Portland Architecture

Holst Transforms Decrepit Downtown Motel Into Hotel Modera (Updated)

The old Days Inn Portland City Center is currently undergoing a transformation into an upscale boutique hotel called Hotel Modera that will also bring the work of one of the city’s best firms, Holst Architecture, to downtown.

    The intent is to embrace the original mid-century modern original architecture. The five-story hotel has 174 rooms and suites and takes up nearly an entire city block between SW Fifth and Sixth and Columbia and Clay.  It will feature an outdoor courtyard that includes a “living wall” of vegetation, fire pits and plenty of seating.  The plaza courtyard will integrate the indoors with the outdoors and is intended to provide guests and Portlanders with a place to gather and unwind in downtown. It’s also a big improvement on the ugly surface parking lot that’s been there.

Holst created a new motor entrance and lobby off SW Clay Street to accommodate for the condemnation of the SW 6th Street motor entrance due to the new TriMet MAX light rail lines that will run adjacent to the hotel. Led by project manager Kevin Valk, the architects chose to extend the lobby out of the SW Clay Street entrance and design a courtyard with the extra space.

Through the Percentage for Art Program, TriMet has commissioned Michihiro Kosuge to install his artwork on the downtown transit mall.  This will include three sculptures fronting the courtyard of Hotel Modera. The artwork will be created from granite that has been recycled from a fountain that previously existed along the bus mall.

Specific green features of Hotel Modera include a stormwater filtration system in the courtyard, upgraded windows and HVAC, occupancy sensors, added insulation to exterior building shell, and a new reflective roofing to reduce heating island effect.

Perhaps Holst’s biggest project planned to break ground this year, however, is the new Pearl District headquarters for Ziba Design. More on that soon. But for now, it’s great to see that eyesore of a motel downtown be re-imagined, and by Holst to boot.

UPDATE 2/29: It just occurred to me that there are a couple other aging chain hotels in the downtown area that would seem ideal candidates for such a makeover. How about the Sheraton along the waterfront beside the Morrison Bridge? Although my parents spent their wedding night there 40 years ago, I never have once heard of anyone else staying there or even going there.

Perhaps another riverfront hotel, the Marriott, could also stand an upgrade. In its way, it's kind of an iconic building for Portland given its scale and site. But even Bob Frasca of Zimmer Gunsul Frasca, who designed it, has said it's not exactly the firm's proudest accomplishment. What could they do to give this place a fantastic design makeover?

UPDATE 3/5: I've replaced the images with larger, sharper ones.

More Scrutiny of Centennial Mills Plans: Nitze-Stagen Emerges

An editorial in today's Oregonian argues for the development proposal by Nitze-Stagen of Seattle (with Portland's Zimmer Gunsul Frasca as architect) to be the choice for Centennial Mills.

"It challenges the city to create an incubator for its next incarnation," the editors write. (I assume their speaking metaphorically, and not about hatching preemies.) "By bringing to the bursting-its-banks Pearl a heady mix of people with actual neighborhood jobs, it might even make the area something more than an oasis for archly cash-mered retirees." (Cash-mered: get it? Like cashmere.)

Indeed, the Nitze-Stagen proposal has a lot to like. There is a piazza for a farmer's market, a central square to show off the original buildings, a small forested park which, like nearby Tanner Springs Park, uncovers and symbolically resurrects the waterway that used to be there. There are also shops, studios, a hotel, restaurant, and more.

If there's any consensus developed so far, it's that nobody seems to like the proposal by the Baltimore-based Cordish Company -- at least for this site. The paper says their proposal is "so much fun we're already reaching for our dancing shoes." (Who gets that excited about a House of Blues or Hard Rock Cafe chain outlet? I wonder if some aging Baby Boomers with an outdated sense of cool wrote this editorial. Luckily their next point is a much better one.) "But it's ill-conceived for this site. Portland has wanted for years to develop an entertainment district around the Rose Garden. Cordish should be pitching Paul Allen, not the Portland Development Commission."

Really the Centennial Mills proposals seems to come down to those by Nitze-Stagen and LAB Holdings. They both preserve the majority of the mill buildings, unlike Cordish. The Nitze-Stagen is unquestionably more ambitious than LAB's. But with the economy tanking and ample evidence across the Willamette at the languishing Burnside Bridgehead site that an ambitious plan isn't guaranteed of ever getting built, it's definitely arguable that the LAB proposal is a far more realistic one. That said, I wouldn't choose LAB or any other plan simply out of feasibility. You do have to dream just a bit, don't you?

What's more, the LAB proposal would maintain the original mill buildings as the centerpiece of the site, while the Nitze-Stagen one would make them foothills to mountainous tall buildings planned on either side.

Nitze-Stagen has more of a local advantage. As a Seattle developer working with a Portland firm, they'd be better tuned to the nuances of our city. This would also give ZGF a foothold in the Pearl District they've never had before. I could certainly enjoy having some more architecture crafted by Eugene Sandoval and company at ZGF, especially considering how the perennially biggest firm in town has elevated its design quality in the last few years.

