Portland Architecture

Colleagues raising funds for local architect with Lou Gehrig's disease

Recently a Portland architect named Harper Bates, who works at Holst Architecture was diagnosed with Lou Gherig's Gehrig's disease. Officially known as Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS), a motor neuron disease, it strikes people between the ages of 40 and 70, and as many as 30,000 Americans have the disease at any given time. Unfortunately, the average life expectency for ALS patients is about five years (although obviously people like Stephen Hawking have defied the odds.) And Harper received his ALS diagnosis just after he and his wife Amie (who is also an architect, working for THA Architecture) welcomed their first child. 

The architectural community here in Portland is trying to help. I was contacted by Mike Meade, a coworker of Amy's, who is part of a group of people at both offices who are involved with organizing a fundraising and ALS awareness-raising bike ride on October 2nd - this Friday - called Red Wigs On Bikes.  The money will go towards the eventual gap in income created when Harper will no longer be fit enough to work but not unemployed long enough to collect benefits, as well as toward an effort to make Amie and Harper's house more wheelchair friendly.  

 

Participants encouraged to wear red wigs and go along for the ride, but if anyone in your party is unable to bike, there will be a walking group as well.  Also, Mississippi Pizza and Laughing Planet will increase their donations if their sales surpass average Friday night levels.

The direct way to help, though, is to make a donation. That can be done via Paypal here, or by means of a check (made out to Harper or Amie Bates) and delivered to THA Architecture or Holst Architecture. If you'd prefer to make a tax deductible donation, that can be made to the ALS Association - although then it won't directly benefit Harper and Amie.

Besides Lou Gehrig, the Hall of Fame Yankees baseball great, ALS has cut short the lives of other such notable and courageous individuals as Hall of Fame pitcher Jim "Catfish" Hunter, Senator Jacob Javits, actor David Niven, and Sesame Street creator Jon Stone as well as musicians Leadbelly (Huddie Ledbetter), Charles Mingus, and Dimitri Shostakovich.

Portland Architecture & Design Festival starts Thursday

Thursday at AIA/Portland's Center For Architecture brings the Portland Architecture & Design Festival, which includes a host of different events, lectures, tours, awards programs, and more.

The Festival is both an extension of the annual Architecture Week that AIA/Portland has held in the past as well as an effort to broaden the scope of design being celebrated that recalls the short-lived Portland Design Festival that was popular for a couple years at the beginning of this decade.

The opening party is Thursday at 5pm at the Center For Architecture, a chance to view the Center's accompanying gallery exhibit, "Art By Architects."

Throughout the month there will be a number of lectures, discussions and forums, several of which are offered in conjunction with Portland Spaces magazine as part of the ongoing Bright Lights discussion series:

October 5: "Bright Lights City Design Discussion: Architecture School Smackdown." Professors Clive Knights (Portland State University) and Nancy Chang (University of Oregon) discuss the future of architecture education. (6pm, Jimmy Mak's, 221 NW 10th Ave., Free.)

October 7: "Bright Lights City Design Discussion: The Mass is Always Greener?" Which is greener - New York or Portland? David Owen, author of "Green Metropolis: Why Living Smaller, Living Closer, and Driving Less Are the Keys to Sustainability" and PSU professor Ethan Seltzer debate the question. (7:30pm, Powells Books, 1005 W Burnside, Free.)

October 8: "Bright Lights City Design Discussion: Ed Schlossberg Interacts." The renowned New York-based designer talks about his latest work: Mercy Corps' Action Center. (6pm, Mercy Corps World Headquarters, 28 SW First Ave., Free.)

October 10: "How (and Why) to Hire and Work with an Architect" and "Ask an Architect". Learn what an architect can do for your home project from award-winning designer David Giulietti, AIA. This seminar will cover the practical aspects of working with an architect, including contractual responsibilities, legal issues, and fee obligations. (10am-12pm, Center For Architecture, 403 NW 11th Ave. $25 individual, $35 for two.) In "Ask an Architect", immediately following, meet one-on-one with local architects to answer questions and give advice on design, energy-efficiency, remodeling, and general architecture-related topics for your home project. (12:30pm, Center For Architecture, Free with "How to Hire" admission.)

October 15: "Bright Lights City Design Discussion: Moses vs. Jacobs in New York and Portland". PSU urban historian Carl Abbott and Anthony Flint, author of "Wrestling with Moses: How Jane Jacobs Took on New York's Master Builder and Transformed the American City," discuss the profound impacts of the 20th century's most influential urbanists, Robert Moses and Jane Jacobs (pictured), on New York and Portland. (7pm, Powells Books, 1005 W Burnside, Free.)

October 25: "Architecture, Power, and Justice in Ragtime-Era Portland". This panel discussion will be moderated by architecture writer and Portland Monthly Magazine editor-in-chief Randy Gragg and feature historians Jan Dilg, Chet Orloff, and Philip Niles, author of "Beauty of the City: A.E. Doyle, Portland's Architect." (2pm, Central Library, 801 SW 10th Ave., Free.)

October 27: "Portland Eco-districts: A Natural Future". A panel discussion on Portland's eco-districts. How do they work? What work is being done locally? And how far can we go to create an idealistic future plan for our city? The multidisciplinary panel will include architects, landscape architects, and urban designers. Accompanying the panel will be a University of Oregon student exhibition. (6-9pm, Center For Architecture, 403 NW 11th Ave., Free.)

October 29: "China: Architecture Now - Lecture by Yung Ho Chang" The head of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Department of Architecture lectures on the profound and rapid changes in economy, mobility, consumerism, and architecture that impact how people in China live today. (7pm, Portland Art Museum, 1219 SW Park Ave., $12 or Free with museum admission.)

There will also be a Design-On-Screen film series that includes four films: "Expo: Magic of the White City", on the 1893 Chicago World's Fair (October 7); "Antonio Gaudi", a profile of the master Spanish architect (October 14); "Magnificent Obsession: Frank Lloyd Wright's Legacy In Japan" (October 21); and "The Rural Studio", on the late great Samuel Mockbee's architecture for the poor of Alabama (October 28). All films screen at 6pm at the Center for Architecture, 403 NW 11th Ave.

In a post last week I mentioned the October 3 "Small Spaces/Big Ideas" home tour that is part of the Portland Architecture & Design Festival. There are also several more tours happening:

October 4: Pedaling Through Portland: An Architectural Bike Tour (1-4pm)

October 11: Spots of Green: Landscape Architecture in the City (1-4pm)

October 11: Photo Tour Workshop (1-4pm)

October 18: Riding the Rails: A Transit Tour through Portland (1-4pm)

October 24: Green is the New Black: An Eco-Roof Tour (1-4pm)

October 25: Design Excellence: Seminal Landmarks in Portland Design (1-4pm)

October 29:  Street of Eames Goes to Work (5pm)

The crowning even of Architecture Week was always the AIA and IIDA design awards. This year they happen October 16-17, first beginning with a jury critique session on the 16th (5:30pm, Center For Architecture) and then concluding with the annual Design Awards Gala (Shattuck Hall, PSU, 710 SW Broadway, $40.) October 22 brings the IIDA awards (6-9pm, Urban Studio, 206 NW 10th Ave.)

