Portland Architecture

Design Calendar: October 1-15

Bejamin Waechter's Oakley residence (image via AIA/Portland)

BY BRIAN LIBBY

Portland Design Festival - Opening Night Party
The Portland Design Festival is an annual city-wide celebration showcasing the full spectrum of design disciplines. Staged from 2009 through 2012 as the Portland Architecture + Design Festival, the Festival reflects the collaborative nature of contemporary design culture. The Portland Design Festival fosters public discourse and awareness of design and design practices, and  invites participation in an extended conversation about the issues and ideas shaping design and its role in our daily lives. The Opening Night Party will feature food, drinks and entertainment by Dig-A-Pony, Sweet Hereafter, and the Bye and Bye. AIA/Portland Center For Architecture, 401 NW 11th Avenue. 5:30pm Thursday, October 3. Free.

Street Seats Design Competition
As part of the Portland Design Festival, designers from across the country will participate in a juried competition for a freestanding "street seat" pavilion to be created and installed during the 2013 Portland Design Festival. This temporary installation will draw on design guidelines of the City of Portland’s Street Seats program, by reclaiming a parking space to create an innovative outdoor public sphere. AIA/Portland Center For Architecture, 401 NW 11th Avenue. 2pm Thursday, October 3. Free.

Branded: Portland's Global Identity and Its Influence on Design
The creative development process of this city’s creative trailblazers has gained respect and admiration nationally and beyond. As part of the Portland Design Festival, this moderated discussion will to share insight and inquiry about the influence of Portland’s identity on the present and future of design, and by extension commerce. The panel will include Michelle Lesniak Franklin A u Clothing, Matt Lounsbury of Stumptown Coffee Roasters, Jeffrey Stuhr of Holst Architecture, and Vince Porter of the Governor’s Office of Film and Television. The discussion will be moderated by Patrick Quinton of the Portland Development Commission. AIA/Portland Center For Architecture, 401 NW 11th Avenue. 6:30pm Friday, October 4. $10.

Re-Shaping of Old Portland - Buried Hollows, Lakes, and Creeks
In this lecture focusing on the early days of Portland, Dr. Tracy J. Prince, author of Portland’s Goose Hollow and co-author of Portland's Slabtown, will present a slide show of historic photos to demonstrate how dramatically different the terrain of Old Portland (the west side—from the Willamette River to the Tualatin Mountains) was from today’s. The changes include: building the Great Plank Road which ran through the narrow and dark Tanner Creek Canyon; burying Marquam Creek, Tanner Creek, Johnson Creek, and Balch Creek; filling Couch, Guild’s, Kittredge's, and Doane's lakes; filling the 20-block-long, 50-feet-deep Tanner Creek Gulch; filling the 14-block-long, four-block-wide Johnson Creek Gulch, filling the Marquam Gulch; building streets on 20-50 foot pilings in areas that today’s residents would describe as “flatlands;” and 25-foot-deep cuts required when B Street (Burnside) was graded beyond Tanner Creek Gulch. Architectural Heritage Center, 701 SE Grand Avenue. 10:00am Saturday, October 5. $18 ($10 for AHC members).

Lovejoy Fountain (photo by Susan Seubert)

Lawrence Halprin's Open Space Sequence - Tour
Oregon’s DoCoMoMo Chapter will lead a tour of the four Halprin-desgined urban fountain plazas that culminate in the dramatic Forecourt Fountain(now called Keller Fountain) – described by New York Timesarchitecture critic Ada Louise Huxtable as “one of the most important urban spaces since the Renaissance”. Built between 1965 and 1970, the Portland Sequence’s importance has been recognized in its successful nomination to the National Register of Historic Places. Landscape architect Steve Koch and journalist Randy Gragg will lead a morning tour detailing the history and creation of Halprin’s masterpiece. 10:30am Saturday, October 5. Reservations required. Contact Becca Cavell to RSVP at [email protected]. $10.

Design Week Portland - Opening Party
Just in case you were wondering, Design Week Portland and the Portland Design Festival are two separate events, happening at the same time. They're not exactly the same, though: While the PDF focuses mostly on architecture, interiors and landscape architecture, DWP casts a wider net to include advertising, graphics, fashion and other design disciplines. The Plant, 939 SE Alder Street. 7:00pm Monday, October 7. $10.

Biomimicry: The Next Big Thing
Inventor, entrepreneur, and futurist Jay Harman thinks big, outside the box but inside of nature. He is one of the world’s leaders in biomimicry research and development as well as founder of several companies that create industrial solutions that are clean and green and based on mimicking nature’s design solutions. Harman has just published his first book, The Shark’s Paintbrush: Biomimicry and How Nature Is Inspiring Innovation. Harman’s Portland lecture at the Pacific Northwest College of Art (as part of Design Week Portland) will focus on what he sees as the immense potential for biomimicry to change business as usual and create a shift from a resource depleting and pollution spewing economy to a clean and green economy. Swigert Commons, 1241 NW Johnson. 6:30pm Monday, October 7. Free.

Portland Building (photo by Brian Libby)

The Future of the Portland Building
When it opened nearly three decades ago, the Portland Building was called our city's Eiffel Tower by then-mayor Frank Ivancie. It was the first major postmodern building in the United States, but due to the building's small windows, its employees suffer more sick days then their City of Portland colleagues in other buildings. Peter Meijer and Becca Cavell, co-founders of the Oregon Chapter of DoCoMoMo and leaders of two Portland architecture firms, will reprise a debate they first presented at a modernism symposium in Florida earlier this year. Meijer will argue for the preservation of Michael Graves' Portland Building, the postmodern landmark that he recently and successfully nominated to the National Register of Historic Places. Cavell will present the case for its demise. But what about a hybrid of the two: leaving Graves' facade but cutting an atrium into the middle? AIA/Portland Center For Architecture, 401 NW 11th Avenue. 5:30pm Monday, October 7. Free.

Design Museum Portland - Launch Party
Following in the footsteps of Design Museum Boston, which has successfully sponsored a variety of exhibitions and events around the Boston area geared to educate the general public about design, the new Design Museum Portland will celebrate what they call "the fruitful result of thoughtful problem solving and a willingness to break with tradition." ADX, 417 SE 11th Avenue. 6:30pm Tuesday, October 8. Free.

Make It Happen: Randy Hunt on Design, Entrepreneurship, and Etsy
Hunt is the author of the upcoming book Product Design for the Web and the creative director at Etsy, where he leads a team of designers creating the end-to-end experience, both online and off. Hunt, as this lecture for the PNCA/OCAC MFA Applied Craft in Design program and Design Week Portland will show, feels strongly that designers must be able to build what they design, a perspective that fits naturally with Etsy’s culture of making and the love of craftsmanship. Bison Building, 421 NE 10th Avenue. 7:30pm Tuesday, October 8. $10.

The Future of Retail
Businesses of all kinds are considering a shift from the commodity-oriented selling of goods to a more service-oriented selling of experiences. How will designers play a role in shaping retail’s future, and designing for it? In this Design Week Portland event, as part of a panel experts, Ziba creative director Jon Irick will discuss these and other issues pertaining to the future of retail. Irick has worked recently on global retail-focused innovation and experience design projects for clients like Reebok, adidas and Charles Schwab. Ziba auditorium, 810 NW Marshall Street. 6:45pm Wednesday, October 9. Free.