According to their proposal, Nitze-Stagen is also partnering with acclaimed landscape architect Peter Walker, who did the master planning for the area of the Pearl across Naito Parkway from Centennial Mills. Walker also designed the very popular Jamison Square Park and the adjacent boardwalk that would conceivably pass through Fields Park and over Naito to the mills. Having Walker on board for this project would give the area some continuity from a very capable hand.

But with Centennial Mills, I also come back to the structure of the RFP process itself. Instead of choosing three developers to make proposals, why can't we choose a qualified developer, but leave the design process and selection more open-ended? Why can't there be a competition to generate a design and not just a developer with a design and architect they've already chosen?

Also, considering that with Burnside Bridgehead PDC chose the developer team, Opus Northwest, mostly on the basis of financial resources and stability, can we feel comfortable that they'll use the right reasoning this time around? Who are the people who'll ultimately make this decision -- and how much do they really understand design compared to balance sheets?

Personally, I'm not completely ready to say whether I would choose the Nitze-Stagen or LAB Holdings proposal. Both would have their advantages and disadvantages. I'm starting to warm to Nitze-Stagen's after initially favoring LAB's, but considering that Nitze-Stagen's proposal took so long to load (34 megabytes!) I had to leave the computer for awhile, I haven't made it through the proposal (or the others) in its entirety.

What's the word around the campfire from the rest of you out there reading these proposals?

Ideabox and the Case For Prefab

Even as an architecture and building industry writer, I don't usually make a beeline for the annual Portland Home & Garden Show, which started Wednesday and continues through Sunday. But a new prefab home on display there, designed and manufactured by an Oregon company, may be worth a close look.

After all, how often is it you see a nice, simple, modern single family house with two bedrooms for as little as $80,000? As a renter who has never felt even close to being able to buy without some crazy mortgage, or a location much further out on the outskirts of town than I'd be willing to accept, it's great to see.

The two year old company is called Ideabox and is based in Salem. They have two houses so far, a 400-square-foot one-bedroom space that retails for about $70,000, and the aforementioned larger unit for ten grand more. (Naturally this doesn't figure in land or other extra costs.) Also, they both are designed and built with sustainable techniques and materials.

They're open inside like a loft, feature lots of windows (including some upper clerestories that I love), and are clad in corrugated metal. These aren't Taj Mahals by any means, but I'd certainly take the architecture of these houses to the style of those built from the ground up in most outer subdivisions. That'd be true if the cost were equal, but actually the Ideabox houses would of course be much cheaper.

When I was growing up in McMinnville, adjacent to our neighborhood of cul de sacs and ranch houses was a development of about 50 to 100 manufactured homes. These were not pretty houses, most looking to be in various states of rusty disrepair and featuring that boxy, ugly mobile-home look that's given the form a bad reputation. Even so, manufacturing homes in a factory from prefab parts remains a very valid idea. We just need better design, which now exists.

There'll never be a vacant lot close enough to the central city for me to order up one of these Ideabox houses. But if the house next door suddenly burned down and the owners offered me the lot, I would be strongly inclined to give the Ideabox - or another prefab - a try.

Speaking of which, one of the country's biggest stars in prefab design and construction, Michelle Kaufmann (formerly of Frank Gehry's office) will be speaking at the Portland Home & Garden Show as well on both Saturday and Sunday. "I’ll be talking about how it’s no longer a question of 'if' people want sustainable, healthy living environments," Kaufmann says on her blog, " but rather, 'how' or 'what' are the best ways to create one.

Wonder Woman and Andreas Gursky: More Thoughts About The Upcoming Powell's Expansion

Last Sunday I made what is an almost weekly visit to Powell's Books. This time I was at the one on Southeast Hawthorne, although I go about equally if not more often to the Burnside flagship store. No book purchases, this time (for once), although I can heartily recommend the chocolate panini and double espresso.

At the Hawthorne Powell's, they'd made one small but effective architectural change. The bookshelves were removed from the store's front wall and redone as islands a couple feet inward. This allowed for a new floor-to-ceiling glass display and entrance. Not only did it bring in more natural light, but it also brought a greater connection between the inside and outside of the store. Even if you are nearby Powell's and don't actually go inside, it's fun to be able to see the store in such a transparent way -- a theater of book shopping at the City of Books.

More than a famous architect or even a high LEED rating, this is what I want out of the expansion at Powell's southeast corner on Burnside - its front door. On both the ground floor and the extra floor or two that will be added above, I want there to be as transparent of a facade as possible. Of course there are codes that have to be followed, and too much glass without proper shading would not be good for the shoppers or the books.

But within those limits, I'd like to see the store build something that celebrates how much of a fluid, constantly buzzing community, and what a real community center, the store is - particularly the downtown flagship. I want its design to peel back the facade, or its impression anyway, as much as possible. Make it look like something the great German photographer Andreas Gursky would want to photograph: a stacked array of floors visible from blocks away, in which bookshelves and shoppers are as visible as an ant farm, or Wonder Woman's invisible jet.

Also, I think they have got to put in a separate door at the Southwest corner, where the coffee shop is. I know certain security measures have to be followed. But it's all bar-coded now anyway. Can't they just have some alarm go off if you walk out with unpurchased books, like other places? To have that corner completely without a door makes that corner of the store too much of a barrier considering that it sits right on Burnside.

