Portland Architecture

10 years of architecture journalism (part one: 2001-2005)

Frank Lloyd Wright's Gordon House (photo by Brian Libby)

BY BRIAN LIBBY

In late December of 2000, about a week before Christmas, my boss informed me that my job was being eliminated. "But I actually think you're going to thank me," she said. After all, it was clear that what I really wanted to do more than work in an office was to be a full-time freelance journalist. And so in January of 2001, after a few years of part-time writing, I took the plunge to try and make a living off journalism.

I'd started writing in the mid-1990s with the goal of being a film critic. Cinema, after four years at New York University, was my greatest passion, and I held writers like Roger Ebert, Wesley Morris, Anthony Lane and even locals like Willamette Week's Dale Basye in great esteem. For seven years, it was a great privilege and joy to write about movies for WW, but toward the end the glitter had worn off a bit - probably while visiting a suburban multiplex for a preview screening of, say, Patch Adams or Freddy Got Fingered, with local pop-station DJs on the microphone, revving up a packed audience with free t-shirts.

The last day job I had before going to work for myself as a freelance journalist had been in the architecture industry, and that planted the seed which would transform my career to writing much more about architecture and design than film or the other myriad topics I was covering in those early years: food, business, science, sports, travel, breaking news. Architecture was, like film, interesting as a collaborative art form. It could be the result of a single artistic vision, with the architect like a film director, but buildings, also like feature films, require big budgets and many collaborators. Thus, we have a blend of artfulness and pragmatism, a discipline where some create basic, rote worlds and some create vivid, imaginative works, and where there are successes and failures in each approach - depending on the execution.

Although blogging here at Portland Architecture has been part of my job since 2006, I'd like to talk here about some of the articles I wrote for other publications in the last ten years. (A more complete list can be found here.) Hopefully this doesn't come across as self promotion or navel gazing, but rather a kind of thirty thousand foot view of the decade in design. That said, it's a long enough conversation that I've decided to break this up into two posts, starting with the first half of the decade.

2001

The first major project I wrote about (and for three publications - Architectural Record, Architecture Week and Willamette Week) was the Gordon House, the lone building in Oregon designed by Frank Lloyd Wright. The house was situated along the Willamette River in suburban Charbonneau, oriented to the water and a postcard view of Mount Hood. But it became threatened with demolition when a new set of owners, completely unaware of Wright or the house's pedigree, bought it solely for the purpose of tearing down and building a larger new home. Ultimately a compromise was reached: the house was moved about 20 miles south to the Oregon Garden near Silverton. The Gordon House isn't the same without the site it was designed for, but today more people are able to see it than ever before; and despite being cut into pieces and reassembled, the house is also arguably in its best condition since original construction.

Another article, for Metropolis, profiled a pair of Portland based location scouts for movies and commercials. What stuck with me was the fact that modernism is all over our various screens, especially in TV commercials; watch for it and you'll see. But to the general public, or at least the builders who supply them, neo-historic designs are much more popular.

adidas Village (photo by Brian Libby)

Comparing the suburban new construction of the Nike World Campus and inner-city urban renovation (from a hospital) of the adidas America corporate headquarters was the subject of another Metropolis article. I came away impressed with both places for different reasons. The Thompson-Vaivoda (now TVA Architects) design for Nike's headquarters is exceptionally impressive as from-scratch place making, all pristine whiteness and a man made lake, even if it seems to isolate itself too much from the surrounding urban fabric (Nike even went to court to prove it's not officially in Beaverton). I can no longer write about adidas objectively, because my partner works for the company now, but BOORA Architects' transformation of the old Kaiser hospital into a colorful set of buildings has always seemed successfully executed in my mind, particularly the multi-toned facades, an engaging embodiment of an athletic company.

2002

Apparently my skills as soothsayer are mixed. When given the enticing opportunity by the Daily Journal of Commerce to choose a group of "All-Star Architects of Tomorrow", I chose some great minds but not necessarily people destined to dominate the profession - not if you measure it in completed buildings, anyway.

The future stars I chose were Randy Higgins, Stuart Emmons, Mark Engberg, Michael Czysz, and Jeff Lamb. Higgins began at the now much-acclaimed Holst Architecture, but is now working in retail design. It's really Holst that has taken off in terms of buildings. Emmons and his firm, Emmons Architects, contributed over the decade some successful projects like an affordable housing complex in Vancouver and master planning for South Waterfront (much of which, had the developers followed, would have made for a better neighborhood), but the economy has taken its toll and not a lot of large scale work has followed. Emmons also co-led (in full disclosure, with yours truly and a few others) the seemingly now successful effort to save Memorial Coliseum.

Czsyz is becoming best known not as an architect (although his firm, Architropolis, did design Lenny Kravitz's house) but as a motorcycle (or "MotoCzsyz") designer. Engberg's firm, Colab, is still kicking, most notably as a recent local partner with Charles Rose Architects on the Oregon College of Art & Craft expansion. Lamb has bounced from BOORA to Sienna Architecture to his own firm, then back to BOORA and back to Sienna and, after Sienna closed, its successor: V3 Studio. Lamb almost saw a tower in Goose Hollow of his design (with Sienna) constructed, before the economy and design commission leanings contributed to its cancelation and the firm's demise. But Lamb did have a guiding design hand in BOORA's excellent Metropolitan Condos.

This was also the first full year after the 9/11 terrorist attacks. I wrote one story for a now defunct construction magazine for an issue just a few months afterward that actually asked if the era of tall buildings was over. And in an interview with architect César Pelli for Salon, he made the then almost sacrilege (given that Ground Zero was practically still smoldering) argument that lower Manhattan's skyline actually looked better without the World Trade Center towers.

2003

My favorite article of this year was a profile of Allied Works founding principal and guiding architect Brad Cloepfil for the New York Times. At that point in his career, Cloepfil was particularly being considered a rising star on the national scene, winning design competitions over international "starchitects" like Zaha Hadid and Rem Koolhaas. He'd designed the acclaimed Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis and was getting ready for two even higher-profile commissions: the Museum of Art & Design on New York's high profile Columbus Circle (at the southwest corner of Central Park in midtown Manhattan) and a major expansion to the Seattle Art Museum.

Allied Works' Wieden + Kennedy building (photo by Brian Libby)

"Born and reared in a Portland suburb, Mr. Cloepfil was educated at the University of Oregon in Eugene, where he fell under the spell of the legendary architect Louis Kahn while studying under a professor who had worked with Kahn," I wrote. "Mr. Cloepfil himself worked for the Swiss architect Mario Botta, whose designs Allied Works' projects also recall. But Mr. Cloepfil said his greatest influence was the picturesque Oregon landscape. 'It's a very romantic perception of space,' he explained. 'I think it frees you up, and allows you to think of architecture as something more than objects.'"

Also that year for the New York Times I was able to write about the operators of the Seattle and Portland BetterBricks daylighting labs. (More full disclosure: BetterBricks is now a sponsor of this blog.) Particularly in the case of the Portland and Eugene lab's operator, G.Z. "Charlie" Brown, it was incredibly illuminating (pun intended) learning just how much natural light affects our body chemistry. As other studies have shown, schoolchildren earn higher average test scores in naturally lit classrooms. Office employees working near windows take less break time and call in sick less often than their counterparts in windowless spaces. Even checkstands under skylights were found to register higher sales.

Continuing the green design and daylighting theme, I also wrote for Metropolis about a trio of sustainable schools BOORA designed in three Oregon small towns: The Dalles, Independence, and Clackamas.

Heinz Rudolf at Portland's daylighting lab (photo courtesy Architectural Lighting)

In a Metropolis story, I wrote about a Willamette Vallery winery, Sokol Blosser, that hired SERA Architects to design a building built into a hillside for storing wine, taking advantage of the ground's more moderate temperature fluctuations to keep the bottles cool naturally. It was one of many projects that found SERA, once known for historic renovations, becoming one of the city's top sustainable design firms.

2004

Perhaps it's because I used to live with a punk rock band. But I've always been a fan of architects who develop their own projects. My Metropolis feature on this topic was called, "Architects: How to Find the Perfect Developer - Hire Yourself!" In addition to designers from Miami, San Diego and New York, I profiled designer Kevin Cavenaugh, who has won local AIA awards for neighborhood mixed-use projects like the Ode To Rose's building and the Box + One Lofts.

