Portland Architecture

Courthouse on the Willamette

As reported in today's Oregonian by Dylan Rivera and Arthur Gregg Sulzberger, Multnomah County has all but decided on a location for a new courthouse: the county-owned block on the west side of the Hawthorne Bridge. Currently the parcel is bisected by the bridge's former offramp.

This would of course be a very prominent site for the couthouse, situated along the river and right beside an historic bridge. As with the potential Portland Art Museum project discussed recently, this courthouse is still a long way off. But like the Art Museum, Multnomah County will have a very important responsibility to build a public building that exhibits true design excellence.

In the case of Multnomah County, politics may dictate that the job go to a local designer. A large firm like Zimmer Gunsul Frasca will probably be considered, which designed the county's Justice Center jail that is located just two blocks away. Or of course a top designer like Brad Cloepfil should also be on the short list. Perhaps Thomas Hacker as well, whose warm modernism would work well with an important public building. But is the ill-fated Fire Station 1 project a strike against them?

But what the project arguably should have is an international design competition. Yet it's also very possible Multnomah County would shy away from this format because of the problems that ensued with the last two major projects that used a competition, Fire Station 1 and the OHSU aerial tram. Still, I'd like to see some top international architects be considered. Thom Mayne has just given Eugene an absolute gem with the Morse federal courthouse. Can you imagine a Mayne building adjacent to the Hawthorne Bridge? Or why not an architect from, say, Europe or Japan? Designed right, a courthouse on the river could become the center of every postcard of the Portland skyline.

I'd like to see the AIA or other members of the design community begin a dialogue with county leaders now about the future of the courthouse site, and really impart to Multnomah County leaders that we expect and demand design excellence here.

Regardless, though, it's great to see a first step being made in securing a site, because the existing Multnomah County couthouse is an absolutely disgraceful dump.

Office Cleanup: Possibility and Loss

This morning, it being the Monday after a long holiday weekend, instead of working I decided to tackle the giant pile of assorted papers, printouts, brochures, and other crap threatening to take over my desk. In so doing, I found three items related to local architecture which gave me pause.

First there was a pair of photocopied Oregon Historical Society photos of the St. Francis Hotel, the four story white brick building that stood at Southwest 11th Avenue and Main Street downtown before it was demolished in 2002. A new building of similar scale stands there now, designed by GBD Architects, and it seems nice enough - a fabric building. But back when the original St. Francis was still around, I wrote a Willamette Week article about it and had a special passion for it. The St. Francis was a nice old piece of the urban fabric, nothing exceptional like the similarly-fated Rosefriend Apartments but nevertheless attractive.

Of extra importance, though, was Gus Van Sant's classic movie Drugstore Cowboy having been filmed there. The St. Francis serves as the halfway house where Matt Dillon goes clean and William S. Burroughs aspires to do the opposite. There are a few other great Portland locations in that movie, incidentally, such as the Lovejoy Columns (in their original location beneath the now-replaced Lovejoy Bridge ramp) and the old drugstore at NW 21st and Glisan.

My winter cleanup also yielded a printed version of a powerpoint presentation from seminar I attended in New York three years ago about daylighting (the use of natural light to supplement or replace electric light by optimum window placement and other means). The hosts were Joel Loveland and G.Z. "Charlie" Brown, who head the Seattle and Portland BetterBricks daylighting/integrated design labs and also teach at UW and UO, respectively. At the time I was writing a New York Times article about daylighting. I also traveled to the Lighting Research Center in Rensselear, New York to learn about research into how natural light affects our biology and psychology. I've never thought about windows and natural light the same. You couldn't pay me enough to work in a basement or any other windowless room.

Finally I found a map of Portland designating seven of the Portland Development Commission's urban renewal areas: Downtown Waterfront, South Park Blocks, River District, Interstate, Oregon Convention Center, Central Eastside, and North Macadam. (Obviously Lents and the Airport renewal areas are missing.) Obviously these have not been a good couple of years for PDC on many fronts, from lawsuits to management to second-guessing on projects. But looking at the map with its individually color-coded renewal areas, my mind immediately began to fill in PDC related projects that exist there. I mean, after a while it really adds up. At the same time, I also imagined on the map much architecture and infrastructure that is yet to happen or now never will. One thing I think that has really hurt PDC is having a mayor like Vera Katz taking a strong leadership role with individual projects, especially in less well-to-do areas like Martin Luther King Boulevard. It's not too late for Tom Potter, and I like what he's trying to do with this big Vision PDX project, but he's at least late in showing that kind of line-item leadership.

