Portland Architecture

Save The Standpoint

Several months ago BOORA Architects unveiled a condo project in Southeast Portland (near 12th and Belmont) called The Standpoint. It was designed to become the first multifamily residential building in the country to achieve the coveted 'Platinum' LEED rating from the US Green Building Council. Renderings showed a facility bathed in natural light while also achieving a careful balance of fitting into its residential context while still of a compelling form.

But then tragedy struck. One of the primary investors in the project passed away. And now both the land and the project are for sale. The only hope for The Standpoint to be built is for another developer to take on the project.

Unlike most condo/apartment projects in town, The Standpoint was funded entirely by private investment. In other words, no banks or real estate investment trusts were part of the funding package, and therefore BOORA was free to design the project without the usual rigid FAR ("floor-area-ratio") structures hemming in their creativity. Unfortunately, now that is precisely what might scare off some investors. But rest assured, a developer can still make a profit on this project. And as projects like the Belmont Lofts have proven, Southeast Portland has become a viable market for condos.

Take a look at the enclosed renderings. I think they will show The Standpoint to be an excellent piece of architecture that would be a huge disappointment should it fall into the graveyard of eternally unbuilt projects. But it needn't be so. Whether it's Williams & Dame, Gerding/Edlen, Robert Ball, Randy Rapaport, Trammel Crow, Beam, John Carroll, Shiels/Obletz/Johnsen, or any of the developers in town, I urge somebody to take the reins of The Standpoint and make it happen.

The Wal-Mart Tipping Point

In today’s Oregonian, Amy Hsuan reports on Sellwood residents’ efforts to prevent a Wal-Mart store from being built on Southeast McLaughlin Boulevard. This is but one of a handful of such battles being waged against the chain in our area and around the country.

Clearly the public at large—and not just a handful of planners or small business owners—understands that Wal-Mart stores contribute to sprawl and can eradicate local business districts. In other words, a wide segment of the public has, at least when it comes to this particularly infamous big-box retailer, come to embrace progressive urban planning principles and recognize when they are threatened by massive surface parking lots and soulless chain stores.

What I find most interesting about the anti-Wal-Mart fervor in the Portland area is that it could be a point of entry for citizens normally uninvolved in discussions about how we plan and develop communities. After all, Wal-Mart isn’t the only big-box retailer out there.

If awareness and action has galvanized around preventing Wal-Mart from coming to Sellwood, Gresham or other portions of the Portland area, can that lesson be applied to other cases? After all, Wal-Mart is only the most obvious of many culprits.

Preventing the Arkansas-based retail giant from invading Sellwood is the battle of the day, but it’s still part of a much broader war being fought over how we plan and build communites. Will the places we live, work and play be accessible to pedestrians and oriented toward mass transit, with small independent businesses on the same playing field as the big national retailers? Or will they be dominated by huge seas of asphalt and terrible traffic with chains squeezing out the little guy?

Regardless of whether Wal-Mart comes to Sellwood, I hope people realize the struggle doesn’t begin or end there.

Preservation and Imagination

Today the National Trust for Historic Preservation begins its annual conference, which is being held this year in Portland. As reported in the Portland Tribune by Randall Barton, one of the conference’s tours will focus on classic midcentury modern architecture.

Local historic preservation specialist Paul Falsetto of Fletcher Farr Ayotte will lead the sold-out tour, which is largely comprised of works by celebrated Portland architect Pietro Belluschi, the Italian immigrant who designed the Portland Art Museum and numerous other landmarks. Although the art museum is wonderful, I’d argue another tour stop, Belluschi’s Equitable Building (now called the Commonwealth) is even more impressive. The Equitable has been called the world’s first modern office building for its pioneering use of aluminum cladding—one seemingly continuous sheet of aluminum and glass on the exterior façade. And beyond that, the Equitable has a timeless elegance. Funny how few Portlanders walking by Southwest Sixth and Stark know how significant the building is.

