An Architects Without Borders project in Haiti (image courtesy AWB-Oregon)
BY BRIAN LIBBY
Architects Without Borders-Oregon: A 10-Year Retrospective Founded in 2005 after Hurricane Katrina and the Indian Ocean tsunami, Architects Without Borders-Oregon assists communities in need by providing design and planning services through a volunteer network of professionals and students. This 10-year retrospective, part of a month-long exhibit at the Center for Architecture that opens with a First Thursday party, tells the story of AWB's global impact, from East Africa to the Pacific Northwest. Projects on display in the center's gallery include schools, parks, and social service agencies. American Institute of Architects/Portland, Center For Architecture, 403 NW 11th Avenue. 5:30PM Thursday, July 2. Free.
Walking tour: historic homes of the Alphabet District Northwest Portland’s Alphabet District owes its existence to John Couch, a sea captain and Oregon pioneer of the 19th century, along with his family, and in-laws who settled in NW Portland. Couch's land claim stretched from Burnside Avenue north for a mile between Northwest 23rd Avenue and the Willamette River. Today, development in the area includes everything from fairly modest homes to mansions – not to mention vibrant commercial areas. This is the first of two Architectural Heritage Center tours that will look at the historic homes that define a large portion of this National Register Historic District. Tour meets at southwest corner of NW 23rd Avenue and Lovejoy Street, 6PM Thursday, July 2. $20 ($12 for AHC members).
Walking tour: Skidmore-Old Town Historic District Learn about some of the oldest buildings in the city and the people who built them in this Architectural Heritage Center tour of Portland’s only National Historic Landmark District. The area also contains the highest concentration of cast-iron fronted buildings on the west coast and much of that iron was even produced locally. Tour meets at Skidmore Fountain, SW First Avenue and Ankeny Street. 6PM Wednesday, July 8 and 6PM Wednesday, July 15. $20 ($12 for AHC members).
Walking tour: historic Sellwood Before it was brought within Portland city limits in 1893, Sellwood was an independent, incorporated town. This Architectural Heritage Center tour takes you through a section of the original Sellwood tract where you’ll see a variety of houses and commercial buildings, some dating back to the town’s earliest days. Tour meets at Oaks Pioneer Church, 455 SE Spokane Street. 6PM Thursday, July 9. $209 ($12 for AHC members).
Watzek House tour Perhaps the most architecturally significant house in Oregon, the Watzek House (now owned and operated by the University of Oregon's John Yeon Center) is only available for tours a few times each summer. But its architecture, and the story behind it, make this tour a special opportunity. The lumber baron Aubrey Watzek and an ambitious young designer, John Yeon, skied and climbed together. The older Watzek used his political connections to help Yeon stop a state road engineer from devastating Neahkahnie Mountain. And in in 1936, Watzek gave the 26-year-old Yeon, with no formal training, the architectural commission of his life. For Yeon, whose father died in 1928, Watzek served as inspiration, mentor, and patron. Yeon Center director Randy Gragg and Blue Sky Gallery director Todd Tubutis will a tour of the Watzek House, along with a look at vintage photographs of it published worldwide. Watzek House, 1061 SW Skyline Boulevard. 6PM Thursday, July 9. $30.
Energizing a Place: New Trends in Public Gardens As part of the Leach Botanical Garden's 2015 Lecture Series, award winning landscape designer Richard Hartlage will discuss how public spaces such as the Highline in New York, City Garden in St. Louis and Millennium Park in Chicago are having a profound influence on public gardens. Public gardens, to attract visitors and be relevant to the community, are no longer simply plant collections for a small group of knowledge- able gardeners but need to be dynamic cultural institutions that appeal to a broad cross section of the community. Hartlage's innovative designs are renowned as emotive spaces that in- corporate sophisticated horticulture, artful detail- ing, and historical knowledge that heighten the human experience of the natural world. Pacific Northwest College of Art, 511 NW Broadway. 6PM Thursday, July 9. Free.
The Shire tour Join the Yeon Center and its executive director, Randy Gragg, for a tour of The Shire, a stunning landscape in the Columbia Gorge designed by architect and conservationist, John Yeon. The 75-acre private reserve was sculpted by Yeon in the 1960s with groomed paths and captured views of Multnomah Falls. A captivating outdoor experience, The Shire draws on the great tradition of picturesque landscapes while anticipating 1970s-era earthworks. This storied spot was the place where the Friends of the Columbia Gorge was founded and capped Yeon’s six decades of activism preserving important Oregon landscapes. 12 and 3PM Saturday, July 11. $30.
Design Camp Are you interested in a career in Architecture, Digital Arts, or Product Design? For one week each summer, the University of Oregon invites students to the White Stag Block for this unique camp experience. At Design Camp, one can engage in thoughtful creative conversations, hands-on design exercises, and field trips to meet professional architects and designers. University of Oregon, White Stag Block, 70 NW Couch Street. 9AM Monday-Friday, July 13-17. $800.
Story Hour: Invisible Design Design Museum Portland’s Story Hour series offers the opportunity for designers to share tales of creativity and exploration, live and onstage. It begins with a theme and a group of storytellers, each story is unique, drawing from the tellers interpretation and experience. In the latest installment, storytellers will tackle the theme of "Invisible Design." On Deck Sports Bar and Grill, 910 NW 14th Avenue. 6PM Wednesday, July 15. Free.
James Beard Public Market from Naito Parkway (rendering courtesy Snøhetta)
BY BRIAN LIBBY
This week architects from Snøhetta, the renowned Norwegian firm with offices now in New York and San Francisco that has been hired to design the James Beard Public Market, unveiled its plans in a series of meetings and community events, such as a packed talk I attended at the University of Oregon's White Stag building Wednesday night.
At least going by anecdotal responses talking with attendees at the unveiling, and on social media since renderings were published Tuesday, the response seems to be hugely positive. And while I usually like to let a design sink in a little bit, or even to wait sometimes until the building is built and I've walked its grounds, I can't help but feel excited too.
The hiring of Snøhetta seemed like a coup for Portland as soon as it was announced. It seemed like a good fit. While the city has a very good roster of local firms, it still is healthy to have outside architects come here and contribute to our built environment. They see the city with fresh eyes, and contribute new ideas.
At the same time, Portland is not really suited for big-ego designers or so-called starchitects. Some billowing titanium Frank Gehry structure might easily seem out of place here. But Snøhetta, with its blend of world-class talent, a collaborative design culture (both in-house as a team and in its embrace of outreach and research in local settings where it designs), and a fusion of architecture and landscape design, all seemed to be a particularly good fit for the Rose City.
What I liked about the James Beard Public Market that I saw in the released renderings was that it seemed instantly recognizable as part of Snøhetta's vocabulary and portfolio (which includes the masterful Norwegian National Opera in Oslo as well as the Biblioteca Alexandrina, the new National September 11 Memorial Museum and an addition to SFMOMA), angular and integrated with the land, yet it also felt like a modern Portland building: full of light and clad in wood.
I also was impressed by how much the design seems to transcend the difficult and confining nature of its site, between and bifurcated by the Morrison Bridge and two of its circular onramps. In his talk at UO, Dykers (as he had a few months earlier in another talk at the university) showed pictures of Trajan's Market in Rome, which is similarly constrained and circular-shaped. The eye is drawn not to the perimeter by the ramps or even to the bridgehead itself, but to the tall wall of uninterrupted glass on either side. And while it looks handsome from the street with its soaring, angular forms, the best views seem to come from inside, where three floors of activity enable views of each other, up and down, where numerous outdoor spaces offer scenic vantage points, and where a winding pathway through the vendor stalls brings a continuous sense of discovery.
Following are some comments from Snøhetta founding partner Craig Dykers (who cited project manager Norman McRae and partnering firms like SERA Architects) on the market design and the thinking behind it.