What do these three miscellaneous bits of detritus from a writer's desk have in common? Well, the daylighting guide and the map to me are filled with possibility, and the St. Francis photos a relic of something lost. Two out of three isn't bad, but naturally it's that third item, the lost building, that registers most.

Loading Docks as PedestrianExperience (And More)

I was just going through some photos I took this summer of the Downtown Self Storage building in the Pearl District across from the Wieden + Kennedy building and the Louisa apartments. I'd been meaning to write a post about the building, just because I like it but also because I think by nature of real estate alone it's destined to be renovated as something more.

Meanwhile, though, another thought occurred about the loading docks that buildings like both the Self-Storage and W+K buildings have. Although one's nicely renovated and the other's still got a little bit of its original grit, they are both smack-dab in the Pearl District, which has largely been the focus (along with downtown) of Portland's stellar reputation in urban planning circles for creating pedestrian-friendly and mass transit-oriented developments. But the irony is, the loading docks on those buildings, at least on the 13th Street side, make for a terrible pedestrian experience.

If merely passing through heading south past there, one either has to climb the stairs up onto the loading dock and back down, or walk around on the street where the cars pass. Having just been at a conference on universal design a few weeks ago, it seems like a place with difficult access, especially for the disabled or elderly. Part of me wonders if it ought to be a pedestrian only street, but that seems a bit too much. But I think if the city weren't already so behind on paving projects, they should consider repaving blocks like this with some kind of cobblestone or similar material that emphasizes the street being shared by pedestrians and autos.

Still, the loading docks are an indelible part of the architecture of these buildings and I definitely wouldn't want them to disappear. Their lack of practicality post-renovation nevertheless helps tell the story of architectural transformation.

In the comments section of my last post on the McMenamins company and its historic renovations, I recently wrote something (responding to another comment) about how they are smart to celebrate and evoke the spirit that already exists in these buildings. If one's at the Kennedy School, the fact that this pub and theater used to be a school remains ever-present in the mind, and that's part of the fun. With their latest renovation of a funeral home over in the Killingsworth area, the history of the building will be the kind of shtick that helps attract people there.

And of course it's the same story in the Pearl District when we climb these loading docks. As we indulge in art galleries, boutiques and restaurants in that neighborhood, there's a nobility to the blue-collar work that happened in these places. That's also, incidentally, why the newer buildings that stylistically mimic these old ones don't impress me. But then again, maybe in sixty or seventy-five years these circa early 21st century buildings will in old age have earned a dignity and integrity I don't necessarily see in them now. The heart of the matter in this case, I think, is time: how the passage of years may deteriorate old buildings and threaten them with demolition, but it also gives them a richness of meaning, a sense of having lived, even if they have only stood motionless. Or even if, for the time being at least, they're a beautiful old brick building used largely for mere storage.

The McMenamins Vernacular

I'm writing this from Canon Beach amidst a short getaway, and on the drive out here on Highway 26 yesterday I happened to notice a couple signs for McMenamins pub franchises: one in Hillsboro, one in Forest Grove. And of course there are others in McMinnville, Corvallis, Gresham and numerous ones in Portland.

To be honest, I almost never go in McMenamins franchises. I've always found the food to be pretty mediocre, and the pseudo-hippy vibe isn't my thing. But I got thinking recently about how the collection of buildings the McMenamin brothers have renovated and transformed over the years may be the closest thing there is to quintessential Portland architecture. Whether it's the Kennedy School, the Baghdad, or the funeral home they're preparing for a new pub on Killingsworth, these renovated structures are infused with life and become vibrant community gathering spaces. And in many cases, they're in historic buildings that might otherwise see the wrecking ball. (Too bad they can't open a hotel or something in the Rosefriend Apartments.)

Incidentally, the other day I was on North Mississippi with a friend having coffee at Blue Gardenia and had a similar thought about the Rebuilding Center, with its patchwork quilt of used windows and siding. Here, as with the McMenamins buildings, there's a kind of blue-collar grit combined with a sense of playfulness that just seems very Portland.

