Portland Architecture

Rethinking the Columbia Crossing: finding greatness in flatness?

Ushibuka Bridge, Japan, by Renzo Piano Buiding Workshop 

Recently I was talking with an architect friend about the troubled Columbia River Crossing project: the lack of an acceptable design, the lack of leadership, the millions and millions spent on the process without anything approaching a consensus. But this friend challenged my desire for a great bridge in an interesting way that has affected the way I see the process.

In an engineering sense, this friend argued, all that is needed is a flat bridge over the Columbia. A new Golden Gate-esque suspension bridge? Not needed for this site. A tall statement-making bridge? That's just form without function, he argued.

In other words, then, are the transportation departments of Oregon and Washington correct in saying that the uninspiring, pancake-flat Glen Jackson Bridge over Interstate 205 should be the template, the inspiration, the goal?

Well, yes and no.

In my previous post about the CRC, I included pictures of striking bridges around the world by great architects, such as Sir Norman Foster's Milau Viaduct in France and Santiago Calatrava's Alamillo Bridge in Spain. But these bridges, just like famous spans such as the Golden Gate Bridge, were tall in part because they needed to be. The Golden Gate, for example, had to span San Francisco Bay between two hillsides.

Or then there are dramatically tall bridges in Portland like the Fremont and the St. Johns. The former rises in the air in part because of the higher ground from which it emanates. The latter responds with its taller structural form to the mountains and hillside on the west side. In other words, these designs responded to the challenges of their sites. They may be postcard-worthy beautiful, but they also were formal responses to functional challenges.

Ushibuka Bridge, Japan, by Renzo Piano Building Workshop 

But the conditions for the CRC are different. Because of the quaint Pearson airfield in Vancouver, this bridge cannot be tall. But the riverbanks on each side are relatively flat ground, so that also means the topography may not call for a taller bridge.

What if, instead of clamoring for height and postcard quality, the design community instead accepted the need for a flat bridge but still insisted that this be more than a flat highway over the water? What if we embrace the potential of the flat bridge?

In so doing, the design community would gain credibility with those accusing them of unrealistic expectations for a postcard. After all, it doesn't take a "designista" (as developer Dennis Wilde coined hardcore Portland design proponents) to see that "postcard" and "gateway" are terms that don't carry any real weight. They are expressions of what a design-lover thinks should happen: the end result. But design isn't about affixing beautiful sculptures to the landscape. The thing has to work well, and within its set of conditions.

If the design community abandons the perceived need for height and scale for the bridge, the social capital could then be applied to what is still desperately needed: a great designer.

But even to say "great designer" may be slightly misleading. This architect friend with whom I spoke argued that if Portland and Vancouver hire a famous architect with a relatively fixed style, even if it's someone who has a very impressive sense of visual artistry, it may not be the right fit. What the CRC really needs, perhaps, is a designer as leader and editor.

The CRC process has so far been guided by giant groups stocked with representatives of different government and private-sector concerns. That's a necessary step in order to cull the concerns, needs and expertise of the many stakeholders in a new bridge. But until there is some kind of singular voice that does something with those opinions, all the ideas remain equal and no quality consensus is reached. It’s not that democracy is a mob, but the ideas are equal to each other until someone brings it all together together. This is where the designer as leader comes in: the person who takes all the opinions and brings them together in one design -- not a Homer Simpson car that is far less than the sum of its parts, but a greater unified whole. A complex design whose beauty is rooted in making the complex seem simple.

It's not to say this designer couldn't be a "starchitect" like Foster, Calatrava or Zaha Hadid. But given the complexities of the process and the many, many people involved, the CRC needs not just a designer-sculptor but one who accepts that there is no model yet for this bridge. "Right now designers have a preconceived conclusion as much as the engineers," my friend (who chose to remain anonymous) argued. "That’s not how design works in my book."

In other words, we need to find a way to unite those concerned with a great design, those concerned with moving traffic, and those concerned with environmental issues. We need a designer leading this ship who listens to the broad set of conditions and formulates that into a design - one that embodies the needs of the site (such as physical flatness for the bridge) but also refuses to build something banal and ugly like the Glenn Jackson. As great architects like Renzo Piano have demonstrated, a flat bridge can still be gorgeous.

At this point, there won't be a design competition for the CRC. There won't be a new Golden Gate that rises over the Columbia. Even so, by installing a designer as the manager of this process, we can still build a bridge that represents the best of us in its design, a bridge that is as beautiful as it is functional. And it's not to say a bridge keeping a low profile isn't a good design. The one great thing about traveling over the Glenn Jackson Bridge on I-205 is the visceral, experiential sense one gets of the river. There are few obstructions to one's view crossing the Jackson, leaving the Columbia itself, and the snow-capped mountains in the distance, as the postcard.

Portland Aerial Tram, photo by Brian Libby 

As it happens, when architect Sarah Graham and her firm, AGPS Architecture, were being considered for the Portland Aerial Tram commission, she said the same thing: "You don't need a postcard. Mt. Hood is your postcard." But Graham also fought tooth and nail to preserve the integrity of her tram design, to not let it just be utilitarian, banal and ugly. The tram doesn't try to be a beautiful design, per se. But it is a beautiful design. The key? Whether it was Reed Kroloff leading the design competition, or Graham herself, we had the right people in place to do the job - a job that called for design greatness, but also design leadership.

NY Times eyes Brainard House

Photos by Leah Nash for The New York Times 

Last week the New York Times' Great Homes and Destinations series looked at a Southeast Portland house that's currently on the market.

Known as the Brainard Brainerd House and located at 54th and Morrison, the Queen Anne style, Victorian era house it was built in 1888 as a second home for the Brainard brothers, who were local merchants and nursery owners. At the time it was built, the home was considered far away from city center. Now it constitutes living close in. The house, selling in the $900,000 range, has six bedrooms and its many handsome materials include fir floors throughout as well as redwood pocket doors in the living room and floral-patterned brass hardware.