"We all appreciate food in some sense or another, but really it’s much more meaningful, this type of understanding of what food is," the architect said of the intent behind the market to begin his talk. "It’s not just a place not where it can be bought and sold, but where they can connect and learn from each other, and food is the catalyst."
Even so, it was "a bit of a shock for us when we came to Portland when we came here and it did not have a food market," Dykers added. "It’s really vibrant food culture and it’s known all over the world. It is odd that there wasn’t one. So it felt natural to revive this. This will be a home for what so many people see as a big part of the culture here.
On Snøhetta's roots and the past of this site, Dykers added: "Our office is both architects and landscape architects. We’re both American and Norwegian. We’re named after a mountain—not as dramatic as Mt. Hood, but a rather beautiful mountain. I think we have that connection with Portland. We’re also here to commemorate James Beard. He more than anyone else, I think, understood the value of the culture of food and how it connects people across classes, ethnicity, and demographics. It’s what makes us human. And we’re here to honor the landscape of Portland, along the waterfront and the buildings and the bridges. It’s a working place, not just a place for leisure. And of course it had in this place at one time a beautiful market building. It was there for many years and torn down I believe in the 1950s. It had a magnificent interior, a kind of big space where you could buy food and participate in the cultural traditions this region had to offer. But it lost its ground. So there is already this kind of missing quality that needs to be reconstructed."
Adjacent to the site today, of course is the Morrison Bridge. "What an unusual place to choose to put a building," Dykers said. "You might say to yourself, ‘Is this the right thing to do?’ We wondered at first ourselves. But we loved the site. It was this unusual geometry, and not a usual city block. It was an interstitial space chopped up by a highway system. But it created this unusual geometry. And it’s a gateway to the city and a place that connects the east and west sides, and north and south. It’s not just a center. It’s also a bridge between parts of the city which are strangely rather divided still. Anything we can do to knit the city together will be a great thing."
Inside the James Beard Public Market (rendering courtesy Snøhetta)
Recalling outreach done earlier this year, he added: "We had a number of community meetings. We also met with a number of vendors, which for me was one of the great experiences of this project. I felt like I was the boring person in the room. These people have a tremendous culture. When we met with people in the city, they were very vocal and very positive. We didn’t just do it for fun. We took all of the responses from all the people we met." He showed a word cloud corresponding with the volume of different words repeated by community members, "light" and "color" being the biggest.
"We also wanted to create an efficient design," he added. "Cost is a factor. It can’t break the bank. It needs to be easy to build, even if it’s inspirational. And the people here need good working conditions." Speaking about the design, he described "a simple back of house corridor" that confined all the market's loading to happen out of view, and without interrupting the front facade. At the same time, Dykers said the firm looked at how vegetation could soften things: "We can filter the air, and provide more comfortable character. And the trees and beg can help control the acoustics. You should feel you’re part of the city, not the overpass."
One of the surprises that came in the unveiling was the suggested addition of several more stories of either residential or commercial office space towards the back of the site. Most of the market would still be just a story or two, with rooftop decks and plazas, but the buildings could grow set back from the street. And they would potentially help bankroll the market, which still must undergo a massive funding campaign to be built.
And speaking of the roof, Dykers emphasized its role in the design, not just as a public gathering space but a place to grow food or even, he suggested, have beehives. "When you’re on the roof you have a view of the city," he said. "Not only waterfront and the east side, but on a good day Mt. Hood and the landscape beyond. It’ll be a very popular place, we imagine."
After the Snøhetta team traveled to markets around the world for ideas, Dykers explained that they settled on the idea of eschewing a long linear succession of market stalls for a more zigzagging pattern that encouraged discovery and paired with a sprinkling of social spaces. "We created a more organic system," he explained. "The entire place would be built up to provide a sense of belonging no matter where you were."
Of course with this site, it's not just a building but two halves of one, with the bridge and its underneath space to contend with and incorporate. Dykers said that while Snøhetta's plan was in many ways like what was done in the master plan to mark out these twin halves inside the ramps on either side of the bridge, "our plan links the sites more directly so you can move freely between them."
Though the front of the market will have 600 feet of uninterrupted glass along Naito Parkway, the façade is not straight. From the southeast and northeast corners it bends in to make the sidewalk a little wider, which in turn is covered by the roof above. The design also takes advantage of the space under the bridge and a triangular strip where the roadway splits into east and west directions, allowing direct sunlight to penetrate the very middle of the site.
Inside the James Beard Public Market (rendering courtesy Snøhetta)
"There will be a strong sense of continuity in the design so you’ll be able to see through to a big open garden that gets a lot of sun, and you’ll be able to walk through a number of stalls underneath the bridge," the architect explained.
Within that in-between bridge space, the design proposes "an unusual garden," as Dykers described it, with a series poles strung like maypoles with growing hops. "They’re taller than the road, so when you come into the city, you’ll see these rods of hops. It says 'Welcome to the city' in a different way. It takes your manner of thinking about the city towards the outskirts of the city. There’s lots of places for people to sit there, and at night it could be lit in a very pretty way. It would be more of a piazza then the rest of the areas around."
The design team also took inspiration from the bridges outside its future door to help provide the structure for wide-open spaces inside the multi-story open interior space. "We knew we needed some steel trusses in this building to support the length of the market column free," he explained, "so we‘ve taken the main truss from the Morrison Bridge and duplicated it. Looking towards the center [of the market], you’ll be able to see that truss, a duplication of the bridge truss. Above you in this column free space is a ceiling of wood, likely reclaimed, perhaps cedar. You can see there’s a number of places to sit and eat as you move through the stalls. There’s skylights bringing light into the building, and that allows us to bring natural ventilation into the space. And there are full height glass walls that lead the eye out back to the park."
He also emphasized the visibility possible between different elevations within and outside the space. "You’ll have magnificent views and access to an outdoor terrace. In the learning kitchen, you can look down into the market and up to the roof, and see both at once. If you’re in the market, you can look up and see the learning kitchen. When you’re in the restaurant, you can look to the garden roofs and to the kitchen. There’s a lot of visual connectivity."
"Unclouded Vision," a 1st prize winner (image courtesy AIA/Portland)
BY BRIAN LIBBY
Last year the Portland chapter of the American Institute of Architects inaugurated its "Stitch" competition, which looked at how swaths of Interstate 405, which cuts through the central city like a canyon, could be covered to restore the missing blocks for public space, buildings or otherwise.
Now the competition has returned, but this time the subject isn't how we cover I-405. Instead, the brief asked entrants to imagine how space under, over and around the freeway (particularly one block bounded by NW 13th and 14th Avenues and NW Kearney and Lovejoy Streets) could be seized and made useful.
"Density in the urban environment drives a need for the community to consider often-overlooked spaces created by infrastructure as infill potential," the competition abstract reads. "Modern vehicle conveyance structures create a natural shelter from the elements and a typically 'undesirable' area. We pass through or feel threatened by their cold and brutal existence."
I-405 in this area doesn't just bisect the central city, but it also acts as the border between the Pearl District and neighborhoods to the west, which can have a very different character. In this way, the name "Stitch" is particularly relevant.
The first-prize winner, comprised of a team from Portland's Opsis Architecture (Joe Baldwin, Jenny Cambier, Heather DeGrella, Bryan Hollar, Jim Kalvelage, Chet Morgan and Nate Wood), whose offices are just a block or two from the proposed site, is called Unclouded Vision. It looks to provide transitional housing, temporary shelter and basic amenities to the homeless as well as connections to mentorship and job training and even a retail and community kitchen. In the application, its designers write of blending "infrastructure, light harvesting systems, sound mitigating systems, pedestrian movement, commerce, food and public services."