For more information about the Portland Architecture & Design Festival, visit the fest's website here.

Seed Architecture Studio's SIPs House begins to bloom

About 15 minutes' drive from downtown near the intersection of 45th and Lombard is the SIPs House, the first built project to be realized by Seed Architecture Studio. Although it was included in April of this year on the 11xDesign homes tour (featuring local up-and-coming designer-developer work), the house was still under construction at the time. Now, as a recent visit showed, the completed house is a striking composition of integrated cubes and contrasting textures. 

Targeted to achieve a Platinum LEED rating, the SIPs House takes its name from the structurally insulated panels that were used in the building's construction. What are structurally insulated panels? Here's how they are defined by the Structurally Insulated Panel Association, with apologies if this sounds too much like a marketing pamphlet:

Structural insulated panels (SIPs) are high performance building panels used in floors, walls, and roofs for residential and light commercial buildings. The panels are typically made by sandwiching a core of rigid foam plastic insulation between two structural skins of oriented strand board (OSB). Other skin material can be used for specific purposes. SIPs are manufactured under factory controlled conditions and can be custom designed for each home.

Building with SIPs generally costs about the same as building with wood frame construction, when you factor in the labor savings resulting from shorter construction time and less job-site waste. Other savings are realized because less expensive heating and cooling systems are required with SIP construction.

This is actually the first house in Portland with floors, walls and a roof made of structurally insulated panels. It is a US Department of Energy Building America demonstration project and also was a City of Portland Green Investment Fund grant winner. The architects also say it is built to resist forces 75 percent stronger than a standard code-built home. So it'd be a good place to be when the Big One of an earthquake comes, or whatever the Mayans believe is coming in 2012.

The house is set further back from the street (an unkempt, partially unpaved bit of an eyesore), with the idea that the front yard can become an active place to spend time or use for growing crops or landscape. The co-developers of the project, David and Wendy Cohan, have an emphasis on sustainable living, and the house was constructed with those principles in mind: bamboo cabinetry, VOC-free paint, an efficient heat-recovery ventilation system.

The exterior composition can seem slightly imposing at first, or at least it did to me, simply because the front of the house is a largely blank wall without the kind of large window we're used to having at eye level. Instead, the glassy transparency happens more at the building's tucked-in corner that's further into the property, via sliding glass kitchen doors. The windows, which account for about 15 percent of the total exterior, were placed to maximize how much natural light could be brought in rather than with views. For this reason, corner windows are often favored for how they can reflect light onto multiple walls and other surfaces. I felt better about the missing big front window when standing inside the house, which was full of bountiful illumination without a single electric light on.

Standing inside the center of the SIPs House, one still gets a cinematic sense of what is transpiring outside, but there is a greater sense of privacy that comes with it. One of the architects from SEED, Darin Dougherty (whose resume includes stints at Architropolis and TVA Architects), told me they wanted to place windows in a way that they wouldn't need coverings, thereby keeping the house's natural illumination uncompromised when people try to avoid the fishbowl effect.

The front portion of the house contains the living room, which is attached to a double-height kitchen area. Overlooking that vast volume of space is an upstairs walkway connecting the bedrooms there to a rooftop deck.

Once standing on the deck, I got a good look at the upper facade's reclaimed wood panels, which came from a barn in Happy Valley. The panels have that beautiful weathered-wood look, which also means they won't fade or stain over time quite as much as some of the newer wood-clad buildings I've seen around town already starting to show wear. Not only is the texture of the wood itself beautiful, but the slightly mismatched sizes and widths of the boards help give the house more of a three dimensional and less of an outright boxy visual quality.

Contrasting the wood portion of the facade is weathered steel, which achieves a similarly scruffy texture that, like many contemporary buildings of this era, enlivens the simple form. Weathered steel, better known by its brand name, Cor-Ten, is a popular material these days, and it will be intriguing to see if it is a fad or something more lasting. The material makes sense here, though, in how it contrasts with the wood for an overall gritty, tactile, organic surface.

Pulverizing as the economy has been for the architecture profession, Seed seems to be staying relatively busy. They have a few other residential projects on the way, as you can see in the renderings below. The firm doesn't intend to keep designing just single family homes forever, but they're certainly off to a fine start.

Small Spaces/Big Ideas home tour coming October 3

Every year the popular Street of Eames tour sells out its limited allotment of tickets with plenty of design aficionados left out in the cold unable to see the houses. So if you're looking to see some of the best contemporary residential designs in the city, the Small Spaces/Big Ideas home tour might be worth a Saturday afternoon.

In 1950, the average size of a single-family house in the U.S. was 983 square feet. By 2004, that average had ballooned to 2,349 square feet. Now that figure may begin to drop again. And these houses help show that this needn't be a bad thing.

Slated for October 3, the mall Spaces/Big Ideas tour (featuring homes under 1,800 square feet) is one of the kickoff events in the Portland Architecture & Design Festival happening throughout the month. There will also be a slew slough of other events, from the annual design awards to an architecture-oriented film series, lectures, and exhibits.

One house on the tour, the Rose House (pictured above), was either the first or one of the first houses in the United States to be built with net-zero energy usage. The little cottage designed by Clark Brockman and SERA Architects generates at least as much power as it uses.

Shortly after it was completed in 2004, the Rose House was featured in a Business Week magazine story called "Enter the New American Dream House." Olga Kharif wrote:

Four years ago, Linda Rose and her husband, Eldon Haines, realized it might soon be time to consolidate -- and reinvent -- their family living arrangements. The retired couple lives in Eugene, Ore., where they have to negotiate 46 stairs from curb to doorstep every time they venture out. So the couple decided to build their own version of a dream retirement home in Rose's daughter's backyard in Portland.

The two life-long environmentalists didn't want just another house, however. The pair already burned old newspapers and cardboard in their wood stove and recycled or reused all plastic. They're proud to boast that they have generated two garbage cans of waste a year for the past 20 years. 

Haines, a nuclear physicist, has worked for decades as a consultant to NASA's Jet Propulsion Lab, most recently on the Mars Odyssey unmanned spacecraft. But he's also known nationwide as the inventor of the copper cricket, a solar water heater. "My real-life interest is the environment, not planet Mars," he likes to point out. 

So it was only natural that the couple set out to build a home that generates all the energy it needs to run appliances, heating, and cooling. It's a pioneering effort in Oregon and one of the first in the nation. 

These so-called net-energy homes go a step beyond the "zero-energy homes" promoted by the federal government, explains Charlie Stephens, residential energy specialist at the Oregon Energy Dept. in Salem. To qualify as zero-energy, a home need only generate enough electricity for 70% to 80% of its needs. The Rose House is energy self-sufficient, period. 

