Portland Architecture

Blazers to play preseason game at Memorial Coliseum

For the first time since the team moved into the Rose Garden next door in 1995, this season the Portland Trail Blazers will play a game in their original home: Memorial Coliseum.

Granted it's a preseason game, but who cares?

This is the building where Bill Walton, Maurice Lucas and company became world champions on June 5, 1977. It's where the team first took the court in 1970 behind star rookie Geoff Petrie. It's where Clyde Drexler and Terry Porter broke the team scoring and assist records during the same 1986-87 campaign, only for Drexler to break the scoring record again two years lter. And it's where the Trail Blazers established the longest streak of sold-out games in American professional sports history: 814 straight games from 1977 until the team moved to the Rose Garden in 1995.

The preseason game will be agaist Phoenix, the last team the Blazers played in the Coliseum before the move. That also makes me think of one of the greatest all-time Blazer games, played in the Coliseum during the 1990 Western Conference Finals, in which Drexler and company overcame a 23-point fourth quarter deficit to win.

Besides Blazer history, Memorial Coliseum is also where UCLA won the 1965 Final Four behind coach John Wooden, who yesterday was named by The Sporting News as the greatest coach in American sports history. It's also where the first-ever American Olympic basketball team made of professional players, the "Dream Team", played is inaugural game, a 79-point victory over Cuba that I was lucky enough to attend.

The exhibition game will be held on October 14, so by that time of year it's likely the sun will have set by a 7:00 or 7:30 tipoff. Even so, it woud be an extra-special treat for the game at Memorial Coliseum to be held with the upper seating bowl curtain open, so fans attending the game can look out through this entirely transparent glass palace at the Portland downtown skyline.

The Blazers franchise has a difficult task ahead of it if they wind up being the ones overseeing the Rose Quarter redevelopment. There's not only the Coliseum's future to figure out and how it relates to the Rose Garden, but there's the broader need to transform the whole Rose Quarter itself, from the untapped resource of a riverfront setting to the fact that an ugly parking garage acts as the front door. They're also working with  developer, The Cordish Company, that is not known for crafting authentic, local business-oriented developments that welcome people of all ethnicities.

Even so, it's encouraging to know that Blazers president Larry Miller and his front office team seem to understand that so many of us, Blazer fans and design enthusiasts and those with civic pride in historic places (many of which overlap), care a great deal about Memorial Coliseum.

This isn't about the ongoing dilemma of where to put a minor league baseball stadium, or whether an invasion of Applebees and Hard Rock Cafe (or even something good like a sports museum) could come to the Rose Quarter. It's about celebrating the past, both in sports and in architecture, as the city prepares to re-imagine this glass palace. It's also about celerating the rich, nearly 40-year history of our beloved Blazers with the team returning to its roots.

Go Blazers!

Oregon schools slow to embrace LEED

Wendy Miller has a sobering report in today's Oregonian: Of the 27 new schools approved by Oregon voters in 2006, only about one in four have achieved LEED certification at any level. That doesn't mean the non-LEED-rated schools do not have sustainable features but rather that they didn't pursue registration.

Still, as Miller writes, going green but not pursuing LEED amounts to a kind of honor system. Should Oregon be requiring its public K-12 schools to earn certification?

"School boards cite cost as the main reason they haven't pushed for such schools," Miller writes. "But there appears to be a move by some districts to build green without the expense and perceived hassle of meeting national standards. Green is a nebulous term, they say, and they don't need a certificate to prove their new schools were built to be sustainable."

The story also says that five schools across Oregon have received LEED certifications, and another 16 new public schools are expected to be approved for certification within the next year. But Miller does not report, by comparison, how many schools there are which are not receiving or seeking LEED documentation.

Miller does, however, delve into the issue of whether LEED certification sometimes steers design and contruction toward decisions that have less to do with the efficiency of the school. "For example, LEED requires contractors to recycle their construction debris and use wood from certified forests," she writes. "It's a holistic approach. School districts that don't pursue LEED may skip those requirements and put the money into the building to enhance its energy efficiency or improve its comfort."

Again, though, a school could conceivably use these arguments that embracing LEED isn't necessary because you can be just as green or greener within school walls than without it, but then abandon a lot of the efficiency measures with "value enginering" (an industry euphamism for cost cutting) when no one is looking.

Then there is the issue of whether LEED certification adds to a project's total cost. According to a study Miller cites by the US Green Building Council, administrator of LEED, these measures can add one to three percent to a project's total cost.

But I have long been hearing from local architects that a LEED-rated school can be done for no extra cost. Way back in 2003, for example, I wrote an article for Metropolis magazine about three Oregon schools designed by BOORA Architects: Clacamas High School (pictured in the diagram above), The Dalles Middle School, and Ash Creek Intermediate in Independence (pictured at the top of this post). In each case, architect Heinz Rudolf and his team at BOORA were able to eliminate enough mechanical and other costs by embracing sustainable methods to make the total construction cost for these projects no larger than that of conventionally built schools.

"I believe in functionalism," Rudolf said in the Metropolis story. "You design a building according to analysis, and everything is in the right place. Then you don't need a big electrical system or a big mechanical system. You take advantage of all the things you can. If you ignore all these good things that nature provides automatically, then you have to overcome them." Each of these three buildings underwent significant commissioning to ensure optimum knowledge and performance of ventilation and mechanical systems, verifying that everything was built the way it was intended to be.

What do the rest of you think: Should Oregon pass a law requiring all public schoos to achieve at least LEED Silver? Or are contemporary energy codes and other measures already assuring more efficient schools without such interference?

As so often happens with Oregonian stories, I found Miller's reporting itself to be well reasoned and written, but the headline -- which an editor usually writes -- made me cringe a little: "Oregon schools: It's not easy, or cheap, being green." The headline takes a more pessimistic attitude than the story itself, casting skepticism on going green at all when Miller's story was about whether to certify. (The paper did the same with a recent story about Memorial Coliseum, expressing skepticism in its headline and sub-healine about a recent tour that didn't exist in the Casey Parks-written story or the tour itself.) Nobody should be arguing at all about the merits of sustainable design and construction itself, especially when it comes to public schools. Students learn better and are healthier, and Portland's own architecture community has already long since proven it can be done at conventional budgets. So as it happens, it can indeed be easy, and inexpensive, to do the right thing.