   

"It looks like it was a lot of work to maintain," said Leah Nash, the Portland photographer who shot the house for the Times. "But It’s an amazing house with a lot of history. Some of the interiors are really old: the wallpaper, fixtures.  The family who had it put a lot of care into it. There’s all this old antique stained glass. It still has a real period feel to it. And the attic alone is probably bigger than some people’s apartments."

The Brainard House is featured in the book Classic Houses of Portland: 1850-1950 by William Hawkins, who notes that except for a missing tower roof, the architectural integrity of the original house is mostly intact. Hawkins goes on to describe the house's diagonally placed rectangular bay extended to become a three-story tower, and two polygonal bays, one with a hipped roof on the entrance façade and the other with a gable extended over the bay.

   

"Verandas are situated at both the primary and side entrances, designed with turned posts, balusters and spindle work," the author continues. "A long flight of stairs, with a railing matching that of the veranda, provides access to the city facing entrance doors."

"The house achieves its architectural unity by the careful tying together of its paneling systems. Paneling is used at the entablature, the horizontal belt course, and the banding under the windows, the latter in line with the porch rail. Windows were not isolated but part of an overall geometric pattern."

Landmark U.S. Custom House faces online auction [updated]

Photo by Brian Libby 

As reported by Fred Leeson in the March 20 Oregonian, one of Portland's most compelling and beautiful historic landmarks is being discarded by the federal government the same way people sell used sofas and t-shirts: by internet auction. It won't be held on e-Bay, but the same uncertainty is there. Now practically anybody will have a shot at filling what is not only a historic Portland building, but one in a key location bordering the Pearl District, Old Town and the North Park Blocks.

"As far as I'm concerned, the feds have hit a new low," Cathy Galbraith, director of the Bosco-Miligan Foundation's Architectural Heritage Center in Portland, told Leeson. The General Services Administration says they have followed the government's usual sequence for disposing of unneeded property. (Because, you know, doing what your told always equals justice, right?)

The Custom House was completed in 1901 to accommodate the U.S. Customs Service's first Portland office. Constructed with granite, Roman brick and terra-cotta with a cast-iron staircase, the building was designed by James Knox Taylor, Supervising Architect of the U.S. Treasury Department, and constructed under the supervision of locally noted architect Edgar Lazarus, the latter of whom designed other local landmarks like Vista House at Crown Point in the Columbia Gorge and the Agricultural Palace for the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition ). The building was added to the National Register of Historic Places all the way back in 1973.

According to the General Services Administration website, Taylor and Lazarus's design created for the Custom House a style inspired by both the English Renaissance architecture of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries as well as the mannered style that characterized London architect James Gibbs's public architecture. Leeson also notes that the building's original Victorian-era interior is largely unchanged.

Photo by Brian Libby 

The building was declared a surplus by the GSA several years ago. In 2005, a deal was struck to sell the Custom House to a developer looking to create a boutique hotel there. When that deal collapsed, the Portland-based International School became a leading candidate. But the school ultimately decided it couldn't afford the $20 million in necessary seismic upgrading.

The Custom House ought to be a cultural center in the city. Even when the federal government still occupied the building, it was unfortunate that such a lovely old building wasn't pouring in and out with members of the public, or devoted to a program in keeping with the emerging cultural district on the North Park Blocks.

Maybe this internet auction will still produce an agreeable tenant/owner. Maybe a consortium of arts institutions could fill the building. For the Portland Institute for Contemporary Art, for example, could a portion of the Custom House become the visual art exhibition space they have sorely lacked? Or maybe, given the dearth of jobs in Portland, there is a corporate headquarters waiting to occupy these impressive digs.

Who else might be a fitting occupant for this stately architectural grand dame?

UPDATE, 3/26/10: I wanted to pass on this comment to the original post from Val Ballestrem, education manager for the Architectural Heritage Center:

"More than a year ago, I suggested the idea of using this building as the Oregon Sustainability Center and the idea was completely disregarded. Apparently, in the eyes of those running that show, a 100+ year-old building like this can't qualify as a 'living' building. Absurd."

This is a fabulous point. Should we really be building a Sustainability Center from the ground up when we could be re-using a wonderful Portland landmark - a much more sustainable move?

"Made in Oregon" sign will remain with "Portland Oregon" script

Rendering courtesy Office of Commissioner Randy Leonard 

The Portland Mercury's Stefan Kamph is reporting, via Commissioner Randy Leonard's blog, that a deal has been reached to save and continue illuminating the neon sign atop the White Stag Block at the west end of the Burnside Bridge.

Instead of the current "Made in Oregon" lettering, which dates to when the store of the same name occupied the ground floor of the building, the sign will say "Portland Oregon" but retain the same serif script.

Last year, the University of Oregon, which now owns and occupies the White Stag Block, applied to the landmarks commission to change the sign to read "University of Oregon." Leonard vehemently opposed this deal, as did Portland State University. However, this wasn't because of a concern for historic preservation. After all, the sign originally said "White Satin" as an advertisement for the sugar company occupying the building, and for decades after that it said "White Stag" for the apparel company that later moved in.

Rendering courtesy Office of Commissioner Randy Leonard 

At the same time, all parties seem to have agreed that a compromise was in order. And it's hard to argue about that given much greater historic preservation issues facing the city like Memorial Coliseum and Centennial Mills.

Luckily, the  sign's owner, Ramsay Signs, has agreed to donate it to the city. Why this compromise couldn't have been reached sooner I'm not sure, and it's too bad there had to be a needless exchange of bad blood between the parties involved. But hey, the new sign looks good.

Now if Commissioner Leonard could please direct his powerful bully pulpit towards the Blazers and get them to keep unnecessarily-embattled general manager Kevin Pritchard.

What does an "activist architect" look like?

 

I'm not sure, but if it's like the rest of the profession I'm guessing it involves a pair of Dockers khakis.

