Portland Architecture

OHSU nursing school finally gets its courtyard

Rendering of future OHSU School of Nursing Courtyard, courtesy OrangeWall Studios 

In the early 1990s, Thomas Hacker Architects (now THA Architecture) designed two major buildings for Oregon Health & Science University's Marquam Hill campus, the Biomedical Information and Communications Center (BICC) in 1991 and the School of Nursing in 1992.

As the nation's first fully computerized research library, and with a more striking form, the BICC received more fanfare. The concrete-framed building, clad in limestone and marble, has a glass block and aluminum window system that had not been attempted before. The project also reflected an array of talent working for Hacker at the time, including Brad Cloepfil, Rick Potestio, Elizabeth Williams, and John Cava.

“The BICC and School of Nursing derive strength from their finely tailored, structural integrity, which sets them apart from the current fashion for fragmented designs,” wrote Architecture magazine's Deborah Dietsch. “Thomas Hacker's buildings at OHSU not only offer a sign of health within their university setting, but within contemporary architectural design."

The School of Nursing building, on the other hand, never received as much celebration for its design, but that may be in part because the U-shaped building never saw construction of the courtyard at its center.

Now, 28 years later, and just in time for the school's 100th anniversary, a new courtyard design has been generated by architect Gary Hartill and his Portland firm, OrangeWall Studios after a private donation to the school has made going forward with construction possible. Shapiro Didway Landscape Architecture and Ken Diener of KJD Architecture also collaborated with OrangeWall on the design.

Rendering of future OHSU School of Nursing Courtyard, courtesy OrangeWall Studios 

Hartill was an unconventional choice, not because of a lack of talent but because he was an architect asked to bid on what would become his first such courtyard design.

"We were working on another project for OHSU ad they liked the design sensibilities," Hartill recalled in a recent phone interview. "They said, ‘We’ve got this courtyard.’ I said, ‘I’m not a landscape architect.’ And they said, ‘Design is design.’" The OrangeWall submission wound up beating out talented firms like Murase Associates (which was originally set to provide the landscape design when the building was first built, before budget problems ended that portion of the project) and Walker Macy. "We got it because we had a different perspective."

Part of that perspective was Hartill's advocacy for creating a master plan for the building as part of a holistic design process. As a result, the building facade is getting pressure washed and repainted, and the school is looking at a green roof for the building.

Rendering of future OHSU School of Nursing Courtyard, courtesy OrangeWall Studios    

To generate the courtyard design, "We talked to staff, faculty, emeritus alumni, students," the architect continues. "All of them had diff points of view but it came down to the same theme: They wanted a place of respite from the stress of the academic/medical world, and a unifying space that could encourage interaction.  Most people eat lunch at their desks now. There aren’t a lot of social spaces that invite interaction. For me that became the kicking off point for driving the design. How do we create a connection between the organization and rigor of the architecture? That drove a more fluid design. "

The clients, Hartill adds, "talked about the emotive components of nursing. Healing is about more than knowledge and data. It was a human connection. So if nursing is a combo of pragmatic and emotional components, how can that be incorporated into the design? The DNA strand became the organizing element. It binds all of these different elements to create something greater.

A new briese soleil shades the south facing elevation while glass canopies on the south side of the court provide protection from the rain. Rain gardens are activated by the weather collecting roofwater from the upper roofs and directing through the planters before returning the balance to the earth. The double helix of the DNA strand creates the symbolic and formal basis for the organization of the elements.

A native Portlander, Hartill initially was enrolled to study at the Oregon School of Design only to see it close; he instead attended Portland State and today speaks of well of what he sees as a holistic approach to design at the school. He later worked at Waterleaf Architecture + Interiors and then spent several years at ZGF Architects; his final project there was the Eliot Tower. Since forming OrangeWall Studios seven years ago, Hartill has worked largely on residential projects, including several homes for executives at local ad agency Wieden + Kennedy. But the OHSU School of Nursing courtyard is indicative of the broadened practice he would like to achieve for OrangeWall.

The School of Nursing courtyard is expected to begin construction in 2011.

Heritage Home Tour and fundraiser this Saturday

Germantown Road house, Pietro Belluschi (photo by Brian Libby) 

This Saturday brings the Heritage Home Tour, offered by the Architectural Heritage Center. Proceeds will benefit the Bosco-Milligan Foundation, the AHC's parent organization.

The six homes on this new tour cover a century of residential construction in Portland and represent a variety of styles and notable architects, such as the great Pietro Belluschi as well as other local notables of architecture history such as Herman Brookman.

The tour will be held 10:00am to 4:00pm. Tickets are $35 for members and $50 for non-members. That seems a little too steep a price in my mind, but it probably speaks to the difficulty the AHC and other nonprofits face raising funds. The same is true with the AHC's education programs, which one would like to be free to maximize outreach but usually are $13.

The Belluschi house on the tour is one of his last completed works, from 1980, and is situated in the West Hills off Germantown Road. I happened to visit the house two years ago. It's owned by another local architect of note, Mike McCulloch, who served for 11 years as the head of the Portland Design Commission and also worked at firms like Waterleaf before striking out on his own.

Teahouse, fountain and Pietro Belluschi house, Germantown Road (photo by Brian Libby) 

In addition to the Belluschi house itself, the McCulloch designed two other structures: an elegant glass and wood teahouse overlooking an outdoor pool (flanked by a striking Lee Kelly sculpture) and a guest house renovated from an old root cellar. The house also is extensively landscaped with a water feature and countless plantings and boasts a broad view of the valley floor below.

Here are some small snapshots of other houses on the tour, provided by the Architectural Heritage Center and photographer Cindy Hvind. First, a circa 1910 house on NW Lovejoy Street that was designed by Edward Thompson Root:

 

And a Victorian house on SW Vista dating to 1884, architect unknown:

Here is some more information on The Architectural Heritage Center from the organization's website:

"The Architectural Heritage Center began as a vision of two remarkable men, Jerry Bosco and Ben Milligan, and is their legacy to historic preservation in Portland and the Northwest. Alarmed by the tragic destruction of historic buildings throughout the region, Bosco and Milligan salvaged countless architectural pieces which would otherwise have been lost to the wrecking ball. From the 1950s – 1980s, they collected a truly awe-inspiring treasure trove of historic stained glass windows, building hardware, doors, light fixtures and shades, tiles, mantles, cast iron, and countless other historic building elements. The National Park Service documents that the Bosco-Milligan Foundation's collections are the largest in the West and among the five largest in the United States. Our collections distinguish us from other historic preservation organizations in the western US."

"Prior to their passing, Jerry Bosco and Ben Milligan established the Bosco-Milligan Foundation to fulfill their vision of a place where their collections could be used in education and training programs. Our vision of renovating the historic West's Block Building - constructed in 1883 at 701 SE Grand Avenue in Portland’s Central eastside - to house the Architectural Heritage Center was completed with the Center’s opening in 2005. The Center includes two exhibition galleries, two classrooms, workshop space, a library, collections storage spaces and the Foundation's offices. Our public historic preservation programming has increased four-fold at our “home base” and we have served the needs of more than 40,000 people, beginning in 1992. With continued progress on the professional inventory and documentation of the collections, public access will be expanded beyond the rotating exhibits in our galleries. The Architectural Heritage Center is a significant historic preservation education facility for the Portland region and plays an important role in celebrating and advocating for the architectural heritage of our city and region."

Matthew Ginn's Portland Public Schools photo tour: Roosevelt and Wilson

Roosevelt High School (photos courtesy Homestead Images) 

This summer, local architecture and construction photographer Matthew Ginn of Homestead Images has taken on a project to photograph Portland's public schools. His first two schools visited are Roosevelt High and Wilson High. I'd like to share a few of his shots interspersed with info obtained from Portland Public Schools about the sites.

Interestingly, these buildings are not included in Bart King's otherwise comprehensive Architectural Guidebook to Portland. But one look at these buildings, or numerous other high schools, middle and elementary schools around town, and it's clear they are both highlights and cornerstones, so to speak, of the city fabric.

Roosevelt High School (photos courtesy Homestead Images) 

Roosevelt High School is located in the St. Johns neighborhood of north Portland. The 17 acre campus includes the original school building (built in 1921) as well as additions of an auditorium in 1930, a gymnasium in 1950, a library and more classrooms in 1960, and even an observatory in 1964.

The Roosevelt High School campus represents a partially realized expandable campus; two of the three parts of an extensible plan were constructed.  The two-story main building and auditorium were designed in the Colonial Revival style. Its principal character-defining features include a main portico lined with Corinthian columns, and something described by PPS as "closed bed pediment with festoon adorned tympanum."  The building also exhibits a "modillion cornice, jack arch lintels with a keystone above all windows, staggered corner quoins of brick, a beveled watertable, and a clock tower replete with open belfry".

Here's more from Portland Public Schools on Roosevelt:

In 1869, the first high school, housed in two rooms of the former North School building in Portland, was opened. Despite early struggles in the development of a consistent curriculum, the high school persisted at the will of the city’s residents until the Oregon School Code, adopted in 1878, officially authorized the construction of high schools in the city. The first purpose built high school in Portland was the 1883 Portland High School built on Southwest Fourteenth and Morrison.  Before it was even built, the school was the subject of a serious debate among prominent citizens as to the necessity of a publicly funded high school. Despite the conflict, the 1883 “Transition Gothic” styled Portland High School established a high design standard for the city’s high schools as it was prominently featured in William Thayer’s “Marvels of the New West” in 1887.  Future high schools in the city would be built on a similarly grand scale.