A first look at Ziba's new Holst-designed headquarters [updated]

On Wednesday afternoon Sohrab Vossoughi, founder of Ziba, and John Holmes of Holst Architecture led a tour of Ziba's new Pearl District headquarters. The multidisciplinary design and branding agency is set for an August move-in.

First we stood outside the building, where the west-facing facade is particularly dramatic. Looking like a picture frame, it consists of metal panels that protrude slightly from the rest of the facade. The building is set back from the street slightly, which allows an extra buffer of wood slats parallel to the sidewalk, pairing nicely with the glass to create a warm, transparent feeling at the pedestrian level. Setting the building slightly back from the street also allows a cantilevering effect with the metal picture frame portion of the upper west facade; it stretches to the property line without infringing public space but still creating a subtly dramatic look.

Holmes and Vossoughi often spoke of deliberate contrasts such as this: between warm wood and cool, crisp metal, or between vast public areas and more intimately-scaled meeting areas, and between luxurious materials and more affordable ones. To some degree, this is a language that virtually any developer, owner or architect could be speaking as they walk you through a contemporary building. But the proof of the Ziba headquarters was right there. It is, at least at first blush, an exceptionally impressive space, but not a pompous one. That's probably not an easy balance to pull off.

The north side of the building, like the west-facing picture-frame facade, is also dramatic, with a two-story glass curtain wall on the second and third floors where Ziba will set up shop (there is retail space on the ground floor).

As Vossoughi and Holmes talked outside, they would take turns talking. "I think what John means to say," you'd hear Vossoughi begin. But they seemed to make a good partnership, with Ziba really seeking to not only create high quality architecture, but to have the design rigidly rooted in function.

"It's really very simple," Vossoughi said. "It's one box on top of another. A metal box floating on a pedestrian plinth."

Inside, after coming up a somewhat large concrete stairway draped in wood panels, one enters the dramatic public areas, double-height and bathed in natural light. This area is called "the street", and it feels a little bit like an airport concourse or other vast public building space such as the glass curtain wall at Memorial Coliseum. In his post about Ziba on the PORT blog, Jeff Jahn compared the natural light permeating the space to the work of legendary 20th century Finnish architect Alvar Aalto; one of only two United States buildings he designed is the Mt. Angel Abbey Library here in Oregon. I'd have to agree: the bountiful yet somehow still soft feeling light in this building made me think of Aalto before any other architect.

The "street" area also includes a series of several conference or meeting rooms, or "pods", that actually take up much more space than the office portion of Ziba. As their business changed from product design to something broader, involving bits of marketing, interior design, communications and other disciplines, Ziba found its employees were spending an overwhelming amount of their time in common areas where teams, or "tribes" as Vossoughi called them, can work together on various projects. So the desk areas at Ziba are very small, compact and all out in the open, just a series of workstations along common counter areas, with no cubicle divisions - even Vossoughi's is tiny and completely open - and pushed towards the back of the space (seen in the first photo immediately below). The pods alternate with open desk areas, and the whole sequence of spaces is connected by a series of sliding doors. In that sense, the interior also felt reminiscent of Japanese architecture.

 

The Ziba HQ even has a series of small private spaces for clients to unwind in before or after one of their intensive days-long research sessions. Say a client can flies in from another city and arrives in the morning with a long work session scheduled at Ziba but no opportunity to freshen up at his or her hotel. The client can just hop into one of these rooms straight from the taxi and take advantage of the client rooms before meeting: take a shower in one of the private bathrooms, watch a flat-screen TV, recline on a sofa and reach for a beverage in his or her nearby fridge. Before you know it they'll be putting a mint on your laptop.

Oh, and did I mention there's an auditorium as well? That's on the far east end of the building. One entrance to the auditorium from the offices is clad in angled wood, and looks like the entry to a chapel - recalling Pietro Belluschi's midcentury churches. Inside, the concrete bleachers are reminiscent of the Allied Works-designed Wieden + Kennedy headquarters, as is the public deck nearby overlooking the Pearl District. This is not to imply copying in any way, of course. The auditorium will be a great addition to the neighborhood. And if the W+K auditorium is a little more dramatic, Ziba has a lot more interesting new exterior than the renovated warehouse facade for the ad agency. Again, though, we're talking Mercedes and BMW here. They're both excellent.

The economy obviously is very tough right now, but so far Holst Architecture has not laid off a single employee, I'm told. Just as importantly, the firm has seized the opportunity to branch out from the mostly residential buildings they've done in recent the past, such as the Belmont Lofts, Clinton Condos, Thurman Street Lofts and 937, and the the larger scale renovations the firm did further back in the last decade like Ecotrust and the Pacific Northwest College of Art.

 

If I compared Holst's Ziba headquarters to Allied Works' W+K headquarters just now, perhaps there's also a comparison to be made in careers. W+K launched Brad Cloepfil into a new level of international recognition that made possible high-profile commissions like the Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis, the Museum of Art & Design in New York, and the University of Michigan Museum of Art, and the Clifford Clyfford Still museum. Perhaps Ziba could become the calling card for Holst as they branch out of Portland, potentially, with a new level of scale, project types and recognition.

If any firm is ready to be the next famous Portland architecture firm after Brad Cloepfil and Allied, it's Holst Architecture. Ziba may have only been under construction for the last year, but Holst has been building to this moment for well over a decade. It's nice to see them grab the brass ring.

And of course this project isn't just a Holst design, but a collaborative project with the clients. Because Ziba is a design firm too, this was more of a collaboration than most. And while Holst is capable of doing an excellent building without Ziba, it also seems clear that Ziba pushed Holst to do some of its best work.

A few years ago I was at Holst's office talking with principal and co-founder John Holmes about his frustration over a project that was being killed due in part to city and neighborhood politics over height and design. Exasperated, I remember John saying, "I just want to draw shit, you know?" I think Holmes, Jeff Stuhr and the Holst team want to create real beauty, and Holmes in particular is a true visual artist. At the same time, Ziba seemed to add to this project the rigor of function: every aspect of the buiding and its materials having a purpose. Although it's not to say Holst is without rigor, or that Ziba can't appreciate beauty for its own sake, that creative tension seems to have contributed to the breakthrough of this superb building.

