cues. It’s endless variety born from very simple initial building forms. “It’s won the battle against the spatial lmits of a traditional approach,” the architect says. “But we also didn’t want you to feel trapped in a triangle.”

HOMBs will also utilize a spectrum of sustainable design and construction, such as FSC-certified wood, choices of high-efficiency radiant or heat-pump heating and cooling. But the most sustainable thing about a HOMB, Kovel says, is the efficiency of the process. “You could build a LEED rated stick-built house and it’s still not very sustainable because of the waste,” he added.

“I’m not naïve about how challenging this is. But I think this could have a broad impact.”

Webmaster of Mt. Tabor: visiting the Wilson House

Photo by Tim LaBarge

If you’re walking along the east edge of Mt. Tabor Park, as I was last weekend, you can see the house Webster Wilson designed and occupies nestled into the hillside just beyond the park’s picnic tables. And it's worth keeping an eye out for.

The house, which was included in last year’s 11 x Design homes tour, is built on four levels, the bottom level reserved for an additional apartment that Wilson’s family rents out. One enters at the second level into the kitchen and dining area. At 2,600 square feet, it  includes four bedrooms, 3.5 bathrooms in addition to a 550-square-foot accessory dwelling unit studio apartment below. The main house’s master bedroom, on the fourth floor, includes a 400 square foot top deck.

The house has radiant heat throughout with stainless steel countertops in the kitchen. The main floor and bathroom floor/walls clad in domestic Vermont sea-green slate. Bathroom countertops are black Eastern Canadian granite. The upper floors and all cabinetry are certified German beech, and FSC-certified mahagony was used on the decks, which add another 200 square feet of space.

Looking east from Mt. Tabor, the house enjoys views of Mt Hood, Mt St Helens and the eastern cityscape, which drove the design. But the house is also a work of simple but intricate geometry and highly detailed finishes. I particularly liked the house’s two-story vertical window wall for capturing the view, as well as the design’s floating wood loft and stair. Also a big part of the exterior look of the project, at least on its back side with the east-looking view, is a wood and metal stairway attached to the building and giving it extra structural support.

Photo by Brian Libby 

Photo by Tim LaBarge

Photo by Brian Libby 

"It just seemed perfect,” Webster said of the vacant lot he and wife Maya Foty found on the edge of Mt. Tabor. “Our prerequisite was we were looking for a lot with a view and light and air. There are limited areas in Portland that have that, in a family friendly neighborhood. We also liked the idea of doing an infill project. It was limiting but also liberating to do a small lot. I think a lot of developers had looked at this lot and said, ‘I can’t do a huge duplex here.’”

Although it’s the first house in Portland to be designed by Wilson it is not his first overall. Wilson has also designed striking houses in Hawaii and Vermont. One of his first projects, a sauna, received a Wood Design Award in 2004 and was published in Dwell, Sunset and Fine Homebuilding magazines.

Wilson earned a master’s of architecture degree at the University of Washington and, during those years, interned under renowned Seattle architect James Cutler. “I guess my formative experience was working for Cutler,” he says, “because of all the wood construction and high level of design. It had a little bit of an old world philosophy. The emphasis was on hand drawn details.” Webster also spent a summer interning in Paris for architect Gerard Grandval and, before moving to Portland, previously worked in New York City for Lee Skolnik, a noted museum and exhibit designer.

Photo by Chad Kirkpatrick

Photo by Bob Zaikoski 

Although Wilson works for himself, this wasn’t exactly a sole practitioner’s design. Wilson’s wife Maya is also an architect, specializing in historic preservation. “She was there all along,” Wilson says of her influence on the house. “I kind of generated ideas, but she was definitely a driving force. I think she made it more humanistic too. I was focusing on the tectonics and the detail side of it, and she was focusing on keeping it family friendly and being responsive to the neighborhood and the city.”

Wilson also has an ace up his sleeve when it comes to his house’s artwork. His father is artist Mark Wilson, a pioneer of computer art whose work was recently part of a retrospective devoted to the genre at London’s Victoria & Albert Museum. “On the 11 x Design tour, we got about as many questions about the art as we did the house,” the architect laughs. But certainly there are no hard feelings about the extra attention, of course: Web had his father design a special artwork that was laser-cut into the house’s front door.

Photo by Bob Zaikoski 

 
Photo by Chad Kirkpatrick 

Initially Wilson had the house on the market, but he and the family (including two young daughters) ultimately decided to occupy the home themselves. After all, if you're the architect of this project, it makes a pretty good calling card. And indeed, I would place Wilson firmly in the group of talented up-and-coming firms that participated in the 11 x Design tour last year, a small fraternity of home designers that could, as with generations past in Portland, come to have a much bigger imprint on the city's architecture in the coming decade(s).

Keeping the Delta House dream alive - as a Living Building

Image courtesy Nye Architecture 

If you're like me, when you hear the phrase "Delta House," you think John Belushi, toga parties and food fights. But the June Key Delta House project is something very different.

