Portland Architecture

"PDXplore" Exhibit Imagines A Future Portland

Beginning this Thursday, the Pacific Northwest College of Art will play host to a month-long exhibit called "PDXplore: Designing Portland" in which five local members of the architecture and design community explore ideas about how Portland will grow and change in the years ahead.

The five participants are Rudy Barton, an architecture professor at Portland State and longtime chair of the school's architecture department; Rick Potestio, one of the city's most talented architects; Mike McCulloch, former head of the city's Design Commission and a veteran architect; Carol Mayer-Reed, a founding principal of landscape architecture firm Mayer-Reed; and William Tripp, another venerable local architect.

Barton's focus will be Portland's relationship to the Willamette River. Coming to Portland from New Orleans, he knows the tremendous opportunity but also the risk facing such environments. Reed will use a variety of aerial photos and other research material to try and define what makes the city unique from a topographical and natural perspective. McCulloch is creating a series of diagrams for the city called "River, Ravine and Ring". Tripp will present in his drawings the potential of what he calls "ritual space", the outdoor public areas essential to creating and fostering community. Potestio also loves to draw, and his illustrations (including the one at left) will present a look at a Portland of tomorrow and how it can be far more dense without sacrificing what makes us unique.

On Tuesday, July 8 from 6-9PM, there will also be a panel discussion in which the five designers discuss their work and ideas. And on July 22 from 6-9PM, as part of PNCA's ongoing Idea Studios, there will be another talk (both events are at PNCA, 1241 NW Johnson) called "In The Round: Collective Leadership" featuring mayor-elect Sam Adams, Metro president David Bragdon, Hillsboro mayor Tom Hughes, Portland planning director Gil Kelley, and City of Gresham executive manager Alice Rouyere.

With an ambitious new mayor on board who favors the arts, as well as a revision of the Portland Plan  coming from city planners, there is no better time to get involved in shaping the city's future. This exhibit will make an excellent first start. But the quintet offering ideas can't do it alone. We need participation and advocacy from the architecture and design community to hold the city to its potential.

Warehouse Temple: Visiting Works Partnership's Olympic Mills Commerce Center

Yesterday I made a long-intended visit to the Olympic Mills Commerce Center, the circa-1927 cereal mill that has been renovated by Works Partnership Architecture and Beam Development into a series of flexible creative spaces for mostly design-based tenants. Some rough edges not withstanding, I like this building and its rehab a lot.

The original structure, known since 1950 as the B&O warehouse (for the former Baggage and Omnibus Company), has an eight-story concrete grain elevator and extends to nearly a full city block with its two-story warehouse.

A series of four courtyards cut into the warehouse with skylights to bring in natural light. These double-height courtyards, encircled by second-floor catwalks, are the most pleasant and photogenic portions of the building. They’re clad in slatted wood (made of 2x6 flooring) that was re-milled from several wood grain cribs that had been part of the tower’s grain elevator.

In a recent home magazine article I wrote, the homeowner talked about enjoying the high volumes that existed even in rooms with relatively small square footage. I thought of the same with these four spaces. Rather than one huge atrium, like you’d find at Montgomery Park, you have four that are small enough to feel intimate yet large enough to feel expansive. And the slatted wood is gorgeous. This some will surely find too hyperbolic, but while the Olympic Mills Commerce Center may not be quite at this level of sophistication, inside the courtyards of this huge, rough-edged former cereal mill, I felt the hint of a Buddhist temple, or some light filled Alvar Aalto building like the Mt. Angel Abbey Library.

The architects had different plans for furniture than the identical red couches in the quartet of spaces. “We were also hoping that each courtyard would be populated with a different furniture strategy,” Works’ Bill Neburka said in a recent email. “One would be old work tables for impromptu meetings, one would be salvaged wood chairs of all types. I was always really intrigued by how you could see a record of human patterns by the residual chair placement in Bryant Park in NYC: sort of like tracks in the sand. We're still working on that one.”

Even so, getting accomplished a historic renovation like this one, which could have been full of countless surprise-expenses, I don’t think the couches are so bad for a start. Maybe it’ll just need to be up to the tenants to take initiative in creating that kind of community—tables or no tables. There is also a lot of artwork, banners and other stuff hanging from the walls, perhaps too much in my taste. But I can see its effectiveness in encouraging these tenants to form that kind of intra-building community.

Although most of my time was spent exploring the interior courtyards, I also took the elevator up to the top floor of the grain elevator. It is still unoccupied, unlike most of the rest of the building, and there seemed to be some residual construction going on there. But as the tallest building in the Central Eastside (or at least close to it), and just across the river from downtown, Olympic Mills offers some tantalizing views.