It's also encouraging how this building will give Ziba more of a real presence in town. For too long the company has occupied a Pearl District storefront with reflective windows and not even a sign in front. If Portland is going to become the international design capital that its leadership is seeking, we need top local design companies like Ziba sitting out on their front porch, so to speak, instead of staying inside with all the shades drawn. Both literally and metaphorically, that has now changed, and Ziba is basking in light.

Mississippi and beyond

For those small Portland firms that are surviving the Great Recession without closing their doors, the path may be one of more modest projects: renovations over new buildings, and gritty low-budget affairs over granite countertops.

That description would fit SUM Design Studio, the two-person firm of Matt Loosemore and Eric Hoffman. They've designed from-the-ground-up buildings, such as the SUM-thing New Condos that I wrote about earlier this year, and that were also included in the 11xDesign homes tour. But lately SUM's projects are remodels, such as an expansion of Mississippi Studios in north Portland.

Situated like its name suggests on Mississippi Avenue, the recording studio, bar and performance space has spent most of its history as a tiny cramped environment. It's also a site with a colorful past. A pentecostal church used to occupy the tiny storefront there, as did an old house in back.

SUM unified the front and back spaces, pushing the performance stage and balconies away from the streetfront and creating a Mississippi Studios that feels like an effortless link to the past. Rejuvenation was a key partner, providing a host of vintage lamps and lighting fixtures. The best materials, though, may have come from onsite. The bar's countertop, its ceiling beams and other parts of the project were built using reclaimed timber from the deconstructed house.

Hoffman and Loosemore's firm also has two other projects in various stages of completion: a mixed use space at East Burnside and 25th, complete with ample glass and wood trim, and a renovation of a unique but mostly ignored storefront on SE Seventh near Sandy Boulevard with a curving circular glass wall. They're also at work on a brewpub in Southeast Portland, and hope to get back soon to developing ground-up projects of their own designs, such as the aforementioned condo project. Until then, SUM is proving you can produce quality designs, and survive as a business, at any scale and in any economy.

Free public tour today of Memorial Coliseum (a.k.a. "The New World Auditorium")

 

(photo by Jeremy Bitterman)

Sorry for the short notice on this, but today (Tuesday) at 5:30PM, the City Club of Portland will be hosting a free tour of Memorial Coliseum. The tour will be led by architect Rick Potestio, who has been part of the campaign to save the building, as well as Rose Quarter guest services coordinator Laura Doyle.

Over the weeks and months as the Coliseum preservation battle has been waged, it has been easy to get distracted from the merits of the building itself. For those who can make it, today's Coliseum tour is a chance to start over and look at this architectural gem with your own eyes.

If you go on the tour, here are some things to think about: specifically, the relationship between the freestanding concrete seating bowl and the surrounding glass box. No other arena in the United States or the world has an interior seating area that is completely open to light and views of the outside world. In Memorial Coliseum, the seats closest to the top that might be called "nosebleed seats" in other arenas may actually be the best seats in the house when the MC's curtain is open, allowing visitors to gaze out at the Portland skyline.

Visitors on the tour will also see a building that in some places has very noticeable disrepair. The ceiling is stained as if from a hundred thousand cigarette smokers, and one side of the seating bowl has some horribly crass structural bracing added to the exterior. But Memorial Coliseum is in excellent structural condition. With the right TLC, its cosmetic disrepair could easily be transformed back into the look of a state-of-the-art arena.

Besides the architecture itself, the Rose Quarter's Laura Doyle may also point out that Memorial Coliseum hosted just as many events as the Rose Garden arena next door: more than 150 events last year. That makes the Coliseum much more viable as a community building than any baseball stadium on this site would be.

In the weeks and months ahead, the city and its Citizens Advisory Committee being put together by the Portland Development Commission will look at a number of potential uses: a velodrome, an arts center, high speed rail, an amateur athletic facility. If touring Memorial Coliseum today, perhaps one could try and imagine these different purposes, and how they would affect the original Coliseum architecture - specifically the relationship between the curving seating bowl and the linear box of the glass exterior.

Or if you're like me, you might want to just stand on the ground floor of Memorial Coliseum and think back to that day in June 1977 when our beloved Trail Blazers became world champions of basketball in Portland's glass palace. And that's saying nothing of Obama's speech there last year, the Beatles concert in 1960, or any of the other events that have taken place inside the transparent box. Or, as legendary poet Allen Ginsberg called it, "The New World Auditorium".

For those attending today, please RSVP by email to [email protected].

One other related note about the Coliseum: Last week, America's most acclaimed architectural photographer, Julius Shulman, passed away at the age of 98. Schulman was most famous for his photos of California architecture, such as the famed Case Study Houses in Los Angeles. But the one Portland building Schulman photographed was Memorial Coliseum. What's more, a few weeks ago shortly before his death, Schulman's daughter told a friend of mine, interior designer Rosanne Sachson, that when they would look at his pictures together Schulman would often stop at the Coliseum to express his admiration for the building.

If you'd like to read further about Memorial Coliseum, I have written two recent articles about the building, its history and the preservation campaign, for Architecture Week magazine and The Architects Newspaper.

Building a collaborative city

The University of Oregon in Portland and writer-editor Matthew Stadler have organized a new series called the "White Stag Block Talk", and the second iteration will be held Wednesday at 6PM. The talk, "Building a Collaborative City," will feature a panel with some of Portland's design and communication leaders discussing how we can get connected in our creative community.

The panel includes artist, dancer, and organizer Linda K. Johnson; designer, and developer Kevin Cavenaugh; and Portland Spaces/Portland Monthly editor and former Oregonian architecture critic Randy Gragg. The panel will be moderated by Julie Williams, recent grad of the UO’s Strategic Communication program.

From the press release: "Portland's smaller scale makes it both imperative and possible to finesse big things from many small parts. At every level — between institutions; between professions; between people — we build our best work here through collaboration, because we have to."

Stadler, who is a five-time novelist, editor of Clear Cut Press, and organizer of The Back Room dinner-and-discussion series, is a new addition to UO Portland, and a very good one. He is directing the school's Publication Studio, and helping students to understand how the creative-industry terrain is increasingly one of collaboration by individuals and small institutions more than a matter of dealing with a handful of New York publishers. To that end, Stadler will also be giving a talk tomorrow at UO from at 2pm in which the author will discuss his new novel, La Cucaracha, his first since 1999's Allan Stein.

