Portland Architecture

Streets and parking as landscape: Alain LeTourneau on "Open Road"

Screen capture from the in-progress film Open Road (courtesy of the artist)

BY BRIAN LIBBY

Today online fundraising campaigns are ubiquitous. Whether it's via Kickstarter or other sites, most of us have become accustomed to and maybe even exhausted by the continuous stream of people seeking one's contribution to any number of artistic, entrepreneurial, charitable or educational opportunities. On Kickstarter today, for example, the main page shows one project to send 1,000 student projects to the edge of space, "each one inside a ping pong ball," a photography book about vinyl album collectors, and a children's toy called The Humble Velocipede, "A desktop bamboo walking machine."

But recently I received an email about a fundraising project that gave me pause, from Portland filmmaker Alain LeTourneau for his new feature, Open Road . The film's central thesis is one of those truths that can hide in plain sight sometimes: that however much we may think of the roads and highways where we drive or the garages where we park as pass through spaces, they constitute a vast portion of the collective built environment. (The funding campaign on USA Projects, by the way, ends this Friday, August 3.)

Le Tourneau has spent the past decade or so both as a film exhibitor - he cofounded the much lauded Cinema Project screening series as well as a successor, 40 Frames - and as a filmmaker in his own right. Before writing about architecture as I do today, I used to principally write about and review movies, and the documentary LeTourneau codirected with Pam Minty about Southeastern Oregon's blend of natural beauty and agriculture, Empty Quarter, is among my all time favorites. (You can watch clips from it here.) Shot on 16mm black and white and featuring a series of long, elegant takes without the usual succession of quick cuts or narration, Empty Quarter is enveloping and beautiful even as it provides a real-life chronicle of farms, families and their dependence on the landscape.

Recently I interviewed LeTourneau about his new film and the perspective through which he sees Portland, his hometown.

Portland Architecture: Your last feature film, "Empty Quarter", chronicled the rural landscape of southestern Oregon and its agricultural communities there. What kind of connecting thread to you see between the topic of that film and "Open Road" with its focus on roads and automobiles? Is it that both are sort of familiar yet ignored in some manner?

LeTourneau I think you've touched on something that is a central focus to my film and photography work, this idea of landscapes becoming so common as to almost be invisible. The images in Open Road and Empty Quarter are not calendar and coffee table book images, which is not to say they don't possess some beauty. The images simply frame aspects of urban and rural landscapes that are seldom given much attention, at least not in popular movies, on television, etc.  

Another thread is John Charles Fremont and his expedition in the mid-1840s that brought him through southeast Oregon and up to Fort Vancouver. Fremont named Abert Rim and Abert Lake (both in Lake County) after his commanding officer. Fremont's name is also scattered across the west with town, lakes, rivers and other geography having been given his moniker. In Portland, there is of course the Fremont Bridge. As it happens, I live about a mile from the bridge’s Cook Street approach. The bridge not only figures prominently in Portland's skyline and is an icon of the city, but has some personal resonance for me as well. The date of the bridge's completion is also the year of my birth. Growing up in the metro area, my mother and I would frequently drive over the Fremont to visit my grandmother who lived downtown in the Portland Center Apartments. 

What are some roads or other structures related to automobile travel here in the Portland area that are distinctive to you or might have helped shape the thinking that is going into the film?

The way I-5 and I-405 encircle downtown and cross the Willamette I've always found very interesting. That such roads dominate the landscape is certainly not unique to Portland, one can find it in many cities, but it was these forms and structures that first inspired Open Road. The I-5 trench that cuts through North Portland is also featured in the film. Its construction had an enormous impact on the neighborhood when built, and the Columbia Rive Crossing will certain present a whole new host of impacts. 

I also became interested in the surface parking lots downtown, mostly in old town. This idea of car storage is very compelling to me. I read somewhere that in the span one year, a car is (on average) in transit (that is, moving) about 400 hours. This leaves the other 8,360 hours that the car is at rest, or parked. That's 95% of time in one year. So, for the life of a car, most of the time the car will be parked. I find this interesting, in light of traffic often being thought of as a key issue of automotive transit in America. The space required for parking is equal or greater than that required for roads. This is something worth giving our attention.

Are you someone who finds freeway overpasses beautiful? I've photographed them frequently over the years, and so have many others - eyesore though this type of infrastructure may commonly be. The short film on your USA Projects site portrays one of the most dramatic of local overpasses I've seen, where the Fremont bridgehead on the east side gives way to I-5.

The Fremont Bridge, particularly on the east side, has been featured in a number of films by local makers. I can recall seeing it in Nick Peterson and Matt McCormick's films, amongst others. It's hard to deny the striking beauty of the Fremont, or for that matter, many of the freeway structures in Portland. There is this wonderful almost chiseled or sculptural quality to these forms. They are massive, and they dwarf even the largest of landscape art by the likes of Heizer, De Maria or Smithson. 

In photographing the urban sites that appear in Open Road, I think of the conflict that photographer Robert Adams spoke of. The critique Adams was involve in when choosing his composition, in contrast to the sheer beauty of the object and the light falling on it. I think it's characteristic of the relationship many artist have to the subject of their work. On some level, you have to be drawn to what you choose to photograph or capture, even if it is something you find yourself very much in conflict with or in opposition to. Also, there is for me a desire to present images that are pleasurable to look at, even if at the same time capturing something that is need of changing. 

 

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Summer travelogue: Lake Quinault Lodge and the other Olympics

Lake Quinault Lodge (photo by Brian Libby)

BY FRED LEESON

If you undertake a little internet research about the Lake Quinault Lodge in Washington’s Olympic National, you’ll find phrases such as “reminiscent of” and “in the style of” the Old Faithful Inn at Yellowstone National Park.