So often we - and especially yours truly - get hung up on whatever the new buidings may be: condos, offices, maybe occasionally a public building. These little buildings in the neighborhoods and small towns are something maybe less impressive in terms of scale, but there is a life to them that a modern condo likely either will never have or will take a or will take a lot of time to aquire. You don't have to order a Terminator Stout or be into the hippy vibe to appreciate that the McMenamins are doing something very precious.

I just wish somebody with more midcentury modern tastes would follow their lead. How about somebody fixing up my favorite decaying empty building, the multicolored checkerboard on SW 10th Avenue?

Art Museum Buys More of Adjacent Block:A Signature Building to Follow?

As D.K. Row reported in today's Oregonian, the Portland Art Museum bought a building at 934 SW Salmon Street, which is roughly across the street from Southpark restaurant and next door to the Roosevelt Hotel, a recent condo conversion. The museum already owned land on that same block to the south, where there's a surface parking lot.

This action confirms what I remember hearing when the Mark Building re-opened last year: that eventually there probably will be another PAM building of some sort on that block. This be a tremendous opportunity for a new piece of architecture. Museums are arguably an architect's ultimate commission today in the way that churches once were. That commission should be handled very judiciously and anything but real excellence considered unacceptable. There's nothing wrong with renovating the Masonic Temple - it's a piece of Portland's history. But this time the museum really needs to bring its A-game. And with all due respect to local firms, I this absolutely has to be an international search for a truly superb architects. Here in town I think Allied Works would have to get major consideration and maybe a firm or two after that, but really all the while in the context of reaching out to people like Renzo Piano, Tadao Ando, Rem Koolhaas, Zaha Hadid and Herzog & DeMeuron. Piano and H&G would have been great choices for the Mark as well. Piano would have been designing next to a building by Pietro Belluschi, a fellow Italian, and H&G would have had the chance to re-imagine an old building like they did with Tate Modern. But who for this new project in, say, 2012?

It goes without saying, of course, that this is all hypothetical and even if the museum did build something it would be years down the road, maybe many years. But it's never too early to start thinking about it.

What excites me about a future PAM expansion is not just the work of architecture that could be commissioned, but also what it could potentially do for the Mark Building.

One of the things that frustrated me the most about the Mark was that it didn't do enough to become more transparent and full of natural light. I know you have to limit that to a significant degree in an art museum with fragile works, but as this former Masonic temple became a public building, a museum that needs broad support from its community, I think it was important for the architecture to become more glassy and open.

This could have been expressed beautifully in the floor-to-ceiling glass installed at the top of the building, but instead the glass was drywalled from the inside in order to create more exhibit space. I'd like to have seen them add an extra floor or two of glass, and used it as some kind of public space open all the time, like a cafe. And the glass pleat at the south end of the Mark Building clearly seems to act as an entrance for the Jubitz Center, yet it's not. In fact, you can't even exit from there. The path one is asked to take underground between the Belluschi building and the Jubitz Center is totally ridiculous. These are problems, however, that could easily be re-addressed either in tandem with or after a new building is built.

Regardless, I think this move to shore up more of the block by the art museum is exciting.

Mahlum's Providence NewbergMedical Center Goes For Gold

I've been meaning for a few months to write about the new Providence Newberg Medical Center by Mahlum Architects (and a host of partners). I think it's an impressive project, particularly in how it incorporates a host of sustainable materials and methods - not just to score a high LEED rating (it's poised to become the nation's first Gold-rated hospital), but to assist in healing by creating healthy, pleasant environments.

Providence Newberg follows some other noteworthy hospital designs at OHSU by Zimmer Gunsul Frasca, and a very nice job with Mary Bridge Children's Hospital (particularly in incorporating artwork) in Tacoma by Portland's Giffin Bolte Jurgens.

Hospitals are increasingly borrowing ideas from the hospitality industry and, crucially, studying what patients want and need. That can mean, for example: creating waiting areas devoted to different uses: children and families having room to be themselves on one end of the spectrum, and those seeking peace and quiet at the other.

It can also mean incorporating more natural light, which is proven statistically to help reduce recovery time. Hospitals traditionally alre also big energy hogs, so going green is a no-brainer just for the massive energy savings. Other sustainable features at Providence Newberg include onsite stormwater management, roof runoff detention, locally extracted and manufactured materials, occupant sensors and controls, daylighting throughout, and low VOC paints. The medical center’s emergency generators are owned and serviced by PG&E in exchange for the ability to utilize these systems to generate power for the grid during peak demand. Providence Newberg is also buying wind power exclusively.