Seriously, though: AIA/Portland and Portland State University’s Department of Architecture will be hosting the "Learning Activism" Symposium on April 9 at PSU's Shattuck Hall Annex, and it's worth attending. The symposium that looks at the growing role of the citizen architect.  This movement "redefines the traditional practice of architecture to include tangible service to the public good," says the press release. The symposium offers the opportunity to meet and learn from architects taking part in community and political leadership as well as a group design charrette to address one of the real needs in Portland’s schools. 

The cost is $50.00 for AIA members and $60.00 for non-members, but Architects Without Borders Oregon will be providing scholarships to those in need. Deadline for applying for those scholarships is Tuesday, March 23. 100 free tickets will also be available for UO and PSU students.

The group charrette, scheduled for April 10, seeks to design a higher-quality modular temporary classroom (instead of those awful trailers) that is "truly modular, scalable, sustainable, beautiful, and affordable" while also providing a better learning environment."

 The regular forums include "Activism within the Profession" by Dave Otte of Holst Architecture (who was active in co-designing the AIA's new Center for Architecture);  a look at public architecture with architect John Peterson; "Learning Activism through Education" with University of Arkansas professor Michael Hughes and Danny Wicke of the Rural Studio (the late, great architect Samuel Mockbee's effort to build homes for Alabama's poor), and "In the Trenches with Communities in Need" with John Blumthal of YGH Architecture and Architects Without Borders.

The profession has long desired - and needed - a bigger voice in how we build cities and how we design systems of all sorts. And in a vacuum where that voice for architects isn't provided, those with different values and agendas prevail.

Opportunity collapsing: can the CRC's design be saved?

Milau Viaduct, France, designed by Norman Foster 

The Columbia River Crossing, Portland and Vancouver’s planned new bridge over the Columbia, could be the great symbol of this generation: an affirmation of how the Portland metro area has risen to become one of the world’s foremost creative capitols.

Instead, this bridge project has become a disaster in the making.

There are too many people involved and yet no real leader. There is no world-class architect or engineer leading the design process, and the powers that be seem to also dispute the need to even have a lead designer at all. Costs for the project have continually escalated, yet people are unhappier than ever with the emerging result. The decision to maintain quaint Pearson airfield at Fort Vancouver all but assures the bridge will be pancake-flat. The two cities that the bridge would connect are also approaching the endeavor with vastly different values about what constitutes a successful Columbia crossing. On top of all this, the bridge wouldn’t even address the worst bottleneck areas along I-5 in Portland, which come at the Rose Quarter and Delta Park.

The design community, it has been argued, is all but absent when it comes to advocating for a great bridge. That has allowed the debate to become hijacked by people apparently ignorant of what design really means - or at least willing to marginalize its importance.

For example, Governor Kulongoski, as far back as a year ago, was belittling the idea of prioritizing what he called “aesthetics.” How can we worry about making beautiful this transportation project, the thinking has gone, when we’ve got all these commuters and freight to move? How can we worry about something as superficial as the form when we have such a big functional task? Or as an Oregonian headline unfortunately put it, “Can we afford pretty?”

But as you know, informed readers, design isn’t just what something looks like. Design is how it works.

Alamillo Bridge, designed by Santiago Calatrava 

Rather than seeking out a great designer for the CRC, design of the project has been left to transportation engineers. It's not to say these people at the Washington and Oregon transportation departments are bad at doing their jobs, but traffic engineering is much more about moving cars than about creating the kind of landmark this location calls for. There are people from the local design communities involved, like Jeff Stuhr of Portland's Holst Architecture and Carrie Schilling of Works Partnership, both of whom served on a volunteer basis as members the urban design advisory group (UDAG), but that's nothing comparable to having a lead architect.

Had there been a talented designer involved early-on in the process, such as Norman Foster, Renzo Piano, Santiago Calatrava, even Sarah Graham or Miguel Rosales, some of the fundamental aspects of the bridge could have been better defined and solved. You don't become the top architects and engineers on Earth by merely acquiescing to state government traffic engineers and just prettying up the exterior packaging. But instead of seeking out the best, we are working toward laying down a lowest-common-denominator strip of concrete along the river Lewis and Clark once followed to the Pacific, a site and project that would make the Fosters and Calatravas of the profession salivate at the opportunity.

This is not to say design should cost more. The CRC is already too expensive. Superlative design talent is defined in part by an ability to work creatively within any necessary budget constraint. I also don't want to neglect the importance of things issues like sustainability, overall bridge size, and provisions for bicyclists and pedestrian. All that is part of the right design. Instead, the fixing the CRC is about process

I mean, what if you were cooking a gigantic cake and you hired dishwashers, waiters, people to wash the windows, accountants, consultants on what constitutes a good cake, and had committees big enough to weigh down the Good Year blimp, but no chef? What if you outright argued against its being delicious because feeding people is all that matters?

Meanwhile, efforts are being made to put wrestle back control of this careening car. To help people understand the CRC process and coalesce public support for strong design, the Architecture Foundation of Oregon and the PDXplore design collective have partnered to present “Crossing the Columbia: What Does It Mean?”, a multi-faceted forum at Pacific Northwest College of Art.

First there is the exhibit “PDXplore: Expanding Design Awareness” from March 22 – 26 in PNCA's Swigert Commons, featuring questions and design approaches to the Columbia River Crossing and its regional impact. That exhibit’s opening reception will be Monday, March 22 from 5:30-7pm in PNCA's Swigert Commons. On Tuesday (March 23) from 6-8pm there will also be a discussion called “Columbia River Crossing: An evening with members of the CRC Project Team”, also in PNCA's Swigert Commons. And on Thursday (the 25th) from 6-8pm, a panel discussion called “Design Perspectives” will be moderated by Portland State University’s Ethan Seltzer with panelists including Boston Globe architecture critic Robert Campbell; artist Ed Carpenter; outgoing National Endowment for the Arts director of design Maurice Cox; Toronto architect and urban design consultant Ken Greenberg; and Richard White, author “The Organic Machine: The Remaking of the Columbia River”.