When the building was purchased in 2005, the tower and base of the building were painted two different colors, which broke up the mass of the huge old mill. But this time around, the new paint job, a sort of earthy orange, was used throughout the exterior. As a result, one gets a much stronger sense of the building as a big portion of Portland’s east-of-the-Willamette skyline.

It makes me wonder what modern buildings might someday be built in the neighborhood to contrast the wonderful historic industrial structures like this one. Hopefully we won’t make the same mistake as some did in the Pearl District, pairing new faux-industrial with the old warehouses. That’s certainly not happening at the Olympic Mills Commerce Center, though, which has new life but nevertheless feels, in its materials and character, like one connecting thread from past to present and beyond. "It's a super-cool building," Neburka adds. "We just tried to stay out of our own way."

Sustainable Industries Magazine Announces Top 10 Green Products

Sustainable Industries magazine (or as I still think of them, the Sustainable Industries Journal) has announced its top 10 green products for 2008. Descriptions are from the magazine (which in full disclosure I also write for).

Compressed Earth Blocks (CEB), produced by Midwest Earth Builders with a CEB machine manufactured by Powell & Sons. This block-building system, typically fed with local clays and soils, creates blocks uniform in size and density that can be "drystacked" to form durable, energy-efficient walls.

EcoTop, manufactured by KlipTech. The first countertop on the market to use both paper and wood fibers certified by the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) as well as rapidly renewable bamboo fibers.

 

Lamberts Channel Glass, manufactured by Glasfrabriks Lamberts. (Pictured above installed at the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn.) Self-supporting columns made of 40% post-consumer recycled glass that can be used to make exterior or interior walls. The channel glass is manufactured in a low-polluting oxygen-fired furnaces.

Masa Cabinet Hardware, manufactured by Eleek. Cabinet hardware made of 100-percent post-consumer recycled aluminum sourced from Portland's Rebuilding Center.

MetroPaint, Metro. An interior and exterior paint made from 100 percent post-consumer recycled interior and exterior latex paint collected from Portland's hazardous waste centers and some retail locations.

Resource Monitor, manufactured by Agilewaves. Monitor collects data from electric, water and gas lines and sends it to a password-protected Web page where building occupants can find detailed information about the cost of a building's consumption in both dollars and carbon weight. Agilewaves bests similar products on the market by aiming to prove the benefits of modern technologies such solar photovoltaics and green roofs.

Solar Tracking Skylight, manufactured by Solar Tracking Skylights Inc. The Solar Tracking Skylight is a completely self-contained, self-managed skylight with mirrors. Unlike typical skylights, which only provide light to occupants when the sun crosses its opening, Solar Tracking Skylight's mirrors provide coverage throughout the entire day.

Straw Wall, manufactured by Green Design Systems. Straw Walls are infill panels similar to straw bale wall systems made of just three materials: rice straw and hulls (an agricultural crop waste), wood framing (certified by the Forest Stewardship Council) and steel mesh (made of 100 percent recycled metal).

Thermastrand Radiant Barrier Sheathing, manufactured by Ainsworth Engineered. Thermastrand is the industry's first radiant barrier foil that is adhered directly to oriented-strand board (OSB) during the manufacturing process. The OSB is certified by the Forest Stewardship Council.

Salvaged Hardwood Tables, made by Urban Hardwoods. Over the past 10 years, Urban Hardwoods has salvaged about 3,000 trees from Seattle homeowners and turned the wood into tables and other furniture. The company has gone to great lengths to reduce waste and resources in its drying and milling process.

Does anyone reading this have any experience using any of these products? Or what might be some green products and materials not on this list that people would like to recommend?

'Cargotecture' In Northeast

Seattle architecture firm Hybrid, which also created the $99,000 competition-winning house in Houston that I wrote about recently, has also seen in one day earlier this month some of the first shipping-container architecture completed in Portland.

At a residence in Northeast near Irvington, a Hybrid-designed workshop made of shipping containers was hoisted into place by crane after being trucked down from Seattle. It was fully installed in less than a day. "It was pretty exciting," Hybrid's Joel Egan told Portland Architecture by email. "We started at about 9AM, and had both halves of the building down and structurally plugged in by noon. The whole neighborhood was out to see this."

