Portland Architecture

Are national media giving Cloepfil's New York museum a fair review?

Over the last few weeks, a host of New York-based and national media have published reviews of the Museum of Art and Design at 2 Columbus Circle, designed by Brad Cloepfil and his firm, Allied Works, of Portland.

So far the museum has received mixed reviews. But one constant seems to be that even the best critics can't seem to evaluate the new architecture without comparing it to the old. The former Huntington-Hartford building, designed by Edward Durell Stone, was well-known for its lollipop-like upper facade (a forerunner of postmodernism) and because of its prominent location. But it was an empty mausoleum for decades, too. Yes, much of the preservation committee rallied around the Huntington-Hartford building, and one expects a critic to mention the battle of course. But it's hard to find a critic willing to evaluate the building on its own terms or incorporate notions of what it means for the people living there and visiting.

The first review of MAD by a major critic, Paul Goldberger's piece in The New Yorker magazine, begins, "Hunting Hartford's old Gallery of Modern Art...was a hard building to love but became an even harder one to hate." I'd bet my left ventricle, though, that Goldberger spent not one second in the previous building since sometime in the Gerald Ford administration. Goldberger goes on to say, "...this is in almost every way a new building, albeit trapped in the body of an old one, screaming to get out." Aside from complimenting Cloepfil on the functional ease of the interior space, he has very little to say about the architecture that doesn't have to do with the exterior facade and the comparison to the old building.

In the New York Times, critic Nicolai Ourousoff began in the paper's fall arts preview with an inexcusable error, attributing the design to "Seattle firm" Allied works. I've written for the Times before, and always found their fact-checking process to be mercilessly precise. How did this mistake not get caught?

Ouroursoff also wrote in his review that the renovation "...remedies the annoying functional defects that had plagued the building for decades. But this is not the bold architectural statement that might have justified the destruction of an important piece of New York history."

In other words, Ourosoff seems to say, if there were some garish piece of Frank Gehry confection sitting at 2 Columbus Circle, one with crazy exterior pizazz that jolts abruptly from history and context, losing Stone's building would have been worth it. But if we have a dignified piece of modernism that will endure even as it draws from the building's past, that's a problem. It's like saying that replacing rump roast with steak is not okay, but replacing it with a candy bar is.

Only critic Bernard Nussbaum, formerly of Architectural Record and now at Business Week, seems to see the Allied Works-designed museum on its own terms. He also has some harsh criticism -- for his fellow critics. "Truth is," he says, "New Yorkers who actually used the streets feared and hated that building." Did I mention that the facade facing Central Park on Stone's building had no windows except at the very top? The overwhelming majority of the original was a blank concrete facade. It made the monolith in 2001: A Space Odyssey look inviting. (Note: in a previous draft I erroneously said the original was completely windowless.)  

Nussbaum also calls Ourousoff's review "nasty, narrow, and backward looking." He goes on to say the Museum of Art and Design is "friendly and open and, most of all, focuses on presenting the museum's great collection of contemporary jewelry, glass, pottery and mixed media." He also was the only critic I encountered who mentioned the long line of people waiting to get into the museum upon its opening.

I haven't been back to my former city to see the Museum of Art & Design for myself (strangely, none of the papers I freelance for has offered to pay for the trip). But so far the writings on Cloepfil and Allied's building neither whet the appetite nor communicate the special quality I believe is there. 

Confluence with freeway: Johnpaul Jones & Maya Lin's land bridge

Although I haven't yet had the good fortune to visit the new land bridge over State Route 14 in Vancouver, designed by Seattle architect Johnpaul Jones as part of the Maya Lin-overseen Confluence Project, my photographer friend Katy Cannatelli was there for the official opening on August 23 and took these photos.

The $12.25 million project is the second of seven Confluence Projects scattered across Washington and, to a much lesser extent, Oregon. The closest to Portland besides this are the Sandy River site just east of Troutdale and a site in Ridgefield, Washington that marks the confluence of the Willamette and Columbia rivers (10 miles away). Even so, it's obviously a treat to have Maya Lin and in this case Jones working on designs that commemorate the heritage of the river and of Native American cultures settled along it in the generations before Lewis & Clark.

In the case of the land bridge in Vancouver, Jones, who is of Cherokee and Choctaw Indian dissent and also in 1998 was chosen as the lead design consultant for the Smithsonian Museum of the American Indian, worked closely with numerous tribes to incoporporate their architectural and cultural heritage into the structure.

As you can see in Katy's images, many of the small details comprise the most interesting part of the bridge, such as stenciled cutouts based on Native American characters and symbols that cast wonderful little shadows.

Jones also had a difficult challenge with this bridge: to honor the heritage of indigenous tribal design without creating a caricature. It's also a little weird, though, at least in my mind, that a structure aspiring to be quasi-sacred given the Confluence inspiration and the metaphorical value of a bridge is ultimately spanning a highway full of commuting cars belching carbon monoxide. Wasn't there a body of water this bridge could have, well, bridged?

Even so, any nitpicking comes in the context of being glad to have the Confluence projects happening, and to have talents like Jones and especially Lin on the job.

A friendly ideological clash over dinner: Pietro Belluschi meets Michael Graves

Today I spent a couple hours talking with local architect Saul Zaik, who's career in Portland dates back to the early 1950s. Now 82, he's designed some of the most gorgeous houses in the city, particularly those built in the 1950s through '70s. A  timeline of seminal moments in local residential architecture by Bart King in the Portland Spaces debut issue a few months ago, for example, made particular note of Zaik's Zidell House, which has a unique octagonal shape from its West Hills perch and was built from a ship's mast.

 

For the story I'm working on about Saul, he brought out some old photos of his projects as well as snapshots with other architects. The photo here (which unfortunately was scanned from a photocopy of the original, so it's poor quality) was taken at a dinner party Zaik attended that was thrown by another great mid-century Portland architect, John Storrs (responsible for the Forestry Center in Portland, Salishan on the Oregon coast). According to Zaik, "Storrs loved to cook."

 

In case it isn't clear in the photo, that's Michael Graves on the left, sticking his tongue out at Belluschi. Graves was here for the design of the Portland Building, the first major postmodern-styled building in the United States (or perhaps the world). The legendary Portland-based Belluschi, the pre-eminent architect of the Northwest Modern midcentury style, was outspoken in his opposition to Graves's wacky postmodern design for the Portland Building, with its faux garlands and playful classical allusions. 

