Portland Architecture

Forget the Moyer Park

This past weekend I caught an early evening movie at the Guild Theater and found myself walking downtown at about 8:30pm. Aside from homeless people and rowdy teenagers, the area was really dead.

As Randy Gragg wrote about in his Sunday Oregonian column, directly across from the Guild sits the surface parking lot that is poised to become a park (and a grossly under-funded one), thanks to developer Tom Moyer’s donation of the land. (It was originally part of that silly plan with Neil Goldschmidt to connect the North and South Park Blocks, bulldozing historic buildings and going against Olmstead’s original design intent.) Seeing the public disbursed so much on what should have been a busy Saturday night, I really think that’s a bad idea.

The area around the Moyer block already has plenty of urban park space. You’ve got Pioneer Courthouse Square one block to the northeast and the South Park Blocks one block to the south. Too much park space in one area and the people disburse everywhree, robbing the streetscape of vitality. Why not put some more housing on the Moyer block? That’s what is really needed to stimulate downtown during non-business hours. I know there has already been housing added in the West End with Museum Place and there is more to come with John Carroll’s new Eliot Tower where the old Psycho Safeway used to be, not to mention the 26-story Benson Tower if it ever gets going. But I’d like to see a lot more. That’s the way to make downtown Portland feel like a 24-hour city, or at least more than a weekday 9-5 city.

Besides, if a building went up on the Moyer block, we wouldn’t have to look at the ugly backside of the Fox Tower. (Sorry Thompson Vaivoda, I love the front side!)

Curry and Cugnart

Two of Portland’s most noteworthy architects have left the firms with which they have long been associated.

Eric Cugnart is the French-born architect who was largely responsible for the Adidas headquarters on North Greeley for BOORA. It's easily one of the most compelling corporate campuses I have ever come across. He also played a role in the Mark Hatfield US Courthouse, which BOORA co-designed with New York’s Kohn Pedersen Fox. And while it’s long been in limbo, Cugnart’s design of the One Waterfront Place office tower for developer Jim Winkler might still make a welcome addition to the skyline. (Would some tenant PLEASE sign the papers so poor Jim can finally build this $%#@* thing?) Before coming to Portland, Cugnart also worked at Pei Cobb Freed in New York, rubbing elbows with legends IM Pei and James Freed. He has a particular talent for fashioning building skins that draw the eye without being ostentatious. While there are many other talented architects at BOORA, this is still a big loss for the firm.

Rob Curry is one of the real pioneers in Portland’s green building crusade of the last several years. Although he, too, once worked at BOORA, Curry has really made a name for himself at Yost Grube Hall. That firm really made sustainability a priority in recent years, and Rob was a key player behind the impressive North Mall Office Building in Salem and the Kelly Engineering Center at OSU. I remember talking with Rob at the grand opening of the BetterBricks Daylighting Lab in Portland as he modeled the OSU project on the lab’s heliodon to show how its central atrium would distribute natural light throughout the building. Impressive stuff, even if it was for those damn Beavers.

Having been around for several decades, BOORA and YGH can easily survive as individual architects come and go, and neither firm is short on talent today. But there’s no question both firms were both better for these architects’ contributions. Curry has already landed at Fletcher Farr Ayotte, and I hope to find Cugnart practicing somewhere else in Portland ASAP, because inevitably at least a portion of my fandom for their former firms will follow wherever they go.

The People in the Cubicles

My aunt works for a to-remain-nameless metro area government agency that provides assistance to seniors and the disabled. This weekend I heard about how recently she and her colleagues moved into a new building, and how the bathrooms already are going to have to be redone. The reason? I kid you not: The bathrooms were not ADA compliant. That’s right—an agency serving the disabled didn’t have restrooms their clients could use.

That story was good for a laugh, but another one my aunt told me also gave pause: her new office has light shelves, the window-and-shelve units that help spread natural light further into a room’s space. It’s Green Building 101. The problem is, this particular building faces south (also by design) and the natural light coming through makes it exceptionally difficult for my aunt and her colleagues to see their computer screens.

I’m certainly not looking to pick a fight with green building advocates. I consider myself one of them. But I think it’s good to hear a user’s perspective like my aunt had.

Architecture can be beautiful and it can be efficient about using natural resources. But it has to be practical too. Even if you don’t win a Pritzker prize for doing it, you have to please the people in the cubicles, or the students in class, or whatever the case may be. As much as I and other architecture lovers are apt to swoon at the likes of Koolhaas or Hadid, I wouldn’t want to squint or hold it in all day either.