Hogwash. One glance tells you the two have nothing in common architecturally, save for some split cedar siding. Their footprints, heights, materials and ambience are distinctly different.

So why the comparison? Simple answer: They were designed nearly 35 years apart by the same architect, a quiet, self-effacing man named Robert Reamer who, perhaps because of his introspective demeanor, is little remembered.

To the extent he is known, Reamer is remembered today primarily for his work in Yellowstone Park, which at one time numbered approximately 25 buildings large and small. Many have been destroyed by fire or demolition over the years, but not his best-known work, the amazing Old Faithful Inn.

The Inn, a stunning log-framed lodge whose dizzying lobby rises to a height of nearly seven stories, was Reamer’s first major commission in 1891 at the tender age of 29. Trained since age 13 by apprenticing in architectural offices, he had been working in San Diego designing furniture when he came to meet a key executive in the private company that planned to build the lodge. Reamer’s creation at Old Faithful made from raw logs (later shaved as a fire prevention measure) was the first dramatic example of a general style that came to be called “National Park rustic.”

Top: Quinault environs (photo by Brian Libby), bottom: Lodge entry (photo by Fred Leeson)

Despite his success on the many Yellowstone projects, Reamer’s career was not commercially stable. He wound up in Seattle late in his career after several earlier stops. The opportunity to design the Lake Quinault Lodge arose after a fire in 1924 destroyed a two-story log structure that had served as a rudimentary hotel at the edge of the scenic lake.

The developers wanted the building finished in one building season, which is short in the Pacific Northwest rainforest. Lake Quinault averages 12 feet of rain per year. Reamer’s design was executed in a mere 53 days in 1926, by two crews working 12-hour shifts non-stop.

The wonderful result bears no resemblance to Old Faithful. Instead of seven stories, Lake Quinault is 2 and ½. There is not a single log in the place, shaved or raw. The grand fireplace is red brick, not stone. The lobby is a single story without any balcony, let alone tiers of them as at Faithful. All the wood finishes are planed smooth and varnished.

Yet there is one interesting similarity in siting philosophy. Reamer never wanted his work to try challenging the best of nature. He faced the front of Old Faithful Inn away from the famous geyser, in deference to its magnificence. At Quinault, the shape of a flattened V of the original building opens to a grassy meadow leading down to the spectacular lake. This is the real focus of the building, not the plainer face that greets the visitor approaching along the narrow highway. The steeply-pitched roof planes include a few dormers and an interestingly-proportioned cupola, both said to be favored Reamer elements.

Lake Quinault (photos by Brian Libby)

Unlike many old lodges that suffered hard times as years went by, the Quinault Lodge apparently has been steadily viable economically. It appears to have its original multi-paned windows and wood doors, elements that often are the first to go when someone decides to “upgrade.” The current manager, Aramark Resorts, has restored light fixtures and curtains to match those displayed in historic photographs that dot the lobby. The original wicker chairs, however, have been replaced with undoubtedly-more-comfortable overstuffed leather chairs and couches.

The most significant change to the lodge was an expansion of restaurant seating decades ago. A shed roof was added to the first story on one wing of the “V” facing the lake. The original shake siding remains on what is now an inside wall. For the viewing pleasure of diners, unobstructed windows were installed rather than the multi-paned windows that dominate the rest of the lodge. While the reasoning is clear, the bigger windows add a jarring note to the façade.

Lake Quinault Lodge lobby (photo by Brian Libby)

Guest rooms in the lodge are small but pleasant. The painted, wood-panelled walls and ceilings appear to be original. The room we stayed in was about 14 feet square with room for a queen double, one chair and a small table. There are no televisions or phones in the old lodge. Newer, reasonably well-hidden units on either side of the original building are more modern. If you like old lodges or rustic architecture, this one should be on your list.

If Reamer, who died in 1938 at age 64, could enter the lodge today, he would feel comfortable, right at home and no doubt pleased by its condition.

 

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Pietro Belluschi: celebrated in OHS exhibit, demolished in Lake Oswego

Model of Belluschi's First Presbyterian Church at OHS (photo by Brian Libby)

BY BRIAN LIBBY

Last week I made an overdue trip to the Oregon Historical Society, to see the wonderfully evocative and informative exhibit on Pietro Belluschi, Portland's most celebrated and important architect. Curated by Anthony (his son) and Martha Belluschi, the exhibit brings alive the succession of journeys Pietro Belluschi made over the course of his life: from a young Italian soldier and WWI veteran to an American who helped guide the course of the nation's architecture, for example, or from an early modernist designing small Oregon houses to one responsible for some of the most prominent buildings in the world.

In a career that lasted some 70 years, Belluschi designed over one thousand buildings, most notably the circa-1947 Equitable Building in Portland (now known as the Commonwealth), credited as the first modern office building in the world for its now-commonplace aluminum and glass curtain wall; the Portland Art Museum, which was built in a modernist style in the early 1930s after successfully enlisting Frank Lloyd Wright to help sell the conservative museum trustees on the design; and a collaboration with Bauhaus founder Walter Gropius on New York's Pan-Am building.

One of my favorite parts of the Oregon Historical Society exhibit was the display of Belluschi'searly Portland Art Museum design iterations. The museum's trustees had wanted a Georgian-style building, like Central Library downtown, by Belluschi's boss, A. E. Doyle. But Belluschi knew he was on the right side of architectural history. "My dear Belluschi," Frank Lloyd Wright wrote in a letter to the Portland architect, "I think your plan simple and sensible and the exterior would mark an advance in culture for Portland." Wright made sure the museum got the word, too.

