Portland Architecture

Minor White's Portland: Val Ballestrem discusses a legendary photographer's record of the city

Minor White, "Knapp House, Exterior/Tower," 1942 [negative]; 1995 [print]
(Portland Art Museum, Museum Purchase: Exhibition Budget Fund, 1995)

BY BRIAN LIBBY

Although Portland is enjoying a kind of moment these days as a cultural hotspot, attracting musicians and filmmakers and chefs, for much of the city's history there have been few famous names born and raised here. Matt Groening, anyone? Doc Severinsen? Tonya Harding?

Yet there are a few examples of great minds being nurtured by the city for a few years before moving on to greater notoriety. Mark Rothko attended high school locally, for example, after emigrating from the Soviet Union and before heading to New York City, where he would go on to become one of the top two or three American painters of the 20th century. Steve Jobs spent time attending Reed College, where he took a very influential calligraphy class, of all things, that impacted his thinking about computer fonts and other aesthetics. Clark Gable took up acting in Portland during the 1920s before heading to Hollywood and becoming a star.

The legendary American photographer Minor White, whose work is the subject of a new show opening this Friday (March 3) at the Architectural Heritage Center, "Parting Shots: Minor White's Images of Portland, 1938-42," is another example. Born and raised in Minneapolis, he came to Portland at the age of 29 in 1937. His intent had been to move to Seattle, but after stopping off first in Portland, decided to stay. Living at the YMCA for a little over two years, he began to explore photography seriously for the first time. He soon joined the Oregon Camera Club and within a year was offered a job in 1938 as photographer for the Oregon Art Project, which was funded by the Works Progress Administration.

White was tasked by the OAP with photographing historic buildings in downtown Portland before they were demolished for a new riverfront development, which means that many of his photographs of the city are also documents of the historic architecture that would soon be lost. At the same time, White worked for the Portland Civic Theater, documenting its plays and casts. White would leave Portland by 1940, when he was hired to teach photography in La Grande. By the time he returned to the city a year later, intending to establish a commercial studio, three of his photographs had already been accepted by the Museum of Modern Art in New York for a group exhibit, and in 1942 the Portland Art Museum gave White (as the museum would later do for Rothko) his first solo show.

But then, World War II ended White's time in the Rose City. He was drafted into the US Army and after the war would settle in New York, falling under the influence of Alfred Stieglitz, and later would continue on to San Francisco, where he would be influenced by two other legendary photographers: Ansel Adams, with whom he helped establish American Photography magazine, and Edward Weston, who became a close friend. By that time, White's style had evolved to be more like Weston's, finding abstraction and sensuality in close-up images.

But White's Portland photographs are something different. They are more straightforward and representational, given this was mostly work for hire and White had yet to develop his artistic identity as a photographer. Yet they are also unquestionably beautiful pictures, making adept use of light and shadow to create a sometimes haunting sense of mood. His photo the Dodd Building formerly at Naito and Ankeny, for example, is wistful and moody in its depiction of a lone man standing underneath one of its arches.

Minor White, "Knapp House, Interior Staircase," 1942 [negative]; 1995 [print]
(Portland Art Museum,  Museum Purchase: Exhibition Budget Fund, 1995)

Recently I spoke with Val Ballestrem of the Architectural Heritage Center, who curated the exhibit using photos from the permanent collections of the Portland Art Museum and the Oregon Historical Society.

Portland Architecture: How did this exhibit come together?

Ballestrem: We have a volunteer committee that helps with exhibits and collections: sometimes ideas and sometimes installations. A year ago we were talking and somebody suggested, ‘What if we did something related to Minor White?’ Bill Hawkins is on the committee, and he made an inquiry to the art museum to see if they’d be interested in providing photos. And we have artifacts: pieces of the two houses photographed by Minor White in 1942. The next step was the Oregon Historical Society had some photos also. They were equally generous in providing what we needed. They both had quite a few images to look through. I wanted to find as many images as I could where there was an inkling of a building with an artifact we might have associated with it. I did some of that: not as much as I’d hoped but enough to fill our gallery. Then I wanted to think more about White as a photographer. He was early in his career here. People say this is what sort of launched his career. I tried to look for different themes coming out of them. I selected an assortment, basically, from the two organizations, and ended up with 35 photos on display. It was sort of a process, but there was interest from many people in the organization here.

Do you see White as another creative mind who passed through Portland for a relatively short time, like Rothko or Clark Gable?

Definitely. They came here for a while, and started their careers, and went elsewhere and did amazing things. It’s interesting: I read Minor White wasn’t planning on staying here. He was passing through on his way to Seattle from Minneapolis. It’s that sort of story you’ve heard before: got of the bus and sort of liked it and stuck around.

Minor White, "Arches of the Dodd Building (Southwest Front Avenue and Ankeny Street),"
1938 (Portland Art Museum, Courtesy of the Fine Arts Program, Public Buildings Service,
US General Services Administration)

What captivates you about White's pictures?

Most of these photos he’s trying to capture reality on the street, but at certain times a day. Maybe there’s nobody on the street and it’s barren, and maybe that says something about the area. Then you see another picture in the same part of town and there are lots of cars. It’s hard to describe. There’s a mood to the photos. I wouldn’t say he’s being sentimental about it at all. He’s not making things look really pretty. Some of the pictures with the people in them, you see the junk store in the background, or some really gritty part of town. He was capturing that reality of what was going on there.