As reported in an excellent February 4 Oregonian story by Larry Bingham (which, curiously, the paper also separately lists as an Associated Press story by Thomas Boyd), the  June Key Delta House project in North Portland is a remodeling of an old gas station began in North Portland. The client is a small group of African American women in the Delta Sigma Theta sorority, who first began planning this home and community center two decades ago.

After a  dozen of the sorority sisters donated $100 each to start a fund, the project inched closer to reality when member June Key purchased an old ARCO gas station at the corner of Albina Avenue and Ainsworth Street in 1992, with the understanding the sorority would pay her back. 

"The site across from Peninsula Park had been declared a brownfield -- a property possibly polluted by the gas station's underground tanks -- though an Environmental Protection Agency review found no contamination," Bingham writes. "Because of its status, the property was going cheap."

Budget is a concern not only because of the grassroots effort behind Delta House, but also because the project follows the strictures of the Living Building Challenge, which was created by our own Cascadia chapter of the US Green Building Council and is arguably the most stringent green building standard in the world.

"Like many of the 50 or so current active members, these women endured the same kind of discrimination that led to the founding of their national sorority at Howard University in 1913. They wanted a home to locate their community outreach projects, such as health and education programs, to fulfill the sorority's mission. They wanted to stop schlepping their meetings to whatever union hall or church basement would have them. They had outgrown each other's homes."

The now-defunct Sienna Architecture Company was the original architect for the Delta House project, with Mark Nye as project architect and Greg Acker as principal in charge. When Sienna folded last year, Nye took over the project under his own banner as a sole practitioner (Acker has since left Portland to work in Abu Dhabi). Many younger former Sienna employees assisted Nye in the design. "There was a little bit of tension, of saying, 'Is this a good idea or not?'" Nye told me in a recent phone conversation. "But I find you end up with a much better product that way."

Photo by Thomas Boyd for The Oregonian 

A key partner for Nye was general contractor Colas Construction, who worked with the architect throughout the design process to keep the budget as low as possible. What's more, Nye says, "Colas is an African American owned firm with long and deep roots in the neighborhood. "They were developing properties in the neighborhood in the early '90s with their own money and are really dedicated to their community."

[Incidentally, the family that owns Colas Construction has ties to Haiti and has started a relief fund in partnership with the Oregon Community Foundation. Go here to assist or find out more about this laudable effort.]

Over the years, many local companies have also made helping the sorority sisters move closer to their dream a part of their pro-bono or charitable efforts. For example, Neil Kelly, the construction company with a showroom just a few blocks away from the Delta House site, donated survey work and created a blueprint in 1992. Benson Industries LLC donated $57,000 worth of glass in 2007. Demolition was provided free earlier this year courtesy of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers as a Martin Luther King Jr. Day holiday service project. The Portland Bureau of Planning and Sustainability's Green Investment Fund also provided a grant of more than $119,000 for using boxcar-sized salvaged cargo containers. 

Image courtesy Nye Architecture  

Nye, the architect, was raised just across the Columbia River in Vancouver, Washington. After several years on the east coast earning a bachelor's degree at Bennington College, a master's of architecture degree from Columbia University and working in New York for the firm Rogers Marvel, he returned to Portland in 2005.

"I was really impacted by the sort of Kenneth Frampton tectonic ideas," Ny adds, citing the British architect known for advocating regional modernism. "It’s really about using a deep technical understanding to manage design, to sort of design with that understanding. The idea is to try to achieve a higher performance building. The tectonic of sustainability is it’s a much higher game we need to be playing, and the technical aspects need to be bought into line to make the aesthetic work."

Meeting the Living Building Challenge specs means that The June Key Delta House will have to  generate its own renewable energy (via solar panels) and treat its own water. The community center will use rainwater for toilets and divert storm water to bioswales.

Meanwhile, though, even with grants and savings, the Delta House still has $455,000 to raise towards the estimated $755,000 needed for the project going forward. So if you or your company are looking to make a positive community impact, remember that (if I may bastardize The Eurhythmics) these sisters aren't doin' it for themselves - or by themselves.

Why all the fuss? The North House looks great [updated]

photo by Daniel Kaven, courtesy William Kaven Architecture 

When the North House on Vancouver Avenue was featured in last year’s 11xDesign homes tour, the project was just a shell of itself—literally. The tour, which I wrote about for Dwell magazine, had featured houses in various states of completion, meant to introduce a group of architect-developers more than to act as a traditional look at completed luxury homes.

So returning to the completed North House a few weeks ago was long-anticipated treat. Not only is this an exceptional three-unit development in its handsome clean modern lines, warm natural materials, contributions to urban density and the opportunity it gives to introduce the talented William Kaven Architecture. It’s also a victory over a needlessly drawn out and bitter approval process that began with a disgruntled neighbor. Kudos to Kaven and co-developer Rich Anderson for seeing this impressive building through to completion.