 

In an exchange that Winston Churchill might have dreamed up, Belluschi is said to have warned the Portland Building would set back architecture by fifty years. That, Graves is said to have replied, is exactly what architecture needs.

 

If anybody reading this recalls more about the Belluschi-Graves exchanges, I encourage you to email me ([email protected]), and I can incorporate more info into the post.

Is Beaverton really more dense than Portland? "Suddenly" explores changing urban life

In Tuesday's Oregonian I wrote about "Suddenly", a broad range of art exhibits, public discussions and other events exploring the changing nature of urbanity.

The brainchild of writer Matthew Stadler and curator Stephanie Snyder of Reed College's Cooley Gallery, "Suddenly" was inspired by German architect and urban planner Thomas Sieverts' assertion in his 1997 book Zwischenstadt of a new "in-between city" that transcends old stereotypes about cities as dense, culturally rich places and suburbs as empty and banal.

In the article, I focused a bit more on the art exhibits for "Suddenly" at the Cooley Gallery and Milepost 5. But of more interest to architects and design enthusiasts may be some of the other events, as well as the book Stadler edited, Where We Live Now (the cover is pictured at left), which translates Sieverts and also includes essays by several others.

In the introduction to Where We Live Now, Stadler writes:

"We struggle, as Thomas Sieverts points out, to accept the passing of the old city. Our love for the vibrant, preeminent urban center blinds us to new forms and paradoxically leads us to burden what remains of the old city with functions that compromise its historic role. 'Revitalization' turns the center into a planned community of wealthy urbanites feeding an economy of shopping and cultural tourism. Meanwhile, the periphery turns into a battleground pitting development against nature. The city's need (or at least its tendency) to expand outward becomes the enemy of farms and green space. How did these widely variable elements come to be fixed in such stark, irresolvable opposition? What common ground or common purpose can be found?

"Where we live now is a dynamic, shifting landscape of all these things: nature, dense settlement, rich and poor, wild and planned. None of it resembles the old ideals of city and countryside, despite massive investments of money and law to force the construction or preservation of these ideals. The landscapes where we live are obstinate and ungainly, spoiling our ideals at every turn. So how can we live here and understand it, as it is? How can we finally leave the long, divisive story of the city and the countryside behind us?

"Suddenly" is going on right now with events at the Cooley (pictured below), Milepost 5 and elsewhere. But here are some of the noteworthy upcoming events:

On Thursday, October 2,  the art-focused enclave Milepost 5 will host a screening of Robert Altman's seminal 1976 film "Nashville" with art critic James Glisson, who previously wrote of the film, "In taking traffic as a narrative medium, the transportation and growth patterns of a 1970s sun-belt city are shown to circumscribe the relations between the character. In other words, the dispersed urban fabric of Nashville patterns the human interactions of the film. (Personally, I prefer Altman's "Short Cuts", but they're both great.)

A day later on Friday, October 3 will be two events with Sieverts: a free 3PM lecture at the University of Oregon's White Stag Block, and at 5PM a with three other experts about indigenous patterns of urbanism that predate the city-building of the 19th and 20th centuries.

This is a big point for Stadler: that in the Northwest before European settlement there was a vast network of decentralized Native American trading posts that can serve as a future model for Portland's metro area: not as central Portland and a series of suburban underlings, but a network of decentralized pockets of density. Which is also, to an extent, in keeping with Metro's 2040 Plan. But in my favorite quote of the Oregonian piece, Stadler told me, "Asking urban planners to save the city is like asking an interior decorator to save your marriage by re-arranging the furniture in your living room." No offense to Portland's first-rate planners, by the way.

On October 4, Stadler will be joined by Sieverts himself as well as Holland's Aaron Betsky, who directed the 2008 Venice Architecture Bienale, for a conversation about the idea of sprawl at The Back Room, Stadler's continuing dinner-and-discussion series. Instead of a restaurant or meeting hall, though, this Back Room will take place in a Beaverton parking lot. Betsky, by the way, was also a consultant to the group that selected Brad Cloepfil via design competition for the Museum of Art & Design at 2 Columbus Circle over Zaha Hadid and two other finalists in 2002. "He's walking into a minefield," Betsky said of Cloepfil and the museum commission in our interview. "[But] I have every faith he can do it."

The afternoon of October 5 (at 2PM) on the Reed front lawn brings another panel discussion, this time with Sieverts, Stadler, the Cooley's Stephanie Snyder, and some of the participating "Suddenly" artists to ask, "How do art and writing shape the city?" (I'm thinking in the shape of a poodle, like one of those twisted balloons.)

On Monday, October 6 at 7PM at the Pacific Northwest College of Art (Swiggert Commons), Sieverts will be joined by celebrated local architect Brad Cloepfil along with writer-editor-museum director-architect Reed Kroloff and Stadler for a discussion about how public policy and planning can embolden design rather than stifle it. Kroloff, who was previously the editor of Architecture magazine, also supervised and organized Portland's design competition for the aerial tram a few years ago. And he did a first-rate job gathering the finalists: Angelil/Graham (the winner), UN Studio, Guy Nordenson, and SHoP.

Meanwhile, I hope checking out "Suddenly" doesn't do for you what it has done for me: force that old Billy Ocean 80s song of the same name into repeat mode in the brain. I've had that terrible-wonderful tune repeating in my head for days, as if Casey Kasem is torturing my innermost psyche. Make it stop - as 'suddenly' as possible!

But actually, considering this local event's ambition for a society-wide re-imagination of contemporary urban life, the chorus to that cheesy chart-topping ballad might serve as inspiration to Stadler, Sieverts and company: "Suddenly...life has new meaning...to me."

What do the rest of you think: Are we too quick to over-emphasize the central city and its at the expense of smaller nearby urban areas like Beaverton or Gresham? Is the notion of pedestrian friendly city and auto-dominated suburb a stereotype? Or do you think yogurt has more active culture than Tualatin?

One thing I never realized before writing this article, though: Beaverton really does have a higher population density than Portland (4664 per square mile to 4199). Who da thunk it?

Custom House once again up for grabs

The historic U.S. Custom House at 220 N.W. Eighth Ave. is up for grabs once again, as Nathalie Weinstein reported in Monday's Daily Journal of Commerce.

Back in 2005, the US General Services Administration chose two finalists to redevelop the U.S. Customs House, Venerable Properties of Portland and The Pochter Group of Chicago.