But I also think there could have been some purpose in that: who was cutting his paycheck. Part of the WPA’s purpose, it was like, 'Make yourself a better artist.' At the same time, he was documenting conditions in a part of town that the powers that be at the time were wanting to wipe out, in a precursor to urban renewal. That’s part of the story that I didn’t know about until I dug into this. Why was he taking these pictures along Front Avenue? I think in part, even if I haven’t completely connected the dots, that the WPA was helping to fund a proposed redevelopment along Front Avenue. His job in some ways was to go take pictures of how lousy it was so they’d support demolishing these buildings. That may be only part of what was going on, but still: I didn’t know the WPA was helping to fund projects in Portland. That’s some of the detail I find most intriguing: the backstory that goes along with the photos. Now I can look at this photo from the Burnside Bridge looking down Front Avenue. He was taking an artistic photo, but he was also capturing conditions that were deemed less than desirable.

And we know that by the mid-20th century much of Portland's riverfront buildings would be gone. White's years in Portland pre-date those years of turning historic buildings into parking lots, but evidently that thinking was already underway in the 1930s during the Great Depression.

When he was there some buildings were already coming down. It really didn’t start to take off until mid-1940. By then he’d gone to La Grande for a year and a half. For the demolition photos you see in the show, I haven’t been able to find out what was going on. But there was clearly a decade or more’s abandonment of those buildings. It was the Great Depression and people didn’t have the funds to fix them up. I think that’s why some of those buildings came down, and why they show up in some of his photos. 

Minor White, "1323-29 Southwest First Avenue," 1939 (Portland Art Museum,
Courtesy of the Fine Arts Program, Public Buildings Service, U.S. General Services Administration)

It strikes me that there is a connection between what White was documenting and what inspired the formation of the AHC's parent organization, the Bosco-Milligan Foundation. White was documenting Portland's historic riverfront architecture about to be lost, and a few decades later it was that broader loss, over the 1940s-60s, that inspired the BMF to begin collecting artifacts from these buildings. And given the growth we're experiencing today, maybe the times are comparable.

It’s definitely been in our minds the whole time developing this exhibit: he was documenting a time on the cusp of or in the beginning of some large changes to the city. Today here we are too with big change going on. We want peole to use this exhibit as a way to think about today. Is there a building I should take a picture of? If I don’t take a photo maybe there won’t be a photo someday. If it’s gone and there’s no documentation of it, it can be completely gone. There are some buildings like that in Minor White's photos where I go, 'I’ve never seen that before.' The Witch Hazel building at the foot of the Hawthorne bridge with its turret: I’m fascinated by it. I think it came down around mid-1940 or somewhere. It’s long forgotten. If it wasn’t for the Minor White photo that shows it clearly, there may not be much record of it.

And with the threat of a large earthquake, now more than ever we should be documenting the city.

Change is going to happen and we know that. We know we can’t save everything. But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t make a record of it. Take a picture of it. Take several pictures of it. Write a couple paragraphs about it. So when that change does happen, someone in the future could say, “Wow, THAT’s what that block looked like in 2017.” I’ll bet few documented Division Street in the 1990s, for example. Now it’s been completely transformed.

 

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Holst Architecture's new owners discuss the firm's evolution

Renee Strand, Kevin Valk, Kim Wilson, Dave Otte (Holst Architecture)

BY BRIAN LIBBY

In my 16-plus years writing about architecture in Portland, I've always had an imaginary tiered system for local firms. And in that top tier of my seven or eight favorites has always been Holst Architecture.

From the moment I began, in about 2001, the firm had significant projects happening, even though at first the firm had few employees beyond founders John Holmes and Jeff Stuhr (the company's name being a fusion of their last names). There were renovations and transformations of old banks and warehouses for local institutions like the Pacific Northwest College, the Oregon Ballet Theater, Bridgeport Brewpub and the Ecotrust building. Not long afterward came some of the first successful multifamily neighborhood residential projects like the Belmont Street Lofts, Thurman Street Lofts, 12.5 Townhomes and Clinton Condos. After that came bigger Pearl District residential projects like 937 and Sawyer's Row,  hospitality projects like Hotel Modera and later Hotel Eastlund, innovative social-welfare projects like the Bud Clark Commons and Glisan Commons, and company headquarters for companies like Ziba and Instrument. 

All the while, Holst projects seemed to possess a delicate balance: the visual language would adapt depending on the project type, the client or the location, but there also was a connecting thread, even if it was hard to pin down: a kind of rigor in the details, but also a reverence for a variety of materials from wood to weathered steel to bricks.

If I enjoyed following the firm and its ever-growing portfolio of award-winning projects over the years, perhaps I, like many others, thought of it as John Holmes, Jeff Stuhr and their staff. But over the last five years or so, I noticed something beginning to change. When a project was finished, it was often Kevin Valk or Dave Otte I was interviewing rather than Stuhr and Holmes, or even if I was interviewing the original founders, it was in combination with other staff.

Even so, and even after watching Stuhr and Holmes take extended sabbaticals, it was a surprise to learn recently that the duo had sold the firm to a quartet of longtime employees: Valk, Otte, Kim Wilson and Renee Strand. Many firms face a difficult leadership challenge as their principals retire or move on. Will longtime clients stay with the firm? Will the firm be able to produce at the same level of quality, or retain its fingerprint?

Pacific NW College of Art, Feldman building - now demolished (Holst Architecture)

To learn more, recently I sat down with the quartet of new Holst leaders to discuss the present and future, as well as to perhaps slightly re-gauge the past.