Early versions of Belluschi's Portland Art Museum design (photos by Brian Libby)

Belluschi would go on to be a major player in the design of the Northwest regional style of residential architeture (along with John Yeon and others), as well as that of the post-World War II American skyscraper. But it may be the succession of churches he designed throughout his career that are the most beloved among locals. Whether it's the St. Thomas More or St. Philip Neri churches in Portland, or the First Presbyterian in Cottage Grove, or St. Mary's Cathedral in San Francisco, Belluschi seemed to possess a preternatural sense of how to move ecclesiastical spaces in the United States out of the ornamentation of the past and into the simple elegance of modernity. Models of several of these spaces are included in the OHS exhibit, along with examples of Belluschi's own writing on design and the legacy he earned in the estimation of others.

"Today's need for economy makes us avoid pompously designed monuments," Belluschi wrote in 1950 in Liturgical Arts magazine (apparently shedding the excitable Italian culture of his birth for American pragmatism), "and in so doing we have found that much significance can be imparted to simple materials such as wood or brick, and much warmth and feeling may be achieved by the judicious use of such intangibles as space, light, texture and color." The proper solution, he added, "is to create an environment in which the average man may find spiritual shelter; a place where he may draw strength for his daily labors, and courage in his battle and temptations, a place where he may join others in worship and meditation."

Belluschi during his WWI service for Italy (image courtesy OHS)

Given how most of them would now be over a half-century old, it's inevitable that some of Belluschi's many local buidings have been or will be lost to history. I just didn't expect a Belluschi demolition to come within a few days of my attending this OHS exhibit honoring his legacy.

But on July 5, a Pietro Belluschi designed Catholic school in Lake Oswego, now known as Our Lady of the Lake Parish but originally called Sacred Heart, was leveled like a house of cards.

"Thursday, July 5th was bittersweet," Our Lady's website reads. "Demolition began on our tired but beloved school and the last phase of construction will continue throughout the summer. Many past and present students came by during the day to witness this long awaited event. As the saying goes, 'out with the old and in with the new,' well that's what we're doing, but it does bring a tear to the eye."

Our Lady of the Lake demolition (images culled from OLL website)

You can see the sense of conflict here. These are not conscience-free automatons without concern for culture and community.

To try and understand why the building was demolished, two calls were placed to Our Lady of the Lake, but the church declined to comment. Instead, I was called by one of the leaders of Group Mackenzie, the architecture firm designing the Our Lady school's replacement; this principal is also a longtime parishioner at Our Lady, and his children have attended the church's Belluschi-designed school. (So, client and architect, then?) He explained that the original school building, completed in 1948, was in too much disrepair to be renovated, and that it had been altered enough times since the original construction that to call it a Belluschi building was really only a half-truth.

Hearing the explanation, honestly I had mixed feelings.

On one hand, he endeavored in our conversation to express respect for Belluschi, and to convey that tearing down a Belluschi building had only come after due diligence had shown a renovation to be prohibitively expensive compared to tearing it down and starting over. The ceilings were low in the old schoolhouse, the basement occupied two disparate levels, and there were both asbestos and lead paint to be concerned about. What's more, Group Mackenzie is a leader when it comes to imaginatively restoring old buildings, such as the River East Center at the east edge of the Hawthorne Bridge, a former early-20th Century warehouse which the firm designed as a new headquarters for both itself and a local software company. I'd expect they'd have saved the building if they thought they could.

Anthony Belluschi at OHS exhibit (photo by Sabina Samiee, University of Oregon)

To be fair, historic preservation is not meant to save every building, and a not-for-profit in particurly must sometimes be pragmatic with the choices an they make about educational spaces for children. Our Lady has spent decades nurturing and providing quality education for students in Lake Oswego, underscored with the soulfulness and the lack of a profit motive that an ecclesiastical institution can bring.

It's also true that this was not one of the most important works of architecture in the large Belluschi portfolio. It was a humble little school building that Pietro himself might have been surprised to see standing for 63 years.

But even if Our Lady was not necessarily demolishing a spectacular architectural masterpiece so much as an old schoolhouse that a famous architect happened to have designed, in the broader context I still find the whole thing troubling. Our society is far too quick to tear down old buildings without considering the broader implication this has. The greatest cities are collections of architetural contributions from every generation. Tearing down an old building is like cutting down an old-growth tree. It may be justifiable, but even then it's sad.

Model of Belluschi's Equitable Building at OHS (photo by Brian Libby)

What may be the combined lesson, I wonder, from seeing the Oregon Historical Society exhibit on Pietro Belluschi and learning of a Belluschi-building demolition within a short succession of days?

The first thought that comes to mind for me is that architecture, like all else, is ultimately transient. We see that a building, built well and then cared for over time, can stand for hundreds or even thousands of years. Yet that is overwhelmingly the exception to the rule. We look to the strength of concrete and steel, or the beauty of wood and glass, and see a firmness and durability our own bodies lack. We want to gaze up at landmarks like St. Paul's Cathedral in London, or The Acropolis in Athens, or the Forbidden City in Beijing, and imagine a continuity that connects the generations, if not a sense of outright immortality. But for every such landmark continuing over millennia, there are thousands more that succumb to the ravages of time and the misguided efforts of societies. Particularly in the United States, we are defined by our disposable culture more than that which we keep.

Model of Belluschi's St. Thomas Moore church at OHS (photo by Brian Libby)

But the other lesson I took from the yin-yang of veneration and demolition for Belluschi this month was that historic preservation reminds me of something John F. Kennedy said in his speech announcing that America would go to the moon: we choose to go there not because it is easy, the president said, but because it is hard. Similarly, historic preservation is never going to be as easy as demolition and new construction. There will always be outdated building materials filling these structures. There will probably always be more upfront cost involved, and more headaches along the way. But going to the moon, as Kennedy knew, was more about just building a rocket that would get an Apollo crew there and back. It was about aspiration, and values. What kind of nation did the United States want to be in the 1960s: one with optimism and ambition, or one that took the easy route? I would ask the same to Our Lady of the Lake, both as architectural client and as educator of children: What kind of institution do you want to be?