The c384w, as Hybrid calls their model, is composed of two used 24’ cargo containers, with their adjacent long walls removed, creating an insulated, well-lit, and modern open space in a footprint of 16’x24’. The project falls into the ‘workshop’ is a category of factory-built structure. It will therefore have a permit for relocation to anywhere in Oregon or Washington - wherever the clients may choose to move.

On top of the structure is a green roof, roof water collection system, a securable mix of original cargo doors and a new 12’ sliding steel door, and exterior access to a garden room. The hard steel exterior is contrasted with warm and light stained plywood sheets throughout the interiors, on the walls and ceiling. The original cargo floors have been left exposed, preserving the nostalgia of a few deep scratches that recall the original life of these boxes.

According to Egan, this is the first cargo container-made workshop in Oregon. I know there have been a couple other structures in the state made with shipping containers, such as a retail outlet on NW 23rd Avenue. Even so, the possibilities for more use of this system is enticing. Although this project is listed as a workshop, it could also be made as an accessory dwelling unit. "The ADU is what we aim for," Egan adds. "Portland’s c384w is an exception to our intent because it does not have plumbing.  But we can make and sell an entire home (albeit a very small one) for less than $49,000 at our factory gate including providing all the services that precede and follow delivery to make the project perform as plug-and-play as possible. This 384 square foot workshop could easily be a 384 square foot home. We have already built one at 320. There is plenty of room for a shower-bathroom and a galley kitchen in a great room, plus room for us to build a bed nook behind some built in cabinets and shelving as we have done in previous projects.  We sell that c384s for $87,000."

Of course, accessory dwellings are not going to be a workable solution for very many thousands of people, given that there are only so many big yards out there. Even so, just as with Hybrid's $99,000 square foot house, this so called 'cargotecture' is intriguing. Who's ready to have one craned into place?

Luxurious Dining & Decor at Lucier

At the south end of Riverplace along the Willamette, beside the new Strand Standard condos, sits the new Lucier restaurant, a very high-end dining establishment with a sizable investment in its architecture and interiors. I visited Lucier last week as part of a press lunch. Hopefully it won't seem like I'm writing this post in exchange for the complimentary striped bass carpaccio with slivered foie gras, which was one of about ten different small plates we had over a four hour meal.

(I particularly recommend the delicious Michima Ranch Ribeye and the Spring Pea Risotto, but maybe that's me. The chef has an obsession, by the way, with micro greens and veggies. Gordon Ramsay would say that's very 1990s.)

The exterior, like the Strand condos, is designed by Ankrom Moisan Associated Architects. It's got floor to ceiling glass and a slanted flat roof that makes it feel a bit like a ship. The back portion also has a wood-paneled curvy cube. The restaurant's 7,600 square foot interior was designed by New York firm Alvarez + Brock, which also designed Le Cirque. The press release has this to say about their design:

"One-of-a-kind features within Lucier include a marble wall milled with abstract swimming designs, a shimmering indoor canal lined with iridescent gold tiles, oversized chandeliers made from bronze tubes of varying heights, hand blown glass sculptures by local artists and a diamond-faceted metal dome meant to replicate the peaks of Mount Hood."

Being inside, I marveled at the beauty of the materials and design, especially the hanging chandeliers made from hundreds of individually hanging tubes that undulate gently. There's even a small waterway that meanders like a creek through the restaurant floor. And that gold dome is something else too, although it separates the bartender from bar patrons, which seems like an unwise move. Still, virtually every surface in this place is made of a luxurious material. It's very impressive, although some might say it also borders on the ridiculous. Will Oregonians go for it?

Obviously Portland like any big city has some affluent types who will flock here, as will others for their prom night or once-a-year birthday dinner at a destination restaurant. It's not Lucier's responsibility to craft their own demographic, of course. It'll be interesting to see how such a fancy place fares, but you've got to admit there aren't many riverfront restaurants except for a satellite of the Newport Bay chain plopped on the water a few feet away from Lucier. Call me crazy, but I don't think of these two as direct competitors.

Although this is possibly the swankiest restaurant I've ever been inside (at least in Portland), I found it curious to know that the proprietor, Chris Dussin, got his start founding the Old Spaghetti Factory and later Fenouil in the Pearl District, while his grandfather started that downtown hipster-stronghold of a watering hole, the Virginia Cafe. Lucier is of course most like Fenouil, both of which have a bit of a corporate feel despite the luxury.