The endurance of historic midcentury modern structures is being put to a serious test these days. As Falsetto explains, many buildings of that era were not built to stand the test of time. So which ones do we tear down and which do we preserve? Is a building still historic if you have to essentially rebuild it from the inside out? As always with historic preservation, there is continuing difficulty reasoning which buildings are to be preserved and which are rescued. And yet those decisions are often not made because of design significance, but because of cold hard economics.

Here in Portland, the city has long enjoyed a lauded reputation for preserving historic buildings. Not every classic is saved (I already miss the St. Francis hotel!), and the loopholes for those who would bulldoze beloved old structures have grown larger. But the underlying culture here favors preserving and re-using old buildings, as with the Masonic Temple that is opening this weekend as the Portland Art Museum’s new Mark Building. Or the Ladd Carriage House that may soon be moved rather than letting a downtown church destroy it. Preservation, though, requires not only a set of regulations, but eternal vigilance.

The other continuing issue with preservation is the form it takes. Some buildings merit renovations that preserve every aspect of their original architectural integrity. Other historic structures, however, can take on new life by becoming part of a hybrid design that transforms the original into something new. Here in Portland, I hope our preservationist community is also open to the idea that certain historic buildings may have bright futures as something altogether new. Depending on the project, extensions and additions to old buildings need not always defer to the existing brick and terra cotta, but use historic structures as the springboard from which they soar.

From Masonic Temple to Contemporary Art Palace

The finishing touches are being put on the Portland Art Museum's newly renovated (and renamed) Mark Building, which will house the new 28,000 square foot Jubitz Center for modern and contemporary art as well as two restored ballrooms and new administrative space. Opening is set for this weekend.

While at work on an article about the project, I have so far visited the museum twice and snapped a couple pictures. The Jubitz Center is huge; thank God there will be more to the PAM now than just traveling exhibits and a tiny amount of space for the permanent collection. So regardless of how it looks architecturally, that's really something to be thankful for.

But as it happens, the Mark Building includes a few key architectural moves. At the building's south end, there is a multi-story glass "pleat" that extends outward from the existing facade to bring in light and give the Jubitz Center a standout presence. On top, the former Masonic Temple now includes a glass penthouse. Both architectural features are not only physically important, adding more space and light, but they also have an important symbolic mission in communicating an openness to the community that was never part of the original building, built for the ultra-secretive Freemasons.

It may not be a fancy new building designed by an internationally famous architect, but the new Mark Building (designed by Ann Beha Architects of Boston, an acclaimed historic renovation specialist that has worked with PAM for over a decade) is definitely one of the most significant projects to happen in Portland during this handful of years. I highly recommend paying a visit as soon after this weekend's opening as possible.

Opting for Opsis

Recently I made a long-overdue visit to Opsis Architecture, the six-year-old firm founded by three former Yost Grube Hall practitioners: James Meyer, Alec Holser and Jim Kalvelage. I was exceptionally impressed.

Opsis thus far has not been part of the condo boom that occupies much of our attention. Instead, they work mostly on public buildings: college classrooms, libraries, community centers. The firm is unequivocally committed to green building, specifically the notion that simple materials and open expressions of structure can act as a kind of visual poetry, even as that structure is simply doing its job.

Looking at the Opsis portfolio, specifically work for regional universities such as Portland State, Western Washington, Idaho and Montana State, as well as local community colleges such as Clackamas and Portland Community College systems, one sees elegant fusions of glass, metal, concrete, wood and other materials. At the Wade King Student Recreation Center at Western Washington University (pictured above), for example, a massive canopy extends over simple concrete pillars to create a plaza beneath a ribboned wall of glass. The Niemeyer Center for the Arts at CCC (pictured below) acts similarly, with uncomplicated grace.

As one architect (outside the firm) put to me recently, when modernism is done right, there’s nothing better. When it’s done cheaply and crudely, there’s little worse. I hate to sound too much like PR for the firm, but I think Opsis represents some of the best contemporary architecture produced out of Portland. And while the trio of principals tell me they fear the firm growing too much—they don’t want to become a boring service firm, after all—I hope there’s even more ambitious work ahead.