For all I know, even as a Belluschi lover, they may be better for having a new school building instead of renovating the old one. But if the name Pietro Belluschi is lost from the collective memory of Our Lady and the teachings going on there, that's their ultimate loss. I would hope Our Lady feels all the more responsibility to educate its students about great architecture, and about Pietro Belluschi, given the choice it felt compelled to make. Were the students from Our Lady taken to the Belluschi exhibit before the school year ended? Do they know who Belluschi even was? The school he designed may be gone, but there's still a chance to learn from it, no matter whether one feels the demolition was the right move or an architectural sin, or both.

An additional OHS exhibit (photo by Brian Libby) 

Meanwhile, get to the Oregon Historical Society while you still can, for the Pietro Belluschi exhibit will be on view for a limited time this summer, through September 9. I've never been a big fan of the OHS's museum space on the South Park Blocks. The building itself is the epitome of unwelcoming brutalism, a monolith with tinted windows that seems better suited for some Kafka-esque bureaucracy. And the exhibits can sometimes feel a bit hokey, such as the display of fake fruit in an old pickup truck currently on view, meant to evoke the state's agricultural traditions. On my visit to the Belluschi show, there was also an unannounced 45-minute delay to see the exhibit because they had closed it for photography in the middle of daytime viewing hours.

But Belluschi's son, Anthony, has, with his collaborators' help, created a fitting tribute to the architectural legacy of Portland's own favorite designing son. And with the help of Our Lady of the Lake, we have been reminded not to take such treasures for granted before they're gone.

 

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The Columbia Gorge's secret Eden: a visit to The Shire

Multnomah Falls from The Shire (photo by Brian Libby)

BY BRIAN LIBBY

The directions guided us to an industrial parking lot on State Route 14 in Washington, maybe 10 miles east of the last city we’d passed, Washougal, before entering the Columbia Gorge National Scenic Area. Moments after we arrived, a shuttle van appeared to take us the rest of the way, into The Shire with its breathtaking views of Multnomah Falls across the river.

At first the van drove us through a thin, winding dirt path, but then all of a sudden, as happens at the end of a drive to the coast, the view jumped out like a movie screen suddenly illuminating a darkened theater. Before I could stop myself, I blurted out a series of four-letter words, all meant to convey the idea of, “Wow!” But as the landscape came more fully into view, with its gently rolling lawns, carefully sculpted groves of trees, and a front-row seat on the Columbia River, the exclamations gave way to a quieter sense of tranquility, something worthy of contemplation more than interjection. 

This was one sublime natural setting, and all within 40 minutes' drive of central-city Portland.

The Shire (photos by Brian Libby)

Part nature preserve and part designed garden landscape, The Shire is the brainchild of and part of the legacy of John Yeon. He was the son of a wealthy timber baron who retired at middle age to volunteer and wound up overseeing construction of the Columbia River Highway. A self-taught architect, Yeon went on to design the Watzek House in Portland, completed in 1937 when he was just 27. It would come to define and kick off the Northwest modern regional style and was exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art alongside the work of Frank Lloyd Wright and other legends of the time; the Watzek is now a National Historic Landmark.

But the younger Yeon was as much a conservationist as a designer. The same year as the Watzek’s completion, he authored the state’s first environmental impact statement. Randy Gragg explains in a Portland Monthly feature: “In the early 1930s, he borrowed $15,000 on a life insurance policy to buy Chapman Point, north of Cannon Beach, to stop a dance hall from marring what today is one of the most photographed vistas on the coast: the view of Haystack Rock from Ecola State Park. He successfully battled the powerful state highway engineer R. H. “Sam” Baldock to stop huge chunks of Neahkahnie Mountain from being blown away for a new road. And the governor appointed him chair of both the State Park Commission (where he helped lay the groundwork for the Oregon’s park system) and the Columbia Gorge Committee, a federal-level planning effort to envision an economic development and conservation plan for the region in anticipation of the Bonneville Dam.”

When Interstate 205 and its Glenn Jackson Bridge over the Columbia were being planned in the late 1970s (they opened in 1982), Yeon could see the threat of development encroaching on the Gorge—especially on the Washington side, which treated the Columbia more as an industrial highway than a scenic vista. The architect wanted the Gorge to become a national park, and to enlist partners to help make a case to leaders at the state and federal levels, Yeon invited them first to The Shire.

It would be here that many a Friends of the Columbia Gorge fundraising dinner would be held. As we now know, the Gorge became a National Scenic Area and not the National Park it deserves to be, but that still brought the crucial protection from development. In a sense, The Shire helped save the Columbia Gorge.

The Shire (photo by Brian Libby)

Yeon had purchased this 75-acre partially wooded riverside tract in 1966 for $50,000. Over the next 23 years or so, until his stroke in 1989, he continued to work on the property. The overriding idea was to create a series of small viewpoints for looking out at Multnomah Falls, with the designer borrowing from English garden design and how it leads visitors to a series of constructed viewpoins, or “follies”. But here, rather than plantings and flowers, the garden is the landscape itself, with its native trees, meadows and riverbank.

“In Yeon’s orchestration of every experience on the property, he plays the falls like a leitmotif in a symphony,” writes Randy Gragg in Portland Monthly.

The main central area at The Shire is a grassy clearing that gently slopes down to the water, its curving lagoon implying a kind of amphitheater for absorbing the panoramic view of water, mountains and trees. (This is also where a scene from the movie Twilight was filmed.) But there are a series of trails that lead to additional viewpoints, including one small clearing further back from the water that views the falls through a grove of trees on either side, almost like peering into a lighted room through a bedroom door that’s ajar just a few inches.