"Unclouded Vision" (image courtesy AIA/Portland)
In terms of architecture, Unclouded Vision seems to begin as a building across the street from the freeway and then stretch across to the site with pedestrian walkways and a series of attendant spaces beneath the freeway overpass. But the basic idea seems to be making the space under the freeway a low-slung architectural extension of what's next door in a way that makes one side of the overpass feel connected to the other. A series of photos in the application also boil down the intent to a few words: ascend, bifurcate, blend, converge, descend, weave. And that's what the design seems to do.
A team from Vancouver, British Columbia firm GBL Architects (Andrew Emmerson, Joey Stevens, Roberto Podda, Kelsy Whitten and Jason Smith) won second prize with "Entwine," which takes the form of an inverted arch with buildings rising above the freeway overpass on each side and a preserved crossing at ground level.
"Entwine," a 2nd prize winner (images courtesy AIA/Portland)
"Trolls should live under bridges," they write in the application, "[but] people should not. By raising the building up along the peripheral edges of the site, we can provide an efficiently stacked arrangement of temporary housing units that are both dignified and humane."
Like the first prize winner, it also imagines a variety of social-service programming, from single-resident-occupancy transitional housing to community workshop spaces, counseling rooms, and a soup kitchen.
The third prize went to a more modest entry, but maybe a more viable one. John Creighton, a project manager for custom fabricator Big Branch Woodworking (who is trained as an architect) created the "Lovejoy Showers," which imagines 10 pay-per-minute public showers that are connected by a series of ramps and bridges over a natural, park-like ground of rocks and greenery. Though modeled after the Portland Loo, each shower is also affixed with a distinctive leaf-like canopy.
"Lovejoy Showers," a third prize winner (images courtesy AIA/Portland)
Two projects were given Honorable Mention. One, called "The Tube" and designed by a quartet of local urban designers (Marc Asnis, Courtney Ferris, Lora Lillard and Mark Raggett), encloses most of this stretch of I-405 in a namesake tube-like form to reduce noise; the tube is also affixed with solar panels to power the site below. Underneath the freeway is a maker space with a commercial kitchen, repair shops, tool library, and educational programs. There is also a separate gathering space with a cafe and marketplace, and at another corner is a climbing wall and other outdoor space for pedestrians and cyclists.
Honorable mentions "The Tube" and "Over The Top" (images courtesy AIA/Portland)
"Over The Top," by a quartet from Propel Studio Architecture (Nick Moroz, Sam Sudy, Lucas Gray and Nick Mira), is like the 2nd prize Entwine design in that it grows buildings on either side of the freeway and is geared towards housing for the homeless. But it goes a step further and actually imagines architecture over the freeway rather than just beside it. On the ground floor would be retail and office space on one side, and social services on the other with a farmer's market in the outdoor space in between, and then housing above. Interestingly, along with single-resident-occupancy rooms to live in, there are also outdoor spaces on this upper portion in which the homeless can actually pitch their tents. It's a powerful idea: taking the model of homeless camps like Dignity Village and elevating them onto a pedestal above the freeway, one of the higher vantage points in the central city.
When I think of utilizing the space under freeway overpasses, I think of the two trips I made a decade ago to Tokyo. There I saw not necessarily any bold buildings rising up and over overpasses, but there was a succession of elevated train tracks that inevitably had architecture underneath. It was structurally separate from the overpasses, and it was modest, but it allowed hundreds of restaurants, shops and bars to be located underneath. In a way, it's no different from how we approach vacant lots: wasted space that in a dense urban setting are too valuable not to use. Portland hasn't quite reached that tipping point yet where the projects could pencil out or zoning allows for them, but I think that time is approaching.
Meanwhile, congratulations to all the winners and entrants on furthering the discussion.
A project by Georgia Barnett and Brian Campbell (images courtesy UO)
BY BRIAN LIBBY
School's out for summer, and with it comes the arrival of architecture students' final thesis projects at the city's two architecture schools, Portland State University and the University of Oregon's Portland outpost. Recently I visited exhibits at UO of student work from three different classes, and have decided to share here some projects from one class, "Soft Urban Waterfronts," taught by Gerry Gast.
"I chose this topic as a positive reaction to the 'gloom and doom' projections of rising waters and more frequent storm events that threaten urban waterfronts throughout the world," Gast said by email. "Most urban waterfronts in the industrial era, including the Willamette River edge in Portland, were developed for economic and utilitarian purposes in response to the needs of resource-based economies, destroying existing natural systems. Given the increasing storm threats we have a choice of an engineered approach by building more expensive levies, barriers, seawalls and dikes, or to re-naturalize urban waterfronts with more 'soft' environmental approaches that restore natural systems while creating places for recreation, urban habitat restoration and beauty."
"The latter approach may not resolve all threats," Gast added, "but it can go a long way to improve cities and reduce the need for hardened defensive waterfronts. The process will take 50-100 years, almost as long as the period during which we destroyed natural systems within cities. The restoration process has already started in many cities, including Portland, through new policies and projects that restore habitats and natural features."
I've always enjoyed seeing what students come up with in these end-of-term thesis projects. It's one of the only times in their careers they'll be able to dream up not just architecture but to act as social programmers, deciding who or what will occupy a site. Particularly when viewing the exhibits in person, you can see that some students are good at some things and some are good at others.
Following are images and descriptions from several of Gast's students.
Brian Campbell & Georgia Bennett, Regenerating the North Reach
Two students, Brian Campbell and Georgia Barnett collaborated on a project called "Regenerating the North Reach" (pictured above), a master plan which "remediates a toxic brownfield site in Portland’s industrial waterfront with biological techniques, creating a model for sustainable future waterfront redevelopment." Then each contributed a building. Campbell's North Reach Bioremediation Facility (bottom image) establishes "a research facility investigating cutting-edge bioremediation and aquaculture techniques on the GasCo brownfield site." Barnett's North Reach Visitor and Education Center (middle image) is about "exploring and educating on the effects of bioremediation techniques of a brownfield site in North Portland through an experiential learning center."
Red Golbat, SurgeProof
"A restorative development that promotes the erosion of a hardscaped water’s edge into a resilient buffer zone that protects against flooding and storm surges while simultaneously setting the precedent of how to approach design for a future with higher ocean levels," is how Red Golbat describes the SurgeProof project in Brooklyn's Greenpoint.
"The site is a 30-acre plot that begins on the shore and extends into the East River," he writes. "The main building is a 20 story residential tower, where each floor is double-height. It offers primarily living spaces, but has some commercial uses mixed in. The tower sits on the edge of an ecological resilient buffer zone that will help reduce the speed of the water when floods and surges occur."
Noah Green, Urban Water Stewardship
"Re-envisioning a pivotal brownfield site on Portland’s waterfront into an urban-water research laboratory," is how Noah Green describes his project, which re-imagines the Ross Island Sand & Gravel site on the east side of the Willamette River (just north of the Ross Island Bridge) as a clean-water research laboratory.
"Up and down the Willamette River are industrial sites, some still in use and others abandoned, that contaminate and damage the quality of the water," Green writes. "These changes have significant implications for irrigation, consumption, hydropower generation, and aquatic ecosystems. Additionally, access to the Willamette River in Portland is limited, at best, and non-existent in most instances. Rehabilitating damaged industrial sites into valued social spaces is critical to the health and wellbeing of urban environments and those who use them. "
Isaiah Kent, Portland Opera and Concert Hall
Isaiah Kent's Portland Opera and Concert Hall, located on the east side of the Willamette River in Portland just south of the new Tilikum Crossing. The Opera "serves as a primary location for waterfront access for the central city," he writes. "With this location, the project aims to resolve several key issues. The first is a lack of much needed public space where people can enjoy waterfront activity. Another important project goal is introducing a civic amenities district to transition the surrounding site for future growth focused on pedestrian activity...The Portland Opera is intended to be more than just a place for occasionally performances, but rather it is a place to meet."