Visiting Lucier (which is named for Etienne Lucier, the man who started Oregon's first independent farm), one also is inspired to ponder what the other most impressive restaurant interiors in Portland may be. We're certainly not the kings of high style with a culture that favors Birkenstocks and shorts, and many of the best restaurants here keep their style unpretentious. That's even more so now with the current generation of fine dining establishments, where often there cement floors to go with your Kobe beef. The first place that comes to mind as an impressive, luxurious restaurant space, though, is definitely the Allied Works-designed Bluehour. What other ones am I forgetting?

The Hawthorne Bridge: A Love-Hate Relationship

The Hawthorne Bridge is the creaky old senior citizen of Portland's numerous Willamette and Columbia River spans. Nearing its 100th birthday in 2010, the Hawthorne is our city's oldest bridge. I've always considered it my home bridge, so to speak, in that it's the one I use by far the most. It's not only convenient to where I live, but it also has the best pedestrian and bike amenities of just about any local bridge. But it's also the Portland span with by far the most draw bridge openings, which also take longer to complete than any other in town. Since I cross it a few times every week, I have come to think of it as the engineering version of a grandparent I love, but one who's a real nuisance sometimes too.

Yesterday while biking home from downtown around 2PM, I wheeled toward the bridgehead just as the warning lights came on and the guard rails came down. It was time for the Portland Spirit to move tourists upriver. Admittedly, I'm an impatient person, but in situations like this I grumble inside about how one tour company is making scores or hundreds of people wait. Then the wait got longer and more frustrating than seemingly was necessary. Even though the drawbridge only needed to be raised about halfway in order for the Spirit to pass through, the Hawthorne was raised all the way to its top. So what was already about a seven-minute wait now became more than ten minutes. Were I a better person, I'd have accepted this as a Zen-like pause in the day's proceedings. Instead, I ridiculously contemplated flipping off the bridge operator as we finally wheeled by.

Initially I was tempted to make this post a mere rant about how much of a pain the Hawthorne can be and how river traffic seems to get more of a priority than they deserve given the overwhelmingly larger number of people trying to use the bridges. But instead I first decided to talk with Michael Pullen, an old friend I used to work with who now is a spokesperson for Multnomah County about bridges, land use, and other public concerns.

The Hawthorne has about 300 openings a month, Mike told me. That compares to just two or three openings a month for the Broadway Bridge, which sits higher on the river. But the ambiance I feel as a pedestrian or cyclist is the flip side: the Hawthorne is lower on the river than other local spans, so there's a greater feeling of connection with the river, and less of a barrier at the bridgehead without the need to ease back downward so much to street level.

That feeling I had yesterday that the bridge was raising much higher than necessary for the Portland Spirit to pass actually was true. Apparently the Hawthorne is such an antique that the bridge has to be raised to its full height every eight hours, every day, just to keep the cables and lift mechanism properly lubricated. Usually they try and complete those lifts as much outside of peak times as possible. One happens in the middle of the night, for example. But in this case, since the bridge had to be opened anyway and it had been several hours since a full lift, Grandma Hawthorne needed us all to wait while she completed her stretches.

There are two rush-hour times when river traffic can't get a drawbridge opening unless it's an emergency: 7-9AM and 4-6PM. And those peak-hour moratoriums actually required an act of Congress to be approved. Mike tells me that the government's principle is that the river was here before the bridges were, so it has the right of way. That means for 20 hours of the day, one person on a sailboat can hold up traffic with a drawbridge opening pretty much whenever he or she wants.

This question of how low to make a bridge, and the trade-off between a low bridge's intimacy and a higher bridge's fewer drawbridge openings is a relevant one, because we'll soon have a new pedestrian and light rail bridge. I'll bet the city planners want a low bridge for ambiance and the transportation people, who are usually concerned with movement over aesthetics, will surely want one tall as can be (and preferably as ugly and cheap as possible).

So as I both rant against and celebrate the Hawthorne, just how much of our oldest bridge's ways do we want in our newest?

Lango Hansen & Metro Unveil Three Design Options for Lone Fir Memorial

Local landscape architecture firm Lango Hansen, who also designed the Hotel Modera courtyard (with Holst Architecture) that I wrote about recently on this blog and in The Oregonian, has unveiled three design options in a Metro-sponsored effort to re-introduce part of Lone Fir Cemetery in Southeast Portland. The agency is seeking public comment on which design is best.

Some background: Several years ago, when the Multnomah Building was planned to be demolished, there was concern that this corner of the cemetery would be developed as a mixed use building, which many locals strongly opposed because it was believed that the land belonged to the cemetery and there were still remains on the site. Multnomah County and Metro conducted an archaeological investigation, and it proved true. Since then, the property has been put on the National Register of Historic Places, as is the rest of the cemetery, and Metro is leading the effort to create a new design for the site that will be a memorial for the Chinese workers believed to be buried there. There will also be a contemplative garden with interpretive elements reflecting the cemetery's history and cultural diversity.