Also that year, I wrote for Metropolis about the Museum Place building in the West End and, more specifically, the Safeway occupying its ground floor. It doesn't sound so revolutionary now, but Museum Place was the Safeway chain's first foray into this type of mixed-use urban building program with housing located above. Because Museum Place was also LEED-rated development, the editors chose a cheeky title referring to how the chain was "Redefining the term 'Green' Grocer".

2005

Things were particularly busy halfway through the decade as the economy boomed. One favorite story of mine was a sort of informal jury review of the Portland Art Museum's renovated Mark Building for The Oregonian, featuring architects Michael Tingley, Marcy McInelly, and Paul Falsetto (experts in arts facilities, planning and historic preservation, respectively). The verdict to Ann Beha Architects' design was a mostly positive one, particularly in reaction to the ample new exhibit space for the museum and the renovation of the former Masonic temple's mural-clad grand ballroom. That said, the trio and I all felt that the underground entry route was convoluted, there could have been more done to embrace the outside view, and that the new glass form protruding from the south facade was somehow too jarring and not bold enough.

Inside PAM's Mark Building (photo by Brian Libby)

Also for The Oregonian, I spoke to volunteers from Architects Without Borders (Cynthia Bankey and John Perry) who had visited the Mississippi coast after Hurricane Katrina to help homeowners assess damage and, in many cases, just listen.

"I remember when we started, the volunteer coordinator told us, 'The assessments of the homes are important, but it's also really important to just hear people's stories and talk to them," Bankey told me. "So every hour we'd listen to a new story from different people. It was very personal, a lot of social work really. And it took its toll on us."

"In terms of the psychological health of the people that have been through this, I think this period, about three months afterward, is in some ways the hardest," Perry added. "The adrenaline has worn off...and these people find themselves without a house and a job, but they still have house payments to make."

In another story for Metropolis, I covered a fiendishly clever exterior paint job for the Pacific Northwest College of Art created by Randy Higgins. A poem by Arthur Rimbaud was translated into a language of differently sized and colored rectangles painted onto the side of the building.

Pacific NW College of Art (photo by Brian Libby)

And for Architecture Week I talked with a local legend, architect Thomas Hacker, about the Hillsdale Branch Library, one of many award winning libraries that his firm, THA Architecture, designed for Multnomah County. What a lovely little modest jewel this and Hacker's other libraries of the '90s and '00s turned out to be, a union of modern and classical architectural sensibilities, festooned in wood, concrete and glass with a bounty of natural light.

In 2005 I wrote an article for Architecture Week about the Brewery Blocks, the five-building development beside Burnside Street and Powell's Books. It probably would not be hyperbole to call this GBD Architects-designed, Gerding Edlen-developed project the most successful green mixed use project in Portland of this decade.

About this time, I also began writing more for home magazines. Two homes of note from 2005 were the Watson-Tschopp House, a renovated mid-century modern house originally constructed in the 1970s, which I wrote about for Dwell, and Architecture W principal Brian White's design for expanding his own home in the West Hills, which I covered for Western Interiors + Design.

I'll save 2005-2010 for a separate post to follow, but I can already say this: my boss, whom I still think of fondly, was definitely right. Being a freelance journalist isn't for everyone. It's not especially lucrative, and future business is always relatively uncertain. That said, I feel almost as though I've been on vacation for the last decade, not because I don't work hard, but because it's a rare case of getting paid to explore what one enjoys.

Advertisement

Seeking nominations for Portland Monthly's top 20th century houses list

Pittock Mansion (photo by charlieetoona via Flickr)

For an upcoming issue in 2011, Portland Monthly magazine and its editor, former Oregonian architecture critic Randy Gragg, are planning to compose a list of the top 10 houses of the 20th century in Portland.

Selections for the list will be decided by a jury comprised of Classic Houses of Portland author William Hawkins, architect Rick Potestio, Architectural Heritage Center director Cathy Galbraith, and yours truly. But before that, the public is invited to make suggestions and arguments.

When I heard about the list, the first house that came to mind was the Watzek House, designed by the great John Yeon.

Watzek House (image courtesy University of Oregon)

In 1935, Portland lumber magnate Aubrey Watzek looked to build a house for himself and his mother, with his friend Yeon getting the job. But Watzek initially did not like the modern, non-traditional design. Instead of trying to change his mind, Yeon suggested Watzek contact Pietro Belluschi, who was then directing the AE Doyle architectural firm, the city's most accomplished at that time. But Belluschi’s design didn't impress Watzek either, so he returned to Yeon's original proposal.

Which was a good thing, because even if the design wasn't initially to the lumber baron's taste, the house would turn out an influential masterpiece of early American modernism. And all this from an architect who was just 26 years old when he finished the construction drawings in early 1937.

As Leland Roth writes in the book American Architecture, Yeon "decided to create a thoroughly modern residence, but one designed in response to the local climate rather than adhering to abstract international formulas, and he decided to exploit wood as a building material rather than steel or concrete," which had been de rigeur in most all other iterations of early 20th century modernism, a la Frank Lloyd Wright or the Bauhaus.

Watzek House (images courtesy University of Oregon)

"The result," Roth continues, "was a clustering of rooms around a central court," drawing from Asian and early ranch styles, "with low pitched roofs carried on wood supports protecting the large expanses of glass from winter rains. The house was featured in several exhibitions and publications produced by the Museum of Modern Art."

After the Watzek, John Yeon only pursued architecture in fits and starts, producing a few other houses and the Portland Oregon Visitors Center that still stands in Waterfront Park. But he largely turned to regional planning and landscape preservation, while Yeon's contemporary, Pietro Belluschi, aggressively pursued his career and went on to become a far bigger name in international architectural history.

Belluschi ought to have a few houses up for consideration on the list as well, not just because he is Portland's most acclaimed architect in history but because a couple of the houses are magnificent. Two years ago I had the good fortune to visit the circa-1948 Burkes House, where Belluschi's own family lived for many years.

Belluschi's Burkes House (photo by Brian Libby)

As Meredith Clausen writes of the Burkes in her book, Pietro Belluschi, the project "was long in gestation. The clients just before the war had decided to sell their old colonial house and build a new one; aware of the fame of the recently completed De Graaff house by the celebrated Los Angeles architect Richard Neutra in the hills south west of Portland, they decided that theirs too should be modern. The house was designed like his others to take advantage of the view while preserving privacy. facing outwards to the expansive view of the city on one side, it opened out to a secluded garden notched out of the hillside on the other. The living and dining areas were combined into one long continuous space paralelling the view, with a kitchen area set off to one side by a large brick masonry core."

"The sense of an open expansive space was enhanced by continuous cork floors throughout," Clausen adds, "and by the lush boards of the fir ceiling which continued uninterrupted through the glazing of the walls to form protective porticoes for terraces on both city and garden sides. Exteriors were of unpainted cedar, witrh smooth, flush surfaces only lightly stained and oiled. The roofline was virtually flat, with a deep fascia and wide overhangs. Mrs Burkes had much to do with this. a woman of independent mind and sophisticated in the arts, she had brought in photographs and tear sheets indicating what she wanted. It was she, according to Belluschi, who, aware of the International Style and the acclaim the Neutra house was receiving, insisted on the flat roof."

In the handful of years before and after World War II, architects based in Southern California like Richard Neutra, A. Quincy Jones and Rudolf Schindler gained wide notoriety for their modern, glassy, open-planned homes, particularly the "Case Study" houses. This vernacular, while clearly a sister of the Northwest modernism Belluschi and Yeon practiced, was less dependent on wood and instead usually favored steel and masonry. Yet both Neutra and Jones designed homes in Portland, too, and some are worth consideration for this list, particularly Neutra's Jan De Graaff House from 1940.

Neutra's Jan De Graaff House (images courtesy Triangle Modernist Houses)

"The owners were avid admirers of contemporary architecture, and they sought out Neutra, who enjoyed an international reputation," Hawkins writes. "He would design for them Portland's first residence in the style, which would house the impressive De Graaff collection of modern art and furnishings. The design that Neutra presented," in association with local architect Van Evera Bailey, has all the International style characteristics. Its flat roof, smooth walls, and continuous banks of windows are completely shorn of ornament. Detail is simplified to the extreme to obtain the tight-skinned, box-like appearance that was a quality of the style. The exterior emphasizes long horizontal bands of windows and similar expanses of vertical tongue-and-groove siding. House design had become an abstract art, relying on floating planes of varying irregularity to achieve the assymetrical balance."

Unfortunately, though, this masterful house was in the ensuing years remodeled so extensively that it has become all but unrecognizable from the original. This house hasn't been demolished, but it's no longer Neutra's design.