While Kulongoski has disappointed clamored for a utilitarian solution, Mayor Adams has tried to advocate for good design. But he’s often been ignored or shouted down by the consortium of state transportation departments and state governors looking to push the CRC through.

In an interview Wednesday with Catherine Ciarlo of Adams’ office, she urged the design community to articulate why design matters and why the CRC is not up to snuff in that regard. “It’s hard for a politician to make a case for why it’s important,” she said. “It would mean more coming from designers. They can articulate how the bridge is a statement of our generation and how a landmark project like this it shapes our feelings about ourselves. But the more things Sam pushes on the more they say, ‘You’re out of touch, and you don’t understand the constraints.’”

“I think of the bridges on the Oregon Coast, for example, as a hallmark of a time and a place and how we interacted with the world. But Sam can’t say that alone. Getting other people join in would be incredibly helpful. The bridge’s cost is very high and the public is having a negative reaction to that. When Sam was actively engaged [in pushing for better design] last fall, our office got a lot of pushback and negative feedback from people saying, “Why are you worried about dolling up a bridge?’”

Even after following the CRC process in the news for years now, and even as a journalist focused on design and architecture, I’ve found it a Kafka-esque experience trying to understand merely who is running this. But it seems I’m not the only one. “All of us involved have sort of puzzled over it,” Ciarlo says.

Interstate Bridge, photo by Brian Libby 

But basically the CRC team is made up of representatives from the Washington and Oregon transportation departments and numerous consultants. There is a Project Sponsor’s Council of locally elected officials and representatives from the DOTs who make some key decisions about the direction of the project. But even so, the true center of power seems unclear. Word is that local officials ultimately have a lot less voice the process than the DOTs.

“It’s a big negotiation, between the inner representatives of the two states, the enterprise that is the CRC, the local jurisdictions and the constituents surrounding it,” Ciarlo adds. “It’s weird to have a project that isn’t run by one entity. It’s a challenge to do a bi-state project that spans two cities with dramatically different values. And two states that have different decision making hierarchies and are contributing different amounts of money and honestly have different desired outcomes: to move commuters better or to move freight better and protect the downstream flow on I-5.”

It is all but certain that the Pearson airfield will remain, meaning the bridge has to be low-to-the-water, at least on the Washington side. Adams advocated for a vertical element on the Oregon side of the bridge. That would add visual impact to the bridge if it was done by a talented designer, and rescue the bridge from being a repeat of the pancake-like Glenn Jackson Bridge nearby, carrying I-205 motorists over the river. But when the CRC committee did its most recent cost refinements, Ciarlo says, the provision was dropped.

This isn’t just a bad sign for the look of the bridge, but a symptom of a larger problem.

“Because of the nature and how much of a multi-jurisdictional project it is, Sam can’t be the only voice in favor of design if this is going to be successful. I believe it would take a governor who also believed it was important, at least on the Oregon side. I also think there’s plenty of people in the public who can understand why a beautiful bridge is important. But that point hasn’t been framed and echoed very well. The people driving this need to know that the constituency cares.”

Meanwhile, Portland faces a make or break point in the history of its built environment. It's not too late to influence the design and configuration of the CRC, but time is running out fast. "I do feel that good progress has been made when local stakeholders, from both Oregon and  Washington, have banded together to fight for things that matter vitally to the future livability of the region," Jeff Stuhr told me by email. Is flat concrete really the statement we want to make to the world, and what we want to be looking at for the next half century as we cross one of the most majestic rivers on the planet?

Or, to put it another way: can we afford ugly?

Sustainability and using what you have

Photo by Brian Libby 

Mike Francis, a member of The Oregonian's editorial board, had an editorial published Saturday that explores the intersection of sustainability and historic preservation.

Francis tells of meeting recently with David J. Brown and Anthea Hartig, the executive vice president and the western director for the National Trust for Historic Preservation, when the pair were in Portland last week. (Individuals and groups continually seek out the paper's editorial board to make their case for something.) 

Brown's primary message was, as Francis recalls, "that saving and reusing buildings is more environmentally friendly and economically sound than tearing them down, even if they are replaced by the greenest, LEEDiest structures imaginable."

Brown cited a National Trust-commissioned report by Rutgers University that examines the economic effects of the Federal Historic Tax Credit. 

The report concludes that the Federal Historic Tax Credit is a highly efficient job creator, and has accounted for the creation of 1.8 million new jobs over the life of the program. The report also finds that the Federal Historic Tax Credit has generated jobs more efficiently than other stimulus options, and that the economic activity leveraged by credit returns more tax revenue to the U.S. Treasury than the cost of implementing the program.

"The case for preservation improving sustainability is more intuitive," Francis writes. He goes on to say: 

"Of course it's less wasteful to reuse a building than to tear it apart, cart away the rubble, and import and erect new piles of steel, glass and concrete. That was what so maddening (to me, at least) with the arguments of those who wanted to tear down Memorial Coliseum to erect a "green" baseball stadium. As much as I appreciate the presence of baseball, beer and warm summer evenings, it seemed crazy to demolish a perfectly usable building a couple of miles away from the Beavers' current home to relocate the team. The only argument in favor seemed to be that nobody had yet figured out how to put the coliseum to use since the Trail Blazers moved next door, so better to tear the place down than re-use it.

That kind of thinking is what threatens a lot of the places where we work, live and play. Sometimes, we manage to make the best of it, as when civic leaders created Pioneer Courthouse Square on the block that housed a grand Portland hotel until it was demolished for parking. Sometimes, we do a halfway decent thing, such as pouring money into the Pioneer Courthouse next door, although it was an enormously bad idea to, essentially, privatize the place by evicting the post office and carving out an exclusive underground parking lot for the visiting judges there. 

Most often, sadly, we tear down something of cultural, emotional or historical value in order to make way for something else, usually of lesser value. When that happens, we're all the poorer for it."

Of course one of the key landmarks under threat of demolition or radical alteration Francis talks about, Memorial Coliseum, still has its fate hanging in the balance.