Roosevelt High School (photos courtesy Homestead Images) 

Beginning with the construction of the main building in 1921 and closely followed by an additional auditorium unit constructed in 1930, Roosevelt High School was part of a dramatic building program begun by Portland Public Schools in the early 1900s. Gradually influenced by John Dewey’s Progressive Education Movement, Portland Public Schools responded to changing city demographics and ideas concerning school safety, sanitation, and child centered instructional methods beginning in the first decade of the 1900s.

By 1905, it became increasingly clear that dramatic increases in school-age children outstripped the district’s current classroom capacity and existing schools could not effectively serve areas of the city with new residential development. After several well-publicized school fires elsewhere in the United States, calls for a more fundamental change in the building stock of the district began as early as 1906 when Mayor Lane called for the construction of new “fireproof” school buildings.

The District architect took on a more formalized role in the design and maintenance of school facilities. Two of the most influential district architects during this period included Floyd Naramore and George Jones, who designed a majority of the schools from 1908 to 1932.  These new school buildings were often constructed of brick and concrete and were one or two stories in height. The buildings also contained more differentiated and increasingly specialized instructional spaces such as libraries, gymnasiums, science rooms, music rooms, as well as assembly spaces.

Roosevelt High School (photos courtesy Homestead Images) 

The Roosevelt architectural plans, for instance, showed that the school would have a chemistry room, sewing room, library, and general science lab.  Designed in the Colonial Revival style, Roosevelt High School fell within stylistic trends of the period as most schools in Portland featured the Classical Revival, Colonial Revival, and Collegiate Gothic styles; architectural revivals that were viewed as inspirational and appropriate for educational settings. 

According to the Oregonian, the lead draftsman for Roosevelt High School, school district architect George H. Jones, reused most of the architectural drawings from Franklin High School to lay out the plans for Roosevelt (Oregonian 6-25-1922).  The architectural drawings also note that Thayne J. Logan drew and “traced” the plans.  George H. Jones, was well versed in the design of school facilities through his role as the school district’s architect.

The son of Thomas J. Jones, who had also served as district architect for many years, George Jones was born in Portland in 1887.  After attending Oregon State College for two years, George Jones obtained a degree in architecture in 1913.  Jones worked in New York for several years before serving with the U.S. Army Combat Engineers during World War I. Following his return to Portland in 1920, Jones obtained his architecture license.  He quickly assumed the position of school architect after his predecessor became district architect for the Seattle School District.

Roosevelt High School (photos courtesy Homestead Images)   

Woodrow Wilson High School, the other of Ginn's subjects, is located in the Hillsdale Neighborhood of southwest Portland. Its famous alumni include former Trail Blazer Damon Stoudamire, whose Wilson team I once saw defeat Beaverton in Memorial Coliseum for the OSAA state basketball title.

The 26-acre Wilson campus includes the original high school building, built in 1953). The two story, International Style school building is a U-shaped plan with the gymnasium, auditorium, and music wing all differentiated from the main classroom sections of the school by different massing, building materials, heights, and overall shapes.

Wilson High School (photos courtesy Homestead Images)

The classroom sections of the building were constructed of “lifted” concrete slabs and the auditorium, gymnasium, and music wing were constructed using the more conventional tilt slab concrete.  Most of the main classrooms lie behind a glazed curtain wall and the second floor library is cantilevered over the first floor.

Here is some info about Wilson from the PPS site:

Most classroom spaces feature a curtain wall composed of three part plate glass windows with an opaque panel below.  The bottom plate is typically a functional hopper window. The remaining sections of the school – the auditorium, gymnasium, and music rooms are sheathed with face bricks laid in an all stretcher bond.

Wilson High School (photos courtesy Homestead Images)

The main entrance to the school overlooks broad athletic fields that sprawl to the west of the school.  The topography descends from the school down to these facilities. The main entrance, consisting of two sets of double doors, is recessed into the building and sheltered by classrooms above that are supported by two columns. The west elevation also features a one story extension that houses administrative offices located immediately beside the main entry. This elevation also exhibits a cantilevered bay on the second floor which creates additional space for the library. The gymnasium also projects from this side of the high school.  It is largely unfenestrated.

The main classroom “fingers” extend to the east forming a grassy courtyard with a central concrete planting bed.  Due to changes in the site’s topography, these two sections of the school rise three stories.  The music wing projects northward from the south finger and is differentiated from the other classrooms by its lack of windows, its projected volume, and by a series of round columns that support it.  Between the two fingers is a one-story projection that houses the school cafeteria. The exterior of the cafeteria is entirely glazed with plate glass windows.

  

Wilson High School (photos courtesy Homestead Images) 

The south side of the high school is dominated by the auditorium.  A curtain wall of windows projects from the south side of the auditorium, but this component of the building is otherwise unfenestrated.  The function of this section of the school is communicated by its angular-shaped walls and double-height volume. 

Thanks to Matthew Ginn and Homestead Images for supplying these images. Matthew is tentatively set to photograph more Portland Public Schools sites this summer and I hope to be posting those photos as part of a continuing series.

If other photographers would like to have their photos of local architecture exhibited on this site, contact me anytime at [email protected].

Trains and bridges

Downtown Portland at SW Third and Washington (image courtesy Cafe Unknown) 

There may not be many buildings going up during the Great Recession, but transit is, well, moving along.

Anna Griffin's Saturday Oregonian column looked at streetcar investment in Portland today compared to the network that used to exist here. It all started with Griffin overhearing a man grumbling over his sushi at a local restaurant about streetcar costs, construction headaches, and lack of ridership.

"I'm right there with you, annoyed at the traffic backup as construction crews lay streetcar tracks on the bridge and skeptical about whether anyone but tourists will ride when it opens in 2012," Griffin wrote. "But let's make sure we're grumbling about the right thing -- like the fact that taxpayers are spending several hundred million dollars -- billions, if you consider what's happening nationally -- correcting planning mistakes of the past."

"A century ago we would have begun that rare night out by hopping on the neighborhood streetcar and using a network that went anywhere our little hearts might wander. Downtown for supper and a show. Council Crest to ride the carousel. Milwaukie, for whatever people did in Milwaukie back then. 'Anywhere you couldn't walk, you took the streetcar,' said Carl Abbott, an urban studies professor at Portland State."

In 1906, the Portland Railway Light and Power Company operated 40 lines over 172 miles of track. Amidst the rise of the automobile, suburbs and highway construction after World War II, Portland, like most all American cities, abandoned its streetcar system. Today we're spending $150 million to build 3.3 miles of streetcar on the east side and connect with the existing four-mile line on the west side of the Willamette River. But we still have a long, long way to go if we seek to match the extensiveness of the old system.

King's Cross Station, London (photo by Brian Libby)

Meanwhile, on another train front, Nathalie Weinstein reports in the Daily Journal of Commerce that the State of Oregon will not seek high-speed rail funding from the round of $2.1 billion in US Department of Transportation grants for high-speed rail corridor proposals, nor from the $245 million for specific construction projects within those corridors.

Though ODOT has several multi-million dollar rail projects on the boards, Betsy Imholt, ODOT rail study director, told Weinstein the transit department won’t apply for this round of fundingthe timeline for the grants, which must be applied for by Aug. 6, is too tight to find a 20 percent funding match from another group.  She went on to explain that if  ODOT had a 20 percent funding match from another source, it could apply for funding for studies to improve freight rail connections near the Rose Quarter and to improve the traffic flow of freight trains along the east bank of the Willamette River.

“All of ODOT’s money is legally tied to other projects and can’t be used for this,” Imholt said. “The money from road fees has to go back into roads. The timeline is just too fast to find a project partner.” In the meantime, ODOT is waiting to hear back on a US DOT grant it applied for in May to update the state’s rail plan, and to study the possibility of a high-speed rail line between Eugene and Portland.

What I wondered after reading about the non-application for high speed rail funding is, why don't we already have a plan in place? It's one thing for the state to simply have the funds or matching funds from another source. But why, in this Great Recession, are we seemingly wasting time and the chance to garner many millions in federal funding on merely studying the issue? I wish the state were ready to roll, both figuratively and literally. Let's not just contemplate high speed rail over the next decade. Let's make it happen.

It's not to say there isn't a place for study and preparation. But meanwhile, the Rose Quarter's future is being determined right now. Many have argued that a high-speed rail station makes sense in this location, both because the Rose Quarter is so centralized and because an east side location would be easier for a high speed train to negotiate. If we had an existing local and regional high speed rail plan in place, wouldn't this be a good time to dovetail those plans with a multimillion-dollar investment like the Rose Quarter? 

On another transit front, an upcoming City Club discussion asks, "Do we need a regional bridge authority?"

Hawthorne Bridge, Portland (photo by Brian Libby) 

"Portland metro area bridges - which connect multiple cities in several counties and are used daily by many of the region's 1.5 million residents - have a vital impact on our region's transportation," the club's announcement reads. "And yet, from replacing the crumbling Sellwood Bridge to doubts about Multnomah County's ability to fund bridges as well as other vital services, governance questions about bridge ownership, operation, use and funding continue to plague regional progress. City Club's recent report, Moving Forward: A Better Way to Govern Regional Transportation, recommended that many of these issues could be resolved by bringing area bridges under the control of a single bridge authority established by Metro."