 Pittock Mansion (photo by Squid Viscious via Flickr)

Of course the modernism exhibited in these houses from the first half of the 20th Century is just one of many styles and idioms expressed in residential architecture. Here in Portland, like any major city, there are Victorian houses, craftsmans, Queen Annes, colonial revival, bungalows, Tudors, and much more. If we're talking about classic houses of the past, in Portland that of course starts with the Pittock Mansion.

The 22-room house, now open to the public, was designed by architect Edward Foulkes and completed in 1914. The mansion sits on 46 acres with a view of five Cascade peaks. The design includes fine plasterwork, cut and polished marbles, cast bronze, and superbly crafted hardwoods and paneling. Its progressive features included a central vacuum system, intercoms, and indirect lighting hidden in alcoves above the walls.

"It typifies the success of the nineteenth-century American entrepreneurial spirit, which, with talent and enormous energy, was able to express itself in the construction of a mighty residence," writes William Hawkins in Classic Houses of Portland: 1850-1950.

"Foulkes, a San Francisco architect, planned two symmetrical angled wins toward the views, the intersections market by twin engaged turrets with conical roofs... A massive, red-tiled, hipped roof with prominent attic dormers sits above the central volume of the house. The axially placed central fireplaces and chimneys peak at the ridge. The house is constructed of dressed Bellingham sandstone, adorned with scrolled and modillioned cornices, a Greek meander entablature, pedimented garden doorways, and balustrated balconies."

Gustav Freiwald House (image courtesy Wikipedia Commons)

Another house Hawkins writes about, and one that received a degree of notoriety in recent years when its owners protested a condo next door that would have dwarfed it, is the Gustav Feeiwald House in Irvington. It is now the Lion & Rose Bed and Breakfast

"At first glance, the house could be of the Queene Anne style, particularly with its corner polygonal three-story turret and wrap-around covered porch. However, if roofs are the determining factor, the house would be of a more Craftsman style....The Freiwald House has the more square proportions, the wider windows, and the curved eave of the Craftsman period, despite the addition of Colonial Revival detailing at porch columns, corner pilasters, and pediments."

The Freiwald House was built in 1906 as a private residence for Gustav E. Freiwald, a 42-year-old German beer brewer who operated breweries and taverns in towns along the Columbia River from Hood River to Astoria. A year earlier, he had hired Emil Schacht, a well-known German-born Portland architect, to design a grand house for him  in Irvington. Schacht had already designed a number of brewery buildings and other commercial structures for Freiwald, but the client rejected the house design and hired HH Menges to redesign the house. It is believed that Menges took Schacht's design and added the Queen Anne exterior elements: an octagonal turret, a wide wrap-around porch with Ionic columns, and a large dormer with an arched window and balcony.

One mustn't forget seminal Portland architect AE Doyle when discussing 20th Century houses, even if Doyle is better known for larger-scale projects like Central Library, the Benson Hotel, and the recently demolished Riverdale School. Among Doyle's best may have been the Edward Harmon House from 1908, still standing at NW 26th and Lovejoy.

Doyle's Harmon House (image courtesy Wikipedia Commons)

Doyle, Hawkins writes, "had just established his practice in the city - the beginning of a long and distinguished career - when he designed the house with the solid, wide proportions then in vogue. The segmental-arched and transomed windows, the solid porch columns, and the shed dormer were Craftsman elements, as is the wrap-around hip at the gable ends - an inventive, almost Japanese form...Combined with these details are the Classical brick quoins at the corners of the house, the flat modillions at the eaves, and the non-fluted Doric columns that support the covered entry pergola."

Most every house I've written about so far, be it contemporary or historically styled, was built in the first half of the 20th century. So what about the second half?

One house that immediately comes to mind actually might not be eligible, for two reasons: it's in Vancouver, Washington and its architect, Rick Potestio, is part of the jury picking Portland Monthly's list. That said, the Burch House from 1999, which won Potestio the top local AIA award, is exceptional.

 
Potestio's Birch House (image courtesy Portland Modern)

“This house to date is still the most sophisticated and completely executed project I’ve done,” Potestio told me in an interview last year for Portland Modern. “It was truly an inspired client who as a businessman was very specific about budget and what he wanted. He wanted it to be evocative of an Asian aesthetic and to be able to bring people from around the world to see it was a work of art.”

Potestio said he conceived the house to play with the Venetian notion of a plaza on the water. But on the side it becomes more of a sculptural fragmented piece in order to frame different views. “This is a 50x80 subdivision lot located on the banks of the Columbia River and surrounded by park space as well as very mediocre tract houses,” he explained, “so the question was how to grab hold of something physically in this landscape when we couldn’t actually touch it. How can we get it to relate only to the sky, the water, and the trees? So we designed it from the inside out, manipulating the view to see trees and sky. That’s what explains the cutouts and the recesses.”

Most of all, the house is designed to capture views of the Columbia River, and to make it feel even closer than it appears. “We used proportion and modulation of space to create optical illusions,” he adds. “When you’re approaching the house through a very narrow space to an entry court at the center of the house, you see this wall of blue at the other end. The layering of screens and other grids of windows create the optical illusion of flattening out the space. By the time you get out to the deck, you’re so encompassed in the space, you don’t want to leave.”

Zaik's Zidell House (collage courtesy Portland Modern)

One other candidate from the latter 20th century I also think is worth considering for the houses list: architect Saul Zaik's Zidell House.

In 1970, shipyard magnate Arnold Zidell asked Zaik to design a house on a ship's mast. "I said 'That sounds like a lot of fun,'" Zaik told The Oregonian's Jeff Kuechle in a 2009 story about the house. "I get odd requests all the time - I never have an easy job."

Zidell had salvaged a mast 36 inches in diameter and nearly 100 feet long from a decommissioned ship and wanted to use it to support a circular rotating house high above Portland's West Hills. Such rotating houses had already been built in Southern California and Connecticut. Zaik, after consulting with a structural engineer, he concluded it would be imprudent to make the house rotate like some of those predecessors. But the octagonal two-story home offered sweeping views and a ground floor 47 feet in the air.

Zaik's Zidell House (photo by Motoya Nakamura, courtesy The Oregonian)

"Steelworkers from Zidell's shipyard descended on the site, off Fairmount Drive in the West Hills, drove a foundation deep into bedrock and set to work bolting on the cantilevered trusses that would support the house," Kuechle wrote. Zaik said he chose cedar shingles because "it's 40 feet in the air - you don't want to have to paint it every few years."

"It's just one of those places," says current owner Lance Crosier. "It's perfect - even on miserable days, it's bright and sunny. You can see the whole city. I can watch the fireworks on the river, I can see Vancouver Lake and Camas; if I stand on my tiptoes, I can see halfway to Alabama."

Portland Monthly's issue with the top 10 local houses of the 20th Century will be published this spring, and our jury will be convening in January. Before we get together and start making our list, what other houses might we consider? What are the best 20th Century houses in Portland to your eyes?

Advertisement

Energy efficiency and the rebound effect

LEED Platinum-rated OHSU Center for Health & Healing (photo by Brian Libby)

In the latest issue of The New Yorker, writer David Owen looks at a troubling potential conundrum of energy efficiency: the "rebound effect". The more efficient our cars, refrigerators and air conditioners become, the more of them get produced, and so the actual reduction in energy disappears.

There are all kinds of examples throughout history.

The Ford Model T, manufactured between 1908 and 1927, averaged between 13 and 21 miles per gallon. A century later, we've learned to use gasoline much more efficiently, but that has only led to bigger cars stuffed with energy-sucking electronic gadgets.

A refrigerator sold in America today uses three quarters less energy than the 1975 average, even though it is one-fifth larger and costs 60 percent less. Yet during this same 35-year time period, the global market for refrigeration has grown exponentially; moreover, far more people in the US now have a second fridge or freezer.

On a macro scale, this proves out too: Between 1984 and 2005, electricity production grew by about 66 percent despite economy-wide energy efficiency gains. Some of this can be attributed to population growth, but not all. Per-capita energy consumption rates also increased during this period, even though energy use per dollar of Gross Domestic Product fell by around 50 percent.

Owen's article is largely based around an idea called the "Jevons paradox" that dates to an 1865 book by Englishman William Jevons called "The Coal Question". At the time, Great Britain was the world's leading industrial, military and economic power. But Jevons argued that it couldn't last. The country's coal supply was rapidly depleting, and he postulated that even increased efficiency in the use of coal would not delay the process. "It is wholly a confusion of ideas," Jevons wrote, "to suppose that the economical use of fuel is equivalent to a diminished consumption. The very contrary is the truth." The more efficiently we use power, the more power we'll want to use. This is also commonly known today as the rebound effect.