Now Arriving at Union Station

The latest issue of Arcade, a quarterly journal of Northwest architecture, is largely devoted to the train stations of Vancouver (BC), Seattle and Portland. An article by Matthew Stadler, an editor with Clear Cut Press and a novelist, offers some fascinating historical details about Union Station.

Originally, Stadler tells us, the train station was planned to be much, much larger: “…a sprawling neo-Romanesque depot with symmetrical wings that covered twelve city blocks.” It would have been the largest train station in the world at the time. But instead, after recession and other problems forced a downsized design, the Kansas City firm Van Brunt and How designed something smaller and more pragmatic. Stadler continues:

“When Union Station (then called Grand Central Station) opened on Valentine’s Day, 1896, the depot stretched along two city blocks, forming a kind of elbow that opened gently, south and west, toward downtown. The only feature retained from the original plan was a square central tower….The tower’s neo-Romanesque rectitude and spareness of detail evoke the older towers of Sienna or Florence (cities often cited by Portland’s early planners), while below it the station’s sweeping, curved roof lines, deep overhanging eaves and ornamental bracing suggest the Italianate. The whole conjures the kind of mongrel assemblage native to older cities, where time has heaped style upon style.”

I love the Union Station we got, which is modest and dignified yet because of the tower has somewhat of an iconic presence in the city. But can you imagine if the original had been built? That would have a railroad station for a very different city, one where the Great Northern Railroad terminating here meant that Portland, not Seattle, was the economic capitol of the Northwest.

Later in this same issue of Arcade, Amtrak's Paul Clements is asked by interviewer Amy Kate Horn which of the Northwest train stations he likes best. "I definitely like Portland's better than Seattle's," he says. "Seattle's King Street Station of course has a lot of historical renovations underway and more planned, but with all the rosettes and cornucopias...I find it a little too fancy. I like Portland's. It's solid, with nice lines, and that great clock tower and neon. Sometime in the '80s, I remember coming through Portland on the Coast Starlight and they were selling pins and doing fundraisers to fix the clock--it was a community-based effort to renovate the clock tower. Portland's station is my favorite, architecturally and functionally."

Taking on Gresham Girth (or: Tigard Tubbiness, Beaverton Obesity, Hillsboro Heft)

A research paper by two Oregon State University professors is creating a classic chicken-egg question. Wait—on second thought maybe I shouldn’t use any food metaphors.

It has already been documented that people who live in compact urban areas that favor pedestrians, cyclists and mass transit as much as cars weigh on average about six pounds less. But Stephanie Bernell and Andrew Plantinga, the OSU researchers, argue that trying to transform suburbs so that the automobile is no longer the only viable means of travel is a lost cause because that’s what overweight people want.

If overweight people eschew the opportunity to, say, walk to the grocery store two blocks away instead of driving there, they have every right to do so. Moreover, we should accept them for who they are and not treat obesity as some kind of shameful loss of personal control. That said, the idea that sound urban planning principles are somehow not worth following because some people will not take up the incidental exercise opportunities inherent to these communities, is totally ridiculous.

Greater obesity is but one of countless examples that sprawling suburban communities are not sustainable in their current form. Now, if there are people in Beaverton or Gresham or other ‘burbs reading this who feel offended, I am sorry. It’s not that we in Portland expect all of you to sell your car and move to a highrise condo tower. There merely ought to be options other than having to drive everywhere.

South Park Block 5: A Bad Idea That Keeps On Going

Today’s Oregonian includes a report by Fred Leeson that the city has approved the development of the block just west of the Fox Tower, now a surface parking lot, into a below-ground parking garage with a park above.

It never feels completely right to argue against adding greenspace to the city, and certainly the surface parking lot needs to go. But as I've written before, the park itself is a bad idea that keeps surviving.