Measure 37: A Call To Battle

With each day another story comes of an Oregon community whose sprawl-limiting growth boundary is about to be ruined by a Measure 37 claim. Oregon’s progressive land use laws were the pride of the nation, at least in planning circles, and with one misguided vote we’ve thrown it away.

But the time has passed to just whine about it. The question now is this: What are we going to do about it?

Members of the Oregon Legislature have indicated their considerable reluctance to reverse a new law approved by the voters. That means we’re either going to have to put a lot of pressure on them to change their minds, or we’ll have to consider a corrective ballot measure of our own for the next election.

I think the best strategy is to develop some sort of compromise that allows landowners to be compensated for a loss in property value due to development restrictions, but prevents them from sidestepping the law. It’s true such a move would severely hamper city and county governments, who are already cash-strapped and would have real difficulty raising millions of dollars to compensate some grandma who wants to pass on a subdivision of snout houses or glorified shanties to her grandchildren. But it’s the only way.

Maybe if a new tax to compensate these landowners were implemented, public opinion would finally come around to the simple truth that the good of the many outweighs the good of the few.

A New Face For Timberline

Next week begins a new exhibit in the gallery space at the American Institute of Architects/Portland devoted to Timberline Lodge. In 2003 the Friends of Timberline organized a design competition to prepare preliminary drawings for a new snow entrance at the main entrance to Timberline Lodge that would be compatible with the historic character of the lodge and be cost efficient in its installation and removal.

The First Place Winners were Ean Eldred and Peter Nylen of NE Works, previously of the celebrated local firm Rigga, known for their saving of the Lovejoy Columns as well as some excellend public art pieces. Second Place went to perrenially underrated Hennebery Eddy Architects of Portland. The Award of Merit went to Ross Sanders and Andrew Schafer of solo2design.

I saw a presentation last year on Eldred and Nylen’s design, which is remarkable and beautiful in its simplicity. The snow entrance is made of computer-cut curves of aluminum channels supporting a double skin of translucent, high-strength Lexan plastic. As an Associated Press article succinctly put it, “The wavy, 20-foot-high parabolic arches promise the eerie translucency of a snow cave with the airiness of a Gothic cathedral.” Piercing the snow cover, they glow at night like a firefly. And yet the whole thing can be folded up and put away in a matter of minutes. Eldred and Nylen have created a wonderful compliment to Timberline, a masterpiece of early 20th Century lodge architecture.

The winning design will be on display through March as well as some of the runners-up. I highly recommend checking it out.

The Race For Platinum

Two Portland projects seem to be vying for the title of first LEED "Platinum" accredited multifamily housing projects in the United States.

One is The Standpoint by BOORA Architects, which will start construction in May, I'm told, and will be located at Southeast 12th and Taylor. I sat down with a couple people at BOORA to look the drawings over a couple months ago and was very impressed. This is a striking building aesthetically, but it also looks like a great place to live, with an inner courtyard bringing in natural light on all sides of the apartments. The Standpoint also has an interesting developer, who I believe has a past promoting boxing matches.

The other contender for residential LEED Platinum is The Meriwether, the inaugural twin towers of the South Waterfront district. This is a much bigger project than The Standpoint, but it has head start since it's already under construction. The architect, GBD, is a familiar choice for co-developer Gerding Edlen. But there is new opportunity in the taller, glassier style being promoted in South Waterfront.

Having ultra sustainable buildings here is certainly a source of pride, and beyond that it's just the most prudent way to build. Although economics of first costs always have to be consideration, it's encouraging that more and more for-profit developers are seeing that long-term life cycle costs are ultimately much more important. But beyond that, it's also important that the buildings have an architectural identity beyond being green. Portland has a stellar and well-deserved reputation for a healthy, pleasant urban fabric, but architects and owners have a responsibility, I think, to seek out compelling designs.

Little Italy?

A Friday article in the Portland Tribune highlighted a growing movement in Portland to create a "Little Italy" that would celebrate the food, architecture and overall culture of the boot. Apparently the group wants to build a replica statue of the Italian Renaissance King Neptune in Bologna, Portland's sister city, and erect a headquarters near the Skidmore fountain or possibly some other location (Burnside Bridgehead or the old Grand Central Bol on Southeast Belmont).

I'm all for celebrating culture, and a Little Italy adjacent to the planned Portland Public Market could achieve some synergy, not to mention fun. But I'm also worried that, despite the good intentions and desire for authenticity by its backers, the proposal sounds a little bit like a cultural theme park.