AFO Honored Citizen Dinner
Each year the Architecture Foundation of Oregon selects a non-architect community member to honor for built contributions to the city. This year, you can join 600 colleagues to celebrate the accomplishments and contributions of Benson Industries, an Oregon company that is a sought-after provider of custom systems for some of Oregon's and the world's most intricate and interesting buildings. Benson designs, manufactures and installs complex, custom curtainwall systems from the Port of Portland Headquarters to the stunning Towers One and Four at the World Trade Center in New York City and Singapore's One Raffles Quay. Oregon Convention Center, 777 NE Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard. 5:30pm Wednesday, October 9. $125.

Green Champions Summit
This year's focus for the annual Green Champion Summit is a call to action for designers to reclaim a position on civic engagement, advancing urban policies and environmental leadership. The event will center on educating and invigorating community leaders, designers, and politicians to the issues surrounding us including the draft release of the Climate Action Plan this fall and progressive building and energy related policy at the local, state and federal levels. AIA/Portland Center For Architecture, 401 NW 11th Avenue. 5:30pm Thursday, October 10. Free.

Portland Writers on Design
What makes a city feel the way it does? Beyond the iconic symbols from postcards and movies, most cities earn their unique identity through the experience of living in and moving through them, and these depend on hundreds of tiny, designed interactions. From drinking fountains and stoplights to transit stations and zoning laws, the urban fabric is woven, intentionally and often at great cost. As part of Design Week Portland, join four Portland writers -- Carl Alviani, Lyza Gardner, Chris Higgins and yours truly -- as we tell five stories, each explaining one way that design has makes the city feel the way it does. Ziba auditorium, 810 NW Marshall Street. 6:00pm Friday, October 11. Free.

Design Matters: A Tour of Exceptional Portland Homes
Here in Portland, we hold a special place in our hearts for the unique and creative. This year's homes tour, sponsored by The American Institute of Architects Portland, is showcasing small and smart homes. Working within a tight framework, these featured architects had to get clever and innovative with their designs. From cantilevering a second story to reshaping an existing mid-century model home, Portland architects (including Benjamin Waechter, whose work is pictured above) once again show us we can live large while being small and smart. 10:00am Saturday, October 12. Tickets available here or by calling AIA Portland at (503) 223-8775. $40.

Riches of A City - Heritage Auction
Enjoy an inspiring evening of supporting local heritage education and advocacy by bidding on specially-donated items. At this fundraiser for the invaluable Architectural Heritage Center, you’ll find art and heirlooms, unique dining and travel experiences with a vintage flair, and fun kitsch. Melody Balroom, 615 SE Alder Street. 6pm Saturday, October 12. $75.

Lovejoy Columns & Tom Stefopoulos Bike Tour
Presented by Know Your City, this bicycle tour that will uncover the significance of the Lovejoy Columns, including their history in the surrounding neighborhood, their place within Greek culture in Portland, their depiction in the media, and efforts to save the artwork that adorned them. The columns, which featured several large murals painted by Stefopoulos, were a well-known landmark in the Pearl District before they were demolished in 1998 during the redesign of the Broadway Bridge (they are now on view in the Pearl District but covered with photographic reproductions of the murals until an indoor home can be found). Narrated by James Harrison of Friends of the Columns (who led the effort to preserve Stefoloulos's work) and guided by Carye Bye, Portland's "Museum Lady." Proceeds from the tour will provide funding for a gravestone for Stefopoulos's currently unmarked grave at the Rose City Cemetery. 1:30pm Sunday, October 13. Tickets available here. $18 ($15 for Know Your City members).

 

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Learning from the (nearly city-botched) Rayworth House move

Rayworth House leaves its foundation (photo by Caroline Dao)

BY FRED LEESON

A small miracle unfolded in Portland’s preservation circles the other day that will have ramifications  perhaps for  years to come. 

It was small, indeed, comprising a mere 1,600 square feet in a house measuring a story and a half tall. But it was a  miracle that it happened, given the amount of work, grief, struggle, money  and hard feelings it took to move the 1890s Edwin Rayworth house a mere two  miles in North Portland. 

For the most part, the story involved  a lot of people who wanted to do the right thing, but managed to trip over miscommunications, misunderstandings and likely some bureaucratic egotism. In the end, the house was saved, will be restored and will likely live on for another century or more – far outliving the temporary grief of the past few weeks.

The episode began early in 2013 when a Lake Oswego developer, Andre Koshuba, bought the old, vacant house in a foreclosure sale. He planned to demolish it and build two units on the small lot that sits fewer than 50 feet from trendy North Mississippi Avenue. 

The proposed demise of the charming but run-down architectural gem hit the Internet. Koshuba, not wanting to be framed as the prototypical evil developer, offered to sell the house for $1 to anyone interested in moving it.  Members of the Boise Neighborhood Association hoped to raise enough money to move the house to a nearby lot and keep it in the original neighborhood.

The little house that could (photo by Ashley Korslien, KGW)

Alas, the neighborhood couldn’t muster the money.  Koshuba set a deadline of midsummer, hoping to get started on his new building before bad weather hit. Roy and Kim Fox, two Humboldt neighborhood residents who had done a masterful job of restoring a larger Victorian, stepped forth as potential rescuers. They found a lot two miles away, and started negotiating the many city regulations about preparing the site through the city’s Bureau of Development Services and making the move, which required a permit from the Portland Bureau of Transportation.  

Koshuba, meanwhile, had shown admirable patience. He set a Sept. 8 deadline. With lengthy assistance from Cathy Galbraith, head of the non-profit Architectural Heritage Center, the Foxes lined up a moving company, negotiated with the various utilities that would have to move lines, paid all the city fees for the various permits and actually received a permit from PBOT to make the move on the deadline.

Alas, somewhere along the way PBOT had not consulted with the urban forester about impacts on trees. PBOT retracted the permit it had approved.  City Forester Jenn Cairo evidently believed the move would damage or destroy up to 20 trees. Oddly, other city staffers who travelled the proposed route placed the number much lower. 

Commissioner Amanda Fritz, the new commissioner of parks – which includes urban forestry – declined to overrule the forester. She said in an email that she didn’t want to face the wrath of property owners whose trees had been destroyed. Mayor Charlie Hales responded that trees were a renewable resource and historic old houses were not. 

Fritz intervened with Koshuba and he graciously extended the deadline once again. In a meeting with the Foxes and others, Cairo reportedly said she was a “one-issue” person when it comes to urban tree canopy. Her intransigence could be mitigated, however, for a $50,000 tree mitigation fee, according to news reports.  The Foxes countered with $3,000, and ultimately agreed to $10,000. After modifying the route,  the deal was struck.

Arriving at its new site (photo by Ashley Korslien, KGW)

With masterful choreography of both men and machinery, Emmert International performed the move. Though the transport of the house progressed smoothly – if slowly – difficulties arose with utilities. Some electricity and Internet service were lost for as long as five hours along the route.  “We lost a lot of goodwill over that, and we are very sorry about it,” Roy Fox said. If fault is to be laid, it is not with Roy or Kim Fox on that one. They had given the notices required under all of the rules.

