Portland Architecture

Architecture Movies

As someone who writes primarily about architecture and movies, I often get asked what good films there are about architects and architecture.  To be honest, there aren't that many.

With documentaries having become more popular in recent years, My Architect immediately comes to mind.  This portrait of Louis Kahn by his son Nathaniel is a great introduction to not only the architect whose work we know well, but the man that we didn't.

But when it comes to fictionalized Hollywood films, the list is still small.  There's The Fountainhead starring Gary Cooper, made from Ayn Rand's book.  There is also Belly of an Architect by the talented but hit-and-miss English director Peter Greenaway.

There are lots of movies, of course, where one of the characters happens to be an architect, such as Sleepless in Seattle or White Noise or Housesitter, non of which I would particularly recommend, both because they're not good movies and because they have virtually nothing to do with architecture.  You could always watch The Brady Bunch, too, because the patriarch, Mike Brady, of course was an architect.  Remember the perfume company headquarters he designed that was shaped like a perfume bottle?

There are many other films whose plots and lead characters are non-architectural but are for one reason or another of interest to designers.  At a festival last year in Virginia called "Architecture + Film", for example, they showed Frenchman Jacques Tati's classic Mon Oncle because it lampoons modern architecture, and the Coen Brother's The Hudsucker Proxy because it uses fabulous art-deco skyscrapers as a metaphor for rising ambition.

This is still a pretty meager list, though, and I'm hoping some of you can recommend a few more titles. 

Lewis & Clark Plaza

The next time you’re in Vancouver, consider stopping by the handsome new senior housing project known as Lewis & Clark Plaza, designed by Emmons Architects of Portland.

The exterior of this four-story residential building is clad in brick and enlivened with a refined contemporary palette of metal mesh balconies and striking vertical windowpanes. The ground floor is all glass, with the top three floors appearing to almost float overhead, adding a sense of lightness to what could have been in another architect’s hands a bulky mass.

Stuart Emmons, the principal behind Emmons Architects (his ex-wife, a co-founding principal, recently founded her own firm), is an architect deserving of bigger and better commissions. His resume includes award winning designs for a couple local firehouses as well as a Case Study-esque single family home and some terrific-looking unbuilt work. And as a planner, Stuart also has done substantial and well-conceived master planning for the South Waterfront neighborhood (much of which unfortunately the developers don’t seem to be following) as well as the downtown waterfront along Naito Parkway. Stuart also studied at Harvard and worked for Skidmore, Owings, Merrill in New York and Koning Eizenberg in Los Angelesbefore coming to Portland, where he previously worked at Sienna Architecture and Yost Grube Hall.

Along with Holst Architecture’s recent Belmont Lofts, Emmons Architects’ Lewis & Clark Plaza represents the almost limitless opportunity for small infill housing projects in  Portland. Much of the attention in local press (including the stuff I write) focuses too much on a handful of big commissions for the South Waterfront, Burnside Bridgehead, and Hoyt Street Yards. But these littler jewels offer more arguably better opportunity for striking architectural composition.

Handicapping Burnside Bridgehead

It is now less than one month until the Portland Development Commission announces the winner among three developers vying for the Burnside Bridgehead contract on April 27.

I'd like to know if anyone out there has a hunch about who is going to win.

Ever since public uproar coerced two of the developers, Gerding/Edlen and Opus Northwest, into removing big-box retailers from their plans, there has been in my view somewhat of a knee-jerk assumption that Beam Development is in the lead.  After all, they got that part of it right the first time.  But it would be silly to assume the decision will be made on that basis alone.  After all, Gerding has by far the most impressive track record in town, and Opus has the muscle of a national organization.  If Beam Development is going to win, I think it will take the same kind of campaigning for their proposal that there was by the public against their competitors.

But forget what I think: What is the gossip about who will win?  What are people whispering in the corridors of power or the local watering hole?  Inquiring minds want to know.

City of Portland, Nation of Asphalt

On Wednesday, March 30 at 7:30pm at the First Congregational Church, the Illahee Lecture Series features Jane Holtz Kay, author and architecture critic, in a lecture entitled: "Last Chance Landscape: De-paving & Re-planning Cities."  It's part of a continuing 2005 series called "How Cities Learn: Portland's Place on Earth."

Kay is an architecture critic for The Nation and also wrote the book, Asphalt Nation: How the Automobile Took Over America and How We Can Take It Back, which urban planning patron saint Jane Jacobs says "has given us a profound way of seeing the automobile's ruinous impact on American life. "

One might consider asking Ms. Kay about all the surface parking lots miring downtown and how we can get the owners of these spaces to do something more (if you'll pardon the pun) constructive with them.

All Hail The Loop Group

In Tuesday’s Portland Tribune, Don Hamilton reported on the Freeway Loop Advisory Group, “known less formally as the Loop Group”, formed by Mayor Katz and ODOT in 2003 to study the East Bank of I-5. According to the report, among the future options the group is studying for the Marquam Bridge and East Bank freeway are a tunnel and moving the alignment east, away from the river.

The Tribune article came about because the Loop Group is seeking $4 million to continue studying solutions for this concrete eyesore across the Willamette from downtown. And while I like the fact that this movement is gaining attention, I don’t like Hamilton’s description of the study’s latest re-funding request as “a sort of bureaucratic Dracula, enduring for decades without ever quite dying...in the midst of budget shortages and many other big-ticket transportation proposals.”

Take a look at downtown, with Waterfront Park a symbol of Portland’s progressive urban design over the last thirty years—there used to be a freeway there too. Now take a look at the East Bank freeway, a hideous snake of traffic towering over the entire neighborhood. There’s a big, big difference. Even the completion of the East Bank Esplanade is just a band-aid. The view may be great, but with thousands of cars hustling buy a few feet away you can barely hear yourself think. And the Esplanade is still hopelessly disconnected from the rest of the East Side.

In response to Hamilton’s article, I disagree with even the hint that we should be considering other things than a change to how I-5 runs along the East Side. In my mind, it is the single biggest infrastructure problem in the central city.

The article also quotes Peter Stark, president of the Central Eastside Industrial Council. I interviewed Stark a few years ago for an article a few years ago, and was surprised to find he wasn’t in favor of removing or changing the massive elevated freeway along the river.