Another tour stop is the Park Box (pictured below) by Path Architecture. The house was also included on the 11xDesign tour earlier this spring (which I wrote about for Dwell magazine as a kind of bellwether indicating a new Portland design generation), but back then it was still under construction. Today it's finished. I visited the Park Box a few weeks ago with its designer, Corey Martin of Path. I was impressed with its simple elegance, including a dramatic double-height living room that the bedrooms overlook as well as the house's geometry of interlocking cubes and its stained wood cladding.

The North House by William Kaven Architecture on North Vancouver Avenue was also on the 11xDesign tour, and was also under construction then. This firm, like Path, is also busy developing lots of its own projects. Trevor Lewis and Daniel Kaven of WKA are pictured here.

Harpoon House, an additional tour stop, is the first house of designer Matt Kirkpatrick. It's located on an urban infill lot in the Buckman neighborhood of Southeast Portland neighborhood of Buckman. The land, according to the house's website, "has existed for decades as an unadorned patch of neatly groomed lawn hosting a single hydrangea bush and a tidy chain link fence. It will soon be the site of Harpoon House – a small, efficient dwelling - and Harpoon Gardens – a diversity of native plants, trees, edibles, and possibly a few chickens."

Harpoon House (shown here in rendering form) features 704 square feet of living space and 448 square feet of unconditioned basement on 2,500 total square feet of land, with one bedroom and one bathroom, but also-interestingly-a root cellar and a rooftop garden. "Harpoon House," its site says, "was designed to encourage a fluid relationship between indoor and outdoor living," with "soil and plants instead of tar paper and asphalt shingles." The project is expected to be certified LEED Platinum.

Also included in Small Spaces/Big Ideas is the Le-Horsely House, by husband-wife architects Joann Le and David Horsely of DAO Architecture. The house was previously featured in Sunset magazine in a piece called "Rethinking the Classic Bungalow" by Jil Peters:

All over the West, homeowners are renovating old bungalows. Some meticulously mimic the original architecture; others create strikingly contemporary additions, sharply contrasting old and new. Architects Joann Le and David Horsley, a Portland couple, chose yet another approach. "We treated the renovation with a subtle touch that imbued a modern sensibility while respecting the home's character," says Horsley. And perhaps most important, they kept a good sense of humor along the way.

"With two architects in the house, there was no restraining voice of reason," laughs Horsley. "We turned a little fixer into a significant fixer." The couple has spent the last six years gradually transforming their 1913 bungalow from a collection of small, dark rooms to an open, airy, light-filled home. They did almost all of the work themselves--even making much of the furniture. "We certainly wish we had bought stock in Home Depot," says Le.

 

 

One of their first decisions was to remove a wall that divided a small kitchen and a tiny downstairs bedroom. Horsley had fond memories of the large kitchen and eating area in his grandmother's home, and he and Le wanted a similarly gracious space. "We use the kitchen in a modern way," explains Le. "We cook, eat, do the bills, and read the paper there." By opening up the room with large double-hung windows and a glass door, they gained access to sunlight and views.

Key to the success of the kitchen is a new rear porch that expands the area into the backyard. The couple finished it with the same fir flooring used inside, protecting the exposed section with spar urethane, a marine-grade finish available at most paint and hardware stores. To ensure that the porch ceiling wouldn't block light to the kitchen, Le and Horsley designed skylights between the rafters, giving them the best of both worlds. A series of openings in the interior walls lets in additional sunlight. "We're not sun worshippers or even beach people," Le says with a smile, "but capturing the light is really important to us."

The Small Spaces/Big Ideas homes tour takes place Saturday, October 3 from 10am-4pm. Tickets are $35, or $25 for students, and available at the AIA Center For Architecture, at 403 NW 11th Avenue.

Besides architecture (part 4)

This is the latest in a series of posts by Portland Architecture guest blogger Corbin Keech. Corbin is looking at how the recession has affected recent architecture school graduates. Corbin received a bachelor's degree in architecture from Kansas State University in 2006, and worked for the past two and a half years at ZGF Architects. He now provides contract design work for several architecture, urban design and planning companies in Portland.

“I don’t like to sit around and wait for things to happen. Whether it works or not, I don’t really care,” remarked Ken Tomita as we relax on his shop’s mezzanine/lounge in southeast Portland. “I have faith that whatever I choose to do, whether it works out or not, the resulting experience is always worth the risk.”

Ken was born in Yokohama, Japan and designs bamboo furniture. He is calm, but impatient. For him, comfort is derived from spontaneity, and guesswork is an expectation. I mean this in the least disparaging way possible. 

Ken’s experimental design process has its origins in both his education as well as his life experience. While he’s currently enjoying stability here in Portland, he understands a feeling of permanence is likely to be fleeting. “The only thing I know is that I won’t be doing the same thing in five years,” adds. “I can only try to follow what feels natural.” 

In the past nine years he has lived in both Portland and Eugene as well as Hawaii, Rhode Island, California, and again in Japan for one year of college. He has worked for Nike and built elaborate bamboo installations in Ireland, Colorado, as well as two separate structures at the annual Burning Man festival in Nevada. 

After acquiring a master’s degree in East Asian Studies and Art History at the University of Oregon, Ken attended The Rhode Island School of Design. After a semester of architecture classes he switched to Industrial Design, only to subsequently drop out and leave RISD entirely after being challenged by a trustworthy friend. 

Jim Barnes, Ken’s materials professor at RISD, illuminated an element related to architecture that was significantly more accessible: furniture design. “He was the one professor who would actually discuss the real world with us,” Tomita said. “It wouldn’t ever dominate the discussion, but he actually took a few minutes to talk about what I considered to be crucial issues, like what you actually do at the office. How much money do architects make? How many women were in the field? And so on. His message simply resonated louder than most of the abstract discussion that permeated the studios.”

As someone who prefers to boldly jump in and start building, Ken could not come to terms with the onerous architectural design process. “Architecture is occasionally too big to comprehend, and I was basically overwhelmed by its scale,” he explains. “It just felt like too much guessing. I also couldn’t handle the disconnect between the drawings and reality. Architecture feels inhibited, and I had professors at RISD that helped me overcome my tendency to hold myself back.” This is essentially why Ken enjoys designing furniture. He is free to simply be himself. (One of his designs is pictured at the top of this post.)

Ken's restlessness is only matched by his confidence that the details will eventually work themselves out. In other words, the most important part of design is the big idea. Such can be said about Project Chaboo. 

Conceived by Ken as a means to connect artists of all trades, Project Chaboo was a massive collaborative design experiment that took place this past March. While the show was organized by Ken it was propelled forward by a team of designers uniformly committed to the success of the event: Kari Merkl, Ken’s brother Yuji Tomita, Lisa Kuhnhausen, Emily Knudsen, and (in full disclosure) myself. 

The objective was broad but the idea was simple: use Ken’s chaboo (a bamboo bench/table, as seen above) as a canvas. Dozens of Portland’s sculptors, illustrators, painters, architects, and carpenters participated, generating a series of creative networks that continue to remain strong. Popularity and interest in Project Chaboo became so great that Ken was forced to turn artists away from participating. Over a thousand people attended the show, a remarkable accomplishment considering the project took shape as it unfolded and Ken's vision was
to simply connect people and create good vibes.