Venerable was trying to turn the Custom House into a new home for the University of Oregon Portland center. The Pochter Group plan, which the GSA instead selected, was to turn the building into an 82-room boutique hotel with Wyndham Hotels & Resorts. Pochter held the building for two years and Wyndham backed out of the hotel deal.

In July of last year, Pochter then partnered with Marcus Hotels & Resorts of Milwaukee, and the GSA were supposed to sign a new lease with Pochter within 60 to 90 days. But earlier this May, the GSA terminated negotiations with developer Keith Pochter for unannounced reasons.

Built in 1901, the U.S. Customs House was designed by James Knox Taylor and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. It's an absolute gem of Portland architecture. James Knox Taylor (1857-1929) was supervising architect of the US Treasury when he designed this building. An advocate of classical design, Taylor worked with Cass Gilbert (architect of the US Supreme Court Building) before establishing his own practice. Building supervisor Edgar Lazarus is well known for his distinctive Vista House design in the Columbia Gorge.

In his Architectural Guidebook to Portland, Bart King writes of the Custom House,

"This massive and somewhat unusually designed building sits regally within a full city block...Variously described as French Renaissance or Italian Renaissance Revival, the ornamentations of this classical, granite-faced building are fascinating. Columns, scrolls, quoins, arches, dentils and keystones abound...Inside, with over 100,000 square feet, there is a lot of building to explore. A 1977 restoration helps the marble and classical plaster moldings welcome the eye, and a grand cast-iron stairway rises to the fourth floor. The top floors of the east and west wings were added in 1938...In 1906, a small metal tower was built near the north chimney that dropped a large 'time ball' at noon each day. Sailors would sight it and set their ship clocks accordingly."

Weinstein reports the GSA will follow a federally mandated disposal process, which begins by offering the building to other federal agencies. GSA public affairs manager Bill Lesh suspects that the building won't be taken by a federal entity, however. "Since the building has been vacant for four years, I don’t believe there will be federal interest," he told the DJC. "A federal agency would also have to spend a lot of money to upgrade the building." Eligible public agencies have 30 days to notify GSA of their interest.

Meanwhile, if we were to do a little quick daydreaming, what architectural future for the Custom House would be best for it and for Portland?

The last time around, I was rooting for UO to get the building instead of it being developed into a hotel, but now the university has already committed itself to its new Old Town location beside the Burnside Bridge. A boutique hotel might be a lot of fun, but I don't see a hotelier being willing to go forward until both the economy improves and North Broadway develops some more. I mean, there's still a boarded up abandoned Burger King at one end of Broadway at Burnside, and vacant lots growing weeds on the other end by Union Station. As the Pacific Northwest College of Art moves in down the street and the vitality of NW Broadway improves, the Custom House will be ideally situated. But I don't know if that future is yet close enough for a private developer to move on the property right now.

Besides a hotel, what else might become of the Custom House? I think most of us can agree we just want the building to be preserved with integrity, and for its occupants to be tied with the surrounding community.

(Note: I usually use my own photos for posts, but in full disclosure, this time around since I din't have any of the Custom House, these photos I gleaned from Flickr.com, in a public account of shots taken by 'Fristle'.)

Offices compete in BOMA energy efficiency showdown

The local chapter of the Building Owners and Managers Association (BOMA) has released the results of its second annual 2008 Office Energy Showdown, which recognizes Portland-area office buildings that have achieved a superior level of energy efficiency. Winners were chosen from among 25 entries, representing over 7 million square-feet of office real estate.

The Grand Prize winner was the 200 Market Building in Portland, owned by Russell Development Company. "It is amazing that a building over 30 years old can compete and win against new buildings designed with energy efficiency in mind," said owner John Russell. The 384,000 square-foot commercial building achieved outstanding energy savings using a variety of strategies, including dimming lights in the four-acre parking garage during periods of inactivity.

In the "Most efficient buildings" category, 1st Place went to One Pacific Square in Portland, 2nd Place to Robert Duncan Plaza in Portland, and 3rd Place to 1915 Amberglen in Beaverton. For buildings under 60,000 square feet, the prize went to Oregon Square 729 in Portland.

Honored for the biggest gains in energy efficiency were McGillivray Place in Vancouver, Robert Duncan Plaza in Portland, and Lloyd 700 in Portland as well as Oregon Square 830 in Portland for properties under 60,000 square feet.

In addition to the nine winners, eight properties in Portland qualified for the Energy Star label by ranking in thetop 25th percentile among the most energy efficient buildings nationwide: Columbia Square, Crown Plaza, Liberty Center, ODS Tower, OHSU Center for Health & Healing, PacWest Center, Standard Plaza Building, and the US Bancorp Tower.

Participants, who were required to be BOMA members, tracked over 24 months of utility consumption using the Energy StarPortfolio Manager. This data was used to generate benchmarking scores for each building that evaluated energy performance. The nationwide Energy Star rating system accounts for weather, building location, use and operating characteristics; a score of 75 or higher on the 100-point scale qualifies a property for the Energy Star label.

As a companion to the competition, BOMA Portland is presenting, in partnership with BetterBricks (a sponsor of this website) and Green Building Services, a series of educational programs focused on energy management and sustainable building strategies. The series began in February and will be offered through November 12.

Build It Green tour: one day, 20 homes

If you're planning to embark on the Build It Green homes tour on Saturday, hopefully your gas tank is full (or legs ready to pedal) and you're free of other commitments. Sponsored by the City of Portland's Office of Sustainable Development and several other eco organizations, the self-guided tour includes 20 different homes in the city (although one, go figure is way out in Estacada).

In Southeast Portland alone, there are five stops, including a remodeled 1961 ranch house owned by landscape architect Pat Lando, three new houses, and even an RV of all things that was outfitted with biodesel fuel, a composting toilet and solar-powered stove. In Northeast Portland there are six stops, including everything from shipping container architecture to multifamily low-income housing to a garden-ensconced accessory dwelling unit. The North Portland wing of the tour includes mixed-use retail space and the Peninsula Park co-housing development. The Southwest Portland side of the tour includes two properties I've blogged about previously, one designed by Jeff and Tracy Prose of Building Arts Workshop and the other spearheaded by Charlie Weiss.

Not that this is important, but the tour is technically called the "Build It Green! Tour of Homes", but I couldn't bring myself to put an exclamation point in the middle like that. And while this is a terrific event, I personally wish it didn't conflict with college football.

Grassroots property development at the Motive Space Symposium

This Saturday in the City Hall council chambers brings a two-day symposium devoted to exploring tactics for collaborative hosuing development in Portland.