Little Italies in other American cities like New York and San Francisco, just like the Chinatowns and other zones oriented around a particular national identity, are places where immigrants from that nation congregated as a kind of necessity, with the culture shock and language barrier of a new nation made easier by having a community of people to turn to from home. Starting a Little Italy from scratch today, however, strikes me more as a marketing gimmick.

As a friend who passed on the Tribune article to me quipped, "Are the Italians going to build a Little Portland on the Piazza Maggiore, complete with a replica of Portlandia?" I don't think so.

Beyond Burnside Bridgehead

While reading Randy Gragg’s article about the three revised proposals for the Burnside Bridgehead development, a thought occurred: What about the other nearby blocks? Of course the two developers who don’t win PDC’s Bridgehead sweepstakes on April 27 will be disappointed, but when you look around the immediate area, there is a lot more land that’s being under-utilized.

Close-in East Burnside seems to be a magnet for car dealerships. One of them, Wentworth Subaru, is currently constructing a new building that will be better urbanistically than most dealerships because it will not be dominated by a surface lot. But on the other hand, it’s not exactly a model of high-density development either. There are also some run-down existing buildings that could be renovated with retail below and housing above.

Once the city gets busy making Burnside’s intersection with MLK and Grand more walkable with wider sidewalks and better landscaping, there ought not to be any reason that Burnside Bridgehead isn’t well connected with the emerging lower Burnside area just a couple blocks away, home to the Jupiter Hotel, Doug Fir Lounge, and an eclectic handful of other small businesses.

Whether it’s Beam, Gerding/Edlen or Opus, I’d like to see one of these developers really embrace the idea that changing this area for the best needn’t be solely about Burnside Bridgehead. If this really is an urban fabric, there’s no point in getting obsessed with one square in the patchwork. Sure, some places are more valuable than others. But as the movement for greater density in the urban core continues, there's no reason why we can't raise our heads up for a moment to consider the opportunities that are right in front of our collective face.

Notes on the Emerald City

Yesterday I made a day trip to Seattle and was once again left contemplating that city’s differences with Portland—good and bad.

One of my destinations was the new Central Library for an overdue look at Koolhaas’ building. From outside the view is staggering. It is an angular jewel among concrete and glass boxes. That sense only continues once you enter, because the transparent mesh of the building’s skin also dominates the interior. The perimeter walls are the primary light source, combining with its form to create the sensation almost of a glowing teepee. The Central Library calm in the way a cathedral is calm: solemn and sober, but never unaware of the grandness of the space.

This incredible library also reminds me of how Seattle values bold buildings by famous names more than Portland. I remember in a Willamette Week article a few years ago Portland State University urban historian Carl Abbott explained that ocean port cities like Seattle traditionally seek acceptance as an important city of the world, while river cities like Portland are more insular and tend more to do their own thing.

That would explain Seattle’s having a collection of buildings by Koolhaas, Gehry, Stephen Holl and the iconic Space Needle while Portland is known more for its pleasant urban fabric but few landmark buildings. Each has its appeal.

Personally, though, I’d rather live in the better pure overall city, even if no individual building in it is really so great. The space in between the buildings is fabulous. Besides, one can always visit the other city, the one with some outstanding individual pieces of architecture, without having to live day in and day out in a city with such a hilly terrain, terrible traffic, and cut off from much of its waterfront.

It’s not to say I don’t like Seattle, nor to suggest that Seattle and Portland are polar opposites. There’s a lot to like about both. But I’ve made my choice and I’m happy with it.

Save the US Customs House

I was horrified to learn last week that the General Services Administration is selling the historic US Customs House on NW Broadway to a hotel chain instead of to the University of Oregon. As Randy Gragg mentioned in his Oregonian column, not only would this classic piece of Portland architecture make an ideal home for UO’s architecture program, but I’ll bet the university would do a lot better job of respecting the original design intent than Dallas-based Wyndham Hotels, the winner of the building contract.

It’s not to say that a hotel is incapable of renovating an historic old building to make a cool place stay. In Los Angeles, for example, Koning Eizenberg Architecture gained widespread acclaim for renovating the former Standard Oil headquarters into the ultra-cool Downtown Standard hotel. But I still don’t want to run the risk of Wyndham Hotels screwing up this circa-1901 Italian Renaissance gem.

One is used to thinking of the GSA as architecture-friendly because of its Design Excellence program, which has awarded contracts for government buildings (federal courthouses, etc.) to some of the nation’s top architects, like Richard Meier and Thom Mayne. (Nevermind Portland got a courthouse by less iconoclastic and more corporate firm Kohn Pederson Fox, and I'm not sure it has aged well even in just eight years.) But in the case of the Customs House, for the GSA it clearly was all about the money. We should all email Ed Feiner, head of the GSA, to complain about such a shallow architectural decision about the future of an important Portland treasure. Who’s with me?