And as a commenter to my previous post wrote (actually, other people have probably already mentioned all of these ideas), I think it's time for that cramped old parking garage to go. Now that there is underground parking just down the street for Whole Foods and other retail customers, there's far less need for the Powell's garage. I'd think there'd be some way they could perhaps expand that garage underground in partnership with the store.

The way I'm talking about the store in such a proprietary way, you'd think this were a public building. But I think that's not too dissimilar in a way to how Powell's feels like somewhat of a quasi-civic institution. Which is not to say I don't support other smaller local bookstores - far from it. I enjoy 23rd Avenue Books, Broadway Books, Annie Bloom's, and Looking Glass and encourage everyone to shop there over the chains and Powell's when possible. I also confess to doing some chain-bookstore shopping, particularly Borders and Amazon. But I, and I think many others in Portland, think of Powell's as our place, at least unofficially, as well as the company's.

Point-Counterpoint on PDC's Future Urban Renewal Plans

The opinion section of Sunday's Oregonian offered two opposing views on what the Portland Development Commission should do next with respect to its urban renewal areas: to keep devoting resources to making the central city more dense, or to focus more on outlying areas in need such as Parkrose and Rockwood.

Portland State University urban studies professor Carl Abbott favors declaring victory in the central city and heading eastward to do more good:

"The equation [for urban renewal starting in the 1970s] had two simple parts: Shore up downtown as a center for retailing, employment and culture. Preserve and revitalize older neighborhoods to keep them attractive for the middle class.

It worked. From the slopes of the West Hills to the slopes of Mount Tabor, the city is a success by any comparative standards.

The Portland 'miracle' is yet to work its wonders, however, in the city's far eastern neighborhoods. These are areas with more people in poverty, more immigrants, fewer parks and a lot less creative class buzz."

By contrast, Patricia Garner, land use planning committee chair for the Pearl District Neighborhood Association and a project manager with Chesshir Architecture, says there are still important pockets of land in the central city currently not in urban renewal districts that need to be developed and densified. Namely, the flats of Goose Hollow and the area around Con-way in Northwest:

"If these to areas were developed to their full capacity, the city could see an increase of at least 4,000 new housing units and one million square feet of new office capacity. The more that is built in these urban environments, the less we have to build in other neighborhoods."

Gardner also addresses what urban renewal is and isn't:

"One of the biggest misconceptions about urban renewal financing is that fat cat developers are given money to create their projects for rich people. This is not true....Urban renewal does not work in established, healthy neighborhoods unless there is a desire to fundamentally change the character of that neighborhood toward more density. But it works fabulously in these blank opportunity sites."

I tend to agree more with Patty Gardner on this one. Of course Abbot isn't wrong that poorer neighborhoods would certainly benefit from more investment in services and infrastructure there: libraries, open spaces, schools, transit. But urban renewal money isn't social service money. It's meant to plant seeds in mostly vacant areas and make neighborhoods. It's true that some of the close-in industrial areas in Northwest Portland seem better candidates for high density than neighborhoods like Parkrose and Rockwood that are far from the city center.

If we're going to go very dense outside the city center, however, it should be at key transit intersections, such as Parkrose's next-door neighborhood, Gateway, where Interstates 5, 205 and 84 intersect along with the MAX line to downtown, the airport and eventually Clackamas. But Gateway already is an urban renewal area.

To some extent, pitting low-income outer Portland neighborhoods against the central city for urban renewal dollars feels like an incongruent, apples-to-oranges affair. Even so, we shouldn't abandon our dance partner -- the central urban core -- in the middle of the floor to cut a rug on the fringe of the dance hall.

A Grassroots Bridge Design Process That Trumps The Official One

How ironic that two happenings related to the future of major bridges in Portland, one involving billions of dollars in public outlay and the other a grassroots, blog-driven effort with zero budget, came within a few days of each other last week.

First it was reported that the big new replacement bridge planned for Interstate 5 over the Columbia River between Oregon and Washington will probably have to be completely flat. As a result, practically any stylistic embellishment (or at least that rising into the air) will be quashed. The reason? A little used novelty airport Pearson Field, which is more importantly a historic aviation museum. The airstrip is across the river and just downstream from Portland International Airport, so it's not as if it's an important transportation hub. But if we want to do anything other than pave cement, apparently, we'll have to forget about it so the occasional B-17 bomber can make a fun visit.

Meanwhile, the local weblog PORT, or portlandart.net, has announced the results of a bridge design contest for a new pedestrian/light rail span over the Willamette. Even with no prizes or reward beyond the glory of winning itself, the contest has attracted some imaginative designs, as well as some practical ones. Sean Casey's, for example (above), utilizes what I believe is the existing Marquam Bridge columns as structural support for a new bridge that spreads out horizontally into a garden. Actually, if we have to keep the I-5 bridge flat for an annual P-38 fly-by, maybe this could be a way to show some creativity.