Ken had essentially tapped into something very simple that the community needed. We were collectively engaged the indisputably positive act of building. Moreover, Project Chaboo’s timing was crucial because people were struggling on every conceivable level, and we needed something positive in which we could invest ourselves. The only explanation for the event’s success had to be fortuitously making a connection with something outside of the event.

Work of this nature is soulful, originating from within rather than a set of rules or programmatic guidelines. Improvised design is a rarity within the realm of architecture, and this is difficult to overcome given the fundamentally complex act of constructing buildings. Nevertheless, a spontaneous design process has the potential to rejuvenate not just a group of artists, but also an entire community. Project Chaboo was proof of this. 

While I’m loathe to admit that spontaneity and architecture typically don’t mix, I know for certain that extraordinary work was never been achieved without risk. Simply stated, I cannot imagine architecture without it. Furthermore, there’s something tremendously inspiring about design that is rooted in one’s instincts rather than precautions. It is without question an ethic that is applicable in any other field, especially architecture.

"Shine A Light" at the Portland Art Museum

This Saturday from 6PM to midnight at the Portland Art Museum is Shine a Light: A Night at the Museum. The event consists of six hours of performances, installations, tours, workshops, and games inside the museum, hosted by 15 artists from Portland State University’s MFA, Art and Social Practice program, led by Harrell Fletcher and Jen Delos Reyes. The projects are centered on artist and audience participation and visitors are encouraged to experience the Museum’s spaces and collections in new ways.

The Art and Social Practice MFA program encourages students to develop and utilize their artistic skills to engage in society. Social practice might appear to be more like sociology, anthropology, social work, journalism, or environmentalism than art, yet it retains the intention of creating significance and appreciation for audiences in a similar way to more conventional art. Students learn about a variety of working artists and non-artists who have engaged in civic activity, and apply their knowledge and abilities to initiate, develop, and complete projects with the public—individuals, groups, and institutions. 

Outdoors in the museum's sculpture court for Shine A Light, local bands Atole, Tu Fawning and E*Rock, will play throughout the day including a demonstration of printmaking at a mobile print factory and sample specially made beer brewed to complement individual museum objects for the event by Old Lompoc, Laurelwood and Lucky Lab.

Inside, projects located throughout the Museum include “Learn to Count in Mon”, a project to save endangered languages, a break-dancing display, musicians, including Mirah, Joe Preston of the Thrones, Honey Owens of Valet, Christopher Doulgeris of Hooliganship, Alex Guy, Drew Slum, and Blacque Butterfly serenading select works of art, “Stranger Moments”, a roving theatrical tour of the Museum employees’ interactions in the galleries with strangers, video installations from the Northwest Film Center and much more.

Tickets are $12, the regular museum admission price.

The Portland Art Museum, at least when I've visited it, has often been surprisingly yet frustratingly empty. Maybe it's not the Metropolitan Museum of Art, but I find it a hugely enjoyable exercise to peruse the many exquisite works, something too many people don't do. Maybe that's in part because of the admission price. At the Met, by contrast, you can pay a suggested donation price. I wish PAM could commit to more regular free-admission days as well.

All of which makes checking out Shine A Light worthwhile, as does the involvement of Fletcher's class, which has increasingly made Portland State an engaging presence in the city.

Memorial Coliseum listed on National Register, and notes from the first Rose Quarter advisory committee meeting

Tuesday of this week was a big day in the history of Memorial Coliseum. Maybe the biggest since Clyde the Glide dueled with MJ.

First, media outlets began reporting by midday that the building had received a listing on the National Register of Historic Places from the National Park Service, giving the 1960 structure protection as a landmark of enduring architectural merit and historic significance. (Congratulations and thanks to architect Peter Meijer and his colleague Kristin Minor for writing the nomination.)

Later on Tuesday afternoon at City Hall, the first meeting was held by the Rose Quarter Development Project Stakeholder Advisory Committee, charged by the city with determining a future use for both Memorial Coliseum and the Rose Quarter overall. The meeting, held in City Council chambers, was chaired by Mayor Sam Adams.

First, the National Register listing. For those who have worked over these past several months to protect Memorial Coliseum since it was first threatened with demolition to make way for a minor-league baseball stadium (a plan since abandoned), it's time to pop the champagne cork. Memorial Coliseum is, according to a wide swath of experts at the national, local and state level, a landmark work of architecture worth preserving. It follows in the same line of preserved Portland landmarks like the Pittock Mansion, the Portland Armory, Central Library, and the Ladd Carriage House, all local treasures that were at one time threatened.

Our city doesn't have a perfect record of historic preservation. To save the Coliseum, though, is a bold statement that Portland is different. Not many American cities save their old arenas once they're replaced. That Portland plans to give the Coliseum new life is a gesture not only a pioneering spirit, but of sustainable values. And we're supposed to be running for the title of America's greenest city.

Some people out there ask, what's so great about Memorial Coliseum? Why preserve it? Several reasons. It's unique in the world as an entirely glass-covered arena that, with the curtain around the seating bowl open, can be flooded with natural light. You can sit in the so-called worst seats at Memorial Coliseum and have something people in the front row don't: a view of the entire downtown Portland skyline. Unfortunately, though, even native Oregonians who grew up going to Blazer games and rock concerts there largely have never experienced Memorial Coliseum in this way.

A few weeks ago I visited the City of Portland archives and found a folder full of correspondence between civic leaders and community members about what to name the building. One of the runners-up to the name Memorial Coliseum I find fittingly descriptive: "The Glass Palace".

The whole concept behind Memorial Coliseum's design, says Bill Rouzie, one of the designers of Memorial Coliseum for Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, was to give the arena a sense of transparency and connection to the outside - something anathema to most large performance spaces. "We were thinking, we’ve got this oval bowl that is going to sit in a glass box," the architect recalls. "When you’re in the bowl looking at something happening, you can either have light or not with the control of the curtain. To get out of there, or at halftime, you walk out into a space and instead of being in some blind corridor, you come out and you’ve got glass and you can see the city. You know where you are, and whether it’s day or night." 

"That was the whole point of the design," Rouzie adds. "You never feel lost there. I can even get lost in some of the buildings I've designed, especially the hospitals. But not the Coliseum."

What's more, Memorial Coliseum has a pureness of design though few other buildings achieve. It's simply a bowl in a box. You can draw the basic form in less than three seconds: a square with an open half-oval inside. You can see the building's basic form from blocks away. It's a visual language of modern architecture - glass and steel - but the Coliseum has a touch of classical symmetry ascribed to the great buildings of ancient Greece and Rome.

Then there's the fact that Memorial Coliseum (pictured below in a shot by Jeremy Bitterman) was designed by one of the great American architecture firms of the 20th Century: Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, the architects behind the Sears Tower in Chicago, Lever House in New York, and Oregon buildings like the Standard Plaza in Portland and Autzen Stadium in Eugene. They're also designing the Freedom Tower in New York (with Daniel Liebeskind), replacement for the World Trade Center.

