Portland Architecture

Tribune Seeks Nominations for Portland's Ugliest Buidlings List

Yesterday a Portland Tribune business reporter named Jeanie Senior contacted me with a tantalizing question: What are the ugliest buildings in Portland? Apparently the paper is putting together such a list, along with a corresponding list of the best local buildings, for an upcoming publication.

Jeanie had already heard from plenty of people who named the Portland Building as ugliest in town. It certainly looks pretty silly with the faux garlands, not to mention it’s very oppressive inside. But I respect Michael Graves’ building for at least aspiring to greatness, even if it failed.

Others cite the Wells Fargo Tower as an eyesore. Indeed, it looks more suited for downtown Los Angeles than Portland: brutal and uninviting. But at least it’s tall; in a city of bulky little stubs its face sits above most all of its neighbors in any skyline view.

Few Portland buildings are outright atrocious. Our greatest offense is mediocrity. Still, we’ve got some rejects out there. And while I am somewhat of a Portland Building apologist, I think overall there’s perhaps no era I dislike more than Eighties postmodernism. Theoretically, embracing historic/classical forms in a playful, colorful way was a great idea. But only a select few of those buildings avoided triteness.

So without further adieu, my choice for the ugliest building in Portland is the circa-1987 One Financial Center, (now called the Bank of America Financial Center). Situated along Naito Parkway, it occupies a front row seat in the Portland skyline. Eighteen stories tall and clad with granite and blue glass, it doesn’t have the silly artifice of the Portland building per se. But it still feels cartoonish, somehow, like a cheap jewel made from cubic zirconium.

One Financial Center’s designer was Zimmer Gunsul Frasca, who I imagine churned out an economical class-A office building for a conservative client in the stylistic flavor of the moment. It’s no better or worse than what goes on every day, then and now. But the building hasn’t aged well. One Financial is somehow too loud to fit in and not compelling enough to occupy the spotlight.

I encouraged Jeanie from the Tribune to cast her crystal ball toward the comments section on this post for your picks. What are the ugliest buildings in Portland? Let the mudslinging begin.

Gateway and the Nation'sTop Young Green Builders

This month’s issue of Dwell magazine features a design competition for a building in Portland’s Gateway neighborhood. The story is about the Emerging Green Builders, a branch of the US Green Building Council for young architects. Last November, the EGB held a competition at the Greenbuild conference, held in Portland. Entrants were assigned a mixed-use project that developer Ted Gilbert would eventually like to build there.

Here’s the “Competition Challenge” as assigned by the USGBC:

“Design a LEED Platinum, mixed use office and residential building, which will serve as the landmark of an entire District, along with an adjacent park and community gathering place. These components will be the heart of Phase 2 of The Elements at Gateway™; a new 13-acre, transit-oriented, urban mixed use redevelopment project in Portland, Oregon. The project is being designed to create a unique District and dedicated to being the most sustainable urban community possible."

"The District has been designated by METRO as: 1) The region’s most accessible location by the year 2017; and 2) Currently Portland’s only designated Regional Center. METRO would like to see a “second downtown” spring from the site, which ultimately could consist of approximately
80 acres."

Granted, the idea was never that the winning design would actually be built. But the winning design is impressive. It’s called the “Re-Orientation” building and features roof gardens, sun shades, porous pavement and other green features within a vibrant exterior palette.

Reading about Re-Orientation, I was curious how closely Gilbert had watched the competition and to what degree he considered the winning design worthy of real consideration.

Speaking by phone, Gilbert took a diplomatic tone. “There is no monopoly on ideas,” he told me. He expressed openness regarding the input of winning young architects Gregory Thomson, Amit Price Patel, and Christine Scott of Boston firm Goody Clancy. Understandably, though, Gilbert also didn’t volunteer to sign these relatively inexperienced emerging green builders up (eligibility requires competitors have less than three years of experience) for what is a promising but still risky plan for the neighborhood.

Gateway is essentially a suburban-type neighborhood for which Gilbert, Metro and the Portland Development Commission (through assignment of an urban renewal area there) envision a more urban future. That won’t come without growing pains, and Gilbert doesn’t yet have the momentum to build at the gangbuster speed of Pearl District developers. So when it comes to the larger type of multi-block project the EGB contestants designed for, Gilbert says it will have to wait.

But I think one way or the other, Gilbert ought to at least indulge Thomson, Patel and Scott with a phone call to talk ideas.

Understandably, developers starting ambitious new efforts often rely on established service-oriented firms to start out (Ankram Moisan is currently his architect). But if Gilbert is dreaming big for Gateway, ultimately he’s going to need big talent and really invigorating ideas to make his vision a reality.

Hillsdale Library

Last week I took a tour of the Hillsdale Library with architect Thomas Hacker as part of an article I'm writing for another publication about the building. Although it's a modest building in terms of size, I came away marvelling at what a gem the library is.

Hacker and his firm have long excelled at creating crisp contemporary architecture that transcends traditional modernism in its incorporation of classical forms and also recalls the Northwest modernism of Pietro Belluschi and John Yeon by using natural materials, particularly wood, to create a sense of warmth.

The Hillsdale library has a masonry base (a "plinth" in archi-speak), with column-like wood forms alternating with glass along two sides. Only the wood columns aren't simply for show. On the inside they hold books. Then there is a glass clerestory between the columns/glass portion with a flat roof that appears to float just above the building.

Inside the space is wide open in what Hacker calls a "garden space", with bookshelves arranged so as to draw attention to the center. The interior is dominated by a series of steel columns that expand into wide circular forms at the ceiling, much like Frank Lloyd Wright's "lilly pad" columns in the legendary Johnson Wax building. It's a very striking space architecturally, but also an inviting one. Natural light pours into the building, but it's a soft, diffuse light ideal for reading.

The library also takes advantage of a sloping site to walk a careful balance with respect to its context. At the lower portion of the hill going towards the Hillsdale commercial area, the building appears appropriately monumental for an important civic structure. But at the upper portion of the hill towards a residential area, the building modestly sits at a similar height to the neighborhood, with the wood columns at the same elevation as the wood single-family homes.

I also love the fact that the Hillsdale Library is ultra sustainable, but doesn't wear its greenness on its sleeve. Commendable as its daylighting, energy efficiency and construction recycling record may be, walking through the space I actually forget anything about it being green. And isn't that the way it should be?

Hillsdale seems to be the last of Thomas Hacker's string of libraries for Multnomah County, and if so, it's a fitting conclusion. Opening within the same year or so as Rem Koolhaas' landmark Seattle Central Library, Hillsdale is a reminder that while Portland may not have the standout diamonds that Seattle does, we certainly have a string of pearls.

Gragg, Hales, Potter and PDC

Randy Gragg's Sunday Oregonian column nicely reiterated something many of us know and feel in our bones: the Portland Development Commission screwed up big-time in not making former city commissioner Charlie Hales a finalist for PDC's top job. And it's not just disappointing - it's utterly dumbfounding.

