Cloepfil Plays Jimmy Mak's

With a book on Allied Works being published next winter, Brad Cloepfil told Randy Gragg during their interview Monday evening at Jimmy Mak's jazz club that he’s been looking back on the firm’s early career. “The last thing we need is more buildings, but we certainly need more architecture,” he said. The essential question for Allied Works, he added, has been, “What can the work heighten or reveal…that we wouldn’t otherwise be able to see?”

Following are some notes I took over a Stella Artois.

Talking about Allied’s Museum of Art & Design at 2 Columbus Circle in New York, currently finishing up construction (and looking quite dazzling, I think), he said the design approach working with the decades-empty but architecturally significant Edward Durrell Stone original building was “removing structure as a way of creating experience.” Cloepfil described the original as “the inert box that was rendered transparent.” The façade now acts as a series of cantilevers, and the museum’s cladding “literally created a new glazing that brings color and iridescence in certain light.” In that way, 2 Columbus Circle resembles Cloepfil’s W+K building in that it is also “first an act of editing.”

For the Seattle Art Museum, he showed the pattern of a spider web and talked about being “given an existing envelope and prescribed boundaries.” It’s a stainless steel building that “gathers forces”. Not much time spent here, though.

Allied’s vacation house in Duchess County, New York is a “visceral glass house, intended not just to be clear, but a diaphanous part of the landscape.” Artist Doug Aiken filmed construction of the house during four different seasons and is projecting the footage onto the fours sides of the house. “You begin a conversation with the architecture that the art extend," he said. "Buildings are less important as objects. The real value of the building is how people can act upon it.”

On his time at the University of Oregon and in Thomas Hacker’s office, both of which brought Louis Kahn’s influence: “We were so lucky when Lou Kahn’s office closed in ‘74 or ‘75, there was a migration of five of six of them to U of O. I was just a suburban kid then. I assumed it was just the way you talked about architecture.”

“There was a morality to Tom’s work I resisted,” Cloepfil also said of Hacker, “but it has stayed with me in some ways. It’s the nature of a good teacher…that you don’t have to push against ideas because you can come to own them yourself. Our St. Louis building was about structure, for example, whereas Lou Kahn was more about plan.”

Cloepfil also talked about the influence sculptors had on him, particularly while he was in graduate school in New York at Columbia in the mid-1980s. “It was a dark time for architecture,” he remembers of the postmodern age. “Art filled a void in ‘70s and ‘80s architecture and extended it through 15 years of silence as far as ideas go.” Works by Richard Serra “blew my mind. It was the most powerful piece of architecture I’d been in. Everything I’d learned about architecture I saw in that work. Then you look at stuff like the Portland Building and you see people got lost.”

Talking later about Allied Works’ magnificent 2281 NW Glisan building, Gragg remarked at how the project managed to narrowly avoid a  implementation of a historic landmark district, who’s chair later said he’d had have allowed Cloepfil’s glass building over his dead body. The architect also remembers getting some eloquent hate mail about the building. But, he says, the Glisan project was a sensible approach to its historic context. “Given the closed buildings around it, wouldn’t it be great to open up?” he asked, by way of explanation. “We said, ‘Let’s do a 20th century building before they close the 20th century.”

Cloepfil had strong criticism for how neighborhoods subject to historic landmarks commission review overstep and misunderstand their role as stewards of architecture. “It’s demeaning to history to mock it,” he said. “Be respectful by how you juxtapose it to the new. But the United States is the worst about this.” In the 1970s, he said, with such destruction happening from urban renewal, and areas like the south auditorium district leveled as a result, it was understandable to try and freeze neighborhoods subject to unwanted change in order to protect them. But now, he added, “We need to have a new conversation about historic architecture.”

Asked to critique the overall architectural caliber of the wave of new condos in the Pearl District and South Waterfront, he said, “I wish there was more diversity of style and voice. But the Upper West Side of Manhattan is probably one of the most architecturally bland areas of New York. Both neighborhoods were built very fast, over about 20 years. Here in Portland, I think there’s not necessarily an iconic building [among the new condos], but there’s a scale and quality that’s a good fabric for the city. But can we do more than the nice, the status quo? Granted, other cities don’t do that, and hence the success of Portland. But it would be nice to take a stab at something bigger.”

Probed to comment on a series of projects, Cloepfil had a big thumbs-up for Memorial Coliseum. “It would be insane if it’s not saved,” he said. “It’s a beautiful glass pavilion.” He was not as complimentary, though, toward the popular Jamison Square Park in the Pearl. “It’s a theme park. It’s an urban artifice. You could have done something so much more elegant.” On South Waterfront the architect said, “It’s contained, it’s dense, but it’s so isolated as a pod. That frightens me.”

I believe the conversation continued onward from there, but I've got a 24,000 word writing assignment due Thursday, so I had to sneak out just a tad early.