Stadler also had this to say about Wednesday's talk: "The three we've put together have deep experience catalyzing world class collaborations, enlisting art and design professionals, property developers, city and regional government, and the general public in projects of breath-taking scope and consequence, such as last fall's City Dance project spearheaded by Linda K. Johnson and Randy Gragg, or Kevin Cavenaugh's 14 Parcels. Portland is a smaller city attempting big things, and this ability to catalyze real collaboration is our essential strength. Linda, Randy, and Kevin are among the best. And, hey, we'll be serving free beer, wine, and delicious food, all of it from excellent local providers."

The UO Portland White Stag Block is located at 70 NW Couch Street, at the east end of the Burnside Bridge. Both today's panel discussion and tomorrow's author talk are free and open to the public.

More than skin deep: Perepelitza on façades

This month at the American Institute of Architects’ Center For Architecture, Mark Perepelitza of ZGF Partnership is exhibiting the results of a fellowship he spent in Europe studying building facades courtesy of the Architecture Foundation of Oregon.

“I think it’s incredibly fascinating,” Perepelitza told me in a recent phone conversation. “That’s what we’re looking at when we look at buildings. And there’s this incredible potential in what they can do.” The architect’s extensive research findings are also being presented on the BetterBricks website.

Perepelitza graduated from the University of Oregon and has been practicing since 1992, with some of that time at Richard Brown Architects as well as ZGF for the past five years.

“Even though there are things we know and we’re doing quite well, there’s a ton we don’t know,” he said of building facades. “And it seems like things are changing and a lot of new potential with the envelope. The fellowship gave me an excuse to focus on it and to follow up with what’s happening in northern Europe.”

If Perepelitza’s itinerary indeed represents cities and countries leading innovation with building envelopes, I need to make studying this stuff more of a priority. He visited six cities in Germany as well as London, Bath, Amsterdam and Copenhagen. “I had a lot of interviews,” he said, “but I tried to keep enough time to just bike around and look at what’s out there.”

 

In this architect’s eyes, building façades are interesting for their duality. They they must marry both performance and aesthetics for example, as a big part of energy efficiency goals and also a major part of how the building looks. What’s more, solutions can be modern and utilize new technologies, or they can be low-tech and come with hundreds of years of proven results. Perepelitza also sees building façades increasingly able to change.

“Rather than a static envelope, there’s this potential for it to be dynamic and to change or at least to respond to dynamic conditions: provide air, light,” he said “All of this stuff is happening outside the building where a sophisticated envelope can manage those things. As the light moves across them it’s changing, which is visually interesting but provides solar control. Or they may be literally changing for shade and ventilation. But there are basic ways of going about it too, like operable shutters on windows, exterior shading or Venetian blinds on the outside of buildings. Before we had electricity and AC, that’s how we kept comfortable. In places like Germany the starting point is assuming not having air conditioning. We’re used to thinking this way a little more in this climate because we don’t have air conditioning as much. In some ways, it’s going back to the ways we used to do things to move forward.”

The image below is a shot of the Wessex Water Operations Centre in Bath, with a double skin to help mitigate climate fluctuations while bringing in plenty of natural light. Among the other buildings he studied were London City Hall, the Deutsche Post Tower in Berlin (pictured above), and the Het Kasteel housing project in Amsterdam (pictured at the top of this post).

Looking forward to the possibility of innovation in our region, “There are a lot of huge hurdles, so it’s not going to be immediate, but I think we’ll start getting a lot more clever about applying these things and getting the most out of them,” the architect added. “There will probably be cases of high profile projects with big budgets doing more, but I’d hope it would not be limited to it.”

The Center For Architecture exhibit of photography and research findings continues through the end of July at 403 NW 11th Avenue.

Memorial Coliseum update: National Register and more baseball pressure

Last week the Memorial Coliseum received a huge lift to its preservation effort. As Oregon Public Broadcasting first reported, the building received unanimous approval from the state historic preservation office in its nomination to the National Register of Historic Places.

The nomination was forwarded by local architect Peter Meijer, one of the Friends of Memorial Coliseum. And part of its unanimous approval comes from support for the building's preservation from organizations like the National Trust for Historic Preservation, the US Green Building Council, and the American Institute of Architects.

Although Memorial Coliseum still must be approved at the national level for final listing on the National Register, the national level rarely, if ever, rejects the recommendations at the state or local level. In all likelihood the Coliseum will be listed officially this fall. That will make it much more difficult, although still not impossible, for it to be demolished. And the National Register can not be swayed by mere political will or fancy - only the good of architecture.

Which is a good thing, because two pieces in today's Oregonian raise the ugly specter of demolishing the building once again.

I want to be careful about addressing Steve Duin's column, because Steve is my favorite Oregonian writer and someone I have a lot of respect and admiration for.

But reading his column, "Coliseum still the future of baseball", I was gravely disappointed. It seemed like Commissioner Randy Leonard had a conversation with Steve and Steve was taking notes. There are ample quotes from Leonard, who makes sport once again of crass, ignorant name calling of this historic building, such as "a really good looking Costco." The only other quote in the story is from urban naturalist Mike Houck, who expresses surprise that the Coliseum was taken off the table in favor of Lents Park, the greenspace he seeks to defend.

So in other words, Duin did not speak to anyone on the opposing side. In fact, he never has. Duin apparently is not a fan of, or does not appreciate, modern architecture. That's fair enough. I am not a fan of, and do not appreciate, country music. But as a journalist, I'd argue that he has a responsibility to at least hear out the other side. Out of all the Coliseum supporters I've talked to, none of them have ever spoken with Steve Duin. Of course he writes a column, not news reports, so perhaps he's not beholden to the notion that you have to get both sides of the story. Still, for someone who has been a terrific columnist for so long, I expect more than merely resorting to name calling and closing one's ears to the complete argument.