Somebody employed by the city - either at PDC or perhaps in the mayor's office - clearly at some point singled out Hales, the clear choice to many of us in and out of local government and the media, and said, 'No'. Who were they and what was their motivation?

Reading Randy's interview with Hales, I just thought to myself, "Damn, I miss that guy." And it's not something I say about very many politicians. Hales brings a genuine passion and a very refreshing bluntness. He also has tremendous vision. Sure, he ruffled some feathers during his time on the council. But you can't make an omelet without breaking some eggs, right?

The idea that Hales is spending his time helping other cities create transit systems like Portland is a kind of cruel joke being played on the city. We had a chance to change that and we didn't. I'm not one to bash PDC, especially these days when it's happening a lot. But I can't help but think the decision not to hire Hales is actually worse than what has happened with the likes of Opus, Beam, Hennessee, Clevinger, and the rest.

Belltown vs. Pearl

A column in the summer issue of Arcade, the Northwest design/architecture quarterly, suggests that the Pearl District is a smarter, healthier, better designed neighborhood than Seattle's comparable Belltown district.

Written by Ron van der Veen, a Portland native now working as an architect in Seattle (at Mithun), the column asserts that "Belltown sucks and the Pearl District jams!" (Jams? What decade is this? Does Ron wear checkerboard Vans and ride a skateboard to work?)

"Last week I flew to Portland, took light rail from the airport to downtown, then caught a trolley to the Pearl District, where I stepped off at a beautiful new urban park. My jaw almost dropped off as I walked along an expansive IRONWOOD boardwalk that will eventually extend to the waterfront.

When I got back to Seattle I headed directly to Belltown to find its urban oasis. After buying heroin and stepping in dog crap in the off leash area at Regrade Park, I wandered the streets for days until I finally found respite sneaking past the parking garage entry into the plaza at Fountain Court on 4th Avenue. There I could relax for only three minutes before being chased out by security."

Here in Portland, the collective estimation of the Pearl has been fairly mixed. We acknowledge the fact that the Pearl represents progressive and visionary high-density, mixed-use placemaking, but often we lament bulky buildings that employ too many faux-industrial stylistic elements in the name of context.

Maybe when you step back, however, the Pearl deserves more kudos than it gets. Or does Ron's take just not "jam"?

Hanging In the Balance: The Burnside Bridgehead Collaboration

For weeks the Burnside Bridgehead project has been in limbo. After Opus Northwest was chosen to develop this multi-block parcel at Burnside and MLK in late April, bridesmaid Beam Development filed a protest to the Portland Development Commission. But mayor Tom Potter then nudged Opus and Beam to formulate a compromise, and suddenly Beam officially withdrew its protest.

I had been under the impression that the two developers had spent recent days huddling up to hammer out a plan. After talking by phone yesterday with Beam head honcho Bradley Malsin, however, it turns out that those negotiations are yet to begin. Apparently they’ll sit down together in the days ahead.

Malsin was understandably reticent to say much about what he’s looking for out of the deal. He says he’s taking a wait-and-see approach.

All we really know is that Opus and Beam will split up the Bridghead pie. One presumes a larger portion will go to Opus, because they were the official competition winner. That said, I’d expect that Beam will at the very least have one major building.

While it’s disappointing simply from an interested bystander’s point of view that negotiations have not yet begun (what—they had more important things to do?), that fact means we, the community, still have the chance to tell these two developers what we’d like to see.

We know there won’t be a big-box retail store at Burnside Bridgehead, but beyond the fact that they’re apparently sharing, what will Opus and Beam each bring? Opus planned lots of housing and Beam lots of office and live/work space. Maybe the best answer really is some hybrid of the two. As Zach Dundas’s recent Willamette Week cover story highlighted, there are lots of those coveted creative-class people who want a place to make sculptures and sleep too. But the high profile of the development and its prime riverfront real estate probably mean that higher-end condos are what pencil out.

Oh, and what about the architects? More specifically, we presumably don’t need all the firms involved in the initial proposals. So if Beam, for example, brings one of their firms to the table, will it be Colab or Ankrom Moisan? [I’m pulling for Colab, whose talent and creativity best represent what Beam brings to the table.] Also, Opus lead architect Mulvanny G2 recently brought on board talented Eric Cugnart, who designed the local Adidas headquarters for BOORA. Might Cugnart get his hands on these blueprints in collaboration with MG2's Gary Larson?

The answers to virtually all of these questions is: we’ll see. There is a whole lot hanging in the air. This project could still be great. And in fact, the Opus-Beam partnership, if gone about correctly, could actually make for a better Burnside Bridgehead than either developer might deliver single-handedly. But they can’t let their ideas be watered down.

The result shouldn’t be a lowest common denominator between the two plans, but a synthesis of the best aspects of both. The developers and their architects are facing significant pressure to get this right. But between Larson, Cugnart and Colab's Mark Engberg, not to mention developers Malsin and Bruce Wood (of Opus), there should be plenty of talent and vision to pull this off.

So let's get it done, fellas: openly and collaboratively, but fearlessly too. Leave your egos and your competing interests at the door, and don't stop until you've come up with something great.

Portland Icons

The back page of this week's In Portland magazine from The Oregonian offers a tantalizing question: What are the icons that define the city?

The article cited the Hawthorne Bridge as its first example, and is asking readers to write in with their favorites by email. "We're looking for city icons," the article says, "the things and people that make the city like nowhere else."

The icon suggestions don't necessarily have to be architecture, infrastructure or even a place per se. The article muses: "Rain? The color green? A business or building that epitomizes the city—or a person for that matter?"

But for our purposes, I'm curious what portions of the built environment and/or the landscape are truly iconic to Portlanders.

Architecturally speaking, what comes to my mind first is the US Bancorp tower, "Big Pink". It's not a masterpiece, but it's a crisp modern tower that seems to get better with age and benefits greatly from its position on the skyline. There isn't another building even half as tall anywhere near the building, so Big Pink really stands out. That said, such visual isolation could expose the flaws of a lesser building, but this SOM-designed structure embraces and flourishes in its spotlight.

Also meriting consideration, of course, is Pioneer Courthouse Square. Sure, the daily sermons shouted out by religious whackos are a little annoying, but this is another project that has aged surprisingly well. As the Portland Building exemplifies, most early 1980s postmodern design has long seemed trite and caricatured. Yet somehow Courthouse Square still seems compelling and sincere today despite being of an undeniably postmodern style. The late Will Martin's design evokes classical architecture but is of its own time and bears its own individual identity as well. That's a balancing act very few postmodernists could ever pull off.

And when it comes to Portland icons you can never count out the landscape itself. I remember a few years ago Brad Cloepfil told me in an interview that it was the Cascade mountains that inspired him as much as individual buildings. While Mount Hood and the Willamete River are not Portland architecture per se, they are the lifeblood of the city and the skyline.