Back in the summer of 2007, the North House’s design was approved by the City of Portland, but that decision was appealed by the neighbor who owned two adjacent properties. 

 

photos by Daniel Kaven, courtesy William Kaven Architecture 

"The proposed development is in a residential zone and therefore should be designed to enhance these existing and predominant features," the appeal argued. "The design is not compatible with the existing structures and neighborhood."

According to an Oregonian article by Fred Leeson written at the time of the appeal, the appealing homeowner “and her relatives have lived among the pitched-roof homes along North Vancouver Avenue for 50 years. So she wasn't pleased to learn that an adjoining house would be cleared to build a triplex. Worse yet, the proposed building would have a flat roof and storefront-style windows — nothing like the 1910 houses in the 4000 block on both sides of her street. ‘The design really sticks out,’ the homeowner said. ‘It doesn't blend in with existing houses.’"

A family's half-century legacy of living in a neighborhood is not something to treat flippantly. Longtime residents of a place deserve to be heard and respected.

And true enough, the city's community design standards for infill housing in older neighborhoods recommend pitched roofs of specified angles. But note the word “recommend”. After the design was approved and the initial appeal rejected, she kept on appealing all the way to the Oregon Circuit Court of Appeals, where the case was also rejected. (A call was placed to the homeowner to get her side; so far it has not been returned.)

photo by Daniel Kaven, courtesy William Kaven Architecture 

I can understand concern among single-family-home owners about their neighborhood being dwarfed by condominiums out of scale with their houses. However, Vancouver Avenue is a major thoroughfare with different zoning rules than quiet back residential streets. It's also got nearly as many commercial buildings to provide architectural context as it does old single family homes. Yet even if you stuck to comparing it only to single-family homes, the North House still does not dwarf the properties around it; the Kaven design wound up about the same height as the rest of the surrounding homes.

I'm not saying the North House's composition perfect; I'm not crazy about the small slit of a window in the front of the house. And some have tired of the Dwell type this house fits into. But overall, I think this is a gorgeous contemporary design.

“The manner in which the City of Portland and neighbors can hold your design hostage has really gotten out of control," Daniel Kaven told me back when the house was first appealed. "There needs to be major changes in the 'community design standards' in order to accommodate modern design. Modern housing, which might only slightly deviate from the standards, is slathered in red tape, while awful track housing still gets the green light.”

Trevor Lewis and Daniel Kaven of William Kaven Architecture; photo by Brian Libby

Visiting the North House recently, not only was I impressed by the simple layouts and sumptuous materials (which include concrete countertops, reclaimed timber beams and stairs, and walnut cabinets) and huge amounts of natural light permeating the spaces, but it was contrasted by the decaying, garbage-filled adjacent houses. One of the two houses, the one immediately adjacent to the Kaven project, has a hole in the roof and some boarded up windows.

With respect to issues of compatibility in neighborhoods, I think the appealing homeowner is partially correct that we don't want to allow projects wildly out of scale to be placed next to single-family homes. However, a big factor is the execution. The North House is not out of scale, and it's a particularly exceptional design. There may be projects worth appealing, but this one isn't it.

photos by Daniel Kaven, courtesy William Kaven Architecture 

The form of this triplex takes on a series of floating boxes, with the second floor gently cantilevered over the first and the small third-floor portions set back from the second floor. The effect is like a series of differently-scaled cubes, activated by a succession of negative spaces that foster shadows and plays of light. When standing outside the North House, looking up at the third floor, you can actually see all the way through the façade’s glass, making it a kind of sculptural object. Even so, those tiny third floors are no bigger than an adjacent house’s chimney.

When I originally wrote about William Kaven Architecture and the 11xDesign tour, it was a chance to recognize not only a group of local architecture firms taking initiative by developing their own small projects, but also to celebrate the top young talents of Portland architecture. And William Kaven definitely belongs in that conversation. During the tour itself, more attention probably went to finished projects like Ben Waechter’s Z-Haus. But the North House should announce Kaven loud and clear as a top talent and one to watch.

Building a Zoomtopian society

photo by Aaron Rogosin

Several years ago, an artist named Carole Zoom bought a former Goodwill store building in Eugene and rented it out (at a reduced rate) to local nonprofit arts organizations such as the Eugene Ballet. She then sold the Midtown Art Center, as it was called, to the Eugene Ballet and moved to Portland.

I first spoke with Carole two years ago about her interest in trying a similar project in the Rose City. And as of its opening party last Thursday, Zoomtopia is the completed result. The single-story building on SE Belmont at Eighth Avenue was renovated from a BOORA Architects design to include a variety of artist studios and performance spaces.

There have been numerous art organizations that have come and gone in Portland seeking to occupy a building first and consider financial models second. Disjecta and the Portland Art Center both immediately come to mind in that regard. But Zoomtopia is something different.

photo by Aaron Rogosin 

This isn’t necessarily an exhibit space or a source for cutting-edge contemporary art. Instead, as DK Row of The Oregonian wrote in an excellent profile of Carole last week, “Zoom's vision is simple: Give artists and creative people affordable square footage to lease or buy so they can make their work; and, collectively, foster a community… It's also the latest example of inspiring resolve by Zoom, a 44-year-old with muscular dystrophy who uses a ventilator to breathe.” 