Organized by Sara Garrett in collaboration with the Portland Planning Commission, the idea of the Motive Space Symposium is to better connect architects and citizens to form new kinds of partnerships that cut the speculative housing model that has teetered the economy and maximize the use of design as a tool for personal, civic, and social empowerment.

Panelists include Brad Malsin of Beam Development, Kevin Cavanaugh of Tenpod Development, Judith Mowry of the Office of Neighborhood Involvement, Bill Cunningham of the Portland Planning Bureau, Shane Endicott of The Rebuilding Center, Craig Ragland of the Cohousing Association US, Eli Spevak of Sabin Green Development, and many others.  

Cost for registration is just $1, although there is a $20 suggested donation. For more information, visit www.motivespace.org.

Latest Designs on Portland discussion: mid-century marvels with Atomic Ranch magazine

On Wednesday evening, our latest discussion in the Designs on Portland series at Design Within Reach, I will be talking with Jim Brown and Michelle Gringeri-Brown, editors and publishers of Atomic Ranch magazine. (And no, this is not the Hall of Fame Cleveland Browns running back Jim Brown - nor is he the Godfather of Soul.)

Based out of Portland, the quarterly magazine celebrates modern homes from the 1940s through '60s, be it ranch style or more explicitly modern. What is the legacy of midcentury modern in Portland? Besides those houses by the big local architect names we know from that period, like Pietro Belluschi or John Yeon, where are the midcentury architectural gems of our city?

The discussion begins Wednesday at 6:30pm at DWR, in the Pearl District's Wieden + Kennedy building at 1200 NW Everett Street.

Hanna & Mulvanny G2 unveil SMART Tower proposal (updated)

Developer Derek Hanna and Portland's Mulvanny G2 Architecture have now released preliminary designs for the proposed waterfront observation tower. 

When I spoke briefly with Hanna today by phone, he emphasized that these are not intended to be the final design, and that they welcome public input on not only where the tower might end up, but how it should look. But still, as you can now see, it's a bold proposal for Portland.

 

As previously mentioned, the tower has a twisting shape with functions at the base and top, and wind turbines comprising about the middle two-thirds. The idea is that this is a "SMART Tower", as Hanna told Randy Gragg of Portland Spaces in an interview published online today on The Burnside Blog (which until recently was written by Mike Thelin).

"What could we do there that would really be an attraction and showcase the city's sustainable efforts and make Portland proud? So we thought let's be the first energy-producing attraction," Hanna said. "When we really started looking at it, we realized, hey, it's on the river. It's not blocked or shaded by any other buildings, so we started looking at the positives of the location. That's what created the SMART Tower."

The tower relies on an innovative turbine developed in Holland called the Turby that Hanna describes to Gragg as " the most advanced urban wind turbine. It can go on top of or on the side of buildings; it can take updrafts and sidedrafts and winds from all different directions."

Hanna also told Gragg that he thinks people have been too caught up in the proposed 600-foot height. He says it can be bigger or smaller. But it has to be along the river to generate optimum windpower, he says, and Hanna strongly favors having it in or around Waterfront Park, or at least the close-in central city. 

"It's really easy to jump on the height," he told Gragg, "but the structure's whole diameter is only 90 feet wide. We designed it to be a see-through tower. The turbines are constantly moving. We designed it as an ellipse so it is at its narrowest from west to east. So everyone in the West Hills sees it at its narrowest: 50 feet, up to 550 feet.

In the interview, Randy Gragg suggested the Centennial Mills site, which I agree might work. How about moving the police department's horse paddock next door and putting the tower there? Perhaps you could also place the tower at the base of the Fremont Bridge in the Northern Pearl. The tower could also go at the Burnside Bridgehead on the east side, stamping that already planned development with a real destination. Or perhaps it could go in South Waterfront amongst the condo towers as a one-two attraction with the aerial tram. Why not put it on the river next to Oak's Park?

Other than its potential height, the other feature some may find a drawback is the parking proposed for the bottom of the tower. Hanna said in the Spaces/Burnside Blog interview it would account for about 15 percent of the tower's estimate $13.6 million revenue. This will surely depend a lot on the location. If it is built at Waterfront Park, the parking is needed there, but before talk of the tower, no one was even proposing trying to store cars at the river amongst the greenspace. Is it possible the tower could be still built without the parking? If it is such a power generator, that and observation-deck admissions ought to provide some revenue without it.

As I said in my previous post, I'm inclined favorably towards the design of the tower and its faintly Calatrava-esque turning torso of a form. I like its transparency and the mission of generating alternative power. I like the message it sends that Portland is a sustainable Mecca. But what of the skyline? I've often yearned for more tall, skinny buildings in the downtown core, but would this tower dominate too much as a visual? Change is always hard to swallow, though. Has this idea's time come, or are others more dubious? One wants this to be more than just our Space Needle. And it really has to look great. I mean, great. I don't care how much power it generates if it's not beautiful. Is this tower the top?

Update 9/22/08: AIA/Portland (a sponsor of this site) will be hosting a presentation and public discussion of the SMART Tower design with by Mulvanny G2 Architects on Friday, October 10 at the Center For Architecture, at a to-be-determined time in the late afternoon.

'Leapfrog' houses: a non-architect's LEED Platinum adventure

Charlie Weiss isn't an architect. Nor is he the football coach at Notre Dame (that would be Charlie Weis, with one 's'.) But the two houses he's seen constructed in southwest Portland off Terwilliger Boulevard are some of the greenest yet to be built in Portland.

Weiss, who studied environmental design in the 1970s and is now a partner in a market research company, worked with Lake Oswego architect Kathy Kramer and local builder Green Hammer Construction to create two 1,600 square foot houses that are poised to earn 105 LEED points apiece - good for a top 'Platinum' rating and then some.

The roof is a result of studies at the University of South Florida that Weiss found. It's made of zinc-aluminum alloy to reflect radiant energy. And because there are no penetrations of the surface from a chimney or otherwise, it has a very high R-56 thermal value.

There is also a 6,000-gallon rainwater storage tank installed underground. The rainwater is filtered and used for showers as well as flushing toilets. Unless there's a major summer drought, Weiss says they can live almost entirely on rainwater. Hot water come from a ground source heat pump.

The walls are 8 inches thick, providing excellent insulation (an R-32 thermal rating) and preventing what's called "thermal bridging", in which heat or cold is conducted through the wood structure. There are also fiberglass window frames that help keep air out.