Other buildings and places that crossed my mind as potential icons: the Freemont Bridge, MAX, Brewery Block 2 (the gray one with the exterior crisscrossed bracing), that Elk statue downtown on SW Main between Third and Fourth (featured in Gus Van Sant's My Own Private Idaho), the Nike campus (terrible isolation but terrific buildings), Jackson Tower, the St. John's Bridge, Central Library, the mural on the Oregon History Center, the Standard Insurance Center, various big old Victorian and smaller craftsman houses, and the Classical Chinese Garden.

What are your choices?

The USGBC and Home Depot: Strange Bedfellows or Genuine Partners?

A few days ago it was announced that the Home Depot Foundation has a $375,000 grant to the U.S. Green Building Council to help with the development of the LEED for Homes (LEED-H) Rating System.

According to the press release, “The grant supports the development of the LEED for Homes Rating System with a special Initiative for Affordable Housing that will include a reference manual; pilot demonstration of LEED for Homes in six markets; and new affordable housing training sessions at the Greenbuild International Conference and Exposition, an annual conference organized by the USGBC, to be held in Atlanta this November…The rating system will provide a much-needed tool for homebuilders, homeowners and local governments for building healthy and resource-efficient places to live.”

All this is of course great news for the USGBC. Residential buildings, be they single or multi-family, use a huge amount of the nation’s energy. And regardless of whatever deficiencies the LEED system may have with respect to cumbersome paperwork (see the previous “Is LEED Broken?” post), its incorporation into residential building market is a positive step for sustainability toward the mainstream.

The fact that seed money for LEED-H comes from Home Depot, however, brings pause. Home Depot is of course one of the nation’s most well known big-box retailers. Their stores occupy vast suburban tracts of land with seas of surface parking lots.

By no means am I suggesting that Home Depot’s grant to the USGBC is in any way dirty money. Home Depot should be applauded for making this donation. And while their stores do not represent good urban place making, they’re making an honest buck encouraging do-it-yourself home improvement.

Still, I hope the USGBC will have the courage to make their relationship with Home Depot a two-way exchange. I’d like to imagine USGBC president Rick Fedrizzi sitting down with executives from the big-box retailer and saying, “Why not build a parking garage next to you store and make greenspace with all the left over surface area? Or put affordable housing on top of your stores? Or consider building smaller Home Depots in mixed use buildings?”

The initial Burnside Bridgehead plan to include a national home improvement chain like Home Depot is an indication of the hostility many Portlanders have for big-box retailers. Fair enough. But Home Depot isn’t going to go away, and rather than vilifying such companies, I’d rather see them engaged and encouraged to behave more progressively. The fact that Home Depot is funding a new LEED program is great. Now that the USGBC has their attention, we need to make even more happen.

More Than a Garage: Design Versus Development In Gateway

A recent Portland Design Commission hearing and vote over a proposed three-level parking garage at the Gateway Transit Center illustrates the friction that often develops between economic development and good design.

The garage, which would hold 573 parking spaces, would serve both the Gateway Transit Center (where two MAX lines as well as the I-84 and I-205 freeways meet) and a three story, 101,000 square foot medical office building that broke ground last week. Subsequent phases in the master plan call for additional floors of medical offices and/or housing on top of the office building as well as two more levels for the parking garage and two more buildings on the site. The project is a joint venture between Gerding-Edlen Development, PDC, and TriMet.

As the Design Commission neared a vote on whether to approve the project, a consensus seemed to develop that the project was ultimately good for the Gateway neighborhood. As the only place in the region where so many transit lines intersect, Gateway is a crucial place for future high-density development such as this.

Still, some of the commissioners, such as architect Tim Eddy, developer Loren Waxman, and architect Jeff Stuhr, felt the designs they saw for the garage were too suburban looking, with not enough pedestrian entry/exit points and without much accounting for future ground floor retail.

But the developers were frustrated by the back-and-forth over what they saw as relatively minor design issues in light of the fact that their funding package was time-sensitive and that everybody agreed the garage was needed. They had a house of cards put together and, understandably, they didn't want to see it fall.

Then the balance was tipped by a blowhard. As Mid-County Memo reporter Lee Perlman noted, Providence Health Systems entered the fray as a new development partner, with some questionable attitude coming from representative Beverly Bookin: .

Bookin said that Providence was negotiating to purchase 10,000 square feet on the ground floor of the east side of the garage, half of it for a physical therapy clinic, half for 27 parking spaces. She said that the commission was asking for too many exterior entrances to the space, especially since most visitors would enter from the parking area.

“Providence is the only one seeking to use this space; there’s not one behind us,” Bookin said. “The one user stepping up to the plate needs to have its issues addressed. We shouldn’t be penalized for being the good guy... I understand you have guidelines, but this project has been twenty years in the making, and its finances are rickety. If Providence is forced to walk away, you can negotiate with the next developer who comes along.”

Well excuuuuuuuse the City of Portland for seeking a decent design standard! I don't necessarily blame the Commission for approving the garage, which they eventually did. But I also hope commissioners walked away at least a little angry over such a challenge.

It turned out that Waxman was the sole dissenting vote in the garage's approval. That’s right, the developer on the Commission was the most uncompromising about design. And I think his final words are the most astute:

The people behind this garage development, Waxman says, “…shouldn’t come here with a feeling of entitlement for lowering the bar. It strikes me you’ll get an approval tonight, but as the area grows and other garages are built, it’s important to send a message that we expect a pretty high design here, especially from our public partners.”

A Riverside Drive

The other day I found myself driving from North Greeley to my home in Southeast Portland in what felt like a cinematic tour of riverfront Portland. The sun was shining but the clouds were dark, one of those incredibly theatrical weather systems you'll only find here. I could almost hear dramatic soundtrack music roaring in accompaniment (oh wait, that was my car stereo).

First came departure from the Adidas Village, a uniquely vibrant and urban corporate headquarters. There are no security gates turning away through traffic, no bland cookie cutter office park architecture. Full of color and geometry and life, this North American headquarters for Adidas, designed a couple years ago by BOORA (specifically Eric Cugnart, who has since moved on to Mulvanny G2, where he’ll presumably be involved with Burnside Bridgehead) is a gem.

Next, Greeley wound down along a wide breadth of rail yards in the shadow of the Freemont Bridge, with the West Hills, River District and downtown looming in the background. Portland has traditionally occupied much of its riverfront with industry: ports, ships, railroads. While it makes tremendous sense to devote more of that prime riverside land to higher-density and more public uses, I believe the overall urban landscape is nicely balanced by a dose of grit. In decades past Portland had more of what I call a hallowed seediness: the dirt under our city’s fingernails as a badge of honor. I’d hate to see that ever disappear completely.

Greeley then continued toward what has become a delightful pocket of bars and restaurants on lower North Williams Avenue. A cluster of historic old buildings such as the White Eagle, a historic and reportedly haunted former whorehouse renovated by the McMenamins brothers, gives this area real character. But I’ve also long been impressed with the newer Widmer brewery here, designed by talented local sole practitioner Mark Garvey.