Another historical aspect of the property is that there were several mental patients buried on the site. A Dr. Hawthorne, for whom Hawthorne Boulevard is named, saw to their burial when these patients' families washed their hands of responsibility (mental illness was often hidden away by polite society in these days).

The three Lango Hansen design options are largely about how much of a memorial exists. The firm has provided narrative for each of the three options, listed as follows:

"Option 1 illustrates a long rectangular lawn with a memorial similar to the historic cemetery trellis, located at the east end of the project area. In front of the trellis a small bubbling fountain is proposed on a stone paving pad. The trellis and lawn are separated from the Morrison Street sidewalk by a band low shrubs and perennials to mitigate traffic noise. On the north side of the lawn a serpentine decomposed granite path meanders through a band of low shrubs and perennials providing pedestrian connections between the project site and the rest of the cemetery. A contemplative stone seating circle is located along this path, surrounded by cherry trees, in the location of where the remains were found."

"At the pedestrian entry off of SE 20th and Morrison, a grouping of four raised planters with low stone walls, similar to the walls found in the cemetery, provide a place for seating and colorful perennial plantings. A gateway feature, similar in design to the trellis, is flanked by these planters. This gateway could have side panels containing interpretive information about the cemetery for the public."

"In Option 2 the trellis on the east side of the project area is expanded in length, and the memorial more explicitly acknowledges the Chinese workers as well as Dr. Hawthorne’s patients. The Chinese memorial contains elements similar to a traditional Chinese cemetery altar, such as stone placement with the Chinese inscription “You are with us” and a funerary burner for offerings. The funerary burner could be a metaphoric work of art rather than an actual burner. These elements are placed in front of the trellis structure, with a large pine planted behind them. A larger paving pad surrounding the Chinese memorial acknowledges by name Dr. Hawthorne’s patients that were buried in the area. At the north end of the trellis a small cemetery maintenance building is proposed, which could be visually mitigated with plantings."

"In this scheme the lawn is contained by an elliptical path and is raised at the west end by a low basalt wall that would seep water. This water feature is a focal point in a pedestrian plaza at the intersection of 20th and Morrison. The plaza also contains a grove of cherry trees with benches and interpretive kiosks. Low growing shrubs create a separation of the lawn area from the sidewalk at SE Morrison Street."

"Historically, the Chinese cemetery contained a path down the center, running east/west. Option 3’s scheme recalls that path, but puts a slight curve in it, connecting the pedestrian entry at SE 20th and Morrison to  two separate memorials at the east end of the project area. The path could illustrate a time line of the cemetery or give voice to the rich history of the cemetery, by the use of inscribed stones set in the lawn, crossing the path at intervals, and becoming the interpretive element. The memorial to the Chinese workers is located in the northeast corner of the property and contains a” stone mountain”, similar to those in classical Chinese gardens, potentially using stone from the Guangdong province where the Chinese workers were from. The paving around this memorial could be a stone mosaic, and the entire memorial is proposed to be surrounded by plants of Chinese origin. To the south of this memorial a stone paving circle, nestled within northwest native plantings is proposed with interpretive elements acknowledging Dr. Hawthorne’s patients."

"At the pedestrian entry at SE 20th and Morrison an entry sculpture is proposed as well as a low mound containing a grove of cherry trees which leads into the site. The mound is backed by low basalt rubble walls similar to those inside the cemetery. Two basalt columns with an interpretive panel form a gateway to the cemetery at what was the west edge of the Chinese cemetery."

This project has come about through a grass roots effort over the past 5 years by Friends of Lone Fir, Buckman Community Association, the Consolidated Chinese Benevolent Society, neighbors and interested local citizens.

On Metro's website, there is additional information about the options as well as the opportunity for public input. Personally, I prefer the option that provides separate Chinese and Dr. Hawthorne memorials, but I also like the pathway going through the middle of the space. You don't want this solemn cemetery becoming an athletic field, after all. Meanwhile, congrats to Lango Hansen on a fine set of options.

Street of Nightmares

It's with respectful empathy I report that a group of local homebuilders are losing gobs of money, but also with a smirk that I report that those losses are associated with the annual Street of Dreams showcase of luxury suburban homes.