It wasn’t that he loved the mammoth structure and how it hinders the city’s ties to the river. But Stark felt the East Bank freeway was oddly a beneficial protecting force for the Central Eastside, because it essentially prevented developers from turning the industrial enclave into another Pearl District. Stark believed that the Pearl developed way too fast, and he preferred that the Central Eastside be allowed to transform naturally over several decades.

I agree with Stark that development in the Pearl has perhaps happened a bit too rapidly, and it’s not necessarily in the city’s best interest for the Central Eastside to go through that kind of metamorphosis. But I think it’s unfair to use what is clearly an eyesore and a hindrance to good urban development along such valuable riverfront real estate. Under that kind of thinking, the East Bank freeway is essentially holding the Central Eastside for ransom from the rest of the city.

In other words, I can’t stress this strongly enough: the Marquam Bridge and the east side route of Interstate 5 absolutely, positively, unequivocally have to be changed. They are a relic of misguided midcentury, Robert Moses-style planning, which Portland rejected more than a generation ago.

Maybe we don’t currently have the resources and wherewithal to transform the east side with a tunnel or some other more urbanistically healthy route for the freeway. But we’ve got to at least keep studying, keep searching, for a solution. The moment we give up on the idea of fixing the freeway is the moment Portland stops being Portland.

New York Times Weighs In on the Pearl District and Portland Schools

The National section of today's New York Times includes an article (registration with the Times site is required but free to access) by former Seattle bureau chief Tim Egan called "Vibrant Cities Find One Thing Missing: Children". The story is largely set in the Pearl District, where there apparently are few children rubbing elbows with the empty-nesters. The story also delves into the issue of declining enrollment and budget problems with local schools.

This is a great article by Egan and well worth the read, but I have to say: What's so terrible about a neighborhood without children? Most thriving residential areas of the city, be it Laurelhurst or Ladd's Addition or Sellwood, have more than a few Big Wheels amid the Priuses and Outbacks. And that's great. But as someone childless (and quite deliberately so I might add), while I have nothing against children per se, I resent the idea that children are necessarily a must-have component of a residential area. Families are not the be-all, end-all of our society, you know.

We often make fun of the Pearl as "Alimony Alley" for older couples as well as increasily a sort of grown-up dormitory for younger singles. I think there's nothing wrong with that. It's how the Pearl has developed, and I'm sure those demographics will change over time. Until then, I see nothing wrong with a little less screaming and crying in the Pearl's restaurants and shops.

New Columbia, Old Problem

In the Metro section of today's Oregonian, Stephen Beaven (a guy who apparently had sadistic parents considering his funny rhyming name) reports on the New Columbia housing development, which will see its first tenants move in on May 9. New Columbia replaces Columbia Villa, housing built during WWII for shipyard workers that eventually became public housing.

The $153 million project is impressive in some respects. By including a mix of low-income rental housing and affordable for-sale residences, as well as what appears to be a new urbanist emphasis on sidewalks, street activity, front porches and good connections to the surrounding area, this is good place-making. New Columbia is also expected to be racially diverse as well as economically, something that doesn't happen often enough in the self-segregating United States.

But take a look at the photo of New Columbia by Bruce Ely in today's paper. Although I've seen worse than the solidly neo-traditional style of these houses, the phrase "cookie cutter" inevitably springs to mind.

Would it have killed them to use a variety of colors, and maybe even a variety of designers? Less than 10% of single-family homes in America are designed by actual architects, so it's somewhat pie-in-the-sky for me to advocate all that much in the design of these homes. But I just hate to see such uniformity in new residential neighborhoods. It makes me feel trapped in some kind of oppressively saccharine suburban hell.

Diamond In the Rough Series #2

Continuing our series about noteworthy architecture in need of TLC is the Ancient Order of United Workmen Temple, built in 1892 and designed by local architect Justus Krumbein.

According to Architects of Oregon, a biographical dictionary of Oregon architects working in the 19th and 20th Centuries by the late Richard Ritz, Krumbein was born and raised in Hamburg before emigrating to the United States in 1869. In addition to the United Workmen Temple, he also was a co-designer of the original state capitol building in Salem, Pioneer Hall at Linfield College, St. Vincent Hospital, the interiors for the New Market Theater, and a building for the Lewis & Clark Exposition.

Beyond the local significance of Krumbein, the United Workmen Temple (which is also sometimes known as the Tourny Apartments) is an ideally situated building for rehabilitation. Granted the office market has been very slow these last few years, and surely a 113-year-old building surely needs some work. But it’s very striking, with its Ionic columns on the upper floors and stately brick façade. Plus it’s ideally situated downtown at Southwest Second Avenue and Taylor Street.

Surely there’s some developer out there looking for a nice old building, or a company that wants a distinctive new home. If an giant cold storage warehouse can become the celebrated Wieden + Kennedy building, surely the Ancient Order of United Workmen Temple can find a new owner ready to take on restoration so as to gain a such a bold piece of local architecture.

The best historic preservation efforts get started long before a building is threatened with demolition. No one has yet reserved a wrecking ball for this building, but let’s not give them the opportunity.

A Failing Grade and a Wakeup Call

The American Society of Civil Engineers has issued its bi-annual report card for the nation’s infrastructure. The overall grade is a “D”. The ASCE says an investment of $1.6 trillion over the next five years is necessary to repair the nation’s highways, bridges, sewers, schools, drinking water, dams, parks, rails, and so on.

Here in Oregon specifically, the ASCE offers some troubling statistics:

ROADS: 51% of Oregon's major urban roads are congested….38% of Oregon's major roads are in poor or mediocre condition….Vehicle travel on Oregon's highways increased 31% from 1990 to 2003, while Oregon's population grew 25%….Driving on roads in need of repair costs Oregon motorists $684 million a year in extra vehicle repairs and operating costs ($264 per motorist)…. Congestion in the Portland area costs commuters $733 per person per year in excess fuel and lost time (compared to $162 in Eugene and $258 in Salem).

BRIDGES: 25% of Oregon's bridges are structurally deficient or functionally obsolete.

SCHOOLS: 63% of Oregon's schools have at least one inadequate building feature….84% of Oregon's schools have at least one unsatisfactory environmental condition.

DRINKING WATER: Oregon's drinking water infrastructure needs $2.7 billion over the next 20 years.

And of course these infrastructure needs come in a time when Oregon’s budget is already insufficient for meeting current needs. Schools are closing, planners are threatened with layoff, the Willamette is polluted, and on and on and on.