After Yeon's death in 1994, both The Shire and the Watzek House were donated to the University of Oregon. Our visit to The Shire was part of a fundraising dinner presented by the university along with Portland Monthly. (Gragg, the magazine's editor, has long been, through his time as The Oregonian’s architecture critic during the 1990s and 2000s and now with Portland Monthly, an important keeper of Yeon’s flame). Over the July 14-15 weekend, there were also public tours of the property.

The Shire (photos by Brian Libby)

It seems likely that The Shire’s availability going forward will be similar to that of the Watzek House: accessible to those willing to wait for a few days of opportunity each summertime, but not accessible full-bore like public parks on a daily basis; to do so would be to threaten these parcels with over-use. Just as the Watzek House, with its delicate architecture, is not a place for scores of thousands to traipse through on their way to Walleyworld, The Shire is not a place to park your RV or cast out your fishing line.

Yet the best thing about the University of Oregon having stewardship of these gems, besides the fact that they’re seemingly safe for the future, is that they are at base a public asset now, available to those who seek these places out.

And seek, I beseech thee. Whether it’s basking on the great lawn, the Columbia lapping audibly at its side and the feel of an incredibly soft grass at our feet (a particular varietal Yeon sought for that feeling—an indication of his eye for detail and for curating a visceral experience), or traipsing through the extended paths and meadows, this is a little gem of a riverside tract that, better than any writer can, expresses the natural treasure the Columbia Gorge continues to be with the help of Yeon and the rest of the people who helped preserve it.

By the time dusk arrived and it was time to leave The Shire, I was no longer firing off crude interjections of awe, just sighing at my good fortune - to live here, and to have seen this.

 

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Local homes tours showcase modern and historic

A boathouse at 2515 Marine Drive (photo by Scott Gerke) 

BY BRIAN LIBBY

Summer and early fall are the time for local homes tours, and this year is no different with two arriving this weekend and next, and more on the way.

First up is this Saturday's Portland Modern Home Tour, a self-guided tour of five homes from 11AM-5PM on July 21. (Tickets available here.) There have been several things called Portland Modern over the years, from the visual art group show held annually in the mid-2000s to the Portland Modern realty and architectual history site (a sponsor of this blog). This home tour is not affiliated with those, but is instead curated by Architectural Record magazine contributing editor Ingrid Spencer for Austin-based Modern Home Tours LLC.

Portland Modern has lined up several of the more compelling contemporary single-family residential projects in the city from the past few years. One is the Fortin-Tingley residence, designed by the husband-wife team of sole practitioner Ellen Fortin and BOORA Architects' Michael Tingley.

Fortin-Tingley Residence (photos by Jon Jensen)

Fronting busy East Burnside, its focus is on the view overlooking Laurelhurst Park in the back of the house. It's also an interesting combination of high design and simple practicality. For example, the ground floor is divided up between Fortin's studio and a separate residential unit that can either be rented out or used as a kind of updated granny flat, or as a family room. Because of the views as well as the opportunity to rise above Burnside, the great room and outdoor deck are located the story-and-a-half tall second floor, with two single-story bedrooms on that level and then two more above. The great room offers a bounty of natural light through floor-to-ceiling glass, which makes an ideal showcase for the homeowners' collection of art (they're active supporters of the Portland Institute for Contemporary Art, and Michael even co-designed the organization's past temporary facilities for the Time-Based Art festival with BOORA).

Interchange Residence (photos by Daniel Kaven)

Also featured in the Portland Modern tour is the Interchange Residence, designed by William Kaven Architecture and located in North Portland's Overlook neighborhood. Its architecture, oriented around a courtyard with extensive use of masonry and glass, seems influenced by California, Southwest and Japanese versions of modernism, but the package works very well here too. Every space, be it the great room at the front of the house, a small office and library in the middle or the master bedroom in back, looks out at the lush courtyard through floor-to-ceiling glass. The owner also possesses a very impressive collection of both art and objects from around the world, including works by Matisse and Picasso as well as several Northwest artists and several ancient religious artifacts from Asia and elsewhere.

Perhaps the most unique project on the Portland Modern tour is a boathouse off Marine Drive, designed by Emily Refi. 

"We started with a 60's boathouse with an open boat well (think of a U-shaped raft, with the boat parked in the curve of the U) and added a second story micro-living unit," Refi explained in an email. "Sounds simple enough, but it was sort of a feat of engineering to make the extra volume above work with the open boat well below. There was only one engineer in town that would touch it (Ken Safe with Miller Engineering). He designed a moment frame for the river-facing wall that was strong enough to keep the 'flaps' of the U together. That had to be brought in over the water via tug-crane. Dealing with the city was interesting, as they had just begun to regulate boathouses with the 2008 code; previously it had been sort of an anything-goes affair. So getting through permitting was a learning curve for me and for the city, as it was the first combination living unit/boathouse they had come through under the code. Another challenge was mitigating the noise from the airport –  attention to skin details & insulation, triple paned windows – this really helped the shell become more energy efficient."

2515 Marine Drive (photos by Scott Gerke)

"My client, Dennis, is a retired US Forest Service ranger and acted as general contractor and did about 80 percent of the work himself, mainly because he had more time on his hands than money," Refi adds. "He had some experience doing construction work on his cabin, maintaining the boat and old boathouse. The logistics of building on the water added some challenges. For instance, all the materials had to be carried or pushed in a hand cart down a steep ramp and dock - about 600 feet. Additional floatation was installed incrementally during construction to keep it afloat, and was installed by a diver. The steel was brought in by tug-crane. Then you can't exactly prop a ladder up against the walls. Dennis rigged up makeshift scaffolding that straddled the neighboring floats, and at times he simply put a ladder down to the riverbed. I came out about once a week during construction to walk through details and answer questions. In the end, he pulled off some pretty amazing details."

A small house but a gem also recommended on the Portland Modern tour is the Harpoon House, which was previously featured on this blog as well as in a Dwell magazine feature by Amara Holstein.