Christina Lin, Salt Folds
The Interbay of Seattle and its rising levels is the area of focus for Christina Lin, whose Salt Folds project "looks into ways of adapting to sea level rise while restoring salt marsh habitats before heavy urban development wipes out more natural areas and allows nature to penetrate into the urban environment." Her Salt Folds Research and Interpretive center seeks to "re-create a habitat and natural waterway to adjust and circumvent destruction from rising sea levels," to "create a natural urban parkscape for Seattle similar to Central Park in New York that pays homage to Interbay’s origins," and "to teach the public about salt marsh habitats and the restoration process as well as connect to universities programs in the area dealing with fisheries and wetland wildlife."
Quisa Reyes, Rio Grande River Restoration
Few American waterways are as depended upon for water and recreation as the Rio Grande. Luisa Reyes looks at the river as it traverses two towns and countries: El Paso, Texas and Ciudad Juarez, Mexico.
"Restoring the river to its natural state will help to slow down floodwater during monsoon seasons and allow habitat to thrive again," Reyes writes. "The river was originally used to geologically separate the two countries but further implications have been taken for further separation. The big vision of this project is that this restoration of the river and new bridge proposal can help to blur the lines between the two countries." She envisions a new pedestrian and bicycle bridge, as well as a pair of cultural centers nestled on either side with space for outdoor entertainment and surrounding live-work neighborhoods.
Tim Schneider, Tether
Tim Schneider's "Tether" project is about "realizing the ephemeral and vulnerable nature of the Upper Mississippi to ensure a sustainable future for North Minneapolis," he writes. His design "seeks to reconnect residents to the river in an experiential way by placing three installations at key points of interest along the river. These installation sites enhance the unique natural features of the river and also act as water-testing sites, to show people the pollutant level of the water in real time." Meanwhile, an Environmental Research and Learning Center "will act as a source for subsequent development, but will also investigate current environmental issues of the river system, transform those issues into environmental policies, and educate the public."
Nick Shanks, Center For Human Performance
The Center For Human Performance by Nick Shanks is a sports training and research center for the City of San Francisco, occupying Piers 30-32. "The San Francisco waterfront, once a bustling place of shipping and industry, has long past its days as a working port," he writes. "The goal of this thesis is to examine the redevelopment of a typical waterfront site through the proposal of a newly constructed sports training and research center dedicated to the study of motion." The center is intended for professional and leisure athletes, sports medicine researchers, trainers and the general public.
Meaghan Whitehorn, Mission Bay Magnet School
The Mission Bay Magnet School by Meaghan Whitehorn, located on the San Francisco Peninsula, is "designed to bring students face to face with their natural environment in the hopes that they can learn to appreciate its power and importance and become stewards of our waterfronts," she writes.
"In many other parts of the city the old industrial uses for the waterfront have been returned back to their natural state, creating lovely outdoor recreation areas, like Crissy Field and The Presidio, for their local communities. Mission Bay’s waterfront is poised to have a very similar transformation, exchanging its disused port shipping piers for tidal marshes and kelp forests." The project seeks to merge "a previously industrial area with a new community of neighborhoods in order to create a soft border between the water and our citizens," as well as ways "in which water can become an integral part of design and using it for things like energy, filtration, and a tool to teach about environmentalism and the need for people to take better care of our surroundings moving forward."
Richard H. Wilson, Alameda Point Condominum
Richard H. Wilson imagines how a former Navy operations site can become home to a new neighborhood despite the fact that within a century it's project to be inundated by rising tides, with a project called the Alameda Point Condominium anchoring a cityscape largely elevated over a ground layer given over to the merging of land and sea.
"The proposal is to soften the waterfront, plant forests, provide a public beach, preserve non-human habitat and re-use existing post-Naval operations site materials," he writes. "Two deep concrete runways serve as the base for the proposed elevated platform, raised above the threat of encroaching tides. Compact development offers prospective developers opportunities to couple onto the new raised platform. This new kind of urban experience weaves a unique development pattern to be explored and tested."
Janten building, NE Sandy Boulevard (image courtesy Architectural Heritage Center)
BY BRIAN LIBBY
Jane Burry: Designing The Dynamic Dynamic feedback is one of the challenges of the hour – how can designers see the performance effects of design options in real-time? This lecture by Jane Burry Burry, Ph.D., who directs the Spatial Information Architecture Laboratory (SIAL) in the School of Architecture and Design at RMIT University in Melbourne will explore how a phenomenal approach to the qualities of atmosphere, sound, heat, air movement and even people, enriches architectural design processes and outcomes through real time feedback. Novel ways to collect and process data help create design environments in which designers can build intuition while designing. University of Oregon, White Stag Block, 70 NW Couch Street. 5:30PM Wednesday, June 17. Free.
Walking tour: Modernism and Beyond - The Architecture of Downtown Downtown Portland contains an abundance of post-World War II architecture by some of the leading architects and firms of their time. This Architectural Heritage Center walking tour explores the northern portion of the central business district, with five buildings by Belluschi including his most famous of all, the Equitable (now called the Commonwealth) building from 1946, the nation's first office tower with an aluminum and glass curtain wall. Other stops include the work of noted architects and firms like Richard Sundeleaf; Skidmore, Owings & Merrill; and ZGF Architects. The tour will also focus on three modern public plazas and try to figure out reasons for success or failure of those designs. Tour begins at the northeast corner of SW 6th Avenue and Oak Street. 6PM Thursday, June 18. $20 ($12 for AHC members).
CPID Talks: Killian Doherty - The Architect As Spatial Practitioner Northern Ireland architect Killian Doherty heads Architectural Field Office, a small collaborative practice. His research interests lie within the exploration of fragmented sites, settlements, and cities at specific thresholds of racial, ethnic, or religious conflict. Doherty's lecture, part of the Center for Public Interest Design at Portland State University's CPID Talks brownbag series, will examine the idea of architects as spatial practitioners. For the past five years he has worked on a number of post-conflict reconstruction projects in Sierra Leone and Rwanda. He is registered for a PhD by Design at the Bartlett School of Architecture (UCL) where he is working with an indigenous community in Rwanda and trying to work through the architect as social spatial practitioner, as opposed to designer of buildings. Portland State University, Shattuck Hall, corner of SW Broadway and Hall Street, Room 217. 12PM Friday, June 19. Free.
Walking tour: From Soda Pop To Swimwear - The Commercial & Industrial Architecture Of Sandy Boulevard Sandy Boulevard has a long history of commercial and industrial architecture with styles ranging from Brick Utilitarian to Brutalism – all with a generous supply of Streamline and Zig Zag Moderne in between. This Architectural Heritage Center walking tour takes a closer look at a surprising section of the city; an area that hosts some of the city’s most notable businesses. Attendees will also see firsthand how the automobile played a major role in the form and style of 20th century architecture. Tour begins atNE 14th Avenue and Couch Street, outside former Portland Bottling Company building. 10AM Saturday, June 20. $20 ($12 for AHC members).
Walking tour: Portland Vernacular - The Buckman Neighborhood Buckman is one of the city’s oldest Eastside neighborhoods with a variety of vernacular housing types beginning with late 19th century cottages through the building boom years of the early 20th century when the bungalow and four-square were popular citywide. You’ll even see some early duplex and triplex houses that give Buckman a unique character as well as post-World War II multi-unit housing. Tour begins at SE 14th Avenue and Alder Street, behind Washington High School. 11AM Sunday, June 21. $20 ($12 for AHC members).