Admittedly this is a politically biased opinion others are free to take issue with, but I wonder when we’re going to come to terms with the fact that we just simply have to raise taxes. Sure, a few hundred more video poker machines would help. Maybe we could lay off some police officers or teachers to tighten the belt. But enough is enough. How many bridges have to fail, how many kids have to see their neighborhood school shuttered, and how green does the river have to get before we suck it up and pay the bill?

In Praise of an Empty Square

Last Friday I bought lunch to go at a downtown food cart and headed for Pioneer Courthouse Square. Instead of the pleasant open space I expected, there was a view of a massive tent. The Shamrock Ale Festival was in high gear, presumably to commemorate St. Patrick’s Day.

Am I the only one who feels disappointment when places like Pioneer Courthouse Square and Waterfront Park are occupied with events and activities? I love these places best when they are left to the public, not when some pre-programmed event usurps the space. I think too often the people who are in charge of these spaces assume that if the place is relatively empty, then somehow it is not living up to its full potential. But I say it’s whenever a wire fence is erected and admission charged, that’s when these open spaces have been taken from us.

I can’t argue with many of the rallies and holiday celebrations that take place in Pioneer Courthouse Square and in other open spaces around town. After all, I've attended a rally or two there, and I have a few nice books picked up at the annual Powell's sale at the Square as well. But I also reject the notion that the success of these places should be defined by the events held there and the amount of people they draw. There is nothing inherently wrong with an empty Courthouse Square or Waterfront Park. In fact, it’s more natural.

That’s what bothered me so much when an ice rink was being considered for the Square. The business community arguing for the rink implied that the role of PCS was to draw people into the central city so they’d patronize surrounding businesses. If people shop downtown instead of the suburbs, that’s great. But it’s not the responsibility of our open spaces to support commerce. That’s merely a bonus.

Instead, the primary role of open spaces is to be whatever the hell we want them to be. If some nutcase wants to preach bible verses at the top of his lungs, that’s okay. If workers from nearby offices want to eat their lunch quietly, that’s even better. When the cargo trucks arrive and the oversized banners start going up, that’s my cue to leave.

A Cran-Do Attitude

Last Sunday an article in The Oregonian by Randy Gragg assessed the successes and failures with regional town centers throughout the greater Portland area that are a cornerstone of Metro's 2040 plan: the success being Metro's planning, the failure arguably being implementation.

Randy extensively quotes longtime Portland architect/planner George Crandall, FAIA, principal with Crandall Arambula, whose experience gives him a great amount of credibility in analyzing Metro's efforts. And that's what I want to focus on here.

As their website says, Crandall and his firm (which includes partner Don Arambula) "integrate urban design, planning, architecture, and economics to create redevelopment strategies for cities." Their success stories include work in several American cities that are much better for the firm's involvement, from Tennessee to Wisconsin and of course Portland. Crandall oversaw the second Central City Plan in 1988 and was a longtime chair of the influential Urban Design Committee at AIA/Portland.

I wrote about and interviewed Crandall and Arambula last year, and came away very impressed. Nobody else in town, or practically the country for that matter, is doing what this firm does.

Crandall Arambula is not a traditional architecture firm, and that’s important. Because they focus only on the planning and investment strategies, clients don’t waste time wondering if their efforts are ever self-serving, cloaking a desire to get building commissions that come out of their planning.

And while some may question their emphasis on government investing in development, which is traditionally left to the private sector, actually private developers are some of their biggest fans.

“Development is an unsure thing,” Crandall told me then. “Why would you want to develop downtown unless you think it’s a worthwhile investment? By doing these revitalizations, it makes for a more sure return on the developer’s investment. It’s all about setting the stage for development to become easier and more effective.”

Indeed, as Randy’s article pointed out, Metro has done a wonderful job of planning Portland’s future from a vantage point that sees all of the region. But what we need to do now to make these town centers effective is to get into micro-management as well as macro. We need to work with private developers to make these higher-density developments around key mass transit stops happen.

Randy’s article was far from the first time George Crandall has been quoted as the wise man of local planning and development. I’d really like to see this guy have a larger and more official role in setting the course for Portland and its environs. I’m not sure what capacity that would be in. But I’d like to see more than quotes in a newspaper and evidence of success in cities far from our own.

Petty Policework and the Art of Jaywalking

The new issue of Willamette Week reports that Portland police have begun handing out $94 jawalking tickets downtown:

"According to Cmdr. Bill Sinnott, the traffic division got a call that a speeding bike messenger nearly took out an elderly woman crossing the street. Officers were told to crack down on pedestrian and bicycle violations, and Officer Doug Gunderson took the message to heart. He wrote 17 jaywalking tickets in the space of a few days."

Jawalking tickets? You have got to be kidding me.

I know the city needs to raise revenue, and that our new mayor is a former Police chief. But the subtle, improvised choreography of pedestrians crossing streets according to the nuances of what traffic allows is part of any healthy functioning city. (If you ask me, the greater problem is those cars who see you're about to jaywalk and come to a stop to wave you past--it ruins the equilibrium.)

We want a city that favors pedestrians and bicyclists. Most of the time they should follow traffic rules. But the relationship between cars, cyclists and people on foot in a dense urban place inevitably gets messy sometimes. That's what a city is. Can you imagine what people in Rome or Hong Kong or Rio would think of jaywalking tickets? It'd be evidence to them that Portland is a backwater burg.

A Victory for Cloepfil's Columbus Circle Museum

The issue of historic preservation and combining old buildings with new additions is in the news again:

Yesterday's online version of Architectural Record reports a victory for Portland firm Allied Works and its founding principal, Brad Cloepfil. Roughly two years ago the firm won via design competition the commission for the Museum of Art and Design, which is a planned rehab of the Huntington Hartford building at 2 Columbus Circle. The original was designed by noted midcentury New York architect Edward Durell Stone in 1959, and has been subject of after-the-fact preservation efforts. But the project has inched a step closer to reality with an important court victory:

"The Appellate Division of New York’s State Supreme court on February 24 upheld the dismissal of a lawsuit brought by preservation groups in 2003 to prevent the transfer of the city-owned structure to the Museum of Arts and Design," Record reports.