The journey then continued toward the Rose Quarter, which includes one of my favorite Portland buildings: Memorial Coliseum. I have a big coffee table book at home of classic architectural photos by the great Julius Shulman, and the Coliseum is the only Portland building included. This is one of at least two landmark Portland buildings by the iconic national firm Skidmore, Owings, Merrill (the other being ‘Big Pink’, the US Bancorp Tower). I realize the Rose Quarter area would be better off with just one huge arena instead of two, but I will definitely mourn if Memorial Coliseum is ever torn down. Besides, it’s sacred ground—the Trail Blazers won a world championship here.

While waiting through an inevitable long light at the Rose Quarter, I of course had the same thought so many others do here: It’s a shame that one of our most important local transit hubs is such a mess. Not only is it not a place you’d ever want to hang out, with no businesses that can survive when the Blazers aren’t playing, but it’s a tremendously difficult place to negotiate as a pedestrian. How many people miss busses here that they can see across the intersection but can’t get to in time?

Next I headed toward Martin Luther King Boulevard, where a red light brought the car to a stop just outside what will someday be the Burnside Bridgehead development. How strange it is that we still don’t know exactly who will be developing what buildings there. And hopefully the surrounding blocks will ultimately evolve into more than car dealerships and cheap furniture outlets.

Continuing down MLK, I was reminded of a conversation with someone at the Portland Development Commission a few years ago about the Central Eastside, and how ultimately we should expect to see a lot more high-density housing along MLK and Grand. For all the attention we’ve paid to Burnside Bridgehead, you’d think there would be more activity on this front. Instead of at the Bridgehead, how about somewhere along MLK for Beam Development's pioneering live-work housing for the creative class?

Finally, crossing 7th and 12th Avenues toward home, I thought about different suggestions for moving I-5 away from the river, possibly toward a tunnel occupying one of these streets. What a great thing for Portland this would be, freeing the East Bank of the Willamette from the yoke of that that mammoth freeway. And yet what a drag such a big tunnel construction project would be for these neighborhoods. But that’s the price of progress, right?

I guess it wasn’t really a quintessential Portland excursion since I was in my car instead of on a bike or a bus. But regardless of how one does it, it’s fun to think of Portland architecture not as just a series of buildings and roads, but a unified whole that is - be it thankfully or regretfully - constantly changing.

The Octavia Boulevard Model

This month's issue of Metropolis profiles a former San Francisco freeway that's been converted to what's called a multiway road. And I wonder if the same format, or at least some of its principles, could be used in Portland - not for freeways or former freeways, but some of our larger arterials.

A portion of Interstate 80 was irrepably damaged by the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake. Sixteen years later, this autumn it will become the new Octavia Boulevard, which, as Jacob Ward writes:

"...will include four central lanes of one-way, high-speed traffic--two on either side of a planted median. At the edges, beyond two more leafy medians, another lane will accommodate parking and slow-moving traffic."

Basically the idea is that the street incorporates two types of traffic: (1) people who want and need to move slower and more deliberately through the neighborhood, mindful of pedestrians as they search for a curbside parking spot; and (2) people continuing on toward further destinations who want to get through the neighborhood as quickly as possible. (Nevermind that reckless drivers like myself prefer to drive at top speed in any situation.)

Naturally only certain roads in Portland are wide enough to incorporate the amount of lanes necessary for multiple lanes and tree-lined medians. But for the ones that are--Powell, MLK, 82nd, portions of 39th--what kind of transformation to the surrounding neighborhoods might we see with multiway roads? With higher density coming to certain transit-oriented clusters of the city, such roads could be a way to accomodate and oblige through-traffic as efficiently as possible while bringing a renewed and enhanced pedestrian experience. Which, incidentally, is currently lacking on our city's widest thorofares.

Rose Festival: The Great Equalizer

This week's Willamette Week (which, in full disclosure, I write for) made me think about Rose Festival and particularly the Rose Parade in a new way.

I'm one of the many Portlanders who has long taken a subversive pride in sneering at Rose Festival. I roll my eyes at the gaudy carnival that hijacks Waterfront Park. I watch in disbelief as people stake out spots along the parade route days in advance. And I huff as Navy ships make all the bridges go up as they recruit troops for a war I abhor.

In The Nose, WW's weekly opinion column, all these gripes are played up not as an annoyance, however, but a kind of spectacle that's an alternative to what normally is a very insular urban community we've created. In other words, it's healthy to invite in the other half for a couple weeks and cross the cultural divide:

"This is a strange season, the annual period when those who style themselves Über-Portlanders--sure, they voted for Kerry, but only because Chomsky didn't run and Kucinich didn't make it--feel like aliens in their own hometown....Tight-panted hipsters scramble to avoid Clackamas County families who look like they've eaten the last six generations of their forebears...Pearl District cleavage is temporarily replaced by Estacada ass-crack."

"This level of culture shock just has to be healthy for a city that spends the other 50 weeks of the year congratulating itself on how much distance it's put between itself and these United States."

The WW article exaggerated a lot of stereotypes about these people for a good read, but the underlying point is more serious.

Not to start singing "Kum-Ba-Ya" or anything, but when we talk about architecture and planning, about green building and smart growth, for all the good we've done in or near the central city, we have to remember that there hundreds of thousands of people living in Portland's suburbs and nearby small towns for whom a lot of the progressive concepts and ideas and values we take for granted as gospel haven't reached their ears.

It's not that I'm going to go looking for some Clark County resident on the ferris wheel and ask why voters there are stupid enough to vote down MAX. Or that I'm going to stop somebody in the middle of their munching funnel cake and ask them to support new urbanist zoning principles. But at least we're not segregated from one another.

So maybe, just maybe, next year come Rose Festival I won't lock myself inside my apartment, rock gently in a fetal position, and daydream about Waterfront Park being empty again.

Is LEED Broken?

Over the past five years, the US Green Building Council's "LEED" (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) green building rating system has become the standard measurement for sustainability, giving architects and builders a much-needed reference point for determining a building's true sustainability and forwarding to the larger buiding community and beyond the principles of ecologically-mindful design.

Here in Portland, we are, if you'll pardon the pun, leading the way with (at least as of last November's USGBC conference) more LEED-accredited projects than any other city. We're also only the second American city to require our civic buildings to achieve a 'Gold' LEED rating.

But two Aspen, Colorado green buiding professionals, Randy Udall (Director of the Community Office for Resource Efficiency) and Auden Schendler (Director of Environmental Affairs at Aspen Skiing Company) say the LEED system is not meeting its potential:

We’re concerned that LEED has become costly, slow, brutal, confusing, and unwieldy, a death march for applicants administered by a soviet-style bureaucracy that makes green building more difficult than it needs to be, yet has everyone genuflecting at the door to prove their credentials. The result: mediocre “green” buildings where certification, not environmental responsibility, is the primary goal; a few super-high level eco-structures built by ultra-motivated (and wealthy) owners that stand like the Taj Mahal as beacons of impossibility; an explosion of LEED-accredited architects and engineers chasing lots of money but designing few buildings; and a discouraged cadre of professionals who want to build green, but can’t afford to certify their buildings. A growing number of LEED veterans have, or soon will, throw in the towel. LEED is broken.