Walking tour: Portland's Historic Goldsmith Addition Homes The fourth annual Walking Tour of Historic Homes will devote to improvements in accessibility for the disabled at the NW Neighborhood Cultural Center, home of NW Children’s Theater & School and other organizations. Inspiration for this year’s tour is the saved and soon to be restored Goldsmith Home, but the tour will also include several historic homes north of Lovejoy Street built between 1892 and 1911. The Goldsmith Home, the family home built by Portland’s first Jewish mayor, Bernard Goldsmith, was designed by one of Portland’s most gifted architects, Edgar Lazarus, who also designed the US Customs House and Pioneer Courthouse in Portland as well as Vista House at Crown Point along the Columbia Gorge Scenic Highway. Losing the Goldsmith Home would have been an unspeakable tragedy, but thanks to 10 neighbors that pooled funds in chunks of $100-$800,000, this home was saved. Tour begins at Northwest Neighborhood Cultural Center, 1819 NW Everett Street. 11AM Sunday, June 21. $25.
Father's Day Watzek House Tour Perhaps the most architecturally significant house in Oregon, the Watzek House (now owned and operated by the University of Oregon's John Yeon Center) is only available for tours a few times each summer. But its architecture, and the story behind it, make this Father's Day tour and talk a special opportunity. The lumber baron Aubrey Watzek and an ambitious young designer, John Yeon, skied and climbed together. The older Watzek used his political connections to help Yeon stop a state road engineer from devastating Neahkahnie Mountain. And in in 1936, Watzek gave the 26-year-old Yeon, with no formal training, the architectural commission of his life. For Yeon, whose father died in 1928, Watzek served as inspiration, mentor, and patron. Yeon Center director Randy Gragg and Blue Sky Gallery director Todd Tubutis will a tour of the Watzek House, along with a look at vintage photographs of it published worldwide. (A second tour will be held on July 9.) Watzek House, 1061 SW Skyline Boulevard. 1PM Sunday, June 21. $40.
Architects Without Borders: a report from Haiti Earlier this month a Pro Publica/NPR story revealed the failure of Red Cross aid efforts in Haiti in the years following the 2010 earthquake. Nick Troutt, an Architects Without Borders volunteer, lives in Haiti eight months out of the year, teaching English and training masons who work on AWB-designed schools such as the Bon Repos Orphanage, located in a suburb of Port-au-Prince, which the chapter working to repair and perform a seismic upgrade. At this month’s open meeting Troutt will describe his experiences and answer questions about the challenges of living, working, and volunteering in Haiti. AIA Center for Architecture, 403 NW 11th Avenue. 6PM Wednesday, June 24. Free.
Walking tour - the Garthwick neighborhood Located just south of Sellwood and north of the Waverly Country Club, this hidden residential neighborhood provided a great outdoor laboratory for architects and builders working in the most popular residential styles of the 20th century. This Architectural Heritage Center tour explores one of Southeast Portland's lesser-known historic neighborhoods. Tour begins at SE 17th Avenue and Ochoco Street, 6PM Wednesday, June 24. $20 ($12 for AHC members).
Walking tour: The Pearl District - Preservation In The Midst Of Change Over the last 20 years, the Pearl has been transformed from an outdated and tired industrial area into one of Portland’s premier residential and retail districts. A century ago, the area went through a similar transformation, from a working class housing area at the edge of a marsh, to the city’s premier industrial and warehousing area. As this Architectural Heritage Center tour will demonstrate, many of Portland’s best known architects of the period designed buildings for important local and national companies. Most of these buildings remain, with their exteriors intact and new uses inside. Tour begins at SE corner of NW 10th and Johnson - near the Portland Streetcar stop. 6PM Thursday, June 25. $20 ($12 for AHC members).
James Beard Public Market: Grand Reveal Architects from the famed Norwegian firm Snøhetta will be on hand as designs are unveiled for the James Beard Public Market, set to occupy a waterfront spot along Naito Parkway between two curving Morrison Bridge ramps. Oregon Museum of Science and Industry, 1945 SE Water Avenue. 6:30PM Thursday, June 25. Free.
Walking tour: The South Park Blocks - A Cultural Mandate This eleven-block downtown area was first platted and donated to the City in 1852, transforming a fire break parcel into the most desirable residential area of its day –complete with schools, playgrounds, stately homes and places of worship. Attendees on this Architectural Heritage Center walking tour will demonstrate, the South Park Blocks stand alone in the central city as a place of revitalization, refreshment and cultural allure. Tour meets outside the First Congregational Church, 1126 SW Park Avenue. 11AM Sunday, June 28. $20 ($12 for AHC members).
The floating Fennel Residence (photo by Cameron Neilson)
BY BRIAN LIBBY
Robert Oshatz has long been one of the Portland area's most iconoclastic architects. Practicing here since 1971, Oshatz design houses with soaring forms and bold geometric shapes that are also draped in natural materials like wood. There's a little bit of Frank Lloyd Wright organic architecture in Oshatz's work, for he worked under Wright's son, Frank Lloyd Wright Jr., for years in Arizona, before relocating to Oregon. But his style also feels rooted in or at least seen through the prism of his first decade in practice, the 1970s, in that it feels somehow modern and postmodern at the same time, as well as both simultaneously futuristic and primitive.
At first, Oshatz designed mostly commercial buildings, and one of his unbuilt works, an office tower planned in downtown Portland for a major insurance company called the C.A. Bright Tower, remains eye-catching and innovative (it was highly sustainable) nearly 45 years after it was first designed. But beginning in the late '70s, Oshatz turned his attention almost exclusively to houses.
C.A. Bright Tower model (photo by Brian Libby)
Come across one of the architect's local works, from the floating Fennel Residence on the Willamette to his own soaring Elk Rock Residence near Lake Oswego to the diamond-shaped Rosenthal Residence in Portland, and it's impossible not to do a double-take. Whatever his influences may be, nothing else looks like a Robert Oshatz house.
A longtime sole practitioner who doesn't even offer clients renderings or drawings of the houses he designs, Oshatz isn't big on self promotion. But he's a music lover, and as a board member of the Portland Chamber Orchestra, he recently agreed to help coordinate a tour of four of his houses on June 20 as a fundraiser for the ensemble, one of the nation's oldest chamber orchestras.
Oshatz recently talked with me about his career and the four residences on the tour: the Elk Rock Residence (1989), the Fennel Residence (2005), the Rosenthal Residence (1984), and the Wilkinson Residence (2004).
Portland Architecture: given its uniqueness, what kind of feedback do you get from the local architectural community about your work?
I don’t really get feedback from the architectural community. It’s partly my own fault. Unfortunately I’m kind of quiet and shy in a sense, so I don’t kind of go out and put myself in a public situation. I don’t really know too much about what other people say about my work. But I’m reaching the point in life where you know when you do something what you did well, what you missed. I don’t like entering competitions, for example, because to me half the time the judges are just looking for confirmation of their own work, and things like they’re doing.
When we were in school, for example you had professors at some schools that were nationally known, and students would just copy what their professors did. Some of them would kind of regurgitate. The good ones tried to encourage what you were doing, not relate it to what they did.
In design competitions, the only time I ever saw one where I thought the best design won was the Sydney Opera House. The other times I thought the winner was really rather weak. The project happened because of the Eero Saarinen connection. He was on the board and came late to the jurying process. They put in a pile everything they weren’t interested in. He didn’t see anything he thought merited a winning design. In the discarded pile he found this one design, by Jørn Utzon. He convinced the jury to go with that design. That’s a very rare and unusual situation.
Rosenthal Residence (photo by Cameron Neilson)
Is doing good work, then, a matter of following your own vision?
Actually when I meet a client and talk, I have no idea whatsoever what I’m going to do. When it’s time for you to sit down and do something, you have to blank your mind and get rid of everything. You might be thinking, 'I wish I could design a cathedral.' But what comes in the door is this little chicken coup. You have to design the best one you’re capable of and forget the cathedral.