The house is so air-tight, in fact, that when it was measured by Earth Advantage, it was the highest ever tested by that organization. Weiss had to have fans installed around the house to discharge air.

Radiant heating is embedded in concrete floors, which are made from 45 percent recycled fly ash, and the wood stairway treads were milled from a fir tree on site. Tall ceilings make the houses' small floor plates seem larger. Weiss cites houses he saw for staff at Yellowstone National Park as inspiration.

Weiss and his family are living in one of the Leapfrog houses, but the other is for sale. And with temperatures today predicted to be in the mid-90s, I can tell you it was also very hot when I visited the Weiss house last week, at least on the outside. But inside you'd have thought it was November.

Viewing plans for a waterfront observation tower

A few weeks ago I posted info about a proposed 600-foot observation tower being proposed by developer Derek Hannah. I don't have any images, because Hannah has not yet allowed them to be released. But on a visit to Mulvanny G2 Architecture a few weeks ago, I was able to see the design. In my previous post, I'd speculated about who might design such a tower, and whether an international design competition might be used to make that choice. But as it happens, the architect is already selected and the design is completed.

Originally the tower was proposed for the west side of the Hawthorne Bridge on the same site where the John Yeon-designed visitors' center building is now. Hannah was proposing to move that building. This plan was rejected when the Bike Republic store was chosen as a tenant for the building, but the idea for the tower in another waterfront site lives on.

The tower is a curvy, elliptical shape that's wider at the top and bottom. In the middle of the tower, which would comprise most of its area, it would be transparent structure like the Eiffel Tower, only comprised of many small wind turbines. That's the catch with this tower: It's one huge power generation plant. Up top would be an observation deck and possibly a restaurant or other amenity, while down below would probably be parking, the latter of which would help pay for the upfront costs of the building.

I can't stress enough in looking at the drawings of the tower that this would be substantially taller than any other building in the city. It would more or less dominate the skyline if it were built in the downtown area. If it were a tower built only for its observation deck, I don't think Portlanders would go for it. But the fact that the tower would act as a power generator, providing lots of extra energy for the city beyond its own needs, might drum up a lot more support for the proposal. Apparently city commissioner Dan Saltzman already likes the idea.

So far Hannah has not given the go-ahead for renderings of the proposed tower to be released by Mulvanny G2. But when the renderings do become public, I'll naturally post them here, and we can begin in earnest a conversation about whether, where and how we want the tower. 

I'm not sure yet what I think of the tower. My first impression was mostly positive, but something this big you want to think about for awhile, after lots of looking. The transparent structural part of the tower seemed really captivating and cool at first glance, but if there was a visual downside to the renderings I saw, it might have been the concrete elevator shaft in the middle. This would also be a structural element, however, so it's particularly necessary. But it looks a little bit like a paper towel rod inside an otherwise metal sculpture. Even so, I think this tower is a very intriguing possibility, and would no doubt make a strong statement about Portland's sustainable aims to the world. The kind of statement, in fact, that traditionally this city isn't prone to making. This feels like more of  a Seattle move to me, right or wrong. Are the times a changing not only for the city, but the message we send?

Ladd Carriage House and the quest for a new historic buildings inventory

Yesterday Fred Leeson had a nice article in The Oregonian about how the 125-year-old Ladd Carriage House will next month be returned to its original location on Broadway. 

The historic building, as many will remember, was moved from its site earlier this year to make way for the Ladd Tower. Originally the site's owner, First Christian Church, filed to demolish the Carriage House, but a group of concerned citizens quickly formed Friends of Ladd Carriage House to help protect the building. And sure enough, the tower plan was altered to save this piece of architecture.

The only problem was what didn't get saved in the course of the Ladd Tower project: the also historic, circa-1907 Rosefriend Apartments, which were leveled earlier this year to make way for the Ladd Tower.

So when I read in Leeson's article about the Ladd Carriage House's return, it was with a cringe that I greeted this quote from Cathy Galbraith, director of the preservation-minded Bosco-Milligan Foundation: 

"This embodies historic preservation at its finest." 

Naturally, she was talking solely about the Ladd Carriage House. And Galbraith is one of the good people in the ongoing historic preservation fight, not at all one of the villains. But I think the Carriage House, no matter how nicely it's restored (once a buyer is found - it's for sale), will always be tainted with the demolition of the Rosefriend Apartments.

Still, I don't mean to cast too dark of a cloud upon the Ladd Carriage House's saving. It's great that it happened. Had we preserved zero on this block instead of half of what needed to be saved, things would have been much worse.

Meanwhile, though, architect Paul Falsetto of Carleton/Hart Architecture, who was instrumental in the Ladd Carriage House being saved and is helping to oversee its restoration, has a good idea about how we can still honor the Rosefriend Apartments that First Christian Church destroyed: create a workable ongoing database of all the historic buildings in Portland. When I first started writing this post, I thought he meant that there was no such list. But it turns out there is such a database, but that it's hopelessly out of date and needs resuscitation.

Falsetto says he would like to see such an effort take place from the impetus of what happened with the Rosefriend. 

The Rosefriend was once on the National Register before its owner had the designation removed, but the apartments been on a citywide database of historic properties we were all collectively keeping an eye on, perhaps attention could have been called to its fate before it was too late.

The idea of such a historic register for Portland buildings is still just in the talking stage. But for those interested in helping to document historic buildings for such a database with photos or other information, please feel free to contact myself or Paul Falsetto at Carleton Hart. With some cooperation, maybe we can improve the chances for the next beautiful old building threatened with the wrecking ball of progress. 

PSU's $25 million green grant

As numerous outlets have reported today, Portland State University will be given $25 million over the next decade (contingent upon the school generating matching grants) from the James F. and Marion L. Miller Foundation of Portland. The grant is for additional investments in research and teaching about sustainable environmental practices. 

The $25 million grant is by far the largest in PSU's history; the largest previous amount was $8 million. By comparison, the 27,000 student university's entire operating budget last year, according to Bill Graves' Oregonian report, was $346 million.

Graves also was told by PSU provost Roy Koch that the money will be used to support studies and research on sustainable practices in transportation, business, architecture and other areas. 

Thinking about architecture in particular, what might this mean for Portland State? The school only recently attained an accreditation for master's degree programs. If the school is to be a leader in sustainability, as the grant intends, shouldn't they have an accredited undergraduate degree program in architecture?

[Update 9/12: A commenter writes, "NAAB (the accredidation folks) have closed the door on any new undergraduate programs. so PSU and any other schol seeking accreditation for a new professional degree has no choice but to seek the graduate designation."]