Despite its high-profile location at the southwest corner of Central Park, Columbus Circle has long been an architectural disappointment, and Stone's monolith didn't help. Mediocre-at-best new towers there, one the headquarters for AOL-Time Warner and the other a soaring condo that looks like a refuge from the Reagan 80s (no wonder--it was commissioned by Donald Trump), haven't helped. With a little luck, Cloepfil's building will remake Columbus Circle for the better.

Conundrum of the Masonic Temple

In a recent New Yorker magazine profile of Rem Koolhaas, the star architect speaks very disparagingly about what he calls “the nauseating contemporary impulse to impose spectacular glass additions on spaces that already have their own aura”, such as IM Pei’s glass pyramid outside the Louvre and Norman Foster’s glass-tiled canopy for a new courtyard at the British Museum.

This argument immediately challenged my feelings about the Portland Art Museum’s renovation of the Masonic Temple next door to Pietro Belluschi’s original facility. The design is courtesy of Ann Beha Architects, a very good Boston firm. It includes some contemporary glass forms that give new life to the circa-1924 building by local architect Frederick Fritsch.

But despite being historic, I’ve never been a fan of the Masonic Temple. As Bart King writes in An Architectural Guidebook to Portland, the building “looks like an imposing refugee from some bygone era, or actually, eras, in that Roman, Persian and Tuscan influences can be found in it.” In other words, the building is not only a daunting monolith, but it lacks historic/stylistic integrity—it’s a mess.

I actually was disappointed with Beha’s design because I didn’t think it went far enough in articulating a new identity on behalf of the Portland Art Museum. I personally love Pei’s pyramid and Foster’s canopy. I love the idea of new architecture growing out of an old host, like a new sapling emerging from a felled tree.

Besides, there is a big difference between the Masonic Temple and the aforementioned Louvre and British Museum—a difference of quality. It’s not a bad thing in theory to err on the conservative side when it comes to historic preservation. But what about when the historic building you’re preserving wasn’t so great in the first place?

Still, as Koolhaas would point out, the Masonic Temple is what it is. If you’re going to keep the building, maybe it’s better to just let it be—at least from the vantage point of the exterior (watching demolition/construction happening currently, it appears the interior is totally gutted). So which is better: total demolition paired with an entirely new building, preservation of the original with minimal alteration, or a hybrid? You tell me.

28 Days Later

Today marks the one-month anniversary of Portland Architecture. It’s not exactly the Diamond Jubilee just yet, but nevertheless we’d like to thank the nearly thirty-five hundred people over twenty-eight days (February was involved) who have logged on.

This website is still gaining form, and your input is unconditionally welcome as we determine the kinds of conversations to be had here.

Admittedly we play certain favorites: urban over suburban, modern over postmodern, historic preservation over faux historicism, mass transit over autos. We also believe unequivocally in growth boundaries and sustainability. But there are no sacred cows here (especially since we love cheeseburgers), and the aim of this website is to foster healthy, civilized debate.

Meanwhile, keep supporting not just Portland Architecture, but Portland architecture. And thanks again for reading.

Housing For the Creative Class

Last Friday’s Oregonian featured an op-ed by former Regional Arts & Culture Council director Bill Bulick about that suddenly omnipresent conversational topic: the creative class. But Bulick offered a fresh perspective by arguing for architecture.

“Portland needs more -- and more affordable -- spaces for creativity to flourish as a vital resource for our economy and livability,” Bulick writes. “The city should become a pro-active partner with private developers, the philanthropic community and the nonprofit cultural sector to develop live/work spaces, studios and cultural facilities while property values and available building stock still permit it.”

Bulick is right. We do need affordable housing for young artists and designers. But not just any housing will do. Take the live-work spaces proposed by Beam Development for the Burnside Bridgehead. Although some of the architectue looks impressive, virtually none of the so-called creative class people I know—young artists, designers, etc.—would want to live in a new apartment tower or, for that matter, in a building designated specifically for them. Instead, they prefer the grittier, more poignantly decaying industrial and residential spaces that appear forgotten by the powers that be, somewhere more off the beaten path, like Alberta and North Mississippi used to be. And they don't just prefer the less pristine enclaves, but speficially the kinds of architecture you'll find there.

While on tour in Portland a few years ago to promote her book “Weird Like Us: My Bohemian America”, veteran New York Times rock critic Ann Powers described our city as conducive to artists and other creative types because of the abundance of large Victorian homes that are shared by groups of roommates. That’s the preferred environment for many creative class types, at least the ones who don’t work at Nike or some other high-paying job.

For the past few weeks one such house, a huge dilapidated old house, across the street from where I live in Southeast Portland, has been undergoing the kind of transformation that I think does speak to the danger Bulick describes. For years it was home to an ever-changing roster of young twenty-somethings who liked to play music together, have parties, and so on. Now these tenants have been kicked out so the owner can remodel the house to spotless condition and attract a high sale or lease price.

It’s not to say that a public-private partnership in Portland can’t produce housing that creative class people would want to live in. But if the old houses that long have provided communal living to the young hippies and punks that go on to run arts organizations or design $150 sneakers are taken away, we do indeed have a tough predicament on our hands.

With the creative class, just as with any other demographic, you have to think of their architectural needs from an experiential perspective. Sociologically the late teens and twenties are about communal living and interaction. The architecture must respond to that. New live-work spaces help foster community, but they also lack the kind of hallowed decay of an old Victorian, something that appeals to many of us.

Consider ReTHINK

This week Portland's Office of Sustainable Development continues its "ReTHINK" series, bringing a mix of practical professional expertise and theoretical food for thought on sustainability.

This Thursday brings a residential-oriented talk called "Reducing Energy Use and Global Warming: Tools to Take Action", with members of the Oregon Energy Trust, NW Energy Star Homes, and the aforementioned OSD.

Commercial building is the focus on Friday with "Marketing Green Building Benefits to Client & Consumer: Canby Middle School". One speaker is Heinz Rudolf of BOORA Architects, who has designed numerous schools in the area that are impressively sustainable but at price tags equal to traditional construction. [Pardon the shameless self promotion, but I wrote about Heinz in a March 2003 Metropolis magazine article you can access here.] The other speaker is Jerry Yudelson of Interface Engineering, who has long spearheaded natural ventilation and other sound green principles.

These lectures unfortunately cost $40-45 to attend, and it would have been nice if OSD could have found enough sponsorship in the industry to make them free. But hey, it does come with complimentary pizza and salad.

