Portland Architecture

Considering the State Renewables Credit

The State of Oregon's increased tax breaks for renewable energy businesses has been a subject of debate in and out of Salem lately because of a proposal to double the already sizable credit. As reported by several outlets, The Oregon House Revenue Committee has voted to forward an energy tax credit proposal for the full Legislature's consideration next month.

More than 170 projects worth around $200 million won preliminary go-ahead for renewable energy tax credits last year. Tax credits were boosted to as much as 50 percent of a project's cost. PPM energy alone received $33 million in tax credits for its Klondike III wind farm in eastern Sherman County. That's a lot of money that could have been allocated for schools, health care, and other budget strapped coffers.

Being a political lefty, I also don't always feel great about the huge tax breaks that are routinely used to attract companies. Why should they get it so easy when individual households and our essential institutions pay the price?

Still, I'm reminded of the examples in Germany, Denmark and other European countries that have attracted many millions of dollars in economic benefit thanks to the large number of companies in solar power, wind and various other alternative energy companies. If you remove it, they will come. And it's already begun here in Oregon, too.

Ideally, there would be as much tax revenue as ever being generated for Oregon, just coming at a lower rate from a wider volume of sources. It makes total sense. I just feel a little funny because it sounds a lot like the argument made for trickle-down, Reaganomics, the Laffer Curve and all that stuff from the 80s, which is not something I'm philosophically not onboard with, despite growing up in a household where it was gospel.

"The truth is Oregon's tax breaks for renewable energy businesses are working," an editorial from last Friday's Oregonian read. "How else to explain the glut of companies seeking these benefits?" Renewable energy businesses also tend to create family-wage jobs, the editors also wrote. "By accepting lower than possible tax revenues today, Oregon is investing in its place in tomorrow's greener economy."

In the end I find it hard to argue with the green energy tax credits. I'm not sure yet if it's changing times or a special case. How do the rest of you feel?

Cloepfil Speaks

This Wednesday at noon, the University of Oregon's Portland architecture program continues its winter lecture series with a presentation by architect Brad Cloepfil of Allied Works.

As you probably already know, Allied has produced a host of big, acclaimed, signature architecture projects around the US: the Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis, the Museum of Art & Design on Columbus Circle in New York, the Seattle Art Museum expansion, and of course Portland's fabulous Wieden + Kennedy 2281 Glisan buildings.

On the flyer I received about the lecture, there was this quote from Aaron Betsky, who heads the Netherlands Architecture Institute in Rotterdam and helped select Cloepfil for the Museum of Art & Design job:

“Cloepfil sees his work as continually pushing and pulling at the expectations we build based on our experiences. He hopes that his buildings do not so much ground us, as make us aware both of our own need for ground and the instability of such a notional center to our existence.”

The lecture will be at the UO Portland Center, SW Second and Yamhill, first floor.

It's been five years since I profiled Brad in the New York Times, so that also makes it feels like a moment of reflection. In that time, the firm has gained another big project, an art museum at the University of Michigan. It's a broken record to chime about how Allied hasn't received much recent work in Portland, save for two spec homes being done with builder extraordinaire Don Tankersley and W+K's John Jay, and some PNCA master planning. But whether it's in Portland or out, I'm excited to see what else the firm comes up with.

New Landmarks Commission Officers Elected With Little Debate

As Fred Leeson reported in a small blurb from today's Oregonian, last week the Portland Historic Landmarks Commission elected its new officers.

Member Carrie Richter nominated fellow member and developer Art DeMuro as chairman, and DeMuro nominated Richter as vice chairwoman. They won approval in a unanimous vote.

For a commission that has perhaps been the most controversial entity in Portland design and construction, I was surprised to see that this vote happened with so little advance notice and public participation.

For all I know, the City probably went through due diligence to give public notice of the meeting. But given that the Historic Landmarks Commission has made some very controversial decisions all over the city, particularly in the last year--the Apple store in Northwest, the Kurisu project on Mississippi, various small projects throughout the neighborhoods--I'd have expected at least some talk about possibly changing the Commission's makeup or at least having some kind of roundtable on its mission and process.

This is not an attempt to badmouth the current Landmarks commission membership. I don't know Carrie Richter, but I've interviewed Art DeMuro before, and found him to be very nice and reasonable. Even so, there increasingly seems to be a disconnect or at least a lack of consensus in Portland on the tenets that comprise the Landmarks Commission's efforts.