I think even the USGBC acknowledges it would like to get better about making the LEED certification process quicker and easier so that more buildings are registered without sacrificing the integrity of the process. I expect continuous revisions to the process.

But what do you architects think? Certainly for all the LEED-certified buidings in the Portland area there are also many projects with significant green features whose owners and/or architects decided not to pursue LEED. Are we talking minor or major problems to the system? Does LEED have a long-term future, or is there a time where it will outlive its usefulness?

PDC and a Voice For Design

The Portland Development Commission has announced four candidates for its executive director position: Gil Jimenez, director of the Arizona Department of Commerce; David Knowles, vice president of David Evans and Associates; Bruce Warner, director of the Oregon Department of Transportation; and Karen Williams, partner at Lane Powell Spears Lubersky law firm.

Each of the candidates brings a healthy measure of experience, but together the quartet serves as a reminder that PDC remains an agency whose primary mission is economic development, with design a distant second—if that.

Many of us had hoped Charlie Hales could be wooed into the position. One former staffer told me he didn’t think Hales was that interested, but according to Ryan Frank’s article in this morning’s Oregonian, the former city commissioner indeed applied for the job. If that’s the case, it seems ludicrous that Hales wasn’t even chosen as a finalist. Hales very well might have won the mayoral election had he chosen to run against Jim Francesconi and Tom Potter. But he’s not even in the top four at PDC?

It was also disappointing that Christine Ervin, formerly of the US Green Building Council in Washington, DC, did not emerge as a candidate. With Portland making a concerted effort to incorporate sustainability as its identity to the world and become one of its greenest cities, she would have been an inspired selection.

I can’t pretend to definitively know which of the finalists is the best candidate just based on what I’ve read in various newspapers and online, but Knowles and (to a lesser extent) Warner appear on paper to be the ones with the best combination of management experience and urban planning/design expertise.

But beyond the executive director position, which by necessity is going to be more administrative and managerial, architecture and planning enthusiasts may be better off focusing attention on the PDC board position that will be vacated in July. That’s where we’ll have the most realistic hope of getting a voice for design. There are countless old-guard Portland architects and others whose presence could help make PDC more balanced toward design.

Off the top of my head, names that come to mind for the PDC board are Bing Sheldon of SERA Architects; George Crandall or Don Arambula of Crandall Arambula; Robert Frasca, Robert Packard or Paddy Tillett of Zimmer Gunsul Frasca; John Blumthal of Yost Grube Hall; John Schleuning of SRG Partnership; Bart Eberwein of Hoffman Construction; Jonah Cohen of Thomas Hacker Architects; Martha Peck Andrews of Andrews Architects; Patrick Harrington of BOORA; Patricia Gardner of the Pearl District Neighborhood Association; Garry Reddick of Sienna Architecture; Rudolph Barton of Portland State University's Department of Architecture; and Don Stastny of StastnyBrun.

Mt. Angel Abbey Library

Last Friday I made my first visit to what is arguably Oregon’s greatest architectural treasure: the Mount Angel Abbey Library. It is one of only two buildings in the United States designed by legendary Finnish architect Alvar Aalto, and it’s an absolutely extraordinary space.

When you first see the library, it doesn’t look like much. The entrance, while of a crisp modern style befitting the late Sixties era from which it came, is a single story, with a slender metal canopy stretched over a simple golden brick form. But the library really sings when you come inside.

Nestled on a hillside, the library actually stretches to three stories, moving downward to keep a low profile. The center of the library is a sort of pea-shaped long and thin atrium-like space, with two levels of books visible from twin staircases. To give you an indication of how dramatic the space is, I took about 95 pictures in fifteen minutes.

Besides the dramatic exposed multi-story center of the library, what’s most striking is the incredible natural light that fills the space like water in a pool. There are skylights and clerestory windows all over, but somehow the light is soft and diffused with no glare—no doubt due to where they are placed. (Incidentally, none of my 95 pictures can accurately replicate the color and soft tone of that light.) Aalto believed that reading and studying inside a library should be a focused, sacred experience with minimal distraction. Thus, the windows bring in light but are placed high enough that they’re not really about view at all.

The library also was clearly designed down to the last detail. Much of the furniture was designed by Aalto, and there is a delightfully striking but simple pattern of slatted wood throughout: on ceilings, at the ends of long bookshelves—even covering the fire extinguisher!

If you haven’t ever been to the Mount Angel Abbey Library, it’s more than worth the hour’s drive. Besides, one of Oregon’s other architectural treasures is nearby. The Gordon House, the only building in the state designed by Frank Lloyd Wright, was moved a few years ago from its original site in suburban Charbonneau to the Oregon Garden in Silverton, just a few miles from Mount Angel. (Moving it was a tragedy given how specifically the Gordon House was tailored to the original site, but it was the only way to save Wright’s quasi-Usonian building from demolition, thanks to some ignorant homeowners who wanted to tear it down and build a McMansion there. Writing about it in Willamette Week a few years ago, I likened their intentions to “finger painting over a Picasso”.)

And as it happens, Mount Angel has again undertaken a building campaign. This time the architect is Portland’s SRG Partnership, with the exceptionally talented Kent Duffy, designer of the exceptional Lillis Business Complex at UO, responsible for an ultra-sustainable building with Aalto-esque natural light levels and natural ventilation. You’ve got to admire Kent’s courage designing a building next to the Abbey Library, which inspires as powerful a spirituality as the monastic order based there.

North of Lovejoy: No Pearl,But a Gem of Its Own

Move over, South Waterfront. There’s another new neighborhood coming to town with elegantly thin blade towers and a coveted view of the Willamette—only a lot closer to downtown.

Earlier this week I visited BOORA Architects to hear about their new partnership with Hoyt Street Properties on two projects north of Lovejoy in the former Hoyt Street Yards along Naito Parkway.

Although this area is technically part of the existing Pearl/River District, the area North of Lovejoy appears headed for an architectural identity of its own—and a refreshing one at that. Because the existing land does not include older industrial buildings, architects are and will be free to create a more contemporary palette that need not fit within or acknowledge an industrial context. No more faux-industrial cliché!

What’s more, Hoyt Street Properties director Tiffany Sweitzer is finally reaping the benefits of a more than two-year struggle to change height and FAR (floor area ratio) regulations in this portion of the district. Like South Waterfront, the area North of Lovejoy will now allow some buildings that go up to 225 feet, instead of the previous 175-foot limit—provided that the taller portion of the building only occupy a portion of the block.