Portland Architecture: Can you talk about how the transition came about?

Valk: It’s been a five-year-plus process. There’s a lot of people at Holst who stick around for a while. I’ve been here for 20 years. People want to be here for a long time. It became obvious about five years ago that we needed to understand what the long-term picture was or look for something else. Do I want to run my own firm? What do I want to do? John and Jeff were always talking about everything, and long-term planning was done to ask what the firm in the future should look like. What does a transition look like? Does it become employee owned? Something else? As time goes on people are moving into leadership roles anyway and it sort of flushes itself out. Which is kind of what happened. There were no ultimatums given or a conversation saying, ‘Hey, it’s going to be now.’ But Jeff took a sabbatical, and John did, and they got more comfortable with the idea.

Wilson: Strategic planning let us determine what kind of structure we wanted to establish. Up until that point everybody did a little bit of everything. When I started you were the designer, the project architect, the one making coffee. That was fantastic, but when you start to get up in say the high 20s in terms of staff, people rightly want to see how the firm fits into their future. We were able in our long term planning to expand leadership roles. The four of us started taking more responsibility.

Otte: One of the reasons we started strategic planning was we came out of the recession in a really good position. We went down in numbers a little bit. But we had 11 people by the end of the recession and have tripled in size to over 30. With that rapid growth came the need to find what’s next, and a need to put in process as you go from a small firm to a midsize firm. Even being thoughtful about that planning helped us to grow up as a firm.

Valk: There was a lot of discussion about how we maintain who we are. A big part of it was people who had been here filling those roles. John and Jeff always allowed us to take on what ever we took on. It was very much, ‘We’re all working on this together.’ You just took stuff on and you didn’t wait for someone to ask you. You did it respectfully but you did what it took to get things done. And we approached leadership the same way. We were already running projects. We already had a lot of client contact. We just said, ‘We’re going to keep taking more.’ You sort of slowly become a leader. The reality is not a lot has changed as far as how we operate. It was operating the way we wanted it to before. We were already on that path.

Bud Clark Commons (Holst Architecture)

How does the apparent ease of transition speak to Holst’s culture?

Otte: The thing John and Jeff did the best is they weren’t obsessed with work. They created this culture where everybody has a life outside, whether it’s painting or traveling or fine dining or volunteering. They want everybody to go home at five o’clock and have a life outside of work. It was less about serving their vision. It was about creating a community. It’s what we still want to do: empower people to be part of the process here, but also turn off the machine and go home. That balance lends itself better instead of serving a single master.

Do you think people in the past wrongly assumed that the whole vision at Holst was coming from John and Jeff?

Valk: It’s a little bit of that but it’s also changing the way we work. It’s even in our new-employee manual: ‘The best idea wins.’ That’s always been the best philosophy. That’s not to say there wasn’t some great talent that John and Jeff had. And we’re not necessarily saying we’re not going to replace that. But we’ve been a part of this office for so long that we all have ways of doing things. There’s positives and negatives to how everybody works. But we’ve been doing that for a while. It hasn’t been one person. We’ve always prided ourselves on how buildings go together: the art side, the craft side. It’s not just craft and it’s not just the artistic side of architecture: it’s a really comfortable blend of both of those. That’s the goal: to maintain that level of balance.

Holst has an impressive portfolio of award-winning projects, and by now a wide variety of project types. Is there a connecting thread?

Otte: What I would say is [it's] getting out of the plan and looking at things three dimensionally—how you experience space and how that translates to the finished product. There’s a cohesive connection, from the diagrammatic standpoint down to the detail. And it’s doing that with very modest projects. Most of our projects don’t have very large budgets. It’s trying to bleed good design out of the every day.

Valk: I think appropriateness is a thread. If you put it on a board people might not know it’s all from the same firm. But we listen to stakeholders and flush out what’s appropriate: the climate, the budget, the city—whatever it is—and not putting our ego in front of it. I can’t say we don’t have some ego. We do. But it has to take a back seat to what’s appropriate. I think that’s what our clients really enjoy.

Ecotrust building (top) and Belmont Street Lofts (Holst Architecture)

But lots of firms say they listen to their clients, or that it’s a team effort where the best idea wins. What makes Holst’s work consistently win awards?

Otte: There’s this ethos we have that there’s always a small amount more we can do. That last 10 percent you bleed out is really hard. It takes a lot of thought and collaboration. But that’s what we love, and that’s what excites us. And the clients like that too: that we bleed out that last bit. It just requires the drive to do it, and also finding and building the right team of people who can think for themselves. That’s what John and Jeff did best, I think: finding amazing people and allowing them to own it. Because when you own something, it makes a big difference.

Wilson: We always try and challenge ourselves. Certainly all the people in the office try to do that: find a fresh approach.

Otte: Kim doesn’t allow us to copy details.

Wilson: We’ve got a whole staff out there from one to two years to all the way up. We like to tell people, ‘There’s no place to hide: you’re always responsible for what you’re doing.’ We feel like that will get the best out of them. I just think fundamentally regurgitating what’s done before sucks the life out of the architect.

Valk: I mentioned listening to clients, and of course everybody says that. I think the difference is we also question. We’re not afraid to tell the client we think something’s not appropriate. We do it respectfully and we don’t cause a scene. But if we really don’t feel like something’s right we’ll be clear about it. We may draw what they ask us to draw, but we’ll draw three or four other things too, and it’s usually obvious why it’s a better idea. I don’t know if we’ve ever had someone say no. There’s been a lot of times working with developers where understanding pro-formas and all that can be a big part of what we do. We can say, ‘What about this?’ It’s worked on multiple projects. We’ll listen and be questioning, all along.