LEED Platinum-rated AIA Center for Architecture (photo by Brian Libby)

All this begs the question: what about buildings?

After all, few entities have been the focus of energy efficiency goals more than buildings. Together, homes and buildings consume more than a third of total energy used in the United States today. Locally and regionally, organizations like the Northwest Energy Efficiency Alliance (whose BetterBricks wing is a Portland Architecture sponsor) have devoted millions of dollars to designing new buildings and renovating old ones so that less energy is consumed. And the design community has become a national leader in sustainability. Portland has more LEED-rated buildings than virtually any other American city, especially when you measure it on a per-capita basis. The first LEED Platinum-rated condo, large medical facility, and National Register-listed building are all located here.

Energy efficiency is also part of a national strategy, called "the fifth fuel" after coal, petroleum, nuclear, and renewables. In 2007 the United Nations Foundation called energy efficiency gains "the largest, most evenly geographically distributed and least expensive energy resource."

Is it a waste of time, energy, money and resources to design and build buildings with better insulation, more natural light, and smaller mechanical systems? I'm not completely sold on the Jevons paradox as it relates to architecture today, nor are experts unanimous about its relation to other current energy issues. 

For starters, as explained to Owen by Lee Schipper, a senior research engineer at Stanford University's Precourt Energy Efficiency Center, the rebound effect is minimal because energy is a relatively small part of the overall economy, between six and eight percent. Efficiency gains today have much less power to stimulate consumption than industrial manufacturing gains in the 19th century like Jevons wrote about.

More specifically as it relates to architecture, building green needn't be seen as a stimulant to building more. There is, perhaps, an argument that in our drive to weatherize homes we will spend as much energy on manufacturing and transporting new materials as will be gained from reduced heating and cooling. But what are we going to do, stop fixing up our buildings or building new ones?

The one area in architecture where the Jevons paradox could hold true is with air conditioning. Just as there are more refrigerators and freezers in use both overall and per capita today, wiping away much of the efficiency gains made from appliances using less energy, air conditioning is much more prevalent than in previous generations. It's part of the reason that regions and cities with very warm climates like Arizona and Nevada and the South saw large population influxes over recent years. Then there's the international spread of air conditioning to developing countries. According to Owen's article, between 1997 and 2007 the use of air conditioning in China tripled. In india it's expected to increase almost tenfold between 2005 and 2020. Owen cites a 2009 study saying air conditioning already accounts for 40 percent of the electricity consumed in metropolitan Mumbai.

Even so, the rebound effect with air conditioning - overall use eating up efficiency gains - is not an argument for the ineffectiveness of green building and architecturally oriented energy efficiency. On the contrary: if millions more people are using AC, it's even more important that this happen in buildings with tightly sealed thermal envelopes (without leaks, in other words) so the AC be utilized as efficiently as possible. Therein, perhaps, lies the broader answer with questions of the rebound effect. Maybe it does exist, to a degree, but if so, that's an argument to fight for efficiency gains all the more.

If there's a lesson to be learned from hashing over the Jevon paradox and the rebound effect as it relates to energy efficiency, perhaps it's a matter of re-learning a bit of common sense: all the efficiency gains in the world don't matter if we don't also curb demand. And yet reducing demand is the last thing any economist wants to hear. The 2000s decade was largely about creating exponentially larger demand for real estate by relaxing home ownership financing rules. And even if we hadn't got carried away building new suburban cul de sacs and urban condos over the last ten years, the population here and especially in other countries continues to increase. All those bodies need electricity of some sort.

Yet there are things we can do on the demand side. Jimmy Carter was the last American president, more than three decades ago, to tell us to be smart about little things like turning the lights off in rooms we don't occupy. Behavior can be adjusted on the macro level, and that's as important as technical advances in efficiency. It's just that having more efficient air conditioners, TVs and refrigerators has to be coupled with anti-sprawl planning, mass transit, and other factors. And then there's the question of energy taxing. Price is as much a determinant of energy or other product/service use as efficiency. As even Jevon would have acknowledged 135 years ago about coal, how efficiently we use anything is merely an extension of how much we want or need to use it.

Matthew Ginn's Portland Public Schools photo tour: Marshall and Franklin

Franklin High School (photo by Matthew Ginn)

For the past several months, photographer Matthew Ginn has been touring Portland's public high schools with his camera for a continuing series. Today, we reach the last two school on Matthew's list: Marshall and Franklin.

The two schools make an appropriate conclusion to the series, because they represent Portland Public Schools at its best and worst. Franklin, as the photographer aptly describes it, is "definitely the best-looking high school in the PPS system, and the staff are rightfully proud of their building." Marshall, on the other hand, faces outright closure. In PPS' game of musical chairs to determine which school will face budget-necessitating end to its existence, the outer Southeast Portland high school will no longer be there in its dual role of educating children and anchoring the long under-privileged Lents neighborhood.

In my previous post, which looked at tall condos built in the past decade, a commenter urged that equal attention be given to more under-funded public buildings instead of these architectural symbols of affluence and overzealousness during the 2000s real estate bubble. Well pal, here you go! No buildings in our community, or most anyone's, better signify the ongoing inadequacy of public funding than our K-12 schools. Portland may be a liberal city, but it is also part of a tax-phobic state. For this an a host of other related reasons, many of the Rose City's high schools as well as elementary and middle schools, are practically crumbling. That may change with Portland Public Schools' emerging plan to cut some facilities like Marshall out altogether and hope for a new bond to pass that will bring renovation and expansion funds for the schools left. Passing large public bonds at a time of 10 percent unemployment is a tricky proposition, but most of us can agree the maintenance at these PPS facilities is in most cases deferred.

If or when a large amount of funding does come for local public school construction and renovations, it will also be a challenge to balance the current era's emphasis with green design, energy efficiency and sustainability with historic preservation. Whether it's a nearly century-old school like Franklin or a mid-20th century structure like Marshall or Madison, these buildings ought to be preserved in some form. If not schools, then at least as facilities like McMenamins Kennedy School, itself occupying (as you can read more about below) significant bit of local school architecture history. 

As with previous posts in this series, pictures of the schools - all by Matthew Ginn and courtesy of Homestead Images - will be matched with abridged versions of the architectural descriptions on the PPS website.

First, the star-crossed Marshall High School. I'm deliberately going with Marshall first, even though Franklin is prettier. It's the least we can do.

Marshall High School (photo by Matthew Ginn)

"Marshall High School is located 3905 SE 91st Ave. in the Lents neighborhood of southeast Portland.  Built in 1959, the 23-acre campus includes only the main school building (1959, 220A).  The three-story building’s internal functions, such as the stairwells, hallways, library, auditorium, and gymnasium are clearly communicated by the building’s fenestration patterns, overall massing, and varying building heights.  

The building mixes an external skin of variegated tan-colored brick with expansive banks of plate glass windows that form the building’s curtain walls.  Cantilevered overhangs shade the windows on each floor on the west and south sides, while no eaves are present on the north and east sides. The interior follows a square shaped corridor plan that provides access to all classrooms, the auditorium, cafeteria, and the gymnasium. 

Development in the surrounding area consists primarily of single family residences built between 1945 and 1970 as well as large scale retail with the presence of large “big box” stores situated to the west at Eastport Plaza."

Marshall

"The school is approached via a U-shaped drive that affords easy student drop offs and access to surface parking lots as well as the playing fields.  An oval track, football field, and grandstand as well as other playing fields are located to the south of the main building. The main (east) entrance into the school consists of three double door entries that are recessed into the building as the second floor is supported by a single round concrete column.  The west elevation exhibits only two floors while the remainder of the building features three stories due to a change in the topography that descends from west to east. While banks of plate glass windows extend to the north of the entry, a large round edged double height volume, the auditorium and music wing, extends to the west.  The north elevation features three floors of plate glass windows interrupted at three points by three floors of small square windows that mark stairwells. 

The high school also features an entirely enclosed, terraced courtyard that descends from east to west. A central walkway provides access from the east to west corridors as well as through the corridors directly to the exterior.  The library intrudes into the courtyard and is supported by a series of cylindrical columns on the bottom floor. 