Photo by Brian Libby 

It is arguable that all three of the remaining finalists selected by the mayor and PDC's Stakeholder Advisory Committee are at least partially preservation oriented in that they preserve the exterior. But only the Blazers' Jumptown proposal actually retains the inside of the building as an arena without compromising the integrity of its signature bowl-in-a-glass-box design. Oh, and in this Great Recession, retaining the Coliseum as an arena is the cheapest option and the most sustainable. And have you been in this building with the curtain open, like it was meant to be? I've met few Portlanders, even the natives, who actually have.

As it happens, National Public Radio ran a story on Morning Edition a few days ago ("Building Law Seen As Threat To California History") about the intersection of sustainability and preservation. The story profiled Paul Song, who, after demolishing his home, is now building a $1 million LEED-Platinum house which will be the first “100% energy-independent” home in Santa Monica. The piece went on to quote Linda Dishman, Director of the Los Angeles Conservancy, saying that the U.S. Green Building Council’s LEED standards don’t do a particularly good job of recognizing the value of building reuse.

However, the NPR story also, in the opinion of Portland's Ralph DiNola of Green Building Services (as written on his blog), "painted a picture that new green buildings can outperform historic buildings and that rehabilitation of existing buildings takes more time or costs more than demolition and new construction, while also leaving the impression that LEED does not adequately credit historic rehabilitation projects compared to new construction projects."

DiNola goes on to look at LEED and historic buildings in his post:

"Perhaps rather than focusing on our desire to have LEED award more points to historic building rehabilitation projects (hopefully they will based upon more advanced LCA methods in the near future), let’s look at the other LEED points that a project can already earn through rehabilitation.  Under LEED for New Construction and Major Renovation (LEED NC), a rehabilitation project can actually earn four points for building reuse. In LEED for Core & Shell (LEED CS), there are five points available plus an additional one point if 95% of the building is reused for a total of six points.  Elsewhere in the rating system there are other nods to existing building rehabilitation projects, such as Energy and Atmosphere Credit 1.  Here, existing buildings get more points for the same level of energy performance compared to new buildings.  For instance in LEED NC, if a rehabilitation projects reduces design energy cost by 24% it will earn nine points, while a new construction project will only earn seven points.  That’s two more points for historic buildings.  There are also two points available for materials reuse, and we have found that existing buildings more often incorporate salvaged materials than new construction projects.  There are also additional opportunities for credit in LEED in the Innovation and Regional Priority credit categories.  In Portland, Oregon for instance, the Building Reuse credit is identified as a Regional Priority credit, thus offering one bonus point to projects that earn this credit. This intentional allocation of points suggests that LEED strategically favors, rather than challenges, reuse, as is sometimes implied."

"Portland has served as a virtual laboratory for sustainable preservation, yet we still struggle with these issues," he concludes. "These are indeed exciting times for historic preservation advocates and green building professionals as American values shift from valuing our history to valuing the new."

Skylab going HOMB

Images courtesy Skylab Architecture and Method Homes 

Skylab Architecture has established itself as one of Portland’s most admired design firms with projects like Doug Fir, the 12th + Alder mixed use project (winner of the top local AIA design award in 2007, the Honor Award), the upcoming Weave building on Burnside, NAU retail stores (also an AIA award winner) the Hoke Residence (made famous as a key location the first “Twilight” movie), and the Departure Lounge atop the Nines Hotel.

Now, the firm headed by Jeff Kovel has become involved with designing…manufactured homes?

FEMA trailer, not by Skylab or Method 

Granted these aren’t the trailer-park eyesores of yesteryear or even the nicer if traditional manufactured-home style prevalent today. My brother-in-law in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania selling modular and manufactured homes doesn’t offer anything like what Skylab and partner Method Homes of Seattle have in mind: the HOMB.

Kovel, speaking recently over coffee, said the intent with HOMB is to create well designed single family homes that in the past only the wealthy could afford, “to create an avenue that doesn’t exist right now: to bring architecture to a broader market.”

  

The modular design of the HOMB, which can be customized and configured in numerous different layouts and design, is based on and built using a series of 100 square foot triangles. Skylab experimented with a variety of different patterns that could be alternatives to the simple box construction of a traditional manufactured home. By erecting the homes on site from these triangular structural pieces, there are countless ways for each client to determine a proper size, layout, and budget. And because these are more than just boxes, there is the chance to embrace more design choices such as double-height living rooms.

“You set your budget, and you build only what you need,” Kovel adds. “Single family home project delivery is flawed, because budgets vary until it’s built. That doesn’t happen with this plan. You’ve eliminated 60 percent of the potential (cost) problem, and you still have this kit of parts to play with. We’re creating a system rather than a single piece that’s designed.”

 

To keep budgets down (HOMBs sell for approximately $160 per square foot), Kovel and Method worked to reduce what is ordinarily a 16-month building process down to six months. The design-construction partners have also embraced digital production capabilities to construct the chassis of each house, basically creating assembly process instead of measure-and-cut. This allows for greater cost control with fixed building, delivery, and installation expenses. It also affords developers the opportunity to build as they go, reducing risk, and potentially trading a one-size-fits-all for custom building for clients.

The idea is that an entire neighborhood could be constructed of HOMBs, and yet there would not be that stereotypical Levittown ubiquity of house after house that’s alike. Houses could be built to different scales in a HOMB neighborhood, but the houses would fit together despite varying sizes out of shared stylistic cues. It’s endless variety born from very simple initial building forms. “It’s won the battle against the spatial lmits of a traditional approach,” the architect says. “But we also didn’t want you to feel trapped in a triangle.”

HOMBs will also utilize a spectrum of sustainable design and construction, such as FSC-certified wood, choices of high-efficiency radiant or heat-pump heating and cooling. But the most sustainable thing about a HOMB, Kovel says, is the efficiency of the process. “You could build a LEED rated stick-built house and it’s still not very sustainable because of the waste,” he added.