On July 30, the City Club will host a Friday Forum discussion with Multnomah County Commissioner Deborah Kafoury; Lynn Peterson, Chair of the Clackamas County Board of Commissioners; and Mike Burton, Vice-Provost at PSU and former Metro Executive Officer about the pros and cons of a regional bridge authority, what actions might be needed to make this recommendation a reality and what other governance alternatives should be considered.

The Friday Forum will be held at The Governor Hotel at 614 SW 11th Avenue. Reserved lunches are $16 for members; $20 for nonmembers. Coffee/tea tickets are available at the door for $5 members/$10 non-members. General admission seats are available at the door, free for members/$5 for non-members.

Meanwhile, if the Portland area is struggling just to maintain the bridges it has, and to build a more extensive network of MAX trains and streetcars, do we really need the new Tri-Met bridge over the Willamette that is currently being planned? It would be wedged between the Ross Island and Marquam bridges. It would require many millions in transportation dollars that could (presumably) otherwise go to laying down more light rail and streetcar tracks. It has had a controversial design process in which one of the nation's most acclaimed bridge designers (Miguel Rosales) walked away with bitterness and frustration.

What if, instead, Tri-Met were to route MAX over the Hawthorne Bridge? Wouldn't that be cheaper and more effective? The location of the new bridge, after all, is far enough south of the downtown core that it wouldn't even make an effective way to cross the river unless one were headed to Sellwood, Milwaukie, or other parts south while much of Southeast Portland waits for a rail crossing of their own.

MulvannyG2 imagines a shopping mall of the future

Future Image Architecture Competition entry, courtesy MulvannyG2 Architecture 

Several years ago I flew to Los Angeles to report for the New York Times on a competition called “Dead Malls”. This wasn’t a competition for an actual brick-and-mortar commission, but instead what is sometimes called an “ideas competition”.

The idea behind that competition was to generate new ideas for the growing amount of abandoned suburban shopping malls across America. There were all kinds of proposals, from arts facilities to prisons. But the idea I didn’t see in that competition was the sole one that made any sense: simply stitching malls into city fabric by making them mixed use with a variety of housing and other private and public spaces, a variety of scales (both for the architecture and the businesses there), and better access for pedestrians and mass transit.

All this time later, MulvannyG2 Architecture  has been named a winner in a similar ideas competition, held by the International Council of Shopping Centers. The  ICSC’s Future Image Architecture Competition asked firms to address a potential “big box” store design built 50 years from now. MulvannyG2 won in the “Green” category for an entry that offers a six-step sustainable strategy for adapting abandoned large format stores into new uses.

MulvannyG2’s winning entry, “ReStart, ReConnect, ReVive, ReTurn, ReClaim, ReEnvision” works on the premise that by 2060 large format stores’ current suburban locations will become urban as density spreads and escalates. Global warming, presumably, would have wrought substantial climate change by that time, and fossil fuel resources would have dwindled far past peak-oil. This, the architects reasoned, would in turn provide greater incentive for large format stores’ adaptive reuse; they will become too valuable a resource to lie abandoned as many do today, or even to be functioning with that low level of density and seas of asphalt parking lots.

Sitting down with a quartet of architects from the firm recently, they discussed additional impetus behind the winning design.

“The crux of it really was stitching everything together so it would be a living entity again,” MulvannyG2’s Jonathan Dunn said.

Future Image Architecture Competition entry, courtesy MulvannyG2 Architecture 

The competition entry used an actual outer-Portland site, at 122nd and Glisan, as its starting point. “With sustainability, especially, site is so important,” said Dunn, who also co-chairs the AIA/Portland chapter’s Committee on the Environment. It’s the crux of how you take a building and shape it to the site.”

“We had a lot of conversations about the right approach,” MG2's Darren Schroeder said. “We wanted something that links everything together and is mixed use but has the financial underpinnings to work. We tried to look at this from a developer’s perspective. That part of it said, there’s no reason why these sites can’t evolve the same way the other fabric of the city has developed historically: slowly, in phases, and with multiple users.”

The design splices what was one large mass into multiple levels, cutting courtyards and skylights into the building and creating a succession of different kinds of indoor and outdoor spaces with multiple tenants and many points of entry. The program integrates housing, libraries, markets, restaurants,  an amphitheater, open space, and even farming.

The design also presumes that fewer people would be driving cars in 50 years, so there is less than half the amount of parking spaces allotted. That’s the part of this process that may have been the most fun for the architects.  Not only did they cut the amount of spaces, but also made them less obtrusive. Do shopping mall developers have any idea how ugly parking lots are? Burying them underground is more expensive, but you also get what you pay for.

“Those are the pressures of the trade,” Schroeder said. You have to be able to understand how important parking is to your client, but you also have to be able to show your client the value in wrapping it in.”

Developers of suburban shopping malls typically have looked for as much as five parking spots for every thousand square feet of spaces. With all that reclaimed space, the design added more greenspace.

MulvannyG2 also sought to bring a more local focus to a format that is usually dominated by chains. “Small local businesses was a huge focus. This used to be the big box chain and this is a complete opposite. Maybe that’s where we’re moving,” said MG2's Kelly Stewart.

Certainly a mall would start to feel different if it had lots of open greenspace and was oriented around micro-sized retail such as food carts or individual retailers. In fact, it makes me think of Saturday Market, which consists of just such a mix today.

But the reason many of us hate shopping malls is not just the chains or the ugly parking lots, but also the antiseptic feel of the interiors. Some of that bad feeling comes from the lack of natural light and air, but it’s something more, too: the failure of interior design to feel vibrant and varied. “We fight that all over the country,” adds Schroeder, whose firm designs retail facilities for many clients. “We even see it in Times Square.”

Ultimately, though, I can’t help but wonder if it’s not the design of shopping malls that needs to change but the approach of the developer, or even the fact that there is a single developer. “What used to be one big box from a tax lot perspective, a huge multi acre parcel that belongs to one holding company, we’d like to give it more like the function of a city,” Schroeder said. “How many tax lots does the city of Portland have for one block downtown? Why can’t we have 25 tax lots here? That’s where our discussion got excited. We didn’t want it to just be a site plan exercise. The idea about this is it’s supposed to work across economic boundaries. Not just a place to go and party and shop, and not a place to squat in your expensive condo. Just a mixture of demographics.”

It’s impossible to predict the future, but the future of the shopping mall can change before 2060, especially when architects and developers needn’t reinvent the wheel to find what works and what is viable for shoppers and residents. “We can grab a lot of cues from our present and say, ‘What’s important to us now?’ Light and space,” Schroeder concludes. “That’s been the guiding force, for example, in what’s made the pearl successful. Maybe it’s not diverse, but they’ve made it work by just extending the grid.”

“This isn’t a one size fits all solution. You can’t just put an urban farm in the middle of a shopping mall site. But these are under-utilized properties with real estate value. How do we get a return on that value again? Back in the day it was sufficient to do forgettable construction and call it good. Now there’s a greater obligation.”

As it happens, I was in a retail space designed by MulvannyG2 over the weekend: the renovated Fred Meyer store at SE 39th and Hawthorne. It is a big improvement over the old store, with more glass along the perimeter and more greenery in the parking lot. But there is still a lot of windowless concrete wall along Hawthorne, and a convoluted entry-exit area. If you're going to pull off a transformative retail design, it takes a willing client, too.

It's no HafenCity, but South Waterfront is quietly growing up

Meriwether Condos, John Ross Condos (photo by Brian Libby) 

In the Travel section of last Sunday's New York Times, writer Gisela Williams takes a look at the HafenCity district in Hamburg, Germany. What she found there got me thinking about Portland's South Waterfront district.

HafenCity is a new district at the site of Hamburg's central harbor on the Elbe River. It's one of the largest and most ambitious urban construction sites in Europe. "Though several portions of the district are unfinished," Williams reports, "HafenCity is filled on the weekends with tourists and residents eating at its waterside cafes, enjoying its vast open space and seeking a glimpse of its 'starchitect'-designed buildings...The spotlight so far has been on the Elbphilharmonie, a 350-million-euro (and counting) project...designed by the Swiss architects Herzog & de Meuron to look like glass wave cresting atop a brick warehouse...and will eventually house the NDR Symphony Orchtestra's concert hall..."

Although it's much larger in scope (388 acres versus 38 acres), HafenCity shares many similarities with South Waterfront. They are both former industrial-zoned waterfront neighborhoods being invented from scratch, starting with large public investments that sought to kindle private development.

OHSU Center For Health & Healing lobby and Portland Streetcar (photo by Brian Libby) 

But there are also key differences besides size. HafenCity is being anchored by cultural facilities and public spaces. There are not just condos with retail below, as has largely been the case in South Waterfront (other than the OHSU Center for Health & Healing).

South Waterfront also doesn't have any 'starchitect' buidings. There are plenty of reasons to be cynical of the culture of a few famous architects designing indulgent eye candy. But having, for example, a new concert hall for the Oregon Symphony designed by a Zaha Hadid, a Rem Koolhaas or even a Brad Cloepfil would help give SoWa a cultural foundation and an architectural draw. Cloepfil, as it happens, has remained embittered that he once seemed to have a commission for the OHSU Center for Health & Healing when it and the neighborhood were initially being proposed. only to be relegated, in his words, to "the bait".