The house now sits at its new location, awaiting a foundation that will be poured in the weeks ahead.  Then the restoration can finally begin. Meetings are being scheduled at City Hall to figure out how the missteps happened and how they can be corrected, although few such building moves occur.  

For single-issue bureaucrats who may never face the same situation again, the message should be this: Buildings like the Rayworth house represent a time in the history of our city, and in the history of craftsmanship, materials and architecture that cannot be replaced. They provide a sense of place – and places for people to live and work. We are not better off if they go to the landfill. 

“Portland will be all the richer, thanks to the extraordinary commitment of the Foxes”, said Cathy Galbraith of the Architectural Heritage Center. “Like all of the 5,000 properties on the city’s Historic Resources Inventory (1983), the Rayworth house had no formal Landmarks designation and that means no protection. What people see in the house is an 1890 picture-perfect Victorian-era cottage that has survived, unlike thousands of vintage houses that were bulldozed during the clearance of Portland’s older neighborhoods during the 20th century. Now, we lose them one at a time - - and Rayworth would have been one more loss.”

Fred Leeson is president of the non-profit Bosco-Milligan Foundation, which owns and operates the Architectural Heritage Center. 

 

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Façade lessons from Allied Works, ZGF

Clyfford Still Museum, Denver (photo by Jeremy Bitterman)

BY LUKE AREHART

On a familiar gray morning in downtown Portland last Friday, the AIA/Portland Center For Architecture opened its door for the first of four sessions of its 2013 Design Symposium Skin: Pushing the Envelope. Providing examples from two recent buildings devoted to art and football, Chris Bixby was on hand to present on The Clyfford Still Museum by Allied Works Architecture, while Owen Turnbull, Kelvin Ono, and Brad Iest were there to talk about the University of Oregon’s Hatfield-Dowlin Complex by ZGF Architects.

In architecture, the term building envelope or ‘skin,’ is used to describe the enclosure of interior space by a surface. As such, the skin of a building can often be described as the façade as it is the visible planes that draw distinction from the outside and wrap the various spaces inside. The skin of a building is incredibly dynamic as it is responsible for a large portion of architectural concepts such as structure, usefulness and aesthetics.

The first project of the session to be discussed in terms of the design of its skin is The Clyfford Still Museum located in Denver, Colorado and completed in November 2011. Still was an American artist and one of the first abstract expressionists. His will stipulated that any city that would agree to build a museum for his collection would be granted his art collection to display. The museum itself was to hold nearly everything that Clyfford Still had painted before his passing in 1980.

The site plan for the new museum included the addition of a tree-dotted plaza at the north entry that opened up important views and access to the busy 13th Avenue that bisects the larger complex of museum and public spaces. One of the main design goals on this project was to integrate the landscape of the site and “to create a building that reflected [Clyfford Still’s] philosophies and his feelings about art and life,” Bixby added, in addition to making a sense of weight to the project with a piece of architecture that could be seen as “of the earth.” As the grove of trees in the plaza reach maturity, they will blend and merge with the textured exterior of the museum’s walls and address one of the stated project goals to have the visitor “find themselves in the building and not feel like they were approaching an object, per se.”

As Bixby showed in conceptual models used in the competition, the exterior concrete skin was a product of many episodes of investigation and experimentation. Allied’s architects would try out different mixes and variations in formwork to note the response and form of the mixture after it hardened. They were looking for an aesthetic that would look “sourced from geological patterning with natural looking strong forms that would add to the sense of weight,” Bixby added. The team “had a great deal of assistance from the contractor who was brought on very early in the project, who self-performed concrete. They had their concrete crew on hand whenever we needed them or wanted to talk to them.” The project team continued to do mock-ups and tests at a larger scale with the general contractor that started to develop the spatial implications of cast concrete. One such idea was to “use rock salt, glued to the interior of the formwork,” which would then be washed away to reveal the pattern of the temporary salt molds.

Clyfford Still Museum facade (photo by Raul Garcia)

The project team settled on a wood board-form strategy, laying wood up inside the gang form system and pour concrete in to it. By the virtue of the shape of the wood it would stick to the concrete, and as the workers pulled out each board individually, the gaps between the boards would break off in different ways and create the organic pattern. “We were looking for something where this final result was a product of the process of its making,” Bixby explained.

Keeping moisture out was a very important consideration due to the climate in Denver and the value of the artwork inside. Libeskind’s nearby building, for example, had to have its skin disassembled after only six months due to moisture penetration. The other element that needed to be integrated into the wall system was insulation, as the exterior wall was concrete. “All of the exterior perimeter walls are backed with a gallery wall that is furred out with a cavity in between,” Bixby added. “We also have places where an exterior surface wraps into an interior wall to expose the structure and hang art from it, which was important to us from the early concepts.”

One particularly interesting aspect to the concrete fins was the idea that the appearance and pattern might change or adjust over time, or that the textured aggregate would provide a place for moss to grow. But in order to keep the pristine image of the museum, various surface chemicals were used on the exterior to prohibit any growth or graffiti.

In all, the Clyfford Still Museum showcased the ability of a building’s skin to take on a beautiful aesthetic while acting as structure. Even given the long-used and familiar nature poured concrete, there were opportunities within the process to make a truly dynamic façade.

Next up for this session, a panel of designers from ZGF Architects presented their design and process for the newly constructed Hatfield Dowlin Complex, an operations center for the University of Oregon football team. Owen Turnbull, Kelvin Ono, and Brad Iest each discussed the project, which has only been open for about a month.

UO Hatfield-Dowlin Complex, Eugene (image via Wikipedia Commons)

A key to the Hatfield Dowlin was the articulation of various volumetric boxes arranged amongst each other to express the programmatic uses on the interior. The façade was then used to develop structural variation and differentiation. Since the program of this building had a multitude of uses for all of the various aspects of running the team, the exterior skin had to respond dynamically to encompass each use.

One of the first design moves was to create spaces above the flood plane by making “a podium at the plaza level, which sets the complex up to have an urban context,” Ono explained. “The first programmatic block anchors the practice field and starts to provide a base for the other blocks.” The building’s skin in the project was used to fold in an attempt to blend the exterior plaza and public spaces together with the highly private interior spaces. “You can inhabit the space that the façade enwraps,” he added. “The building is really about the skin as an expression, the skin of the building is what makes it so unique and special.”

To develop the design, the ZGF project team looked to body armor as inspiration, specifically that of a Samurai. They loved the speed, movement and agility that is expressed, as well as the idea that each piece of armor is unique and serves a purpose. Each piece becomes an extension of the Samurai’s skin. It also follows that the armor/pads of the University of Oregon football players served as inspiration as well. The skin on this building strives to match this caliber of stealthy sleekness that has become synonymous with Oregon football.

UO Hatfield-Dowlin Complex, Eugene (image via GoDucks.com)

The ZGF team used standardized dimensions for the modules that would visually slide in and out of a surface plane to develop a porosity of sorts from each volume that never touch each other directly. The building’s skin has a very dimensional aspect to it with the addition of the system of layered glazing. Partially rationalized and party pure aesthetic, the darkened ‘sunglasses’ to the building deliver a sleek look to the façade while providing various gradients of protection to the sun-facing west facade and the view of the practice field facing offices and spaces.