The project is also handsome in a modest, dignified way. It's really just a series of interlocking boxes clad in brick and glass. I can think of numerous European hospitals more impressive in terms of scale, shape and materials, but this work by Mahlum also reminds me of the many simple yet elegant public buildings in Oregon and Washington by Opsis Architecture. In both cases, the buildings work first as machines, with the mechanical and electrical systems operating much more intelligently and efficiently. From there, a simple palette with a minimalist look makes for a work that should age well over time. Opsis's buildings for some of the community colleges are also very green, and ultimately they're a little bit prettier than Providence Newberg.

Having grown up in the next town over, McMinnville and visited Newberg all too frequently (it's the town that will be bipassed if proposed the Highway 99 bypass is ever built), I think Providence Newberg is a welcome addition to a small town with little new architecture of note besides a host of chain stores sprawling at the town's edges. They're just a few feet away from the bucolic open space seen through the windows of this photo, and I'm sure the greenery we see now will soon have an Applebee's there. If there's one complaint I have with this hospital, it's that it it takes part in this junky strip. I'd have rather seem Providence invest in the city's small downtown, which includes a succession of historic old buildings, including a city hall structure renovated very successfully by SERA Architects a few years back. It's the closest thing Newberg has to a pedestrian-friendly environment. That would have been good placemaking to go with the good architecture.

AIA Study Celebrates, ValidatesGreen Schools

A new study called "Greening America's Schools", commissioned by the American Institute of Architects (the local chapter of which is a Portland Architecture sponsor) and conducted by Capital E, a clean energy/green building consulting firm, suggests the benefits of schools built and designed with sustainable principals, methods and materials are even greater than previously believed, with improved test scores, better student health and lower operating costs. According to the report, sustainable schools save an average of $100,000 per year in operating costs.

The report analyzed 30 green schools built in 10 states from 2001-06, and concludes that the total financial benefits are as much 20 times greater than the initial cost. It includes energy and water savings, and improved student health and test scores. ""If all new school construction and school renovations were designed to be environmentally conscious starting today," the report goes on, "energy savings alone would total $20 billion over the next 10 years." Additional findings in "Greening America's Schools" include:

• An average of 33% less energy and 32% less water used than conventional schools
• A study of Chicago and Washington, D.C. schools found that better facilities can add 3 to 4 percentage points to a school's standardized test scores

The report also highlighted several existing green schools, and cited a whopping five different Oregon-based projects by Portland's BOORA Architects, more than any other firm. The projects are located in Clackamas, Monmouth, Canby, Newberg, and The Dalles.

I had the good fortune to visit three BOORA-designed sustainable schools a couple years ago for a Metropolis magazine feature. [Download LightFantastic.doc] I came away exceptionally impressed with the schools themselves, which, like the old Temptations song, seem to exhibit "sunshine on a cloudy day" thanks to all the daylighting. The designs are of course a team effort, but extra credit should go to BOORA principal Heinz Rudolf, FAIA. It's also worth noting that all of these projects included time spent at the BetterBricks daylighting lab at the University of Oregon's Portland center.

Laurie Olin on Portland

Today's Oregonian features Randy Gragg's interview with renowned landscape architect Laurie Olin (who by the way is a he). Olin is working on the block behind the Fox Tower that will have a park above underground parking. I'd have thought the design was already long completed, but Olin and his clients are still considering three schemes.

When this park was proposed as part of Tom Moyer and Neil Goldschmidt's campaign a few years ago to link the North and South Park Blocks, I thought it was a bad idea. The block is just a few feet away from Pioneer Courthouse Square, and at a certain point a city can have too much green space that diffuses, disperses and saps vibrancy from the public realm. But Olin makes a good point in the interview: We need some places to sit down, places that Courthouse Square doesn't have, places that have shelter from the rain but transparency to bring through the light. Hopefully his deisgn for the Moyer block will include just that.

Meanwhile, I wanted to pass on some of Olin's refreshingly straightforward opinions about Portland. Randy began to ask him about Portland's reputation, saying, 'We like to bask in the press we get about how spendid we are..." But Olin, if the transcript is accurate, actually broke in and said of our city, 'It is astonishing. It is different and better than most places.'

