Gragg on Gragg

Recently I conducted by email a short interview with Oregonian architecture critic Randy Gragg, who has been on leave since last fall at Harvard University as part of a Loeb Fellowship:

How has being away from Portland affected your feelings/thoughts about the city?

Amazingly, I haven’t thought too much about Portland. I was really ready for a change. With the shift in city hall politically, an era came to an end. And whatever era is next hasn’t really formed – at least beyond a few new players grandstanding on the idea that the old era sucked. So it was the perfect time to leave. It’s clearly going to take a while for the city’s leadership – public and private – to recognize any kind of legacy it wants to build.

As well, I’d say my feelings about the placce have been influenced by so many people out here who have constructed a certain mythology about Portland and Oregon. They imagine us as some kind of planning nirvana. They have a hard time, for instance, believing we passed Measure 37. “Is there any hope for land use planning in Oregon now?” I was recently asked by Alan Altschuler, Harvard’s Design School dean. We are held up as the idol of “Smart Growth” or the evil of the property rights crowd. These views are so pervasive, we’ve come to believe them ourselves. We’ve forgotten the very specific historic conditions that led to the land use program that are in line but also against both those ideologies. The seeds of Measure 37 and things like Portland’s thriving farmers’ markets were both fertilized in Senate Bill 100. Now the economics of farming and forestry has changed. The rise of the suburbs shifted the sociology and politics. And, so we have a hybrid system in which Oregon’s unique historic roots have been shaped by national and international economics. Seeing how Massachussetts has developed WITHOUT our planning system has made so many things clearer. For Oregon, Portland and the Willamette Valley, the choices will be either to continue blending into the American landscape or finding a way to renew and update our more distinct historical impulses so that we  – and the next generation – can continue to enjoy what makes the place so great. A sense of history and of possibility has always played out in the Oregon landscape. For Oregon to be Oregon, you can’t have one without the other.

What have been the best highlights of the Loeb fellowship and Harvard?

The Loeb is just a damned fine deal. You can do whatever you want for a year, situated at one of the world’s great universities. It’s also overwhelming, as many have said, “like trying to take a sip of water out of a fire hose.” Then there’s the scary part: leaving. As the fellowship’s leadership likes to say, “You’re only requirement in this program comes after you are done: to go out and change the world.”

My own exploration here really has been about fundamentals. I’ve taken courses in landscape ecology and landscape history, in religion and public policy, food policy and, strangest of all, “mobilizing group resources.” This latter course tossed 120 Kennedy School of Government students from about 20 countries into a room with a psychiatrist as a facilitator where we then tried to teach ourselves about “leadership.” It was a complete headtrip. I mean, many of these people openly talk about someday running their countries. Mentally and emotionally, it dominated my entire first semester. But I learned a lot, some of which I might have preferred not to.

Of course, I experienced a lot of architectural ideas. But as one Portland architect once described me (in a good observation intended as a deep jab), I’m “more of a sociologist with a fondness for the built environment.” (So, too, I would argue, are the designers of the most enduring architecture, but that’s another discussion.) So the Graduate School of Design was not the center of my experience.

What are your initial impressions of some of the projects finishing up while you've been away, like the art museum, Eliot Tower, or the first two South Waterfront projects?

Well, don’t want to tip the hand too much on future articles I might write, but I’ll say the museum’s north wing turned out better than I expected (particularly on the cheapskate budget and breakneck timeline), even with too many dead-ends in the gallery circulation and one inexcusable missed opportunity to create one of the city’s greatest rooms. The Eliot is better than expected: a beefy boy of building who thankfully found a very good tailor for his suit. So too, The Meriwether – 2,000 square feet fatter than the typical floor plates of the “Vancouver pin towers” it was supposedly modeled on, but not so bad. Let’s see how the equally husky but taller John Ross looks and, then, the slab tower by Hacker going up after that. But, hey, for capitalist realist architecture, we could do a lot worse. You oughta see the condo piles they build in Boston!

How do you like Boston and Cambridge?

Other than getting lost all the time –or maybe because of it – I like both a lot. Boston is the only downtown in the country that has more corners than Portland. But they aren’t on a grid. It’s more like an Islamic city. And so moving through it is a constant discovery as you rarely travel the same way twice. Honestly, I can still get lost going from my apartment to the Harvard Yard if I don’t take my usual route.

I also realize how much I miss being in a city with a major university. Smart, weird people create audiences for smart, weird things. I’m neither that smart nor that weird, but I like being around people who are because I constantly learn from the extremes of their interests. An example: music. The symphony here is amazing. I’d never heard an entire evening of 20th century symphonic music before. The jazz scene is amazing, not so much bop, as bop is bop, but big band. All these Berkeley players teaming up to play one another’s compositions. (They do covers of Julius Hemphill for crissakes!) It’s a rich synthesis of African and Anglo-European traditions. I’m going to need music detox when I leave here.

I’m also really going to miss cops who could care less about bicyclists breaking rules. I won’t miss honking drivers. I’ve seen pregnant women walking in crosswalks here get charged by cars driven BY women. Bostonians are easily the friendliest most giving strangers I’ve ever encountered in an American city, but behind the wheel, they grow fangs, horns and tails.

Architecturally, I feel like I’m in an older, larger version of Portland – capital-C conservative. (Lovejoy’s and Pettygrove’s coinflip to name Portland rightfully should have fell the other way.) But in the fall, the city will get a jolt in its self-image with the new Institute for Contemporary Art. I’m anxious to see in 10 years or so what it will have meant for both architecture and contemporary art. It’s a significant raising of the bar that Portland is nowhere near taking. I hope it works out. But my little taste of the city leaves me imagining many ways in which it might not.

Comments

[Carlo]

I found this all very interesting because I lived in Boston for quite a few years. Since moving to Portland last year, I've come to think, like Randy, that the two cities have a lot of similarities -- though to be fair, he should mention one big minus about Boston: It costs about twice as much to live there than in Portland. When I was there, almost everyone I knew either lived right in the heart of the city (and spent virtually every penny they earned on housing) or lived an hour and a half outside the city (and spent 3 to 4 hours each day commuting to and from work).

Although this is a tangential point, I'd like to quibble a bit with Randy about the music. From what I hear he's right about the Boston Symphony these days, but that's due entirely to the recent arrival of James Levine as its new music director; when I was there it was pretty stodgy. As for Portland, probably the thing that gave me my single most pleasant surprise upon moving here was how good the Oregon Symphony sounded and how innovative its programming is. He should give them another try when he gets back.

Bottom line: Boston is unquestionably one of America's great cities -- but Portland stacks up pretty well in comparison.

[Valarie]

I love his point about not having a major university in Portland. I've never thought about the effects that has on the environment, but he's right. It's funny this hasn't come up more, since there have been so many discussions about attracting the "creative class" to Portland.

[Brian]

A minor note- The "Berkeley" that Gragg refers to is likely the renowned "Berklee" College of Music in Boston, not the city adjoining Oakland across the bay from San Francisco.

[Ray Whitford]

The point about Portlands lack of a university (compared UofW up North, UofC at Berkeley down South, or Harvard in Boston) is a point that Portland and Oregon didn't and won't solve without one of two things happening.

OSU or OofU will need to consider Portland a co-equal campus (they won't and in my opinion shouldn't) or PSU and OHSU have to look at a slow process of creating a framework that supports their unique capacities but places them under one entity.

The second way will also be tough but is more doable then the first option. The State Rep. or Senator who mentioned this idea last year was on the right track.

Ray