As a result, BOORA’s first of two planned buildings in the neighborhood, which was recently christened “The Metropolitan”, will have the thinner, taller look of South Waterfront. And to the credit of the Pearl District Neighborhood Association, the neighbors have learned that this arrangement won’t block the sun, but just the opposite. There will be a lot more light hitting the streets and parks and sidewalks here than there would have been with a bunch of bulky buildings hindered by the 175-foot limit.

The Metropolitan is very refreshing in that it’s primarily a white building more reminiscent in tone to the Jackson tower or Meier & Frank building downtown than the Pearl. BOORA had tremendous success with Cincinatti’s acclaimed National Underground Railroad Freedom center using a golden travertine stone, and they’ve introduced this elegant material to pedestrian areas here, along with some impressive touches of natural wood and white metal.

What’s more, although The Metropolitan is in some ways a familiar form with a blade tower sitting atop a bulkier base, BOORA’s design break up the mass by creating the illusion of more than one building. The base has somewhat of a separate identity from the tower. Yet there is also a striking perpendicular L-shaped axis that connects the two portions of the building.

In addition to housing and retail, the Metropolitan block will also include a separate small office building. Although the office market is weak to say the least, it’s great that the neighborhood will have an expanded array of uses. It’s a boon for the Pearl and hopefully the beginning of a trend.

Oh, and here’s the killer. Hoyt Street selected BOORA by means of a four-firm invited design competition. Many of us in the architecture community have been clamoring for Portland to hold more design competitions, to end the unofficial moratorium that lasted for two decades after the Portland Building debacle and recognize they can be a great way to get better design in the city.

First the local competition rebirth was kicked off with key public projects: the tram from Pill Hill to South Waterfront and Fire Station 1. Now it’s happening with a housing project by a for-profit developer. That’s really something to celebrate. And yet this design competition happened with very little attention from the press or the larger building community.

Hoyt Street Properties deserves a round of applause on a few counts: holding a design competition at all (a risky move for a private developer), waiting two years to build The Metropolitan until new their struggle for new height limits was won, and working with the city to hold an urban design charette for the rest of the massive Hoyt Street Yards parcel.

BOORA is also designing a second building at what’s now called Block 19, and early renderings indicate they’ve managed to create slender, elegant architecture even at the 175-foot height limit that has produced the Pearl’s bulkiest buildings.

Again, only time will tell if this emerging neighborhood or BOORA’s initial work there will meet the promise shown today. But I’m very excited about this new era for the Pearl, for Hoyt Street Properties, and for BOORA Architects.

Portland's Pioneering Emission Reductions

Yesterday it was announced that Portland is the first US city to drop its emissions below 1990 levels. With many thousands more living here than fifteen years ago, this figure is downright astonishing. Many people deserve a round of applause, from local governments to renewable energy proponents to the waste/recycling industry to architects.

Looking to the future, the city and county have set a goal of cutting emissions 10 percent below 1990 levels by 2010—just five years from now. And clearly our built environment will play a primary role.

We all know that green buildings are occupying an ever-increasing portion of Portland. But beyond LEED scorecards and other short-run measurements of building performance, I’d like to know what the decade and beyond will look like from an architectural perspective.

For example, how might technologies such as photovoltaic solar panels and wind turbines transform the look of the cityscape? Will a bioswale someday be as common as a sidewalk? Or perhaps we’ll follow the lead of Holland, with limits on how closely each worker must be to a window. It could not only reduce season depression and save energy, but increasingly make for thinner buildings in a city where height limits too often breed bulky buildings.

At the same time, sustainability cannot and should not comprise the entirety of our architectural character. Rather, there should be as much style and differentiation as ever, but simply within the more comprehensively agreed-to context of a building as a machine that incorporates climate and site context into its scheme for efficiency.

We’ve also got to continually encourage those who build buildings for others, who get things built for the purpose of turning around and selling them, to favor materials and methods for buildings that last. We’ve got to have hundred-year buildings here, not just in urban core but out in the suburbs, too. That means not just efficient buildings, but flexible ones that the next generation can make their own.

And we’ve got to radically change the way suburbs are built and, in the cases of older communities as close to downtown Portland as they are to the growth boundary, rebuilt. Places like Beaverton and Tigard have to change zoning and transportation systems to curb the automobile’s dominance. We can’t save the planet until the guy out in Hillsboro leaves the SUV at home when he needs a bottle of milk.

Like virtually any good news, yesterday’s emissions announcement is a time to celebrate, but also a time to pledge the efforts that got us here will only continue.

Watch, Listen and Lerner

Tonight one of the world’s foremost experts on smart urban growth will be speaking in Portland as part of the Illahee lecture series.

As a three-term mayor of Curitiba and two-term governor of the state of Paraná, Brazil, Jaime Lerner created an infrastructure that limited sprawl despite its rapid growth. He even came up with a plan to make bus tickets double as lottery tickets. Lerner also consolidated the City's basic urban transformations and implemented an Integrated Mass Transport System and intensified an encompassing program that resulted in social and environmental advances. During Lerner’s tenure as governor, Paraná has emerged as Brazil’s new industrial hub.

Lerner has also served as a planning consultant for the United Nations, involved with planning designs, mass transportation programs and urban projects in Latin America and Asia. He’s received the United Nations Environmental Award, the UNICEF Child and Peace Award, and the "Thomas Jefferson Medal" from the University of Virginia.

Obviously Portland is no slouch when it comes to promoting mass transit, limiting sprawl and encouraging sustainable building/design practices. But you can bet Jaime Lerner will have a refreshing perspective on how to develop cities the right way.

The lecture will be held at the First Congregational Church (1126 SW Park Avenue). Doors open at 6:30pm and the lecture will begin at 7:30pm.

Loyola Jesuit Center

Tucked away on a residential street a couple blocks from busy Powell Boulevard on Southeast 45 is a humble architectural jewel.

The Loyola Jesuit Center, which I visited yesterday with its designer, Tim Eddy of Hennebery Eddy Architects, consists of a handful of small buildings occupied by a chapel, conference rooms, priest residences and administration, with a central courtyard and fountain in between.

Completed in 2002, this is a contemporary example of the Northwest Modernism initiated more than a half-century ago by local architects like Pietro Belluschi and John Yeon, but with its own identity too.

The buildings are clad in unpainted natural cedar with simple pitched roofs and an abundance of glass, particularly in the central chapel. Many of the structures also include canopies that serve as a link between interior and exterior spaces while striking a simple but strong presence with thin wood columns, all the while bringing a soft, diffuse natural daylight into the space. I have been to few places in Portland that seem so tranquil, and that’s because of the architecture as much as the tenants.

Behind the center is a park-like setting that includes the Jesuits’ stations of the cross and, just as spiritually compelling, several century-old evergreen trees planted by members of the Jesuit community a few generations back.

The Loyola Jesuit Center keeps a low profile in Portland, but any local architecture fan ought to consider a visit. This is a place where simple natural materials, a client committed to its buildings lasting a century, and a talented architect’s eye for detail have converged to make a place of contemplation, brotherhood and beauty.

