NASA JPL Flight System Testbed and Design Center, Pasadena (Rosanne Sachson)
BY BRIAN LIBBY
Portland Winter Light Festival
When it debuted last year, the Portland Winter Light Festival was dazzling and charming. Presented by the Willamette Light Brigade and located outside the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry (OMSI), this outdoor celebration illuminates Portland’s waterfront through contemporary light-based art installations, engaging performance, and fun activities for all ages. Free and open to the public, this nighttime community-supported event generates critical opportunities for artists, designers, creatives, makers and performers to collectively expand art, performance and technology innovations in our region. This year, the festival has expanded to include installations on the west side of the Willamette River, near Tilikum Crossing. In most cases the installations aren't sophisticated: they're almost like the flipped of a Halloween funhouse, delighting us instead of scaring us but doing so with cheap materials and high levels of imagination. After the pitch-black darkness of national events the past few weeks, no event could be more welcome. The festival continues each evening through Saturday. Oregon Museum of Science and Industry, 1945 SE Water Avenue. Begins 6PM Wednesday, February 1. Free.
Rosanne Sachson: It Is Rocket Science
Portland interior designer Rosanne Sachson is a local treasure with a fascinating career history. Based in Los Angeles for much of her career, she began with a residential and hospitality focus and has designed home interiors for a number of Hollywood celebrities. But a highlight of her career came in the early '90s when Sachson was tapped by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory to redesign its Flight System Testbed and Design Center in Pasadena. Designed to facilitate development for a spacecraft, her Flight System Testbed design used a virtual-spacecraft approach, significantly reducing cost and spacecraft development time. Design and space planning for the project involved integration and test consideration, system administration, conference space, and simulation support equipment plus microspacecraft Testbed. In this talk, Sachson will recount her days working with NASA and as a designer to the stars, as well as her past decade in Portland, which also includes years of design work at the Pittock Mansion. Lake Oswego City Hall, 380 A Avenue. 7PM Thursday, February 2. Free.
The Pearl District – Then and Now
The Pearl District was practically deserted 25 years ago. On this Positively Portland Walking Tour, attendees will see how the district has been transformed into a dynamic walker-friendly neighborhood with contemporary and adaptive high rise housing, fine dining and world class entertainment. The Pearl District in Portland has become a model of high quality urban living and a must-see destination for visitors to our world-class city. Tour begins at AIA Portland Center For Architecture, 403 NW 11th Avenue. 1PM Friday, February 3. $15.
Intisar Abioto: Opening Reception
Sadly and perhaps ill-advisedly, the White Box gallery at the University of Oregon's outpost in the White Stag building will be closed in June, but this opening reception for Portland photographer Intisar Abioto is a chance to see first hand and learn about her latest project: photographing black citizens in 18 different cities across seven countries in North America, Europe and Africa. University of Oregon, White Stag Block, 70 NW Couch Street. 5PM Friday, February 3. Free.
AFO Winter Member Event
Recently Portland architecture firm Ankrom Moisan moved into its new headquarters, a timber-framed structure located along the Willamette River waterfront in Old Town beside the University of Oregon. As part of this Architecture Foundation of Oregon event (open to members only), lead designers of Ankrom's new headquarters will tour the space with attendees and provide food & refreshments to ease conversations. Akrom Moisan, 38 Davis Street. 5:30PM Monday, February 6. Free (registration required).
ARE Lecture Series – Schematic Design
In this ongoing lecture series, the AIA Portland Emerging Professionals Committee partners with local professionals to produce an annual lecture series to prepare licensure candidates for NCARB’s Architect Registration Exam. This fourth installment deals with schematic design. AIA Center For Architecture, 403 NW 11th Avenue. 5:30PM Tuesday, February 7. $30 for individual lecture ($15 for AIA members), $200 for full nine-lecture series ($100 for AIA members).
Emerging Studios
The AIA Portland chapter's Small Firm Exchange and Emerging Professionals committee is hosting this discussion with five emerging professionals who will share their experiences in starting, running and making a living as design entrepreneurs. Speakers will include Tim Fouch of Fieldwork Design & Architecture, Matt Brown of YBA, Allison Bryan of Open Studio Collective, Lucas Gray from Propel Studio, and Jenna Fribley from Envelop Design and Architecture, with the discussion moderated by Brian Cavenaugh of Architecture Building Culture. AIA Portland Center For Architecture, 403 NW 11th Avenue.
Vijay Gupta: "The Citizen-Artist as Healer"
Though this lecture by Vijay Gupta does not relate directly to design and architecture, its message is an important one for all creative disciplines. Gupta is a violinist and renowned advocate for the regenerative presence of artistic voices in social issues. He joined the Los Angeles Philharmonic in 2007 at the age of 19, and is a passionate advocate for the dedicated presence of citizen-artists in social and civic discourse. He founded and directs Street Symphony, a non-profit organization dedicated to engaging distinguished musicians in performance and dialogue with marginalized communities of people experiencing poverty, homelessness and incarceration. First Congregational Church of Christ, 1126 SW Park Avenue. 7:30PM Friday, February 10. Free.
Constantinople On The Willamette: Byzantine Architecture In Portland
For a thousand years the imperial city of Constantinople on the Bosphorus was the greatest metropolis on earth. Its soaring church of Hagia Sophia, with a dome intended to symbolize the vault of the heavens, represented the culmination of Greco-Roman engineering and design. Nearly five hundred years after the city was conquered by the Turks in 1453 and its name changed to Istanbul, Byzantine architecture provided the inspiration for an exotic revival across the United States. Temple Beth Israel in Northwest Portland (1928) is one of the nation’s finest examples of this style, yet several others are to be found around the city - and in some very unexpected places. In this Architectural Heritage Center Lecture, John Doyle will discuss the Byzantine Revival style in Portland, the original Byzantine architecture that inspired it, and the history of this unique style in the United States. Architectural Heritage Center, 701 SE Grand Avenue. 10AM Saturday, February 11. $20 ($12 for AHC members).
The Bullitt Center in Review – Modeled vs. Actual Energy Use
The Bullitt Center opened in Seattle in 2013 as the world’s largest certified commercial Living Building. In order to meet the requirements of the Living Building Challenge, it was designed to achieve net-zero energy consumption with high-efficiency features such as passive cooling, natural ventilation, thermal massing, and energy-saving HVAC solutions. This presentation will discuss the building’s energy modeling approach, which used TAS and eQuest during design. Model results from the design will be compared with actual performance data collected over the building’s first three years of operation. Finally, alternatives to the modeling approach will be discussed in light of changes to the tools available and lessons learned from the Bullitt Center results. Ecotrust, 721 NW Ninth Avenue. 12PM Wednesday, February 15. Free.
Advertisements
Comments