I also found it intriguing what Olin had to say about  "...residential buildings of a certain midrise scale that will wear pretty well. There's a common-sense modesty to the buildings: They're not postmodern or this or that -- just sensible. That produces cities that can endure economic cycles." It reminds me of some of the arguing done in the comments section of this site whenever the topic is modern buildings in historic neighborhoods. Residents are concerned about context and the buildings fitting in, which is understandable. But a lot of the better work is very simple contemporary architecture: boxes enlivened with a few angles and materials.

Another nice thing to read in the Olin interview was the reminder of just how revered some of Portland's landscape architecture is amongst an international audience of designers and design enthusiasts. The Forecourt Fountain in front of Keller Auditorium, for example, Olin called,  "A huge influence on even becoming a landscape architect." Olin also refers to legendary critic Ada Louis Huxtable in the New York  Times calling the Lawrence Halprin-designed Forecourt Fountain the greatest civic fountain since the Renaissance. "I knew she was right," Olin added.

Ladd Tower Approved, RosefriendApartments Fate Sealed

As Fred Leeson reported in today's Oregonian, the Portland Design Commission has given its approval to the proposed Ladd Tower project, which has been developed by Opus Northwest and John Carroll for the First Christian Church. The Ladd Tower, as many architecture enthusiasts know, would necessitate the demolition of the historic Rosefriend Apartments building at Southwest Broadway and Jefferson.

The Ladd Tower has gone through several design iterations by its architect, Ankrom Moisan, in order to win approval. The latest alteration includes a 27 foot setback on the Park Blocks side, thereby reducing the building's impact there. In all honesty, I'm no expert on the building itself and have little opinion about it. My focus from the beginning has been on the architectural victim of the Ladd Tower, the Rosefriend Apartments.

I attended one of the Design Commission hearings on the Tower project, and there were several people there who registered protest because of the Rosefriend demolion plans. But it was clear from the beginning that the Design Commission was not an arena for deciding that question. The Commission seems only set up to negotiate the details of architectural projects: the setbacks, the material choices, the number of awnings. If the Rosefriend was going to be preserved, it wasn't going to come from this group. There didn't seem to be anyone in city government with the power to stop this project for the reasons Rosefriend defenders wanted it stopped.

I certainly have no established record of being a crusader for historic preservation. I never did much to join in when the Friends of Ladd Carriage House were campaigning to save that building, a next-door neighbor to the Rosefriend, from being demolished in the original Ladd Tower plan. I wouldn't have wanted to see that building go, and the FOLCH should take pride in its being saved. But I have always loved the Rosefriend Apartments, which represent a piece of historic architecture that is still very much a working building for low-income residence. The Ladd Carriage house is important historically, but it's an anachronism for which occupants have to force-feed new building programs into places meant for horses. The Rosefriend has always done what it was built to do, and its elegant brick facade and light-filled curving form seem to transcend eras. And for all their good work, the Friends of Ladd Carriage House knowingly turned a blind eye to the Rosefriend in order to preseve the Carriage House.

I want to be clear that there's no animosity on my part towards Ankrom Moisan or their building per se. I've met with people like Steve Poland, the head principal working on this project, and come away with a favorable opinion. Poland realizes the Ladd Tower comes at an awful price.

But I don't have the same empathy for the First Christian Church. Whenever I walk down this stretch of Broadway or the South Park Blocks, I'll remember that this institution - one devoted to spirituality, community and morality - is responsible for demolishing an irreplaceable, beautiful piece of Portland's urban fabric. Winston Churchill famously said that we shape our buildings, and then our buildings shape us. Well, that's true for the buildings we demolish as well. I feel profoundly shaped by an ecclesiastical institution destroying one of the nicest buildings in the central city. In the spirit that parishioners celebrate on Sunday, I won't judge the First Christian Church leadership - but damned sure I won't forget, either.

Certainly it's true that retaining its location in the central city is an extra challenging one, with issues like parking and space for its activities hampered. But with that prominent position between Broadway, the city's most decorated avenue, and the South Park Blocks, downtown's most treasured greenspace, comes extra responsibility. Maybe building the Ladd Tower and underground parking (the impetus for this project) can only pencil out by reclaiming the land the Rosefriend has long occupied. Yet the church from the beginning has bristled at the notion of historic preservation being part of their responsibility to the city. I even read one quote from a pastor there saying his church was in the business of saving souls, not buildings. God help you, sir.