Owners Matt Kirkpatrick and Katherine Bovee found a small 50-by-50-foot lot in Southeast Portland's Buckman neighborhood, and Kirkpatrick, through his firm Design For Occupancy, created an ideally modern but woodsy-Oregon house to go there.

Harpoon House (image courtesy Portland Modern Home Tour)

"Kirkpatrick designed the house to draw upon the outdoor area rather than dominate it," Holstein writes. "Instead of a single-story home that spreads to the limit of the lot, the three-story house holds itself trimly in place. A basic box that’s as tall as it is wide (28 feet) and 16 feet long, the house consists of rooms stacked verti­cally: an unfinished basement on the bottom, a kitchen-living area and a bathroom in the middle, and a bedroom on top, with the stairwell hinged onto the front of the home. The only interior doors are those to the bathroom, basement, and root cellar, leaving the rest of the space open and unfettered."

A key aesthetically with Harpoon House is the outdoor deck, with a partial lattice-like enclosure that creates a cool sculptural feel by completing yet partially taking away from the form of the box.

A house by Orangewall Studios (image courtesy Portland Modern Home Tour)

Portland Modern includes not only Portland houses but one in suburban Milwaukie. Designed by Gary Hartil (who was recently featured in our "Architect's Questionnaire" series) of Orangewall Studios, this whole-house renovation "integrates a second story master suite addition, an exterior renovation, new roof massing, new decks, and landscaping," the tour website explains. "The existing shingle siding was retained, defining the character and form of the original cottage. New functions are articulated with an accent of horizontal tongue and groove cedar. A full seismic upgrade was also completed for the project."

There are two more homes on the Portland Modern tour, but I'm choosing not to write about them because they are currently for sale. To do so would, at least for me, cross a line between editorial content and advertising.

Fort House by Saul Zaik (photos by Lincoln Barbour)

Meanwhile, besides Portland Modern there is also the third annual Heritage Home Tour, presented by the Architectural Heritage Center and scheduled for Saturday, July 28 from 10AM to 4PM. Although the tour includes historic Victorian and Queene Anne styles, among others, one of the houses, the Saul Zaik-designed Sam and Esther Fort House is an epitomy of midcentury modern residential architecture in Portland. Completed in 1962, wood and glass home is set into the landscape, designed to recede behind the trees and native plantings. The house is separated into three different pavilions that define the living and kitchen workspace, the children’s area, and adult area. Mosaik Design and Remodeling ;recently completed the kitchen renovation on the Fort home.

Another home on the Heritage Home Tour should be familiar to anyone who has regularly crossed the Ross Island Bridge into the east side of Portland. A majestic Queen Anne‐style house in the Brooklyn neighborhood, the Johan and Dora Poulsen house dates to 1892 (the architect is unknown) and features a 50-foot turret with curved glass.

Top: Poulsen Home; bottom: Barnes House (images courtesy Architectural Heritage Center)

There is also the H.W. and Leony Howard House, located in Eastmoreland and featuring a blend of Dutch design elements and Mediterranean Revival architecture. Its front door has a carved wood panel, and it also includes a massive brick chimney with multiple stacks, stepped gables, and a red tile roof. And the Heritage Home Tour also includes the Frank and Isabella Barnes House, a 1914 classical revival-style dwelling which played a role as a haunted house in Beverly Cleary's Ramona Quimby children's book series, andhas also been a location for the TV show Grimm. It includes a grand portico with ionic columns and ballustrade as well as interior rooms retaining the original wall coverings, including a leather wainscott in the dining room.

Finally, there's the Julius and Delia Durkheimer House, located in Northwest Portland and dating to 1899 from a design by architect Rolph H. Miller. Another in the classical revival style, it includes pilasters at the corners and dentil friezes below the cornices. The encircling porch includes Tuscan columns and a balustrade balcony, as well as leaded glass windows.

Most of these homes, be they modern or historic, are closed off to the public. This is a rare opportunity to see some of the best of both past and present residential design in the city. 

 

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The Architect's Questionnaire: Jeff Kovel

Jeff Kovel (photo by Katie Anderson)

BY LUKE AREHART

Continuing our series of conversations with local architects about their careers and inspirations, we come to one of the most acclaimed designers in the city, Skylab Architecture founder Jeff Kovel. Since the firm's founding in 1999 (after Kovel had worked on musician Lenny Kravitz's home for Architropolis), Skylab has been responsible for a host of eye-catching projects in Portland and beyond, including the Departure Restaurant & Lounge atop the renovated Meier & Frank building downtown, Doug Fir restaurant on East Burnside at the Jupiter Hotel, and a residence in the West Hills famously used in the "Twilight" movie series, not to mention the Flavor Paper headquarters in Brooklyn and a temporary (but dazzling) space for Nike at the recent track & field Olympic Trials at Hayward Field in Eugene.

Portland Architecture: When did you first become interested in architecture as a possible career?

Jeff Kovel: When I was seven my parents built a house in New York with a talented young architect. I was young enough that I was able to spend time on the construction site with the architect and get to know the contractors. It was an incredible process that opened up a whole new world for me. I was playing with Legos at home and then seeing construction built in reality; that connectivity was apparent and got me interested in architecture. Growing up in a modern house was amazing, the house was on a beautiful site, and it was architecture in the sense that it was a tool to mediate between you and the landscape. I could see and feel the impact of living in a building that was custom-designed for its site and for the elements; I was able to see the initial design and construction process and grow up in this amazing house.

Fortunately, the high school I went to had drafting classes and I was able to take those. My earliest memory of that drafting class was a watching a film on the Portland Building being constructed; which was my first awareness of Portland in the 8th grade in New York through a film about a Michael Graves building.