It was just hours after reports of the the National Register listing began running that the Rose Quarter Stakeholder Advisory Committee met at City Hall. There are 32 members of the committee. If you've ever held a meeting in a big conference room where everyone wants and needs to weigh in, you know having that many people on the committee will be challenging. But the plus side to a large committee is many people have a voice, including members of organizations like the Urban League, the Bicycle Transportation Alliance, and the American Institute of Architects as well as neighborhood activists and even a kid attending public school in Portland, Jules Renaud.

Not much happened at the first SAC meeting, mostly just a meet and greet. In his opening remarks to the committee, Mayor Adams said, "We are better situated than ever before," to successfully transform the Rose Quarter. His reasoning? Portland now has experience in successfully redeveloping neighborhoods like the Pearl and South Waterfront. There is a transit confluence at the Rose Quarter as well, with streetcars set to join the existing MAX train and bus hub.

When asked, Adams also said, "I am not committed to saving the bowl," but he does want the exterior glass perimeter to remain "largely intact."

The committee took time for each member to express his or her initial concern going into this series of 20 meeting sessions. It proved somewhat fruitful as a beginning point for generating ideas and forming collective values. Among the comments and concerns I jotted down were:

• The economic and scale issues associated with having two large arenas
• Physical barriers like the railroad running along the river 
• Mobility for cyclists and pedestrians
• How Rose Quarter events match up with locals' leisure time preferences
• Whether to restore the street grid that predated the Coliseum/RQ
• How this relates to (and jives with) the revitalization of NE Broadway
• The results of previous Memorial Coliseum and Rose Quarter studies
• The inclusion of minorities and small businesses in renovation plans
• Celebrating the history of the neighborhood that used to exist here
• Family friendliness
• Honoring veterans
• Sustainability

Designs on Portland series continues Thursday with "The City Onscreen"

For the past year and a half, I have hosted a bi-monthly series at Design Within Reach called "Designs on Portland" featuring discussions with the city's top creative design minds, ranging from architects like Jeff Kovel and Thomas Hacker to editors like Randy Gragg, academic leaders like Tom Manley to urban design gurus like Arun Jain.

This week's installment of Designs on Portland will be a little different. Instead of discussion, we'll be screening a variety of short films featuring our city.

Among the filmmakers will be Matt McCormick, who is arguably the father of experimental film in Portland, having founded the PDX Fest and had numerous past films of his accepted at the Sundance Film Festival. His film in this show, "It Was A Crushing Defeat," chronicles a late night at the Portland Police horse paddock beside Centennial Mills.

Also included in the show is a film by Rob Tyler, whose films have played around the world and screened at countless international festivals. "October of this Year," his contribution, is a portrait of last winter's massive snowstorm.

Karl Lind, another local whose work has screened in numerous fests, contributes a chilling spontaneously-made film shot at a MAX station. We'll be showing three shorts by Andrew Curtis, each a gorgeous time-lapse shot of a Portland landmark such as the St. John's Bridge or Waterfront Park.

I'll also be showing a few films of my own, including "Portland Project #1" (above), portraying the city's Central Eastside; "Creamery Birds," which follows a flock of birds at the Darigold plant (and won a judge's award at the 2007 NW Film & Video Fest); "Demolition of the Rosefriend Apartments," which chronicles the action taken by Portland's First Christian Church  to tear down a beloved work of local architecture, "Above & Beyond," which has fun with various spinning advertising signs (think Franz bread), and "Nocturne," chronicling a drive through an empty downtown Portland in the middle of the night.

One change has been made to the originally-planned lineup. We had been planning to show "The Day Called X," a 1955 CBS News documentary about Portland preparing for nuclear war. Due to some technical difficulties, that film probably will not be shown as part of "The City Onscreen". But if you're interested in that film, which is narrated by actor Glenn Ford and includes many shots of 1950s Portland, you can watch it online here.

This is a fun opportunity to combine my two greatest artistic loves, architecture and film. For several years before I wrote about architecture, I was a film critic. I don't miss seeing free preview screenings of teen movies in suburban multiplexes with loud radio DJs amping up overweight crowds, but I'll always have fondness and admiration for the community of local filmmakers in Portland, some of the best of whom will be featured in this show.

"The City Onscreen" officially starts at 6:30pm on Thursday, at Design Within Reach at 1200 NW Everett, in the base of the Wieden + Kennedy building in the Pearl District. Popcorn will be served and admission is free.

Besides architecture (part 3)

This is the third in a series of posts by Portland Architecture guest blogger Corbin Keech. Corbin is looking at how the recession has affected recent architecture school graduates.

Corbin received a bachelor's degree in architecture from Kansas State University in 2006, and worked for the past two and a half years at ZGF Architects. He now provides contract design work for several architecture, urban design and planning companies in Portland.

My initial interest in architecture was never about having an impact on society. It was not about participating in something larger than myself, or creating a legacy. Instead, at an early age I was merely seduced by the sight of a metropolis and its energy. More abstractly, architecture was more about expression and form. Being a virtuous artist was of above all my greatest concern. 

However myopic and naive these attitudes were, I luckily was not immune from seeing the bigger picture. Professional work has illuminated the value of contributing to a project that is rooted in something outside of itself. While it took some time to see how meaningful this process can be, for others working for a larger cause was the objective from the start. Eden Brukman radiates this ethic. 

Today, Brukman is the Research Director of the Cascadia Region Green Building Council and, like Naomi Cole (the subject of last week’s “Besides Architecture” post), has found a means of influencing the architecture and urban design world on an enormous scale. Similarly idealistic and purposeful in her quest to implement broad and sweeping change in sustainable design, Brukman is another example of an individual who found architecture to be a means to an end: a way of discovering her true calling.

Brukman earned a bachelor’s degree in architecture from the University of California, Berkeley with a minor in visual studies - a program she crafted on her own. From there she earned a Master’s degree in illustration from the Edinburgh College of Art in Scotland. While at Berkeley she had an internship at Esherick Homsey Dodge and Davis, a high respected architecture firm in the Bay Area, and after graduation worked at Richard Meier & Partners. With Meier, she contributed to projects such as the Crystal Cathedral in Anaheim (pictured above and below) as well as the landmark Getty Center in Los Angeles. 

Nevertheless, she felt limited by the amount of attention one project required. Implementing and advocating for more environmentally responsible design strategies was a means of expanding the breadth of her influence, presumably with greater, more expansive results. A move to Portland during this career transition was the ideal way to address this sense of duty.

“There’s an interesting desire to nourish life here,” says Brukman. “I didn’t come to Portland because I wanted to work in architecture. I came here because I wanted to get into research and information outreach as they relate to sustainable design practices. I figured this place would have more opportunities for someone interested in sustainable design. I wanted to develop a better toolkit as a means to influence change.” 

She spent four years as the Sustainability Coordinator at SERA Architects before moving to her current position at Cascadia, where her primary concern is developing the standards and procedures of the International Living Building Institute’s groundbreaking Living Building Challenge. The purpose of the program is to create design, construction and occupancy standards with which the built environment is in perfect balance with the natural environment. 