“I’m not naïve about how challenging this is. But I think this could have a broad impact.”

Webmaster of Mt. Tabor: visiting the Wilson House

Photo by Tim LaBarge

If you’re walking along the east edge of Mt. Tabor Park, as I was last weekend, you can see the house Webster Wilson designed and occupies nestled into the hillside just beyond the park’s picnic tables. And it's worth keeping an eye out for.

The house, which was included in last year’s 11 x Design homes tour, is built on four levels, the bottom level reserved for an additional apartment that Wilson’s family rents out. One enters at the second level into the kitchen and dining area. At 2,600 square feet, it  includes four bedrooms, 3.5 bathrooms in addition to a 550-square-foot accessory dwelling unit studio apartment below. The main house’s master bedroom, on the fourth floor, includes a 400 square foot top deck.

The house has radiant heat throughout with stainless steel countertops in the kitchen. The main floor and bathroom floor/walls clad in domestic Vermont sea-green slate. Bathroom countertops are black Eastern Canadian granite. The upper floors and all cabinetry are certified German beech, and FSC-certified mahagony was used on the decks, which add another 200 square feet of space.

Looking east from Mt. Tabor, the house enjoys views of Mt Hood, Mt St Helens and the eastern cityscape, which drove the design. But the house is also a work of simple but intricate geometry and highly detailed finishes. I particularly liked the house’s two-story vertical window wall for capturing the view, as well as the design’s floating wood loft and stair. Also a big part of the exterior look of the project, at least on its back side with the east-looking view, is a wood and metal stairway attached to the building and giving it extra structural support.

Photo by Brian Libby 

Photo by Tim LaBarge

Photo by Brian Libby 

"It just seemed perfect,” Webster said of the vacant lot he and wife Maya Foty found on the edge of Mt. Tabor. “Our prerequisite was we were looking for a lot with a view and light and air. There are limited areas in Portland that have that, in a family friendly neighborhood. We also liked the idea of doing an infill project. It was limiting but also liberating to do a small lot. I think a lot of developers had looked at this lot and said, ‘I can’t do a huge duplex here.’”

Although it’s the first house in Portland to be designed by Wilson it is not his first overall. Wilson has also designed striking houses in Hawaii and Vermont. One of his first projects, a sauna, received a Wood Design Award in 2004 and was published in Dwell, Sunset and Fine Homebuilding magazines.

Wilson earned a master’s of architecture degree at the University of Washington and, during those years, interned under renowned Seattle architect James Cutler. “I guess my formative experience was working for Cutler,” he says, “because of all the wood construction and high level of design. It had a little bit of an old world philosophy. The emphasis was on hand drawn details.” Webster also spent a summer interning in Paris for architect Gerard Grandval and, before moving to Portland, previously worked in New York City for Lee Skolnik, a noted museum and exhibit designer.

Photo by Chad Kirkpatrick

Photo by Bob Zaikoski 

Although Wilson works for himself, this wasn’t exactly a sole practitioner’s design. Wilson’s wife Maya is also an architect, specializing in historic preservation. “She was there all along,” Wilson says of her influence on the house. “I kind of generated ideas, but she was definitely a driving force. I think she made it more humanistic too. I was focusing on the tectonics and the detail side of it, and she was focusing on keeping it family friendly and being responsive to the neighborhood and the city.”

Wilson also has an ace up his sleeve when it comes to his house’s artwork. His father is artist Mark Wilson, a pioneer of computer art whose work was recently part of a retrospective devoted to the genre at London’s Victoria & Albert Museum. “On the 11 x Design tour, we got about as many questions about the art as we did the house,” the architect laughs. But certainly there are no hard feelings about the extra attention, of course: Web had his father design a special artwork that was laser-cut into the house’s front door.

Photo by Bob Zaikoski 

 
Photo by Chad Kirkpatrick 

Initially Wilson had the house on the market, but he and the family (including two young daughters) ultimately decided to occupy the home themselves. After all, if you're the architect of this project, it makes a pretty good calling card. And indeed, I would place Wilson firmly in the group of talented up-and-coming firms that participated in the 11 x Design tour last year, a small fraternity of home designers that could, as with generations past in Portland, come to have a much bigger imprint on the city's architecture in the coming decade(s).

Stadler sees design DNA in two PAM paintings

Whiting Tennis, "Bitter Lake Compound", courtesy Greg Kucera Gallery/Portland Art Museum 

This Thursday (March 11) the Portland Art Museum will host the latest in its ongoing series of artist talks, in which artists and other creatives select pieces in the museum’s permanent collection to talk about with an audience.

This time around, writer-editor Matthew Stadler will talk about two paintings by Seattle artists: Mark Tobey’s “Western Town (1944) and Whiting Tennis’ “Bitter Lake Compound” (2007).

Followers of the local art scene may remember that Whiting Tennis was the winner of the Arlene Schnitzer Prize from the Portland Art Museum's inaugural Contemporary Northwest Art Awards in 2008.

"Whiting Tennis’ early works chronicled the settling of Jamestown and infamous massacres of Native Americans, while recent paintings and sculptures reflect a nostalgic view of the abandoned detritus of the American experience, inspired by rural outbuildings, make-shift shelters, and mountains of discarded junk," explained Jennifer Gately, then PAM's curator of Northwest art, when the awards were announced.

Mark Tobey was a well regarded abstract expressionist who was regarded as one of the "mystic" Northwest painters and was an influence on the great Jackson Pollock. In a book about Tobey, author Chapin Seitz explains that the artist's painting "Western Town", which Stadler will talk about, "is a generalized city where architecture dematerializes into the mist of a central vortex. The compartments appear densely populated. Above and toward the center the atmosphere is electric with presences, yet not a figure is depicted."

"Both were painted in Seattle and display interesting compositional strategies that are somehow corollary to urban environments in that city at those two very different times,” Stadler says.