  Another entry in Port's contest (at left) was by Bill Badrick, a frequent reader and poster on this blog who has created numerous renditions of park and transit hybrid bridges. Bill won Port's 'Put Paradise On Top of a Parking Lot' award. Michael DiTullo's was more futuristic, but also seems easier to envision as a real bridge. The curve here is attractive and functional, and the suspension cables reference what is arguably Portland's nicest bridge, the St. Johns.

Congrats to Port on a very cool effort to elevate design ideas in Portland. At least if we get stuck with a slab of concrete over the Columbia, we can daydream about something better for a pedestrian/rail span here beside downtown. And as Port co-editor/writer Jeff Jahn has talked about, there are at least a couple of people in town--one a developer, one a museum head--who have personal connections to a couple of the world's greatest bridge designers, Norman Foster and Santiago Calatrava. Think we could get them to submit a couple drawings to Jeff's blog while we're at it?

A First Look at Centennial Mills Development Finalists: Would Less Be More?

A few days ago, following a national search for a developer of the Centennial Mills site, the Portland Development Commission announced its three finalist proposals. They come from LAB Holding of Costa Mesa, California; the Cordish Company of Baltimore (a.k.a. "Balmer"); and Nitze-Stagen of Seattle.

I’m not an expert on all of the criteria PDC was asking for. I also haven’t yet given a meticulous run-through of all the details surrounding each of these three proposals. But after reading about each in The Oregonian and online, my personal first impulse is that I’m disappointed by at least two of the three candidates.

Both Nitze-Stagen and especially the Cordish Company are proposing several very large buildings on the site that would overwhelm the original Centennial Mills structures or wipe them away all together. In the latter case, looking at the Cordish proposal, I can’t see any of the old mill buildings. (Maybe they're not the right fit for a Hard Rock Cafe.) Nitze-Stagen’s proposal seems to retain more of the buildings, but there are tall thin towers surrounding them.

For that basic reason, my first impulse is that I much prefer the LAB Holding proposal (shown in the photo at top). They’re calling it SEED and, according to Stephen Beaven’s report in The Oregonian, would focus on restaurants, entertainment, green retailers and open space.  Their basic proposal is based around food, and I like how the were cheeky enough to include a famous old Brillat-Savarin quote, "Tell me what you eat, and I will tell you what you are", that began each episode of the original Japanese Iron Chef.

The wildly different scales and ambitions here are reflected in the cost. LAB is proposing a $57.4 project, largely financed privately. Cordish has a $368 million development in mind, with $107 million in public subsidies. Nitze-Stagen’s plan is harder to decipher: according to the paper, they would pay PDC up to $8 million for the land but also require an as-yet-undetermined (very clever, guys) amount of public financing.

As a design enthusiast, I’d be willing to support the more expensive plans if they seemed like the better ones. But at least in the Cordish and Nitze-Stagen renderings, I just see a collection of somewhat banal looking modern buildings. And what’s more, they’d be fairly tall structures sitting right on the waterfront. Even if the zoning allows it, is this what we want?

Here’s another thing that makes me skeptical: Yesterday I happened to be interviewing Tiffany Sweitzer, head of Hoyt Street Properties, which owns and is developing all of the condos and greenspace directly across from the Centennial Mills site. Sweitzer told me that none of the three developers approached her company to talk about how the massive greenspace, condo towers and boardwalk would connect with Centennial Mills. If I’d have been one of the developers going for this job, this would be one of the first calls I’d have made. Are the three finalists PDC selected really telling us that they have zero interest in integrating their proposals with the surrounding urban fabric?

I don’t mean to go on record at this point saying I unequivocally love the LAB Holding proposal. You can’t do that from one rendering and a few bullet points in the paper about their proposal. And if I did, that choice would be a process of elimination.

There are individual things to like in all three of these proposals. I like the central piazza proposed by Nitze-Stagen and the inclusion of local institutions such as OMSI or even Portland Public Schools. Cordish would include a waterfront ampitheater and an extension of the Willamette River Greenway Trail. LAB would have a public market there, which would finally end a search for a home that’d make the Israelites blush.

More than anything, I wonder if the intent is to squeeze too much into this Centennial Mills site in an effort to make it viable. Everybody talks about it being green, or putting a maritime museum there, but it seems like they’re just throwing in as many ideas as possible, like leftover veggies from the fridge into a soup pot. And unless they’re holding something back, I don’t see any evidence that any of the three developers has made great design a priority.

All three developers will present their proposals and answer questions at an open house from 6-9PM Wednesday, February 20, at the Pacific Northwest College of Art (1241 NW Johnson).

Memorial Coliseum Again FacesThreat, Possibility

As reported in today's Oregonian by Ryan Frank and Brent Hunsberger, the Trail Blazers have decided to revisit the idea of redeveloping the Rose Quarter area. That, the report says, could include retrofitting or demolishing the Coliseum.

It's true that the Rose Quarter is a dismal place unless there's a Blazer game happening, and even then it's only because of the game. At the same time, one of the city's biggest transit centers is here, so it would be good for the city for this area to be used more efficiently and smartly.