The area around the South Park Block 5, as it's currently known, already has plenty of urban park space. You’ve got Pioneer Courthouse Square one block to the northeast and the South Park Blocks one block to the south. Too much park space in one area and the people disburse everywhere, robbing the streetscape of vitality. If Pioneer Courthouse Square is Portland's living room, as people say, why are we putting a family room right next to it?

Why not put some more housing on the block? That’s what is really needed to stimulate downtown during non-business hours. I know there has already been housing added in the West End with Museum Place and there is more to come with John Carroll’s Eliot Tower and the Benson Tower. But I’d like to see a lot more, because that’s the way to make downtown Portland feel more like a 24-hour city. Parks always sound nice in theory, but the key to a healthy urban space is a balance of uses and functions. I'm afraid this park is tipping the scale.

What Will Become of theSolomon Courthouse?

Since its construction in 1933, the Gus Solomon US Courthouse at SW 6th and Main downtown has been one of Portland’s most compelling buildings. Designed by local architect Morris Whitehouse (who also co-designed Oregon's state capitol building), the neo-classical building is grand yet nimble in form and made from beautiful enduring materials such as sandstone, terra cotta, marble and bronze.

But since the Hatfield US Courthouse was completed in 1997, the Solomon building has sat mostly empty. Sure, the Regional Arts & Culture Council temporarily occupied a fraction of the 117,000 square foot building. And now the post office has relocated there from the Pioneer Courthouse to make way for judges’ parking spots. Multnomah County looked into relocating there from its shamefully-decaying courthouse a few blocks away, but the move was nixed by then County chair Bev Stein.

Considering the landmark status of this historic building, shouldn’t it be something more? Like, a lot more? The Solomon is still listed as part of the federal government’s roster of courthouses, but I’d like to see the building sold, remodeled and re-imagined. Even if there are commercial and/or government office tenants there, I think the courthouse needs to be more than office space. This building needs to become an active space in the city again. Could it be an arts facility of some kind? While it would be worrisome to imagine wholesale changes to the structure, the right architect could make the Solomon a very appealing hybrid of old and new elements.

It’s doors are not exactly padlocked shut, but in my mind the Solomon courthouse is essentially a dead space in an otherwise vibrant downtown. And that needs to change.

Women In Architecture

Recently, while preparing to write an upcoming article about the Portland Art Museum's new North Building expansion project, it occurred to me that the two biggest public building projects in our recent history are being led by women.

Ann Beha and her eponymous firm, Ann Beha Architects of Boston, are behind the art museum project, while Sarah Graham of the Zurich/Los Angeles firm Angelil/Graham/Pfenninger/Scholl, is the designer of the aerial tram between Marquam Hill and South Waterfront.

Those are two very big projects, both in terms of size/budget and significance to the city and culture. But at the same time, Beha and Graham are not necessarily a good barometer of the role women play in local architecture. Both operate firms from out of town (although Graham is a native Portlander), and when it comes to Portland firms in which female architects are principals or play an otherwise significant role, it's hard to count many.

Obviously there is Robertson, Merryman, Barnes Architects, which has long been referred to as the only firm in town whose principals are all women. RMB was involved with the Classical Chinese Garden as well as the Old Town Lofts. But stop for a moment and think: Other than in the interior design and planning professions, where women seem to occupy a somewhat greater percentage of movers and shakers, can you name very many women calling the shots at Portland firms?

A few names do come to mind, of course: sole practitioner Cynthia Bankey, Amy Miller-Dowell of the Portland Development Commission, Martha Peck Andrews FAIA of Andrews Architects, Fuji Shono of Browning Shono Architects, Diane Shiner at Mahlum Architects.

Still, for years, no matter what city in America, women have been a frustratingly tiny minority of licensed architects. That was supposed to be changing, with architecture schools turning out designers at nearly a 50/50 ratio of women to men. But when will that be reflected in the makeup of local firms?