Hotel Modera (top) and Ziba offices (Holst Architecture)

Otte: Another thing that allows that to happen is we’re a firm run by designers, not managers. Well, I’m a manager now, but that’s not how I started my career. I’m looking at everything from that designer lens. Even if we spend more time on a project and blow the fee, it’s worth it. It changes the equation.

You talked about the value of looking five years ahead as part of the smooth leadership transition. So what do the few years hold, or what are your goals?

Valk: I don’t think there’s fundamental changes we’re expecting. The challenge is maintaining the variety of what we do. I think we’ve grown with that and taken it for granted what people can do. Sometimes it’s easy to say, ‘We’re going to stop doing that because it’s not as profitable.’ But I think we’re aware of what different projects provide us.

Otte: One thing we identified early on is it’s not about the project type so much as the client. That was kind of a light bulb for me. If you’re working with someone you respect and you have shared goals, that’s what makes it worth it. We’d love to do more higher-ed projects, for example, or a museum, but in the end it’s about who we’re working with.

The firm has also branched out of Portland with projects in places like Massachusetts and California. It has been interesting to see the Holst visual language both adapt to different regions and maintain some kind of identifiable constant.

Valk: We have been expanding to new locations, and we like that. The knowledge base in Portland translates well to other places. I think that will continue to happen as our country evolves and other people want that.

Otte: There’s expertise in Portland we take for granted. There are midsize cities just expanding their cores and revitalizing their downtowns. What we’ve learned here can be exported pretty well.

Valk: Most of the Holsters are not from Portland. I’m from Connecticut. We’ve got a lot of Midwesterners. It’s like, ‘That’s easy, so and so grew up there. We knew how to do that.’

Otte: Part of the reason the work was successful in Amherst is we don’t come to things with a singular vision. We look to that place to tell us what it should be. It’s from the same hands, but it’s in a different context. We don’t have a Holst manifesto.

You’ve talked about how John and Jeff were good about empowering other architects, and that has allowed the succession to take place naturally. But I’ve also always been fascinated by how being a good architect can mean a lot of different things: good at working with clients, good at drawing, good at inspiring staff. Could you talk a little bit about what John and Jeff’s specific talents?

Valk: They’ve both always been very good designers. They would handle that differently in their approach, which evolved. Jeff was always more of a hands-off designer, encouraging staff and working with people to evolve, but less with his own hand: a great editor. And that evolved into being more of a managing partner. John was an amazing designer, in a way that he could draw and ideas would flow through that pen. It was a lot harder for him to be an editor, though, and provide feedback and work that way. And not that one’s right and one’s wrong. They’re just fundamental ways somebody’s brain thinks.

Otte: Jeff’s a people person. He loves to be out in the world. John likes his privacy. I think their two talents were what made this place take off.

Those two different skillsets seemed to compliment each other: almost like a mom and dad of the firm. So let me ask the same question of the four of you, the offspring who have taken over the house. How do your skills complement each other?

Valk: I’m definitely more of a people person…That was a joke, by the way.

Strand: Dave’s a people person. I guess I’m the quiet one.

Otte: I think part of why the four of us evolved into this position is we compliment each other really well. Kim is the best technical architect I’ve ever worked with. It’s why I wanted to work here. Years ago I saw the Belmont Lofts coming together and wanted to find out who did those drawings. She’s our quality director. Everything has to have her stamp of approval. Renee gets the best out of people. She manages the most projects in the office. She’s the glue. Kevin is taking the design lead within the transition. But also it’s interesting watching Kevin evolve from a background doing projects relatively on his own, not with big teams, to now getting to watch him work with bigger teams: it’s really cool to watch. I manage projects but also do business development, marketing. I tend to focus more on the outside face of Holst.

Open School (top) and Karuna House (Holst Architecture)

Wilson: Every project we have in the office usually has two of us usually entrenched in it in different roles.

Valk: And at some point we’ve all done each of the other roles, which helps us work well together. We’ve all managed, designed and drawn projects. That allows us to understand what the other is doing. And no matter who’s working on it, it’s a Holst project. Everybody’s really open to communicate what they feel. Nobody says, ‘I’m going to keep my hands out of that.’ And that’s what we’re pushing even more to do: make sure everyone feels part of the process.

Wilson: We place importance on every aspect of a project. I think all of us have shepherded projects to the end. You don’t always like to get those calls three years down the road, but it’s part of what we do. Instilling that is something we enjoy doing. The shift I’ve seen in the last five years is we can be really good at keeping our heads down and kicking ass and getting something done, but we’ve also had to really look up and make sure everyone in the office has that opportunity. That shift in mentorship has been kind of fun.

Otte: One thing I wanted to make sure people know about is we’ve been certified as a women-owned architecture firm and are the largest in the state. It goes back to that work-life balance. A big part of the architectural community drops out because of lack of support. There’s the missing 32 percent. I think it speaks to what our values are at Holst and how we want to continue to grow in terms of talent and opportunity.

 

 

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Design calendar: February 16-28

Siskiyou House (Beebe Skidmore Architects)

BY BRIAN LIBBY

Pearl District Walking Tour
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 17. $15. 