As Ryan Frank reports in today's Oregonian, not one of the homes from the 2007 Street of Dreams--located this year on Grasle Road outside Oregon City--has sold. Normally, a few homes sell during the show and most are sold within a year. This year, they're all either vacant or occupied by the builders.

The Street of Dreams is a popular longtime showcase of the biggest and most expensive homes, but this time around they've been hurt by the nation's tumbling mortgage market. Yet I'd argue there's more than a credit crisis keeping these homes empty. After World War II and for several decades the American suburb was the destination for many millions of middle class and affluent familes. Hundreds of thousands still move there each year. But we're in the midst of a multi-decade reversal in which the most coveted locales are now much closer in to central cities.

After all, if the mantra of real estate is location, location, location, who wants to live in a subdivision outside Oregon City for $3 million?  I can see living in the country outside Oregon City. That would probably be a nicely pastoral, bucolic setting. But a subdivision of McMansions that are in most cases not even designed by a real architect? (Less than 10 percent of single-family homes are designed by architects; the rest, such as these Street of Dreams homes, usually come from mass produced and/or draftsperson-originated designs.)

McMansions are architectural SUVs. Notice General Motors just shut down several of their sport utility vehicle factories?

I'd like to see a new kind of Street of Dreams, an urban one. How about if you got the developers of a few different condos to reserve units and have some top interior designers go to work on them? Maybe one is in Thomas Hacker Architects' Atwater Place in South Waterfront, another in the BOORA-designed Metropolitan, another in GBD Architects' Casey. Tell me those would all be on the market a year from now.

Masters of Their Domain: State Board Approves PSU Masters of Architecture Program

The State Board of Higher Education has approved a new master's degree program in architecture at Portland State University. It will be the second graduate degree of its type to be offered in Oregon, along with University of Oregon's. It's also been a long time coming. PSU is seeking to enter candidacy status for professional accreditation with the National Architectural Accrediting Board in July.

The new Master of Architecture degree program, say its organizers, will encourage hands-on fabrication, design-build experiences, in-depth thesis investigations and urban architecture. The department plans on adding six new full-time faculty members over thenext two years to support graduate studies and enhance the researchbase.

"We are very pleased. It is an essential componentin developing greater strength in sustainability with a focus on theurban environment at PSU," said Roy Koch, provost and vice presidentfor Academic Affairs, in a boilerplate press release that I've copied much of this blog post from. "This program takes advantage of existing strengths at our university including our nationally recognized Urban Studies and Planning and Engineering programs to build a distinctive program with a focus on architecture in the urban and metropolitan environment."

The new Master of Architecture is a two-year 74 credit hour program.The University anticipates that it will grow to an enrollment of 25-30 students per year.

A Look at the Big Look (or: Speaking Fregonese)

This evening the Bright Lights Discussion Series from Portland Spaces magazine and the City Club of Portland continues with Randy Gragg's interview of planner John Fregonese.

"As most of you know, John’s leading major planning efforts across the country," Randy said in a recent email. "We’ll be talking about that work, focusing on lessons from elsewhere Portland and Oregon might learn from. But we’ll also be talking about John’s work developing a plan for the Big Look Task Force, the first major review of Oregon’s legendary landuse system since its inauguration three decades ago."

The "Big Look", created by the governor and the legislature, is a 10-leader task force from around the state and across the political spectrum, seeking to retool the state's efforts to balance farmland and open-space protection with property rights and urban growth. Fregonese, who will lead the task force, has worked for cities such as Los Angeles, Nashville, Chicago, and Houston, as well as the entire state of Louisiana. "His views often run against Oregon orthodoxy," Randy's email goes on, "but before joining the national planning big leagues, he rose through the Oregon minors, serving as planning director of Woodburn, Ashland, and Portland's regional government, Metro."

The Big Look is a promising effort. Oregon has rested on its planning laurels of the 1970s for too long, some say. Can we be optimistic that this will be the way to change that, to make our own mark as caretakers of the state's land use planning?

The discussion starts at 6PM with doors opening at 5:30. As always, Bright Lights is held at Jimmy Mak’s jazz club, 221 NW 10th Ave. Chances are there won't be any blue notes played tonight though.

A $99,000 House

Although this doesn’t have anything to do with architecture in Portland, I wanted to point out a recent design competition in Houston that could be ideal to replicate here, either the competition itself or the project that won: the $99,000 House Competition.