The presenters also delivered stats on metrics that measured the performance of the mostly glass façade. For a couple of configurations the team showed the value of the Solar Heat Gain Coefficient (SHGC) which measures the potential rise in temperature to the interior space from solar radiation and the coefficient for visibility which puts values to sun absorption and glare.

Each of the remaining three sessions for the AIA Portland 2013 design symposium will also focus on a pair of projects completed by prominent local firms.

This Friday, September 20^th SERA Architects will be discussing the Edith Green-Wendell Wyatt Federal Building, and members from Opsis Architecture, LLC will present on the Building 7 addition for Portland Community College’s Rock Creek Campus.

The AIA Design Symposium series is moderated by Corey Griffin, who is an Assistant Professor in the School of Architecture at Portland State University, teaching design, structures and building technology courses.

The sessions run from 8:00am-12:00noon at AIA Portland, AIA Portland (403 NW 11th Ave Portland, OR 97209). The cost for individual sessions is $100 for AIA Members and $140 for non-members. Participants are eligible for 16 CEHs/HSWs learning units. For additional information on each session and to register visit: http://aiaportland.org/education/upcoming-classes/2013-design-symposium-skin-pushing-the-envelope As of this posting, sessions are sold out. Please call Liz Rhodes at AIA/Portland (503-223-8757) to be put on a wait list.

 

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Design Calendar: September 16-30

The Shire (photo by Brian Libby)

BY BRIAN LIBBY

The Ladd and Reed Legacy: Building Portland, 1851-2013
In this lecture urban planner Richard Ross, who led a coalition to restore the historic Columbia River Highway nd founded the Save Our Elms campaign for Laurelhurst and Ladd's Addition, traces the roots of the Ladd and Reed families, which helped build Oregon’s civic and educational fabric, its basic economy, and set the stage for Portland’s strong neighborhoods and vital downtown of today. The Ladds and Reeds  pursued a common vision, to build a thriving 19th century “Renaissance City” out of soggy Stumptown while also establishing Reed College. The lecture is part of the American Institute of Architects/Portland chapter's Historic Resources Committee's monthly meeting. 12:00pm Wednesday, September 18. AIA Center for Architecture, 403 NW 11th Avenue. Free.

Donovan Rypkema: the Remarkable Economics of Preservation
Rypkema, principal of PlaceEconomics, a Washington, D.C.-based real estate and economic development consulting firm and author of  "The Economics of Historic Preservation: A Community Leader’s Guide," makes the case in this lecture for historic preservation's economic viability with rousing oratory. 6:30pm Wednesday, September 18. St. James Lutheran Church, 1315 SW Park Avenue. $15.

Films by Evan Mather
As part of the Center for Architecture Film Series, director Evan Mather's 30-minute documentary A Necessary Ruin: The story of Buckminster Fuller and the Union Tank Car (2009) will be shown, as well as the shorts A Plea For Modernism and I Am Artist.  As A Necessary Ruin explores, upon its completion in October 1958 the Union Tank Car Dome, located north of Baton Rouge, Louisiana, was the largest clear-span structure in the world. Based on the engineering principles of the visionary design scientist and philosopher Buckminster Fuller, this geodesic dome was, at 384 feet in diameter, the first large scale example of this building type. A Necessary Ruin relates the powerful, compelling narrative of the dome’s history via interviews with architects, engineers, preservationists, media, and artists; animated sequences demonstrating the operation of the facility; and hundreds of rare photographs and video segments taken during the dome’s construction, decline, and demolition. 7:00pm Thursday, September 19. AIA Center for Architecture, 403 NW 11th Avenue. $5 suggested.

Lewis & Clark College’s Agnes Flanagan Chapel
Presented by the Portland chapter of DoCoMoMO, this guided tour explores an iconic campus buildings at Lewis & Clark begins with the Flanagan Chapel, completed in 1969 by acclaimed Seattle modernist Paul Thiry, and its 2007 addition by Portland's BOORA Architects, the Dianne Gregg Memorial Pavilion. Thiry's sixteen-sided chapel emerges from the trees, rising dramatically upwards from a wide base. Inside, the chapel resembles an amphitheater as much as a church, with circular seating around the center creating an interactive and yet intimate space. 10:30am Saturday, September 21. Lewis & Clark College, 0615 SW Palatine Hill Road. $10 ($5 for DoCoMoMo members). Advance registration required. Please RSVP  to [email protected]. 

Agnes Flanagan Chapal (image courtesy Lewis & Clark College)

Summer Tours of The Shire
The Shire, formally known as the John Yeon Preserve for Landscape Studies, occupies a 75-acre waterfront site in the Columbia River Gorge across from Multnomah Falls. This is a carefully designed landscape with a sculpted lawn, a series of meadows, wetlands, vista points, river bays, and walking paths that John Yeon created over the past 30 years. The Shire is a center for Pacific Northwest landscape studies while being preserved as an example of landscape design. 10am Saturday, September 21. $30. For more information call 503-412-3718.

How to Research the History of Your House
Ever wonder who lived in your house before you? Or what your house looked like originally? Historians Tibby O’Brien and Morgen Young take you through the steps to uncover the history of your vintage house (as well as any other building). Using the latest online sources, local archives, and libraries, they will show you that the process is not so mysterious when you know what steps to follow and where to look. 10:00am Saturday, September 21, Architectural Heritage Center, 701 SE Grand Avenue. $18 ($10 for AHC members).

Green Apple Day of Service
A group of organizations including the AIA/Portland Schools Committee, the AIA/Portland Committe on the Environment, the Cascadia Green Building Council, the Council of Educational Facility Planners International and AIA/Vancouver have teamed up with two schools and their communities to organize two projects. One, the Jason Lee K-8 School  in Portland, will host a second phase of their “Learning Garden” project, which includes the addition of berry, flower and herb, and native species gardens, along with benches, trees and a new pathway. (Sign up here to volunteer.) 8am Saturday, September 28, 2222 NE 92nd Avenue, Portland. The other, at Hough Elementary School in Vancouver, will undergo a first phase I of the Outdoor Classroom Project, including building new gravel pathways, benches, a stage and a teaching area, and planting bulbs. (Sign up here for this event.) 8am Saturday, September 28, 1900 Daniels Street, Vancouver. Free.

 

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Exploring Portland's riverfront ports and shipyards

The Golden Bear in a Swan Island drydock (photo by Brian Libby)

BY BRIAN LIBBY

Over the past 25 years or so, American cities have reclaimed vast swatches of riverfront space that used to be the domain of industry and infrastructure. We've eliminated many of the shipyards and factories and highways dotting and clogging riverbanks for a century or more, replacing them with public parks, walkways and expensive condos.

Yet a huge portion of waterways such as the Willamette River as it passes through Portland remain the domain of industrial facilities, from warehouses to dry docks to ports for barges full of goods ready to unload. Because industrial enclaves such as this are closed off to the public, they remain at least partial mysteries.