Grading the Curve: 8NW8

Completed last year, the affordable housing highrise along the South Park Blocks at the corner of West Burnside, known as 8NW8, is an impressive one. Designed by SERA Architects and built by Walsh Construction, it includes numerous sustainable features, some of which are even beyond what the LEED scorecard includes.

Instead of using concrete metal-stud framing with fiberglass insulation going into the stud wall cavity, Walsh convinced SERA and Central City Concern, the owner, to let them put the insulation on the exterior sheathing and the exterior waterproofing membrane. That means a much-improved thermal performance and better protection against incoming rainwater.

The interior of 8NW8 is also noteworthy because it was built with just seven columns despite its being twelve stories tall. Instead, much of the structural support comes from sheer walls, bringing added flexibility to the design and saving money on construction.

And its plethora of sustainable features includes a heat recovery system, CO2 sensors, low-flow shower heads and faucets, high-efficiency appliances, occupancy sensors, and compact fluorescent lights. These will reap energy savings of well over $25,000 per year.

But when you’re walking or driving near 8NW8, the most visible feature is its curvature. The ground floor features a glass wall that undulates gently to wonderful effect. Then there’s the roof, which curves like a cream puff.

Overall I like this building a lot, especially considering that it’s affordable housing. But the roof is the lone aspect of 8NW8 that I’m still undecided on. In his year-end round up last December, Randy Gragg of The Oregonian commended SERA for designing a building with curves in a city of squares and rectangles. Fair enough. And another thing about the curved roof is that it hides the building’s mechanical equipment, something I wish more buildings would do.

Yet there’s something about the roof that seems silly to me. And admittedly, it may be strictly a matter of personal taste. But the curving form feels postmodern to me, bold yet trite in the same way Michael Graves’s garlands are on the Portland Building.

How do the rest of you feel about 8NW8’s curving rooftop?

The Casey: Lost Opportunity?

Recently Gerding/Edlen Development announced a new 16-story residential project at Northwest 12th and Everett, adjacent to the Brewery Blocks. The Casey, as it’s called, will be the first quarter-block highrise building in the Pearl and is slated to meet LEED ‘Platinum’ standards, potentially making it the greenest residential building in the country.

All of this is good news. What troubles, me, though, is that The Casey is being designed by GBD Architects.

As evidenced by the Brewery Blocks, Belmont Dairy and numerous other projects, GBD does good work. But they already have designed five other buildings in the immediate area. My beef isn't about their capabilities of their firm. Rather, I believe it's time for Gerding/Edlen to patronize another firm that will complement GBD's existing Brewery Blocks work with a different visual presence.

Over the last few years Gerding/Edlen has arguably become the city’s most important architectural patron, with a central role in both the Pearl District and South Waterfront. The developer has particularly done an excellent job in promiting sustainable design and pedestrian-friendly urban spaces.

Going with one firm for the entire five Brewery Blocks was understandable given how risky and not no so clearly a sure thing the project was when Gerding/Edlen began. But today it's a different story. The developer has a reputation of fitting their business model to greater civic goods. In talking with Mark Edlen, I know his company also takes seriously the virtue of supporting a variety of firms. That's why I was expecting Gerding/Edlen to venture out of their comfort zone with The Casey.

Clearly GBD is Gerding/Edlen’s firm of choice, and to a large extent that's OK. The two companies' offices are in the same building--a Brewery Block they built together. The two firms have a very strong working relationship, and a proven track record of success. There's undoubtedly a useful kind of shorthand that's developed between them.

Which is why no one can question Gerding/Edlen's post-Brewery Blocks use of GBD as the architect of record on a succession of South Waterfront projects in which another firm serves as lead designer: Peter Busby, Thompson Vaivoda and Thomas Hacker.

With The Casey, I expected Gerding/Edlen to again let another firm show what they can do, and then have GBD be the architect of record. Of course GBD need not be relegated to this more compromised position every time. But they have had several trips through the buffet line already, and other people are hungry. And Gerding/Edlen holds one of the biggest serving spoons.

Two of the other biggest developers in Portland focused on residential buildings, John Carroll and Hoyt Street, already show tremendous favoritism towards another architecture firm, Ankrom Moisan. Between these three developers there have been somewhere along the lines of 15 different buildings to go up over the last decade in the Pearl District alone. It’s not healthy for the neighborhood or the city for a mere two architecture firms to be designing virtually all of them.

For all I know, GBD’s design for The Casey will be spectacular. But that’s not the issue. This is not a matter of talent or track record, but of opportunity.

The Sad State of the Multnomah County Courthouse

Today for the first time in years I found myself inside the Multnomah County Courthouse on 4th Avenue, between Salmon and Main (contesting a parking ticket). What a dump that place is!

Designed by Whidden and Lewis and completed in 1914, the building does have an impressive and stately architectural past. As Bart King writes in An Architectural Guidebook to Portland, “An American Renaissance-style building faced with Indiana limestone blocks, the county courthouse’s most significant features are huge Ionic limestone columns from the third to the sixth floors…which help give the building a magnificent government look.” Indeed, the original building is an impressive one.

But the reality of spending time inside this nearly century-old building is something different altogether.

First, the courthouse suffers the common post-9/11 problem of logjams just to get past security and into the building. I know the county is perennially strapped for funding, but it’s just not acceptable for there to routinely be a line around the block just for the privilege of walking in the front door. The security also robs us of any kind of drama that would normally come with entering a such grand piece of architecture. I’m not saying we should do away with security, but architects really have an important dilemma that’s yet to be solved: incorporating metal detectors and other elements of security into the architecture in a more seamless manner. (It's also rather humiliating to take off your belt and shoes just as you're entering the brick-and-mortar representative of the government.)

Second, the building is very deficient when it comes to natural light. A government building has an important symbolic need to have a lot of glass, in order to communicate the government's transparency and openness. What’s more, the fluorescent lights inside the Multnomah County Courthouse are downright oppressive. I almost put on my sunglasses inside. I've heard there's a lot of sick building syndrome next door at Michael Graves's Portland Buiding, but I'd rather work there than county courthouse.

And finally, the building’s interior desperately needs a facelift. The classical forms of the original design are undermined by decaying materials, mismatched furniture, and lots of small tacky details, like laminated paper court notices taped to the wall. If nothing else, the county needs to hire an environmental graphic designer for some proper wayfinding and signage. Xerox paper from your Laserjet taped to the wall is pathetic.

Perhaps it’s naïve to call upon under-funded Multnomah County to do something about the courthouse, but as a citizen I’m depressed by what a woeful building this has become.

UO Architecture: Learning From Students

Yesterday afternoon I had the privilege of serving as a juror at the University of Oregon School of Architecture’s senior thesis exhibits at the Galleria.

It was an informal affair: Basically how it works is that scores of thesis projects are on display, and certain students request the opportunity to make an oral presentation about their projects with feedback from people in the design community.