Also, there are numerous colleges whose environmental studies departments and/or buildings comprise some ambitious architecture, perhaps most notably architect Will McDonough's Lewis Center at Oberlin College (pictured) and Mahlum Architects' Seminar II building at Evergreen State College. Might Portland State University eventually have a landmark center for environmental studies?

If so, although I often argue for bringing in talented outside firms for big signature landmark projects, there are plenty of local firms that could compete well given their first rate green design credentials: SERA Architects, Opsis Architecture, and of course GBD Architects. But countless firms, from Zimmer Gunsul Frasca to BOORA to Thomas Hacker Architects, know how to make a LEED gold or platinum building these days as well. GBD has already done it for another school tied to PSU: Oregon Health & Science University.

What else might those in the design community like to see done with this $25 million to forward the cause of sustainability in Portland at at PSU in particular? Oh, and one other thought: Apparently this foundation has been in operation since 2002. Where have they been before this? And is the $25 million the end of their donations, or the beginning? James and Marion Miller have both passed away, but one wonders if their foundation might be interested in future benefaction -- like, for example, towards a contemporary art museum?

Prism on Division: Visiting the Clinton Condominiums

When they last completed a building together, Holst Architecture and developer Randy Rapaport (along with a couple key co-developers) produced the Belmont Street Lofts. Five years later, it's still among the most compelling and attractive mid-sized condo projects in Portland, if not the very best.

Now, final work is being completed on the team's long-awaited follow up: the Clinton Condominiums.

The process has been a long and somewhat arduous one, with a nearly two-year construction process, some squabbles between architect and developer, and a housing market very different from the boom in which the Clinton was planned.

But now that the building is complete, all seems to be forgiven. "I loved working creatively with John Holmes," Rapaport said of Holst's co-principal when I visited the Clinton last week. "I wanted to challenge him to stretch what was possible in Portland."

Rapaport is not a designer, and as a client, he might not be right for everyone. Like me, he's a bit neurotic and verbose. Much has been made of this late-40s man’'s penchant for indie rock and skateboards. But more importantly, Rapaport relishes the idea of inspiring and empowering architects to do their best work, and he is willing to commit to the budget, materials and design work to make it happen. And the results speak for themselves. After all, like its predecessor on Belmont, the Clinton is quite beautiful.

In such a downturned economy, he and Holst could have value-engineered all the best aspects of the building away. But they didn't. Right now the building’s 27 units are 70 percent sold, but even if it gets completely filled, Rapaport says he'll take a loss. Better that than dumb-down the building, he says.

Among the residents so far at the Clinton are a renowned scientist just retired from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the founder of an award-winning coffee company. There is also a yoga studio and a bakery on the ground floor: Little t American Bakery, which I can tell you from personal experience makes an exquisite New Orleans style Mufaletta sandwich.

At the street level, what's quickly noticeable is the Clinton's mahogany trim framing floor-to-ceiling windows. Touring the building last week with Randy Rapaport, he told me the supplier ran out of the original wood intended to be used, Meranti, so they were upgraded to mahogany.

Looking upward at the condos on floors two through four, the signature element is an assortment of translucent green glass panels that are placed in a somewhat random pattern and at varying widths. It gives the building, especially at night, the look of a jewel or prism with organic sides and angles glimmering in different directions.

On the sides of the building, the Clinton is clad in core-ten Cor-ten steel, which is designed to rust over time. With the angular, complex looking glass front facade, the Cor-ten provides a noticeable counterbalance of simple form and rough texture. Cor-ten seems to be a popular material these days, and the Clinton is far from the first to use it. Even so, it's a nice addition and further evidence that every detail was attended to.

Inside, the Clinton's inside units are first rate, with gorgeous walnut trim throughout and wide open loft-like spaces but bedrooms that can be closed off. There's a sea of white glass tile in the bathroom as well. Looking out at southeast Portland just over the treetops, the top floor views are quite different from what you get in a condo tower, but one feels much more part of the urban fabric down a little lower.

On the corner where the Clinton sits at 26th and Division, the surrounding buildings seem incongruent: a dingy Plaid Pantry store, and an abandoned small warehouse. Just a block to the south, though, you have the cozy and inviting Clinton Street neighborhood that includes a couple terrific restaurants (Savoy, Dot's) and the Clinton Street Theater. Besides, I think the Clinton will set in motion changes for this stretch of Division. Which is not to say there isn't value in a less polished blue-collar urban neighborhood, as this area has been traditionally. I hope the Reel 'Em Inn tavern a block down Division, for example, stays put. It's a mix of old and new, dingy and pristine, that makes for a good neighborhood.  

In the years since they first collaborated with Rapaport and his co-developers on the Belmont, Holst has made some major strides. This is a firm that operated for years without having a completed building project, and now they have a lot of the most compelling work in town. In addition to the Clinton coming on line now, the gorgeous 937 project in the Pearl is nearing completion. And Holst recently broke ground on the new Ziba Design headquarters. Aside from a condo in Hood River, they've yet to expand very much out of Portland. But along with Allied Works, Works Partnership, Skylab, Rick Potestio, Thomas Hacker and a few others, Holst is unquestionably one of the best firms in town.

Meanwhile, Rapaport is looking to drum up community interest in what may be his next project: a 2,000-seat music venue. Rapaport either is or may be partnering with Brad Malsin and Beam Development on this, according to reports in Willamette Week and the Southeast Examiner. But it's all, as I understand it, in the talking stage now. The venue would be in the Central Eastside very close to the neighborhood's I-5 exit ramp.

To be designed by Works Partnership, the venue would seem to occupy a workable niche between smaller venues like the Roseland Theater (1200 seats) or Crystal Ballroom (1500 seats) and the larger Schnitzer Concert Hall (2700 seats).  Rapaport told me it'd be likely to have a kind of opera house design, with upper seating directly on top of the lower seats for optimum intimacy, and a cube-like form on the outside. He also says he's been more vocal about this project than he normally would for a hypothetical development because he believes a public project should get the public's input before it's built more than a private residence.

Meanwhile, next time you're on Southeast Division or in the adjacent Clinton neighborhood, have a look at its new condo namesake.

Halprin "City Dance" series begins tonight with Gragg-Abbott discussion

Tonight at 6PM at Jimmy Mak’s jazz club as part of the continuing Bright Lights discussion series, Portland Spaces editor Randy Gragg will be discussing the legacy of the South Auditorium District with Portland State University urban studies professor Carl Abbott. South Auditorium represents the Portland Development Commission's first project(s) after its founding 50 years ago, in 1958.