“In both cases, the painters were trying to create a compositional space and strategy that could refigure the urban environment around them into something legible and, somehow, dynamic. I will read the paintings, in part, as corollary to the urban environments that they were dealing with...Tobey's vortex of a centered city flying apart and Tennis's overall field of flat, dimensionless sprawl. I've had some interesting discussion with Whiting about this, and will share them, and I'm still going through the Tobey materials at PAM's library to find the ways he articulated his intentions with the city paintings.”

Stadler is a novelist who also has written about art and architecture for various publications, including Frieze, Artforum, and Dwell. He also was co-founder and editor of Clear Cut Press. Currently Stadler runs Publication Studio, a print-on-demand publisher and storefront in Portland, with Patricia No.

The artist talk series at PAM occurs the second Thursday of each month. All talks depart at 6pm from the Hoffman building lobby, and are followed by a social hour with the artist until 8pm with complimentary food and beverages. Free for members or with Museum admission. Reservations are not required, but space is limited to the first 60 attendees. To confirm attendance, advance tickets and group sales are available at the box office. Future artist talks will involve the great Oregon painter James Lavadour (April 8), writer-artist-curator Jeff Jahn (May 13), superlative painter Storm Tharp (June 10), and photographer Christopher Rauschenberg, son of the great Robert Rauschenberg (July 8).

Ecoroofs: for the birds?

Photo by Brian Libby 

Two weeks ago I attended an open house at the Audubon Society of Portland, a chance to meet and see up close the organization's educational birds, those injured or otherwise unable to survive in the wild now used to teach about habitat and conservation - such as Jack the Sparrowhawk, Julio the Great Horned Owl, Aristophanes the Raven, and Ruby the Turkey Vulture.

Some of these are not birds ever likely to be common to urban landscapes, even those with a massive forest inside city limits like Portland. Even so, it was such an inspiring site to see these magnificent birds up close that it got me wondering about efforts to re-introduce nature and wildlife into the city through ecoroofs, bioswales and greenspaces.

Portland has become a national leader for ecoroofs, particularly ones that are designed to capture stormwater. But what if the city's collection of green roofs could, once expanded, go a step further and actually become a functional habitat for birds and wildlife - part of a green infrastructure in the city? Ecoroofs do a lot for buildings themselves, insulating them better and reducing energy bills, besides capturing stormwater to prevent runoff. But it wouldn't take much for them to be bird magnets as well.

As it happens, March is being promoted as "Ecoroof Month" by the City of Portland, the Audubon Society of Portland, and the Urban Greenspaces Institute. Events will include "Ecoroof Portland," a free two-day event this Friday and Saturday (March 12-13), as well as an ecoroof tour of South Waterfront on March 27, lectures on March 30 and 31 by London ecoroof expert Dusty Gedge, and an ecoroof tour of downtown Portland on March 31.

As Bob Sallinger, conservation director for the Audubon Society of Portland notes in the organization's wonderfully titled newsletter, the  The Warbler, there are already 200 ecoroofs in Portland, and the city has set a goal of increasing vegetated rooftops to cover at least 39 acres by 2013. An incentive program initiated by the city in 2009 provides property owners with up to $5 per square foot to install ecoroofs. According to the City's ecoroof website Buildings can also receive bonus FAR (floor area ratio) based on three ranges of ecoroof coverage in relation to the building’s footprint: 10-30%, 30-60% and 60% or greater earns one, two and three square feet of additional floor area per square foot of ecoroof respectively.

Multnomah County Central Library ecoroof, photo courtesy Jaysonphoto via Flickr 

Chicago is the only American city with more ecoroof area then Portland, with 534,000 square feet of ecoroof space compared to the Rose City's 423,000 as of 2009. But how are we doing compared to Europe, where ecoroof building leads the world and dates to the 1970s? We've got a lot of catching up to do.

For example, the metro area in Stuttgart, Germany, home of the exquisite Mercedes-Benz brand, has 10.7 million square feet of estimated ecoroof area. Dusseldorf, Germany's overall metro area has 7.86 million square feet. Basel, Switzerland - just the city, not its metro area - had 7.53 million square feet of ecoroof area as of 2007. London has 5.38 million, not including its suburbs and exurbs.

"Portland is particularly well positioned to learn from the European experience with ecoroofs and the emerging trend of biodiverse ecoroofs," writes Jim Labbe of the Audubon Society, also in The Warbler. "Efforts in the United Kingdom, Germany and Switzerland clearly indicate an ecoroof building boom is possible with the right public policies in place. These include adequate incentives and regulation to strongly encourage or require ecoroofs on new development where technically feasible. However we also need local research to help improve designs of biodiverse ecoroofs adapted to our unique climate, flora and fauna."

Photo by Brian Libby 

"By investing in and expanding biodiverse ecoroofs in Portland, we can dramatically expand urban habitat diversity, enrich our local and neotropical bird populations, and help keep nature nearby in our densest neighborhoods."

In 2006 I wrote an article for Metropolis magazine about Tanner Springs Park and its design by German landscape architect Herbert Dreiseitl, which was indicative of an an emerging philosophy regarding wild-life protection in a high-density urban setting. "Instead of just setting aside one or two larger parcels on the outskirts of the city, Portland planners favor also introducing small pockets of nature throughout," I wrote back then. “We’ve done a lousy job of protecting nature in the city until very recently,” added Mike Houck, urban naturalist for the Audubon Society of Portland and director of the nonprofit Urban Greenspaces Institute. “This is a new phenomenon.”

In seeking to become a sustainable capitol, can Portland also become an innovator for nature in the city? Sure, if the Europeans haven't beaten us there first. But Portland also boasts something these older European cities perhaps don't, or at least not in as much supply: enough space, and enough of a connection with the surrounding natural landscape, to enjoy a more substantial connection between city and nature. In that way, the urban growth boundary is as important as ecoroofs. But as with urban planning, it takes both macro and micro level design and implementation to make the unified whole work successfully - a unified plan for growth, and means to make it happen block by block, or in this case, roof by roof and park by park.