So what's your relationship like with clients? How are you able to negotiate their expectations?
A lot of times my clients ask me, 'Don’t you have any opinions? We want to know what you think.' I’d say, 'I’m a designer. My job is not to tell you what you can have and can’t. My job is to find out what you want.' I’m not trying to be conceited, but the main thing I think is different from myself when I was young was I knew I wasn’t the answer to every single client. Some clients especially when you’re young can take you in a wrong direction and you do something that’s pretty awful. People come to you because they want that awful thing too, and you have to do it over and over again. You need to be honest with yourself and interview the client as much as they interview you. I know the typical thing being said was, 'I took that client as far as I could take them.' My feeling was you should go right where the client wants to go but make sure it’s where you want to go also. You want to make sure you want to go where he wants to go. You can’t force him to do something you don’t want.
Most of it just was a matter of being honest with yourself and trying to do the best you can. The scary thing is that it’s hard to get hired when nobody knows what you’re going to do. If you don’t know what you’re going to do, someone else won’t. I remember in my first or second year in practice, a businessman told me, 'You’ll never get a job that requires a committee. They’ll only choose someone where they know what they’re going to get.'
Wilkinson Residence (photo by Cameron Neilson)
But now in old age or so, you have a volume of work, and the main thing is convincing people you’re not going to do the same building they saw and came to you for.
I tell clients the structure will be at peace with its environment, and they’ll be at peace with the structure. If they want that, we’ll be able to work together. I’ve been lucky that throughout my career clients never ask what my building will look like. They just assume the outside will be to their liking also if the floor plan suits them.
The Wilkinson Residence, for example, he saw just floor plans and maybe one section to get a sense of the volume. He never saw a model. One was never built. He never saw an exterior elevation or rendering. Even in the working drawing, the elevations were just partial, enough to get a building permit.
Do houses appeal to you, then, because you can have more control of the process?
Not really. If you ask an architect what the most diff project is, he’ll say a house. If you do a commercial building, it’s all about dollars and sense, but on the house he’s looking at every little doorknob. But houses are an opportunity to do some experimentation, more than a commercial building.
For me, you always want to do something that you haven’t done before. I would rather have the mix of a lot of different projects. I’m lucky: for some reason I don’t have a big following of clients in Portland. But I’m able to travel a lot. I get phone calls from people all around in different environments. The result of doing predominantly residential is the fact that there’s no going out and looking for work. Whatever strange phone call I get is what I have to do. Once in a while there’s something in it. I did a commercial building about 10 years ago up in Idaho, a large complex. But the recession hit and the project never went ahead. Now I’m doing an entertainment pavilion in japan, a structure for banquet dinners for 60 people, a lecture hall for 70 people. Unfortunately just whatever comes into the place is what I get to do. I would love to do a church. And I’ve done some churches but they’ve never been built. I’d love to do an opera house, a museum. You can dream about them, but the job that comes into the office, you have to get these other ideas out of your mind.
An upcoming Oshatz project in Japan (images courtesy of the architect)
I started out doing nothing but commercial work, but as the economy changed, people started to ask for houses. Between residential and commercial, that difference in scale of the projects, people have been successful at both ends of the spectrum. But it’s very difficult to make that transition from one end to the other. I’ve always wanted to have that opportunity to make the transition between the two. But they come to you because they like what you’ve done. You don’t have that battle. I tell interns, 'Nobody is going to come to you and ask you to do the greatest building in the world. You haven’t done anything. You have nothing to show. But when you get your first job, you’ve got to the best you can and not compromise your values.'
Let's talk about the four houses on the tour, starting with the Wilkinson Residence.
That house was one of those sites that had to go through a lot of design reviews, not aesthetic but environmental, being right by a ravine and having a number of trees that had to be saved. It was a difficult site to work with, but every site has its own sense of poetry to it. Your job is to capture that sense of poetry and translate it into the architecture.
The client was marvelous in that he didn’t come with an agenda of what he wanted the house to look like. We discussed a program. We talked about two elements. It’s easy to say, ‘I need to sleep three people and I want two or three bathrooms and an open kitchen.’ But you have to draw out of them: do they like soft, flowing lines or angular lines? Do they want sunlight hitting them in the morning or a dark space to sleep in? What colors or textures do they want to have?
Wilkinson Residence (photo by Cameron Neilson)
In his case, music was a very important element. He sang in a repertory choir and he played the viola in a quartet. Also his eating habits were that his girlfriend would make a gourmet dinner on the weekend. It might take up the full day were she would cook one course and he’d think about the wine served and they’d eat it. She’d go back and make that course and he’d think about the wine again. It might take six hours. And he wanted a nice big deck where he could make ice cream on in the summertime. That was the starting point of the house. It told me that he needed a house that had marvelous acoustics so he could enjoy music in it. The shapes and forms and the materials used had to be consistent, to give him good acoustics. He needed to have a kitchen someone could really cook a meal in and he needed a space to be able to sit and contemplate the wines he would choose. That and the sense of poetry of a site and a sense of how he perceives space and materials that he liked, colors and textures. That’s how the building started to evolve just from those choices.
Then he also made one very important comment. You always have to do this work in a budget. He gave me a budget but he said, ‘If I’m getting a piece of art to work with I’ll spend more money.’ We spent months and months and months just working on floor plans, giving him a floor plan and letting him think about it and talk about it. Sometimes his ideas might change. At one point he wanted a separate space to play his viola in and practice. We decided it wasn’t necessary. Where the fireplace was going to be: it was part of the kitchen, then part of the living room. Things evolve, and the client massages the design. My job is never to tell them what they can have and do it in a beautiful way for them. He had no preconceived ideas about what the house was supposed to look like. But he’s very happy with it. He loves his house.
What about the floating home you designed, the Fennel Residence? A tour I curated last month included a floating home near the Fennel, and lots of people wound up asking about it.
Randy Fennel didn’t know any local architects whatsoever. His friends suggested a number of architects to go talk to. They were all good firms, but more what I would describe as the kind of boutique firms that were very modern, white, slick houses. For some reason, that didn’t appeal to him. So he finally decided to go on the Internet and look for a local architect for himself. He came over to talk and the interview didn’t go very well. He said that I was too expensive. All I was able to say was, ‘I don’t have any idea what others charge, but I know what it costs for me to do something.’ And I couldn’t build the house quick enough. He wanted to be in there within a year. I thought, ‘This is going nowhere.’ I said, ‘I’m the wrong price for you, and I can’t build it quick enough. But I have to go to the Wilkinson jobsite, and maybe you can come along.’ He got out there and said, ‘Now I can understand why you charge what you charge.’ This was on a Friday. By Monday morning I had an email saying, ‘I want one of those. Just do it as fast as you can.’
Fennel Residence (photos by Cameron Neilson)
The other problem was the client saw a particular building and he wanted that building. I didn’t want to do that. But he liked the curved glulams, and the use of wood. I had to do it in a way appropriate way for him and his site, and not an appropriation of something else. I wouldn’t be interested in it. It’d be repeating yourself. A painter doesn’t want to paint the same canvass again. It had to be a variation on a theme. I used a lot of different materials [compared to the Wilkinson], but he actually at the last moment said, ‘No, I want the shingles and the curves’ like it had. It was difficult in that I wanted it to have its own expression. The Wilkinson, he would go out to look at the house when it was under construction to see which one was better. I said, ‘For you, yours is better.’ I tell the client, ‘Don’t worry what your friends say. They’re not living in your house.’
That house, it did have a completely different site, on the water. So it had the rhythm of the water and the flow. I wanted to capture the emotional quality of water going downriver and the ripples and wakes. People going inside say they feel they’re in the wake of the wave as they go into the house. But it wasn’t a conscious effort to do that. I wanted to capture the poetry of that rippling movement of water. The client also wanted a loft-like feel: a large volume and aloft above.