A Coup For Thomas Hacker

Recently the developers of Portland's South Waterfront, the biggest city development in more than a century here, announced that their latest building contract has been awarded to local firm Thomas Hacker Architects. And I'm very happy to hear it.

Thomas Hacker himself has long been a regional legend. He taught for many years at the University of Oregon's school of architecture, where he passed on lessons learned while working in the office of master architect Louis Kahn. Talented local designers like Brad Cloepfil, Nancy Merryman and Rick Potestio are all former pupils.

But beyond academics, Hacker and his eponymous firm design beautiful buildings that function well and are a joy to be in. In particular the string of libraries he has done in the area, especially the Woodstock branch, are noteworthy for their poetic simplicity and ample natural light. The New Theater at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival in Ashland, which I previously wrote about for Architecture Week magazine, is also very striking, showing a subtle Japanese influence with its palette of latticed wood screens.

Despite this impressive résumé, Hacker to my knowledge has not previously designed a large apartment building like the one he'll be doing in the South Waterfront. That means hiring his firm is a risk, and with that in mind I commend developers Williams & Dame and Gerding/Edlen for making the right choice instead of the safe one. By necessity, developers have to keep an eagle eye on the economics of architecture and "how it pencils out", to cite a cliched phrase I frequently hear. So the fact that these people went with a very talented but somewhat unproven firm given the program is to me a very good sign for the future of this crucially important new Portland district.

Milan Seethoff and Credit for Builders

Last night I had drinks with a builder and woodworker named Milan Seethoff. The owner of Thunder Construction, Milan served as the general contractor for the Watson House in Portland, which I recently wrote about in Dwell magazine. Unfortunately, though, I neglected to mention him anywhere in the article. This same omission apparently also happened with another high-profile project Milan was the builder for: the stunningly beautiful modern log home formerly owned by Portland restaurateur Bruce Carey and given a 12-page spread in Martha Stewart Living magazine.

Milan not only does fabulous work, but his predicament is one that happens all too often to builders. They work with architects collaboratively on both major structural elements and small details, only to see the architect get all the credit if the project is written about. And I’m definitely among the guilty. But after meeting with Milan and looking at photography of his past projects (which also include the very impressive-looking wine bar Vigne, a stunning renovation for a Nike executive and work at one of the Willamette Valley’s most prestigious wineries), I don’t intend to make an oversight like this again.

Thinking About Powell's

A few days ago I had a meeting at the Brewery Blocks, which is now nearing completion as the fifth and final building, the Louisa apartments, is set to open in a few weeks. Approaching the area on 10^th Avenue, one first sees legendary Powell’s City of Books, which occupies the entire block bounded by 10^th, Burnside, Couch and 11^th. The East portion of the Powell’s block was expanded and renovated a few years ago, but the store’s front door remains a rather shabby looking one-story structure. Now that the Brewery Blocks tower over Powell’s, it begs the question: When will the store do something more with its space?

From an economic standpoint, there may not be a great deal of motivation—at least not yet—especially considering that the store already expanded a few years ago. And Powell’s is already a huge bookstore, the largest independent one in America, actually.

But considering what a success the Brewery Blocks have been in forging a pedestrian friendly, high-density environment for office and residential space along the streetcar at this crucial junction of downtown and the Pearl District, I can’t help but think that the space above that one-story quarter block at 10^th and Burnside needs to have something built above it.

Local architect Gary Reddick of Sienna Architecture has received press in numerous publications over the years for walking around Portland, seeing one-story buildings, and seeking out the owner to develop the “air rights” above his building. Michael Powell (the store’s owner) doesn’t’ need an architect pointing out the obvious to him, but I wonder how much Mr. Powell has considered an upward expansion.

The office market in Portland right now is very slow, but surely at some point there will be a need for more shelf space for books. If not, apartments above such an iconic bookstore and so ideally situated between downtown and the Pearl would practically sell themselves. And while I admire the Brewery Blocks for a lot of reasons, there is also opportunity here to trump them from a pure architectural standpoint.

Mr. Powell, have you met Brad Cloepfil? Thomas Hacker? Rick Potestio? Countless great local designers are standing by waiting to take your order.

Welcome

Welcome to the Portland Architecture weblog, where I will be talking about design in the Rose City from skyscrapers to single-family homes, famous architects to unknown up-and-comers. Enjoy!