Duin also implies that Mayor Sam Adams is the only one holding up the Coliseum from being razed so a baseball stadium can be built there. And he outright accuses the supporters of only being "a plucky bunch of architects". It's a nice rhetorical device: he's trying to isolate Coliseum supporters and make us look smaller than we are. But it's not the truth. It isn't merely a bunch of architects working to save the Coliseum. Our effort has included neighborhood leaders, people from the arts community, and people who don't fit any particular categorization but just want to see the building saved.

By the way, if you are one of the non-architect supporters of the Coliseum reading this, please consider writing Steve Duin, at [email protected], to let him know you are out there and his lazy stereotype of only architects working to save the building is untrue.

The Oregonian's editorial board also weighed in on the Coliseum, and they too are not exactly model preservationists. But the board actually had more of a measured tone. They argue that the Coliseum needs a purpose, and that it shouldn't sit in disrepair. Absolutely right! Even Coliseum preservationists and the Friends of Memorial Coliseum don't want the building to remain status-quo. It needs a renovation and a clearer purpose, no question. That's what will come out of the citizens advisory committee and the public process for Memorial Coliseum happening this fall.

What we already know is this: shoehorning a baseball stadium into the Rose Quarter site does very little to resolve the issues this site has faced since its inception. This is a suburban solution in one of our most important urban settings.

I've written a lot of angry rhetoric in the last couple months about Memorial Coliseum, and feel no desire to go on the warpath today. No accusing Steve Duin of being Marcus Brutus, no calling Leonard an Ernest clone, and no characterizing the editorial board as philistines. Even so, it saddens me greatly that these clearly informed, intelligent, veteran journalists don't understand the value of landmark contemporary architecture, a building that is treasured by the community and has international recognition and renown. Of course, this is the same struggle that all of Portland's most treasured historic buildings and places once faced: the Pittock Mansion, the Ladd Carriage House, the Skidmore Historic District. Hopefully the Coliseum can ultimately outlive the jaws of the present to continue its history.

For those interested in joining and supporting the Friends of Memorial Coliseum, we will have a website up and running soon, and will have a lot more to say and to show this community about the majority that supports the Coliseum's preservation.

Upcoming talks: Oregon Sustainability Center (at Bright Lights tonight), Cavenaugh & 14 Parcels (Designs on Portland this Thursday)

Wow, that was such a long title to the post I practically don't even need to write anything here. But here goes:

Tonight at Jimmy Mak's jazz club, Portland Monthly and Portland Spaces editor Randy Gragg will be talking with Dennis Wilde of Gerding Edlen Development and Ralph DiNola of Green Building Services about the Oregon Sustainability Center.

If Mark Edlen is the leader of Gerding Edlen, Wilde may be its spiritual heart. He's the green building guru at a development company that has made its name on sustainable developments like the Brewery Blocks and various South Waterfront towers.

DiNola, meanwhile, has long been one of the city's foremost green building specialists. He's not the architect who designs LEED-rated projects like EcoTrust, but DiNola's Green Building Services team has provided the expertise to make them a reality, with over 100 LEED-rated projects and counting. 

The Oregon Sustainability Center seeks to become the first highrise 'living building' in the world, a 200,000-square-foot urban office structure with a zero carbon footprint, generating all of its own power and processing all of its own waste on-site. But, as the Bright Lights email teaser says, "Already the project is meeting major challenges, from economics (the first-draft design's curving form is being squared off to be built more cheaply) to aesthetics (local design aficionados have attacked it on the blogs)." To give you an idea of the research going into this project, here is a diagram of the thinking that went into the windows alone:

The Bright Lights talk begins at 6PM at Jimmy Mak's, 221 NW 10th Avenue. If you can't make it for the OSC talk, consider trying venerable jazz drummer Mel Brown later in the week.

Meanwhile, this Thursday brings the latest in the Designs On Portland discussion series: a talk with designer-developer Kevin Cavenaugh about the innovative 14 Parcels development he's been putting together just south of downtown. On a hilly site just a few hundred feet from the Interstate 5 overpass, Cavenaugh is coordinating a development of what is now 17 different residences by 14 different designers. And the roster is a real who's who of talented Portland architects as well as an intriguing mix of out-of-towners.

Among those signed on to design units in the 14 Parcels development are local firms/architects such as Skylab, Works Partnership, Architecture W, Mark Holmquist (his project is pictured at the top of the post), and Paul McKean, as well as Cavenaugh himself. Also included are award-winning Los Angeles architect Larry Scarpa, Phoenix architect Will Bruder, Vienna-based firm ID Design, Boston firm Single Speed Design, Sao Paulo firm SPBR, and even a pair of husband-wife architects from Managua, Nicaragua: Joachin and Linda Mendoza. Here is a rendering of one of the projects, ID Design's "Two Kings and a Golf Ball" project at 14 Parcels:

What's more, in the worst economic climate since the Great Depression, 14 Parcels is poised to go forward when most larger condo and apartment projects have been shelved. This is a great example of wonderful design ingenuity happening at a grassroots level in Portland - literally.

Although Kevin Cavenaugh wants to have this talk be mostly devoted to 14 Parcels and the other designers involved, I also love hearing about what Kevin himself is up to. Although not technically a registered architect, he is the ultimate manifestation of architecture and development coming together in one Portlander, having put together past projects like the Box + One Lofts on SE 28th and Ankeny, The Rocket at SE 11th and Burnside, and the AIA Award-winning Ode To Rose's building on NE Fremont. I also wrote about Kevin for a Metropolis magazine 2004 cover story entitled "Architects: How to find the perfect developer - Hire yourself!" Here's a brief exerpt:

Three years ago, 25-year-old Portland architectural intern Kevin Cavenaugh was getting discouraged trying to work his way up the ladder of a large firm. "I realized that even if an ideal client arrived to hire us, I wouldn't be the shoulder that got tapped to work on the project," he recalls. Then, Cavenaugh got an influential pep talk from his wife. "She said to me, 'How much harder is it for you to do what your clients do? You should just hire yourself.'" 

Cavenaugh soon began sending lunch invites to some of the developers he'd sat across the conference table from at work. "I'd say, 'What's a pro forma? What does cap rate mean?' I think they thought it was kind of cute."