What about the Rosenthal Residence? It's not curvy at all.
It’s a completely different geometry. When I first got started and I was doing commercial buildings, people said, ‘Can’t you do anything but a straight line?’ I said, ‘Yeah, if it’s appropriate.’ Then people said, ‘Everything you do is curves.’ I did an affordable house in Japan recently that’s rectangular. The rectangle is a beautiful geometric form. I love working in it. Here that was the appropriate solution. I built the Rosenthal as a spec house. I was trying to make sure that I did something I was happy with, that would be sellable and also affordable so I could afford to get the financing and build it. At the time I was doing predominantly commercial work. Afterward I started to get calls from people who had seen it. Before I knew it all I was doing was houses.
This house, it had this gorgeous view of Mt. Hood. I wanted to frame the house to that view, and give privacy from the houses next to it, yet in that dark site amidst the trees bring in as much light as possible. I did these diamond windows that would bring light into two levels. Then I had a lot of high windows that would bring light in but they were clerestory windows so you’d have privacy. The house focused on Mt. Hood so that on the main floor there was this big pane of glass, six feet tall and 12 feet long. It framed Mt. Hood just like a picture. Upstairs in the master bedroom suite there was this other window five feet tall and 10 feet wide that framed Mt. Hood and the night lights, so that when you’d go to bed, you’d look at this big window and it would be like a movie theater screen.
Rosenthal Residence (images courtesy of the architect)
I didn’t realize it was going to change everything and change my practice. I lived there for a few years, and then the Rosenthals came from New Jersey and bought it. When they came to the house, they had seen it on a previous trip when they were scouting Portland. When they came back, the real estate agent wasn’t even interested in showing them the house. They asked to drive by. At the time it wasn’t on the market any longer. They blocked my driveway looking out the house. I asked them to move their car and they said, ‘Is the house for sale?’ I said, ‘No but I will sell it.’ They came in.
The living room and kitchen area didn’t work for the way they lived. They wanted to turn a closed kitchen into an open kitchen and move some things around. I said, ‘I can redesign this to fit your needs.’ I was glad to do it. I wanted to design a house that fit the needs of clients. I wasn’t all that thrilled, I realized, about doing a spec house. It was easier than a house for an individual. You create a program. In every design, it starts with an idea. Everything takes work. You reach a point in the early part of design where you say, ‘I can’t do this. The best things I’ve done, I’ve already done. I’m washed up.’ But you can’t, so you force yourself and you work something out. On a spec house for yourself, you get stuck. Instead of solving the problem, you change it so you don’t have to solve that. Spec houses weren’t as challenging as a custom house. I didn’t enjoy doing it as much. The custom made you design for a particular human being. The spec you were thinking in general terms, and you could change the terms if you got yourself stuck, so it wasn’t as challenging. But that house I like the flow of it, the feeling. All the houses are designed from the inside working my way out. The exterior is just a reflection of the interior space.
And what about your own house, the Elk Rock Residence?
That started out as a spec project also. It’s kind of hard because when as an architect you do a spec house that you’re financing yourself, you’re trying to do something affordable and sellable. But the more unique the house is, the fewer potential buyers there are. The reality is most people aren’t interested in architecture. When you do something other than the standard house, your market is lower and lower. On this, I wanted to do a spec house but something I’d also enjoy doing: something that was an interesting challenge. And a challenge it was. It was built with unskilled labor. My foreman had never built a house before. He was a handy man with some knowledge of concrete, of framing, of sheet rock.
Elk Rock Residence (images courtesy of the architect)
It wasn’t a simple house at all, but it’s a house that I wanted to do and I didn’t care about the fact that it was going to be hard to sell. It would be unique. I wasn’t going to take the site and bulldoze it into flat ground and build a standard house on it. I wanted the house to have a sense of soaring out from the hillside but remaining attached to the ground. And the higher on the site, the better the view became, but the grater the noise from Macadam. I had to find a balance and figure out how to mediate the sound from the highway. That house was also designed completely from the inside. The elevation drawing was never done until it was under construction. As I got into the project, I always dreamt about living on a lake. The view of the river would be the closest I’d ever get. I decided to stay in the house myself.
It wouldn’t happen today, but back in 1988, the city didn’t even want to do a plan check on it. I called and said, ‘When am I going to get a building permit?’ They said, ‘Come in and we’ll talk about it.’ When I got in, I saw someone had written on the drawing, ‘Space, the final frontier’ [quoting the opening to the original Star Trek TV show]. People had said my work looked like The Jetsons. I had never seen the show so I didn’t know what they meant. Finally I saw it, and I said, 'My houses don’t look like that.' They’re really warm inside. People always told me they were surprised how warm the interiors were.
A rendering of the future Oregon Square (illustration by MIR/GBD Architects)
BY BRIAN LIBBY
Nearly a decade ago, Portland's GBD Architects saw completion of one of the largest projects of the era, and one that helped redefine a neighborhood: the five-block, seven-building Brewery Blocks.
By the time the final Brewery Blocks building was completed, the Pearl District was well on its way into transitioning from an industrial enclave to a place where people lived, worked, and frequented wine bars and art galleries. But the Brewery Blocks, constructed on the site of the old Blitz-Weinhardt brewery, became an instant success, particularly at street level, where the development wrapped around Powell's Books and used that proximity to create a thriving urban setting full of people. The project, developed by Gerding Edlen, was also noteworthy at the time for having all of its square footage LEED rated for sustainability, something far less common at the time.
Now GBD is at work across the Willamette River designing an even bigger cluster of buildings and public space in the Lloyd District. And the firm faces perhaps an even bigger challenge in terms of placemaking.
While there are plenty of shopping and eating options nearby, be it at the Lloyd Center mall or along NE Broadway just a couple blocks further north, as well as a range of transit options from light rail and streetcar to two freeways, the Lloyd District has traditionally lacked any residential component. But in the two-phase development GBD has designed for American Assets Trust, its San Diego developer client (a publicly traded real estate investment trust), there will be a cluster of new apartment buildings.
Looking south through Hassalo to Oregon Square (image courtesy GBD)
The first phase, Hassalo on Eighth, will include buildings of five, six and 21 stories, totaling 657 units (occupying one large block with the existing circa-1970s Lloyd 700 office tower). The second phase, Oregon Square, will consist of four buildings across one superblock ranging from 11 to 30 stories (the maximum height limit) and over 900 units, surrounding a public plaza more than twice the size of Pioneer Courthouse Square.
The city's Design Commission has urged the designers to make sure, though, that for all its size the public space is and feels accessible to the public passing through, not just like a private park for residents. There is also hope that the combined Hassalo plaza and Oregon Square park can create one big outdoor room, proceeding south to the domed Oregon state office building almost in a Beaux Arts-style layout.
Beyond the issue of public space, there is a challenge here to make a neighborhood of several buildings feel like something more organic than just one firm doing seven buildings at once. I've never necessarily been in love with the aesthetics of GBD's work per se, but they know how to handle these kinds of big-scale architectural challenges and make them work at the pedestrian and street level, and they know how to do it with first-rate sustainable credentials. At one point a few years ago, I believe GBD had at one point designed more LEED-rated square footage than any firm in the United States. And the Brewery Blocks area is always teeming with activity, more than can just be attributed to the adjacency to Powells. It's good placemaking. It's true that there are issues to solve if Lloyd District is to become a real neighborhood. Where is the affordable housing - or will it just be for the affluent? But if that kind of foot traffic like the Brewery Blocks has could be transplanted to these blocks between Lloyd Center and busy MLK Boulevard, it would be a step forward.