The Living Building Challenge is, according to the ILBI website, a “rigorous performance standard that defines the closest measure of true sustainability in the built environment, using a framework of what is currently possible and given the best knowledge available today.” While different levels of LEED certification are earned through credits and prescriptive standards, Brukman says the Living Building Challenges is instead an “additive” process more akin to building codes.

“Here,” she explains, “we start with the ideal – with what could be. Beyond that, the program doubles as an advocacy tool, in that it narrows the gap between the ideal solution and what’s possible today. This forces us to acknowledge market realities but work to achieve something beyond these limitations. I also like how it forces us to bring the human element into the equation. It brings experience in the truest sense back into design. Lastly, there is no feeling of propriety. Ego is left at the door. It is understood that people should learn from each other's design.”

Working for the USGBC and toward the Living Building Challenge, Brukman feels part of a design culture where information is more easily exchanged and her impact more broadly felt. “Now, I’m able to contribute to dozens of projects, whereas architectural projects require a more narrow focus.” 

It's not to suggest Brukman developed an aversion to the narcissistic tendencies of the architectural world. Rather, she firmly believes that outreach and research are ways in which she can personally give back as well as feel professionally sated. Additionally, she believes that architects often search elsewhere because of a subconscious thirst to have an impact in the world, and sometimes architecture is quite frankly, stifling. 

“The profession doesn’t often embrace the notion that anything is possible,” Brukman adds. “Some people leave because the imposed limitations can be exhausting. Creative people want to explore possibilities. They don’t want to be constrained. We tend to start with limits - an idea that is fundamentally about prescriptions or what we can’t do - rather than starting with the ultimate vision of what could be. This is what drew me to the Living Building Challenge. There’s a greater sense of optimism.”

Asked if she considers Portland to be an easier town for architects to take a risk and look elsewhere for work, she wasn’t sure Portland was any different than other large city. “I think it’s more about your personal condition rather than the place in which you live. I have friends in LA, San Francisco, London, and here in Portland that have left architecture. I think it really has more to do with the options in the city - each of these cities has an enormous amount of opportunity. Basically, you can take a risk if your personal life allows it. In other words, it is less about place and more about commitments outside of your career.” 

While this reinforces the idea that architecture both sustains and defeats us, what I continue to find compelling is the notion that these struggles force us to grow in ways that allow us to succeed elsewhere. Not only are our skills transferable, but we also develop an itch to continually search for something greater, whether it is through our work or personal lives. Ken Tomita’s story (subject of the next installment in this series) is one of resiliency and decisiveness, and further proof that gut instincts are there to follow, not dismiss.

Two Portland projects sweep AIA's national healthcare design awards

Recently the American Institute of Architects announced the recipients of its 2009 National Healthcare Design Awards, honoring two built projects and one unbuilt project. And both of the built projects are located here in Portland: the Providence North Portland Clinic on Interstate Avenue, designed by Mahlum, and the Peter O. Kohler Pavilion at Oregon Health & Science University on Marquam Hill, designed by the Los Angeles office of Chicago-based Perkins + Will.

I wrote about the awards for this week's issue of Architecture Week magazine, which you can read here.

The Providence clinic is a departure for the client. "All the rest of their clinics have red brick," Anne Schopf, a principal at Mahlum, told me for the story. "We really wanted to create a new face for them, a new attitude."

The building is more contemporary than other Providence clinics, with an expansive glass facade along Interstate. Rick Potestio, the acclaimed Portland architect who was working for Mahlum at the time, also told me, "We believed that the site, on Interstate Avenue, merited a civic-scaled building, not a one-story building that looked like it could be a pancake house." The solution was a single-story building with a butterfly roof in which the east and west elevations reaching two stories in height.

The butterfly roof form allows daylight into the middle of the building, which is divided into three clinical pods centered on open nurses' stations, trading some privacy for openness. The pods are faced with murals visible from the street through a floor-to-ceiling glass wall.

The Kohler Pavilion at OHSU didn't even have a site when the design began. A site had to be carved out of Marquam Hill by replacing an existing roadway. Now, however, the building acts as the visual face of the hilltop campus as it looks out to the east. The Kohler has a striking glass facade, and one's eye is also drawn to the building because it acts as the upper terminus for the Portland Aerial Tram. 

The new building houses an intensive care unit, operating rooms, and treatment suites, and the new Center for Women's Health. The pavilion's arrival court includes a large garden area sitting atop a 450-space parking structure. "One of [then-OHSU president] Peter Kohler's strong directives was he didn't want to look down and see cars parked," Nick Seierup of Perkins + Will said in the story. "So any view looks out over greenery." Cascading landscaped roof decks provide intimate gardens as well as terraces for the public to enjoy the panoramic views.

Both projects also reflect a strong trend in healthcare design towards interiors that aid in the healing process, P+W's Seierup added. "Studies actually prove patient outcomes are improved by access to views and natural daylight. And it's proven to have a lasting beneficial effect on staff. They make fewer errors; they're able to read charts better. There's a whole trickle-down of effects."

Resource Access Center for homeless going forward after urban renewal settlement

As reported yesterday by Matt Davis of the Portland Mercury and Mark Larabee of The Oregonian, the city's $46.6 million Resources Access Center for the homeless can now be built along NW Broadway in Old Town.

Financing for the Center had been held up since last summer, when a group called the Friends of Urban Renewal appealed to the state Land Use Board of Appeals the city council's decision to expand both the River District Urban Renewal Area's size and its budget. The FOUR argued that the "blight" definition of urban renewal was inappropriate for this portion of the Pearl District and Old Town.

Under the settlement arrived at by the city and FOUR, the city will reduce its debt in the River District from $550 million o $489.5 million and the FOUR will drop its appeal. Seems to me like the Friends group more or less lost this fight and accepted a settlement for only a little bit less than what the city was planning to spend anyway. That said, the Board of Appeals did agree that the city had too loosely defined "blight".

Meanwhile, we can move on to the Resource Access Center itself. Besides providing shelter for homeless men in Old Town (the project is a key component of city efforts to end homelessness here), the Center represents an important commission for Holst Architecture.

Although regarded by many as one of the city's most talented firms over the past decade, Holst has made its name largely on condos such as the Belmont Street Lofts, Clinton Condominiums and 937 (no surprise given the condo boom of the last several years). With their exquisite Ziba headquarters in the Pearl district now complete, and gaining some of the highest acclaim of Holst's already acclaimed existence, the Resource Access Center is a further expansion of the firm's portfolio.

As you can see in the enclosed images, the building is divided by the color of its brick into two long thin slabs, breaking up the mass of what would otherwise be a fairly monolithic form. Holst also has designed a lot of glass into the ground floor of the building, with pigment-stained concrete forms taking on a figural quality.

Some critics of the project have argued that the $46.6 million budget is too high for a city project such as this. But the actual construction budget is just $28.7 million. The per-square-foot cost, Dave Otte of Holst told me, is not very high given that the project is 106,000 square feet. Maybe a Holst design for a public housing project just looks expensive compared to comparable past designs by other firms. The 8-story building is also expected to earn a Platinum LEED rating from the US Green Building Council, giving the project top-notch green credentials.