Unrelated: Heidi Beebe and Doug Skidmore
Since founding their firm in 2007, former Allied Works architects Heidi Beebe and Doug Skidmore of Beebe Skidmore Architects have quietly built one of the city's most talented architecture firms. When they aren't lecturing at places like Harvard University and the Rhode Island School of Design, the duo have designed a range of award-winning commercial and residential projects in Oregon and Idaho, including the Swift advertising agency headquarters in Portland, which won the top-level Honor Award from the American Institute of Architects last year, and the Two Story Four Square house in Boise, which was featured in Dwell magazine. Speaking as part of the Portland State University School of Architecture's Fridays@4 series, Beebe and Skidmore will discuss these and other recent works like the Siskiyou House in Portland. Portland State University, Shattuck Hall Annex, SW Broadway at Hall Street. 4PM Friday, February 17. Free.

An Introduction to Portland House Styles
In this Architectural Heritage Center lecture, retired former University of Oregon and University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee professor Tom Hubka will help attendees make sense out of the architectural styles common to houses built in Portland over the past 150 years. Through photos and diagrams, Hubka will highlight the details to look for in styles ranging from early Greek Revival to the modern Ranch and everything in-between. Architectural Heritage Center, 701 SE Grand Avenue. 11AM Saturday, February 18. $20 ($12 for AHC members).

Eastmoreland Walking Tour
Before becoming one of Portland’s most desirable older neighborhoods, Eastmoreland was part of the extensive agricultural landholdings of the Ladd Estate Company. The Lewis and Clark Exposition of 1905, the founding of Reed College in 1911, and the extension of the streetcar network into the eastside of Portland helped to kick-start residential building in Eastmoreland. From the first decade of the 20th century onward, this neighborhood has been a popular enclave for upper-middle class Portlanders. As attendees will learn on this Positively Portland Walking Tour, Eastmoreland features wooded boulevards, fine schools, parks, a golf course and easy access to Reed College. Architectural styles represented include a range of Arts and Crafts influenced high-style designs as well as a number of Period Revivals. Several of the top early 20th century architects in Portland designed homes in this affluent neighborhood. Currently, the neighborhood is pursuing designation as a National Register Historic District. Tour begins at corner of Reed College Place and Woodstock Boulevard. 1PM Saturday, February 18. $15.

Northwest Portland Sacred Spaces Tour
In the late 19th century, Northwest Portland was the most prestigious neighborhood in the city. Today, numerous well-preserved historic residences and apartment buildings contribute to the distinctive character of the community. Situated in close proximity in this high-density area are several worship spaces built during the Portland boom years of 1890 to 1930. On this Architectural Heritage Center tour, attendees will be able to go inside four unique sacred spaces and learn about the history and architecture of each: Trinity Episcopal Cathedral, St Mary’s Roman Catholic Cathedral, the former First Christian Science Church and Temple Beth-Israel. 1PM Sunday, February 19. $25 ($18 for AHC members).

Construction Site Tour – Japanese Garden Expansion
The Portland Japanese Garden is undergoing the biggest transformation in its history, with a new Cultural Crossing designed by renowned Japanese architect Kengo Kuma (with an assist from local firm Hacker). This construction site tour, hosted by Hacker and Hoffman Construction, includes a hard-hatted look at the site, as well as a discussion that will touch upon coordination amongst international design team partners, coordinating Construction with specialty craftspersons, the pros and cons of specifying sole-source products, and achieving zero-tolerance details. Portland Japanese Garden, 611 Southwest Kingston Avenue. 1PM Wednesday, February 22. $10.

DoCoMoMo Oregon Modern Mixer
Join DoCoMoMo Oregon for this annual free event for members, new members, potential members, and modern design enthusiasts and advocates to meet the DoCo Board, play some trivia games, and learn about upcoming DoCoMoMo Oregon events and programming, advocacy, as well as how to get involved. Rontoms, 600 East Burnside Street. 5:30PM Thursday, February 23. Free.

Old Town/Chinatown Walking Tour
On this Positively Portland walking tour, attendees can discover the history and architecture of Portland's first commercial district, where over 100 years ago ocean-going ships delivered their passengers and goods in this thriving port city . The tour will also feature Old Town's "Blazing Center" which hasn't changed much since the days it was originally filled with brothels, bars and gambling houses, and survivors of the cast-iron era of architecture, as well as a look at Portland's Chinatown as well as restored landmarks like the US Custom House and the Society Hotel. Like many neighborhoods in Portland, this district is changing with the times and those changes involve the re-purposing of many underutilized buildings. Tour begins at AIA Portland Center For Architecture, 403 NW 11th Avenue. 1PM Friday, February 24. $15. 

Giancarlo Mazzanti: From the Factory to the Toy
Colombian architect Giancarlo Mazzanti is is well-known for his work in education and school design, particularly for his schools in marginalized neighborhoods of Colombia. As he will discuss in a lecture entitled "From the Factory to the Toy: Mechanisms for Triggering New Educational Behaviors,” Mazzanti’s most important works include the Pies Descalzos School in Cartagena, El Porvenir Kindergarten in Bogota, the Atanasio Giradot sports complex for the South American Games in Medellin and the Biblioteca Espana in Medellin. Mazzanti was recently recognized with the Global Award for Sustainable Architecture in Paris, exhibited at the 2016 Venice Bienalle and selected for the New York MOMA permanent collection. He has taught at a quartet of Ivy League universities including Columbia, Harvard, Princeton and Penn. University of Oregon, White Stag Block, 70 NW Couch Street. 5:30PM Friday, February 24. Free.