In 1945, the citizens of Portland approved a ballot measure that provided $5,000,000 over five years to construct, improve, and rehabilitate its public school buildings to respond to the explosive growth in school-age children that had occurred in the city as a result of the arrival of defense plant workers and their families, as well as the deferred maintenance arising from the lack of funds during the depression. Beginning with this initial bond measure, PPS embarked on an effort to improve its school facilities through renovations, additions, and new construction of over fifty schools between 1945 and 1970."

Marshall

"Emphasizing the need for economy and rapid construction, the designers adopted new materials that were standardized and mass-produced including steel, plywood, glass block, and aluminum. In many buildings, architects achieved flexibility through the building’s structure by employing non-load-bearing partitions walls and zoned ventilation and heating systems. 

Although many of the architects for schools in Portland continued to design their schools to be extensible, designers turned away from the two-story schools with centralized massing and the period revivals that were popular in the 1920s.  Instead many architects adopted the principles of the Modern movement and its regional variant, the Northwest Regional style, choosing to express functional areas through massing and materials to create innovative forms. Classrooms featured extensive built-ins that included sinks, slots for bulky rolls of paper, and coat storage. Many buildings incorporated interior courtyards, which facilitated access to the outdoors and expanded the opportunities for passive ventilation and daylighting. 

Designed by Stanton, Boles, Maguire and Church, John Marshall High School was originally called Southeast High School until it was renamed for the U.S. Supreme Court justice. A native of Iowa, Glenn Stanton graduated from the University of Oregon and Massachusetts Institute of Technology, returning returned to Portland where he worked with Morris H. Whitehouse, eventually becoming a partner in the firm of Whitehouse, Stanton & Church. In 1955, Stanton formed the partnership of Stanton, Boles, Maguire, and Church – a firm that would be responsible for designing Madison and Marshall High Schools in 1955 and 1960, respectively as well as structures for the new Lewis & Clark College Campus, and the Stadium Branch of the US Nation Bank.  Stanton was also known for supervising the restoration of the McLoughlin House (1846) in Oregon City."

Marshall

"The school featured a square corridor plan with the various functions of the school decentralized around all parts of the square.  The gymnasium, auditorium, cafeteria, were all designed to serve as appendages to the square corridor plan.  The building, largely constructed with exterior curtain walls that consisted half of brick and half of glass, also featured cantilevered eaves on each of its three floors on only the south and west sides of the building to reduce the amount of glare caused by sunlight. Other components of the school include an undersized auditorium to reduce the size of heated spaces, sliding partitions that could increase classroom sizes and permit work with team teaching techniques, as well as a large terraced courtyard located in the middle of the building.  

Marshall has not been extensively modified over time and retains most if not all of its character-defining features.  Even so, it does not appear to be eligible for the National Register of Historic Places. Although associated with the suburban expansion of southeast Portland, the high school’s overall design was not noted as being necessarily innovative for the time period."

And now, Franklin:

Franklin High School (photos by Matthew Ginn)

"Franklin High School is located in the South Tabor neighborhood of southeast Portland. Intended to be expanded over time, it was designed in a distinctive Colonial Revival style and the campus was organized according to a multi—part plan. The 18-acre campus includes the original classroom and school office building and boiler building from 1915, a manual arts (west) wing built a year later, an auditorium dating to 1924, a fieldhouse from 1950, a gymnasium built in 1954, and an industrial arts building from 1981. 

The campus occupies an expansive 18-acre rectangular-shaped parcel that is positioned between SE Woodward St. to the south and Division St. to the north. The core group of two story brick-faced and concrete buildings feature a balanced and largely symmetrical fenestration, colonial revival embellished porticos and entryways, staggered quoins on building corners, modillion cornices, jack arches with keystones over all windows, elaborate terra cotta panels, the retention of original twelve-over-twelve sash windows, and a centrally-placed, highly detailed clock tower with glazed cupola. The property also includes expansive playing fields that include a football field and baseball field. Just to the east of the school are playing fields and tennis courts that are part of Clinton Park and Atkinson School. 

Approached from the south, the main school building is a concrete structure with a brick veneer laid in an all stretcher bond. The main school building, auditorium, and west wing retain a beveled water table, staggered terra cotta quoins, jack arch with keystone above each window, and modillion cornice, as well as hipped roofs."

Franklin

"Decorative emphasis is most prominent on the front and rear entrances. The ceremonial or north entrance features a two story portico with both rounded and square shaped columns with acanthus leaf capitals. The columns support a pediment with a festoon-adorned tympanum as well as a modillion cornice. The three double-door entrances each feature elaborate transoms with leaded traceries as well as terra cotta surrounds. These surrounds are composed of Doric friezes decorated with triglyphs and metopes filled with panels decorated with cartouches, festoons, fruit bowls, swags, and sheaf of wheat with scythes. Immediately above the frieze is a soffit replete with mutules and lozenges. The more commonly used rear entrance slightly projects from the main building. Rather than columns, this entrance exhibits three portals decorated with terra cotta surrounds. 

Immediately above each door are terra cotta panels decorated with cartouches and festoons. Three large single hung fanlight windows illuminate an interior stair. The entrance composition is completed by a closed bed pediment that lies above the second floor and a modillion cornice. 

The most prominent feature of the main building is the clock tower, which is symmetrically positioned in the middle of the building. Mirroring much of the embellishments below, this all-white structure features staggered quoins, clocks framed by an open bed pediment and corner urns, as well as an eight sided, glazed belfry. The top of the tower exhibits urns as well as a bell cast roof and weathervane."

Franklin

"Ancillary entrances exhibit Federal era-inspired door surrounds consisting of sidelights, slender pilasters with acanthus leaf capitals as well as a dentil cornice, and semi-elliptical leaded fanlights. Some of the secondary entrances also feature pediments as well. Nearly all of the windows on the first three units have been retained and exhibit their original twelve-over-twelve sash windows.

The interior of the main building consists of a U-shaped corridor plan that is then attached on opposite ends to east and west wings by two story hyphens. In the main foyer are plain pilasters at each corner, boxed ceiling beams, as well as a set of staircases that lead to the second floor. At the head of the stairs on the second floor is a painting by WPA-era artist John Balletor entitled “Benjamin Franklin at Liberty Hall, Philadelphia” which was completed in 1935.  

Franklin 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 .

In 1908, Portland Public Schools created the Bureau of Properties in an effort to centralize the management of the district’s various properties and take 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. The architectural details of the new schools were largely encompassed by the Classical Revival, Colonial Revival, and Collegiate Gothic styles; architectural revivals that were viewed as inspirational and appropriate for educational settings."

Franklin

"The architect of Franklin High School, Floyd Naramore, who in his tenure at Portland Public Schools designed 16 schools for the district including the Kennedy School, which gained notoriety as a single story response to the issue of fire safety in American public schools. Naramore’s success led to a similar position in Seattle, where he designed many of the city’s most renowned schools and would be a founding principal of the still-flourishing firm Naramore, Bain, Brady & Johansen (NBBJ). 

Franklin High School is eligible for the National Register of Historic Places under Criterion C. The high school is also eligible under Criterion A for its association with the rise of higher education in the 1910s under Superintendent Alderman, and for its association with the development of southeast Portland."

Advertisement

The decade in review (part 2): the rise of condo towers

Metropolitan Condominiums, Pearl District (photo by Brian Libby)

Nearly a year ago came the first in what was supposed to be a series of posts about the just-completed decade, 2000-10 or thereabouts. That first post concentrated on renovations, which comprised a major and perhaps an increasingly large portion of the market: projects like the Wieden + Kennedy building, the EcoTrust building, and the Brewery Blocks. It was the plan all along to write about another architectural grouping, one that not only symbolized the booming national and local economies, but physically embodied it: tall condo towers. Over the 2000s, they changed Portland’s skyline substantially.

It wasn’t that any individual buildings from this decade, condos or otherwise, were taller than ones of previous eras. The circa-1972 Wells Fargo Center by Charles Luckman and the Skidmore Owings Merrill-designed US Bancorp tower from 1983, both downtown, remain the two tallest structures in the city at 544 and 536 feet, respectively. And even they are modestly scaled compared to architecture of other large metropolises from Seattle to San Francisco and beyond. The Wells Fargo, back when it was called First National Bank Tower, inspired local height restrictions. But the skyline did become substantially extended in the 2000s.

Downtown, resting along the Willamette River, is now flanked by the South Waterfront neighborhood and the Pearl District. In each case, numerous buildings of ten stories or more were constructed, most all of them condominiums. Particularly because these two neighborhoods are along the river or close to it, they stand out as part of an extended architectural forest.