Before long, Cavenaugh had taken out a loan, procured a site, and begun construction on a three-story mixed-use building with retail below and housing above. At just $107 a square foot, the palette was rough: concrete floors, sheetrock, and garage-like rollup glass doors. But Cavenaugh used this to his advantage, designing with a poetic simplicity that earned critical praise and attracted what would become the city's hottest wine bar.

When the contractor's budget came in too high, Cavenaugh spotted an $8,000 line item for hauling off debris as a way to cut costs. I said, 'I'll do that,'" he laughs. "At first the contractor said, 'No, you can't.' And I said, 'This is almost not going to be a project. If you want it to be a project, I'm going to do that.' So I had an old beat up Chevy truck, and every Friday I'd cruise over and fill it up with all the debris."

Thursday's Designs On Portland talk begins at 6PM at Design Within Reach, at 1200 NW Everett on the ground floor of the Wieden + Kennedy building in the Pearl District.

Elvis, Pele and Willie Stargell: a short history of PGE Park

Aaron Fentress has a fun piece in the Sports section of today's Oregonian (the section I always read first): a timeline of major events, both sports and non-sports related, held at PGE Park.

Events were first held on the grounds here in 1893, but it was more officially christened as a stadium, Multnomah Stadium, in 1926, from a design by renowned Portland architect A.E. Doyle. In the 1930s, it was a popular spot for greyhound racing. In the 1950s, the Portland Beavers moved there from their stadium on Vaughn Street. And that's just the start, my friends.

Here is Fentress's timeline for the stadium, with a few parenthetical notes of my own:

1908: Oregon and Oregon Agricultural College (later Oregon State) meet in a football game on the field for the first time. (Brian's note: OAC was unofficially known as "Moo U.")

1909: Steel grandstands are built and President William H. Taft visits with 20,000 school children. (Brian's note: Taft, history's fattest US president, reportedly takes up an entire row of seats.)

1923: Years after more seating is added, President Warren G. Harding appears for a speech. (Brian's note: this was on the heels of Harding's "Teapot Dome" scandal. The Sam Adams of his time?)

1930: The University of Oregon football team beats Washington 7-0 before a record crowd of 35,266. (Brian's note: Go Ducks! And as my dad often says, Huck the Fuskies!) 

1931: Former heavyweight boxing champion Jack Dempsey spars with four opponents in a series of two-round exhibitions. (Brian's note: Randy Leonard was not involved.)

1935: First NFL exhibition game is played at the stadium between the New York Giants and the Chicago Cardinals. (Brian's note: It's a little known fact the Cardinals have been based in 34 different cities.)

1948: A crowd of 8,000 turns out for a show featuring Bing Crosby and Bob Hope. (Brian's note: The show undoubtedly must have been called "The Road to Portland" - and sponsored by Texaco.)

1955: During an exhibition, the Los Angeles Rams defeat the New York Giants 23-17 in first NFL overtime game. (Brian's note: the Rams were led by former Oregon Ducks quarterback and future Hall of Famer Norm Van Brocklin.)

1957: Elvis Presley performs a concert in the infield before 14,600. (Brian's note: It's somehow fitting, although in a way I can't pinpoint, that The Beatles played Memorial Coliseum and Elvis played the stadium.)

1958: Willie Mays leads the San Francisco Giants against the Beavers in an exhibition game. (Brian's note: Say hey!)

1974: The Portland Storm in the first year, the Portland Thunder the next, bring the World Football League to the stadium. (Brian's note: where can I get a Portland Thunder t-shirt?)

1977: In soccer star Pele's last professional game, the New York Cosmos beat the Seattle Sounders 2-1 in front of 35,548 in the North American Soccer League's championship game. (Brian's note: the annoying tradition of single-named Brazilian soccer players began soon after.) The photo below was provided by reader Stephen Himes, whose father snapped the picture of Pele playing at the actual Civic Stadium game.

1980: The 1979 World Series champion Pittsburgh Pirates play an exhibition game against the Beavers, drawing 26,912, a year after Pirates slugger Willie Stargell slammed a ball onto the balcony of the Multnomah Athletic Club during a home run contest before an exhibition game. (Brian's note: Aaron - why not just note the 1979 Stargell homer game instead of the 1980 game?)

1985: Another short-lived professional football league, the United States Football League with the Portland Breakers, calls the stadium home and draws crowds approaching 20,000. But, alas, the league lasts only one season. (Brian's note: Go Marcus Dupree! The only Oklahoma Sooner I ever liked. And the Breakers' best jhery curl.)

1992: Evangelist Billy Graham holds a five-day event that draws nearly a quarter-million people.

1997: In the first of a series of matches related to the World Cup, the U.S. men's soccer team defeats Costa Rica 1-0 in front of 27,396.

1999: The U.S. women's soccer team beats Canada 4-2 in front of 23,325 in its final game before the World Cup. 

2002: San Diego Padres and Seattle Mariners play an exhibition game in front of 19,778. (Brian's note: fans expecting to see future Hall of Famers Ken Griffey Jr., Alex Rodriguez and Randy Johnson are disappointed. But at least it's the major leagues.)

2003: Three doubleheaders are held during the 2003 FIFA Women's World Cup.

I also remember attending another somewhat historic baseball game Fentress didn't mention. In 1983, fresh off winning the World Series against Baltimore, the Philadelphia Phillies played an exhibition against the Beavers. I remember excitedly watching the team's two Hall of Fame stars, Mike Schmidt and Pete Rose, competing for the Phillies. (Yes, I know Rose is not technically in the Hall, but obviously if not for the gambling he'd have been in Cooperstown on the first ballot.) But my greatest excitement was reserved for relief pitcher Tug McGraw, he of the sparkle-covered cleats. However, if I'd known he'd be responsible for country music star Tim McGraw, my allegiances might have been different.

In the controversy over MLS coming to Portland and necessitating a Beavers move to another stadium, with Memorial Coliseum becoming threatened along the way, we may have lost sight of the architecture of PGE Park and how it will change. Although the stadium has lots of history, it's never been an esteemed work of architecture. Portland Timbers and Beavers owner Merritt Paulson has the chance to bring the stadium a great design. And while I think that will be achieved when it comes to fan amenities and experiences -- seats close to the field, more luxurious concourses -- I'm not sure if there's anything about the design itself that will excite people. (Initial plans have been drawn up by Kansas City-based Ellerbe Becket, one of the nation's largest and most prolific stadium designers. They also did the Autzen Stadium expansion.) But there's still time for that to change.