Pace, Process and Product at PDC

An op-ed in today’s Oregonian by developer John Russell and Walsh Construction president Bob Walsh provides an antidote to the condemnation of Portland Development Commission pseudo-scandals over the past year:

“The mayor and the PDC leadership need to resolve to break the deadlock on vital Portland projects, including a headquarters hotel for conventions, the Midtown Block park project, the Lents urban renewal area, the Skidmore district malaise, Vanport Plaza and a Central Eastside vision, among many others. And the rest of us need to evaluate their successes on more than the lack of embarrassments. We need to demand progress and results.”

Not only am I glad to see the community getting over the bruhaha, but Walsh and Russel bring up an interesting question: Is the pace of PDC development projects fast enough? I’m not necessarily saying it isn’t. But recently a friend of mine who works for the city argued to me that Martin Luther King Boulevard has actually been stifled because there are a number of PDC-owned properties that have lagged for too long without being developed.

I can only assume people at PDC would retort that certain processes have to be followed in order to make sure community members and other stakeholders are able to help shape projects in their area. And that’s indeed true. But if you take a look at MLK, and then by comparison at North Mississippi and/or Alberta, private sector development on the latter two streets has happened a lot faster.

This is something I’ve alluded to in several recent posts, but I wonder if a future vision for PDC would be to make product the focus as much as process. It’s important to involve the community and really listen to their feedback, as Burnside Bridgehead reminded us. But whether it’s the pace of building projects or what they look like when they’re finished, getting good buildings done should be the ultimate goal.

Big Ideas for Small Lots

For the last several years, narrow-lot homes have filled a market need for affordable detached single-family housing (as opposed to apartments or condos) but have also incurred the wrath of neighborhood activists with bad design. Thus, last year the City of Portland held the Living Smart design competition.

Entries came from all over the world and were judged by a panel of design experts from Portland and beyond. At Commissioner Randy Leonard’s urging, the Bureau of Development Services also resolved to pre-approve a handful of plans in order to streamline the building process and make these superior designs more likely to be used by homeowners and developers.

It has now been a year since Living Smart judging began, and I wanted to find out what progress had been made to pre-approve winning plans. After talking with Anne Hill at the Development bureau, it seems the wheels are in motion but not moving exceptionally fast.

Currently the focus is getting pre-approved and permit-ready two competition entries that were chosen both by design competition judges and as People’s Choice Award winners. A fair amount of red tape has to be overcome first, including city council approval of zoning exemptions and contracts with the designers for mass production. It’s hoped that the first two plans will be ready for use by the end of this year.

One plan was designed by local architect Bryan Higgins, who works at SRG Partnership but designed the Living Smart entry on his own. Bryan’s house has the distinction of being the only one in the competition that has actually been built. “It is located in the Lair Hill neighborhood, one block south of the tram route, which is a historic district and had design guidelines and had to go through design review with the City of Portland, which results in its contextual look,” Higgins told me.

The other design, by Roxanna Vargas Greenan and Trent Greenan of Berkeley, is, like Higgins, of a traditional architectural style, although an extended sunshade in the front is a relatively uncommon move.

I sat in with the Living Smart jury and noticed a wide chasm between what the architects on the jury liked and what the lone developer on the jury preferred. The architects almost universally preferred more contemporary designs. And I don’t think this was simply for modernism’s sake. The tall, skinny geometry of these houses is such that a triangular, pitched roof, common to more traditional style, emphasizes their thinness. A flat roof, more common to the contemporary entries, often gave the houses a more pleasingly symmetrical look. It also makes for a great rooftop deck.

The first two houses chosen by the Development bureau for pre-approval are, while singled out by the design jury for their overall quality and viability as prototypes, are in a relative minority stylistically. Most of the design jury’s choices were more contemporary. While I take no issue whatsoever with the bureau’s choosing two more traditional designs as the first to be pre-approved, and there are a plethora of issues beyond the traditional-modern debate (garage, back yard, how they face the street), I hope more contemporary plans are ultimately pre-approved as well.