While Portland has long put an emphasis on maintaining pedestrian friendliness with storefront buildings that meet the sidewalk, many of the shorter, bulkier buildings of the city’s past gave way to condo towers with a split personality: built to the street for a story or two, then giving way to taller skinny tops. The 2000s will be remembered not just as the decade of the condo tower, but of the thin half-block tower rising from a wide base.

Louisa Apartments, Pearl District (photo by Brian Libby)

I’ve often been told that the condo tower, particularly in its residential portion rising from the mixed-use base, is a kind of formulaic proposition: How can one fit as many units as possible on to each floor while giving each one a proper amount of light and space? In most cases, those floor plans remained the same on each floor. And does one design from the outside in or the inside out? 

In the Pearl District, particularly in the many condos developed by Hoyt Street Properties (holders of the former Burlington Northern rail yards property) we can see the evolution of thinking in the late 1990s and 2000s about what building type carried favor. Try walking down a street like NW Ninth Avenue and you’ll see modestly scaled two two five-story condos, all built to the street front: Tanner Place and the Riverstone Condos by Ankrom Moisan, for example, or the Johnson Street Townhomes by Seattle firm Mithun. But then as the Pearl moves east past Jamison Square Park, the buildings get taller, such as The Metropolitan and The Encore by BOORA Architects and The Pinnacle by Ankrom Moisan. There is a kind of hybrid in the other principal development of the Pearl during the decade, the Brewery Blocks, which draw their palette from the industrial past of the site but find the most success as pioneering green buildings amidst a very rich pedestrian environment.

Ultimately, Portland and the Pearl are probably richer architecturally for there being this variety. A city skyline needs both foothills and mountains.

Eliot Tower, downtown (photo by Brian Libby)

Although downtown itself saw fewer condo towers than the neighborhoods to its north and south, there were a few big buildings that arrived here too: The Eliot, a glassy work by ZGF Architects; the Benson Tower by Vancouver-based firm IBI-HB; and Ankrom’s Ladd Tower, which necessitated the demolition of the historic Rosefriend Apartments. The Alphabet District near 23rd Avenue also saw the arrival of its tallest ever building, the 14-story Westerly condos, also by Ankrom.

The “blade tower” form was largely inspired by Vancouver, British Columbia. Portland developers often traveled there over the last decade for inspiration. It’s visible in the five building GBD Architects-designed Brewery Blocks along Burnside with buildings like the Louisa Apartments by. And in South Waterfront, this building type is everywhere. It was controversial with residents in the adjacent Corbett-Terwilliger and Lair Hill neighborhoods, concerned the tall towers would block their views of Mt. Hood. But part of the argument for these buildings was that, in comparison to shorter, squattier buildings like the city was used to building, these would actually allow more sunlight to reach the street.

These condo towers of the 2000s also came during a decade when sustainability and green design were becoming by far the most substantial architectural movement of our time. Just as Portland began to show more ambition in terms of high-density development and taller buildings, the old stylistic genres—modern, postmodern, traditional—became an almost antiquated way of basing a design. If it didn’t use energy efficiently, or incorporate natural light, how could even a pretty building have integrity? This is mostly a very good thing, both for buildings and for the world. Because buildings comprise close to half of all energy consumed, architecture has had the opportunity in this decade and beyond to literally help save the planet—not in some symbolic Kum bah ya kind of way, but literally by reducing carbon and curbing sprawl.

Henry Condominiums, Pearl District (photo by Brian Libby)

At the same time, because the guts of architecture became much more important, sometimes the aesthetic form of a building almost seemed to play second fiddle. Find a LEED-rated building ugly, and there almost seemed to be a disdain coming from those involved, as if one was being embarrassingly superficial by caring about looks: “Our son is so smart. Why do you care if he has acne?!”

To my eyes, the majority of Portland's 2000s condo towers were neither stunningly beautiful or outrageously ugly. Moreover, any list of personal favorites amongst the condo towers of the 2000s is just that. Even so, a couple condo towers from this time unquestionably rise to the top for me: the aforementioned Metropolitan by BOORA and 937 by Holst Architecture.

Jamison Square with Metropolitan Condos, Pearl District (photo by Brian Libby)

The Metropolitan, at 19 stories, is the tallest building in the Pearl but more importantly from a visual, aesthetic standpoint, it is full of interesting angles and sumptuous materials, including an exterior clad in Roman travertine with a custom glass curtain wall system that invigorates the building with lightness.

Although BOORA is the architect, a sizable contribution on the Metropolitan came from Jeff Lamb, who later moved on to Sienna and then saw the firm fold. Lamb emphasized the notion of designing the Metropolitan’s units from the inside out. As a result, they don’t feel like the bowling alley lanes that many condo units do. And yet, the exterior design benefits. Unfortunately, BOORA wasn’t able to capture that same aesthetic magic with their next Pearl condo tower, The Encore. But the firm should take tremendous pride in the Metropolitan.

937 Condominiums, Pearl District (photo by Brian Libby)

Holst had built numerous smaller-scale neighborhood condos in the 2000s before designing 937, some of them amongst the most acclaimed of the decade, like the Belmont Street Lofts and the Clinton Condominiums. But 937 represented a newly large scale and Pearl District prominence for the firm, and they did not flub the opportunity.

937 has a whitish façade like the Metropolitan, only in brick rather than travertine; it recalls some of the white turn-of-the-20th Century buildings near Pioneer Courthouse Square. But like other brick buildings constructed in the Pearl during this decade, 937 didn’t have a molecule of neo-historic style. It didn’t try to tritely rehash the district’s industrial past like some preceding Pearl projects, nor did the design exhibit the faux-historic style of nearby condos like The Elizabeth or the Gregory Lofts (both by Ankrom Moisan). 937 also has a very compelling seemingly random or fractal-like window pattern, a trend that also emerged here towards the end of the decade. Some have taken issue with the red-tinted glass balconies flanking the exterior; they do feel like an add-on to the architecture, but the color helps break up the mass of the façade. 

Two other buildings register very high for me, but not without some reservation: Atwater Place by THA Architecture and the aforementioned Eliot by ZGF.

Atwater Place, South Waterfront (photo by Brian Libby)

Atwater has a natural elegance, and seems among the glassiest of the decade’s buildings. One gets a true sense of the phrase “glass curtain wall” with Atwater, as if the entire structure behind the glass is transparent. Yet for all its transparency, as with the TVA Architects-designed John Ross condo building across the street (itself an attractive cylindrical tower), overall Atwater Place can at times feel dark and gray, two qualities not ideal for a rainy climate.

The Eliot seems gorgeous at certain angles, particularly if one views it from the east. The project market an arrival of sorts for ZGF partner Eugene Sandoval, who seems to have a particular gift for crafting beautiful glass facades. Sandoval has since gone on to re-invigorate the firm’s once rather stodgy designs, recalling for ZGF the younger days of head principal and Pietro Belluschi disciple Robert Frasca. That said, merely walking around The Eliot to its west façade shows a different building, one with more raw concrete and less glass, and much less attractive. The best part of the building, along with its innovative patterning on the east facade, may be a double height, floor-to-ceiling glass façade entry and café on the ground floor.

L-R: Atwater Place, The John Ross, Meriwether Condos, South Waterfront (photo by Brian Libby)

Again, though, although the history is everyone’s, the opinions on which of these condo towers are merely mine. What do the rest of you like and dislike most amongst the generation of condo towers that changed the Portland skyline? (In case you're wondering, I'm planning a separate post on neighborhood condos, which arguably represented more successful architecture over the decade.)  And in this new 2010s decade, what will be our aspirations for the skyline: taller, more plentiful towers, or a return to a smaller scale?

The urban growth boundary and homebuilder humble pie

Edge of Portland's urban growth boundary (photo courtesy Google)

In Wednesday's Oregonian, Jeff Manning reported from the Home Builders Association of Metropolitan Portland's annual forecast breakfast. And while builders projections for the future are mixed at best, the conversation is illustrative of how the Great Recession's affect has created some changes of heart about the city's urban growth boundary.

"Congratulations on your survival," David Crowe, chief economist of the National Association of Home Builders, said in his remarks at the breakfast. "This has been the worst housing depression since the Great Depression. Any way you measure it, it's been just awful. And it's been going on for five years in some areas." 

The HBAMP has traced builder confidence for 25 years. On a scale of ozero to 100, builder confidence hardly ever fell below 50 between 1985 and 2006. Today, it is at 16, Crowe said. Building permits for single-family homes in the Portland metro area exceeded 10,000 annually every year but one from 1993-2005. But permits fell substantially below 4,000 in 2009 and 2010.