The successful recent Davis Cup match at the Coliseum not withstanding, it seems like overkill both in terms of function and in terms of architectural scale to have two large arenas sitting next to each other. But for virtually any architectural enthusiast, the Coliseum is a far more elegant, attractive and historic building than the larger, newer Rose Garden. It was designed in 1960 by Skidmore, Owings & Merrill at the height of their mid-20th Century prowess, and the glass enclosure gives the Coliseum a wonderful transparency that few other arenas can even come close to.

The above photograph was taken by the legendary architectural photographer Julius Shulman and is from the book Modernism Rediscovered. Inside, Pierluigi Serraino writes of how the building's roof system of steel trusses on four concrete columns produces a 270x240-foot clear span of glass. As a result, the structurally independent arena is "completely contained within a glass box patterened with 78-foot high wooden mullions". This is easily the most impressive glass structure in the city.

And speaking of history, remember that Memorial Coliseum is where the Trail Blazers won the 1977 NBA championship. It's also where The Beatles played their only Portland concert. We're talking sacred ground here.

I was disappointed to read in Frank and Hunsberger's article that Commissioner Randy Leonard has gone on record saying "he could support razing the Coliseum as long as another appropriate veterans' memorial was erected on the site." Even though veterans should indeed be honored, the memorial at Memorial Coliseum is the least special and unique thing about the place. We could easily replace that memorial. We can't replace the exquisite architecture of the arena.

There have in past years been ideas about how to renovate and renew the Coliseum, from the awful, very un-Portland idea of making it a big-box retailer to the very fine idea to make it an amateur sports Mecca. The latter plan, though, depended on a huge grant from McDonald's billionaire Roy Kroc's widow that was up for grabs at the time. That money is long gone, but why not revisit that idea with a new revenue stream?

There also could, and arguably should, be a housing and office presence somewhere within the Rose Quarter. That's the only way it will have life beyond a few events at the Rose Garden.

How about a design competition to generate new ideas for the facility? It could be an 'ideas competition' and non binding in terms of building. But between tearing down one of the most loved structures in Portland and turning it into a Home Depot, there has to be a third way that we can get behind - something that's a slam dunk.

Green Building's Resident Curmudgeon

I got to know Metropolis magazine columnist Philip Nobel last November while we were on a press trip for a museum opening, the Ullens Center in Beijing. I found him to be a nice guy, if quite the chain smoker. We and a couple other journalists had fun scurrying away by taxi from a gala dinner with champagne and caviar held in a building with no heat (that's China in a nutshell). But in his column Philip has somewhat of a curmudgeonly reputation.

That's definitely true when it comes to green building. "And not only because it's boring," Philip writes in this month's column. "As saving the Earth has become the cause of all causes, I thought this might just be my usual knee-jerk recoiling from things earnest and popular. Now I know it's a deeply principled stand based on the defense of public manners." He continues:

"When one does something good, does one then crow about it, seeking gain? That would be the opposite of grace. But that is exactly what we see in page after page of project after project, each claiming to be LEEDier than thou. Here, planet, I've done you this kindness. Look everyone, I'm saving the planet!"

"Clearly there's a place for a specialized literature, a quiet little spot on the journalistic margins where green architects and clients can trade best practices and grow the field. It's the right thing to do. But that doesn't mean we need to hear about it."

Philip is really just 'taking the piss', as the English say, crowing in a provocative way that makes entertaining copy. I hesitate to dive into defending green building for fear of seeming too earnest and popular. And because green building doesn't really need defending from Philip.

Still, even if he's just joking, it's too bad if Philip or others who grow weary of green building talk think it's only about saving the planet.

Let's suppose for a moment that they discovered global warming wasn't happening after all, or that there was some infinitely plentiful new energy source that made efficiency and alternatives to fossel fuels less urgent. Even then, I'd take the chance to live or work in a green building in a heartbeat, because they're better places to be. Spend a day working in front of a window, then the next in an artificially lit basement. When were you most productive? Happy?

Philip is right, though, that green buidling needs to develop an identity based more on altruism and back-patting for meeting LEED strictures. How can we capture people's imagination with green buildings without just rattling off the points they score for recycling or low-flow showerheads?

"Demolition of the Rosefriend Apartments" at PIFF

Pardon the self promotion, but I wanted to put the word out that my short film, Demolition of the Rosefriend Apartments, will be playing this Saturday in the Portland International Film Festival as part of the 'Made In Oregon' shorts program.

As you can see if you watch it online, the five-minute film is basically just a collection of raw video footage taken of the building's facade being torn down by a giant crane. I considered putting it to music, or having voice-over interviews or other audio about the story behind the Rosefriend Apartments, which as many may recall stood at Broadway and Jefferson downtown across from The Oregonian and Higgins restaurant until being torn down last year. But ultimately I just decided to keep it as simple as possible and with no embellishment. Very modernist, don't you think?

The Ladd Tower is under construction on this site now, and for those of us who had hoped the Rosefriend could be saved, I think now those passions are better directed towards the future. But I had an affection for the building and felt compelled to film some of its demolition.

In the film festival guide, the title was erroneously called The Destruction of the Rosefriend Apartments. I love the NW Film Center, and I don't want to split hairs, but I actually think that 'Demolition' is an important distinction from 'Destruction'. It's similar to how Return of the Jedi was originally set to be called Revenge of the Jedi, but George Lucas made the change from 'Revenge' to 'Return' because he decided that revenge wasn't a Jedi concept.

