Bud Clark Commons (photo by Brian Libby)
BY BRIAN LIBBY
When Holst Architecture was designing the Bud Clark Commons, the new homeless day center, shelter and transitional housing facility that opened last week, the firm faced a challenging moment that could have severely curtailed the chance for architectural excellence: the lost of $4 million from the budget. Instead, the architects say, it made for a better building.
“We originally had a whole block site,” recalls Holst’s Dave Otte. “But we came up with the idea to stack it all on a half-block. Instead of doing a five-story and a three-story building abutting each other, we did one eight-story building. We’re maximizing the efficiency of the site, creating a tighter and more urban building. We had to give up about 20 units, and about 15,000 square feet of retail space. But it’s a better building.”
This theme seems to recur when talking about Clark Commons: what could have been a mediocre work of architecture, burdened by a small budget, numerous stakeholder-clients and a complex program instead became an impressive design that acts as a gateway into Old Town and downtown.
So why was this project successful when so many other city and nonprofit-sponsored projects end up achieving something less? Talking with Holst, it seems a point of emphasis was that Bud Clark Commons was a point of emphasis.
“One factor was our sort of fresh take, not having done many public buildings, questioning assumptions and working really hard to find better solutions than the norm,” Otte explains.
Bud Clark Commons (photo by Brian Libby)
But also, explains Holst’s John Homes, the client was ambitious. “The aspirations for the building were pretty high,” he says. “This was kind of a showcase for the Housing Authority of Portland. The aspirations around homelessness and the whole mission for the project: I think it made them take a step back and make sure they hired a strong design team. One of the ways to get around the stickiness of putting more homeless people in this neighborhood was to do a good strong building. I think it helps people get past that. Good design can maybe solve some of those concerns.”
Former city councilor Erik Sten had initially been a champion of the project, which is part of the city’s broader goal of ending homelessness in Portland. “There was a lot of support from city hall. Erik wanted to make sure it was a beautiful building,” Otte says. “We kept hearing that over and over again: ‘We want to give dignity to folks who don’t ordinarily have it.’ There were a lot of practical needs that had to be met, but beauty was a big part of it. When [Commissioner] Nick fish took over, I think he embraced that same ethos.”
"I think if you read a lot of RFPs, it really does come down to the client pushing that agenda," agrees Jeff Stuhr, who co-founded Holst with Holmes. "TPI (Transition Projects, Inc.) and HAP (the Housing Authority of Portland) were interested in that, and behind them was Nick Fish, who was adamant about it. We were going in and presenting designs to him as we went along. He took an active role, down to the point where we had to sell ideas to him. He’s thrilled with the outcome but took a great interest all the way through."
“Without the steadfast political will throughout the course of the project, especially through the crash of ’08,” Otte adds, “it wouldn’t have happened.”
Before embarking on the design, architects from Holst traveled to different American cities such as Austin, Los Angeles and Seattle to see how they address homelessness. “We didn’t find any projects that combined all three of these elements, trying to take a day center, the temporary shelter, and the permanent housing, and condense that onto a half block,” Otte adds.” It took a lot of creative geometry and taking advantage of a sloping site, and let those elements start to inform the architecture.
As described in last week’s post, Bud Clark Commons features a glassy first floor hosting public areas such as the day center. Then above, there are two volumes of light and dark brick, respectively. A key feature attached to the day center is an outdoor courtyard, which not only gives visitors and occupants a chance to enjoy the outdoors, but eliminates the common site in Old Town of people lined up along the sidewalk waiting for a soup kitchen or other services.
Yet it may at first seem counterintuitive to have the day center and courtyard at the north end of the building, away from downtown and up the sloping site toward the Broadway Bridge. The decision was made in part by the desire for natural light to reach the ground floor public areas and the courtyard amidst the changing dynamics of zoning and adjacent parcels. The lot across Irving Street to the north, beside Union Station, has a 75-foot height limit, so there is less risk of a future building shading the Clark Commons courtyard and day center. On the other side, at Hoyt Street, the adjacent parcel is zoned for up to 350 feet, so it’s more likely this side of the site would have eventually been shaded.