On dry land outside these places, one encounters chain-lined fences and restricted entries. At best, one can see them from afar, such as the centrally located ship loading facilities near the Broadway Bridge and the Rose Quarter. But from the river, these industrial areas are revealed. Up close, they show off ships and cranes and massive water and oil tanks with a functional but striking sculptural beauty.

Global Sentinel docked at Swan Island (photo by Brian Libby)

I'd first explored Portland's stretch of the Willamette earlier this summer, aboard the MS Wolf, a small, circa-1932 craft captained by Bruce Hebeler that is ideal for river cruises: small enough you can reach out and touch the water, but big enough to feel steady. That cruise had started at Willamette Park in John's Landing, south of the Ross Island Bridge, and continued north to the Steel Bridge before turning around. This time, Captain Hebeler offered to continue the journey so we could see Portland's shipyards.

As we passed under the Steel Bridge, where July's cruise ended, I gazed at the Louis Dreyfus terminal, a grain elevator that is probably the largest and most prominent riverside industrial facility in the central city. The terminal partially blocks views of the downtown skyline from the Rose Quarter, and it prevents an expansion of the Eastbank Esplanade north without diverting from the riverbank. Yet great cities are a mix of many different types of architecture, infrastructure and industry. To have such a large grain terminal sitting beside the modernist minimalism of Memorial Coliseum, for example, or right across the river from the Pearl District, makes the city more vibrant.

After the Dreyfus terminal, the boat continued past my beloved Coliseum. Saved from demolition four years ago, it sits in limbo now, awaiting City Council's approval of funds that would give the building new life. It's already a busy building, hosting as many events annually as the Rose Garden next door and often acting in tandem to attract large events. Yet even with the Portland Winter Hawks pledging millions for this city-owned building, City Council has so far refrained from funding basic deferred maintenance that would pay for itself in bookings.

Still, the building looked beautiful. Because our boat ride was happening in late afternoon, the sun was shining through the Coliseum's glass facade, making the curving upper edge of the seating bowl easily visible. This building is so exquisitely simple in its composition: a concrete bowl in a glass box. Have any of you ever experienced any other arena in the United States, or the world, that was so utterly transparent? It makes the Rose Garden, despite being thirty years newer, look like it was created by Fred Flintstone.

In front of the Coliseum, as our boat went by, was the prime riverfront parcel that is being used as a gravel parking lot for Rose Garden employees. This could be an ideal public space, either as continuation of the Eastbank Esplanade that ends a few feet away at the Steel Bridge. Instead it's a totally wasted piece of prime riverfront real estate.

Passing under the Broadway Bridge, we moved alongside another terminal, this one owned by Temco; a massive ship called the Rosalia D'Amato was there, juxtaposed against the Pearl Disrict condos on the opposite bank. I actually knew this was the ship in port because a local artist whose studio is in an industrial building adjacent to the terminal, Melody Owen, reguarly posts on social media what ships come and go. "BRILLIANT SKY came in as the actual sky darkened last night," she wrote on Twitter today, for example. "Now, a cool white morning. The sound of sirens echo across water."

When we passed under the Fremont Bridge, my attention to the riverbanks temporarily subsided. This is the most beautiful bridge in Portland's central city (which does not inlude the city's best bridge, the St. Johns) yet one of contradictions. It was completed in 1973, a period not known for great design. 1970s buildings, for example, have not stood well the test of time with their overemphasis on concrete and monumentalism. Yet this elegant arched span is timeless. One can't help but laugh, though, knowing the bridge is named after John C. Fremont. It's not that Fremont isn't deserving: during the Civil War as commander of western armies, he freed the slaves in his jurisdiction and was the first to promote Ulyssees S. Grant. He also explored the Oregon territory extensively. But Fremont was also the first presidential candidate from the Republican party and one of the first two US senators from California.

After passing the Fremont Bridge out tour headed for Swan Island, where much of Portland's terminals are concentrated. First passing a trio of massive Ash Grove tanks, we came in view of several giant cranes at the waterside, attending to the massive ships parked there. Here we also came across what seemed to be the city's main dry docks. A huge ship called the Golden Bear was being worked on.

As we moved into the interior banks of Swan Island, there was suddenly a succession of ships along its docks, but because two of them were historic it felt not like a modern shipyard so much as a kind of graveyard of the past.

Once we passed the silver Global Sentinel, a present-day vessel, our boat came across the Empress of the North, a paddle-wheel ship that looks like it's from the 19th century but was actually constructed in 2002, to take tourists up and down the Columbia as well as up into Alaska. It's been sold and is being rebranded as the American Empress. I'd actually spent time on the Empress of the North 11 years ago when it first was christened, on a press tour as it sat docked near Jantzen Beach on the Columbia - its trite faux old timey tackiness almost overpowering. Part of me enjoys the heritage of still having paddle wheelers on the Willamette and Columbia. Part of me rolls my eyes.

Another faux-historic riverboat, the Columbia Queen, was also in port, but seemingly not for the renovation happening to the Empress. It too isn't nearly as old as it looks, for the Columbia Queen was completed in 2000. After just one season of ferrying passengers along the Columbia, its parent company, Delta Queen Steamboat, filed for bankruptcy. It was taken over by another company, Great American River Journeys, but that company too went bankrupt. In 2009, its third owner, Majestic America, also went out of business. Today the ship is reportedly for sale, but as we passed alongside, the Columbia Queen was alongside another ship called the Salvage Chief, apparently in the process of dismantling it.

Empress of the North at Swan Island (photo by Brian Libby)

What does the string of bankruptcies experienced by the Columbia Queen say about river travel? Rather than a precipitous drop in tourists wanting to travel up and down these rivers, I wonder if the deliberately old style is a turn-off. If you were taking a rail trip, would you do it in a faux choo choo made? If taking a plane, would it be on a propellered DC-3 or in a 747? A good riverboat should get out of the way of the beautiful natural scenery. We don't need to go back to the days of Mark Twain for the vehicles that take us down river. We just need to smoothly travel over the water.

Rounding back out of Swan Island, we returned south along the Willamette, this time along its western banks. Here there were Port of Portland terminals not only for loading and unloading ships, but long rails extending into the water that seemed to denote ships being launched from here.

The journey brought us alongside one more massive ship: the Port Pegasus from Hong Kong, docked just north of the Fremont Bridge, emblazoned on its side with "PACIFIC BASIN." It seemed longer than two football fields, yet I suppose it would still seem like a tiny structure as it crosses the ocean.

Centennial Mills (photo by Brian Libby)

By this time, central Portland was again coming into view. And if I wasn't already a proponent of saving historic Centennial Mills, I certainly was after seeing it from the water. We see the tall grain-elevator buildings when we see the facility from the Pearl District and Naito Parkway on dry land. Yet it's the smaller wharf buildings and dock along the water that indicate the most potential for future development. Centennial Mills stretches out into the Willamette like virtually no other space in the city. This is a chance to preserve our maritime heritage, but also to create a great 21st Century place.