Tenants at Zoomtopia include two dance companies, the avant-garde dance group tEEth as well as another called Wobbly Dance that uses wheelchairs. tEEth occupies the biggest studio, a 2,200-square-foot rehearsal space with wood floors. The group intends to rent the space to the public for rehearsal use.

photo by Ross William Hamilton for The Oregonian 

When I visited Zoomtopia last week, it was endearing to see a succession of contractors and subcontractors swirling in and out but never without a wholehearted stop to say hello to Carole. There was a wonderful vibe in the air; Carole was clearly on top of every detail, specifying light fixtures that needed changing, thermostat switches that needed lowering to wheelchair height. And yet there was a familial relationship evident between her and every construction worker or new tenant.

"I don't want someone in here who doesn't interact with the others," Zoom told Row. "This is a community space. People won't be islands in this building."

At one point in our conversation, she recalled having wrestled with the decision of whether  to include a central hallway connecting all of the studios on the inside; Carole had strongly considered making each space open separately onto the outside, and this hall-free layout would have allowed space for more studios, thereby helping the bottom line. But still, I wondered, given how strong a sense of community there already seemed to be at Zoomtopia, and that the bottom line is not at all Carole’s overriding concern, why would she possibly have considered eliminating the communal hallway space connecting everyone—the very thing that architecturally fosters community here?

 

photos by Aaron Rogosin 

It’s because over the years in her motorized wheelchair, Carole has constantly felt scrunched to one side. Most of the hallways she’s ever experienced are too thin to accommodate disabled people in wheelchairs comfortably. The sense of claustrophobia often overwhelmed the communal feeling of such public spaces for her. Ultimately, the right call at Zoomtopia was just to build a wider hallway, not to do away with it altogether. Even so, it says something about the thought she put into the design. Carole was no passive client.

A renovation of an existing single-story building, Zoomtopia is no architectural wonder of the world so much as a simple, thoughtful multi-use space that is strong on natural light, detail, and TLC. Stop by if you're in the Belmont neighborhood and tell Carole congrats - if you can stop her for long enough.

A gleaming cube: UO's Jaqua Center

photo by Brian Libby 

When I visited the University of Oregon John E. Jaqua Center for Student Athletes in Eugene earlier this week, the afternoon January sky was decidedly gray. But inside the 40,000 square foot building was teeming with natural light: from above via a massive skylight, and from all four glass sides of this transparent cube.

Much has been made of the high budget for this project, which was funded privately and made possible by the contributions of Nike co-founder Phil Knight, Oregon’s golden-goose benefactor. The Oregonian called it a “Taj Mahal.” Spending time in this ZGF Architects-designed building, though, it’s not really luxurious materials that stand out.

 

photos by Brian Libby 

Sure, there’s a classroom decked out with yellow leather seats from the company that manufacturers seats for Ferraris. And this building has the only elevator shaft I’ve ever seen that flashes multicolored neon lights. Yet the Jaqua Center experience is really all about glass, wood and natural light.

Viewed from outside, the building is incredibly clean and simple as a sculptural object, particularly given how the exterior is surrounded on three sides by water. In many of the photos I took, it was surprisingly difficult just to determine where the building ended and its reflection in the water began.

Eugene Sandoval of ZGF told me that in early client meetings before the design was generated, Oregon athletic director Mike Bellotti (then the head football coach) emphasized the desire for a building that celebrated the natural beauty of Oregon. Bellotti spoke to Sandoval of how the surrounding landscape was a recruiting tool for luring top athletes from other regions of the country, and asked for a building that would articulate that sensation.

 

photos by Brian Libby

It starts with the natural light. For years there has been research data showing humans are more alert and productive in naturally lit spaces. Students are shown to achieve higher average test scores. Even checkout lines under skylights record higher sales than those that don’t. And I can scarcely recall ever being in a building this size and so easily being able to look in every direction and see outside. No matter where you are in the Jaqua Center, you don’t just see out, but through.

Normally energy codes wouldn’t allow for a building with anywhere near this much glass. I mean, the entire façade is glass. But this building actually has two facades, with a five-foot gap in between that you pass through upon entering. This way the building is heated efficiently using thermal solar energy, otherwise known as the greenhouse effect. In the summer, the building is continually flushed with fresh air using the stacked ventilation effect — up and out the top.

photo by Brian Libby

photo by Randy Rasmussen for The Oregonian

 photo by Randy Rasmussen for The Oregonian

Inside, the building is centered around a large three-story atrium that is bisected with glass-ensconced catwalks. The interior design, particularly in these public areas, utilizes a series of massive wall displays. One is made from thousands of photos of current student athletes that were etched onto metal paneling and combine to form a likeness of Albert Einstein. On another wall (pictured above), the names and likenesses of past UO athletes are etched onto square wood blocks that jut in and out of the wall.