But this isn’t just a talk of half-century-old urban renewal, or the mild wonders of Keller Auditorium. Gragg writes:

"A boisterous new child fed by huge federal grants and loans, its first project was to clear 84 acres of downtown to create an entirely new kind of city in the South Auditorium District. Out with the old: dozens of businesses and hundreds of low-income apartments filled with Portland's most diverse ethnic community, but deemed a "slum." In with the new: offices, apartment towers, and three landmark fountain plazas designed by renowned landscape architect Lawrence Halprin.

Many American cities tried similar projects; few did it as successfully as Portland. But how do the losses and gains of the PDC's first undertaking look a half-century later?"

Tonight’s discussion is the first event of "The City Dance of Lawrence and Anna Halprin," a weeklong celebration of Lawrence Halprin's plazas in South Auditorium and the pivotal collaboration with his wife, renowned choreographer Anna Halprin, that influenced the designs.

Tonight at the Northwest Film Center brings two films on Anna Halprin, Jacqueline Caux’s documentary “Out of Boundaries” and Andy Abrams’ "Returning Home". Also, this Friday at noon the City Club of Portland will host Charles Birnbaum, director of The Cultural Landscapes Foundation in Washington, DC, who will speak on Lawrence Halprin's landscapes in Portland and elsewhere and the growing national movement to recognize and preserve historical landscapes. 

This Friday from 4:30–6:30 p.m., starting at the Ira Keller Fountain at SW 3rd Avenue and Clay Street, there will be walking tours of Portland’s Halprin-designed plazas with Gragg and Anna Halprin biographer Janice Ross.

And this Sunday (Sept. 14) from 1-4PM comes “The City Dance of Lawrence and Anna Halprin”, again at the Keller Fountain. This will be a concert by Third Angle New Music Ensemble that combines “a celebration of Portland's most architecturally significant space, the radical music of the late 1960's minimalist movement and postmodern dance”.

Halprin grew up in New York and spent three of his teenage years in Palestine on a kibbutz. After studying plant sciences at Cornell as an undergrad, he moved on to learn design at Harvard under the legendary Walter Gropius, Marcel Brewer, and  landscape architect Christopher Tunnard. He then apprenticed under renowned landscape architect Thomas Church, collaborating on the seminal Dewey Donnell Garden in Sonoma County and helping to develop the contemporary California Style garden concept, Halprin opened his own office in 1949.

Halprin's work is acclaimed for attention to human scale and the social impact of his designs. He was the creative force behind the interactive, 'playable' civic fountains most common in the 1970s, most notably in Portland’s fountain outside the Keller.

Legendary as he is (the American Society of Landscape Architects gave him its first ASLA Design Medal for lifetime achievement), Halprin's work has fallen victim to neglect in some cities, and others argue his designs are now outdated. There's a whole lot of concrete in our own big Halprin fountain, for example. We probably wouldn't build it that way today. But that's also what makes the work more valuable as history. Besides, you can trust Randy and Carl Abbott to articulate Halprin's genius tonight.

Gorge-ous: visiting post-renovation Vista House

Earlier this week, with family visiting from out of town, I made my first trip to Vista House in the Columbia Gorge since its four-year, $4 million renovation was completed in 2005. And while the view is still the thing at Crown Point, where the octagonal stone 733-foot structure is situated on a cliff overlooking the Columbia, Vista House looks better than it has since your grandparents went there

It was designed by Edgar Lazarus, a Portland architect, in 1915. According to the Friends of Vista House website, the building is an example of German art nouveau architecture. "Native Italian craftsmen built retaining walls and bridges for the Columbia River Highway and laid the rock work surrounding Vista House," they add. 

Besides its shape, the materials are what really make Vista House look enduring and substantial. The floors and stairs in the rotunda and the wainscoting in the lower level are made of Tokeen Alaskan marble. Most of the interior of the rotunda is light cream and pink Kasota limestone (marble), including the hand-carved drinking fountains (which unfortunately are still outfitted with push-button spigots that don't belong there).  The inside of the dome and its supporting ribs were painted to simulate the marble and bronze originally planned for the structure.  The exterior is faced with light gray sandstone. The upper windows and rotunda are made with green opalized glass, in keeping with the original. The roof was originally surfaced with matte-glazed green tiles and covered with a copper crown.  During the exterior restoration, a new glazed green tile roof was installed over a protective dome membrane.

Looking down at the incredible view with an assortment of middle-aged motorcyclists in black leather, young families pouring out of minivans, and senior citizens inching along in their Buicks, it's certainly hard to imagine someday looking down at a casino up the Columbia River a few miles, as has been proposed.

But instead of dwelling on such sobering thoughts, I found myself basking in our East Coast visitor’s sheer awe at the Columbia Gorge, be it the blueness and vastness of the river itself, or the rocky forested canyons surrounding it. "We ran out of adjectives," she told our neighbor as we returned.

 Later on after Vista House, we naturally continued down the Columbia Gorge Scenic Highway with stops at a couple of waterfalls, and then lunch in Hood River at a brewpub overlooking an army of windsurfers and the occasional barge.

And my thighs and calves hurt from all the hiking we've done through Gorge trails, aviation museums, the coast, and central Portland. But it's always nice to be told that the place you live is something akin to a Utopian society. Or at least compared to the Hellertown, Pennsylvania. Still, we may have the progressive lifestyle and gorgeous scenery, but the Keystone State still has the best pierogies.

John's Landing to parachute landings: John Gray is Architecture Foundation of Oregon's latest honoree

The Architectural Foundation of Oregon has announced its annual Honored Citizen. And no, this doesn’t have anything to do with a discounted meal at Shari’s restaurant and pie house. Instead, it’s a kind lifetime achievement award for those who have made a lasting contribution to the built environment, either here in Portland or elsewhere in the state. Past honorees include urban naturalist/advocate Mike Houck, architect Robert Frasca, philanthropist Jean Vollum, and landscape architect Barbara Fealy.

Although he won a Bronze Star in World War II parachuting behind enemy lines with the Army’s famed 82nd Airborne division, locally developer John Gray is best known for resort projects like Sunriver in central Oregon near Bend and Salishan on the coast just south of Lincoln City. Each is a remarkable and lasting demonstration of how Gray patronized talented, noteworthy local architects like Van Evra Bailey and John Storrs, the latter of whom designed Salishan.