Coming past downtown reminded me once again that, while there is much to like about our central city, from the small blocks and pedestrian-friendly streetscape to the myriad transit options, we do not have many buildings that stand out from the river. Ours is a banal skyline if judged only by sculptural standouts. What is more compelling on the water is the bridges: not the Burnside or the Morrison, but the heavier structures like the Steel Bridge, the Broadway and the Hawthorne. As we passed under the Broadway Bridge, one could see its temporary installation, a massive multicolored quilt, swaying in the breeze.

By now, though, the river was more alive with people. As we moved first beneatht the Hawthorne Bridge, passing the Riverplace marina, and then continuing past the under-construction TriMet bridge, our boat continually encountered teams of dragon boats enthusiastically and rhythmically gliding along the top of the water.

Perhaps this is one of the things that makes a Willamette River excursion so pleasurable: that there is every size of craft on the water here, from the largest ocean-going ships to the tinest human-powered boat.

I love looking at the as-yet-unnamed TriMet bridge, precisly because it's not yet finished. With its spans reaching from either side but not yet touching, one senses its betweenness, a sense that at no other time moving down the river will the bridge look like this.

TriMet bridge under construction (photo by Brian Libby)

TriMet rejected the most compelling and visually attractive bridge design offered to them, by the talented Boston-area engineer Miguel Rosales. Instead, they chose a design by Donald MacDonald that, while certainly not an eyesore, lacks that same streamlined elegance. But the construction itself is beautiful and fascinating to behold, the first time in 40 years that a new bridge has been assembled over the Willamette.

Heading back to port at Willamette Park we made our way past another area undergoing lots of change: the Zidell Yards and South Waterfront. One senses from the water the gap in access that exists between Riverplace to the north and the Ross Island Bridge to the south. But here, particularly at Zidell Yards, is a chance for Portlanders to have a more direct access to the river and its banks.

 

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Award winners: THA, Holst, SRG, ZGF, YHG, UO

THA's Hallie Ford Center in Corvallis (photo by Lara Swimmer)

BY BRIAN LIBBY

Recent months have seen Portland firms take home a number of awards, from projects to the work of individual architects. As we dive into the fall arts season, let’s take a moment to acknowledge the acknowledgements.

Holst Architecture, for example, has received the Project of the Year award from Residential Architect magazine’s 2013 Design Awards for the Bud Clark Commons. Featuring 130 studio apartments for residents who have been experiencing homelessness, the project beat out a host of swanky houses. Think of it: people not long ago living on park benches and under bridges now occupying space that’s won a design award over mansions.

“I just assumed we were going to pick a house or an apartment that showed the expertise of the architect and their use of the best materials in creating the best spaces,” juror Brian Messana said. “But this project to me encapsulates all of that.”

“Good design should be available to everybody,” fellow juror EB Min added. “That’s one of the tenets of modernism. I think this project really addresses that. When we’re talking about residential architecture, everyone just jumps to think about single-family homes. But this is a residence as well. And beyond the social program, the design itself is lovely. As a piece of architecture in Portland, it functions beautifully. It’s a great addition to the cityscape as well.”

Holst's Bud Clark Commons (photo by Brian Libby)

“We chose to offer this as an example to everyone: that you can achieve something for a relatively mundane, straightforward project that usually is not treated very well,” concurred juror Robert M. Cain. “It goes beyond.”

Meanwhile, Portland’s THA Architecture is the recipient of the 2013 Region Firm Award from the American Institute of Architects’ Northwest and Pacific Region.

“Two interrelated qualities stand out about THA Architecture. The first is the breadth of consistency they achieve from concept to detail and the beautiful work that results. Second, is the quality and focus of the firm’s culture and the way it infuses itself into every aspect of the firm’s highly evolved practice.”

The award may denote a generational arrival for THA. Once known as Thomas Hacker Architects, the firm has moved beyond the shadow of its talented founder, Hacker, who studied under Louis Kahn and who, as a University of Oregon professor, influenced a number of acclaimed architects like Brad Cloepfil and Rick Potestio. Now, however, THA principals like David Keltner, Becca Cavell and more recent addition Corey Martin are playing leading roles. The firm continues to make public buildings such as museums and higher education facilities its bread and butter, but is also moving further into condos, apartments and other residential projects.

Bayview Library, San Francisco (photo by Bruce Damonte)

Recent THA projects, for example, include the Hallie Ford Center at Oregon State University in Corvallis and the Bayview Library in San Francisco, with a number of others under construction: the State of Alaska Library Archives Museum in Juneau, 3339 SE Division (an apartment building) in Portland, and the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Central Oregon in Bend.

THA also received another honor recently, as did two other Portland firms.

The September issue of Architect magazine includes its annual list of America's top 50 architecture firms. THA came in at #8, while SRG Partnership came in at #22 and ZGF at #24. Last year, ZGF was the top-listed Portland firm on this list (and the only one), at #10. This year, SRG also came in at #10 on Architect's alternate listing of the top 50 sustainable design firms, with THA at #11 and ZGF at #35.

YGH Architecture also was honored recently. Architect Lona Rerick, who directs the firm’s sustainability efforts, received 2013 BetterBricks Award in the Building Design category. The award recognizes her leadership in the Pacific Northwest’s green building community and her many accomplishments in sustainable design during her more than 10-year career with YGH. While at the firm, she has led or played a significant role in the sustainability strategies for numerous projects, many of which earned LEED Gold or Earth Advantage Gold certification and have realized energy consumption rates ranging from 30 to 45 percent below current code requirements.

Rerick is a former chair of the AIA Portland, Oregon Chapter’s Committee on the Environment and has served as the head of YGH’s Sustainability Committee since 2002, helping lead the firm through The Natural Step planning process. Additionally, she is instrumental in coordinating YGH’s efforts to meet the AIA 2030 Commitment, which sets guidelines that move buildings to carbon neutrality by the year 2030. She also currently sits on the National Sustainable Design Leaders Group, an elite selection of nationally recognized green champions.

Students Jason Rood, Alex Kenton and Ben Bye (image courtesy University of Oregon)

Architecture students from the University of Oregon also recently won first place in the "Timber in the City: Urban Habitats" contest, an international competition of the Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture.

Called upon to design a mixed-use facility for a site in Brooklyn, New York, a team that included UO architecture undergraduates Benjamin Bye, Alex Kenton and Jason Rood used cross-laminated timber as a new building technology to create a cost-effective, environmentally friendly solution for creating livable and recreational areas that support a wide range of daily activities for residents. The UO students’ work was chosen from 1,000 entries.

 

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GBD's Enriquez on designing an apartment building to Passive House standards

Kiln Apartments (rendering courtesy GBD Architects)

BY BRIAN LIBBY

In recent years the US Green Building Council's LEED rating system has been joined by a number of other green design verification and certifications, such as the Living Building Challenge, Green Globes and Passive House. But the latter has almost never been applied to a scale beyond that of the single-family home. An apartment building project on North Williams Avenue in Portland now under construction, the Kiln Apartments (formerly called the Payne Apartments), seeks to become one of the first to do so. Recently Agustin Enriquez of GBD Architects, the project's designer, discussed the challenge of applying Passive House standards to multi-tenant housing.

PORTLAND ARCHITECTURE: How is Passive House more challenging to meet than other certification systems?