How about some kind of public forum to take a new look at the group and its mission?

TVA Unveils Revised UO Arena Design

Bob Thompson and his firm, TVA Architects, have released a new design for the University of Oregon's arena that is more transparent -- arguably making it, to the project's benefit, a little more like Portland's Memorial Colisseum and less like the Rose Garden.

I was a fan of the previous, more boxy design, but this clearly seems to be a step up. There will be a lot more light entering the arena now, especially at the perimeter. A building of this massive scale needs to be transparent, I think, to avoid the common problem of being a closed-off, monolithic presence on the landscape.

One of the new features beside the glassier exerior and more curving form, according to a report in today's Oregonian, will be a wooden seating bowl that harkens back to Duck fans' beloved Mac Court. This would also add some greater natural materiality to TVA's work, which is always very sleek and modern.

Naturally there are still a lot of questions to be answered, from financing for the arena to priorities at the UO given that overall academic performance there is in decline. There may also be further opportunities to integrate the building with its environment. That said, as both a Duck fan and design enthusiast I'm overall very pleased.

Originally I had several other images to show of the arena design, but UO is being silly about releasing them and has pulled TVA's reigns.  When the university eases off its paranoia and takes a chill pill, I'll try to post some more.

Seed Architecture Ready to Sprout

Along with major trends like sustainability and condo building, the rise of more studio-sized firms in Portland over the last several years has been encouraging.

One of the latest to take root is Seed Architecture, which is headed by Darin Dougherty, whose resume includes two other first-rate local firms, Skylab Design and Architropolis. His business partner Greg is a contractor, so Seed anticipates being able to handle both design and construction, a very enticing package. As if that weren’t enough, Greg also has founded on the side a sustainable surface (counter tops, tile) manufacturing company, Fuez.

Seed also is one of the few smaller firms you’ll find that’s invested in BIM software, which allows them to design with real-time budget information. “A big issue I often ran into working for other architects was designing way past a budget,” Dougherty says. “Some times double or triple even. Being able to see your budget change every time you change design is a powerful tool.”

Although the company is only a few months old (the house at left is one of their first projects), they currently are working on an office remodel and, on a larger scale, a modern development of 12 single family homes located in Beaverton. If this winds up happening, it ought to be huge for Seed—and Beaverton.  The firm also owns on North Greeley near the Adidas campus, which they’re developing into a sustainable mixed-use home for Seed’s office and other tenants. And Seed may be involved with building a housing development in St. Johns involving shipping containers.

The firm has also been to design and build a project on a rural twenty-acre site in Anacordes, Washington shooting for net-zero or off-grid energy use. That would be significantly beyond LEED platinum. They also had an entry in the city's recent courtyard housing competition, seen at left.

With a little luck, the firm will soon outgrow its own name. But then again, Mature Plant Architecture doesn’t quite have the same ring to it.

More High Density Growing Pains: Award Winning Up-And-Comer Works Partnership's Latest Critized as 'Brutal'

An article by Tyler Graf in yesterday's Daily Journal of Commerce highlights a seemingly controversial new condo project near Montgomery Park at NW Upshur and 26th.

The site occupies an entire block in this borderline zone (along with the adjacent Vaughn Street) between residential and industrial areas. It is to be six stories in a neighborhood with mostly smaller two and three-story ones. In the DJC article, neighbors from the La Torre condominiums next door to the project, including Academy Award winning animator Joan Gratz, express worry and even a little hostility. She even is quoted as saying, "It makes you wonder what (architecture) school they went to," and complains that the development would "block views, create street congestion and tower over the sleepy hillside."

I'd paraphrase that as another day in the more or less healthy development of a city.

One thing I didn't get from the DJC article is the important context that the firm designing this project is an especially good one: Works Partnership. They've won multiple AIA awards over the last couple of years, and their hand has been all over the Central Eastside with renovations of the East Bank Commerce Center and the more recently rehabbed B&O Warehouse. Their B-Side6 office building planned for lower East Burnside is turning lots of heads for its powerfully bold look. They're definitely one of my favorite firms in town.

This has also become such a broken record in Portland: a project comes along that goes to the allowable height limit on a key street or at a key intersection, but it turns out that allowable height feels incongruent and too high for some of the nearby neighbors. It's not to say they some of these neighbor complaints don't have merit, but too often I think these people criticize the design simply because they haven't come to terms with how the new building's perfectly allowable scale is going to change their patch of the urban fabric. But cities change, and Portland is on a multi-decade path of big growth. Too much of it is happening on the suburban outskirts anyway. Even with the Urban Growth Boundary, we're not preventing sprawl. We're just slowing it down a little more. This latest project on Upshur is just the latest example of a worthy project that also represents growing pains.