Held by Rice University and AIA Houston, the competition called for a single-family house with up to 1,400 square feet, including three bedrooms and one-and-a-half to two bathrooms, to be built for $99,000 or less. The competition challenged designers and architects to design a sustainable, affordable house, with special consideration given to affordability, longevity, energy savings benefits, and appropriateness for the hot, humid climate of Houston. The objectives were to broaden awareness of green building strategies applicable to affordable housing, generate and publicize buildable examples of sustainable affordable houses.

The competition was won by a partnership between Seattle architecture firm HyBrid and Houston’s Owen Richards Architects from a field of about 200 applicants. Hybrid is known for its conversion of cargo containers into architecture, and also created factory-built wood modular apartments called “inhabit” on display now at in Seattle.

The Hybrid/Richards design, said juror Bryan Bell, “allows for a range of specific users to personalize the space. This highly creative response offers flexible floorplans with possibilities for a home office, a room for a grandparent, or even a fourth bedroom. The proposal even came in below budget, allowing for some further personal options such as a larger kitchen or nice landscaping of the lot. And after reviewing many energy savings ideas throughout the competition, the solutions included in this design were well considered for Houston and will help the owner with each monthly bill."

The house will be built this summer on land donated by the City of Houston. Several more may be built in succession.

The Hybrid/Richards design features a stacked plan that can act as an up to four-bedroom home or two 600-square-foot duplexes. The four-square form with horizontal slat siding is oriented to take advantage of natural ventilation and south-facing summer shading. A solar-powered fan atop a central shaft moves natural air efficiently but also combines with conditioned air when needed. (This is Houston’s surface-of-the-sun climate, after all.) It’s built using a balloon frame on a four-foot module that minimizes material use and works for either prefab or traditional housing.  Inside it’s made with lots of sustainable materials such as magnesium oxide board (an alternative to traditional gypsum wallboard), while cisterns collect rainwater for use in toilets and irrigation.

I like the look of this competition-winning $99,000 square foot house better than some of the initial permit-issued homes from Portland’s skinny lot housing competition of a couple years ago. What are the chances of seeing something like this house built here, or something like it? I know a lot of people who don’t feel they can afford a $200,000 or $300,000 house (like the guy in my mirror), but $99,000 sounds much more within the ballpark.

Wrestling With Columbia Crossing

The proposed new I-5 bridge over the Columbia River has been in the news a lot lately, with much debate not only about what form the bridge might take, but whether there should be one at all.

Considering how Portland is and wants to be a pedestrian and transit-oriented city, to keep reducing our emissions, and to honor our history of fighting freeway projects such as the Mount Hood Freeway and others recommended for Portland by Robert Moses, it's natural for many to bristle at building a new bridge. If anything, the argument often goes, there should be a bridge just for pedestrians and MAX trains. But having adequate highway infrastructure, another pro-sustainability argument has been argued, is a way to encourage additional high-density development, which in itself makes a great contribution to greener living.

While I wish it had better pedestrian and MAX accomodation, I'm not sure having more lanes there would make traffic that much better. To me it's the Rose Garden and downtown area that really causes a slowdown on Interstate 5. That's where it not only becomes two lanes in each direction, but also merges with Interstates 84 and 405. You're never going to really change that unless you drastically re-route things and spend billions of dollars there too.

However, the Portland/Vancouver area is looking at many billions of dollars in federal money for the project, and if we add auto lanes, that'll also bring the opportunity for MAX and pedestrian/bike connections. Most all of us don't want to encourage auto use, but quality infrastructure is beneficial to the economy and to the life of the city.

It seems the chance for a landmark design, something we should absolutely demand of a Columbia crossing bridge if it gets built, will probably be severely hampered by height restrictions due to the nearby Pearson air field in Vancouver. Even so, creativity can overcome those restrictions. You can build something flat as the I-205 bridge but still (unlike that banal concrete span) make it beautiful. Architects like Norman Foster and Renzo Piano come to mind as wish-list design candidates, as do engineers like Arup and Battle/McCarthy.

Or by the same token, rather than salivating about a famous designer of today, what if instead we imagined something with the elegance of Portland's St. John's Bridge (pictured above)? I'm not saying we should go for a retro design, but if new modern-looking spans like Foster's Millennium Bridge don't get you jazzed, there are still lots of very elegant if more classic options out there, such as the suspension bridge. What I'm saying is don't forget to make it beautiful, too. Remember, we'd be looking at this bridge for a good half-century at least.

I've read a lot of opinions about sustainability and the bridge, such as how the bridge should be carbon neutral and, again, that it shouldn't be built at all. But where do the majority of architects and engineers stand on this? After all, it's a once-in-a-generation opportunity for a great design that defines and symbolizes the city, but it also is largely, no matter how you spin it, largely about moving cars, which any good urbanist cringes at. To bridge or not to bridge?