Robert Moses and Portland Freeways

An article in Wednesday's 30th anniversary edition of Willamette Week by Bob Young looks back on a key moment in Portland's history: the successful fight to stop construction of the Mount Hood Freeway.

The article reminds us that in 1943, Portland invited Robert Moses, "the fearsome architect of modern New York City, who built the bridges and expressways that moved millions of people and megatons of freight around the nation's largest metropolis", to produce a plan for Portland.

Moses's plan called not only for the Mount Hood Freeway, along Southeast Division Street and Powell Boulevard, but several other freeways as well: the Saint Helens Freeway heading northwest, the Prescott Freeway to the northeast, the 52nd Avenue Freeway running north-south, the Multnomah Expressway heading southwest, the McLoughlin Freeway along the boulevard of the same name, the 20th Avenue Expressway on the east side, and finally the Sellwood Freeway and Johnson Creek Freeways in the southeast portion of town.

Fortunately, beginning around 1969, the city was able to coalesce its resistance to the Moses plan (for leading us into a desert of blacktop, you might say) around the efforts of emerging leaders like Neil Goldschmidt. And today Portland has long since committed itself to being a different kind of city, one that favors strong neighborhoods, increased density and mass transit.

As we look back on the anti-freeway campaign, I think it calls to mind a new battle being waged today over the effects of Measure 37. With Goldschmidt all but exiled and his generation beginning to age, who are the new leaders who will fight the threat of catastrophic sprawl that the new law brings? Who will keep Measure 37 from unraveling all the good work of a previous era to define greater Portland and Oregon as a livable environment?

Young writes that the Mount Hood Freeway battle "signaled that citizens could stand up to seemingly inevitable social forces if they simply decided to do something about them." This time around it's a little more complicated in that it is citizens themselves who created the Measure 37 disaster by voting in favor of the ballot measure. But we in the architecture/building/planning community have to assume they are the equivalent of those who viewed Moses's plan a half-century ago and daydreamed about how easy it would be to navigate Portland on all that new asphalt. We have to fight them for the community we want.

Portland's Pueblos, or: Duin the Right Thing

Yesterday in his Oregonian column Steve Duin described a sweep of homeless encampments underneath McLoughlin Boulevard, just south of the Ross Island Bridge. As Duin points out, they may have been illegal, they may have been a haven for drug abuse, and they may have been pretty damn unsanitary. But they were still in effect genuine architecture.

“The McLoughlin Caves,” Duin writes, “don’t evoke shantytowns like Dignity Village so much as the Pueblo cliff dwellings of Colorado and New Mexico. Hundreds of the homeless may have been camped beneath a 500-yard stretch of the highway when ODOT workers, armed with a police escort, dutifully posted eviction notices several weeks out.”

“Many painstakingly carved living quarters out of the embankment, several big enough to park a U-haul, others cozier than a sleeping bag. They erected shopping-cart barricades, tarp roofs and—oblivious to the tinderbox quality of the hillside vines below—open-air barbecue pits.”

I’m certainly not taking issue with ODOT for doing its job to keep the roadways safe by clearing out illegal encampments. But still, I think it is at least cause for a moment’s pause to consider that these already destitute people had their homes destroyed.

Some of the McLoughlin Caves denizens could find legal shelter with the help of various charities. Others are too stubbornly independent or mentally ill or drug-dependent to take the helping hand that’s offered them. But that’s not the point.

Instead, I commend Duin for humanizing, however briefly, the struggle of the impoverished to create a place to call their own. And without a hint of patronization, let's not forget that one person's upturned shopping cart or hastily strewn tarp is indeed another person's home.

A Desire Named Streetcar

Cross your fingers: Oregon may be getting more money for transit projects. Yesterday the US House passed a highway and transit bill that would steer $2.6 billion to Oregon through federal gas-tax receipts.

At this point it’s very much up in the air as to whether this bill will ultimately become a law. Last year, the president threatened to veto a similar bill for some $318 billion. But this version comes up at $284 billion, so hopefully the price tag will be palatable to the prez even though it’s not going to warmongering.

In the humble view of Portland Architecture, what’s most promising about the transportation dollars isn’t the highway improvements on Interstate 5 and elsewhere that would be paid for (although it would be nice if that bottleneck around the Esplanade and Rose quarter were eased somehow), but a new streetcar line along East Burnside.

Obviously the streetcar has been a great success in its initial line between PSU and Northwest 23rd. Now the streetcar is extending to Riverplace and, soon, South Waterfront. That’s great as a development tool, especially in the latter neighborhood, of course. But what will be really exciting is when the streetcar hits the East Side.

Apparently Burnside will be the first to get a streetcar line, but hopefully we will someday see additional lines along such major arterials as Hawthorne Boulevard, Fremont Street, Portland Boulevard, Powell Boulevard, 39th Avenue, Martin Luther King Boulevard, and 12th Avenue. If you take a walk in the Central Eastside, you can still see all the streetcar lines of a previous Portland century. They had it right the first time.

If you’ve got an extra moment or two, consider emailing or phoning your congressman or senator and tell him to get behind this transportation bill. Unless, of course, you want Portland to become less like London or Amsterdam and more like Houston or Atlanta.

The Rose Plaques

This morning I was talking with a longtime Willamette Week colleague, Steffen Silvis, about the blue plaques festooned to many London buildings to indicate famous artists, leaders and other historic figures of note who had lived and/or worked in them: Charles Dickens, Virginia Wolf, Sherlock Holmes, Winston Churchill, and so on. Steffen said he’s long advocated a similar system for Portland, and has coined the term “Rose Plaques” as the potential moniker/symbol.

Obviously Portland does not have anywhere near the history or roster of famous citizens as London. But there are more people of note who have resided within our borders than one might realize. For example, Steffen told me something I didn’t know, that painter Mark Rothko—unequivocally one of the most significant artists of the 20th Century—was raised here and had his first one-man exhibition at the Portland Art Museum in 1933. Why not put a Rose Plaque on the house or apartment building in Portland where Rothko lived?

As many Portlanders know, the legendary food writer and gourmand James Beard also hails from the Rose City. Pietro Belluschi, the patron saint of Portland architecture, emigrated here from Italy and did most of his best work in town—New York’s Pan Am Building and Julliard School not withstanding. The Marxists portrayed in Warren Beatty’s film Reds, Jack Reed and Louise Bryant, also called Portland home..