I exchanged email with Bill Neburka of Works Partnership, and he stressed that the design process is an ongoing one, but that they've worked hard to involve the neighbors and do much more than they're required to in order to meet La Torre and other neighbors' concerns. (He also stressed that the attached images are very preliminary.) Here's more of Neburka's comments:

"Our office and the developer, George Hale, have made great efforts to incorporate the La Torre residents' concerns into the massing of the building, including an overall reconfiguration to shift mass away from that condo building and provide additional light and air not required (by any measure of) the zoning code.  Minimum required setback we have looked to increase that up to almost double. The La Torre condominium itself does not meet the current set-back requirements of its CS zoning (abutting a residential zone), and we are trying to be mindful of this existing condition.  We have met with the NW neighborhood association twice, are scheduled to meet with the La Torre condo association on Saturday, and have another meeting set up with the neighborhood association next Thursday. We have stated many times that it is our intent that this building contributes to the Northwest neighborhood and the city of Portland in a positive way.  This is a big building, but it is a very valuable city-block sized site (40,000 square feet) with existing high-density zoning.

In conjunction with larger format apartments, this courtyard typology has explicitly been encouraged by the planning department and public officials as a way to increase the density of the central city and and encourage family oriented living without sacrificing overall livability. I think the idea that a 100,000+ sf building is going to resemble a single family house or a semi-detached rowhouse is really unreasonable.

It is, of course, a modern building that looks to modulate the scale of its mass through a series of screened exterior zones/facades and glass connector bars.  The final material selection has not been determined. We are looking at a wide variety of materials to form a simple palette, from metal to wood to brick. I have no idea where the DJC writer came up with reflective metal.  We will try to achieve a subtle richness and variation from whatever the final palette is. But we have worked earnestly to create the beginnings of a relevant piece of fabric architecture, rather than pandering to a knee-jerk historicism that would be both insincere and patronizing to the many beautiful (truly) historical residential buildings in the Northwest."

If one wants to take on a condo project that doesn't fit with the neighborhood, a better target might be the nouveau historic building planned -- and being fought -- in Irvington.

Kenton and Town Centers

Do you ever have that moment where you recall a conversation you’ve had in the past day or so, and then think about an idea or question never expressed? I’m having one of those with the inaugural ‘Designs On Portland’ conversation from last night with newly minted Portland Spaces editor Randy Gragg.

As it happens, Stephen Beaven’s cover story from the InPortland section of Thursday’s Oregonian connects with it. Or it least I think it does.

In the talk at Design Within Reach last night, we were discussing Metro’s 2040 plan of trying to create certain regional town centers, I believe they’re called—basically clusters of higher-density development (mixed used, multi-story, condos, etc.) centered around key MAX light rail stops and, eventually by extension, the Washington County commuter rail line.

What we seemed to agree on was that there seemed to be a mixed-bag of measurable success on that front, with struggling but in some ways very laudable developments like The Round in Beaverton emblematic of the growing pains happening in suburban areas trying to go high-density with both financial success for the developer and an urban success for the neighborhood.

In last night’s conversation and now, as I write this, I also remember (or remembered, as it were) a past interview with award-winning planner George Crandall of Crandall Arambula, whose plans have helped revitalized a number of medium-sized American cities and was also involved in Portland’s earlier downtown revival during the 1970s. Crandall believes (or at least he did when I interviewed him a couple years ago) that Metro has been much more successful at macro-level planning for the Portland Metro area than micro-level. Which, I guess you might say, means the idea of the high-density, MAX-oriented clusters is a good idea, but the seeds are sprouting only with middling success. Two totally different challenges, guess.

Stephen Beaven’s article talks about the Kenton neighborhood in North Portland, traditionally a sleepy blue-collar enclave, that’s the latest of many close-in neighborhoods to experience gentrification (rising housing prices, other social and demographic changes brought on with generational ownership turnover). It’s in some ways an apples/oranges comparison to look at Kenton versus locales in, say, Beaverton. But even so, they’re both fruit, ya know?

I thought Beaven, interviewing Portland State urban studies professor Ethan Seltzer, summed up the ingredients in an urban Portland’s neighborhood’s makeover.