Un-fare Play: Will TriMet's Giant Ticket Price Increase Deter Mass Transit Ridership?

Everybody knows the cost of gas and oil has gone up enormously. That's no different for TriMet, which runs 643 buses and will use 6 million gallons of diesel fuel this year. When they forecast gas prices in their 2007 budget, TriMet figured on $2.31 a gallon. Last week, they were paying $4.

So it's not surprising that the transit agency is increasing fares by 14%. But is it the right thing to do?

The Oregonian seems to think so. An editorial in today's paper says the agency is "headed down the right road with its plan to raise transit ticket prices." Their argument was basically that the agency will be in massive debt if they don't. The editors also cite the other source of TriMet's funding, a payrolll tax levied on employers, which actually accounts for 57% of the transit agency's budget. "But the Oregon legislature has long since capped the agency's payroll tax rate, so here in the short term  fare increase looks like the only answer."

Am I the only one thinking this just isn't a good enough justification?

In a time when America is choking on the cost of petroleum, TriMet is creating a financial deterrent to taking the bus. For people like me who live close in and can walk or bike places, it doesn't matter much. But there are scores of thousands of commuters who each day face the decision of whether to get in their car and have an easier, faster time of it, or to get on the bus and get there much slower with a full load of passengers, some of whom don't shower regularly or take manners hints from Heloise.

Maybe the Oregonian editors are correct that there's no other short-term solution for TriMet than an appalling counter-intuitive fare increase that will hit the poorest Portlanders first. But instead of acting as apologist for this disappointing move, I'd rather see the paper advocate for a new funding mechanism. After all, affordable transit, to put it in the paper's language, is 'How We Live'. (Also known as 'Living'.)

Several years ago I was having my taxes done when the H&R Block accountant pointed out the payroll tax I was paying, which was probably about $50. Since about half of the agency's funding comes from this tax, he argued, If TriMet would double the fee, everybody in the city could ride buses for free.

I'm not necessarily suggesting we should double the employer tax. There's probably a more equitable way to raise those funds. But at the fare box on buses and trains shouldn't be the way. Is the Portland metro area really so impotent in its ability to properly fund TriMet that it has to raise prices to the level where it doesn't make sense for individuals to take the bus anymore? How about a city gas tax? A fee levied on registration for automobiles selling  above $25,000?

If Portland is really the greenest city in America, we can do better than pricing our prized mass transit system out of the range of fair fares.

PSU, UO Student Reviews This Week (updated)

The latest semester is coming to a close at Portland's architecture schools, Portland State and University of Oregon. That means final reviews will be on display, with the opportunity for members of the public to check out and support what our next-generation architects have been learning and making.

PSU has eight studio reviews happening all this week at the Unitus Building at 2125 SW Fourth Avenue, on the 3rd and 4th floors, unless otherwise noted. Soon the school's architecture department will be moving back to its renovated headquarters inside Shattuck Hall, so this will probably be their last studio review at Unitus.

The Portland State reviews include: Beginning Design Studio II with professor Nikola Boscanin and three others (review Monday, June 2 from 4-7pm); Community Action Space with professor Matt Bietz (review at The Plant, SE 9th and Alder, June 2 from 4-7pm); Beginning Design Studio I with John Froning (Tuesday, June 3 from 4-7pm); PDX Center for Design with Rudy Barton (Tuesday, June 3 from 6-9pm); Machine: A Visitor Center for Trains with Jeff Schnabel (Wednesday, June 4 from 6-9pm); Living Community with professor Jason Jones (Thursday, June 5 from 6-9pm at Mahlum Architects, 1231 NW Hoyt); In_habit with Garrett Martin (Friday, June 6 from 5:30-9pm); and Urban Garden for Shattuck Hall with professor Kurt Lango of Lango Hansen (Monday, June 9 from 6-9pm).

As for UO student review times, Hajo Neis's class Urban Architecture in Portland’s Central City will have reviews on Wednesday June 4th from 5-9pm. On Thursday June 5th from 5-9pm will be Gerry Gast's class: Intersections; In the Presence of Differences. Don Genasci's class, Portland’s Bridgehead Gateways will be showing on Friday June 6th from 3-7pm. And finally, there will be an Exhibition Open House this Saturday June 7th from 3:30-7pm. All reviews will be held at the UO's White Stag block, 70 NW Couch Street, on the 5th Floor.