Then there are more modern examples like director Gus Van Sant and Matt Groenig. Why not a plaque commemorating a site or two where one if Van Sant’s early masterworks like My Own Private Idaho or Drugstore Cowboy was shot? Or the Simpsons creator’s boyhood home?

Steffen says he’s forwarded the Rose Plaques idea to people at City Hall and the Oregon Historical Society before with no action taken. I’ve read that there is indeed a plaque honoring Reed in Washington Park, but I’d like to see a unified series of plaques that honor several people and that everyone knows about. This should be a fun thing that residents and tourists alike seek out.

Don Stastny and Design Competitions

An article in yesterday’s online version of Architectural Record magazine reported that Thom Mayne and his firm Morphosis have been selected via a design competition to design a new state capitol building for the state of Alaska. The man who managed the competition was Portland architect Don Stastny of StastnyBrun.

This is just the latest of many prestigious design competitions that Stastny, an AIA Fellow, has organized. Past competitions include the memorial to passengers of Flight 93 (which crashed over Pennsylvania on September 11), Walt Disney Concert Hall, the US embassy in Berlin, the Oklahoma City bombing memorial, Pioneer Courthouse Square, and approximately fifty more.

Last year I interviewed Stastny and was surprised to hear that he has some reservations about design competitions outside of big public projects because they can be “…a way of getting a lot of free work from the profession.” But he also says in Portland competitions could be a good way for exploring new and different ideas. The problem, Stastny told me, is “to do a good competition you also have to spend money. Portland tends not to want to do that.”

Even considering their drawbacks, I still would like to see more competitions happen here. It was a good sign when an international design competition was held in Portland for the aerial tram between OHSU and the South Waterfront. But it needn’t just be done with big public projects. Why not for, say, housing? Or some more modest government buildings?

As long as the competing architects are properly compensated, competitions can be an ideal way to make sure commissions are handed out not on experience (the value of which is over-emphasized when a firm has experience designing mediocre buildings), but on product. It’s also a way to level the playing field between larger and smaller firms, locals and out-of-towners.

So many of us in the local architecture community want to see things shaken up a bit more, and this is one way to do it. Just ask Don.

Diamond In the Rough Series #1

Consider this the beginning of a new series on the Portland Architecture website: occasional profiles of interesting, compelling buildings that are in need of some TLC.

The inaugural building in this series faces two street fronts, 10th and 11th Avenues, between Stark and Washington Streets. Its facade consists of a series of color panels, which if I remember correctly are made of wood. (I love seeing a little color to Portland buildings, and the city needs much more of it.) The back of the building's second floor extends over street-level parking, while the front side is a storefront on 10th.

As long as I can remember this building has been empty. I'm sure the building is in some state of disrepair, and perhaps that is why it has under-utilized for so long. But it's got a superb location. It's technically downtown, within just a few blocks of Pioneer Courthouse Square. But the building is also two blocks or less from Powell's and the Brewery Blocks. Its back side also sits directly across from the striking and newly renovated Telegram Building.

We're quickly entering an age where Modernism can also be classified as historic and in need of preservation. This isn't the kind of building some of the big boys like Gerding/Edlen or Williams & Dame would seek out, but to one of the historic preservation-minded developers (perhaps Art Demuro, the Telegram's savior), this building is just crying out for a makeover. Considering its wonderfully unique facade and ideal location, I can't help but think some hip company would love to set up shop here if the building was once again in decent shape.

So listen up, all you investors looking to make a buck -- seek out a contractor and architect to make this diamond in the rough shine anew.

Cloepfil Speaks

Tonight architect Brad Cloepfil of Allied Works, Portland's budding star on the international scene, will speak at the Pacific Northwest College of Art. His lecture is called "Creating a Space for Objects: New Apporaches to Museum Design".

Anybody who follows Portland architecture knows Brad has received numerous high-profile commissions in recent years: the Forum for Contemporary Art in St. Louis, the Museum of Art and Design on New York's Columbus Circle (which is still facing a fight with preservationists for daring to alter Edward Durell Stone's original building, a silly looking yet imposing monolith), the Seattle Art Museum, and the University of Michigan art museum. And of course there's the Weiden + Kennedy building here in Portland as well as one of my personal favorites locally, the pristine 2281 Glisan building.

Another commission worth noting is that Allied Works has been hired to produce a new master plan for PNCA. I'm not sure how much expansion there is ahead for the school, and I don't think they know yet either. But I love the idea of PNCA having a greater architectural presence in the Pearl District. And since Portland's for-profit developers and biggest medical center so far have inexplicably shied away from hiring our local boy made good, I'm glad to see at least one client making excellent architectural choices--first the exceptionally talented Holst Architecture several years ago for PNCA's headquarters, and now Brad.

A Tokyo-Portland Design Axis?

This Friday brings a lecture at the Pacific Northwest College of Art highlighting the possibilities of increasing collaboration and cross-pollination between designers in Tokyo, Japan and our very own Rose City. Lecturer Teruo Kurosaki, Founder and Chairman of Idée’ in Japan, "is a major force in design, retail, and the creation of contemporary lifestyle in Tokyo", says PNCA. Krusaki will be joined by John C. Jay of Weiden + Kennedy, who has spent the last six years establishing the agency's Japan and China offices.

I think it's wishful thinking to assume Portland looms as large on Tokyo designers' radar as New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles, and so on. But that said, I like the idea of both cities as increasingly interdependent trading partners, trading not just goods and services, but ideas.

And architecturally, it would certainly be a boon to Portland if our collective design sensibility increasingly took on the poetically simple manner of the best Japanese buildings.

A History of Burnside Skatepark

Now viewable online is an entertaining and informative documentary first broadcast on OPB called Full Tilt Boogie, which chronicles the creation of the Burnside Skatepark. This is a wonderful story of urban rebirth, of young visionaries, and succeeding in spite of the city and citizenry. For as long as people have been riding skateboards, they've been harrassed, whined about and refused places to compete. But thanks to the efforts of people like Chuck Willis, Mark "Red" Scott, Sage Bolyard, Bret Taylor, and Osage Buffulo, the Burnside Skatepark is now one of the most popular venues in the world for competitive skateboarding. This summer the World Cup of skateboarding will even be held there, with NBC Sports reportedly planning to film the action.

And you thought it was just a bunch of troublemaking hooligans down there.