• “High housing prices in the core and surrounding neighborhoods force young people to buy further out. This is why Kenton and St. Johns are getting trendy.
• These outlying neighborhoods usually have good bones: mature trees, parks, well-tended streets and commercial buildings that can be easily renovated.
• Public investment—whether it’s a light-rail line or the sale of city-owned land—sparks retail and residential development.
• New residents throw themselves into neighborhood, reinvigorating community organizations or starting new businesses."

What are the ingredients that exist in Kenton that could are missing in some of the Metro town center locations, but could realistically be grown over time? You can't rush the trees growing, but I wonder what needs to change to eventually, over the coming decade beyond any particular recession or boom, to see clusters in Beaverton, Hillsboro, Gresham or Gateway flourish as environments where you can walk for a lot of your basic services, where there's a built environment that doesn't feel synthetic, bland or Disneyland -like (or Edward Scissorhands) but is affordable as well.

Then again, when your neighborhood has a gigantic Paul Bunyan statue -- a not completely un-Disney-like presence (if I you'll forgive me for pretzel-like phrasing) -- you always have a built-in advantage.

But I think Kenton is also just entering a particularly fun moment: that sense of betweenness, where the old hasn't disappeared. There's a quintessentially Portland blue-collar grittiness like you might see in a Gus Van Sant film that hasn't disappeared. Some some senior citizens living across the street from the tattooed young folks. And a place on a reasonably nearby corner to get a decent cup of coffee.

A Fareless Flub By Tri-Met?

Yesterday Tri-Met held an afternoon hearing to take comments on a proposal to curb the transit system's Fareless Square downtown, from 24-hour free service in this downtown vicinity (plus some of the Lloyd District) to 12 hours, or none at all.

The argument, says Tri-Met boss Fred Hansen, is that the Fareless Square incites lawlessness and vagrancy, at least late at night. But as the Portland Mercury's Amy Ruiz reported, Hansen wasn't at the meeting yesterday, nor was anyone from Tri-Met except for a hired facilitator.

Worse yet, when pressed for statistical evidence linking the Fareless Sqare to crime, Tri-Met told the Mercury that they don't have any - just anectdotal evidence from police and riders. And the trouble they're trying to address is really only late at night.

Personally, I think this is a horrible idea. Even if you concede to Tri-Met that the Fareless Square has some at least small tangential relation to crime troubles late at night, there are other ways to address this issue then making the majority people who aren't causing trouble on the buses and trains to pay a new charge. How about putting more cops on the beat? Or even playing classical music at the bus stations? Even that's been proven to discourage rowdy behavior.

There's a reason transit fares are fareless downtown. We need to encourage people to get out of their cars, and sometimes that can be a very tall order even in Portland. Heck, if Tri-Met is going to change anything, I'd like to see the agency do something really bold to encourage more mass transit ridership, like making fares half-price or free during rush hour. That said, I certainly don't want to heap too much criticism against Tri-Met, because they've gone through at least the motions of taking public comment, so in theory there's nothing about the process that isn't working here -- unless, of course, they go through with this plan. For that, Portland would indeed pay an unfortunately high fare.

Designs On Portland

Tonight at Design Within Reach kicks off a new bi-monthly discussion series called "Designs On Portland" that I will be hosting in the store's upstairs studio in the Wieden + Kennedy building (1200 NW Everett, 503-220-0200). Our first guest will be Randy Gragg, longtime former Oregonian architecture critic and now founding editor of Portland Spaces magazine.

We'll be talking about the past, present and (especially) future of local achitecture, architects, and the role of design press. It's really an open discussion we'd like to involve the audience in, too, so if you've ever been dying to ask Randy, "Briefs or boxers?", now's your chance.

In the months ahead, we'll be putting together more discussions with local architects and other members of Portland's creative community.

Tonight's event is free, includes refreshments (one word: kegger - just kidding) and begins at 6:30. See you there?

At the FIVE Spot: PNCA's "Idea Studios"

Their quest to claim the 511 Broadway building may still ongoing, but Pacific Northwest College of Art is moving forward, announcing today the launch of Idea Studios as the leadoff program of the College’s recently established Ford Institute for Visual Education. (The acronym is FIVE, and I think they should have a logo with an opened palm, as if slapping hands is a symbol for the exchange of art and knowledge). Idea Studios premieres February 16, 2008 with a talk by James Turrell, a MacArthur Foundation "genius grant" recipient whose work is part of the light-and-space art movement of Dan Flavin, Hap Tivey and others that inspired, among other things, the look of Apple computers. Turrell's art installation in an Arizona crater is a transformative experience. There will also be a February 29 lecture by Jacques Rancière, the philosopher, critic and political theorist (he's French, of course - only in France do philosophers still get famous).