Hidden History of Albina Tour
As part of Black History Month, local nonprofit Know Your City will be presenting a tour of the Albina area (once its own city) including its public art, historic buildings and green spaces. Alina, comprised of the Boise and Eliot neighborhoods in North Portland, is rich in diverse history and culture, serving as the historic heart of Portland’s African American community. Over the past few decades, dramatic changes have altered the face of the region, something which can go easily unnoticed to those who don’t know the history. Tour stops will include the only church in Portland where Martin Luther King Jr. preached, Vancouver Avenue Baptist Church; one of the few remaining black owned businesses on North Mississippi, Sons of Haiti Masonic Lodge; the historic headquarters of the Urban League of Portland, and remnants of Albina’s City Hall building. Tour begins at Little Big Burger, 3747 North Mississippi Avenue. 12PM Saturday, February 25. $15. 

Lina Menard
A designer and builder of tiny homes at Niche Consulting, Lisa Menard is a natural co-conspirator who has lived out her own questions around intentional living, less stuff, and happiness. As she'll explain in this Reed College lecture, she has resided in a travel trailer, yurt, backyard cottage, and three (and counting) tiny houses on wheels. Rooted through a background in sustainable design-build and urban planning, Menard also has a penchant for experiential learning and healthy communities. She has found her niche nestled among small spaces, collaborative education, and community planning. Reed College, Art Building, SE 36th Avenue & Woodstock Street. 9AM Tuesday, February 28. Free.

 

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Protecting Oregon's historic buildings just got a little easier

Amity First Baptist Church, Amity, Oregon (Brian Libby)

BY BRIAN LIBBY

For more than 20 years, most historic buildings in Oregon, particularly those outside Portland, have had virtually no protection. And because we’re one of the only states with owner-consent rules regarding historic designations, we’re one of the worst in the nation for preservation in many ways. But thanks to a rule change that has amended Oregon’s Goal 5 land-use policy and adopted by the Department of Land Conservation and Development—which now basically see historic places as a natural resource worth preserving—there will be an important new baseline of protection for over 11,500 National Register properties in the state, as well as new options for local governments to preserve the historic buildings and neighborhoods.

“The implications are profound,” Restore Oregon executive director Peggy Moretti told me in a phone interview late last week. (Her organization spearheaded lobbying for the change.) “It’s the best thing to happen to historic preservation in Oregon in 20 years.”

The new rules do a few things. First, they specify that for any property listed on the National Register of Historic Places, there must be a demolition review first.

“For folks here in Portland used to hearing about historic districts and hoops they have to jump through, they know we already do impose protections here on individual National Register-listed properties and districts,” explains Morretti. “But for most of the National Register-listed properties in the state, there was virtually no protection. Even in Washington and Clackamas counties there were no minimum protections at all. Demolition delay was all. And delay is not protection. You can just wait out the day. We’re excited there is finally this minimum standard. This change doesn’t prevent demolition but there has to be a public process where they consider the value of what they’re proposing to replace a historic place with against the benefit of retaining that historic place.”

The Goal 5 rule change also makes it easier to create local historic districts that are not National Register-listed districts but still have some kind of designation like “conservation district.” It also removes the biggest roadblock to such initiatives by clarifying that (1) only a simple majority of property owners need to consent to that designation, and (2) that taking an inventory of historic buildings is not a form of designation. This frees cities to update their historic resource inventories without requiring owners to consent.

“We haven’t inventoried our historic resources since the ‘80s because there was an assumption it triggered owner-consent rules,” Moretti added. “Now we know it does not. Taking stock is not the same as designation. So a community can take inventory and it doesn’t require owner consent. Portland can feel comfortable allocating funds to an updated historic-buildings inventory. And that’s important. How many decades of buildings do we have that have reached the age of 50 to become historic but have never been inventories? And it’s the same across the state. This change enables cities to take stock of what their historic assets are and plan for it.”

Also rewritten as part of Goal 5 is an allowance for local jurisdictions to apply additional protections to National Register listed properties or districts, but only after a public process. This gives property owners a role in customizing design guidelines or other regulations for their district.

“I think it was intentionally not defined too tightly,” Moretti said. “Out in rural communities they might approach that differently from Portland, which already has a historic landmarks commission. We’re trying to approach this with flexibility for different communities and jurisdictions so it works for them.”

I asked Moretti what the rule change did not do, or to put it another way, I asked her if a doomed historic building like the Ancient Order of United Workmen Temple would be more likely to get saved with this change.

“Unfortunately I don’t think it would have mattered,” she said. “It did not fix the fact that our historic designation process is just broken. This thing we call owner consent, we’re the only state that does that. I think we need to find ways to significantly revise that, because it really gets in the way of fulfilling the mandate to protect historic resources. And ‘protect’ doesn’t mean everything's safe. Buildings like the Workmen Temple or the Governor Building at Second and Stark should not be lost. Those are significant buildings that should not be coming down without significant dialogue. They’re more than private properties. They’re community assets. There should be more of a public process in determining based on objective data whether they’re historic or not, and whether they should receive protection.”

“A property is either historic or not,” she added. “It’s not up to the owner’s whim. What is discretionary is whether it’s protected or not. It either meets the criteria of significance or it doesn’t.”

She characterized the Goal 5 rule change as making lemonade out of lemons, or a step in the right direction. But ultimately, Moretti continued, “There’s lots more work to do. We have an agenda that includes looking at the backwards historic-designation program in Oregon. We need a state historic tax credit. We need more historic designations. There needs to be more ways to incentivize preservation. We need to add density and retain affordability while still retaining our historic fabric: the places that make Portland not look like anywhere else.”