Props for Doug Fir

Congratulations to Doug Fir restaurant, which is profiled this month in Metropolis magazine in an article by Karen Steen (a former Portlander and Willamette Week editor).

Steen writes that "...what is most unexpected about the Doug Fir Lounge, which opened in October, is not its humble beginnings. It's the obvious pleasure [architect Jeff] Kovel has taken in exploring two divergent idioms: diner modern and timbered lodge...Doug Fir's juxtapositions of high and low, sleek and rough-hewn, are both comical and lovely."

I wonder if any Portland architects, restaurateurs or entrepreneurs have taken note of Doug Fir's success -- a business triumph through smart, witty design and a love of materials. Terrific as it is, Doug Fir can be more than just a wonderfully designed establishment. It ought to be the beginning of a trend.

Hoyt Street Ahoy

Walking through that portion of the Pearl District that was once the 34-acre Burlington Northern rail yard, it's astonishing the amount of building that has transpired. Coming off the Broadway Bridge one now descends into a small canyon of high-density housing atop mixed-use buildings in a neighborhood that continues to mature quickly.

What's easy to forget, though, is that developer Hoyt Street Properties is only about halfway through development of this massive parcel. Although architecturally this series of buildings has had its ups and downs, I'm cautiously optomistic about the future here.

One reason is that the head of Hoyt Street, Tiffany Sweitzer, has increasingly invited an array of experts and concerned citizens to join in the process of creating a vision for the remaining land. On February 3 and 4, for example, her company held a two-day brainstorming session with city planners to discuss the next phase for Hoyt Street Yards development. Beyond what may or may not have come out of that process, it's a great gesture. For-profit developers don't have have to do this kind of thing.

Another reason I'm optimistic is that the faux-industrial look that early Pearl residences clung too seems to be giving way to a more contemporary look. Park Place, a $23 million residential structure by Seattle firm Mithun overlooking Jamison Square, is a handsome building, and so is Robert Leeb's Streetcar Lofts. I really hope Tiffany Sweitzer and her team will increasingly seek out new, talented firms to design the remaining rail yard parcels.

When talking about residential properties, one has to acknowledge that developing them is a business. You can't be concerned solely with the sculptural quality of the buildings; you've got to focus largely on maximizing units and remembering the lessons you've learned about what made past ones profitable. But it's also clear that good design sells.

So I say what Hoyt Street needs is to embrace new and talented designers even more, whether they're from Portland or beyond. If a firm being considered has the talent but not the experience, pair them up with an experienced local service firm that's done a bunch of these--just don't succumb to the easy option of letting them always come up with the design as well.

Contemplating a New Bridge

Today's Oregonian reports on early planning by a bi-state team for a possible new bridge over the Columbia River, to replace the Interstate Bridge. If all were to go well with federal financing, permits, et cetera, construction could begin in 10 years.

Ironically, I also read over the weekend about a controversy surrounding reconstruction of a portion of the historic Bay Bridge between Oakland and San Francisco. Apparently massive cost overruns are threatening to halt a striking new suspension-style portion of the bridge's east end in favor of flat, very plain, cheaper skyway-style connection.

Let me be the first to say that I hope if a new span over the Columbia is instructed, it ought to be something inspiring, something striking -- even if it costs a lot more. One need only look to Interstate 205's Columbia crossing to see that while efficient traffic movement over the river is of course vitally important, having a plain old skyway is a copout. Crossing that span, I look out the window at Mt. Hood and Mt. St. Helens, maybe a couple others on a clear day, and think, nature did its part to give this place some majesty--can't we try too?

Would a suspension bridge or some other Calatrava-esque feat of engineering cost a lot more? Of course. Would it be worth it? Definitely. Maybe great engineering and architecture isn't quantifiable in cold hard dollars. But if that's the only way we're capable of measuring value, that is pretty sad.

The Columbia River is brimming with history, and not just that made by Lewis & Clark. Thinking a little more than a decade down the road, I look forward to a bridge that symbolizes all that this waterway means to Oregonians, Washingtonians, and the world.

PDC's Ch-Ch-Changes

So Don Maziotti has fallen on his sword and will leave the Portland Development Commission in June. And after a less-than-flattering City Club report on the agency recently as well as a desire on the part of Mayor Potter to make PDC more open, more big changes are obviously on the horizon.

Because the agency has been subject to a lot of negative publicity lately, I'm not going to join in. With any city bureaucracy there are successes and failures along the way. Let's not forget that the city is much better for PDC's efforts, be it in Lents, Interstate, downtown, South Waterfront, Gateway, or any number of other places. And despite the clamoring about how PDC focuses on big developments too much, I say the little guy has been served well by agency efforts like the Storefront Improvement Program.

And while I'm not one to advocate back-room deal making, as the agency has been accused of, I'm also a little suspicious sometimes when there's a big clamor to "let the people decide" everything, to paraphrase the mayor's oft-repeated populist mantra. Too often the squeaky wheel gets the oil, and while sometimes that's good (as with the big-box furor over Burnside Bridgehead), other times it leads to skewed priorities.

Rather than openness, what I choose to focus on when considering the future of PDC is an increased emphasis on good design. It's not to say the agency has turned a blind eye to architecture in the past--far from it. But rather than solely opening the gates to welcome every last Portlander's whim about what should be a development priority in the city, I hope PDC will give particular consideration to the experts who understand what makes for a desirable urban fabric: not only business leaders and citizen groups, but especially planners and architects.

Is that a biased, self-serving opinion? You bet. But hey, the website is called Portland Architecture.

PNCA: What A Coat of Paint Can Do

If you haven't been to the Pacific Northwest College of Art in the Pearl District since it unveiled its new exterior paint job, do your self a favor and head for NW 12th and Johnson right away.

This is no mere coat of paint. Resembling a Piet Mondrian painting, it consists of a series of grey and yellow rectangles in a seemingly abstract pattern. But actually the arrangement was calculated in a very precise manner. The basis is a code that translated letters of the alphabet into differently sized and colored rectangles. That code was then applied to a Rimbaud poem that is expressed on all four sides of the building in paint.

The mastermind is architect Randy Higgins, who now is a sole practitioner under the business name Environmental Design Office, but was part of the original design team at Holst Architecture that transformed a nondescript Pearl warehouse into the fabulous integration of industrial and modern architecture that PNCA's home remains today. The college hired Randy to work with an in-house committee to come up with a paint job that better reflected PNCA's spirit of artistic creativity through rigorous process.