The furnishings in study areas and counselor/tutor offices, which comprise much of the building, are kind of like an Apple store with wood floors, glass and immaculate Mac computers. Common areas have some of the more luxurious material finishes, such as the aforementioned Ferrari leather seats in one classroom as well as some very high-end French Ligne Roset sofas in another gathering area. This is the kind of space in which the budget obviously bought a lot, but meticulous attention to detail is what really makes it sing. Even fire extinguishers are tucked into elegant wood cubbyholes.

 photo by Brian Libby

Looking across the University of Oregon campus at some of the ugly and run-down buildings not funded by private dollars or zealous football fans, one can certainly understand how some students and faculty might look at the Jaqua Center with envy or even a bit of resentment. Back when I was in college, I remember visiting friends at UO with dorm rooms that resembled prison cells. Yet the obligation of billionaire benefactors to fund academics as much as sports is another argument for another time. And besides, the Jaqua Center is an academic building, even if it’s one for student athletes.

What’s more, every major university, even if it happens to be a state school, is able to grow and flourish only with the help of such windfalls. It’s how Oregon got a fancy law school building and a new business school headquarters in years past — from donors with names like Knight, Autzen, Lillis and Schnitzer. It’s how Ohio State and Georgetown and Harvard get theirs too, and I’m not sure if such gifts, athletic or academic ones, engender much soul-searching.

 

photos by Brian Libby  

Ultimately the point here is to talk about the architecture, a successfully vibrant, open, light-filled work that couldn’t have been achieved with money alone. Like all building projects, this is a collaborative effort involving numerous architects from ZGF as well as their many contractual partners, including Hoffman Construction, Arup (one of the world’s leading engineering firms) and Benson Glass. Even so, the Jaqua Center also represents the continuing rise of Eugene Sandoval at ZGF (the equivalent of a director if this were a movie) as one of Portland’s foremost design talents.

Beverly comes to Hollywood

photos by Brian Libby 

Portland’s Hollywood district is home to a new mixed-use project, The Beverly Condominiums, at NE 44th Avenue and Sandy Boulevard.

Slated for LEED Silver certification, the five-story building was developed by Gerding Edlen Development, now the largest sustainable building developer in the United States. This, along with another recently completed Gerding Edlen mixed-use project, The 20 on SE Hawthorne Boulevard, represents the developer moving to Portland’s east side. In the past, Gerding principally made its name with larger west side projects such as the Brewery Blocks in the Pearl District as well as Atwater Place, The John Ross, The Meriwether and (more recently) The Ardea in South Waterfront. 

Named after a former famous resident of the Hollywood district—children’s author Beverly Cleary—The Beverly was designed by GBD Architects, Gerding’s most frequent architectural collaborator. If you put together all five Brewery Blocks, The Casey, The Gerding Theater, the OHSU Center for Health and Healing and now The Beverly, The 20 and The Ardea, that’s an incredible number of major projects between this developer and architect in the last decade-plus, all of them fairly large in scale. (And that doesn’t include the work Gerding and GBD have done together in other cities like Los Angeles and Bellevue.) I can’t think of another developer-architect partnership in this city in the current era that has been more impactful. 

The brick and wood-clad Beverly is anchored by a Whole Foods Market and Chase Bank on the first floor, with two floors of parking above. The top two floors are devoted to 53 condominiums (all one or two bedrooms), which enjoy views of Mount Hood to the east and downtown Portland looking west.

 

 

The residential units share a handsome rooftop interior courtyard that feels quite different (more intimate) compared to the massiveness of the overall building. It’s a series of small forms stacked on top of the big, broad base and middle of the structure.

Inside the condos, living areas feature hardwood floors in natural red or saddle oak and wool carpet. Kitchens are built with maple or ash cabinetry with stainless steel hardware.

For optimal indoor air quality The Beverly was built with materials emitting low or no volatile organic compounds (VOCs) or formaldehydes. The building team, led by general contractor R&H Construction, also recycled all construction waste. And The Beverly provides 100 percent storm water filtration.

When I first heard about this project, I was disheartened because constructing The Beverly meant the mid-century modern bank on this site, an elegant glass and concrete structure, had to be torn down. At the same time, there is reason to cheer this new building because of the density it adds to the Hollywood district given its relatively close-in location and its proximity to a MAX stop. The Beverly is part of Gerding Edlen's broader focus on what's commonly referred to in sustainability talk as "20-minute living," or the notion that most of the things we need (jobs, shops, services) can be found within a twenty-minute walk.

 

Viewing the block-sized building from Sandy Boulevard, I enjoyed the façade’s interplay of textures, particularly the natural wood cladding of the upper portions and how it contrasts with the brick below.