Then there is the question of public space. "In HafenCity you find a lot of quality public spaces," architect Martin Haas of Behnisch Architekten told Williams. "You can see how important the urban planners understood the importance of that by seeing how much money was spent on designing public spaces."

Elizabeth Caruthers Park design, image courtesy Portland Parks & Recreation 

It's not to say South Waterfront doesn't have open space. But only now, years after the first towers rose there, is the first park, Elizabeth Caruthers Park, opening. There will be an opening celebration and ribbon cutting on Thursday, August 19 from 5:30-8:00 PM.

Meanwhile, though, the South Waterfront Greenway continues its purgatory. Portland’s vision is to have a continuous greenway running along the Willamette River from the Steel Bridge, past River Place, through South Waterfront to the Sellwood Bridge. But according to Portland Bureau of Parks & Recreation, the action for 2010 on this riverfront strip consists of "defining the "preferred alternative" design, conducting outreach to stakeholders, meeting with committees and continuing discussions with the state DEQ about environmental testing of material and with riverfront property owner Zidell. If I were a salmon, I wouldn't plan on resting along these banks anytime soon.

And then there's that pesky economy. Condo towers like the John Ross and Atwater Place once attracted stampedes of people ready to plunk down deposits on units yet to be built. But once these buildings were completed, they experience bank repossession and auctions of units. No architecture took a bigger hit during the Great Recession than SoWa condo towers.

South Waterfront greenway, 2009 (photo by Brian Libby) 

But as the economy has revived from its worst moments of crisis in late 2008 only to sort of stagnate, neither falling nor rising quickly, South Waterfront has quietly become more of a real neighborhood.

Those auctions may have been embarrassing and not as lucrative as backers of the original projects might have hoped, but they have put residents in these buildings. Currently only 79 units out of 214 in the Atwater Place remain to be sold. Only 20 units in the John Ross remain to be sold. The Mirabella condo for retirees opens in August, 2010 and is largely pre-sold. The rental apartment properties, the Ardea and the Riva on the Park, are 72 percent and 85 percent occupied respectively.

There are also three children's learning facilities opening in 2010: the Montessori day care in the John Ross, the Healthy Starts OHSU day care, and the Southwest Charter School in the old Discovery Center. The South Waterfront community garden is even up to 85 beds from 30 a year ago.

Looking ahead, plans to develop the area are largely on track. For example, the General Services Administration (GSA) is planning a 74,000 square foot add-on to an existing building to house a division of the Department of Homeland Security. A five-story affordable housing unit, The Tamarack, will break ground in the fall of 2010, set to provide 209 homes.

There is also the Gibbs Street Pedestrian Bridge, which will connect SoWa with the Lair Hill neighborhood. Construction is scheduled to start in December 2010 and conclude in December 2011.

Willamette River from Atwater Place condos (photo by Brian Libby) 

And then there is the Life Sciences Collaborative Building north of the Ross Island Bridge. This multiple-university facility is still being planned, but it will in time fill in the gaping hole between South Waterfront and the rest of the downtown waterfront with science and research facilities. That's really when SoWa will feel like a vibrant part of Portland: when it's part of a continuous strip of city and greenway along the Willamette.

South Waterfront will never be HafenCity, and maybe we don't even want or need for it to be. At the same time, as the saying goes, news of the district's death have been highly exaggerated. It just needed time to get rid of its new-car smell, so to speak. In time, we'll think of SoWa not as an island, but like we do any other district in the city. After all, cities and neighborhoods don't take years to grow in, but decades and centuries.

Splitting the split-level: Works Partnership's tandemDUO

Stairway at TandemDuo (photo by Brian Libby) 

Last year Portland firm Works Partnership Architecture won two local AIA awards for unbuilt designs, one for a workforce housing tower and the other for a duplex. The latter, called "tandemDUO", has since been completed. (The liberties taken with upper and lower cases are theirs, not mine.)

Situated at the corner of Southeast 28th and Pine, tandemDUO takes advantage of a nexus of nearby restaurants, bars, a grocery store, Music Millennium record store and the Laurelhurst Theater. It's also one of numerous contemporary projects in the area to be built in recent years, such as Kevin Cavenaugh's Box + One Lofts and Holst Architecture's Sunrose Condominiums.

Top: model of tandemDUO, bottom: sectional image, courtesy Works Partnership Architecture 

In their application for last year's design award, Works Partnership described tandemDUO as a new interpretation of the split level house:

"The mid-century post war split level suburban house offers inspiration for the current urban in-fill lot.  Those models were located on larger lots and their configurations allowed for gracious views across and through to the slightly offset levels.  The urban in-fill lots in close-in Portland have been most recently been dotted with skinny lot housing with basic stacked rooms over a street facing garage.  

Finding the essential spatial beauty in the split level concept pulls from Le Corbusier’s Villa Carthage  - The main living areas hover above the ground plane and the internal spaces interlock and stack to culminate in an exterior roof garden that looks out across the neighborhood.

Capitalizing on the cues the split level provides, we have taken those traditional spaces and shuffled them like a deck of cards.  The internal rooms stack and shift vertically; finger- jointing together around a central staircase.  Any one space is always just a half level above or below the other.  The stair acts as a screen and a light source; tying the spaces together.  The big house becomes small but experientially expanded by the gracious views across and through."

Visiting the house several weeks ago, I was most struck by how the stairway acts as a spine from which adjoining rooms are interspersed on either side at half-level intervals. As with the Z-Haus in North Portland by architect Ben Waechter, which has a similar half-level succession, you can stand in the stairway and look up or down at two different floors of the house. It makes for a special kind of architectural connection, almost like watching a split screen or televisions at once.

 
 

(photos by Brian Libby)  

Whereas the Z-Haus stairway was broken down into zigzagging sections of stair treads that correspond to each level, tandemDUO has one long continuous stairway, for a more dramatic effect. In fact, the walls of the stairway become a transparent, almost sculptural form, with no drywall and just the wood frames left exposed. When I first entered the house, I thought, "Wait a minute. I thought they told me the construction was finished." But the more time I spent there, the more I found myself quietly mesmerized by the semi-permeable walls and perforated steel stair treads, which not only have a tactile quality but help distribute natural light.

The exterior has the two residential units adjoined like two people locked arm-in-arm. But these are not twins. Although the units are identical in spatial layout, because one faces 28th to the east and the other Pine to the north, the facades are different. They share certain forms such as a garage and a balcony with perforated steel, and the same material combinations of wood, masonry, glass, and weathered steel, but each is differently articulated.

tandemDUO exterior (photo by Brian Libby) 

I love the idea of the interlocking boxes, and proportionally tandemDUO seems to work well. If I have a criticism, it's that the the exterior looks just a little bit clunky, with a few too many of these materials interwoven together. But overall, I still liked the project a lot, especially inside with the aforementioned half-level configuration. The entire square footage also feels bathed in natural light. And while garages don't necessarily make the best neighbors at street level (a visible front door and porch is ideal), it is slightly sunken into the ground to be more discreet, and the elevated height of living spaces above the garage give one a more tranquil removal from the business of the neighborhood.

The project was developed by David Mink of DPM Development and built by Tamarack Construction.

A new hope for the Guild Theatre

Photo by Michael Lloyd for The Oregonian 

It wasn't long ago in Portland's history that downtown was home to numerous old single-screen movie theaters: the Fox, the Music Box, the Broadway. But today most all of them are gone. And the Guild, which shuttered four years ago, may have been the last of them. But as reported by David Stabler of The Oregonian last week, a little known arts group, Opera Theater Oregon, is seeking to bring the Guild back to life.

Opera Theater Oregon would like to gain management of the theater, which is owned by real estate developer Tom Moyer, and rent it out to other like-minded performance arts groups and show movies as well. Moyer, who developed the Fox Tower across Director Park from the Guild, as well as the planned Park Avenue West tower which was halted after early stages of construction, has granted OTO permission to make an offer. 

Katie Taylor, artistic director of OTO, told Stabler, "We envision the Guild Opera House becoming a nerve center for the tasty mixture of high culture and pop culture that groups like ours, Portland Cello Project, Filmusik, Vagabond Opera, Pink Martini, Live Wire and others have been successfully cultivating over the past decade."

OTO, as you might expect, does not have deep pockets. The idea would be for the opera company to bring in a pro bono consultant team, raise money and renovate the theater in exchange for five years of free rent. Taylor previously spent 17 years as a marketer for architects and engineers and is working with KPFF Consulting Engineers on surveying, structural and civil engineering. 

"Portland's music groups certainly need a hall that is medium sized, centrally located and acoustically inviting," Stabler writes.

Studio Building and Guild Theater, image courtesy Daily Journal of Commerce  

The Guild enjoys an interesting history along with its adjacent building. As related by the Daily Journal of Commerce's Aaron Spencer in an April 7 article, the Guild is attached to the circa-1927, the Studio Building, a nine-story building that originally 128 rehearsal studios for musicians and actors. The building is lined with original busts of famous composers. The attached Guild Theatre, as it's now called, was a 450-seat recital hall. They were built to operate in tandem. But the Guild became a separate entity during the Great Depression when the music publishing business declined.

However, it's the issue of bathrooms belonging to a Studio Building tenant that could threaten the Guild's chance for a comeback. It turns out that the Guild's bathrooms were actually located in space belonging to the ground-floor Studio Building tenant, which is currently Pastini Pastaria. "We were told, 'It's in your leasehold space. So go ahead and tear them out," Pastini co-owner Susan Bashel told Spencer.