I hesitate to say too much about the design based solely on renderings. As always, we know the proof is in the building itself. That said, I see a potentially compelling project here. It's not earth shattering: mostly a long thin pair of affixed slabs with a subtly articulated random window pattern -  a more reserved 937, if you like. The RAC as seen here also reminds me of Holst's Hotel Modera project (although that was renovation) in that its best part seems to be what's happening at ground level with intersecting glass, wood and concrete forms and textures. And doing your best work at the pedestrian level is about as Portland as you get.

Frank Lloyd Wright's Gordon House: talk & tour

Normally on Saturday if I'm awake by 10AM, it's a bit of an anomaly, especially if it has nothing to do with watching college football or eating lots of greasy bacon, eggs & hash browns.

But as it happens, this Saturday I'll be giving a talk at the Architectural Heritage Center (701 SE Grand Ave.) called "Frank Lloyd Wright: Great Grandfather of Green". Despite the lecture title's emphasis on sustainability, however, the focus will really be on Wright's Gordon House, the only house in Oregon that the great master designed.

The talk will be followed by a chartered bus trip to the Oregon Garden in Silverton for a tour of the Gordon House itself.

Here's a passage from my 2001 Architecture Week article on the Gordon House, which at the time was being moved to the Oregon Garden from its original location in suburban Charbonneau:

"The Conrad and Evelyn Gordon House (S.419) is based on Wright's 'House for a Family of $5-6,000 Income' plan, originally published in a 1938 issue of Life magazine. (That wage translates into $65,000-$75,000 today in 2001 income.) 

Wright designed a lot of big buildings in his career, but this minister's son was also faithfully committed to dwellings for the middle class, which he christened "Usonian." Designed in 1956, the 2,100-square-foot (190-square-meter) Gordon House is Lilliputian by today's building standards, but it radiates beauty and craftsmanship in a way that most cavernous houses in Portland's 'upscale' West Hills never approach. In other words, Wright knew it's not size that matters but what you do with it."

If you go on the tour, you may find it surprising how small the house really is. The kitchen is particularly tiny, and so are the bedrooms. But there is an exquisite clarity to the design and its details, as well as the focus on public spaces such as the living area, where a vast expanse of glass looks out at the garden. The house was originally oriented towards views of Mt. Hood and the Willamette River at its original site, and unfortunately that can't be replicated. But if one were to count on one hand the most significant works of architecture in Oregon, the Gordon House would arguably be one of them.

What's more, the house still serves as a model for good design that a lot of suburban subdivision home builders would be well served to study. It's not about having some giant foyer when people walk in the door and stepping down in space and material quality everywhere else. Wright did just the opposite.

"You enter this house through a small, constricted opening with a low ceiling and transition into a dramatic high-ceiling area," architect and historian Al Staehli told me for a Willamette Week article on the Gordon House. You always have a sense of moving through a sequence of different-scaled spaces. Wright's Usonian houses are of a scale that you can live in. I'm not the kind of architect who could design, say, a 600-square-foot bathroom, so I relate to these designs."

Even though the Gordon House is among the smaller of the legendary architect's designs, this principle of moving through a sequence of spaces is quintessential Wright. I think of the Unity Temple in Oak Park, Illinois, for example, where Wright made the unusual decision of having the sanctuary elevated a few feet above the rest of the space (many sanctuaries are descended into like sunken living rooms). It had to be accessed by a small series of stairs, which was very much intentional: you were moving upward to a communion with God. In that same sense, the procession through a small sequence of entry and private quarters into the double-height, glass ensconced family gathering area.

I'm not sure if the bus trip will allow for it, but Wright's Gordon House is also located less than a mile or two from another of Oregon's biggest architectural treasures, the Mt. Angel Abbey Library, designed by the great Finnish architect Alvar Aalto. The interior of this library is absolutely breathtaking (see my snapshot below). Even if the bus doesn't stop there this Saturday, make sure you do sometime.

Besides architecture (part 2)

Note: This is the second in a series of posts by Portland Architecture guest blogger Corbin Keech. Corbin is looking at how the recession has affected recent architecture school graduates. We hope to continue guests posts by Corbin from time to time after that. Corbin received a bachelor's degree in architecture from Kansas State University in 2006, and worked for the past two and a half years at ZGF Architects. He now provides contract design work for several architecture, urban design and planning companies in Portland.

As a Portland native, Naomi Cole affectionately recalls her childhood here, where environmentalism was as common as coffee shops and seasonal affective disorder. “People in Portland tend to design and build their urban environments with respect to the natural one," she says. "That’s just how it is, and it becomes even more pronounced when studying architecture in other places. My approach to urban development today is largely affected by the fact that I grew up with this ethic.”

This January, staring an uncertain future and a fragile economy square in the face, Cole fearlessly chose to leave her position as Sustainability Coordinator at ZGF Architects for more autonomous pastures at Konstrukt, a small consulting firm founded by her father, Jeff Cole. Her clients include local governments and non-profits such as BetterBricks, the City of Beaverton, and Portland + Oregon Sustainability Institute as well as green building consulting for a few local architecture firms. Here, she can fulfill the collaborative role she had always envisioned for herself; to be a fierce exponent of community engagement and market transformation. Above is a rendering of a project Cole is currently working on in Hood River. (Image courtesy of Richard Brown Architects.)

Like Kari Merkl, Cole had an early interest in architecture. For an eighth grade thesis project, she was mentored by Kent Duffy, a principal with SRG Partnership. She spent a summer in high school studying architecture at the Rhode Island School of Design, and three separate summers in high school and college as an intern at Thomas Hacker Architects (now THA Architecture) . Throughout these early explorations, she continually imagined ways in which design could be married with a sense of environmental and social responsibility. In high school, a lecture by William MacDonough at Portland State solidified her interest in the field as he explained why architecture and design is the effective route to environmental responsiveness. “His message resonated. I hung on every word," says Cole.

With ambitions for environmentally responsible architecture, a Bachelor of Arts degree in architecture from the University of Pennsylvania was a good fit because of its inherent flexibility. “While it was studio-focused, I was not limited strictly to architecture because of the liberal arts degree, and I was required to expand my horizons through other coursework,” says Cole. “As a continuation of the interest I had initially found in both environmental studies and architecture, this was an opportunity to construct a thesis that combined the two.” Oddly enough, her devout interest in sustainability made her the anomaly. “Surprisingly, my architecture classmates were not as interested in achieving broader sustainability goals in their projects.”

Cole came to realize our impact as designers can be as large or as small as we choose it to be - she now chooses to go big with a focus on master planning, urban design, and advocating for greater sustainability policies and programs. Her background in architecture only strengthened her interest in solving problems, as well as her credibility as a reliable advocate for change. “Improving the function of one building is obviously important," she says. "You could spend an exorbitant amount of time supervising the successful operation of an occupant-controlled night flush system, and this kind of change must occur at every scale. But for me personally, I find greater effect on a larger scale by conveying sustainability values to a broader audience - at the level of city of neighborhood planning.”