I listened to two student presentations, both of which came from an assignment to design a building within the context of Portland. The first was located at the site of the main post office on SW Broadway and Hoyt. A completely new structure (not preserving any of the existing midcentury modern building), the program called for a massive K-12 school with a curving glass canopy with an interior atrium that acted as an outdoor space on the inside. It was very impressive. Another student presented a health club for the South Waterfront neighborhood along the Willamette River. The building featured an impressive glass curtain wall looking out at the river and sculpturally acknowledged the adjacent Ross Island Bridge as well.

Browsing all of the student projects, and acting as a juror for the first time on some specific ones, I was invigorated by all the ideas being created for public and private buildings, small and large ones. Outside of architecture schools, I don’t think designers either have the time or are willing to devote enough time to saying, “What if?” Sometimes we forget that there are really an infinite amount of possibilities out there for the buildings that could comprise our city in the future.

If there was one curious thing about the projects, it was that budget wasn’t really considered much at all. While talking at the exhibit with architect Nancy Merryman of Robertson, Merryman, Barnes (a UO grad), she reminded me that architecture school is probably the only time an architect has the chance to dream big without the constraints of budget. I agree with Nancy, but I at least would like to have seen real-world budget considerations acknowledged verbally by the students. For example, the huge and impressive K-12 building presentation I saw never took the time to concede that schools are very much strapped for cash.

I also was curious to see how much sustainability was taken into account and embraced by the students. The results were mixed. Of course the students are very much aware of features like natural ventilation, daylighting, and so on. But if I could dream up a project with no budget constraints, I’d feel a kid-in-a-candy-store delight in loading up my building with photovoltaics, wind turbines, etc. It’d be fun to really get into the idea of making my building a living machine. I didn’t feel the students I talked to had that same excitement about green design.

There were many projects that caught my eye, either because of their innovative programs (these students really must be social engineers as much as building designers in dreaming up project ideas) or the sheer sculptural qualities of their design work.

For example, Student Bonnie Graham’s project was called “A Center for the Urban Workforce”. Situated in downtown Seattle, it imagined a home base for the ever-increasing numbers of business travelers, with small short-term hotel rooms, showers, entertainment and other facilities.

Another student, Josh Meharry, offered a “Relief Cube”, a prefabricated unit that could serve refugees or vacationers alike. Walker Templeton’s project, “Transit Synergy”, valiantly sought to make sense of the transit mess at the Rose Garden, with a new station serving high-speed rail situated along the Willamette where that monolithic shipping dock is now.

Cassandra Holliday’s project was the “Buckman Retirement Community”, an adaptive re-use of the long-empty former Washington High School on Southeast 12th Avenue between Morrison and Burnside. (Poor Cassandra’s project was impressive, but her presentation boards spelled “Buckman” wrong – without the ‘k’. Grammar, punctuation and spelling errors were rampant throughout the exhibit.)

Even if you never serve as a juror, I highly recommend checking out UO or PSU architecture students’ work—the latter of which, by the way, is on display at AIA/Portland throughout June. This is a great way for us all to learn from young, idealistic architects-to-be just what Portland can be.

Visual Aid For Our First Anti-37 Victory

A report in the Metro section of today's Oregonian brought great news: A judge in Hood River has ruled that federal laws associated with the Columbia Gorge National Scenic Area trump Measure 37. We have our first victory against the new law that rapes Oregon's proud land-use laws.

And by coincidence (or perhaps not, you sly Oregonian graphic designers), a picture directly above the Measure 37 article perfectly articulates the feeling that goes with this victory, even though the picture has nothing to do with the article. It's a shot of thousands of people at PGE Park raising their hands with joyous excitement. Nevermind that they were cheering at a Def Leppard concert (bad taste isn't a crime, after all). A picture, even one randomly chosen, is indeed worth a thousand words, right?

An East Side Arts Mecca

Helpful as virtues like experience, connections and wisdom may be, sometimes it takes a little naïve chutzpah to really do something great. DK Row’s profile of Disjecta impresario Bryan Suereth in today’s Oregonian is a case in point.

Suereth wants to transform the empty Templeton building on East Burnside in to a hub for art galleries, cinema screenings, and administration for his arts organization. More comfortable in the underground of wallet chains and T-shirts than the corporate world of ties and slacks, Suereth is struggling mightily just to raise $120,000 to make his dream a reality.

But this, hopefully, is where we in the architecture and arts communities join in. The vacant RJ Templeton Building, the intended new home for Disjecta, is just crying out for some pro-bono work by an architect and/or builder looking to gain a little name recognition and good karma.

As Row’s article indicates, a variety of art shows and performances will be happening at the Templeton Building (230 East Burnside) today through Sunday. I hope somebody reading this will be motivated to seek out Bryan Suereth and offer to help. With a little design and construction expertise, an expanded Disjecta could be a great destination for the rapidly evolving East Burnside area.

If you’re one of the people afraid that Burnside Bridgehead will be a bland gateway to the grittier, edgier east side, keep in mind the promise that a landmark arts Mecca could hold.

Half a Million For a One-Bedroom?

This morning I was reading a Portland Tribune article by Jim Redden about some of the first people to buy condos in the South Waterfront. I knew the residences being planned for the district would be pricey. But my sticker shock was off the charts as I read about two couples' transactions.

First the article profiled Rachel Coble and her boyfriend Scott Sasser, who just paid $494,000 for a one-bedroom apartment in The Meriwether, which is now 90% sold. Then the story introduced Roger and Carol Gertenrich, a retired couple who have invested $649,000 for a two bedroom condo.

Maybe it's just my own naivete, but does anyone else find those prices just astonishingly high? These two couples are paying far more for tiny little apartments than one would pay for a much larger house in just about any Portland neighborhood. I know they're paying for the right to live in a high-density urban locale that, presumably, will some day soon be brimming with retail and cultural amenities. But it's still a depressing reality that this exciting new neighborhood we've been talking about for years now with great anticipation is one that 90% of us could never afford to live in.

Of course one assumes that South Waterfront will eventually include affordable housing, too. But having two ends of the income spectrum represented still doesn't change the fact that in South Waterfront, like most of the Pearl District, the middle class is on the outside looking in. The overwhelming majority of us make a lot more than would ever allow us to qualify for affordable housing, and the idea of spending half a million dollars on a one-bedroom apartment is not just ludicrous, but impossible to ever imagine.

Buyers' enthusiasm for South Waterfront and the Pearl is high, and I don't begrudge the developers for charging as much as they can get. But I'm reminded of the larger context with which these developments are happening. Across America people are returning to inner cities from the suburbs. The most coveted real estate is closest to the action: theater, restaurants, museums, etc. As a result, people with less income are being driven further and further out.

Mark my words: someday suburbs will be the new American slums. And as always, middle-income people will be, well, in the middle: not as far away from the urban core as some, but likely too far away to feel the warmth of the fire.