Learning From Sluseholmen

The May issue of Metropolis magazine profiles an interestingly collaborative new high density housing project in Copenhagen that got me thinking about how such a thing might happen in Portland.

Sluseholmen is a housing development along Copenhagen's harbor, which, as in many cities, is being converted from shipping container terminals to housing and other urban uses. It includes a 14.5-acre site crisscrossed with canals that form a grid of row-house and apartment blocks. The project, inspired by a similar effort in Amsterdam, is being overseen by a large Danish firm called Arkitema (not Dutch, as I originally wrote here), but with as many as 1,100 units to build and concerns about too much uniformity of style, the architect is commissioning 20 young Danish architects to design about 150 different facades for the individual units, which are tall, thin buildings based on Amsterdam canal houses but also not dissimilar to the narrow-lot or "skinny" houses increasingly being built in Portland and were the subject of the city's Living Smart competition.

Of course designing facades isn't really designing buildings, but there are a lot of things to like about the collaborative opportunity Sluseholmen provides. Here in Portland, we face a similar threat of bland ubiquity in neighborhoods where a lot of high-density housing is going up quickly. How we might employ a similar spirit to involve a lot more architects, and preferably younger ones in particular, in a meaningful way? I see this as the kind of thing that might give a developer or lead architect more work and headaches, but also a lot more unique product, which the market would have an appetite for if it was done well.

Comments

[Agustin Enriquez]

This is an idea that has been floated in Portland before. It was discussed with respect to South Waterfront. The idea was to have a variety of designs for the townhomes to give the blocks less of a monolithic quality. Logistically, this becomes a challenge because it increases the coordination work and can make hitting the schedule very difficult. (Of course there are other issues about control, design aesthetic, increased fees, etc. but all of those things can be worked through.)

In the end, the overall goal down there by the developers is exactly that idea--get a varied appearance to the area by having different architects touch each project. To date, there are 6 buildings under construction and numerous architects have played the part of design lead: 2 for GBD, 1 for TVA, 1 for THA, 1 for Busby Perkins + Will, and 1 for AMA.

[Ryan]

Arkitema is a Danish firm, not Dutch.

The firm behind the masterplan is Soeters Van Eldonk, which also masterplanned Java Island in Amsterdam's harbor - a similar project that received lots of press and includes varied facades designed by a number of Dutch firms.

[crow]

I like the idea very much. I think with a little bit of zoning overlay such as setbacks, hieght etc it could be very rich. This is not south waterfront though. I am afraid that even if they dressed up facades at the base of john ross, meriwhether or Atwater we would still see a homogenity! Each are interesting but rather than drawing a parallel to the facade idea which would have the richness, the SoWA examples are each separated by one or two simple characteristics and the rest just blurs together.

[zilfondel]

I would have rather seen the mixed-use projects in Mississippi and Belmont take on this technique of breaking the facade down into individualistic pieces, rather than literally breaking the linear streetwall down into separate components and destroying its linearity...

Remember the neighborhood opposition to the Mississippi Street Lofts? It seems that most architectural firms and developers in Portland are still uncreative in their solutions to problems.

This 'variegating the facades' is a fairly standard approach to building design in Europe...