Moretti also sees a danger to Portland’s historic buildings coming from our ever-greater density. “I predict we’re entering a period of more commercial buildings,” she said. “It won’t just be houses. It will be good commercial buildings: the two-story buildings up and down our transportation corridors. There’s a danger they’ll say, ‘we’ve got to go tall.’ That’s a good idea generally speaking, but do we want to lose every bit of those historic Main Street buildings?”

 

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Delightful diversion: discussing the Portland Winter Light Festival with co-founder Jeff Schnabel

"Immersive Jelly," an interactive installation by Ivan McLean (Brian Libby)

BY BRIAN LIBBY

Sometimes in Oregon during the winter it can rain so long or hard you just don't want to go out, at least not on foot. If you do, you know you'll be soaked to the bone, perhaps even within minutes. And yet that's exactly what I decided to do last Saturday in order to check out the second annual Portland Winter Light Festival, located mostly along the east side of the Willamette between OMSI and the Hawthorne Bridge (although this year it also expanded across the river to the Zidell Yards). By the time I got home my pants looked like I'd just pulled them out of a lake, but I didn't care.

I'd gone to the festival last year without any expectations but soon was captivated by the installations and exhibits, which are contributed by a wide array of local artists, artisans and designers. What made them so endearing was that so many of the exhibits were so simple. In many cases, they involved simply moving through some sort of enclosed but illuminated space, perhaps mirrored to distribute the light or possessing some kind of interactive texture. Others involved simply projected light onto a nearby surface, such as the massive, Sequoia-like columns of the I-5 freeway overpass. Still others were basically just glowing orbs, responding and changing according to touch or some other cue. None of the Winter Light Festival was overly sophisticated, and yet it succeeded in conjuring something much greater than the sum of its parts. In the dead of winter, with darkness and bad weather stuck with us for weeks, this festival managed to bring many thousands together with a collective sense of delight.

Earlier this week I spoke with one of the Portland Winter Light Festival's primary founders, Portland State University architecture professor Jeff Schnabel, about how it came together and what we might see in future incarnations of the fest.

Portland Architecture: despite getting soaked at the fest last weekend, and that discomfort ultimately keeping me from venturing over the river to see the rest of the exhibits, I'm so glad this event happens when it does. We all need a pick-me-up in the dead of winter, especially this year given the huge disgrace and danger happening in national politics the past few weeks.

Schnabel: People have often asked, "Why don’t you have this in the summertime when you won’t have those kinds of weather problems?" But in summer there are tons of things to do. In the wintertime, not so much. We wanted to create a public event that happened at a time of year we typically aren’t out as much in the public realm. We’re hearty stock here in the Northwest. We just kind of figured folks would find their way out. It provides a kind of wonderful diversion in the dark of winter. And it gets dark much earlier.

I don't think I've ever seen the east-side waterfront as crowded as it was for the fest these past two years. How did this year's crowd compare to last year?

Last year it caught it us a little bit by surprise, the sheer number of people. I hear we even kind of backed up I-5 a little bit as well. We were better prepared this year. We got geographically larger and separated pieces out a bit more. The Portland Spirit was running multiple boats this year because last year they had more people wanting to ride than were able. I think this year the organizers did a good job getting ready for the crowds. Saturday night we still got the big numbers we’d hoped for. The three previous nights there were plenty.

Friday night was probably my favorite night. It wasn’t particularly crowded. The rain did stop and the wind died down. There was an opportunity to stand and be with some of the art pieces and take them in without feeling like you had to move on.

"Lumascope" by 2.ink Studio (Brian Libby)

I loved the whole fest and the eclectic nature of the installations, but my favorite was “Immersive Jelly” by Ivan McLean, with scores of long pieces of fabric moving in the wind and with people moving through, and constantly changing light. It felt a little bit like a rock concert where you could go onstage and become part of the show.

I like that piece as well. Wednesday night, when the wind really picked up, it was horizontal. It wasn’t dangling at all. But even that was beautiful. It was kind of pointing you toward the city skyline, revealed from underneath it. Even in the high wind it was quite lovely.

Could you walk me through the origins of the festival, and what it took to get it off the ground?

I guess it started with a symposium I hosted here at PSU called “The Illuminated City.” I was getting very interested in designing for nighttime. I brought in folks internationally to talk about new technologies that were illuminating our cities. I met Chris Herring, who eventually became our artistic director for both years. He and Jean Margaret Thomas, our technical director, have done the heavy lifting both years.

For a while as we tried to get it off the ground, it just wasn’t happening. At one point I stopped trying to make it happen. But then this landscape architect, Mary Anne Zarkin, called me and said, 'I’ve just been to Amsterdam’s light festival. We’ve got to get this going again.’ About that same time, I had joined the Willamette Light Brigade. I said, ‘This seems like it might be a reasonable extension to your agenda.’ To their credit, they enthusiastically embraced the idea. I was coming to them with no funding, no backing. They agreed to be the umbrella organization and use their 501(c)3 and use their contacts and connections in the city. Chris and Jean came on board and began to reach out to the design and artist community and the lighting industry. But that was five years it took to get that going.