Flavor Paper, Brooklyn (photo by Boone Speed Photography)

Where did you study architecture and how would you rate the experience?

I went to Cornell Architecture School. I first discovered the school through a summer program when I was in high school; at that point I had known that I wanted to be an architect, so I was looking for a fast track. I had a great time in the program. We did three projects and I was making models and designing buildings for the first time. I was fortunate enough to be accepted as a bachelor of architecture student to Cornell; I earned my five-year undergraduate degree there. Cornell is a school that is idea-focused and less technically focused; it is also rooted in craft and the traditional architectural skills of hand drawing, ink drawing and model making. The computer didn’t really show up until my fourth year of study, and even at that point it was pretty minimal. When I think about architecture school, I think about an education that you can’t get any other way; in a technical capacity you can learn on the job or through experience, or studying on your own.

Cornell was an idea driven focus for five years with a traditional craft basis. I think this is the best type of education and has really helped me in my ability to craft ideas and then be able to sell them and lead them through to execution.

What is your favorite building project that you’ve worked on?

Columbia Boulevard Wastewater Treatment Plant (CBWTP Support Facility). It is the largest scale and most civic project that we’ve done to date. It has been a process working with the city to develop a progressive concept and bring it through the stages of design. We have landed on something that will be symbolic for the city in terms of built structures and sustainability. The plant staff and leadership were looking to build a hundred year building; this allowed us to explore concrete in a new way. We spent a lot of time with CBWTP finessing its structural system, it is a pretty sophisticated tessellated roof system, it has a series of tapered, cambered concreted beams that are forty feet long and land on 24 inch diameter concrete round forms; it will be exciting to see it realized.

Some of the other projects that I have enjoyed have been projects where we have been able to design on a civil engineering scale, some of the residences that we have worked on for example have 36-inch deep wide flange structural beams that double cantilever thirty or forty feet in each direction. I enjoy getting to that level of structural expression where we are employing the art of engineering to creating conceptual forms.

HOMB prefab design (rendering courtesy Skylab)

Who has been most influential to your career?

Frank Lloyd Wright is an influential person to me. I would have to say the architect in New York, Steve Haas. Also a number of fabricators have been really influential, relationships built over time where we’ve innovated around anything from project delivery to details and material process.

What part of the job do you like best, and as an architect what do you think you most excel at?

I like being on the construction site: being able to see what is happening and anticipate issues or discrepancies and find a path towards resolution. My other main strength is my role as creative director in all of our projects; translating research into concepts and editing them through to realization.

Nike facility at Olympic Trials, Hayward Field, Eugene (photo by Boone Speed Photography)

What are some Portland buildings (either new or historic) that you most admire?

I love some of the early modern buildings here: The Union Bank of California tower, the Standard Insurance tower. I take inspiration not necessarily from urban structures here as much as rural structures, like Timberline Lodge and Salishan, even things like the highway rest stop buildings that have more native regional forms are inspiring to me for their materiality.

Another thing that I find influential is the industrial buildings of the western landscape; things like grain silos and warehouses and the working quality of the West have been really interesting to me for a long time. The opportunity to rehabilitate some of these buildings and bring them into their modern form has really been exciting to us; there is a patina, texture, materiality and ethic to them that is very powerful today.

What is your favorite building outside of Portland and besides any you’ve worked on?

My two favorite buildings in the last 10 years are the Seattle Central Library by OMA and the Mercedes Museum by UNStudio in Stuttgart, Germany. Both of those buildings, in different ways, have pushed the field of architecture.

Brown Residence (photo by Boone Speed Photography)

Is there a local architect or firm you think is unheralded or deserves more credit?

I’m excited about Aaron Whelton of Whelton Architecture. He is a professor at PSU and he won the competition to do The David Campbell Memorial on the waterfront; he is a really promising designer who has both the drive and disposition to become successful.

Allied Works is making incredible work.

There are a lot of designers: industrial, product and digital that I could point to as well.

There is a company called NEW run by Jason Martin and Carl Jonsson; they are doing some incredible industrial design and pushing the field forward.

What would you like to see change about Portland’s built environment in the long term?

We generally have a conservative approach to making buildings here in Portland. We have a very risk-adverse development community; the counter to that is that we have an incredibly talented group of architects here, and I would like to see that gap get bridged more tightly, provided the city is a very blank canvas right now and transitioning into a new era; it’s a great time to add the layer of inspiration that more progressive architecture will bring and carry us further in terms of the global perception.

Bureau of Environmental Services project (rendering courtesy Skylab)

How would you rate the performance of local government like the Portland Development Commission, or the development and planning bureaus?

We’ve had excellent experiences collaborating with the Portland Development Commission, and we’ve also found a lot of support in the Bureau of Development Services in the city government, people like Portland Mayor Sam Adams. A great example of this positive collaboration is the Bureau of Environmental Services’ project that we are working on now. The project started as a fairly narrow program and building size without much site work or master planning; we looked at the site holistically and then created a design solution that in an integrated way resolves a number of issues and creates a powerful platform for a piece of architecture that wouldn’t have existed otherwise. In many governments, the approach is much more narrowly defined and prescriptive.

Would you rather live in a South Waterfront condo, a craftsman bungalow in Laurelhurst, a warehouse loft in the North Mississippi district or a mid-century ranch in the West Hills?

It would be a toss-up between Mississippi and the West Hills. I live in something that is similar to a loft in the North Mississippi district now, in the West end, where I’m raising children and it’s pretty tight quarters. I definitely have an inclination to move toward more of a ranch in the West Hills; probably because it’s the easy answer to the challenges of living downtown.

Mixed-use project proposal, East Burnside (rendering courtesy Skylab)

Who is a famous architect you’d like to see design a building in Portland?

There are so many excellent architects that it’s hard to say, probably a European firm, having an OMA, UNStudio, Herzog & De Meuron, or MVRDV project here would raise the bar. There is so much happening in global architecture that has not made it here yet.