"8xPDX: Photographs of Portland Architecture" at AIA Center for Architecture

"Ziba Street" by Jeff Jahn 

Beginning with an opening party this Thursday evening and continuing throughout March, the AIA/Portland's Center for Architecture is exhibiting "8xPDX: Photographs of Portland Architecture". I curated the show, which includes (as the name indicates) the work of eight photographers: Jeremy Bitterman, Chris Hornbecker Jeff Jahn, Shawn Records, Sally Schoolmaster, Susan Seubert, Michael Weeks, and myself.

Collectively, the 20 photographs portray not only local architectural icons -- such as the Wieden + Kennedy building, the Portland Aerial Tram, Memorial Coliseum, the Jackson Tower, Portland International Airport and the Lovejoy and Forecourt Fountains -- but also unfamiliar and less obvious segments of the urban fabric. There are simple representational images but also more abstract presentations. It was important for me that the show have both familiar and unfamiliar visual imagery. On one hand I love many of the city's well known local landmarks, but on the other hand the best designed thing in Portland is the totality of the city itself. What's more, I hoped some pieces, particularly the ones of less familiar portions of the city, would speak to the textures and colors of this place.

"Forecourt Fountain" by Susan Seubert 

Artist bios (excluding my own) with a few extra personal notes are as follows: 

Jeremy Bitterman is the owner of Bitterman Creative, providing architectural photography and art direction. He is also art director for Allied Works Architecture. I've known Jeremy for several years through his work at Allied. One of his photos in the show, of Memorial Coliseum, was taken as a favor to the Friends of Memorial Coliseum, the preservation organization I'm part of. The shot was taken during last summer's Rose Parade, which originates in the Coliseum.

"Memorial Coliseum" by Jeremy Bitterman 

Jeff Jahn is a curator, artist and cultural critic. His photography has appeared in Art News, NYArts Magazine, Willamette Week, and the Portland Mercury, among others. Jahn also publishes Portland’s most-read visual arts publication, PORT.

His two photos in this show portray the Holst Architecture-designed Ziba headquarters and the Portland Tram. Jeff, whose writings I've read for years, is also a cousin of the architect Helmut Jahn and seems to be ever-present in the local visual arts world, a testament to his drive and smarts.

"308mm" by Chris Hornbecker 

Chris Hornbecker is a Portland based professional photographer who shoots portraiture, sports and fashion photography for commercial advertising, advertising agencies, editorial and directly for clients including as worked with clients including Nike, Adidas, Miller High Life, Comcast, Vonage, The Fader, Sports Illustrated, Ad Week, and Bust.

Chris is one of two photographers whose work I didn't know of before curating the show; he was recommended by Kristan Kennedy, who heads visual arts programming for the Portland Institute for Contemporary Art. His contributions to "8xPDX" include an ethereal shot of the largely ZGF Architects-designed airport in fog, as well as a shot and one of my very favorite Portland buildings, on SW 10th Avenue downtown, familiar for its multicolored checkerboard-paneled facade.

Photo by Shawn Records, from the Portland Grid Project 

Shawn Records is a Portland photographer whose work has been exhibited at the Castillo/Corrales Gallery in Paris and Blue Sky Gallery in Portland, the Museum of Contemporary Photography in Chicago, the Camera Club of New York, and the Pomona College Museum of Art, among others. Records was included in the 2006 Oregon Biennial at the Portland Art Museum. He earned an MFA in art and photography from Syracuse University in 2003 and a bachelor’s degree in photography from Boise State University in 2000.

I first became aware of Shawn's work through his collaboration with writer Matthew Stadler a few years ago on a series about Beaverton, which I reviewed for The Oregonian. Shawn's pictures in "8xPDX" are from the Portland Ground project, in which numerous local photographers participated. One of Shawn's shots in this show also features his son, Max Records, who recently starred in the Spike Jonze movie Where the Wild Things Are.

Susan Seubert regularly photographs for National Geographic Traveler, Geo Saison, and The New York Times, among others. The Portland-based photographer was also a 1999 recipient of Columbia University’s Alfred Eisenstaedt Award. Since receiving her BFA in photography from the Pacific Northwest College of Art in 1992, Seubert has exhibited continuously in the United States and abroad. Her work was included in the Portland Art Museum's 1999 and 2001 Biennials and the Tacoma Art Museum's 2009 Northwest Biennial. Most recently, Seubert received an International Photography Award for her piece entitled, "Nest". In the fall of 2010 Seubert will lead two expeditions for the National Geographic Society and is leading two expeditions through the Columbia River Gorge. I've long been a fan of Susan's work, and she's one of the only local photographers working simultaneously and successfully in both commercial and fine art.

The two photographs by Susan in "8xPDX" are from the recent book "Where the Revolution Began: Lawrence and Anna Halprin and the Reinvention of Public Space," edited by Portland Spaces editor (and former Oregonian architecture critic) Randy Gragg.

Sally Schoolmaster is chair of the photography department at the Pacific Northwest College of Art in Portland. Her photographs have appeared in The New York times, Architectural Record, Wallpaper and many other publications, as well as the 2006 book "Architecture in the United States", published by Taschen. Schoolmaster received her BS from the University of Oregon and her MFA from Ohio University.

"Ominous" by Michael Weeks 

I've long been a huge fan of Sally's pictures of the Wieden + Kennedy building - the completed project by Allied Works, that is. What I didn't know about until meeting with Sally for this show was that she has just as many shots of the building before it was re-imagined and rebuilt. The photos of this former cold-storage warehouse are drop-dead gorgeous.

Besides one "before" and one "after" shot of W+K, Sally will also be exhibiting three small photos of temporary facilities designed by BOORA Architects for the Portland Institute of Contemporary Art's Time-Based Art (TBA) Festival.

Michael Weeks is a Portland photographer and owner of Weeksy Photographer as well as a student at Portland State University. I found his HD photograph of the Jackson Tower on Flickr and was blown away by it.