And regardless, narrow-lot homes are a housing type that has to be made to work. I don’t blame neighborhoods for complaining about homes that have heretofore sprouted throughout the city. They’re atrociously ugly. But if more Living Smart designs can be made available and attractively pre-approved to homeowners and developers, the narrow lot house can be a win-win option for Portland.

PDC's Headquarters Hotel:Will the Best Design Win?

The Portland Development Commission’s long-awaited headquarters hotel at the Oregon Convention Center is finally coming to life in the form of four developer finalists, each of which has hired its own architecture firm and provided a design proposal. And as with all PDC-sponsored project competitions, design quality is but one of many considerations that will go into determining the winning team.

Last week a nine-person evaluation committee recommended local real-estate company Ashforth Pacific and its partner, Dallas-based hotel developer Garfield Traub. The architect is Zimmer Gunsul Frasca of Portland, in partnership with RTKL International. This design seems the most compelling from the renderings, with one tower and a long glassy stretch along MLK Boulevard as part of a Westin chain hotel. But it’s hard to place too much stock in renderings alone.

Besides, as we know from the Burnside Bridgehead competition, the committee’s recommendation will not necessarily be adopted, and when the Commission does render its final decision, design will probably take a back door to financial considerations. So the door is presumably still wide open for the other three teams.

The evaluation committee’s second choice was developer Faulkner USA, who recently completed the new Hilton hotel and convention center in Vancouver, which was designed by Fletcher Farr Ayotte and is poised to become the first LEED-rated hotel in the country. For the headquarters hotel proposal, FFA has been paired with the giant San Francisco-based (but national-reaching) firm Gensler Architects. This design includes an L-shaped tower operated by Hyatt.

Another plan is offered by developer Hines Interests & Wright Hotels and designed by Seattle-based Callison Architecture. Their rendering shows four smaller towers but is harder to discern details from because it’s a rough drawing instead of a computer illustration.

Finally comes a proposal from developer Jones Lang LaSalle and designed by perhaps the nation’s most well-known and historic large firm: Skidmore Owings & Merrill. SOM used to have an office in Portland and was responsible for the US Bancorp Tower, Memorial Coliseum, and Autzen Stadium. Local firm Yost Grube Hall is also involved.

This hotel proposal occupies a different stretch of MLK, on the west side of the street and north of the Convention Center. (The other three, if I’m not mistaken, all chose the east side of the street directly across from the convention center.) This allows the hotel to be adjacent to the light rail station. The team is also proposing a residential tower on the PDC-owned land on the east side of MLK and a large trellise spanning the area between the hotel and the convention center.

PDC is accepting public testimony about the proposed hotel at three future meetings. The first is tomorrow (September 14) at Billy Reed’s restaurant (2808 NE MLK Boulevard) at 6:30PM. A future public meeting will be held from 8-10:00AM at the PDC offices (222 NW Fifth Avenue). The PDC board will pick a winner on October 12 after a 3-5:00PM meeting.

Although at first glance I like the ZGF/RTKL design best, with by the SOM/YGH offering a very close second, I think the more important testimony to offer PDC is that while the numbers of parking spaces and hotel rooms are important, as is the developer’s track record and the funding package, it’s the physical building that will ultimately endure. And therefore, design should be a priority. Although we very well may get a nice piece of architecture, I don’t think the current process guarantees that or even makes it a primary concern.

Architects Without Borders:Designing Relief

The Oregon chapter of Architects Without Borders, a nonprofit charity dedicated to providing architectural and planning services to people in need, was formed eight months ago in response to the Southeast Asian tsunami.  Now AWB will provide humanitarian aid to those affected by Hurricane Katrina. There are numerous ways for local architects to lend a hand.

First, there is the Immediate Response Team, which will assess damaged structures to determine their habitability and provide input on potential repairs.  AWB-Oregon is in the process of scheduling the required training seminars. If you are interested in being trained and/or mobilizing for a volunteer deployment of a week to the Gulf Coast, please contact [email protected].

Second, there are many displaced students, interns, and professional designers from the Gulf Coast who cannot attend classes or work. If your firm is interested in hiring temporary workers or can provide office space for a displaced architect, contact [email protected].