One can't help but see today's low confidence as a direct result of overzealousness a few years ago. For example, through most all of the past century, Americans have spent an average of 3.2 times their annual income on the cost of a home. During the economic boom of the 2000s, the ratio reached as high as 4.7 nationally and 5.4 in Oregon.

In a city and region fashioning itself as the sustainability capitol of America, it's just not sustainable to expect people to spend 5 times their annual income on a house. It's not surprising that today the ratio has returned to more normal levels, a 3.26 rate nationally and 3.7 in Oregon.

There is some reason for hope. Interest rates remain historically low. And because so relatively few homes have been built here over the past three years, any uptake in the market could lead to a shortage of homes, which would be music to builders' ears.

Perhaps most noteworthy of all the remarks and attitudes to come out of the  Home Builders Association of Metropolitan Portland's annual forecast breakfast was the admittance that our metro area's urban growth boundary has been a boon, not the boondoggle home builders used to see.

Tim Sullivan of John Burns Real Estate Consulting said at the breakfast that if not for the state's strict land-use laws, Oregon might have suffered a fate more like Phoenix or Las Vegas: massive overbuilding that has created an economic black hole, expecially in the once big-booming Sin City. "It's because of your urban growth boundary," Sullivan said. "You're the antithesis of Phoenix, where you can build anything, anywhere at any time." 

Land-use laws like the urban growth boundary have frequently assailed by the Home Builders Association and other builders in the past. Opponents of the urban growth boundary have cited high housing prices as an indicator of the policy’s problems. Where land once accounted for about a quarter of the home-building cost, they argued, now it takes up to 40 percent of the cost. Something had to be done! They also suggested the Portland metropolitan area was facing a shortage of affordable housing as markets are hurt by the UGB factor. When the regional governing body Metro announced a few years ago that suburban Damascus would be the only initial area of expansion for the growth boundary, leaders in Hillsboro, Forest Grove and other 'burbs were irate.

After all, joining the UGB makes your land more valuable. A 2000 study by Eban Goodstein, an environmental and economic resources professor at Lewis & Clark College, explored whether the restricted supply of land created by growth management policies affected housing prices or whether Portland, like other hot cities, simply had more demand and speculation. He found land selling for $150,000 an acre at the edge of the boundary and $18,000 just beyond its border. But does this necessarily mean an argument for UGB expansion?

According to data from the National Association of Home Builders, the median price of homes in the Portland area rose from $85,000 in 1991 to $144,000 in 1996 and $220,000 in 2001. During that time, Portland's was the second-highest percentage increase in the country, setting up concerns about a crisis in affordable housing. But there was no accompanying data to show that the UGB was largely responsible. Other cities like Denver without growth boundaries saw parallel rises in home values.

Willamette Valley farmland near the UGB edge (photo by Brian Libby)

Some were critical of the UGB for a more practical reason: If places like Hillsboro and Forest Grove in Washington County have been responsible for adding jobs for the region, shouldn't that be tied to where the UGB is expanded? After all, the thinking goes, why allow a bunch of homes to be built in expanded UGB territory in an outer eastern suburb/small town like Damascus when the tech jobs are on the other side of the metro region? For this reasons, some builders and members of the real estate community have been in favor generally of the UGB but desirous of more flexibility.

Besides, many economists have come to believe housing prices are not a reflection so much of land use policy but demand. 

“Fast-growing regions make housing prices rise,” said Joe Cortright, an independent economist working with the Westside Economic Alliance in a Portland Tribune story by Kristina Brenneman. “It’s really important to look at the demand-side factor,” Cortright said. “The rising price of housing shows you are becoming relatively desirable.”

Goodstein's 2000 study concluded that the urban growth boundary has had “a small, and statistically weak, upward influence on housing prices.” His figures found if the boundary were not in place, housing prices in the Portland area would be about $10,000 less on average. That's a lot, lot less than the value of most people's homes nationwide have already dropped in the last three years. But it's nothing compared to the money saved by maintaining the integrity of the region itself as a livable place. That ought to deliver some measure of confidence.

Expanding the Japanese Garden - with Kengo Kuma?

Japanese Garden tea house (photo by Brian Libby)

As reported in last Thursday's Daily Journal of Commerce by Nathalie Weinstein, Portland’s Japanese Garden is in the process of selecting an architect to design an expansion of the Washington Park.

The Garden is focusing on firms in Japan for its search so that the expansion is authentic as possible, and this could result in a major Japanese architect designing in Portland. A landscape architect is also being sought to make associated improvements.

The Japanese Garden's expansion will include construction of a new administration building, gift store and a tea house that will serve Japanese cuisine and beverages. Although the Garden already has a gift store and tea house, they are located within the gates of the garden and not accessible without paying admission. The tea house, but it is only for demonstrative purposes and not meant for public use.

Rendering of Kengo Kuma's Dundee V&A design (image courtesy BBC News) 

Garden officials are already considering one candidate for the expansion commission, acclaimed Japanese architect Kengo Kuma. His portfolio includes some very impressive projects and commissions, such as the Victoria & Albert Museum satellite being built in Dundee, Scotland, for which Kuma recently won a design competition over internationally renowned firms like Snøhetta and Steven Holl Architects.

I had the opportunity to visit a completed Kuma design three years ago, and it was breathtaking: the Bamboo House, which is part of a high end luxury resort called Commune by the Great Wall planned by the ambitious Chinese husband-and-wife developers Pan Shiyi and Zhang Xin and featuring 11 private villas and a clubhouse, each designed by a leading Asian architect. The development is located in the shadow of the Great Wall, about an hour's drive north of Beijing. The Bamboo House was festooned with seemingly nothing but bamboo and glass, and even compared to houses by a variety of other top Asian architects in the development Kuma's design stood out.

Kuma's Bamboo House in China (photos by Brian Libby)

Kuma will visit Portland next week to give a lecture and present his proposed design to the Japanese Garden’s selection committee. Although the lecture is sold out, Kuma’s design will be on display at the Garden’s pavilion this Saturday, December 11, from 10AM to 4PM. The Garden is located at 611 SW Kingston Avenue, adjacent to Washington Park.

The original 5.5-acre Japanese Garden was designed by Professor Takuma Tono beginning in 1963, though the garden opened to the public in 1967.

In a study conducted by the Journal of Japanese Gardening, Portland's was ranked first out of 300 public Japanese gardens outside of Japan; it is still considered to be one of the most authentic. A traditional Japanese garden normally takes hundreds of years to evolve and mature, but the Portland Japanese Garden evolved much more quickly, fusing western speed with stately eastern expression. According to traditional design, the Japanese Garden combines three elements which represent the earth: stone represents mountains and islands for strength and support, water is the center and represents purity, and plants grace it with texture, color and growth.

Kuma (or another selected architect) wouldn't be changing the Japanese Garden itself, but the addition of these buildings has the power to transform one of the city's most sacred, inspiring places. And while there are no doubt plenty of local designers who would love to get their hands on the Japanese Garden commission, the city has long experienced a scarcity of project commissions for prestigious out-of-town architects. With Boston's Charles Rose recently unveiled expansion of the Oregon College of Art & Craft campus, a Japanese Garden commission by and for Kuma could make not only another compelling project, but a demonstration that Portland features great design from around the world.

Advertisements

https://www.thelocaltreeexperts.com/wi/eau-claire/​

ZGF Architects' Gene Sandoval talks about UO's Casanova Center expansion

Rendering of planned Casanova Center expansion (image courtesy ZGF/UO)

Today is the final day before the biggest football game in the history of the state of Oregon, with the Ducks heading into tomorrow's annual Civil War against archrival Oregon State with a slot in the national championship game on the line. Oregon has been playing football since 1894, and in 116 years the team has never come close to a moment like this: a potentially perfect season atop the college football world.

Taking a few moments from my fetal position on the floor, where I'm writing with nervous tension over my beloved Ducks once-in-several-lifetimes opportunity, I spoke by phone with ZGF Architects partner Gene Sandoval about the ambitious new architecture planned for the land surrounding Autzen Stadium. Sandoval assures me that tomorrow's game is actually not a once-in-several-lifetimes moment, because the coalescence of head coach Chip Kelly's genius with benefactor Phil Knight's riches and ambition will mean a very bright future for the program.

Alternately known as an expansion to the existing Casanova Center and as a "football operations center" of its own, the new building will be series of glass and metal boxes meant to evoke the nature of football itself.