Everybody is pretty trigger shy here, probably in some part based on the Portland Building experience; there just hasn’t been an appetite for that type of project.

Which would you rather be responsible for: an ugly LEED platinum building or a beautiful modernist energy hog?

Neither.

Name something besides architecture (sneakers, furniture, umbrellas) you love the design of.

I like when design crops up in unexpected places, as much as I’m interested in more of the mainstream channels of design like furniture and apparel and footwear design and accessories. Often it is the unexpected solution to a problem that most people are overlooking is what gets me most excited. 

What are three of your all-time favorite movies?

"Lost in America", "The Shining", and "2001: A Space Odyssey".

 

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Warehousing the future: visiting Vestas headquarters in the renovated Meier & Frank Depot Building

Vestas headquarters (photo by Brian Libby)

BY BRIAN LIBBY

For more than a decade since it was vacated in 2001, the circa-1927 Meier & Frank Depot Building has sat vacant waiting for a suitor. Now, it's the American headquarters for Danish wind turbine manufacturer Vestas, thanks to an extensive renovation and the addition of a fifth floor overseen by GBD Architects and Ankrom Moisan Associated Architects.

Developed by Gerding Edlen, the company behind the five-building Brewery Blocks as well as numerous other Pearl District and South Waterfront projects (and also a ground-floor tenant of the new space), the Vestas headquarters is designed to meet Platinum-level LEED strictures and is a whopping 68 percent more energy efficient than a buiding designed to code. This comes from a variety of features including the building's thermal mass, its operable windows, its combination of operable windows and water-cooled ventilation, and downtown Portland's largest array of solar panels (enough to meet 12 percent of power needs).

Thanks to a 160,000-gallon cistern, the building collects enough water for non-potable use (flushing toilets, irrigation) that it uses 80 percent less than a conventional building and diverts 33 percent of Vestas' stormwater runoff away from the sewer system.

Overlooking I-405 from busy NW Everett Street, the hulking masonry building has always been more elegant than one expects from a warehouse. Now, with a fresh coat of white paint (resembling the white terra cotta of the classic AE Doyle designed Meier & Frank building downtown) and the boards removed from the windows, it has a handsome presence that is both unassuming and grand.

Vestas atrium and auditorium from fourth floor (photos by Brian Libby)

Inside, the Vestas headquarters is defined by and centered on a large multi-story atrium. Particularly when you're standing on the upper floors, the entire building feels connected as office workers circulate amongst glass-ensconced conference rooms, offices, and an auditorium with bleachers made from reclaimed wood salvaged from the bottom of the Willamette. Throughout the building, in fact, the wood helps soften the interior architecture and add texture. Most of all, though, the atrium itself makes the building feel special in how natural light permeates the building from the center radiating out.

The only place the atrium doesn't feel so compelling is on the ground floor. That may be because the building's second floor has been given over to parking. So when you're looking up at the atrium from the bottom, that sense of connection amongst the open floors surrounding the atrium is lost because the walls are sealed off. However, according to Patrick Wilde of Gerding Edlen, who accompanied me on the tour, that second floor could someday, as demand for space grows, be converted back to usage for humans and the second-floor able to join the atrium.

Views from Vestas rooftop (photos by Brian Libby)

The rooftop, despite having such a large solar-panel array and parts of it given over to plantings for an eco-roof, also provides a great place to hang out with a postcard view. The design put a common lunch room on this fifth-floor addition to give everyone a share of the panorama.

It's all but impossible not to compare the Vestas project to another renovated full-block warehouse down the street, one also developed by Gerding Edlen: the Wieden + Kennedy headquarters. Both are company headquarters, and both feature central atriums with bleachers that marry concrete and reclaimed wood. And each has something to offer versus the other. The Vestas design has more of a bounty of natural light: it almost feels like you're standing outside when in its central atrium. Office workers here will never get seasonal affective disorder, even in the longest stretches of perennially gray December and January days.

Yet the Wieden + Kennedy building, designed by Brad Cloepfil's firm, Allied Works, is unquestionably more refined in its detail and refinement. The concrete looks like marble in the W+K and the upper stories a kind of living sculpture of catwalks and carved-out space. One senses there architecture as a a true artistic composition. In this way, the Vestas headquarters feels bland by comparison.

But again, that doesn't mean Vestas isn't an overwhelming success - because it is. It just feels like natural light and sustainability were overriding concerns for the Vestas project, while the ambition for capital-A architecture drove W+K.

Besides the architectural details, simply by building a major corporate headquarters here Vestas helps make a kind of statement that hopefully can be backed up over time. The market for alternative energy sources like wind and solar has had dramatic ups and downs over the past decade, as a great leap forward in market share has been set back by the recession and the plummeting cost of fossil fuels like natural gas with the spread of hydraulic fracturing (fracking) techniques and its ability to tap previously unreachable reserves. Vestas has been laying off employees just as its big new headquarters is ready to unveil itself.

Yet standing outside the Vestas headquarters on a recent sunny afternoon, the building seemed to serve as a reminder to focus on the long term, one in which alternative energy plays an increasing role and in which Portland is a leading player. This city, despite whatever cultural cache it currently carries, is not an obvious choice for a corporate headquarters. We lack many Fortune 500 companies, we're not a center of financial wealth, and we lack major nationaly renowned academic institutions.

But Portland may be a suitable fit for Vestas, if not a kindred spirit. Like Denmark, where Vestas originated, Oregon is a left-leaning spot on the coast that's perhaps overshadowed by more populous neighbors but quietly harboring substantial ambitions in the burgeoning green economy, a place that eschews loud statements and prefers to just get on with a higher quality of life. Standing outside the Vestas headquarters feels like that future is more than just chasing windmills.

 

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