Standing on the street outside the building can look monolithic and imposing, particularly towards the back. However, because of the triangular building footprint created by Sandy Boulevard, The Beverly is at its most slender and visually appealing at the point from which it will most people will see it. What’s more, it is very difficult to make a parking garage look humane and vibrant. They’re a necessary aesthetic evil of having automobiles.

  

Naturally, were the parking garage underground and The Beverly instead a three story building with Whole Foods and Chase on the ground floor and the condos directly above, it could have made for a more attractive piece of architecture and a more pleasant experience for the casual passer by. The subterranean parking would also have added significant costs to the project, and the land cost east of the river must not have allowed it in the building’s budget. As a result, the residential units on top of the garage feel less connected to the street and the neighborhood. That makes the building feel less attractive ultimately than comparable projects like Museum Place downtown, which GBD also designed, or the Brewery Blocks that Gerding Edlen and GBD previously collaborated on (one of which has another Whole Foods).

 

To be honest, I'm not sure exactly how to judge a project like The Beverly. It earns very positive marks by a number of measuring sticks, from its sustainability to the attractiveness of its materials to the way it contributes to Hollywood’s future as a higher-density, transit oriented neighborhood. But it’s a bulky building with a parking garage enlarging what would otherwise have been a more intimately scaled mixed use building. And yet I'm also not sure if it's fair to critique a building's design based in part on what might have been in terms of program (with underground parking). In that way, perhaps this project is a reminder of both the opportunities and challenges, economically and in terms of design, along Portland’s continued path towards higher density. 

The return of Genoa

Photo by John Valls 

For many years in Portland beginning in the 1970s and continuing through the 1990s and beyond, Genoa Restaurant was not just a premiere destination for sophisticated, authentic Italian cuisine - it was the place. In a nation of Chef Boyardees, Genoa was Marcella Hazan, the grand dame.

But the restaurant at 2832 Southeast Belmont Street closed in 2008 and, by that time, despite its exquisite food, the restaurant felt like an anachronism, all worn carpet and seven-course meals.

Now, it's a pleasure to report that Genoa is not only back, but the restaurant's original location has been updated to include an adjacent cafe one is likely to frequent on a much more regular basis. 

 Photos by Brian Libby

Architecturally speaking, I'd argue the renovated restaurant (pictured above) is vastly better than the old Genoa ever was. Much as we foodies may have swooned at the arancini (fried risotto balls), the homemade pastas and all the other exquisite food at the old Genoa courtesy of great chefs like Kathy Whims and Jerry Huisinga, I never loved the interiors or layout. The kitchen was so small that a lot of wait staff duties like gathering silverware and pouring drinks were out with the diners. The curtains were closed so natural light was practically nonexistent, meaning you had either fluorescent light or near darkness. I can appreciate a fine dining restaurant trying to carve out an intimate space, but even when the food was great I'd have preferred the inside to upgrade from the textures and approach of the Carter administration.

By contrast, Genoa's new dining room (pictured immediately above and below) is beautifully rendered with wood floors, curtains and a fireplace, even as familiar bits of the old restaurant like a beautiful armoire remain. Curtains still assure the space does not have a fishbowl effect, but storefront glass allows more natural light to come through. A wall now separates the dining room from the kitchen, with the small wall that was there now removed.

Photo by John Valls 

Yet if diners want to experience an open kitchen and a more casual atmosphere with a coule of courses instead of seven, the adjacent cafe, known as Accanto, has a more open feel, both figuratively and literally speaking. The kitchen area is completely with a row of barstools surrounding the cooks. 

Overall, Accanto (pictured below) is much more in keeping with casual and more affordable restaurants of recent years that still have great food, neighborhood spots like Savoy, Cafe Castagna or Bar Mingo. You can stop there for a wild boar ragut sandwich at lunch, like I did, or even a late-morning espresso, like a few locals seem to do. There are also entrees of the same quality you'll find next door in the dining room, only available a la carte.

 Photos by Brian Libby

The team behind Genoa's rebirth included architecture firm Works Partnership and the design-build company Siteworks as well as Fix, an interdisciplinary design studio. I liked the simple layout of the restaurant, although what may have stood out most, at least to my eyes, was the richness of the materials, some of which were older salvaged materials and others that were newer and polished. [Note: I originally did not include Fix in my list of design credit along with Works and Siteworks - apologies for that. There are also several subcontractors whom I may not have mentioned.]

The bar at Accanto, for example, is made with live-edge walnut (pictured below), meaning it undulates with the tree's remaining knots and crevices. But Jean-Pierre Veillet, owner of Siteworks, also combined the walnut with steel, part of a series of subtle contrasts throughout the space such as the black and white tiles on the kitchen's back wall, the steel mirror and the kumaru wood floors, and the open and secluded halves of the restaurant itself.

 Photo by Jean-Pierre Veillet

Wood makes a lot of different appearances. Another favorite material I saw was a salvaged set of double doors (pictured above) in the Genoa dining room that originally were part of a church. Accanto also has a wall in back clad in wood with built-in bookshelves, and the ceiling is festooned with slats of wood that partially but not entirely cover the ceiling rafters behind it.