I'm certainly no Jedi. Probably more like C-3PO. And by no means would I compare myself George Lucas - although we do share a birthday. But I distinguish 'Demolition' from 'Destruction' in a similar way to revenge/return.

Even so, filming the demolition that day, as I stood in a very large crowd of men seemingly giddy to see the crane do its work, it seemed like I was surrounded by people with an appetite for destruction, to borrow from Guns & Roses (not that I'm a fan). I was one of the gawkers, of course. But I also felt a little guilty, like staring at a car accident as you drive by. Let’s face it, though: destruction is fun to watch. I guess it’s that weird irony that made me run and film that day. That and a desire, however corny it may sound, to not look away when the moment came.

The 'Made In Oregon' shorts program screens at 2PM Saturday at the Portland Art Museum's Whitsell Auditorium.

The Case of the Irvington Squire

In this ongoing era of Portland’s sometimes stressful densification in historic neighborhoods, the latest proposed building project to draw the ire of neighbors and the attention of city regulators is at the corner of 15th Avenue and Hancock Street in historic Irvington.

Called the Irvington Squire, the project would add 18 condominiums in a quarter-block building of potentially six stories and 71 feet. That’s a size within ‘RH’ zoning code strictures. The neighborhood is asking for 55 feet. However, Irvington is designated as a ‘Historic Conservation District’ and there is an effort underway to give the neighborhood additional protection as a full fledged Historic District. What’s the difference? I really don’t quite grasp it myself. But the bottom line seems to be that this building is within the range it’s legally allowed to be, but that the city may still have some leeway in approving or not approving the project.

“The Historic Design Guidelines clearly would preclude such a building,” one Irvington resident who is against the Squire, Jim Heuer, said by email. “The very big question is can the Historic Design Guidelines trump zoning? Based on the first Landmarks Commission review of this project, the Commissioners are divided as to whether they have the right to turn down a building that would be permitted by the zoning in the absence of the Historic Design Guidelines.  Which, of course, raises the question: why have a Historic Landmarks Commission and Historic Design Guidelines?”

Clearly some people in Irvington are concerned not just about this project, but about  density in the neighborhood in general. A flier sent out by the Irvington Community Association last month for a meeting about the building had as its major headline, “Is Irvington about to become ‘Pearlington’?”

I think that particular quote is being a bit silly. Density is coming to historic neighborhoods, and that's not necessarily a bad thing. The Pearl is a success story, not a cautionary tale. Granted, Irvington is a place of single and two-story homes, but it's also adjacent to the Broadway-Weidler shopping/retail area. Even if the Squire itself should be rejected, Irvington should get some high-density condos as long as the city continues growing. No matter what tax bracket most Irvingtonites are in, their neighborhood shouldn't be immune from the future.

The Squire would be sited next door to the Gustav Freiwald House (currently home to The Lion & The Rose bed and breakfast), which is listed on the National Register. Some would argue the Freiwald would be dwarfed by the Squire. However, there are numerous taller buildings nearby, such as highrise housing one block over at 14th and Hancock.

The project comes courtesy of a Lake Oswego developer and is designed by a small Portland firm, Perkins Architectural. The design is a neo-historic style that seeks to ape some of the historic architecture nearby. This also brings up the continual argument of whether neo-historic honors or patronizes the actual historic architecture nearby. I, as regular readers know, definitely prefer modern design, but I can’t tell you that the Perkins design for the Irvington Squire is some pitiful work of cartoonishly faux design, either. Although as the project's opponents point out, it could probably benefit from greater setbacks and landscaping.

But Heuer had this to say: "One of the many objections that people had was that in this case 'faux historic' architectural style was an insult to the neighborhood, as it assumed that a grotesquely oversized building could be made palatable to the community by dressing it up with some cornices.  Further it was suggested that if a modern building had to be constructed next to the Queen Anne Styled Freiwald House, it should be minimally ornamented to provide an unobtrusive backdrop to the ornate historic structure."

What do you make of the Squire and its right to land in Irvington?

Coming to a Narratorium Near You

Professor Clive Knights and his architecture students at Portland State University are revisiting an interesting project that embraces the city as ongoing narrative. Called Plotting the City: Telltale encounters with the mythic city (the key word here being 'city'), it intertwines storytelling, walking and architecture. 

Check out this invitation I recently received by email. It's a great example of why having a solid academic presence in the city provides wonderful ideas, even if they're as nutty sounding as a 'Narratorium':

Students have been asked to consider the identity of the city of Portland. They are exploring identity not as a single definition or absolute but as a multitude of myths embedded in the landscape, buildings and unfolding human drama of everyday life.

As if the city were a complex, layered script awaiting interpretation through continued acts of involvement and concern, they have trodden the streets, read signals, and plotted narratives about the neighborhoods they have explored. The project speculates on the contribution of the act of walking in interpreting urban space, architecture and cultural meaning.  Quite literally, they have been walking the city in somebody else’s shoes (acquired from thrift stores) and over the past several weeks have explored 8 neighborhoods of the city on foot.