Idea Studios will be an ongoing and portable series of conversations, lectures and performances on the inner workings of creative practice featuring practitioners from a range of fields and cultures as part of a broader PNCA + FIVE effort to highlight the importance of creativity in fostering innovation and civic imagination. It's the latest in an ambitious set of moves during prez Tom Manley's reign.

Architects of note from around the world could make ideal candidates as future FIVE guest residents. I hate to use a cheesy term like "cross-pollination", but it's fun imagining (to use some of my own international preferences as example) some rising talent from Japan, Holland, New Zealand or Brazil forming a substantial connection with Portlanders and Portland. I'm not sure if these guests get an apartment, a per diem or what, but one doubts they'd be in a flophouse with bread and water. What if you ran into Ben Van Berkel unexpectedly at Esparza's Tex Mex one night, or saw Masamichi Katayama (pictured at left in a shot by my friend Michael taken last year when we visited) cutting a rug with Darcel? People increasingly talk about our fair city as having the chance to be a design mecca, and these are the kinds of creative investments that set the stage for it to happen.

Portland Spaces Debut Party NearlyRuns Out of It

Last night the anticipated new magazine Portland Spaces, edited by former Oregonian architecture critic Randy Gragg and published by Portland Monthly, arrived on the scene with a party in a decked-out warehouse over in the Northwest industrial area near Pyramid Brewing.

If the turnout for this shindig was any indication, the magazine ought to do well. When it came time for Randy to speak shortly after 8PM, the room he spoke from (there were two adjoining spaces for the party) actually reached its limit and some of us wound up watching from closed-circuit flat screen TVs in the overflow room. It felt a little surreal, but thanks to the genius stroke of having free hors d'oeuvre from Burgerville in the form of little cheeseburgers, cups of fries and shakes (plus free booze at the bar), the big-brother effect went down a whole lot easier.

The jam-packed gathering also was somewhat of an odd mix. On one hand, you had lots of art and architecture people, most all of whom know Randy. And on the other hand, there was also, if you'll forgive the stereotyping, a cleavage and Range Rover contingent. A cynic might say this represents the marriage of Randy and Portland Monthly's demographic (which, in full disclosure, I've freelanced for). But in the end it doesn't matter. It's about the product, the magazine itself, which was handed out in little goody bags with jars of Burgerville spread (or what I still think of as "special sauce"). And that could wind up being an interesting pairing--Randy and the magazine, that is, not the magazine and the fry goo.

I've only made a first run-through of the magazine, but it was fun seeing the successful brisk and well-designed graphics of Portland Monthly applied solely to homes and architecture, underscored by Randy's erudition about local planning, preservation, and architects. (Two writers from Willamette Week I like a lot, Zach Dundas and Mike Thelin, also contributed to the first issue.) For example, there's a spread of four pages tracing the lineage of housing design in Portland that includes pictures and small bits of text on everyone from Van Evra Bailey, Pietro Belluschi and John Storrs to Brad Cloepfil, Bob Oshatz and Rick Potestio.

In addition, there are more in-depth looks at individual projects in smart ways, like the under-construction 2121 Belmont project seen through the eyes of three people: an architect from Ankrom Moisan involved in the design, someone from the neighborhood organization, and an architect previously part of the design commission. The cover-story is a house by Jeff Kovel and his superlative firm, Skylab. That's probably a good example of a cool modern project you'd be less likely to find in, say, Oregon Home. (Although I do remember seeing a few cool Rick Potestio projects there from time to time in years past.)

Regardless, it's always great to have more voices and resources devoted to covering design and architecture in Portland.

And speaking of Randy Gragg, if you didn't get a big enough dose from the magazine, or would like to hear more about the making of it--and more about architecture in Portland--next Wednesday, January 16 at 6:30, I will be interviewing Randy as the debut in a new discussion series that I'm doing in partnership with Design Within Reach called "Designs On Portland". The event is free and will be held at DWR's studio in the Wieden + Kennedy building. We'll be doing one about every other month. More to come on the discussion in the days ahead.