Rendering of planned Casanova Center expansion (image courtesy ZGF)

Featured in the expansion, which will wrap around the north and west sides of the Casanova Center, will be a new 25,000-square-foot weight room, an enhanced grass football practice field as well as the addition of two new synthetic turf practice fields, and a full-service dining facility available to all University athletes, students and staff.

The ground floor of the six-story center will feature a lobby and reception area celebrating Ducks football history program, giving way to a centralized football operations center upstairs that will include nine dedicated football position meeting rooms, two team video theaters, offense and defense strategy rooms as well as a larger conference suite for the entire coaching staff. The centralized area will be flanked by office and locker facilities for coaches, staff and student-athletes. Additional amenities will include a players' lounge, a recruiting center to host prospective student-athletes, dedicated areas to accommodate professional scouts, a media interview room as well as an advanced video editing and distribution center.

A new outdoor courtyard and plaza to the west of the Casanova Center is designed in the center of the complex, uniting the expansion with the existing Cas Center and Moshofsky Center.

Rendering of planned Casanova Center expansion (image courtesy ZGF)

"The idea of the building  is about collective strength that comes from individuals," Sandoval said. "So it’s a series of stacked boxes, like Lego boxes, that make a form. We want to celebrate each piece and make it sing. In some ways that’s analogous to a team: they all have different positions, but it’s about making a congruent entity."

The building will be clad in glass and metal, hoping to strike a balance between protection and openness. "The exterior envrolope takes on the notion of armor and pads, so it’s going to be a black suit of armor," Sandoval added. "But it’s translucent armor. It’s glass. There is this sort of play between strength and accessibility. We’re formidable but open. All the ground floor is glass and all the meeting rooms. It’s about texturing and layering."

"We intentionally situated the ground floor so it's all public rooms and transparent, to invite people into the bilding. All the rooms that needed privacy are elevated about 30 feet up. They become this notion of the cloister, where you can go and reflect and learn and strategize."

Although most of the new square footage is devoted to the football program, this will free up substantial space in the existing Casanova Center for other sports.

"It’s not just about football. It’s about building a sports community," the architect continued. "But this building does represent Chip Kelly’s notion of football: we build our own future. We’re all about the best and the latest. We’re open to anything that makes us better. He’s an amazing man. And he’s also very savvy. Chip is really about changing and reinventing football, not only in terms of strategy with offense or defense but the way he trains people. And he needs a place for this. It’s really a pedagogy. The building is about supporting chip Kelly and the mission of moving forward. And built into it is the flexibility to change over time."

Fire station, garage and handball court to creative-class hub: Emerick Architects' Fire Station No. 7

Fire Station No. 7 (photo by Brian Libby)

The former fire station at Southeast 11th and Stark, originally built in 1927 as the home of Engine Company No. 7, has become the latest in a series of creative-services enclaves.

The project was developed by Venerable Properties, which has renovated countless old buildings around town such as White Stag Block in Old Town for the University of Oregon, and designed by Emerick Architects, whose portfolio includes renovations like the Ford Building, also an historic Southeast Portland industrial building turned into a home for creative industries (designers, yoga and martial arts instructors, an art gallery, a photographer's studio).

Fire Station No. 7, designed by the same architect as the historic Belmont Firehouse about 20 blocks away that has become a fire bureau museum, has been added to and changed numerous times over the years. In the 1930s, a handball court of all things became the first addition. "I guess handball was pretty big then," laughed Emerick Architects' Brian Emerick in a recent phone interview. "It had a lit up scoreboard and everything." In the 1970s the structure was expanded and turned into a repair center/garage serving the entire Fire Bureau staff. In the 1980’s the City sold the building and it was subsequently used as an automotive garage until abandoned a few years ago. As a result, the current renovation involved not just the original 1927 structures, but the adjacent automotive shop dating to the Nixon era.

Original Engine Company No. 7 building, 1927 (image courtesy Emerick Architects)

The adjacent shop addition was completely revamped to become the new headquarters for Bremik Construction, while the original Fire Station has become home to a variety of companies, including a salon, a research and development group, a marketing company, and a designer of smart phones apps.

Although both the original building and the garage addition were already listed on the National Register, the addition "non contributing" to the historic architecture so the architects had more liberties in this portion.

Bremik Construction interior (photo by Brian Libby)

"The original was more about adaptive reuse," Emerick added. "The Bremik building was trying to find some cool factor in the fabric and being more radical about how we changed it. If you can imagine a '70s auto garage, that's really where the opportunity was to re-appropriate. There were some timber elements in the ceiling we were able to highlight, and the way the handball court was captured was an interesting story. It was all wall to wall Douglas fir in that part of the building, so we were able to sandblast the paint off and leave it as just a big volume and add the inset boxes – the offices that sit inside. We also felt like it was important to revisit the [garage's] façade because it was poorly done with t-111 siding. We wanted it to be more compatible with the original fire station and more engaging as a storefront."

Fire Station No. 7/Bremik Construction (photos by Sally Painter)

As a result, the fire station seems like merely a cleaned up version of its same self from the outside, while a wall of storefront glass makes the garage a more attractive and inviting building than it ever was in the first place. And inside the Bremik headquarters (the company served as contractor for this and the fire station), there is a rich palette of wood and a sense of fun that comes from the remnants of the handball court.

Over the years, character defining elements such as 12’ tall carriage doors and cast iron lighting had been lost and original steel sash windows replaced.  The design approach was to rebuild these and restore the building’s iconic neighborhood status, while creatively dividing the interior into viable suites that respected the original layout. Downstairs, this was accomplished using the new massive operable carriage doors as an engaging storefront system for retail.

Upstairs at Fire Station No. 7 (photo by Brian Libby)

Upstairs, the original building used to contain highly segregated firefighters' quarters: not as in segregation between black and white or Duck and Beaver fans, but fire captains from the rank-and-file firefighters. There were even two separate stairways side by side separated by a wall. Here the architects mostly just opened things up, including a skylight that hadn't been in use but now floods the space with natural illumination.

If we're talking about a fire house being renovated, it begs the question: what about the fire pole? Are there Apple R&D people or phone-app designers sliding down the pole on their way to finding a cappuccino or a yoga class?

The good news is that at least one of the fire poles remains, but the bad news is that it had to be enclosed at the top and bottom with glass to prevent people from actually sliding down the old thing.

Fire pole at Fire Station No. 7 (photo by Brian Libby)

Rigid insulation beyond code values over the maintenance garage roof allowed the building to maintain its old growth timber framing, which doubles as a spectacular finished ceiling in the space.  Single pane aluminum windows and garage doors were replaced with insulated double glazed wood units.  High efficiency gas fired units replaced an old oil boiler, and a shared central chilled water system, made a leap in heating and cooling performance efficiency. Operable casement windows were maintained in the original building to allow for natural ventilation. Because the site primarily faces north and east, it is protected from the southern solar exposure and winter winds.

The architect also credits his developer for the vision to see historic projects renovated the right way, often spending the extra dollar to build quality even if it takes longer to recover the costs - not out of some selfless altruism on the part of Venerable head Art DeMuro (who also is a member of the city's Historic Landmarks Commission) but because ultimately it's better for business.

"We've been working with them for a decade and I can say Venerable’s very unique as a developer," Emerick explains. "They’re long-term owners in every project they do. So sometimes they’re willing to spend more to get things right when it pencils out in the long term. It can lead to a higher level of quality and authenticity in the product, and that adds value. The projects lease up even in tough times. With the fire station, they actually had a tough time getting a loan for that. And they even had Bremik on board as an anchor tenant taking up have the real estate space. But now that the project’s finished, the building’s pretty much leased out."

Bremerick Construction interior (photos by Sally Painter)

This is just the latest case of an old Portland industrial building becoming home to a cluster of creative industries, following examples like the aforementioned Ford Building as well as the Olympic Mills Commerce Center in the Central Eastside and the Leftbank Building on Northeast Broadway.

"There’s an authenticity of the history that’s also been reinvented too," Emerick said. "I think that’s an appealing combination. And southeast is a hotbed of creativity. It seems a lot of the artists and the providers for the building trades have moved over. It’s funny: people look to places like South Waterfront for growth, but the Central Eastside is what’s interesting to me.  Part of the transformation is being driven by the changes in the industry itself. It’s still an industrial sanctuary, but most heavy industry isn’t able to use that kind of property effectively. Many of them have moved out to the ‘burbs. The B&O warehouse was full of artists working there without heat even before they renovated it."