Simultaneously, they developed a character study inspired by the shoes using narrative to generate a fictional ‘other’ whose detail developed in parallel with the unfolding of the city through multiple ambulations. Students then developed stories that
interlaced these characters with a particular route and destination. These stories, and the walks that unfold within them, were then creatively translated into the form of handmade book-maps, a hybrid of literature and map, each of which can accompany and guide the reader across the city in unique ways.

This e-mail is an invitation to offer your insight and response to the project and its themes by exploring the website we have constructed and by responding to any of the 17 linked ‘blogs’ that reveal each student’s experiences more fully.

We are now engaged in a discussion to define a new civic institution that we are calling a Narratorium: a place for nurturing and archiving expressions of cultural identity through storytelling. Your insights and participation are sought and welcomed. We intend to have a forum for discussion to pose ideas for the Narratorium, to which you are cordially invited (date and time will be announced shortly). We look forward to your contribution.

I just want to know when PSU football coach Jerry Glanville is going to visit the Narratorium. He'd actually be a natural for this project.

"Dream Homes" at Center For Architecture

This month in its newly opened Center For Architecture in the Pearl District (NW 11th & Hoyt), AIA/Portland is hosting an exhibit of local houses featured in the new coffee table book published by Panache Partners: Dream Homes Pacific Northwest: An Exclusive Showcase of the Finest Architects, Designers & Builders in Oregon & Washington. (Try and say that three times fast!)

Among the local architects and firms whose work is featured in the book are: Giulietti/Schouten Architects; Robertson, Merryman, Barnes Architects; Richard Brown Architects (their house is pictured below); Dowd Architecture; Vallaster & Corl Architects; Jeff Miller; Colab Architecture & Design; Chesshir Architecture; and Hans Kretchmer/Green Gables Design.

You can already count my thoughts on this as subjective, because the AIA is a sponsor of this site. But I also had the chance to get to know some of these designers during my time working at the AIA (which concluded seven years ago last month), particularly through a committee I was a liaison to called the Small Firm Roundtable.

More often than not, of course, the men and women designing single family homes are represented by smaller firms, and that's the case here. These are largely firms that won't ever get a huge condo or office commission, instead keeping a lower profile but creating some very substantial houses. (An exception would be some of the larger-scale work that Colab, RMB, Vallaster & Corl and to a lesser extent Richard Brown have done.)

The houses in the Dream Homes book encompass a lot of different styles, much of it historic stuff but also some modernity as well. I'm particularly fond of Giulietti/Schouten's Walnut House, which I wrote about separately a few months ago, but there's a more traditional looking one by Mike Dowd that I also like.

As a showcase of the "finest architects", as the book calls it, I can think of a few very top Portland architects and firms and individual projects who do single family homes that weren't included: Rick Potestio, Paul McKean, Waterleaf, even Terra Forma where my pal Nathan works. Brad Cloepfil also has two houses under construction that would be ideal for a next edition. But people like Brad and even to a lesser extent Rick get a decent amount of press publicity. I like the idea of people like Mike Dowd, Richard Brown, Stan Chesshir, Dave Giulietti (his NY Mets fandom not withstanding) and the RMB trio getting some attention as well.

The exhibit, called not "Dream Homes" but "Cross Section of 9", will be on display through February 29, when the houses leap back into their binding.

A Great Move By Powells

When I started writing the Portland Architecture blog three years ago this month, the very first post (after the one that said, "Welcome to the blog") was about Powells Books.

I've long felt that the store, considering its cultural landmark status here and how it anchors the Brewery Blocks area as a gate between downtown and the Pearl District, has a responsibility to make their buildings better. Granted, no one wants Portland to lose the rough edges that balance out its more glossy new condo buildings. But having a single-story building along Burnside with a shabby facade isn't good enough for Powells.

Now, the nation's largest new-used bookseller is stepping up with a plan to renovate the store's entrance and principal rooms at the Southeast corner entrance by 2010.

Of course not all renovations are created equal, and while it's exciting to imagine a new front door and more space, I'm not at all a fan of the architecture that Powells favored in its last renovation, of the Northwest corner in 2000, which has a very bland and neo-traditional look that seems counter to the spirit of Powells and Portland. I'm not saying they need some clean-lined modernist look with no grit or enduring power to it, but there ought to be a happy medium, ya know?

Powells' entrance also sits at a very key corner, of Burnside and Southwest 10th. If they're renovating and expanding that building, it will also be important to integrate it with the surrounding environment. There's talk of making Burnside and Couch into one-way couplets (an idea I'm vehemently against). How might that affect the architectural decisions? Is there a way to do something special with that intersection? I once heard architect extraordinaire Rick Potestio suggest some kind of plaza there with the buildings themselves curved to create some kind of grand circular public space. At the very least, Powells seems better served with widened sidewalks on a two-way Burnside than being hemmed in by two one-way streets.

Regardless of Burnside's plan, though, we're finally getting a fixed-up Powells, and I'm excited to see how second-generation Powells head Emily Powell puts her stamp on the job. And Emily, just on the outside chance that you read this, how about opening up the dialog about who you hire as an architect?