 Photo by Brian Libby

Veillet, a native Portlander, has an interesting history. Trained as an artist at the Pacific Northwest College of Art, he later taught sculpture there for eight years and now funds a scholarship at the school. You can see the ongoing artistic love in some of the first-rate artworks Veillet has lent to Accanto, such as a portrait called "Same Ol' Same Ol'" by legendary local painter Arvie Smith at the front of the restaurant and an original Chuck Close artwork on the way to the bathroom. Veillet's portfolio also includes design-build services for retail clients like the Lizard Lounge clothing store in the Pearl District.

A "Design Statement" Viellet emailed explains, "With his firm, Siteworks, Veillet has taken his background in site-specific art and mixed it with a serious shot of writing, poetry, and experience to produce spaces that communicate with people through objects, design, and elegance."

 Photo by Angel Franco/New York Times

Another of his projects, a temporary store for the clothing company Nau, was featured last month in the New York Times. In that piece, Eric Wilson wrote:

"The green movement in fashion, in which designers do go on about hugging the planet with their biodynamic cotton henleys, would appear to be at odds with the 'pop up' shop movement in fashion, in which the very same designers open temporary stores, lavishly redecorate them and then, when they close a few weeks later, toss all the fixtures, lights and displays to the curb."

Mr. Veillet said his idea was to create a space using materials that were almost entirely rooted in New York City’s waste stream — fallen tree limbs found on the street, timber and metal pipes from derelict Brooklyn factories and piles of discarded cardboard boxes — so that when the store closes, at least the garbage won’t be new."

Veillet and Works Partnership also have another project in the works, a series of what they're calling "eco flats", or low-cost, high-density, multifamily housing units, on Williams Avenue.

US Green Building Council president visits Mercy Corps for LEED Platinum ceremony, tour

 Photo by Jeff Amram

Last week, US Green Building Council president Rick Fedrizzi was at the new Mercy Corps headquarters to personally award the building its Platinum certification, the highest possible in the Council's LEED (Leadership in Energy & Environmental Design) rating system for green buildings.

"Fabulous. Fabulous. Terrific," Fedrizzi said of the building, which was designed by THA Architecture and received an assist from consultants Green Building Services, engineering from Glumac and construction by Walsh. "This is always exciting for me. We talked sixteen years ago when we started the LEED system about how people would someday celebrate their buildings like this. This is a really beautiful space. And a building like this is teaching lessons you can take around the world."

"It is not easy to do LEED Platinum," added Fedrizzi (pictured at left in the shot below). "And I've actually seen LEED Platinum achieved but done wrong. But this building is what LEED Platinum should be all about. It will be a beacon."

 Photo by Caitlin Carlson

"We needed a home that reflected our values and our mission," said Mercy Corps president Neil Kenny Guyer (pictured at right in the above shot) as he accepted the Platinum plaque (which is actually glass) from Fedrizzi, "a place where we could make an impact. We know that climate change discriminates. It affects the poorest first."

"But we knew we got it right the first day [after moving in]," Guyer added, "seeing people meeting on the stairwell with smiles on their faces."

Photo by Jeff Amram 

The Mercy Corps headquarters is comprised half of a historic existing building, the circa 1892 Skidmore Fountain Building (also known as the Packer-Scott Building), and half from a new building, making one unified space. A lot of structural work had to be done to get the Skidmore Fountain Buidling structurally sound and up to current seismic codes, especially when one of its walls was removed to connect the new and old buildings. "“If you had a really strong breeze, this thing would have fallen over,” Ashton Walsh of Walsh Construction told the Daily Journal of Commerce.

The building includes offices for Mercy Corps as well as an Action Center, which the organization describes as "a social studies lab for school groups and a newsroom for everyone. It's an interactive exhibit space dedicated to providing up-to-date, compelling stories from around the world. It's a place where programs -- casual, short-term university seminars, impromptu panel discussions and guest lecturers -- encourage conversation about the issues of the day."

 Photo by Jeff Amram

In order to get the design approved by the city's Historic Landmarks Commission, the exterior of the new half of the building needed to fit in aesthetically with the old Skidmore Fountain building's red brick façade.

THA Architects managed to walk a fine line in this regard, because the new half of the Mercy Corps headquarters feels thoroughly modern even as it is connected to the historic half. The newer portion feels like the repeating of a rhythm, neither a trite neo-historic caricature of old architecture nor a jarring incongruent departure.

The new half of the building's two most visible sides, the east-facing riverfront side and the south-facing one that looks out at Ankeny Plaza, are also distinctive in their use of glass. The riverfront facade takes its cue from Mercy Corps' mission. In researching the client and the project, the architects learned that a connecting thread between the many world cultures the agency serves is just that - thread and weaving. So the glassy riverfront facade faintly resembles a weaving, but again without resorting to postmodern silliness.