Bud Clark Commons (photo by Brian Libby)
The site is sloped enough that the ground-floor entrance on the north side is actually the second floor. Having the day center on this side allowed it to be at ground level and to bury sleeping areas for the temporary shelter underground. “In LA at the shelter we visited, they had this big sleeping room with all these windows blacked out with curtains,” Holmes says. “People’s schedules are such that some people are sleeping during the day. It needs to be a place to sleep at all times. With our site have Irving above and Hoyt below, shoving the sleeping areas underground at that end of the site, that was an obvious thing to do.The other issue was the proximity of the building to the bridge, and the notion that this building has a kind of gateway quality to it. As you come down you have this sense of arrival. That was one of the key ideas we had: How do we give this building a kind of presence?”
The Bud Clark Commons is admirably sustainable, with a coveted Platinum LEED rating expected from the US Green Building Council, yet it doesn’t wear its green credentials on its sleeve.
“They’re all based on making the building cheaper to operate,” Otte says of the sustainable features. “Everything was based on what is going to have the cheapest payback. We approach sustainability the way we approach everything else: it’s not additive, and it’s not about marketing. For example, this building has a ton of plumbing: 130 apartments, 90 guys living downstairs. It made more sense to do graywater harvesting than rainwater harvesting. We’re going to be the first multifamily project in the state to do that. The stuff we’re doing on Bud Clark will save an estimated $60K a year over a base code building. It pays for two caseworkers. You’re connecting the triple bottom line instead of whiz-bang."
Upper floors of the Bud Clark commons are deisgned with concepts in mind similar to rigid Passivhaus standards, reflecting an overall focus on insulation. Because the upstaira units are small, there is enough waste heat from refrigerators and lights and people to heat the building up. The heater shouldn’t have to turn on unless it’s 5 degrees Fahrenheit outside. "Rather than fancy systems that need a lot of commissioning and balancing, it’s about adding better skin and windows," Otte adds. "You don’t need the fancy systems if you’ve got a good skin.
Also of note, and perhaps even a symbolic quality of this building, is the multicolored window frames on the upper façade. On another nearby building Holst designed, the 937 condos in the Pearl District, the architects used random-seeming patterning of windows to create a web-like composition. Here, the patterning is more tame but color enlivens what would otherwise be a blank façade. “The big challenge when you’re dealing with 130 units, exactly the same, is how do you get away from the uniformity of that,” explains Holmes. “There were certain constraints. We couldn’t have windows flor to ceiling because people needed to be able to put their furniture there against all four walls. So you’re winding up with a five-foot window punched into the skin. The patterning and the color kind of de-institutionalizes it.”
Bud Clark Commons (photo by Brian Libby)
Despite touches like the multicolored window mullions, ultimately Holst’s buildings are successful compositionally because of the inherent restraint the architects show. “I think one of the things we do really well in this firm, and I’m sort of baffled by in other buildings, is getting the material palette right,” Holmes says. Indeed, the clarity evident in the Clark Commons, from its brick facades to the wood-trimmed glass fronting the ground floor, helps this building transcend the sum of its parts. Ending homelessness in Portland or anywhere is a difficult, perhaps even impossible challenge. But the clarity and dignity of this building’s design, even with a variety of programs and uses inside, helps symbolize the orchestration necessary to lift the lives of the less fortunate.
Situated between the tony Pearl District and gritty Old Town, between public building and private-sector nonprofit project, between being a homeless shelter and a sender of street people to better lives, the Bud Clark Commons nimbly walks a design tightrope. That it is Holst’s first social-services project yet so completely meets its goals is a testament to why overall design excellence, and not just experience or green-design acumen, should be a foundational force in how the city selects architects.
Holst has two other interesting projects in the works. One is the Glisan Commons, a mixed-use project in the Gateway district of outer Northeast that will provide a headquarters for the nonprofit organization Ride Connection (along with housing above). The other is a single-family house in Yamhill County that is set to become the first in North America designed to the Swiss Minergie green building standard - similar to the better known Passivhaus standard, both of which place emphasis on tightly sealed building envelopes.
Meanwhile, the firm can take pride in the fact that they've retained Holst's trademark blend of restrained yet expressive architecture while moving from the realm of high-end condos and hotels to a public building of admirable dignity and simple elegance.
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