Courtyard Design By SERA, RosefriendApartments Homage By Opus?

Recently, by way of Design Advice Review with the city, SERA Architects unveiled preliminary designs for a new six-story apartment project in Northwest Portland just off Couch Park.

Park Apartments, as it's to be called, is a half block site on 19th between Glisan and Hoyt with six stories including retail on the ground floor and underground parking, and roughly 95 market-rate apartments. Because this site requires Type 3 design review before the Historic Landmarks Commission, SERA's Kurt Schultz says they have been meeting with neighborhood leaders "...for several months to figure out a concept for the site that takes advantage of its unique location fronting the park and meets all the historic criteria of the Alphabet Historic District."

The resulting idea was to bring back the courtyard apartment typology, best characterized by the now-demolished Rosefriend Apartments as well as the similar Ambassador Apartments downtown near the Broadway Metroplex and Gus Solomon courthouse. Schultz also cites numerous other buildings from the first three decades of the 20th Century, such as the Biltmore or Campbell Court. 

"We think it’s a great prototype for this location to allow the park to cross 19th avenue into our project, and provide an amenity that is gracious for the residents as well as for the urban/pedestrian passerby," he says. "We have been also looking at proportions of the early 20th century apartment blocks to get clues on scale and massing.  Our intention is to build a modern interpretation of the courtyard apartment using proportions found in the alphabet district but not attempting a faux historic structure in its details."

The attached images were presented to the Landmarks Commission at an early design advice request last week and, Schultz says, were well received. He also cautions that these are early designs that SERA expects to develop based on further input, going back for a second DAR in December or January.

I love the idea of bringing back the courtyard, which was one of the best things about the Rosefriend Apartments. And it's of course ironic that the developer here is none other than Opus Northwest, developer of the Ladd Tower that hastened the Rosefriend's demolition. Would it be going too far to call doing a similarly-shaped and proportioned building a kind of architectural penance?

Regardless, I think the rightness of the courtyard form wins out. I'd rather have windows from two or more sides than marble countertops in long, thin unit with one wall of glass any time. In terms of the look, the forging of modern lines with a neighborhood-friendly feel and form, it seems too early to tell based on a couple sketches. That said, I like the fact that Schultz and SERA seek a modern building and to avoid historicism. What might that mean in terms of materials? Maybe some of you architects would like to make a few suggestions.

UPDATE 8-28-07: I was just looking at the rendering again today of the apartments, and the form reminded me a little bit of a totally different building type in a far-away city that I visited earlier this year: the Copenhagen Opera House, designed by Henning Larsen and engineer Bruno Happold. It doesn't have a courtyard and it's not apartments, but the building is not dissimilarly sized (short and wide) and has a big wide roof to allow for lots of glass on the facade. What about SERA extending the flat roof we see in the rendering and using the extra shading to provide more glass - would code allow for such a thing?

Comments

[zhouse]

While the proof will be in the product, the process at least refreshingly combines modern rationality with a sensistivity to context and precedent - nice to experience the vibe of "the past has value."

My assumption is that the courtyard form evolved to get air and sunlight into larger early-20th-century buildings - form follows function.

Today it seems to be more about light and less about air - will the form hold its integrity when its functional grounding shifts? Can the windows and wall penetrations create a sense that the building can breathe, or will it still feel all sealed up like modern jewel box?

I personally have always loved the glass-enclosed sun porches on the nearby St. Francis at 21st and Hoyt - they just seem give that building (with its sliver of a courtyard) a unique magic...

[Nikos]

Let's see, a daring Opera House design and the Danish people spending money on risky and imaginative architecture vs Portland's design reviewed to death, Rosefriend aping, ho hum apartment building. I hope the materials used make it interesting and appealing (I agree with more glass and windows that open to the mild climate of the area) but as a design it is nothing exciting.

On a (un) related note, we can all envy cities that build new Opera Houses. What, they run out of old theaters to renovate in Copenhagen, have they no "movie palaces" to preserve? How strange.

[ADH]

I beleive that would be BURO Happold.

[JJ]

This is exactly the type of building I have been craving in Portland for some time because really I think we could really use some quality alternatives to the dominant glass and minimal aesthetic in almost all of the new mixed use buildings and towers.

By quality I mean a building based on traditional architecture principles (such as using harmonious proportions, multiple levels of scales from tiny details to large levels like the overall building mass, a sense of symmetry, lining up elements of the building, an overall sense of order, and even using ornament to some degree) and not poorly executed past time period historic styles used as an image pasted on the side of a structure. I like what I hear from the architects but as far as the rendering goes though its not yet doing it for me. I also like that they want it to be traditional yet still fresh. If the building is on the whole treated and designed as a traditional building I think the architects will be successful. After all traditional architecture is not about creating new forms, it is about refining existing proven forms and designs and creating a relatively quiet yet attractive fabric building. If it is treated as a modernist building with traditional imagery affixed on as is the case with many of the new more "traditional" or postmodern looking buildings in town (Elizabeth, Westerly for example) then I dont think it will be all that successful.

I wish SERA a lot of luck with this project.

I also really hope that the architects use quality wood windows with panes and not those cheap PVC ones.

[Jeff Joslin]

For the record: I'm not "JJ". I never weigh in anonymously. As I'm formally involved in the review of this project and regularly participate here, thought I'd clarify.

Jeff Joslin
Land Use Manager: Urban Design, Design Review, Landmarks Review
City of Portland