AGUSTIN ENRIQUEZ: With LEED, there are a lot of points to assess, so you can pick and choose a strategy. Generally speaking, if you do a thoughtful job it’s relatively straightforward. With the checklist, it’s kind of easy to do because there are so many options and approaches.

Passive House is different. Passive House has two or three things you’ve got to do. If you do them, you’re done. If you don’t do them, you don’t receive certification. There aren’t silver, gold or platinum [levels]. It’s yes or no. It’s very black and white in that sense.

How do you accomplish the ambitious energy-efficiency goals?

Generally speaking, you end up with a building that’s very highly insulated with very high performing windows.

You insulate everywhere: not just the exterior walls. You’re literally insulating, if you think about it, like a thermos. In our case we have insulation under the slab and under the footings, which adds a layer of complexity. In a house, it’s not a big deal [to insulate under the slab]. It doesn’t weigh that much. In a bigger building, that’s a much more significant challenge. You’ve got a lot of weight that’s sitting down on those footings.  It also meant a whole lot more insulation on the roof than we’d usually have: R70. It’s literally a thermos with a bunch of holes (windows) poked into it that are sealed very, very well to bring in fresh air and keep it temperate.

And with a high performing skin, you tend to get a lot less windows, because windows are leaking energy through the glazing. If you look at other Passive Houses buildings, they just don’t have a lot of glazing. The rule of thumb in our climate for every day, code-compliant buildings is 30 percent, give or take, and up to 40 percent if you have really high performing glazing. In a house that tends to be easier because you just don’t need a lot of windows on all sides. In an apartment building, you’ve got apartments fronting every direction. If you’re on the backside facing north, you still want to have the same amount of windows. It’s just a whole series of challenges on that side, which I think we knew about but didn’t actually understand the magnitude of prior to the energy modeling. We’re using triple-glazed, super-high-performing, metal-clad wood windows, and they perform unbelievably well. But they’re expensive, a lot more expensive than a typical window.

In addition, you have 24-hour ventilation being provided through an energy recovery ventilator. We’ve done that before but not to this level. But we knew that going into it.

Inside the Kiln Apartments (rendering courtesy GBD Architects)

What we didn’t necessarily fully grasp was that the way the metric works is it’s basically energy per square foot as opposed to energy per person. Our owner in this case and those in most of our projects tend to try and make the units as efficient as possible and as small as possible. That way you can spend more money on the quality of other things. So we have the smallest units we’ve ever really done for a market-rate apartment project. We thought that was going to be really useful and valuable. In LEED you get bonus points for that.

In this case, that is a significant penalty, because if you think about having a 1,000-square-foot apartment, with two people living there the amount of energy that apartment is using is basically the same: the same number of TVs, of refrigerators, the same number of showers being taken. You’re heating a little more atmosphere, a little bit more volume. But you’re losing very little of the energy that’s in there. So you’re not spending that much of your energy budget on heating and cooling, for example. If you go from 1,000 to 500 square feet, you’re using the same amount of energy but your denominator changed. We didn’t, or at least I didn’t, understand the magnitude of that when we got into it. It turned out to be a significant challenge. We worked through it, but it’s very challenging. I think maybe the deal is because it was developed in Europe, maybe the size of the units tends to be smaller. Maybe it’s not as big of a deal – I’m not sure. But here in our market the difference between a 700-square-foot unit and a 500-square-unit is a big deal. That’s a big market difference. Shaving off that much more energy is just really challenging. It was fun, but more challenging than we grasped.

How did the site figure into those energy calculations and goals?

To be honest, we probably wouldn’t do it on a site that was long and skinny like this in the future. It’s a 50x120-foot site. So the building’s only 45 feet wide. We’d not done a 45-foot wide apartment building because that poses some financial and efficiency challenges.  And we overlaid it with this very aggressive and aspirational goal on the energy side. We know enough now to say, ‘We should probably attempt this on a different site.’ This particular client was really interested in figuring out what the next step in reducing energy consumption might be. They’re super interested in energy efficiency. Certification wasn’t as important, but this gave us a metric to address. They said, ‘We’d love to be part of this experiment.’

We now have learned an awful lot about how to do this more cost effectively. The first thing is we’d probably avoid a site this constricted. You’d be helped out a lot because the typical units, which I really like and are really cool, are these long, skinny, wide units as opposed to long, skinny and deep. You pay an energy penalty for that because you’ve got a lot more skin, which is where you’re losing all your energy, than if you had a typical shotgun or just a deeper unit. In other projects you’re not thinking about penalties on the energy side per se. And there were a lot of steps in it, because we had a whole series of conceptual frameworks of why we were doing that. And we were also really trying to fit this large building into a neighborhood of single-story and single-family homes. How can we reduce the mass in some ways? We had these stepping ideas. That’s all good. But you typically wouldn’t do that in a Passive House building. Ideally, you would have a rectangular box and you would just find the most efficient way to skin the building.  Not necessarily very creative, but that is certainly the most straight forward approach to an efficient building skin.

These units are long and skinny, but placed along the perimeter of the building instead of the way so many condos are like bowling alley lanes. We’re getting a lot of the light and solar energy deep into the space because the building just isn’t that deep. Our building is 45 feet wide. If you walked to the Pearl and looked at a lot of the shotgun units, a lot are 45 feet wide. That’s our entire building width.

How did you decide the best way to heat the building?

We honestly looked at a wood pellet boiler. The energy model actually takes into account where the energy is coming from, so if you’re delivering it onsite, there’s some advantages to that. And this would have made the building a little easier on the energy side. But it was really hard to wrap our head’s around burning wood in the summertime to heat water. It might be a hundred-degree day but you need warm water and you’re burning wood. It just seemed real odd.

We’ve got solar thermal up on the roof that preheats domestic hot water. The heating is delivered through radiant wall panels; so we’ve got hot water that’s basically running around the building. The solar thermal heats it to a certain level preheating it, and gas boilers heat the water that little bit more for washing hands, taking showers, and supplying the water for the radiant heat. The building is so well insulated that we don’t have to provide a lot of space heating. Most Passive Houses don’t have space cooling, either, so there’s no cooling system here. We could have done, say, the radiant in the slab. We wanted to have wood floors and it was a little more efficient and cost effective to do it in the walls. Down on the ground floor we’ve got slab heating where we’re exposing the concrete. We’ve also got ceiling fans to create air movement in the apartments. The building won’t fluctuate in temperature very much throughout the year. It probably hovers around 70 degrees, give or take 10 degrees, and then that’s when the space heating or cooling kicks on. I live in a house with no air conditioning and it works for me and my family. I like that. And this building will perform much better than that.

What about people using operable windows? Won’t they disrupt the tight Passive House envelope?

That’s a good question. We asked that question immediately: are we going to lose an awful lot of energy right away? Probably not. The building itself will retain so much of the energy that you won’t lose a ton. It’s kind of like your refrigerator – when you open the refrigerator to grab a pitcher of orange juice, all the cool air doesn’t immediately leave.  If you were to leave the door open accidentally and take off for the weekend, then the refrigerator is going to be working like crazy.  Same thing in a Passive House.  And the times of year where someone will likely want to open a window, will be the times of the year that the temperature is mild to hot and it shouldn’t be a significant issue.  The Passive Houses we’ve toured, people have opened the windows to bring fresh air in the summertime, but the anecdotal feedback is they don’t necessarily need a ton of breeze.