What really helped spark me was getting the Van Evera Bailey Fellowship from the Architecture Foundation of Oregon. I wanted to do something but was incredibly naïve. It made me less naïve, which was a great thing. It allowed me to travel to a bunch of bad-weather locations that had light festivals. I went to Helsinki and Montreal and Reykjavik and Amsterdam. The weather was horrible in each of those locations. It also gave me a chance to talk to their directors and how they funded these. The funding came in a variety of ways. Helsinki was fully funded by the city government: about $600,000. The opposite end of the spectrum is probably Montreal, which is largely funded by large banks and corporations, but they do get some arts funding as well.

"Feedback and Flow" by Max Strater and Kyle Paulsen (Brian Libby)

How did you fundraise here?

Neither one of those aforementioned options turned out to be available for us. We couldn’t get the City of Portland to bite. They’d say, 'It’s a great idea. You should do it.' And Portland lacks Fortune 500 companies. There are some very generous individuals and companies within the city, but they get asked six times a day to support things. We’re a big town, small city. There’s a finite number of resources. And so this festival would not have taken place if not for the passion and in-kind donations from the creative community. It was landscape architects, architects, engineering firms, lighting design and supply firms—and lots of them. Each stepped up with what they could to make this thing happen. They almost are too numerous to name.

I think that in part is responsible for the character of the festival: it’s not just one or two large corporate donors making this thing happen. It is a lot of firms that are passionate about the festival and really stepped up. This festival exists because of the Portland design community, and I use that term broadly. You’ve got lighting designers, lighting suppliers, artists and sculptors who are fascinated with light. You’ve got some people really geeky about light, and I mean that as a compliment. They’re looking at what lasers can do. The artists largely provided their art for free, or basically the festival covered their costs. We want to be the kind of festival that compensates artists for their art, but folks were coming to us and passionate about being in the festival, and generous with their time. You’ve got people like Jonah Cohen from Hacker Architects for example, fundraising like a madman and putting up his own cash. He’s manning info booths and locking up toilets at night.

And he’s just one example. The commitment people had to this festival went so far beyond just writing a check. Somebody would say, ‘I will help with the graphics’ or ‘I will help with the website.’ People started coming out of the woodwork and donating their time. But we still weren’t there yet. We didn’t have the kind of funding we needed to pull off the event. That piece came about as I reached out to Erin Flynn at PSU, in research and sponsored projects. She was spearheading the Innovation Quadrant and advocating for that. It was PSU, OHSU, PGE, and OMSI. They wanted to give some identity to this geography they all share. She made some introductions and we were able to secure PGE as the first funder. That gives you a bit of credibility so other funders followed. PSU contributed and OMSI became our host location, and really an important collaborator in the event.

Even if a lack of wealth here makes fundraising more challenging, doesn’t that need to get buy-in from a wide swath of participants and people in the community help raise awareness while you fundraise? Or is it possible it makes the effort feel more eclectic and less corporate?

I think that’s absolutely true. That said, I certainly would not mind a couple of big checks coming in. And part of it too is that the festival is largely an all-volunteer effort. We don’t have paid positions. Our executive director this year was Michael Joyce. He got a token amount of money for what he did. The challenge is to be sustainable. Portland has seen a lot of interesting one-off events. To make something happen year-in, year-out, you can’t just have complete turnover. You need some continuity. And that does require some reasonable amounts of money. For the festival to be sustainable, we’re going to have to see some additional revenue coming in.

Did fundraising become any easier in the second year, when you had a successful event to show potential donors?

Over 30,000 people were in attendance, and then there’s the economic development impacts it made for the city. February is a terrible period for hotels, restaurants, retail, and if we can get to come particularly from out of town, that’s great for our economy. But I was kind of hoping that after the first year, when we could show the numbers, the lifting would get easier in the second year. And I don’t think it did. The struggle to raise money was as great in the second year as it was the first.

I also think is important part of that delight you described is our commitment to it being free. That means that the audience is way more diverse. I think that’s an important thing. As we tracked where people came from, it really was from all parts of the region. We got outer southeast folks, Oregon city folks. I think people are looking for things you can do for free. I got to go to the Oregon Winter Fest in Bend. I got to be a judge for the fire sculpture competition. It was quite fun. But there was admission for that. It was a very nice event, but it definitely felt like it was an event for the privileged. That’s just not us. We want that delight to be experienced by anybody and everybody who wants to come down and be part of that. Part of our challenge comes from our own making.

Inside "Ocular Operatic Observatory" by Hacker Architects (Brian Libby)

How might the festival grow in the years ahead?

I’ll let you in on some long range planning. We always see the Willamette River as the core. We refer to it as the heart of the festival. But you’ve already seen us expanding over to the west side. You had Place doing installations for the Halprin sequence. And as we grow, we’ll expand the heart but really I think everybody on the board and the advisory committee sees this event as being a citywide event, and more than just four nights. You might just go into one quadrant to see that stuff. Another night you may come to the Willamette and participate in that. But we’d like to introduce extraordinary light installations throughout the city. The city is the festival. You can’t just block off space for that. And we’re starting to see little bits of that. Elizabeth Leach Gallery featured a light artist this month. PNCA participated last year. We’d love to see that zone in the North Park Blocks in the Pearl grow and expand. We’ve done some things at PSU and would love to expand that. Last year they hosted two shadow-puppet performances, and this year we got students involved in the lantern parade. We’d like to make all of this an integral part of the light festival. Amsterdam’s light festival is like that, as is Montreal’s. They’ve got four major zones in Montreal for their light festival. People visit it multiple nights.

That’s the beauty of this festival: its lack of specificity. It really can absorb any of the arts.

 

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Design calendar: February 1-15

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.

 

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