Recently I sat down with GBD Architects principal Kyle Andersen about the challenges and opportunities of creating a neighborhood virtually from scratch.
Portland Architecture: Can you talk about the challenge of place-making at this scale, and in an area previously without much residential?
Kyle Andersen: I think placemaking, and creating a sense of place, was one of the biggest challenges. There was no there there at the time, just class-B office buildings surrounded by parking.
Which seems to make the landscaping component critical here, to create someplace people, be they residents or visitors, want to spend time lingering at, and not just passing through.
When it came to start working on this project, we even interviewed all of our landscape architects and we made them compete. [Normally the firm just hires one firm or another.] Because place making was such a big thing.
Street and population diagrams of Hassalo and Oregon Square (images courtesy GBD)
Could you talk about trying to combine public space and sustainable features?
We don’t realize this until you’re on the outside looking in that sustainability is part of our culture [in Portland]. And the idea of using sustainability as placemaking echoes our ethos and the culture we’re a part of. There were some tough budget challenges on Hassalo where the client was ready to pull the sustainable features out and just be done with developing three apartment buildings. But it was the placemaking and the culture that will set the tone for the rest of their property. You’re creating a place that’s rich and hopefully, through that, will be successful.
Do you think of these projects as starting a neighborhood from scratch, like South Waterfront and parts of the Pearl were in the last decade? How much do you see the presence of something like Lloyd Center, a struggling mall in a time when malls are becoming all but obsolete, as an asset?
I've often said this isn’t a revitalization project; it’s a vitalization project. The mall and offices there, it’s taking advantage of all those pieces in place, which is in contrast to the South Waterfront. Where else can you sit in your apartment and go, ‘I need a new pair of shoes,’ and go across the street and have your pick of choices?’ The new owners of the mall are revisioning their asset and hope to change the perception of Lloyd Center. There’s really a chance to do a facelift. I am a graduate of Benson High and I am very familiar with the area and the history of the place. The stigma attached to the district is only recent, but it is in for some big changes. When the mall became more introverted it turned its back to Holladay Park, which allowed it to become a dangerous place. The developer sees that we need to put eyes on the park. Until now it’s been a business district, not a neighborhood. It doesn’t even have a neighborhood association. But we are developing a place to both work and play with the majority of the support services established.
With seven buildings by one architecture firm going up together, how do you keep it from seeming diverse in style and scale like a city?
It was the Brewery Blocks model: creating a village requires some diversity. It doesn’t want to look like it was done by the same hand. We had small design teams for each building with a bit more artistic freedom to differentiate. They shouldn’t all look the same. It wants to be unique and diverse like people. One of the criticisms of the old buildings was that they were objects. Residential development is more about people. The scale is different because of that.
Hassalo on Eighth (images courtesy GBD)
Multnomah Boulevard, which forms the northern edge of the Hassalo on Eighth buildings, has become more bike-friendly, and the development is taking advantage. Could you talk a little about the huge bike hub that will be located there?
Each building requires a number of spaces. Since this is a super block it’s considered one site. We can consolidate all of it. We put it in the 700 building. We use valet to store your bike and lock it up underground. Or you can take the ramp down and go down by yourself, lock up your bike. It’s a retail facility yet a traditional bike facility.
We’re putting in over 900 bike stalls in Phase 1. There will be a shop that will sell passes, give information on alternate modes of transportation and be a valet for your bike. They will offer services to fix your flat, or give your bike a tune-up. We later decided to increase the bike facility to 1200 to cover residential, retail and create a district amenity. It quickly became a story that went around the world: 'Hassalo on 8th, largest bike hub in North America.' The client from San Diego says, 'So there’s no minimum car parking, but there is required bike parking? That is crazy.'
How did you approach the mix of ground-floor retail, which can attract people and bring amenities and life, versus having some walk-up residences, which can break down the mass of the towers?
In Phase 1 [Hassalo on Eighth] we’ve have some walk-up units, and some storefront type retail. The client wanted to do more residential on the street. It will totally change this area completely. We have both flats and two-story townhouse type units.
Phase 2 [Oregon Square], on the other hand, is all ground floor retail. I think some ground floor residential might come into that as we get further along in the programming. The right retail is very important to both phases. We have to be careful to curate the right local retail. We might have too much retail with the addition of all the ground level retail in Phase 2, and we may need to revisit that later.
Oregon Square images (courtesy GBD)
Even so, when I studied urban design in Barcelona, I remember shopping with friends, and going separate ways and then meeting up at a café just down the street from where we were. There were plenty of cafes and gathering places to activate an urban experience. Portland needs more of that.
The plaza at Hassalo on Eighth will include landscaping that treats wastewater. Can you talk about the two developments' treatment systems?
We have a wastewater treatment facility up here to the north [of the Hassalo development], and a rainwater harvesting system at the southern portion of the property. The site is surrounded by what’s called a combination system: both storm and sanitary. When it rains heavily in Portland, there is the potential to overflow sewage into the river. Some of the systems built on the site are from the 1800s.
We asked the city, ‘What if we treated our wastewater on site and instead of putting it into the system, and we put it into the aquifer via some drywells? What if we put meters in place showing we don’t have any sewage outfall? We’ll use that reclaimed water for non-potable water and put the rest into the aquifer.' The city's Bureau of Environmental Services said, ‘We’ll give you a 60 percent discount on your SDCs.’ That was around $1.2 million. We ran the numbers of what it’d cost to build a wastewater treatment facility and run it, do all the testing, against what we’d save in the sewer bills we wouldn’t pay. It had a 2.4-year payback.
All the units will use reclaimed water for toilets. That’s never happened at this scale for residential. We’re also running a purple pipe to the 700 building to replenish the cooling tower. This keeps 60,000 gallons of sewage a day out of the city’s infrastructure. It’s going to be an amazing thing. It uses nature, natural systems found in nature, and is similar to how the city treats its own wastewater. But we’re also using it to develop a sense of place and tell a story, which is a microcosm of the culture of our city.
Hassalo on Eighth and Oregon Square (illustration by MIR/GBD Architects)
With some pretty tall buildings on the site, including three over twenty stories, how did you approach the massing in terms of not shading these public spaces all the time?
As we thought about fitting all the program on Oregon Square, [we knew that] one of our towers is 325 feet tall, the maximum height limit for the site. We had to think about where a new tower would fit in with the pattern of the existing towers, and in such a way to maximize solar access to our proposed open space. We ended up biasing our height to the southeast. It casts a shadow in the morning, but after about 11 it’s opened up so the plaza sees sun through the rest of the day. We also used that diagram to study the pattern of views between massing.
What about the challenge of creating wide enough access points to Oregon Square from outside to make it obvious to passers by—to make it truly public?
One is the openings to that plaza are 60-plus feet wide. These are street right-of ways between the buildings. Since our last time in front of the Design Commission for our third DAR we’ve created another pass-through opening through the Northwest-most building. We also tried to maintain transparency at the ground level of all buildings, so at times you can see through to there [the plaza]. The lobbies for the other three buildings are double height pass-through lobbies we’re hoping to let the public pass through. It’s not just for the residents. There are coffee shops activating those lobby spaces.
Overall, I think there’s some drama that’s made by enclosing that space and not letting it be completely open to the street—some compression. Thousands of people will come by it on MAX, and there will be a lot of programming. We’re looking to the Pioneer Courthouse Square people to answer how we activate it. We’re talking to the group programming Holladay Park to plant the seeds. The Portland international brew fest was at Holladay Park last year for the first time, and it will be there again this year. This space has that opportunity as well to be complimentary not only to Holladay Park but to Pioneer Courthouse Square. You won’t have to be a rocket scientist to discover this is there. It’s a big space but is broken down into opportunities for smaller rooms. There’s a water feature that can be something, playful or calm depending on the time of day.
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