Kiln Apartments (rendering courtesy GBD Architects)

How would you characterize the neighborhood association’s appeal and its role in the evolving design?

We worked very diligently with them. I think we came up with a lot of solutions I think ultimately they were very appreciative of. The height of the building, from a neighborhood size, I think they would have preferred a smaller building. We didn’t ask for modifications or adjustments on the height. It’s allowed outright. But I think we had a really good working relationship with the neighborhood association. And it’s still a tough conversation. We got letters back that said, ‘We really appreciate the quality. We like the building.  We understand you’re trying to build a building that’s going to be here in 100 years. Could it be smaller?’ Ultimately we ended up moving the mass of the building around from the neighborhood side to other locations.

How much more efficient than code is it?

The real conservative estimate would be 65, 70 percent better. And that’s Portland code, which is really aspirational anyway. In another part of the country that is really conventional, it could be 80 percent [more efficient]. Now, we have a lot of advantages. You don’t have to heat and cool to the same degree. But in Portland, our rough, conservative metrics are that it’s 65 to 70 percent better than a code compliant building.

How unique or unprecedented is a multi-family housing project designed and built to Passive House scale?

We’re hearing that there are only a handful of these in the country, and they’re not this scale. There’s a dorm that’s under construction that is larger.  There is also a building in the planning stages here in town that is larger.  Its still very new and cutting edge for multi-family.

How does this project and its energy goals differ from some of the LEED Platinum projects GBD has designed?

On the Passive House side, the systems are low-tech. We’re piping around hot water. That’s not a complicated system. The insulation is what it is, and the windows. We don’t have a bunch of complicated systems turning on and turning off, really finely tuned, which was one of the attractive things to this owner: low tech and a lot less maintenance. We did OHSU’s Center for Health and Healing, for example. That requires a building manager that really understands the building. It’s a very complicated system. It works: it’s performing the way we expected. But it took a year to fine tune it. Passive Houses really shouldn’t. There just aren’t that many levers to switch or dials to dial in. Which for us was really exciting. Low tech is really interesting.

Low-tech sustainable buildings existed a millennium or more ago: holding thermal mass and oriented for the best natural light.

The site orientation, how much glazing, all those things: that’s the way a farmer would deal with his farm. He would site his house and his crops in a way that took advantage of the prevailing winds, the location of the sun and how it moves across his field. Here the site is very constricted but it has the right orientation. It’s long and skinny in the east-west directions, you have broad faces for the south, small faces for the east and west. If you were to flip this 90 degrees, we wouldn’t be able to have this much glazing, so you just wouldn’t have units that were this attractive—if you could even meet the metric.

When we were going through the design phase, there were other people tackling similar issues on the home side. To be honest, I don’t think we understood the magnitude of what we were trying to accomplish. This is a project that at the end of the day really needs to make financial sense. It’s not a single family home where you can kind of absorb those costs and rationalize it as, ‘It’s my dream house.’

Is there incentive for owners to do this if the renters pay for the electricity?

In this case, it’s something the owner wants to do. I think there is definitely a marketing and branding opportunity. I think the units themselves are going to be nice and very interesting. If this wasn’t Passive House, the quality of the units and the location are still awesome. At the end of the day, does someone move in here because it’s super energy efficient? Hopefully, though, I’m not sure.  My ultimate goal would be for the project to be full of great apartments that happen to be extraordinarily energy efficient.

I think the effort here is to learn everything you can learn about how to make a building more energy efficient and then take the good ideas that are cost effective and export those to larger projects—not necessarily even larger Passive House projects. For example, we have four inches of exterior insulation because we were really working hard to get under our energy threshold.  Does it make financial sense to go from three inches to four? Should we have gone to five? At what point does it not make financial sense to do that? We have a significant amount insulation under the slab. If you weren’t doing Passive House, but wanted to do an almost Passive House quality building, would it make more sense to halve the amount of insulation under the slab and apply those cost savings somewhere else?

 

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Design Calendar: September 3-15

Downtown Portland (photo by Brian Libby)

BY LUKE AREHART

REvive Jacmel Reception
An interdisciplinary student-led project to create a new health care clinic in Jacmel, Haiti called REvive Jacmel, will hold a competition awards reception. With guidance from Waterleaf Architecture, UO professor Nancy Cheng and the project’s instigator, Dr. Michael Workman, the team is creating a 2,500 square foot facility that con function completely off-grid, built by local residents in Jacmel, a city still recovering from the 2010 Haitian earthquake. 5:30-7:30PM Thursday, September 5. University of Oregon in Portland School of Architecture and Allied Arts, 70 NW Couch Street, Fourth Floor.  Free.

Modernism and Beyond - Downtown North Walking Tour
This tour explores the northern portion of Downtown where you’ll look at Portland skyscrapers – from the oldest to the near-tallest and most recent. The fingerprints of iconic architect Pietro Belluschi are on five buildings on this tour, including perhaps his most famous of all. Other stops include the work of modern masters Richard Sundeleaf, Skidmore Owings & Merrill, and Zimmer Gunsul Frasca. The tour will also look at three modern public plazas and try to figure out reasons for success or failure of those designs. 6:00PM Thursday, September 5, 2013 and 1:30pm Sunday, September 8, 2013. Architectural Heritage Center, 701 SE Grand Avenue Portland. $15 ($10 for AHC members). Allow two hours for the tour, pre-registration is required at www.visitahc.org.

Time-Based Art Festival
The Portland Institute for Contemporary Art presents its 11th annual TBA Festival, presenting dozens of emerging talents and legacy artists from around the world. Visual installations and live performances fill out theaters, temporary galleries, and unexpected spaces on both sides of the river, activating the city of Portland with art and energy. September 12-22, various locations. For more information, visit http://pica.org/event/tba13.

Huggins residence, Willamette Heights (image courtesy AHC)

Willamette Heights Walking Tour
Some of Portland’s most notable architects including Emile Schacht, designed homes in Willamette Heights, an area that borders the site of the 1905 Lewis and Clark Exposition. A strenuous walk through the hilly-but-amazing Willamette Heights neighborhood. 6:00PM Thursday, September 12, 2013. Architectural Heritage Center, 701 SE Grand Avenue Portland. $15 ($10 for AHC members). Allow two hours for the tour, pre-registration is required at www.visitahc.org.

Skin: Pushing the Envelope
Join AIA Portland for our four part Fall Symposium, an exploration in design and dynamic building envelopes. The symposium focuses on case studies exploring how to design effective, efficient, and above all beautiful skins. Attendees will discuss navigating design and construction challenges, and consider the future of high performance sustainable building envelopes. 8:00AM-12:00PM Friday, September 13, 20, 27 and October 4, 2013. Click here to register online, or call 503-223-8775.

Watzek House tour
Offered by the University of Oregon, the John Yeon-designed residential masterpiece will open to public tours for the fourth and final time this year. 10:00AM and 1:00PM Saturday, September 14. $30 per person ($15 children 15 and under). Tickets available at http://tickets.uoregon.edu/johnyeon.

 

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