Kahn on Kahn

Pardon the lateness of this announcement, but this evening at 6PM the AIA Center For Architecture will be having a screening of My Architect, an excellent film about the great Louis Kahn by his son, Nathaniel.

Obviously Kahn is among the handful of very greatest 20th Century architects, and he has a little bit of a Portland connection. Thomas Hacker, head of Thomas Hacker Architects, got his start in Kahn's office. As it happens, I happened to talk with Hacker about his time in Kahn's office recently for an article I'm working on. He stressed the interweaving of teaching and professional practice, and the need to be constantly searching in one's work for new ideas and solutions.

I also had the good fortune to interview Nathaniel Kahn for Willamette Week when his documentary came out in 2004. Here's some of that interview/profile:

With San Diego's Salk Institute, Fort Worth, Texas' Kimbell Art Museum and the capital building in Bangladesh among his distinguished credits, Louis Kahn is easily among the foremost American architects of the 20th century.

But Kahn was certainly no saint. And to his son Nathaniel, he was always an elusive figure. The elder Kahn fathered Nathaniel with a mistress, and his visits were sporadic. "It's the story of a son's search to know his father," the filmmaker said.

As both director and quasi-emcee, the younger Kahn manages to scrutinize his father's compromised personal life--he fathered children with three different women--while never exploiting Louis Kahn's dirty laundry. We meet the cab drivers who shuttled the architect from home to office to affair, as well as the women and children who made up his different families, contrasting with the reverence his architecture inspires. "The human imperfections are part of what makes him a man to me," Kahn says. "They're what make him someone I'd want to know."

More than five years in the making, My Architect also includes interviews with architects and critics, such as Frank Gehry and Phillip Johnson, who elucidate the architectural significance of Louis Kahn's buildings. Kahn was part of a generation that made Modernism the signature form of world design. But unlike many of his contemporaries, such as Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, Le Corbusier or Alvar Aalto, Kahn eschewed futuristic metal and glass edifices in favor of more spiritual, enduring forms and materials. The pyramids of Egypt were his inspiration, not Tomorrowland. "He asked, 'How do I make a modern building that has all of the majesty and solidity and mystery of an ancient building or ruin?'" the director explains. "He wanted to return some of the magic and presence that you find in ancient buildings."

If you can't make it to tonight's screening (what with the two-hour notice and all), keep the Center For Architecture in mind for more events in the future than were probably happening at the old location.

What Ever Happened to Burnside Bridgehead?

Remember a few years ago when there was a big to-do over which developer would win the Portland Development Commission's RFP contract for the Burnside Bridgehead? You can be forgiven if it's a foggy memory by now. In fact, it was a full four years ago that PDC first floated the idea of having a big-box retail outlet there, before withdrawing the plan amidst widespread community uproar against it.

As I read in Lee Perlman's Southeast Examiner report, but has also been reported in bigger media outlets, the winner of the Bridgehead development rights, Opus Northwest, has been unable to find a non-big-box anchor tenant. They're now asking PDC for more "flexibility" in choosing one. According to the article I read, an Opus representative told members at a Buckman Community Association meeting that while it won't be Wal-Mart or Home Depot, it ought rightfully to be able to be something popular like Ikea. It seems to me that's just a way of pointing out that people's feelings about retailers are not all the same, and trying to use that as a wedge to get approval for big-box scaled retailers there.

Opus, unlike the two other developer finalists for the Bridgehead job, also has in its plan improvements paid for by PDC to facilitate Northeast Couch as part of a new couplet with Burnside, as per Commissioner Sam Adams' proposal. Other causes for delay cited Opus says have been PDC's fault: securing zoning changes for the property and relocating tenants of the Convention Plaza office buildings on the site. PDC, according to Lee Perlman's Examiner article, has conceded some blame on this. But the other big factors are "the collapse of the condominium market and other changes in the marketplace, rendering Opus's original development plan unfeasible."

Let me ask you this: If we had to choose between an Opus-developed Burnside Bridgehead that supplants their original plan with a big-box retailer or having PDC select a new developer, what would our answer be? On one hand, you can't blame Opus for the market changing, or for delays on the PDC side. Yet I can't help but wonder if Gerding Edlen or Beam Development could make something interesting and more architecturally compelling happen here without, say, a Lowe's occupying one of the most prime riverfront spots in the central city. If PDC were to select a new developer, it might further delay something happening here. And regardless of how one feels about Opus, might there be a risk that kicking them out undermines the integrity of such a city-sponsored selection process? What kind of message does that send to companies vying for, say, the Centennial Mills development rights?