Cole professes that she has never left architecture. Rather, architecture has simply been a part of her process. “I came to sustainability through archiecture. I started on a very linear track, and although it’s evolved significantly, to me, it stills seems like a direct progression,” she continues. "To be an architect, you have to possess a diverse skill-set. You need to speak intelligently on a range of topics. Really good designers are able to take challenges and limitations and think creatively about how to achieve a vision within those constraints. Design is broad, and people interested in architecture are also interested in the design of objects or cities.”

Indeed, architecture is endlessly complex. So could this explain why architects have a tendency to look elsewhere? Certainly it is not this simple, especially given the complexities Cole and others presumably face when working with municipalities and non-profits.

I suggested to Cole that perhaps her hometown perpetuates this phenomenon. Her own father provided a model for self-employment and work from home as she was growing up. In other words, perhaps Portland facilitates greater professional experimentation. Cole paused for a moment and agreed. “Portland supports the kind of flexible professional life that many of us want," she adds. "A young architect in Philadelphia might not see as many different directions to take a degree in architecture as someone in Portland. Whereas there are more opportunities here ... somehow.” As is commonly accepted, Portland is an okay place for big business but a great place for small business. “Because of its livability and affordability," she concludes. "Portland is a more palatable place to take a risk.”

The bottom line is that Portland puts us at an advantage as individuals and as designers. As more architects lose their jobs and work continues to destabilize, we are forced to reevaluate our respective skill-sets. The benefit of taking inventory of what we love versus what we must do to survive is that a new opportunity could potentially reveal itself. Our city is more affordable, the social networks more accessible, the professional world less stratified, and the overall sense of community more pronounced. Perhaps this is an oversimplification, but it is nonetheless reassuring.

Conversely, it is debatable whether things are that much different here. Cities larger than Portland certainly don’t have a shortage of creative, ambitious individuals. Moreover, everyone’s experience is slightly different, but no less meaningful. Perhaps Portland’s uncharacteristically familial atmosphere is not the silver bullet. As I continued to pursue the issue, Eden Brukman offered her perspective with equal saliency.

Bruce Forster's "Graffiti Funhouse" at Center For Architecture

The list of Portland-based architectural photographers with eye-catching talent and a long history of work is surprisingly short. Michael Mathers is one photographer who has plied his trade here with an array of acclaim, and there are others like Sally Schoolmaster and Rick Keating. But Bruce Forster is near the top when it comes to Portland picture takers focusing on architecture.

This month's show at AIA/Portland's Center For Architecture provides an ideal look at this venerable photographer's work. Called "Graffiti Funhouse: A Tribute to the Artists of Pirate Town", the show documents elaborate graffiti art that was pained on the walls of an abandoned building in Triangle Park, a 35-acre former industrial site on the banks of the Willamette in North Portland. The building was known informally as "Pirate Town" amongst those who hung out or slept there.  It was secluded haven for graffiti artists, skaters and other like-minded souls.

Forster collaborated with Infinity Images  to produce large-format prints and graphics for the show. Sections of painted wall, removed from the building, are also incorporated in the exhibit.

"The graffiti writers are not what you'd expect. They are not pre-teens scribbling their names on bridges," Forster says. "The artists would come into the space with a huge variety of paint and a concept. Their work is beautiful."

The building was recently torn down by The University of Portland, which owns the land and has expansion plans for the area.

Forster settled in Portland in 1970 after earning an MFA in photography and built a substantial client base doing fine art, magazine, corporate, and architectural photography. He also is the owner/founder of Viewfinders Stock Photography, an ever-growing archive of Pacific Northwest imagery. In his Pearl District studio, Bruce has a staff that manages the digital processing, marketing and stock image fulfilliment. He is a co-founder of the Oregon Chapter of the American Society of Media Photographers (ASMP) as well as a member of the Stock Artists Alliance (SAA) and the American Society of Picture Professionals (ASPP).

I don't blame Forster for getting interested in graffiti. It's long been a fascination of mine as well. I like to photograph it, as in the shot below. And the psychology of graffiti is interesting as well.

Here's an excerpt from an Oregonian story I wrote two years ago about graffiti art (and which, like most of the paper's past articles, is shamefully not available online):

In ancient Greece and Rome, artists scratched symbols onto walls. The preserved ruins of Pompeii revealed graffiti in the form of poems and bawdy phrases, not unlike today's public bathrooms. The Vikings and Mayans also wrote graffiti. During the early 20th century, graffiti attracted the art world's gaze. In 1920s Paris, Brassai photographed local graffiti, inspiring the Surrealists such as Salvador Dali and, later in the 1950s, the more socially conscious Situationist movement.

"They saw it as a kind of wild, anti-bourgeois statement, an authentic means of expression," says James van Dyke, an art history professor at Reed College. "Graffiti artists perform in dangerous spaces, and transgressing the law at night fulfills a kind of desire for adventure, of danger, of an authentic existence that jobs -- and their fears of breaking the law -- can't realize."

Forster's exhibit at the Center For Architecture began with last night's First Thursday reception (which I unfortunately missed watching the Ducks play a horrific season opener) and will continue through September.

The gallery is located at 403 NW 11th Avenue, at the corner of 11th and Flanders, and is open 9-5, Monday-Friday.

Badanes to the bone

Readers of Portland Architecture know that I've long been a fan of architects and firms developing their own projects. And Wednesday night brings a chance to hear from one of the Northwest's true pioneers in that endeavor: Steve Badanes.

Badanes will deliver the inaugural lecture associated with the new MFA in Applied Craft and Design offered jointly by Pacific Northwest College of Art and the Oregon College of Art & Craft. The lecture is scheduled for 6:30pm at the new MFA in Applied Craft and Design Studios at the Bison Building, at 421 NE 10th Avenue. Pictured above is the Associate Artist Pavilion - Atlantic Center for the Arts that he co-designed and built.

Badanes is an architect and educator widely known for his practice and teaching of design/build. He is currently a professor at the University of Washington's department of architecture, where he holds the Howard S. Wright Endowed Chair in the College of Built Environments.

After receiving a Masters of Architecture degree from Princeton University in 1971 and seeking an alternative to conventional practice, Badanes and partners Jim Adamson and John Ringel founded the Jersey Devil design/build firm. The firm has designed and built a wide variety of projects over the ensuing three decades. Their work has been the subject of two books, Jersey Devil Design/Build Book (1985) and Devil’s Workshop: 25 Years of Jersey Devil Architecture (1997).

In that time, Badanes and Jersey Devil have inspired a whole generation of Northwest architects who appreciate not only the do-it-yourself manner of Jersey Devil's work, but the excellent skill of design and craftsmanship. Badanes and the Jersey Devil team love to get their hands dirty, building nearly everything themselves. This isn't just design/build or even self-developed architecture, but a broader notion of the architect as master builder.

Badanes is also an expert on energy-efficient building techniques and speaks on the social responsibilities of architects and the role of architecture in building communities. He is currently in the process of working with the new MFA students to design and build their own studio spaces in the MFA building on the East side. This lecture will provide the first public opportunity to see the new space.