Comments

[Keahi Pelayo]

Thank you. Creative. Insightful. Very helpful.
Aloha,
Keahi

[B-rad]

It is good to get the perspective of an architect who has a distinct style on what is going well and poor in Portland design. I agree that there is a blandness to the condo explosion in the Pearl district but it is an important contribution to the fabric of the city. To have a neighborhood grow up quickly with many similar designs lays the groundwork for future designers to draw context from and contrast with something daring. Portlanders will be able to look back fondly at this time in our history when the city took a big step forward.

[Nikos]

Brian I am ashamed of you. Drinking Stella Artois in Portland of 32 microbrewery fame!

[Nikos]

I like Cleopfil, but he is wide off the mark on Jamison Square. Jamison Square is an extremely succesful urban space, in my mind it is incredible how well it functions as a public space , for such a designed from scratch , "artificial" (ie not evolved through time) square!

[Brian Libby]

I hear you on the beer, Nikos. I love local micros and particularly enjoy (1) Mirror Pond Pale Ale, (2) Bridgeport IPA, and (3) Widmer Sommerbrau. But those Belgians make some very fine beer, ya know?

I'm not sure what I think about Jamison and Cloepfil's comment. It's very popular and extremely successful in that sense. But as a childless, dogless person, I've never once set foot in Jamison Square. I've always been fine with that, because I just think to myseelf, 'This park is nice but it's not for me.' However, Cloepfil does make me wonder: is there a park that could have been built there with some tables or other quiet spaces that people like me might have enjoyed? If it'd been only that, then of course the kids and families would have been having less fun. So I don't know the answer. What is the mission of a space like that?

[billb]

Glad to hear BC mention the great Lou Kahn profs many of us were
lucky to learn The Art of Architecture from. It was a priceless window into a vision of Design for Meaning and Humanity.
Everybody go look a a book on Lou.

[Nikos]

Belgians do have tasty beers, no question!
I don't like kids splashing in the water of the fountain by (it feels) the thousands either, but I have a different daily experience of the square because I live one block off of it! I love the originality of the fountain (in line with the great Portland tradition of splash friendly fountains), you can sit on the tiered stones or the benches. There is what I think enlivens european squares, which is tables out (Fenouil) with people sitting out drinking and eating. It is surrounded by stores and there is always foot traffic. The trees provide startegic shade. It is beautifully lit at night!
I think it is usurping Pioneer Place Square's claim to Portland's living room!
I think no one can predict whether any urban design will work or not, many times things work DESPITE their design for mysterious reasons.

[ws]

"He(Brad Cloepfil)was not as complimentary, though, toward the popular Jamison Square Park in the Pearl. “It’s a theme park. It’s an urban artifice. You could have done something so much more elegant.”

If grand, elegant architectural design were the only important consideration for that location, I'm sure something much more elegant could have been created. As a solution to the challenges and problems that can sometimes befall urban parks, I think Jamison is very elegant.

Jamison, with it's exceptionally well designed, child safe water feature, has drawn families and laughing children. Isn't that exactly what cities need more of? The parents and other responsible adults present at Jamison help to discourage and dispel the presence of less desirable social elements at the park; the drunks, junkies, perverts, gang bangers, and so on. Many more positive things could be said about this park.

It's amazing to me that the architectural critic, urban studies guy, editor of this architecture weblog, Brian Libby, has "...never once set foot in Jamison Square." That's just astonishing. Do yourself a favor and get on over there some sunny weekend day this summer. It's an amazing thing to see how the thing works.

There's plenty of places to sit; the gently sloping lawn, some park benches, parts of the fountain away from the water....the coffee shop, the upscale restaurant directly adjoining the park. It seems PB5 may have a water feature somewhat related to the one at Jamison, but it's hard to tell from the renderings whether it will have the potential to do something as good for downtown as Jamison has done for the Pearl. I'm so disgusted with the city for letting Moyer build that 33 story monolith on PB4...nothing could repair the damage that building will bring upon the city.

[BrianLibby]

WS, I may have misrepresented myself. I've been through and past Jamison Square Park many many times. I've also eaten at the restaurant overlooking the park, Fenouil, a couple times.

It's true I don't spend time hanging out in Jamison Square, but I should have qualified that by saying I don't spend much time hanging out in parks in general, unless I've brought my lunch there or something - but I work from home, so that's seldom too.

I've said things in the past, here on this blog and in articles I've written, both in praise and criticism of Jamison Square. It seems enormously successful to me in that it's popular, it has a distinct identity, and there's a blend of fun spirit with enduring, tactile materials like stone and wood.

I also think that Jamison Square can't fully be appreciated until the trees become more mature. When that happens, and there's lots more shading, I'll be much more likely to stop.

However, I think there's also at least a kernel of truth to what Brad says in that Jamison Square does feel rather themed to me in that it's meant to be a vibrant space where kids and dogs are frolicking. I think Brad's point was that a lot of great urban spaces can appeal to a wider array of uses when their design is more minimal. Brad's a kind of classic modernist in that way, and very distrustful of design that feels postmodern or playful. It's just not his thing.

So in other words, I meant to occupy a middle ground on this one, between those who adore Jamison and those who deliberately avoid it, as Brad, a Pearl resident, says he does.