Although it was a collaborative effort, the project seems to be largely Randy's brainchild. And I use that word very deliberately, because in my opinion Randy has a very big brain. As part of an interview we did yesterday for an article I'm writing about the project, he used expressions like "Gestault-based language" and "intellectual audit" as effortlessly as a guy on the street might say "eat my shorts". And yet Randy's also not pretentious--he's a fun dude to share a beer with too.

I find it fascinating that a mere paint job on an old warehouse has, at least in my mind, become arguably the boldest architectural gesture in the entire Pearl District. If only more architectural projects would be approached with this level of research, intellectualism, challenge and, ultimately, fun.

Planning For Change

City Councilor Randy Leonard has recently suggested some changes in Portland’s planning. In the future, the city could put all city planners, who now work in different bureaus, in the Bureau of Planning. Leonard also proposes putting all permitting staff under the Bureau of Development Services.

A recent Portland Tribune column by Promise King goes further: “I have said before that the Bureau of Housing and Community Development should be integrated with the Office of Neighborhood Involvement. Only in Portland do you have this kind of duplication. These bureaus share significant housing functions. We should take a clue from the city of Seattle.”

“You also don’t need a centralized planning bureau,” King continues. “Most bureaus already have planners. For instance, the bureaus of Transportation, Parks, Water and Environmental Services do their own planning.”

I’d like to know what people in the trenches have to say about this: planners, architects, builders, and their member organizations. Are ideas like the ones Leonard and King float good ones? Or are they oversimplifying things without understanding the nuances of what it takes to plan this city?

Quite honestly, I don’t yet know enough to say. I’m suspicious sometimes of outsiders in elected office or the press who think they know better than the people actually doing the work in question. But it’s also a good idea to at least have these conversations. Whether these ideas are ultimately accepted or rejected, in either case we’ll be better for the dialogue.

A Rare Argument for Historic Landmark Demolition

An article in the Metro section of today’s Oregonian detailed a designated historic landmark downtown that might possibly be demolished in the months ahead. And while usually that’s reason to sound the alarm, it may not be such a bad idea in this case.

The Kress Annex occupies one-eighth of the block on the corner of SW Fourth and Morrison. As the article explains, “The origins of the two-story building…are unclear. It was connected to the five-story SH Kress Building in a 1953 remodel. The larger Kress building dates to 1928.” Both structures were designated national historic landmarks in 1996. But since that time, a closer look at the Kress Annex’s “…suggests that its innards are less historic than earlier thought.”

It’s ironic that of late the city has been working to toughen historic preservation laws, yet this may be an example of a case where it would be better to tear the building down. The Kress Annex was until recently the longtime home of Nordstrom Rack, and its main retail space is underground. It’s an uninviting space devoid of natural light and without a street-level presence. I think a retailer would be crazy to rent or buy the place.

Currently the Kress Annex is two stories, but it is zoned to allow 15 stories. At only one-eighth of a block, a building that rose to the maximum height would be a slender one. In the right designer’s hands that could be a recipe for a real architectural gem. And given its location—across the street from Pioneer Place and a MAX stop, two blocks from Pioneer Courthouse Square, and at the intersection of two very bustling downtown streets with heavy pedestrian, auto and light rail traffic—the prospect of new building here ought to have developers licking their chops.

So while it’s exceedingly rare that I’d say this about a historic building, bring in the wrecking ball!

Clackamas Town Center's Expansion: Return For A Refund

Recently Clackamas Town Center announced a major expansion that will add some 200,000 square feet and give the mall a facelift to become more of a “lifestyle center”. That’s the hot new trend in shopping mall design, to make malls more like public streetscapes with open-air storefronts and public spaces.

I’m all for making a mall more pedestrian friendly and more urban in its feel. What’s more, Clackamas Town Center will soon be connected to the next MAX light rail line. But the plans announced by the mall’s parent company, General Growth Properties, are still a disappointment.

A couple years ago I wrote an article about an international design competition called “Dead Malls”. Rather than producing an actual building, the purpose was to generate new ideas about the American mall. I remember one of the jurors, Jeffrey Inaba (co-author of The Harvard Design Guide to Shopping with Rem Koolhaas), saying, “Any time there's a plan to just enhance and expand, that's the smell of death.” In other words, if a mall doesn’t take the opportunity to integrate with the surrounding fabric, it’s a major lost opportunity.

Lifestyle centers are at heart are fake urban places. It’s not that the inclination to be pedestrian friendly or incorporate public plazas is wrong—that’s a good thing. But why not include housing? I’m sure there are plenty of suburbanites who would love to live above or directly adjacent to a shopping mall. They could leave their gas-guzzling SUVs at home! While they’re at it, malls ought to reach out to every other kind of possible tenant: religious organizations, government agencies, anything. That’s what is known as a real urban place. You could easily incorporate all of it in the land space Clackamas Town Center already has by getting rid of that endless sea of surface parking and build a garage.

Too bad this eyesore at the intersection of I-205 and Sunnyside road is simply taking the predictable, unimaginative route.

Colab is Fab

It’s a familiar refrain that many Portland firms do their most challenging, ambitious and appealing work outside the city. But that’s especially true with Colab. Their only projects in Portland are Tube, a small bar in Old Town (albeit an incredible looking one), and the Brandon House, a modernist gem just off North Mississippi Avenue overlooking I-5.

Go outside Portland, however, and you’ll find a very impressive resume. Colab has built for Nike at the Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City. They’ve designed the multimedia façade for ABC’s “Good Morning America” studio. They’ve done the futuristic entry to a space pavilion at Epcot Center. And then there is Colab’s work in Dubai.

Although it’s not their only work in this affluent United Arab Emirates city, the DMCC Tower is a marvel. Set for completion early next year, the building is a 37-story office space that resembles a series of blocks stacked on top of each other. As Colab’s website explains, “The envelope is clad in titanium composite panels with high performance glazing and automated metal mesh sunscreens that track the sun’s path.” To that I eloquently add: Damn!

One of the three proposals vying for the Burnside Bridgehead development contract, that offered by underdog Beam Development, includes a building by Colab. Each proposal has its merit, and its roster of talent. But I sure would love to see a bigger project in town by these guys.

And just on the outside chance one of Portland’s big developers reads this and is still deciding on an architect for his/her next big condominium, consider hiring this firm instead of (no offense) the usual suspects.