Without bathrooms, the Northwest Film Center, which occupied the theater at the time, moved out. And now, it could be bathrooms that keep the new Guild project from going forward. You tell me, architects, code experts and building industry professionals: Is there a way an agreement could be made for a shared bathroom between the Guild and Pastini, or some other arrangement that could keep this opportunity from being...well, flushed away?

The possibility of the Guild coming back evokes movie-going memories for lots of us. Oregonian film critic Shawn Levy, for example, had this remembrance:

I started attending movies at the Guild in the mid-'80s, when it was among a number of theaters downtown that were holding on but just barely.  And yet it never seemed likely to go under.  

To me...the Guild seemed like it could survive anything, let alone the caprices of taste or business.  It was crouched to the ground and bunkered; it felt like a warren. In fact, to be honest, it was a terrible place to watch movies in many ways. The ceiling was low, and the old-tech heating and cooling systems roared. The sound was bad (not the acoustics: the equipment), and the layout was crazy -- bathrooms in front, an aisle down the center of the rows of seats. And the upkeep, well:  My father-in-law, Paul Bartholemy, worked in the place in the '50s when he was at Central Catholic, and I used to joke in the '90s that I suspected that he was the last guy to give the floor a good, thorough scrubbing.

Although I attended my first screening at the Guild in 1990 (Spike Lee's Mo' Better Blues), I most remember the Guild from the several years in the late '90s and early '00s I spent reviewing movies. For much of that time, it was home to the Northwest Film Center, which besides great year-round programming of classic films, documentaries and such, produces the Portland International Film Festival. Each February, about a week before the festival began, I would be there for a succession of matinee preview screenings for press, watching two or sometimes three movies there a day. (Among my favorites were In the Mood for Love, Memento, and When the Rain Lifts.)

Guild Theatre sign, photo courtesy Mokolabs via Flickr 

I also remember speaking alongside Oregon Symphony conductor Murray Sidlin at the Guild the night before Thanksgiving in 2001, about the relationship between comedy and tragic historic events. Our talk had been paired with the Ernst Lubitsch classic To Be Or Not To Be with Jack Benny. Unfortunately Sidlin didn't find very funny some of the satirical headlines I read from The Onion about the September 11 attacks. ("Hijackers Surprised To Find Selves In Hell", "U.S. Vows To Defeat Whoever It Is We're At War With")

As most of us know from experience, single-screen movie houses have a special ambiance. Most of the surviving ones are rough around the edges. The Guild certainly was. But the red velvet curtains and squeaky reclining chairs, the dark setting pierced by projector light: it added up to something deeper and more special than the sum of its parts. Old movie houses are at once vast and intimate, dingy and grand. I like to think of cities as collections of different kinds of buildings and places. Of course not all of our cultural past can be preserved, but I don't think it's so unreasonable for a city of Portland's size to support one old such theater.

My first time at the Guild 

The Guild was never the most exceptional local movie house, but it's the last of a breed. Perhaps it's a bit of a pipe dream for an arts organization most people have never heard of to turn around a decrepit old theater when it has no money and the theater occupies prime downtown real estate. But one often hears that a strength of Portland's broader arts community is its collaborative spirit and ingenuity amidst limited benefaction and financial support. Might the Guild, and what it stands for in our local cultural and interior architectural history, be worth rallying around?

Adams, Blazers on Rose Quarter past, future

L-R: Randy Gragg, Sam Adams, J. Isaac, Rick Potestio, Sarah Mensah. Photo by Brian Libby 

Last night's Bright Lights talk about the Rose Quarter development, hosted by Portland Monthly editor Randy Gragg and featuring Mayor Adams and three members of the Trail Blazers team, was both encouraging and, at times, a little baffling.

The talk began with an explanation from Gragg about why the two non-Blazer finalists for the Memorial Coliseum renovation - the VMAAC (Veterans' Memorial Arts & Athletic Center) and the MARC (Memorial Athletic Recreation Complex) - were not participating. "For tonight it’s both broader and more specific," he said. Gragg mentioned three decisions coming up that needed vetting: the expiration of the Blazers’ Coliseum development rights in 2011, whether Urban Renewal Area funds from other districts should be used here, and whether the Convention Center URA should be reshaped in 2011 to include the Rose Quarter.

Gragg then invited Portland State University professor and historian Carl Abbot to give a brief refresher talk on the 100 years of history that predated construction of the Rose Quarter. This parcel has always had value as high ground, Abbot explained: a peninsula of higher land between Sullivan’s gulch and the bottom lowlands. “It was one of the few places where dry land came down to the river on the east side.”

Then, with the addition of streetcar lines in 1904, the future Rose Quarter area became a cross section of two principal arterials: Broadway running east-west and Interstate Avenue (then Portland's principal highway) running north-south. The Broadway Bridge construction in 1912 made Broadway a commercial corridor. As Portland developed a working waterfront in the 20th century, the mixed-income and mixed-race neighborhood of Lower Albina flourished here. Approaching and during World War II, industrial jobs helped Portland's African-American population grow by tenfold, from two thousand to 20,000. After the war, like most American cities, Portland added freeways (Interstate 5) and huge urban renewal projects (Memorial Coliseum). These had value, but at the great price of destroying a once thriving neighborhood.

I've been to several Gragg-hosted panel discussions over the years, and they almost always start with each of three or four speakers giving presentations, and then a discussion finally at the end.

So next Mayor Adams was introduced to the crowd, but he had a message of his own to deliver before sitting down with Gragg.

First, the mayor paid tribute. "It’s with a great amount of reverence and humility that we have to approach this," Adams said. "Reverence in that this was once a functioning neighborhood…and reverence for the fact that this part of the city includes the displacement of African American Portlanders who had not much of a toe hold of any sort of security in this city for very long—except for this neighborhood."

Some of Adams' following comments were the most controversial of the evening. The mayor asserted that he was not blindsided by opposition to demolishing Memorial Coliseum for a baseball stadium last year.

2009 Rose Parade at Memorial Coliseum, photo by Brian Libby 

"When we were looking to site a new triple-A ballpark, I was a strong advocate for it to go in the Rose Quarter," he said. "It was really a great place to put it. But when our charrette of people got together and said the only way to site it was to tear down Memorial Coliseum, I said after two days…that this would be very controversial, but I wanted to honor their work and get the word out for public input."

“I did not support tearing down Memorial Coliseum but I thought the discussion was a good and healthy one.”

Many of us were shocked that the Mayor argued this was all part of his master plan. Gragg followed up by asking, "The  process the way you portrayed it was very intentional and methodical. But you were a bit blindsided by the reaction against putting the stadium there, weren't you?"

"No," Adams insisted. "If you were there at the charrette…I told people in the room this was going to be controversial. It was as contentious as I predicted it would be."

I'm sure the mayor and his advisors are smarter than me when it comes to politics; Adams has a limitless passion for ideas. But I'd have advised the mayor to demonstrate a bit more humility about the journey of the past 15 months. We've all had a learning experience, and I would bet that includes the mayor as well.

Gragg then asked Adams about the now-controversial recent decision to dive into generating three finalists for the Coliseum commission only to set aside two of the finalists. The Mayor indicated that this, too, was all part of the plan.

"Absolutely," he said. "It was important that we only get it to the point of being half baked because we needed the ideas of the district to inform the ideas about the coliseum and do diligence on what was really realistic for the future of this building."

I'm not saying Mayor Adams is wrong or that he's lying. But his version of the last year and a half of wrestling and debate over Memorial Coliseum is very different from the memory that most of us have. That Adams was supportive of the Coliseum all along is a very shocking revelation that's difficult to believe. But the important thing is that he supports it now.

"There have been press reports about it being halted," Adams continued. "But we’re going to take the most inspired but doable ideas out of Memorial Coliseum, look at the district and come back to the Coliseum. I realize it’s tough to track. This kind of negotiation usually happens behind the scenes. At one time people were surprised when it was going to be a big box. One of the lessons I learned was it needed to happen in the daylight, to look at all the ideas and take them seriously."

“I told [the Stakeholder Advisory Committee] at the beginning we were going to come up with some half baked ideas of the Memorial Coliseum and let a discussion of the Rose Quarter inform the discussion about the Coliseum and vice versa. You’re going to have to cover the same waterfront of issues if this is going to go forward. You couldn’t do one in isolation, but they were so big you had to look at them apart.”

"Because there’s so much emotional attachment to the Coliseum and the Rose Quarter, for some, that passion presented itself with people with very firm and confident ideas on what the future for Memorial Coliseum should be and what the future of the rq should be. In my time I’ve heard ideas that have run the gamut. So I knew it was important to let people present, and that the good, doable ideas, no matter where they came from, we’d try to move those ideas forward. That’s why we had such an odd, open process move forward."

Rose Quarter map, courtesy Portland Development Commission 

Talking about the Rose Quarter moving forward, Adams had some potentially encouraging signs. "Inspired by the Coliseum itself, it’s an opportunity for us to have a stand up neighborhood that is modern in its form," he explained of tentative design plans. "It’s a chance for us to break from the re-creation of past forms and create a new form that’s inspired by the Coliseum itself."

Considering that the Blazers' plans for the district, tagged "Jumptown", seemed by their first released rendering to be built in a cloying neo-historic style, the team's plans have come a long way. But the Blazers, for all their faults, have one thing over Adams: they freely admitted to changing their thinking according to public input.

