Elements residence (photo by Daniel Kaven)
BY BRIAN LIBBY
Most architects with a pristine modernist house under construction would insist that, whatever glossy magazine or website comes calling, it be photographed and marketed after completion, when the tenants and their designer furniture have moved in and the architectual table is set with all the trimmings.
But for Daniel Kaven of William Kaven Architecture, whose passions and talents lie in photography as much as design, there are inherently more interesting images to be taken while the construction process is still underway.
"Structures are limitlessly more interesting visually and photographically while under construction, when there is a sense of man battling the elements to gain simple shelter," says Kaven, who is one half of William Kaven Architecture along with brother Trevor WIlliam Lewis (the firm is named after their grandfather). "Upon completion, humans tend to take shelter for granted and tend to never reflect on how complex it was to build."
Elements residence (video by Daniel Kaven)
An accomplished gallery-exhibited photographer and painter, Kaven has been at work on a new film series featuring buildings under construction, starting with the Elements residence near Mosier, Oregon in the Columbia River Gorge. The firm also recently relocated to an office inside the nonprofit art center Disjecta in North Portland's Kenton neighborhood.
"This year is actually the year I’m trying to operate with architecture and art sort of being one and not trying to separate them," he explains. "Because they’ve been divided in the past. This space is about that. I wanted to be in a space where I could make stuff and do architecture one and the same. I would really like to do a project that had integrated film work or murals or really cool sculptural entities—architecture that frames artwork that’s integrated into the system."
"Control Room" by Daniel Kaven (Thermal Transfer & Acrylic on Canvas - 2004)
"The thing I love about art is that it’s very conceptual," the designer-artist adds. "Especially if it’s a smaller size, you can explore any realm and just do it. In architecture you have to work in a partnership with somebody else who’s paying for something and convince them of ideas that are important and work collectively with them. Sometimes it doesn’t get built or takes a lot of time to get built. That can be frustrating. But at the same time what I love about architecture is the permanence of it. Art is often seen by just a select few people. Whereas architecture is in many ways the people’s art, that people can see from outside, or, if they’re public buildings, from inside. There’s almost a civic pride I have in making architecture that people can love and learn and live inside of."
The Elements project was commissioned by a Portland couple looking for a second home. The clients allowed William Kaven Architecture to help select the site as well as design a house there. "The view was huge," Kaven says. "We did these really elaborate studies of looking at geological maps to find angles. To really figure out exactly where we wanted to orient the building. Up until construction started, it was sited a bit differently. There was an exhaustive effort put into the angle of the building. I have yet to take a single picture that really captures what it’s like to be in that space. It’s as close to floating above the Gorge as one could be. And the wind: there’s such extreme breeze out there, it almost gives you the feeling that you’re sailing or something."
Elements residence under construction (photos by Daniel Kaven)
The design for Elements "was very spatial," the designer explains. "We really worked on something…an unusual thing we did there that isn’t something I’d typically do in an urban setting was to put the main living space up on the second floor, to elevate everyone above the ground and increase the view. The materiality is very simple and locally sourced as much as possible. There’s a lot of Oregon white oak in there, and concrete and basalt." The cladding is a rain screen stucco system.
William Kaven Architecture first came into local notoriety with the North House, a multi-unit residential project on Vancouver Avenue in North Portland. A local resident initially took the contemporary design to task for not fitting in with the older homes on the block, but the design proved to be a fore-runner of the now wide array of modern condos and houses in the area.
Photos by Daniel Kaven
In 2009 the North House also featured on the 11xDesign homes tour, which focused on small Portland firms developing their own projects.
"I think we had 1,000 people come through the North House, and it wasn’t even finished being built," he remembers. "I think 11xDesign was architects developing projects themselves at a time when financing was still available to do that. It was a unique exercise in the balance of development and design acumen. Projects of that scale are hard to do unless you’re building them, contracting them, yourself. But the group switched gears when the financing changed: the loans to buy, the loans to build."
Workforce project, Beaverton (rendering courtesy William Kaven)
Even so, William Kaven has managed to keep moving forward, with projects like a villa in Croatia as well as a workforce housing project concept developed for the City of Beaverton.
"The things I’m really into now are probably less building-related," Kaven adds. "We want to be a part of doing projects that are more mobile. We’re interested in doing some mobile museum type projects: things that move to other places. It’s intellectually intriguing. We’ve cut our teeth on brick and mortar projects, and we’ve been pretty good at getting that stuff built. But I’m very interested in sort of sharing architecture in new ways."
Advertisement
Comments