A rant against clearcutting

 

A few weeks ago I spent a weekend at the Oregon Coast. While driving west on highway 26 through the Coast Range toward Cannon Beach and Seaside, I was appalled at the amount of forest that had been clearcut. From the road one could see thousands of acres of rolling hills in the Tillamook and Clatsop forests where there had recently been healthy ecosystems, now decimated to be as bare as Samson's scalp. I wondered if it was my imagination that more clearcutting seemed to be apparent than in the recent past.

Now don't get me wrong. I'm not saying state forests can't be logged. After all, I'm writing this from a wood-framed building stocked with lots of wood furniture. If I could, I'd replace my vinyl linoleum floors with a nice wood parquet for that Boston Garden effect. I'd replace my ratty recliner with a wood-backed Eames chair.

But it turns out I was on to something when it comes to the Tillamook and Clatsop forests and the debate over just what their purpose is: an industrial tree farm or a natural wonder.

Earlier this year, the Oregon Board of Forestry moved toward a new policy on the Tillamook and Clatsop forests, voting to boost the cut on state forests. Apparently this came after demands from the Legislature and from Tillamook and Clatsop counties for more logging and timber revenues.

Increasing logging was just the start, though. The Board of Forestry also launched an effort to rewrite its definition of the "greatest permanent value" of the state forests as being timber production. This contradicts the existing definition:  " healthy, productive and sustainable forest ecosystems that over time and across the landscape provide a full range of social, economic and environmental benefits to the people of Oregon."

What is this, the Dark Ages? Or, as a recent Oregonian editorial said, "Oregon's state forests are not tree farms."

Granted the people of rural Oregon have been hit hard in the last 20 years by declining timber production and revenue. It's understandable to want to bring more jobs back to logging towns like Vernonia, Mill City, and Willamina. Even so, cutting down every tree in sight is a matter of cutting off the nose to spite the face.

Oregon's forests are bountiful enough to provide plenty of timber that is logged sustainably. We don't need scorched-earth tactics in order to get this job done. And while this should not be an either-or choice of ecosystems and beauty versus economics and jobs, it's not merely empty romanticism to look at the forests from a speeding car and lament the devastation. It's not just loggers and logging companies that have a stake in Oregon's forest, but every Oregonian. And I'm quite confident that if you polled every resident of this state, the case for massive clearcutting would be sawed and felled in no time.

An architectural tragedy: Riverdale has been destroyed [updated]

It is a sad day for architecture and history in Portland. Riverdale Grade School, which carries the pedigree of having beee designed by the two most acclaimed architects in the city's history (A.E. Doyle and Pietro Belluschi), and a school that generations of Portlanders have attended, is no more. In a blaze of bulldozing, Riverdale was leveled like Dresden in World War II. Today all that stands at the corner of Military Road and Breyman Avenue is a pile of rubble. (The pictures used here were provided by architectural historian Libby Farr, Ph.D.)

The board at Riverdale that pushed through the demolition, in order to build a gargantuan new school (the style of which is a trite caricature - faux Riverdale on steroids), are not bad people. They think they're doing the right thing for the community and the students. Unfortunately, the rest of us have to live forever with their irreversible folly.

Historic preservation is never the easy route. Preserving and expanding the original Riverdale building might have been more expensive. It might have required more innovative thinking on the part of architect and client. But it didn't have to come to this. Riverdale could have been a model for historic preservation, which is also a key principle of sustainability. Instead, the stench of this deed is reeking all the way from the district's tony Dunthorpe locale up the Willamette and throughout the city.

"It's a shame the children of Riverdale have been denied the opportunity to learn that preservation and building a sustainable future go hand-in-hand," wrote Steve Jewell of the Preserve Riverdale campaign in an email today. "Riverdale has become a 'throwaway' community, in stark contrast to our traditions and community values. Regrettably, the 'bigger and newer is better' crowd holds the upper hand and has now destroyed the iconic symbol of our community's values and traditions."

Jewell and friends are at least up to one last bit of protest. Back in 1988, many Riverdale community members purchased individually inscribed bricks to help raise funds for a restoration campaign. The school has pledged to use those bricks in the new school building subsequently being constructed, in order to honor the memory of the previous building. But preservation supporters have arranged with Riverdale to allow individuals who bought a brick back in 1988 to have the brick returned to them upon request, instead of having it used in the new school. 

I wish more could have been done to save this poor wonderful schoolhouse. Not to go all Oskar Schindler on you, but certainly I could have done more. The City could have done more. The architecture and historic preservation communities could have done more. But in the end, if you can't convince the building owner of the value of his or her historic property, it is a very difficult uphill battle.

Even so, what can we do to at least make Riverdale a wakeup call for Portland? How can we strengthen lax preservation laws that allowed this to happen, or galvanize the community of sane people who opposed such destruction?

For starters, Portland has not updated its historic buildings inventory in more than 20 years. City Council could be committing funds to creating an updated list of buildings in this city worth protecting, and then put some teeth into their protection. We also need to look at the freedom this district had to self-immolate without much of any buy-in needing to be secured from the rest of the city. Shouldn't destroying a historic Portland school be a little harder? And we need, apparently, to educate both children and (especially) their parents about the value of historic buildings and our collective responsibility to preserve and protect them.

Meanwhile, no amount of good wishes will bring back Riverdale from the dead. The city will recover from this wound, just like we did when past historic treasures were leveled. But hopefully those at Riverdale will never forget the sobering destruction they have perpetrated.

UPDATE: Many have noted from the photos here that the building was not torn down in a way that allowed for proper salvaging of the building materials. Although some supporting Riverdale's efforts have written in promising that salvaging will happen, I wanted to highlight this comment from Nigel Barnes, who runs the architectural salvage department at Rejuvenation The Rebuilding Center:

"I can tell anyone who doubts it that this demolition was obviously done in a blitzkrieg style, with little, if any, consideration for materials re-use. They may perhaps have saved a few "prestige" pieces, like the lanterns, fancier windows, and cornerstones, but clearly the majority was simply smashed and will be completely wasted."