Photo courtesy THA Architecture 

The south-facing facade (pictured above) is one of the most important for any green building, because that's where you manage changing solar light, so as to bring in the illumination and warmth when it's needed in the winter and keep it out when it's unwanted in summer. Instead of the usual light shelves one sees on many a green  building facade (horizontal exterior shades extending out at every floor), the THA design utilizes a patchwork of small rectangular shades that are tilted at an angle. Standing inside the building, it made for a dazzling experience watching the winter sun come into the space. And the array of shades also creates a compelling look for the facade of this otherwise boxy building. I love it when beautiful form is born from very useful function.

Inside, the heart of the building, as Neil Kenny Guyer mentioned, is an open stairway that looks and feels like a kind of geometric DNA double-helix. Wood stair treads salvaged from the original building were combined with a light steel stair structure, giving the area both texture and transparency. This is the very middle, interior-most portion of the building, and it's still teeming with natural light.

 

Photos by Jeff Amram 

Overall I am a big fan of the Mercy Corps building, but came away with two relatively small criticisms:

While standing in the new half of the building filled with Mercy Corps workers' cubicles, I was surprised to see that the executive offices were placed along the north and south facades and walled off on the inside with drywall. This means that only a select few will have access to natural light from the building's exterior. It's of course largely moot in terms of light distribution because this same area benefits from an all-glass east facade looking out at the river. But this configuration is still surprisingly indicative of an older, less egalitarian way of laying out administrative offices for executives and rank-and-file employees. I'd have expected either the executive offices along the building perimeter to be walled with glass on the inside, so the light and views are distributed into the space, or to have open desk configurations along the perimeter and executive offices in the middle of the space. During the tour, THA principal William Dann explained that interior-wall glass for these perimeter offices was too expensive, and that Mercy Corps didn't want to be extravagant with budget given the extreme needs of the people around the world the agency serves. But if that's the case, why not put the executives in the middle and the larger amount of regular employees along the glassy perimeter?

Photo by Jeff Amram 

My other disappointment was with the Mercy Corps Action Center, located on the ground floor of the older Skidmore Fountain Building portion of the headquarters. This is a space for the public to come and learn more about Mercy Corps and the needs of people the agency serves. It was designed not by THA, but by noted exhibit designer Edwin Schlossberg (husband of Caroline Kennedy, JFK's daughter).

To its credit, the Action Center has on display some of the tools and equipment Mercy Corps provides around the world, such as an easy-to-build tent dwelling and a rollable donut-shaped water carrier. Most of the space consists of TVs where one watches video about Mercy Corps' efforts and is encouraged to take actions such as contacting a member of Congress.

The video terminals have educational value, of course. Yet I'd like to have seen more of an experiential design approach taken, as was done with the "Real.Life" exhibit at the Medical Teams International facility in Tigard. There you can stand under a simulated 25-foot tsunami wave (like the one that ravaged southeast Asia), or amidst a recreation of Mexico City's garbage-dump, a Ugandan refugee camp, and a Romanian orphanage. The Medical Teams International exhibit is emotionally evocative as it is educational; the Mercy Corps video terminals can be helpful to get one to take action, but any of this could also be done on the organization's website. In this day and age, providing someone with a screen full of information seems a little bit of an outdated concept when they can do so with even a cell phone.

Even so, the Mercy Corps building seems architecturally like a major success. Locating in still-gritty Old Town and renovating a historic structure wasn't the easiest course for the agency, but as Ralph DiNola of Green Building Services wrote in a blog post about the project, "Mercy Corps’ decision to consolidate several offices and locate in this part of the city catalyzes redevelopment momentum and revitalizes this re-emerging neighborhood. Directly adjacent to downtown, the urban locale leverages existing infrastructure, offers employees an array of alternative transportation options and concentrates development to protect agricultural and natural habitats in the outlying areas while infusing the adjacent district with long-term investment and ownership."

Indeed, I love the idea that when one comes west across the Burnside Bridge into downtown, the crossing is bookended by the University of Oregon's White Stag Block on the north side and the Mercy Corps headquarters to the south. Admittedly, it's also a neighborhood teeming with homeless people, but that's all the more reason why it's great to see these entities embracing Portland's urbanity, both in terms of amenities and challenges. 

Photo by Jeff Amram 

As with the rest of the THA Architecture (formerly Thomas Hacker Architects) portfolio, including projects like the Woodstock and Hillsdale libraries in Portland, or their theater for the Oregon Shakespeare Festival in Ashland, this is not contemporary design meant to grab you by the lapels and call attention to itself. The Mercy Corps headquarters is a quintessentially Portland building in that it's a good neighbor, a piece of the urban fabric that fits well within its context. Yet a lot of buildings that fit well into their context are a design bore, forgettable as soon as one passes them. The Mercy Corps headquarters is, like Fedrizzi says, a beacon. It walks a deft balance between sober and dazzling, which seems entirely fitting as a physical embodiment of the client and the city.