Courtyard Competition Winners and Family Housing in the Central City

On Wednesday night at 7PM, winners of the Portland Courtyard Housing Design Competition will to be announced to the public from city offices at 1900 SW Fourth Avenue, Room 2500A. The announcement follows a day of deliberation by the competition's jury panel. The competition has attracted over 250 submittals from around the country and the world. As the press release goes on to explain...

"Participants were invited to submit innovative designs demonstrating how higher-density courtyard housing can serve as an attractive option for families with children, while also contributing to environmental sustainability, providing an affordable housing option, and responding to neighborhood context.

The competition is part of city efforts to foster design excellence and the creation of new family-friendly housing in Portland's neighborhoods.  During the announcement event, the winning designs will be on display and competition jurors will be on hand to comment on the competition and their choices.  Following this event, the public will be invited to choose their favorite designs as part of "People's Choice" balloting to take place later in November and in December."

Having been in Beijing the week before last, I was interested in that country's traditional hutong housing, which is similarly inwardly oriented, only without much of a real open-space courtyard - just a well, really. But courtyard housing has a rich and very diverse history in places like the Middle East as well as in Europe.

What's interesting about Portland having a go at courtyard housing is that ours is a city that's decidedly oriented to the pedestrian, which in theory can be the opposite of courtyard oriented architecture. Obviously it doesn't have to be one or the other, though, and that's why it will be cool to see what the winners come up with - particularly when you remember that this stuff should ultimately get built here.

Meanwhile, on Thursday from 6-8pm at the Ecotrust Conference Center  (721 NW Ninth Avenue, Second Floor), a lecture and discussion will focus on how Portland continue to provide new housing options for families as the city continues to grow and densify, and how can this be done in ways that are environmentally sustainable.  Presentations will be made by two authorities on child-friendly housing and sustainable community design, Clare Cooper Marcus and Cynthia Girling, who served as jurors for the Portland Courtyard Housing Design Competition. Clare Cooper Marcus is co-author of Housing as if People Mattered and People Places: Design Guidelines for Urban Open Spaces. Cynthia Girling is co-author of Skinny Streets and Green Neighborhoods: Design for Environment and Community and Yard, Street, Park: The Design of Suburban Open Space.

Sounds like these two events go together. Courtyard housing is an ideal way to densify while still maintaining open space for children and families to play or (if your family was like mine) escape each other now and then. Just remember to curb your dog, people.

I recently read a statistic looking at Portland's number of persons per square mile (4,199.17 according to Wikipedia) versus other American cities like Boston (12,327) and Chicago (12,470), which is to say nothing, of course, of New York (27,083). Portland has such a long way to go in terms of real densification. And if the figures are correct, with millions moving here in the decades ahead, I don't think any of us have really completely wrapped our heads around how much the fabric of the city is going to change. But, considering how few hutongs are really left in Beijing when they once comprised virtually its entire fabric, perhaps such things are largely inevitable.

Comments

[Nikos]

"..the city is oriented to the pedestrian!" Brian,you win the double entendre prize of the year!

[el dorado architects]

if anyone attended last night's event, it would be greatly appreciated if they would post the winners.

thanks so much.

[Dave]

I second Nikos . . . the competition website says only "Competition winners will be posted in late November."

[Dave]

Er, I second "el dorado architects". It's early in the morning. ;-)

[el dorado architects]

i know, i know. we're on central time, so we've been up awhile.

[bzar]

winners for inner site

1st- 112
2nd- 175
3rd- 98
4th- 48

can someone explain to me how driveways and/or parking lots would ever be considered desirable play areas or "courtyards" for children? i have been in these hard-scaped spaces and find them as harsh and cold as their surfaces. now lets add the potentional for vehicular circulation as well as "temporary parking" for the families second car and what i imagine you will find over time is basically and alley. the winners were nicely rendered and well planned but the competition itself and it's requirement to park a car per unit is quite un-portland in my opinion.

[Yannick]

Hi bzar,
How do you know this?
What about eastern site?
Thanks

[el dorado architects]

bzar,
thanks for the info. are there names with the numbers yet?

[zz]

You can check out all the entries with their numbers in the competition website, www.courtyardhousing.org > Entries and Winners > See the entries.

[MT]

Check out this site for actual winner names...
http://www.djcoregon.com/articleDetail.htm/2007/11/15/Winnah-winnah

[Alison Ryan]

The eastern site first place is number 012, the second place is 043, the third place is 004 and the HM is 003.

I had to do some serious (highly unscientific) photo matching to figure that out, too.

[el dorado architects]

thanks to all of you for your assistance. don't forget to vote for your favorites at www.courtyardhousing.org
my personal favorite for the inner site is 165. shamelessly politicking.

[John]

I'm sorry but these designs are terrible.

The winning inner site is a cul-de-sac. Its as if a suburban subdivision was plunked down on a tiny inner city lot. The cul-de-sac is lined with garage doors and as bzar rightly mentioned above how is this hard top street a desirable play area for children? The kids will have to get out of the way as residents drive into their garage. Very few of these designs are Courtyard Housing. Courtyard Housing is a shared central garden lined with residental units.

This ended up a complete waste of money and time for the Planning Bureau.

[kolas]

i agree with john, the first place for the inner site became more about the CAR access than the people. The selected winners lack innovation or historic idea of what courtyard housing is all about..car is secondary to how we accomodate the act of communing while maintaining a sense of privacy

[archis124]

Some of the winning designs are so traditional that one has to wonder if this can be the architectural response to 21st century challenges. Competitions should be about exploration and innovation. Why hold a competition in the first place if pushing the envelope is not encouraged?

[ben]

you guys should have seen this coming after the skinny house debacle.

[william]

Big deal a lot of the designs aren't "innovative." What should be most important is how well the designs solve the programmatic requirements of the competition. If in order to accomplish this, a solution is a new "innovative" design then great, if not, thats fine in my book also. There's a lot of solutions to this problem that can utilize existing proven models which can probably be even more successful.
I don't understand this preoccupation architects have for aesthetic "innovation" being the only important thing in a design.

[archis124]

I agree that proven models can be used but do the buildings need to look as if they were built a hundred years ago (with cheaper details of course)?
I am sure a lot of people may like the idea of a "historic" look, but for that kind of result there is no need for a competition. Competitions have always been a tool to reflect contemporary advancement and thought, otherwise a regular RFP will do.

[william]

I'm not talking about the aesthetic "look" but the function and layout, particularly how it deals with handling the automobile and addressing the street.

[Matt]

Thank you JOHN.

I was impressed on how many people entered the competition and excited to see the end results, that is until they actually came out. Most of the ideas were text book and simple with flashy facade changes. Very few actually took the concept of the "courtyard" into consideration.

"Big deal a lot of the designs aren't "innovative.""

ARE YOU KIDDING ME? This kind of comment is what is killing the profession of architects and designers. Let's get a concept, a big idea, and then work with the two hand in hand rather than settle for "its all been done before".

This competition seemed as if was being judged by developers with with dump trucks ready to go, rather than a open minded design professionals.

But what do I know, I sell shoes.

[worya_zhoulideh]

i am iranian architecture

[chris]

I am a filipino architecture student.. hi there!!!