Potholes, On the Road and In the Head

In Friday's Daily Journal of Commerce, Tyler Graf writes, "Sam Adams' road-maintenance fee continues to make political enemies. No surprises there."

Huh? Actually, there is a surprise here.

Graf is referring the plan hatched by Sam Adams and Randy Leonard to put through a road maintenance plan for Portland that breaks the intended fee into a three-part affair so it doesn't have to be referred to voters. He quotes Jason Williams of Oregon Taxpayers United, a reactionary anti-tax organization that seems to favor anarchy, closed schools, laid-off police and firefighters, and of course pothole-strewn roads, all in the name of protecting the masses from the evil specter of paying their fair share to keep our civilized society stitched together. Williams is supposed to stand as the voice of reason in this story.

Williams calls the Adams-Leonard move to stave off a referendum, which would probably be voted down because pretty much any tax measure gets voted down, "sleazy". Maybe it's sleazy like allowing the lifeblood of our economy--our public roads and infrastructure--to crumble.

Graf does point out at the end that some of Williams' points are psychotically off base. Like saying both the tram and even MAX are failures. Or that Oregon already has the highest fees for automobiles in the region when it has the lowest.

Maybe it's just me, but I think finding a way to fix Portland's roads is exactly the kind of thing we as a city should step up and do. And if city councilors like Randy Leonard and Sam Adams can find a creative way to get this deal done, then that's great. I'm all for democracy, but Oregon already has way, way, way too many initiatives referred to the voters. I expect my leaders to lead some of the time, not to patronize us with having to get a rubber stamp for the tough decisions we'll vote down if it saves us half a nickel. I doubt Adams and Leonard are making many political enemies out of this road fee, but if they are, perhaps this is the chance for the voting public to be heard without actually voting. Let's tell the naysayers that an enemy of decent roads is an enemy of ours.

Audience With Higgins

Last week I caught up with Randy Higgins, a designer who always fills my brain with ideas and theories about architecture.

Randy first gained notice in the ‘90s working at Holst Architecture. Although not registered as an architect, he worked on projects like the Pacific Northwest College of Art and the Edge Lofts. But just as Holst was really taking off, Randy left to do his own thing.

In the last few years, he has designed the Elizabeth Leach Gallery’s new space, a Mario’s boutique clothier at Bridgeport Village, and came up with the incredible exterior paint job at PNCA (I wrote about it for Metropolis magazine in June 2005) in which a Rimbaud poem is literally translated into a language of yellow, gray and white rectangles.

No matter what he’s doing, though, Randy is like an academic in that he devotes a lot of time to research and theory. He reminds me of something I heard Thomas hacker say about his time working in the great Louis Kahn’s office: that private architectural practice should always be intertwined with the academic side of design. Not only is there a fountain of youth there, with new young designers always arriving each year. But even more importantly, there exists the freedom to pursue ideas with much more time and deep scrutiny than the pace of the building industry realistically allows. Design can’t advance in the private sector alone. There has to be a laboratory for new ideas. But a private practice does itself a disservice by being too completely severed from that kind of inquiring intellectual environment. (“Inquiring minds want to know!”)

Perhaps ironically, to be able to approach design this way, Randy increasingly works outside traditional architecture, and more in the sub-field of retail and experiential design. The multidisciplinary design firm he’s working at now, Vizwerks, is more akin to a Ziba Design than a traditional architecture firm. Yet these kinds of firms are increasingly getting involved with designing the built environment and not just graphics, Internet, consumer products, etc.

As we talked over lunch at Gotham Tavern--and by the way, don't let me make him sound like some Buddhist monk of design; he's very easygoing--I was making a case to Randy that I thought because of various trends over the last decade, from sustainability to the condo boom to the influx of many young creative people, the overall caliber of design being generated here was improving. While not disputing the basic premise, Randy played the kind of devil’s advocate role I imagined and wanted to hear.

Randy laments that so much of the architecture filling the skyline is speculative. When the project is a condo or office buildings, in most cases instead of architects designing for clients who will occupy their spaces, they’re designing for the person who will sell them. “Without a more direct relationship between the public and architects,” he asked me later over email, “then how can the few (architects) truly know the needs of the many (public)?”

Major developers like Gerding Edlen have grown more and more sophisticated about how they market their spaces. On projects like the new Cyan condos downtown by Thomas Hacker Architects, for example, the developer hired Ziba Design to come up with a concept, from the blue-green color the building is named after to the concept of the potential occupants aspirations and values far beyond the countertop they choose.

Randy also had something interesting to say about what we often call modern architecture: that it’s no longer really modern in the sense of modernism, but more like a postmodern building—the exterior having very little to do with the interior functions—only dressed in a classic modernist language.

I don’t know what it is about people named Randy in the Portland design community. There’s writer/editor Randy Gragg, developer Randy Rapaport, and the aforementioned designer Mr. Higgins (who is not pictured in these attached shots). It reminds me of a children’s book read to me many years ago, “Randy’s Dandy Lions”. I guess, then, that maybe this trio would be our Dandy Randy Lions.