Third, AWB is turning its attention to the planned evacuee shelter at Portland's Washington High School. The news of whether the evacuees are coming to Portland or not seems to flip-flop every day, but if they do come, AWB hope to hold a charette to produce design ideas and a resource list for any shelter organizer to use. The organization will also procure and install items at this shelter.  Please indicate your interest by e-mailing [email protected].  In the meantime, AWB also suggests that architecture firms call suppliers and get donations in the works that can be mobilized quickly once the local shelters are activated.

Finally, there are long-term design efforts. AWB is working with the Department of Homeland Security, FEMA, Mercy Corps, the Oregon schools of architecture, Louisiana universities, and Gulf Coast area AIA and planning offices. AWB has also received a call to aid with establishing a campus for orphaned children.

Architects Without Borders is embarking on a much-needed effort, and anyone who can lend their expertise and/or their labor will be welcomed.

Traditional vs. Modern at the MLK/Fremont Corner

The northeast corner of Martin Luther King Boulevard and Fremont Street has sat vacant for far too long. Now, the Portland Development Commission is redeveloping the site as part of its Convention Center Urban Renewal Plan.

But exactly what kind of building will ultimately go there is a discussion in itself. I don’t mean the program per se – I think we can all agree some type of mixed use is warranted, with ground floor retail and either housing or offices above. I’m talking about the style of architecture best suited for this very visible corner.

As we know from the Burnside Bridgehead project, PDC usually issues a request for proposals and chooses a project team consisting of both a developer and architect. So while design is definitely a consideration, it’s not the only one.

The winning proposal was designed by LRS Architects and is of a neo-traditional style that fits easily into the surrounding fabric. According to PDC project coordinator Estee Segal, the selection committee—made up of neighborhood representatives, business leaders and others—preferred a more traditional design style that incorporated historic forms and materials. The committee also liked how the plan called for three small ground-floor retail spaces instead of one big retail space.

The runner-up proposal was designed by Emmons Architects and is, as the attached rendering indicates, of a much more contemporary style. This is a bold, colorful building that could have acted as a much more striking gateway to Northeast Portland. (It included one large restaurant space as the anchor retail tenant.)

I make no bones about the fact that I prefer Emmons’ design. But part of the reason I say that is to acknowledge my own bias. Unlike PDC, I don’t have to take into account what the neighborhood prefers or what development plan behind the design was the best. I have the luxury of being singularly focused on modern architectural style.

This project and its selection process speak to a larger disconnect between architects and design enthusiasts on one side, and the greater population at large on the other. Most neighborhoods seem to prefer architecture that blends in with their historic homes. I call that kind of style faux-historic and believe contemporary architecture is a more honest representative of our times. Is it entirely fair to say one side is right and the other is wrong? I’m not sure.

What do all of you think?

Glossy Home Mag Goes Green(For One Issue, Anyway)

This month's issue of Oregon Home, the monthly home decor magazine, includes a special supplement called Green Living. It's another sign that green design and construction are inching closer to the mainstream.

Among the frou-frou sustainable items celebrated in the front of the issue are: Lama Li Lokta Nepalise paper for wrapping presents; plyboo bamboo hardwood; dinner plates made from de-commissioned traffic lights; and a variety of low or zero-VOC paints. Elsewhere in the issue, a variety of green power options (solar, wind, biomass, geothermal) are broken down to two simple questions: what's in it for you, and what's in it for the planet?

In the feature section, homeowners show off not only their green homes, but how they came to embrace sustainability. Two allergy sufferers installed non-toxic surfaces and a green roof; a couple restored their farmhouse with a solar hot water heater; a couple of farmers installed a rainwater collection system to irrigate crops. Interestingly, in most cases the homeowners didn't know much about green building to begin with, but were influenced by their architect and/or builder.

As best I can tell, however, this is a once-a-year issue and completely separate from the normal Oregon Home magazine. It begs the question: Do we have to wait another year to find out about green residential design in this publication, or will such principles be incorporated into the magazine on a regular basis?