Moving forward, the only thing we can do is take a second look at Portland's historic preservation laws and pledge to not let this happen again...just like we do every time an old building comes down. Or some would argue that we ought to get over ourselves and accept that nothing is forever, even when its cast in brick and mortar. It's all true, I suppose, but I still can't help but feel as part of a generation of architectural enthusiasts in Portland, unofficially charged with preserving and upholding the architecture here, we've let Portland down.

Old Town Treasures

In today's Oregonian Fred Leeson reports on a renovation to the circa-1883 Bickel Block building at 33 NW Couch Street in which the original cast-iron facade has been restored after being covered with brick for several decades. Leeson continues:

The Bickel was completed near the end of the cast-iron era. From the 1850s to the late 1880s, cast iron was the material of choice for commercial and industrial buildings in major cities, starting in London. Columns, arches and architectural details were produced in large factories and shipped to building sites where the pieces were bolted together.

"It just happened that Portland was founded during that time," [architect/historian Bill] Hawkins says....Soon after the Bickel was finished, steel proved stronger than cast iron. Many of Portland's cast-iron buildings were lost to parking lots after World War II.

The Bickel is one of three buildings being renovated by the University of Oregon for its new Portland headquarters. Their presence in this under-utilized area, but one of some terrific historic buildings like the Bickel, is already paying dividends.

  Reading about the Bickel, I also remembered a post I'd planned to write a few months ago after having a series of meetings at an office in the Blagen Block, which is just a door or two down the street. Standing here along the MAX line, just a block away from the Waterfront, within a short walk of the Classical Chinese garden and a host of cool galleries as well as downtown, I found it stunning how dead it felt. Historic architecture, mass transit, greenspace, the core of the city, cultural amenitiies--what more could you want?

Holst's 12½

When we last visited Holst Architecture, the firm was neck-deep in a battle with the city's historic landmarks commission and a small vocal group of neighbors in North Mississippi over its mixed-use building for the Kurisu family. The jury is still out on that project (a new commission hearing is scheduled for later this month), but meanwhile I wanted to highlight another Holst project that, thankfully, seems to be moving forward without much controversy.

The 12 and a Half condominum project is a 13-unit building at the corner of Northeast 7th Avenue and Knott Street near Martin Luther King Boulevard. Similar in its floor plan to Rick Potestio's acclaimed Lair Condominiums, 12½ includes an interior courtyard for automobiles and a palette of natural wood and white masonry. The most striking aspect of the boxy exterior seems to be a series of wood-enclosed balconies on the second floor of the three-story structure that give 12½ the composition of a series of stacked blocks. It's a very simple building form, but as usual with Holst, that simplicity is offset and emboldened by rich, warm natural materials.

I also came across an article about 12½ in Building Design & Construction magazine describing how the project has come to be an admirably sustainable one - although it's disappointing to hear that apparently was not initially the case. According to the article by Libby Tucker (no relation), 12½ developer George Hale was reluctant at first to incorporate sustainable materials and methods when they were proposed by general contractor Barrs and Genauer Construction. "At first, I didn't want to hear it. I've shied away from it because it seems so extremist." Extremist? No offense to Mr. Hale, but that sounds kind of absurd to me. It reminds me of my Republican dad calling me a Communist because I vote Democrat. What's so extremist about building a better building that responds to its climate, lasts longer, is more efficient and more responsible to the social context of its material selections? I'd venture it's more extremist to build only with an eye on the bottom line. That said, one has to praise George Hale on a couple fronts: a willingness to learn from the experts he hired (Barrs and Genauer's campaign for a greener building was largely successful), and to hire such a talented building team in the first place. Mr. Hale might not be out front with sustainability, but he was very smart to hire such a talented architect and contractor.

Meanwhile, this project continues what is becoming a real rennaissance for Holst Architecture during this multi-year stretch. The Belmont Lofts are already a local architectural landmark - the Portland Tribune last week ranked it very high in a poll of the city's best architecture. The Clinton Condominiums, already under construction, are shaping up as a very worthy sequel, and a host of new projects on the boards and/or under construction seem to push the aesthetic envelope even further. And with the 937 condo tower in the Pearl District underway, the firm's presence will only continue to grow.

Some may complain that I've already written a lot about Holst, and that it's time to profile more of the other firms doing good work here. My anser? Agreed! Please consider this an invitation to all firms, but especially the small ones, to submit their work to me for posting on this site.

And congratulations to John Holmes, Jeff Stuhr and company on another job well done.