Jack Ramsay at Maurice Lucas memorial service (photo by Brian Libby)
Thirty three years ago, my mom boycotted Philadelphia brand cream cheese. It was June of 1977, and the Trail Blazers were playing the Philadelphia 76ers for the NBA championship. I thought of my mom yesterday at the memorial service for Maurice Lucas at Memorial Coliseum, not because she was a big basketball fan, but because she wasn't. See, that's the impact the Blazers' championship team had back then on Portland. Winning the title wasn't just a sports achievement, but a watershed cultural moment for the city.
Admittedly, this is a post about a man first and architecture a distant second. But the experience of saying goodbye to Maurice Lucas in the building where the Blazers won that championship seemed abundantly fitting, not only because of the history made there in 1977 but because, in its expansive volumes of glass and light, Memorial Coliseum has a powerful spiritual quality. After all, it was designed as a memorial to veterans, a place where 360 degrees of glass view symbolized the overcoming of loss by opening yourself up to the sky.
Lucas was more than just a player on the Blazers' championship team. He was more than just the leading scorer in that historic six-game series against the 76ers. Lucas was, as current Blazers' coach Nate McMillan said in his remarks at yesterday's memorial, "a mighty man." He had a reputation in the 1970s as one of the toughest players in the league, but Lucas was no bully. "He bullied bullies," McMillan added.
Memorial Coliseum concourse (photo by Brian Libby)
When Lucas came to Portland, the Blazers had Bill Walton, perhaps the greatest passing center in the history of the game. But Walton was fragile and the team, in coach Jack Ramsay's words (also at yesterday's memorial), "was soft." Lucas transformed the Trail Blazers, not just in the win-loss column (the team had never made the playoffs before he arrived), but in in their sense of what was possible. The '77 Blazers squad became known not just as that year's champion, but the kind of selfless squad of role players and passers that made old-school basketball purists like Bob Knight swoon. At the same time, the big power forward was known to most who knew him as exceptionally gentle, not just for a basketball player but compared to anyone.
As it happens, the '77 Blazers were a special squad in a way that still resonates today: they were great collaborators. In Portland we don't have the financial capital of neighboring cities like Seattle and San Francisco. We don't have the rich diversity or media attention of places like New York or Los Angeles. But there is a culture of collaboration in Portland that is distinctive, and that enables our other key trait: innovation. Trail blazing.
Inspiring, moving and enriching as the Lucas memorial services was, one disappointment I experienced was seeing the Coliseum's curtain closed. After all, many of the most celebrated houses of worship designed and built in our time, such as Philip Johnson's Crystal Cathedral in California, Tadao Ando Church of the Light in Osaka or even some of Pietro Belluschi's churches here in Portland, make natural light a central ingredient of the experience. But a Trail Blazers executive explained to me shortly before the Lucas memorial that they'd chosen to close the Coliseum curtain because of the extensive video and photographs planned for the service. Had the curtain been open, it would have been harder to see the screen.
The incorporation of multimedia is actually one of the other major trends in ecclesiastical design. Increasingly it's not the sculptural quality of the interior or exterior architecture that acts as a transformative, spiritual experience, but instead the use of video, pictures and other imagery. I think of a modest church in my hometown of McMinnville that a few years ago renovated the former tri-cinema complex. They made a house of worship out of a concrete box that was a movie theater. The only exterior change was a faux-historic awning added out front. I've always wondered if they retained the projection booths.
Jack Ramsay at Maurice Lucas memorial service (photo by Brian Libby)
So in a certain respect, the Lucas funeral demonstrates a prime dilemma of designing contemporary worship spaces: what part of the experience, the brick and mortar or the virtual, is meant to help lift your soul?
Meanwhile, despite the sad reality that the great Maurice Lucas left us way too soon, we can all give thanks for the fact that he, like so many, embraced Portland when given the opportunity. And while attending the Lucas memorial in Memorial Coliseum helped give the moment a special resonance, Lucas himself was the man of the hour, reminding us to bully the bullies. And if I ate bagels, I'd have mine today without the cream cheese in Big Luke's honor.
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