In Portland, Gray was also a developer of John’s Landing, named not after himself but the B. P. John Furniture Company, the largest of several furniture manufacturers along the west side of the Willamette. John Storrs’ designs helped Gray and others transform the area into Portland’s first riverside residential and commercial development.

As it happens, I’ve been thinking about John’s Landing lately because I’ve been getting weekly acupuncture treatments on Southeast Macadam. (Remember when they used to call South Waterfront “North Macadam”, by the way?) Although one certainly has to respect and applaud the way John’s Landing was redeveloping relatively central riverfront property decades before it became widespread, I don’t find it a pleasant place to spend time. 

It’s unfortunate: This is a major arterial highway, and cities have to have them. Even if there were a streetcar all the way to Lake Oswego and lots of commuters were using it, we’d still need a four-lane road going south from Portland. And because of the hilly terrain, there aren’t that many alternatives. It’s not as if there are other streets on a grid to diffuse the traffic. So I don’t blame drivers in this regard or the need for the highway going through here. 

However, this is not a pedestrian friendly place, either in the relationship of the sidewalks to the busy street or the architecture.  Some of the houses in John’s Landing are very nice, and so is Willamette Park. But from OPB’s ugly and banal corporate headquarters to the car dealerships to the lowest-common-denominator restaurants (excepting the yummy breakfast spot Café du Berry and a couple others), it’s unfortunate that in pedestrian-friendly Portland that south Macadam doesn’t feel more pleasant to walk or shop at. I don’t mean to say that it’s a hopeless string of strip malls and fast food, but John’s Landing could use a dose of North Mississippi and even the Pearl. Don’t you think?

This is not meant to take anything away from John Gray, either. Quite the contrary. He was a visionary, it seems, and one who patronized some of the best local architects of their time. Particularly if one lived in Oregon during the 1970s or 80s, when there was far lest development on the coast or east of the Cascades, places like Salishan and Sunriver were distinctive places that felt as much like California’s famed Sea Ranch development: modern but born from nature and a sense of place. 

And John’s Landing seems capable of taking on new life given how the space between this neighborhood and Portland is filling out (South Waterfront), including perhaps a streetcar to be extended through. What could we do with John’s Landing to compliment the strides that John Gray and his architects made in the last generation? And to whom can this airborne builder pass the baton to?

Roger, McMinnville: Visiting the Evergreen Air & Space Museum

Although I grew up in McMinnville and as a kid was obsessed with military aircraft and space vehicles, until last Friday I'd never set foot inside the Evergreen Aviation & Space Museum in my hometown. But with family visiting from out of state, we finally had the excuse to go.

The museum, recently expanded, now consists of three buildings: one for the aviation museum, housing most famously Howard Hughes' "Spruce Goose", one for an IMAX theater, and one for the new space museum.

All three buildings are basically huge triangles sitting on a landscape of rolling farmland, along Highway 18 just outside McMinnville. Designed by Scott Edwards architecture of Portland, they also, I'm told, had lots of input from Evergreen founder/owner Delford Smith, who is quite the Howard Hughes figure in his own right. (I worked two summers at Evergreen in college, and the stories about his company and its top-down leadership, however much they may have been small-town myth, were eye-raising: regular drop-of-the-hat employee firings and gun runs to the Nicaraguan 'Contras' for the CIA.) One thing's clear, though: they have a wonderful collection of air and spacecraft. I half expected Wagner's "Ride of the Valkyries" to be playing as they stamped our hands to enter the museum. (I love the smell of tourism in the morning.)

The buildings slightly resemble the agricultural barns common to the semi-rural Willamette Valley, but also have a strong sense of classical architecture with their meticulous symmetry.I don't love the look of these buildings, but I think they are simple enough to endure somewhat well over the years upon the landscape.

Inside, they are vast open spaces pretty much like airplane hangars. Being there on a hot summer day, we were also surprised to find there wasn't any air conditioning being used (at least in the aviation portion of the museum), despite the massive greenhouse effect from the buildings' glass front and back facades. We were also astonished that Evergreen charges three separate admissions for each of its air, space and IMAX attractions.

But it certainly was a thrill to see the air and space craft on display. As a child, my dad was in the air force, and I had a deep and enduring love for fighter planes. This was the height of the Cold War, so in addition to American F-4 Phantoms and F-15 Eagles, I also loved and memorized the look of the Soviet  MIG-25 Foxbat and the MIG-29 Fulcrum. If you'd have told me as I kid there'd be a MIG-29 parked at Evergreen in 2008, I'd have thought, "I knew it. Red Dawn was right!" 

Having now wound up later in life as an architecture and art critic/journalist, though, I also think that growing up in a small town without an art museum or those kinds of cultural offerings, the look of sports cars and jet planes was my childhood version of sculpture. And let me tell you: the F-4 phantom on display at Evergreen's museum was as awe-inspiring as I imagined it as a child. This was a do-everything plane: an interceptor, a dogfighter, a bomber, and it was one of the loudest the Air Force ever flew. And with its slightly dipped nose, the Phantom looked just a bit like a vulture - only one that created its own meals. The F-4 on display at Evergreen had two red stars painted on its side to represent its Vietnam kills. (A P-38 Mustang from World War II at the museum actually had 48 small Japanese flags on its facade. But it's the Cold War jets that I'll always love.)

Although the Spruce Goose was indeed incredible to behold, with its unprecedented massiveness that towered over all the other scores of planes at Evergreen, and the many rockets from the golden age of space exploration gave me chills, I was most excited to see another plane: the SR-71 Blackbird. Recently de-commissioned from the US Air Force, this was the fastest plane ever made. It didn't shoot any guns or missiles. The Blackbird was a high-altitude spy plane. During the Vietnam War, my dad analyzed the reconnaissance photos it took, so I've had an almost life-long obsession with this plane. And viewing it in person for the first time all these years later, with the critical view of an adult, it was as astonishing to me as ever: a work of pure engineering that still, more than 40 years after the SR-71 first flew, has never been equaled.

(One other personal aside: All this adulation for military vehicles is tempered by being an anti-war liberal as an adult. I hope for none of this stuff to get used, and less of it to be built.) 

Has anyone else reading this been to the Evergreen Air & Space Museum? What do you think of the architecture? The attractions? And more broadly, what other objects besides architecture itself have inspired and amazed you with their look and function?

Oh, and stay tuned to the Evergreen museum's future goings-on if you're a space fan. They might be in line for a de-commissioned space shuttle in a few years.