Personally, I think if the original plan no longer works economically, even by Opus's admission, then PDC should hold some kind of intervention to jump-start things in terms of ideas and brainstorming. With all this dour economic, legal and real estate talk, it's easy to forget what an incredible site this is, right along Burnside and MLK and the bridge and the river, all directly across from Downtown, Old Town, and the Pearl. What kind of use do we want there? What works? But it may also have been a mistake to put developers first and their designs second, as this RFP process did. What if we were to have some other kind of setup that favored both economics and design.

I also can't help but wonder if there necessarily should be one developer handling all of this big Bridgehead development. Why not parcel it out to a few different ones working in tandem? After all, too often these big developers tend to have one firm design a cluster of buildings in these big developments. It's an understandable from the developer's point of view, but in terms of the good of the city I'd much rather see a variety of different firms working here on a variety of building types.

One other bit of interesting news I picked up in Perlman's article. At the aforementioned Buckman Community Association meeting, Bruce Wood of Opus said his company is negotiating with a potential 8,000 square foot performing arts hall, and a 25,000 square foot museum. Who might they be? If there's a new museum planning to set up shop there, or an existing one planning to move, that ought to be significant news in and of itself. Portland really needs a major contemporary art museum. It's terrific having all these young arts organizations here like the Portland Art Center, Organism and Disjecta celebrating the huge influx of emerging artists to the city. But any major urban city worth its stripe has a contemporary art museum. That should be on Portland's big-item wish list along with a new concert hall, relocating the east bank freeway, and a robust network of streetcars.

Lawyer Makes Case For Interstate Neon

In Sunday's Oregonian, an op-ed by land use attorney Sandra Duffy makes a personal plea to save the threatened Crown Motel sign on Interstate and others like it. She also walks us through some successful and unsuccessful past efforts in Portland to save such neon gems.

Growing up two blocks from Interstate in the Overlook neighborhood during the late 1950s, Duffy remembers how the neon Palm Motor Hotel sign, "complete with monkey and coconuts, was the landmark guiding Dad's turn in the neighborhood. Classmates with a summer birthday and whose parents had money to spare (mine did not) would rent a room for a birthday pool party there."

Dufffy goes on to cite how other developers have "recognized the historical significance of neon icons and incorporated them into new uses," adding:

Montgomery Ward blazed red for decades from Northwest Portland. The Naito brothers tweaked it into Montgomery Park, a landmark for new generations. The Naitos also saved the White Stag for their Made in Oregon store. The Paramount movie theater sign was retrofitted into the Portland marquee with the renovation of the Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall.

But it was another favorite lost to history that Duffy likes best, the "Reddy Kilowatt" mascot for Pacific Power's downtown office where her father worked, "a little man with lightning bolts for arms and legs, a light bulb for a nose and wall outlets for years." If that neon sign were still shining somewhere in Portland, I'd have to draw from the cheerful rhetoric of Rachel Ray: "How good does that look?"

As previously discussed, Tri-Met is involved in developing this project to promote mass transit use, and Reach Community Development is building SERA Architects-designed lower income housing there: a noble endeavor certainly. I also think all involved want to do the right thing, or at least avoid doing the wrong thing. It seems like the community uproar over the ambiguity of the sign's fate took them a little by surprise, but that they'd unquestionably prefer somebody save the sign and preserve it elsewhere, if only to avoid being blamed for contributing to the demise Interstate's atomic-age neon heritage.

Incidentally, one of the other proposals for that same Crown Motel site that lost out to Reach's, I was told, was for a boutique motor hotel that would embrace the original site and sign as part of its image and program. I'm not sure that would have been a better plan for a site along the MAX line, given that residents are perhaps more likely to use the train. And with Erik Sten's announced departure from the city council, affordable housing in Portland has already lost an important advocate. We should be supporting organizations like Reach. Still, I'd have been excited to hear of the other developer's plans had they won out.

Meanwhile, there seems growing reason for optimism that the Crown sign will at least be preserved elsewhere, and possibly still on Interstate. The Atomic Age Alliance has been meeting, as Pulitzer prize nominee Inara Verzemnieks (say that three times fast!) wrote about in The Oregonian last Friday, and I wouldn't put it past them to go nuclear if more neon signs start coming down. Ultimately, though, there ought to be a conciliatory, diplomatic way of handling the "Crown Affair" that saves face for everybody -- including the sign itself, of course.