Contrary to that comment is one from an anonymous commenter called Enough Already, who seems to be writing with the inside knowledge of the Riverdale board. This commenter's most recent entry, defending the demolition, ended by simply saying, "This was about doing what was right for the kids." Enough Already went on to accuse preservationists of choosing a building as more important than the students attending. As I write this, I suddenly feel unable and unmotivated to come up with a witty or even angry retort. All I can say is the mindset here is as sad as the blitzkreig we see in these photos.

TriMet's Willamette bridge: have to admit it's getting better?

The Beatles once sang on Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, "I have to admit it's getting better/a little better, all the time/can't get no worse!" And now Jeff Jahn of the PORT blog (and many other local visual art curatorial and artistic endeavors), after attending the recent July 2 meeting of the Willamette River Bridge Advisory Committee, reports that a likable new design may be emerging from a process that once seemed like it could be doomed to deliver mediocrity.

The last time the WRBAC had met, I attended the meeting and, because it followed the selection of Donald MacDonald over Miguel Rosales (designer of the then best bridge prototype in the process, the "hybrid"), was concerned that TriMet, the client, was going the route of mediocre design in order to meet budget concerns and project timelines. The Rosales hybrid prototype seemed much more original and elegant than the Arthur Ravenel cable stay bridge that McDonald had done in South Carolina, for example.

But at last week's WRBAC meeting, MacDonald's team unveiled a new prototype that may give us reason for greater optimism. "I think I saw the light at the end of the tunnel," Jahn wrote after seeing the new "A" prototype (pictured above). It has inwardly canted towers, but slightly so - not the V shape that had served as an earlier prototype. The bridge also has wide bike and pedestrian paths around the tower, cantilevered over the water dramatically.

The "A" prototype also includes, somewhat strangely, a waterfall feature in the middle of the span part of a protective enclosure. I like the enclosure idea - a place to catch your breath and enjoy the view even in the rain. The water feature could either be wonderfully iconic or it could be absurd and trite, depending on the execution.

"Of course everything you see here is very preliminary but what we do know for sure is that this new multi-use bridge (transit, pedestrian, cycling) will be a refinement of the modern cable stay design," Jahn adds. "Also, with bike and pedestrian lanes on both the north and south sides it has a shot at being the best (and only) bike, pedestrian and mass transit span in US."

The "V" tower, pictured below, is still an option (and there are multiple versions within that option), but it seemed to find less favor at the WRBAC meeting. There is also option "E" with its steel towers, but it brings extra cost and risk that TriMet is unlikely to favor. Option A, meanwhile, was given go ahead for additional design development.

"My take is that Rosales hybrid and wave frame were partly an appeal to Portlanders' sense of humility," Jahn told me by email. "Which is fine but this is a nation leading project and why not take credit for once? The A design, especially with the four observation areas, will tend to provide greater interaction with the water and less cables so it is cleaner visually than the hybrid. MacDonald also appears to be at the forefront of bicycle and pedestrian accommodations." Here is another shot of the "A" prototype:

"Until the Esplanade the city has somewhat turned its back on the Willamette and that needs to change," Jahn added. "This bridge should address that. Both the Hybrid and the A are muscular enough to stand up to the Marquam (may it be torn down in my lifetime) but I think the A puts a greater emphasis on a lighter above deck superstructure. I also think the inwardly canted towers will improve the cycle/pedestrian experience and make the A design less stumpy than the hybrid. Mass transit is an aspirational thing for most cities so implying a vertical point somewhere above the bridge is a nice iconic idea. It's going to be an image a lot of other cities will aspire to."

Now if you'll excuse me, that Sgt. Pepper reference has given me an insatiable urge to go listen to the record.

Portland Monthly story celebrates new architects generation

The new issue of Portland Monthly includes a feature by Amara Holstein arguing that "a new generation of young architects is reaching beyond the expected to blend high density, sustainability, and thrift into a bolder breed of Portland building. At last."

Holstein begins with a look at the new Ziba Design headquarters in the Pearl District (rendered above), designed by Holst Architecture and set to complete construction this summer. (Rick Potestio and Mahlum Architects were the initial designers.) "This plum commision is the payoff of seventeen years of architetural ladder-climbing, rung by rung, from restaurant remodels and office renovations to townhouses and condos," adds Holstein, a former Dwell magazine editor.

"But well beyond being a measure of any one firm's success, the new Ziba headquarters is merely the most prominent in a collection of fresh, dynamic buildings rising across the city in environs as diverse as gritty lower East Burnside Street and the bungalow-villes of North Portland. The architects--mostly younger firms like Works Partnership, Atelier Waechter, William Kaven Architeture, Path Architecture, and Seed Architecture Studio--share Holst's goals of honing Portland's longstanding traditions of eco-consciousness, lively urbanism, and thrifty building into sharper forms of architecture."

A key project Holstein notes besides Holst's work is the new Bside6 building on East Burnside (seen below in a shot by Jon Clark for Portland Monthly). "With ribbons of dark-gray metal playing hide-and-seek with sleek glass, the structure mixes sexy and stern like no other building in the city." But it's also, she notes, built on a very small budget. And that's a central aspect of the generation Holstein writes about. Given today's economy, it's a no-brainer to build affordably. But these architects were doing so when the housing boom was still in full-swing.

I also wrote an article about this new generation of Portland designers and builders for Dwell magazine a few months ago on the occasion of the 11xDesign homes tour. But my story focused on the residential side of this equation. Holstein is correct in expanding the scope to include non-residential works like Ziba and Bside6, as well as to put Holst and Works Partnership at the forefront.

Another defining characteristic of this new urban architecture, Holstein writes, is that it's sustainable without wearing such features on its proverbial shirt sleeve. Of course you'd build green. How could anyone not in this day and age? But to build a sustainable building, even if it has been hailed with a Platinum LEED rating, does not guarantee beauty or great design in totality.

The other distinction to be made here is that these firms are working almost exclusively in existing neighborhoods. Rather than being constructed in new areas like South Waterfront or the northern Pearl District, these buildings face tough tests of fitting in with the existing fabric. Not everyone thinks they do. Holst's Clinton Condominiums, for example, was controversial for replacing an existing historic house on Division Street. But for the most part, these modern works can be appreciated both for how they fit in and how they articulate a very contemporary identity within that.