"We’ve changed our approach from what we initially thought about the coliseum and the larger district," Isaac said. "But we’re still in the middle of this and we’re still looking for input."

"If there’s one message that we would want you to take home with you tonight, it’s that this district can be whatever you want and we want it to be. The potential hasn’t been captured yet. We want the district to reflect how Portland is changing. It’s got to embody the values that make Portland different."

Isaac also argued for the Coliseum to remain an arena, not for architectural reasons but for business ones.

"We feel like an arena function is a benefit to this community that is very little known. About half a million people a year come into the coliseum. We still have those graduations, and winter hawk games. And we bring major events to town because we have two arenas. It functions well and brings activity to the community. We wanted to add to it rather than to take away."

Isaac was then joined by Rick Potestio, the ultra-talented Portland architect who may be leading the Blazers' Rose Quarter design plans long with Nike's Tinker Hatfield and Baltimore-based firm Design Collective (Cordish's longtime partner).

Host Randy Gragg at Bright Lights. Photo by Brian Libby 

“The Rose Quarter’s potential is based on its connection to the rest of the city," Potestio said. "It's the best located opportunity the city has to bring a vibrant neighborhood into connection with our waterfront.” He went on to emphasize its connections not just to North and Northeast Portland neighborhoods and the Lloyd District, but also Chinatown, Old Town and the Pearl District across the river. Most of all, though, he emphasized the river. "This gives an unprecedented opportunity to create a vibrant riverfront experience, something we’ve tried in the rest of the city but have really been yet to achieve," he added. "It has incredible proximity to all modes of transportation. The southern edge is an important intersection of light rail system, the north side will have the first streetcar line on the east side, and the fact that this is a nexus of bike routes is really significant." Potestio has long been an avid cyclist.

"I also imagine a future with high speed rail and water taxies," the architect continued. "High speed rail could be adjacent to if not within the Rose Quarter. "And parks and public spaces need to be an integral aspect. And the Rose Quarter was once part of of city street grid. While it’s not possible to recreate that, we have the opportunity to create a series of blocks and streets that are intimate and human in scale."

The Blazers' chief marketing office, Sarah Mensah, also joined the discussion. She walked the audience through a huge array of ideas being considered for the Rose Quarter: a farmers market, retail pods and food carts (“pop-up retail”), music and arts, local and regional microbreweries & wineries, housing. "We’ve got to figure out to make the rose quarter an accessible and desirable place to live, and not just to visit," she said. "When people live there, they tend to spend time there. The same with office space. It will be a critical component to a mixed use development." She also mentioned one or more hotels.

A skeptic might argue that these are all just seductive keywords: "organic", "local", "brewpubs", "food carts", "river", and that Mensah was just forging a superficial relationship to things that define us.

Rose Quarter topographical map, image courtesy Portland Development Commission 

Something else Mensah said could be even more important: "This does not need to be a single-source developer either. That’ snot traditionally how it’s been in Portland."

Of course the other piece of this puzzle is the Cordish Company, the Baltimore-based developer the Blazers are partnering with on the Rose Quarter development. Cordish has taken a barrage of local criticism based on the company's proclivity for developing chain-oriented places with an antiseptic feel that feels more suburban and mall-like than befits a central urban area. But as Gragg pointed out, Cordish also has designed places more urban and less dissimilar from what Portland wants. 

"Which Cordish are we going to get?" Gragg asked Isaac and Mensah.

"They recognize Portland is different from any other market," Isaac answered. "They get that something that worked somewhere else might not work here."

"We get what we deserve," Mensa added. "At the end of the day, the city and PDC are setting the parameters here. We’ve got specific goals in place that we want to follow. We’re comfortable that they want to be successful. The last thing they want to do is invest in a project like this and have it not be accepted by the city in the future."

"I’m not for or against Cordish," Adams said, "but I think we can get a little provincial. Remember it a was local developer that a few years ago wanted to add big-box retail in the Coliseum." He was referring to Brewery Blocks and South Waterfront developer Gerding Edlen.

One Center Court from Memorial Coliseum, photo by Brian Libby 

Ultimately the evening's talk was just that: talk. How the process unfolds from here will be the proof.

Adams, despite perplexing the audience with his claims that he never wanted to tear down the Coliseum, has embraced a contemporary, mixed-use vision for the Rose Quarter that includes a functioning, restored MC that is retained as an arena. That's good - credit to the Mayor for that. 

The Blazers say the right things about adding a variety of functions from food carts to plazas to a riverfront with water taxis. For all of Paul Allen's Nixonian isolation, the Portland-based Blazer staff do listen to the community and are rooted here. The organization, to its credit, has also come a long way in its thinking about the district. Yet can we trust the organization to let Rick Potestio's considerable talents lead the way and to deliver on its other promises? Can we get Cordish to develop something contrary to most of their portfolio? It's hard to say. My inclination is to have a blend of trust and skepticism, and to hold all these players accountable every step of the way.

Kicking off the Rose Quarter conversation

Rose Quarter riverfront, photo by Brian Libby 

On Monday, July 12, the Bright Lights discussion series from Portland Monthly magazine and the City Club will present a talk about the future of the Rose Quarter, hosted by the magazine's editor, Randy Gragg, and featuring Mayor Sam Adams and Trail Blazers vice president of business development J.E. Isaac.

"Sam will talk about process moving forward. J will talk about their programming concepts for the coliseum and the quarter in concert," Gragg explained in a Thursday phone conversation. "This is intended to be an unofficial kickoff to basically re-examine the problem and what’s on the table in terms of money, what’s on the table in terms of how far they want to go."

So far the city's Portland Development Commission-led process has focused on Memorial Coliseum. But now attention is being turned to the overall district. It's too bad the Coliseum and the Rose Quarter are being looked at separately, but that's one of the many difficulties that have been inherent to the process so far, from a lack of budget consciousness to a discouraging of professional design expertise. But it's encouraging to see the city is finally ready to take a holistic look at the Rose Quarter.

"Basically the Blazers have had the development rights to the Quarter since they built the Rose Garden," Gragg added. "I think this is a bit of a moment of recognizing that it’s not just about the building. It has to work in consort with the rest of the Quarter. Whatever you do with the Coliseum can’t be done in isolation."

Speaking of isolation, it's worth pointing out who won't be a guest of Gragg's for the Monday conversation: the other two finalists besides the Blazers that were selected by the city's Stakeholder Advisory Committee process: the Memorial Athletic Recreation Complex (MARC) and the Veterans Memorial Arts & Athletic Complex (VMAAC). Even though as a staunch Coliseum preservationist I'm glad to see the city possibly moving away from the two plans that would have gutted the building and cost exponentially more than the city can afford, one can certainly see why the MARC and VMAAC proponents would feel angry about being marginalized after all that effort to generate their proposals.

That said, perhaps there is still room for a portion of either the MARC or VMAAC proposals or both - simply in places other than Memorial Coliseum. As I and others have said for over a year now, since the Coliseum was first threatened by a ludicrously ill advised minor league baseball stadium plan, there is huge opportunity to transform the Rose Quarter into a vibrant, mixed-use district: but that opportunity shouldn't begin with ruining the best thing the Rose Quarter has going. Instead, imagine new facilities along the riverfront, or on the site of two giant Rose Quarter above-ground parking garages, or on the site of One Center Court's hideous above-ground parking garage, in the huge exhibition hall underneath the Coliseum's entry plaza.

Rose Garden and Rose Quarter from Memorial Coliseum, photo by Brian Libby 

I also can't help but wonder: the Vera Katz Eastbank Esplanade extends from OMSI in the south to the edge of the Rose Quarter in the north. Wouldn't it be ideal to extend the Esplanade so it runs past the Steel Bridge and the Rose Quarter, continuing on to at least the Broadway Bridge? This way pedestrians could walk to the district pleasantly from virtually anywhere downtown or in Southeast. 

Last week on Portland Arts Watch, Barry Johnson offered some ideas about what the process needs:

First, any urban planning solution to the Rose Quarter's 'dead zone' problem should be part of an overall plan for the area surrounding the Rose Quarter, especially the blocks north of Broadway, along Williams and Vancouver streets,  and the Lloyd District. The Rose Quarter needs to be connected to these areas in some way to be successful at anything it attempts to do. Second and related, the neighborhoods nearest the Rose Quarter, including the River District across the Willamette River, needed to be consulted.

For the past year with private development at a near standstill, public projects like the Columbia Crossing bridge and the Rose Quarter have garnered all the more attention. The Columbia Crossing is a disaster waiting to happen, with the process hijacked by state transportation departments and flying in the face of local values. The Rose Quarter could just as easily become a failure - or more accurately, remain a failure - but there is also no reason why it can't be a great success.

It's true that the Portland Development Commission can sometimes be a detrimental force just like state governments are doing with the CRC; the agency has a history of favoring process for process sake - a parade of community members talking rather than an investment in great designers. Even so, at least PDC is of Portland, stocked with people who understand the city and live it every day. The wild card in that sense may become The Cordish Company, the Baltimore developer that the Trail Blazers have so far insisted on making their partner. Would Cordish be able to develop a Rose Quarter that is truly expressive and representative of Portland? It won't happen simply by stocking local businesses in a neo-historic brick building made to ape jazz clubs of a half-century ago. Whomever the developer is, they need talented planners, architects and other designers involved.