That, I think, is the big hurdle green design is yet to overcome with much of the media and, to an even greater extent, the public at large. Sustainability is indeed recognized as a significant presence, but it's often still treated as separate. This Oregon Home supplement is a good sign, but perhaps the ultimate achievement will be its obsolescence.

Labor Day at Washington-Monroe

At the theater inside Washington-Monroe High School in Southeast Portland, where a thousand evacuees from New Orleans will soon arrive, a prop from a school play still sits on stage. It’s an archway that reads, “Atlantic City”.

In between bursts of scrubbing walls and mopping floors at the school on Monday, as part of a Red Cross volunteer effort to prepare the school for arriving evacuees, I sometimes would take a moment to cruise the corridors of this abandoned school that has been frozen in time. The lockers, the chalkboards, the long cafeteria counter: it seemed such a shame this ideally located high school in Southeast sits empty. But now Washington-Monroe High School is alive again, if only because of a tragedy some three thousand miles away.

The cots have been set out with a blanket. The dust and grime have been properly scrubbed and bleached away. But I think there’s a lot that our city’s architects and builders could still do.

Outside the school is a massive athletic field. How about if some group of you out there who know their way around a hammer and a 2x4 construct a modest play area for the kids that will be spending their days in this foreign place with their toys floating into the Gulf?

This idea need not extend only to the building community, but I’d love to see some resourceful soul rent a bus, pull up to Washington-Monroe, and say, “Who wants to visit Mt. Hood?” Not only have these people lost their homes, but many are poor and have never seen much of the world outside New Orleans.

Or what if one of our movie theater operators moved into that old school auditorium, the one with the leftover prop, and started showing movies? Maybe you could start with “The Big Easy” for old time’s sake.

Honestly I’m not the type of person who’s always first to volunteer when crisis comes, but luckily I was dragged to Washington-Monroe yesterday by my gallant girlfriend. And if I can don rubber gloves and scrub for a couple hours, I think so many more can do something to.

For many of the 1,000 evacuees arriving this week, this will be the only time they ever see Portland. The volunteers at Washington-Monroe have already hand-painted signs there welcoming the evacuees to Portland. But I say we should take it a few more steps. We can’t make these people forget they’ve lost their homes, but we can put a bit of a twinkle in their eye when they someday look back on Portland and all that the people there showed them and did for them.

A Continuing Debate: The Future of the Central Eastside

An article by Yuxing Zheng in today's Oregonian brings up a topic that has been raised countless times over the years, although an ever more relevant one: the future of the Central Eastside Industrial District.

This time, the debate is not about the possible introduction of housing to the district, which was prompted in the past because of the gangbusters growth multifamily housing projects in the Pearl. Instead, Zheng's article portrays the attraction of creative industry business to what has heretofore been an industrial area.

The article focuses on two businesses, architecture firm Group Mackenzie and software developer Coaxis, who jointly bought the Holman building at the foot of the Hawthorne Bridge. The building is ideally situated, with downtown only about a 3-minute walk over the Willamette. And yet it was sold to the two firms by the Portland Development Commission for only $400,000. Good deals still about in the Central Eastside, and not just on parcels owned by PDC.

While I think the district is developing nicely without being cramped by housing, consider this: The community of longtime Central Eastside businesses has fought for years to maintain zoning that doesn't allow housing, except for along major arterials such Martin Luther King Boulevard, Grand Avenue and Burnside Street. But if the Central Eastside is becoming less and less an industrial sanctuary, does the need such a division of uses still apply? After all, the best urban places are ones where a variety of uses--offices, housing, open spaces--exist together.

I'm not necessarily advocating that the Central Eastside be re-zoned now to allow housing. But I wonder if this era, where old warehouses coexist near swanky restaurants like clarklewis and architecture firms like Group Mackenzie or Myhre Group (another CE resident), is bound to someday give way to an era where people finally do have the chance to live along the riverfront.