Blue Collar Architecture Tour

Today I dropped off my car for servicing at its usual shop in Goose Hollow. One of the things I like about this place is that they'll give you a ride to home or work (or in my case, both) afterward. And today, as one of the mechanics drove me through downtown toward the Hawthorne Bridge, I unexpectedly got some interesting opinions about architecture. He was the first to admit he didn't follow design or know a lot about architecture, but the guy repairs German cars for a living, so it's not like he's oblivious to form, function and beauty.

I didn't tell the mechanic that I wrote about architecture, or anything about what I do. We happened to start talking about it because their shop is right across from the new Jefferson Condos by Vallaster & Corl. I like this project a lot. But the mechanic wasn't impressed. He called it "bland" and lamented that it didn't have more color. I asked if he was adverse to modern buildings in general, but he said that he wasn't. He cited "that new one over on Burnside", The Civic (by SERA Architects), as one he liked.

We also drove east between the Museum Place condos by GBD Architects and the Mosaic Condominiums, which Myhre Group was I believe the architect of record for. When they were built I liked the Mosaic better, because it's much more colorful and glassy. As a few years have gone by, though, I've come to appreciate the simplicity of the brick Museum Place building and the vibrancy of the ground floor Safeway. My mechanic acquaintance, though, preferred the Mosaic. He also wasn't too fond of the Hatfield US Courthouse a few blocks away, which he again described as "bland".

Ultimately, though, he said his favorite building in town was probably the KOIN tower (designed in the 1980s by Zimmer Gunsul Frasca). I've often heard people outside of the architectural community, people not normally enthusiasts of architecture, cite that building as a favorite on the Portland skyline. Yet you never hear a lot of architects talk about it. I'm not saying one group is right and the other wrong, though. In the mechanic's case, he compared it to the Empire State Building but seemed specifically to respond to how the building gets more slender toward the top, which both the Empire and the gorgeous art-deco Chrysler building do most notably. It's such a simple, elegant move for most any building, but one you don't see happen much with the offices and condos comprising most tall buildings. It compromises floorspace.

I'm sure all of you who either practice or are enthusiasts of architecture experience this sometimes. Architecture is one of those art forms like movies that most every layperson has opinions about. I hope none of this sounds patronizing, but I think it's helpful to get this kind of input from people outside of the usual dialog about design. It's not to say this mechanic was any kind of soothsaying savant from whom we can learn great universal truths. But if you have your face a few inches from something most of the time, it's elucidating to get the perspective of someone standing further back.

Yeon Exhibit In Final Days(His Influence, Ongoing)

Bob Hicks has a great piece in The Oregonian today about John Yeon that serves as a good reminder of the "In the Land of Influence" exhibit continuing through tomorrow evening at the new AIA/Portland Center for Architecture.

Hicks recently retired from full-time editorial duties at the paper after a decades-long tenure there, but as he proved countless times over the years, he can write insightfully about anything arts related. About a decade ago, at my first daytime critics screening to review a movie for Willamette Week, Bob was there reviewing it on pinch-hit duty for Shawn Levy's Oregonian review team. It's great to see him still contributing to the paper, writing about Yeon:

"Drive around particular parts of the Pacific Northwest — Ecola State Park on Oregon's north coast, say, or the Columbia River Gorge, or even the platoons of lockstep McMansions that march like conquering soldiers over the fallen body of the region's exurban land — and you can hear the whisper of John Yeon: a whisper of what is, what is not, what shouldn't be and what might have been in his corner of the Earth..."

"A modernist, he created structures that in certain ways were the antithesis of the International Style — buildings that took their very being from the landscape they sat upon, striving not to subdue it but to become part of it. The hallmark of a Yeon house was its beguiling combination of serene majesty and humility, an essence derived from simplicity of line and an unswerving sense of place."

In an unusual twist, tomorrow's First Thursday gallery walk will serve as the closing-night party for the Yeon exhibit at the CFA. (Incidentally, that's the Swann House pictured above.) The facility was a little late in finishing construction, which happens and is understandable. But unfortunately it has made this a shorter exhibit than it deserved. So if you're perusing the Pearl on Thursday night (I also recommend Hap Tivey's light sculptures at the nearby Elizabeth Leach Gallery), be sure and stop in.