We also have to figure out funding. Gragg said Mayor Adams will be largely talking about the process moving forward. Perhaps the biggest aspect of the process will be the question of where the money comes from. The city has a very small amount of budget to devote to the Rose Quarter and the restoration of Memorial Coliseum unless the city is able to draw from urban renewal funds allotted to the Convention Center Urban Renewal Area and/or the Interstate Urban Renewal Area. But it's been an ongoing open question as to what funds will be drawn from where, and what impact the loss of those funds might have on these urban renewal areas.

Another way the City of Portland can bring clarity to the Rose Quarter redevelopment process is to hasten a decision on the future of the Portland Public Schools site that lies just across NE Broadway from the Rose Quarter. Will it be a place where we can build mixed-use housing and a new neighborhood? Because housing is the primary component needed in making the Rose Quarter successful. The problem with the whole area between NE Broadway, Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard and Burnside is that it is both (1) not scaled for pedestrians and (2) not home to much of any pedestrians. We can't change the fact that people coming to the Rose Garden arena for events will usually come in cars, because Trail Blazer games and concerts attract people from all over the region. You can't walk here from Newberg or Washougal, at least not in time for a 7PM tipoff. Yet if the Rose Quarter is to become a successful district, not just during events but when there aren't any, we need to give people reason to be walking here - as in it being where their condos, apartments or even hotel rooms are.

We also need to find a way to find out if the plans being discussed will ever really happen. It's one thing to plan a holistic, vibrant neighborhood with housing and public amenities. It's another to build it. How long will it be before a transformed Rose Quarter plan is implemented? We could be talking several years. At the same time, Memorial Coliseum could be restored starting tomorrow. Upgrading its facilities is a quintessential 'shovel-ready' project even if it doesn't require a shovel.

The Bright Lights discussion will be held, as always, at the Gerding Theater in the Pearl District (SW 11th between Couch and Davis), with doors open at 5:30 and the talk beginning at 6:30pm.

Sustainable economics, temperatures and cities

Photo by Brian Libby 

This week, as Portland sees its first 90-degree temperatures of the year, recent media stories testify to how the way out of the Great Recession is through sustainability, alternative energy and planning.

Nathalie Weinstein reports in Tuesday’s Daily Journal of Commerce on a report released by Earth Advantage showing new homes in the Portland metro area with third-party sustainability certification were sold for more money.

Homes built between May 1, 2009 and April 30, 2010 that were certified with either Earth Advantage, Energy Star or LEED for Homes sold for 18 percent more (on average) than homes without a certification. Existing homes that received a certification sold for 23 percent more.

I’ll bet most of those green homes did not have central air conditioning. Granted, with Portland’s moderate climate it’s easier to accomplish that here and maintain comfort for all but about 11 months of the year. But could America really ever wean itself off air conditioning?

Numerous national outlets have also taken note of a new book by Stan Cox called Losing Our Cool: Uncomfortable Truths About Our Air-Conditioned World (and Finding New Ways to Get Through the Summer). In a Q&A with the National Post of Canada, Cox says air conditioning has shaped U.S. presidential politics, shifted populations, altered our sex lives and thickened our waistlines.

Cox is on to something. Between 1993 and 2005 our use of electricity [in the U.S.] for cooling residences and retail space doubled over that period and that, over that same period, more or less, we doubled our use of petroleum energy used in cooling automobiles. The mass migration that has occurred in America to Sun Belt states has been part of that phenomenon. One needs air conditioning in Las Vegas, I’d approximate, about 25 hours a day, 375 days a year. Phoenix slightly more still.

Cox isn’t suggesting we get rid of air conditioning altogether. “Focus on people cooling rather than building cooling,” he tells the Post. “An example would be going back to the single room air conditioner. Have it in one room of the house and if things get too bad, turn it on and cool the room. Rather than, imagine our current scenario, say, in the American Sunbelt, where a husband and wife get up in a 3,000 square foot air-conditioned house, get into two air-conditioned cars and commute to an office block that has been sitting there, getting cooled all night in preparation for the workday. Meanwhile, back home, that 24,000 cubic feet is being cooled with nobody in the house.”

If air conditioning isn’t as necessary or ubiquitous here, designing buildings that can survive in hot climates is still an expertise we need. Portland is a leader in sustainable design, and as much promise as their may be in solar, wind and other alternative energy, it’s through buildings that better heat and cool themselves efficiently and passively that America will wean itself from fossil fuels. 

As best I can tell, it would take an extraordinary green building to keep one cool on a 95-degree day without air conditioning.  It would require top-notch insulation, the help of external shading from trees or human-made devices.  And even then, it’s difficult to imagine just walking away from such an effective technology.  Even so, the days are gone when one can expect to simply blast refrigerated air into poorly insulated, sieve-like architecture. 

In an economic climate that is shaky at best, and with the threat of a second recessionary dip seemingly growing, green design and construction projects represent a lone bright spot amidst an industry with skyscraper-high unemployment rates.

The government has acted accordingly, with the Obama administration embracing sustainability and alternative energy endeavors. On Saturday, for example, President Obama announced that the Department of Energy will award $2 billion to two solar energy companies, Abengoa Solar and Solar Manufacturing, to build solar plants that will collectively create about 1,600 new American jobs with over 70 percent of the construction components and products manufactured in the United States.

Now more needs to be done on the single-family home front. While there are some tax incentives for items like solar hot water heaters, high-efficiency boilers, and energy-efficient windows, I can’t help but believe more could be done to encourage market transformation, such as rebates for the kind of third-party verified green homes that are already proven to hold better sale value. Or a gas tax that could be used to fund other weatherization projects at residential, commercial and institutional levels.

Make no mistake, though: There seems to be not just an economic transformation happening today but a cultural one. Take for example another article, in last Wednesday's New York Times, about how auto dealerships around the country, particularly those of domestic auto brands,  are being converted into a range of other uses. 

The Times article cited a report by CoStar, a DC-area commercial real estate research firm, that since early 2009 about 2,300 auto dealerships have closed around the country as new car sales plunged more than 40 percent and the government forced General Motors and Chrysler, to end longstanding franchise contracts. The closings put 70 million square feet of buildings and land on the market. Some of the former dealerships are becoming other auto dealerships, but others are becoming schools, retail centers, even lumber yards.

I wonder if there’s a bit of a vacuum happening here, though. Ultimately we can’t just design sustainable individual buildings; we need neighborhoods that are interconnected, where a mix of housing, retail, offices, parks and other spaces mean most anything one needs is only minutes away—and preferably by some means other than car. If all these auto dealerships are becoming available, and if the economy is transforming all kinds of other industries right now, shouldn’t there be some kind of concerted, collective effort to make sure we are planning sustainable cities as well as sustainable buildings? Sustainability-focused architects often compare an efficient building design to a living, organic organism. If that’s true for a building with scores or a few hundred people, it’s even truer for a city of millions.

Building playgrounds and removing barriers

Students at The Hand in Hand School, image courtesy Project OPENmotion 

One is in Israel, one in Portland. One has already been completed using tree branches. The other is seeking funding for its manufacture. But both are a testament to how design can be a compelling progressive force that unites people.

First, there is the project William Fritts and his partner Michelle Ricker, through their nonprofit organization Project OPENmotion, saw completed recently at The Hand in Hand School in Jerusalem. Hand in Hand is a bilingual school where Arabic, Christian and Jewish kids learn together and are taught in both Hebrew and Arabic. Fritts and Ricker tapped 12 graduate design students from the nearby Bezalel Academy, the top architecture and Design University in Israel, to corral the children and teachers and get their input on the design through a four-day workshop to generate the design and construction.

Building a playground at The Hand in Hand school, image courtesy Project OPENmotion 

"We first scoured the Jerusalem municipal tree cutting grinding facility and recycling center for the raw materials, which cost no more than the diesel to run the delivery truck from the center to the school," Fritts explains. "We used the collected sticks, branches, yucca fronds, irrigation tubing and tarps as the foundation design constraint. The K-12 kids toured us around their campus and told us of their dreams for making the place more 'playable'. The girls wanted places to chat and the boys wanted to kick a ball yet get out of the sun too. From that we all designed then built two “igloo” structures, two shade structures, a swinging hammock bench and two soccer goals. These were mostly made by the hands of over fifty K-12 kids as we guided and loosely directed."

"What we heard from both the K-12 kids and the graduate students was amazing," Fritts continues. "The little kids came in on the second and third day saying they had started gathering similar free materials in their neighborhoods to start building places to play with their friends at home. They were so happy that they could do this for free; it had not previously occurred to them. The graduate students, who were all Jewish, were struck by the way the kids from cross-cultural roots could create and work side by side in harmony with no idea that they couldn’t. Most of them had never spoken to an Arabic person before, much less an Arabic child. They said, 'If there is hope for peace in the Middle East it will come from this place and from these sorts of activities together.' This of course brought waves of emotion to us."

William Fritts and Michelle Ricker, founders of Project OPENmotion 

Fritts was trained as an architect and worked in the profession for 10 years, including work on the Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station in Antarctica, then later stints at Portland's GBD Architects and furniture manufacturer Herman Miller. After receiving an MBA, he started the interior environments and furniture company Intelligent Design in 2001; the company's first main project was providing all the furniture for the Seattle Public Library, designed by Rem Koolhaas. Later in the decade, Fritts switched focus to sustainable design and in 2007 and started the company Solidcore.

Fritts says Ricker is really the visionary behind project, which she conceived. Her expertise is in health and diet (she's a registered     dietitian) and tackling childhood obesity. The founder of a company called New and You, she has worked in a wide array of health, exercise and nutrition positions in clinical and executive levels and often lectures internationally on these topics of expertise.

Fritts says today Project OpenMotion takes up about a quarter of his time."We call OPENmotion an initiative for now," he explains. "We select four to five relevant projects per year that have the greatest potential impact on local community building, kids health effect and green design teaching using simple, found materials."

OPENmotion's current projects include a playground for the TEDxAustin festival next February, an installation for the Design Museum in Holon, Israel, and one at Wow and Flutterville here in Portland. Fritts says they are also in discussion with the Architecture + Design Museum in Los Angeles, where he is a board member.

Harper Goldberg, photo by Benjamin Brink, courtesy The Oregonian 

The other inspiring playground was inspired by one four-year-old little girl, Harper Goldberg. When she was just a few weeks old, her parents discovered that Harper suffers from Emanuel Syndrome, an exceedingly rare disorder with only 200 or so documented cases worldwide that causes severe developmental delays, rendering her unable to walk or talk.

Harper loves her neighborhood park, but she can't use the slide or climb on the play structure. But her parents hope to transform a portion of North Portland's Arbor Lodge Park into a place where Harper and children of all abilities can play together. Harper's father, Cody Goldberg, has led an effort to build a playground North Portland's Arbor Lodge Park that is accessible to children (and adults) of all abilities.

Goldberg envisions an all-inclusive play structure by Boundless Playgrounds, a Connecticut company that integrates wheelchair- and walker-friendly elements into play equipment. He was inspired by a similar structure in Washington Park, the only one of its kind in Portland. Goldberg and his wife approached the Portland Bureau of Parks and Recreation and were advised to approach their local Arbor Lodge Neighborhood Association first. When they did, "I attended in January and in February made a presentation asking if they would endorse the concept," Goldberg recalled in a phone interview. "That night they actually voted overwhelmingly to support it and said they’d like to make it a priority for the community."

Since then, the Goldbergs have formed a nonprofit organization to help raise funds for the park. After a May 2 article about the effort in The Oregonian, "We got a flood of donations even though we hadn’t started our capitol campaign," Goldberg added. RFPs have since been sent out to find an entity to build the customized playground by Boundless Playgrounds and create an appropriate setting. They hope to have the playground completed in time for Harper's birthday next year on July 8 (which she happens to share with my grandma).

Play facility by Boundless Playgrounds at Hoover Elementary School, Medford 

How will the playground look? Goldberg says it will not just be accessible but inclusive. "The key difference between accessible and inclusive is it invites people of all abilities to get everywhere. Someone in a wheelchair can get to the same point where someone climbing a wall together. You can play togethet no matter what your abilities are. The keys are ramped access to the highest point and smoothed surfacing, usually rubberized. There are also a lot of other play elements. We're adding some of these spacially interesting designs that kids with autism are said to respond to, for example. There are these cool looking mosaic tiles that have play elements on them. There’s a lot of other play elements at a level for someone in a wheel chair, like a raised sandbox."

"What’s important for us about this project is first and foremost it’s giving our daughter a place to play. But in the broader sense, it’s sending a message to all people that inclusion is important. It’s inviting people of all needs into everything that’s happening."

North Portland Community Works, a local nonprofit serving organizations in the area, is providing fiscal sponsorship, or legal and tax-exempt status, to Cody's organization, Harper's Playground, which he started this year. The project is expected to cost about $200,000, based on $100,000 for the equipment, $40-50,000 for surfacing, and other expenses. Harper's Playground has received a $10,000 pledge from Reliable Credit Association, but overall only 7.5 percent of the cost has been raised. Here's hoping they capture the rest of their needed funds soon.

Goldberg has also come to believe that the playground sought for Harper and other special needs kids overlaps with larger issues of what's called universal or barrier-free design. "It starts for us with Harper and other children with other needs, but it’s grown to the Elderly and adults with special needs," he says. "Most elders would benefit from a sloping ramp to the top, to be able to engage with their grandchildren. It goes a lot further. As a person who grew up able bodied, I could play everywhere I wanted. I think all projects should now be universally designed."

More UO student projects: "Places Full of Time"

Danielle Meyers, "Layers of Time", image courtesy UO

Recently I wrote about visiting an exhibition of architecture student projects from a University of Oregon called "Experiential Harmony" taught by Kevin Valk and John Holmes of Holst Architecture. During that same visit, the work of another class, taught by Gerald Gast Ghast was also on display.

The class was called "Places Full of Time" and students were tasked with creating projects of urban regeneration. "During the nine-month process," it explains in the class syllabus, "students select the final 'capstone' project of their professional education, conduct in-depth research, prepare a design program, and develop rigorous design studies that include a high level of tectonic development. The emphasis of the studio is development of a comprehensive architectural project backed by a creative and rigorous research effort."

The syllabus description of the "Places Full of Time" concept and assignment follows:

"Renzo Piano recently remarked that the projects he found most stimulating were those with a depth of physical and cultural history.  They often require reworking or adding to an existing building, transforming a derelict site to create a renewed place, or recovering the roots of a culture that is associated with the history of a site or neighborhood."

"From the late 1960’s, the influence of Jane Jacobs’ prolific book The Death and Life of Great American Cities, the growing interest in preservation and conservation, and the environmental movement have all converged to orient urban architecture toward a more time-layered approach."  

"In his book and drawings, Radical Reconstruction, Lebbeus Woods advocates retaining scars of the past, including tragic ones with unpleasant memories.  In the German Ruhr, one of the most environmentally-devastated industrial districts in the world, an ambitious regeneration effort emphasizes retaining the archeology of abandoned factories and industrial sites as part of  a “green” environmental and economic revitalization at a regional scale.  Closer to home, revival of historic public places, cultural landmarks, and neighborhoods that experienced post-WWII decline, have invigorated city centers with new energy.  Sensitive community-based efforts in small rural places, exemplified by the work of Rural Studio in Alabama, demonstrate that exceptional architecture need not be limited to high-end budgets and new signature museums by star architects.

"We take it for granted that historically-significant buildings and districts are worth preserving, but what about the archeology of more ordinary urban places, sites and buildings?"

I particularly like the idea of this class because I've long felt that too many old buildings, particularly historically protected ones, are restricted in the ability of architects to imagine new futures for these structures as hybrid architecture. But the examples of projects that have become new-old buildings includes some of the most impressive architecture in the world, such as Norman Foster's renovated Reichstag in Berlin, or Herzog & De Meuron's Tate Modern museum in London.

Danielle Meyers, "Layers of Time", image courtesy UO

One of the student projects, that of Danielle Meyers, is an adaptive re-use of the Pabst Brewery complex in  Milwaukee, Wisconsin (pictured at top and above). One can't help but see the similarities to the Brewery Blocks here in Portland, the adaptation of the former Blitz-Weinhard brewery into a vibrant mixed-use area.

 

Jessica Kreitzberg, "A Building That Heals", images courtesy UO

Another student, Jessica Kreitzberg, created  "A Building That Heals", situated in the Old Town-Chinatown district of  Portland. The project is a medical center combining western and eastern medicine.

 

 
Nicholas Lopez, "San Francisco Maritime Museum", images courtesy UO 

Nicholas Lopez created the "San Francisco Maritime Museum" project along Pier 70. It's an adaptive reuse of the historic Union Ironworks industrial district, the oldest surviving industrial district in San Francisco.

Kristopher Celtnieks, "Relief School, Philadelphia", images courtesy UO  

Kristopher Celtnieks designed "Relief School, Philadelphia", a demountable school and building system for temporary use when inner city schools are closed for renovation, overloaded or stressed with unexpected events. The great thing about these student projects is the creators have license to dream and imagine without real-world constraints. Like a lot of these projects, I couldn't help but feel a little seduced by Celtnieks' images.

 

 
Ellen Hagen, "Sustainability Integration Learning Center", images courtesy UO 

Ellen Hagen designed the "Sustainability Integration Learning Center", located along the Ballard Locks in  Seattle. I enjoyed how the building seems to integrate well with the landscape.

 

Stephen Varady, "Bootstrap Union", images courtesy UO 

Stephen Varady's project, "Bootstrap Union", is a business incubator for the Detroit inner city. And of course in Detroit, America's Pompeii, there is ample need for a business incubator, and lots of opportunity for adaptive reuse. Although I wonder if the word "Bootstrap" is ideal in the title, for the phrase "pulling yourself up by the bootstraps" has long been a kind of conservative code for arguing against public assistance and equality programs such as welfare and affirmative action. Chances are people in Detroit getting small-business assistance wouldn't be this sensitive, but a building title should always send the right message.

 

 
Tony Walsh, "Portland Adaptable Housing", image courtesy UO 

Tony Walsh was one of the students contributing a locally focused design.  "Portland Adaptable Housing" is targeted for Northeast Portland.

These are the final projects for these students as they complete architecture school. Most all of them will face grim prospects as they enter the job market amidst a building industry that has largely collapsed from its boom of the 2000s. There won't be lots of half-block condo buildings or office towers to work on. They'll have to possess not only ingenuity and talent but perseverance. But we can't ask design students from this class anything more than they've already given: their passion, their ideas, and themselves. Congrats, gang, and Go Ducks!