"Helianthus Enorme" by Chad Gaetz (Portland Winter Light Festival)
BY BRIAN LIBBY
Portland Winter Light Festival 2018
The Portland Winter Light Festival is an outdoor event that celebrates winter and community through illuminated art installations, vibrant performances, stunning kinetic fire sculptures, and highly interactive activities designed to delight adults and children alike. With more than 40,000 visitors in 2017, this three-night festival brings over 100 artists, designers, makers, and performers together to turn the wintering city into a tapestry of light and celebration. Various locations. Begins Friday, February 1 at dusk and continues through Saturday, February 3. Free.
Pearl District Walking Tour
The Pearl District was practically deserted 25 years ago, but it has since been transformed into a dynamic walker-friendly neighborhood with contemporary and adaptive high rise housing, fine dining and world class entertainment. The Pearl has become a model of high quality urban living and a must-see destination for visitors to our world-class city. This Positively Portland Walking Tour includes the historic warehouse buildings that became the basis for the present Pearl district, including the recently re-purposed and re-opened Schnitzer Center at Pacific Northwest College of Art, now located in the grand classical revival former 511 Broadway federal building dating to 1916. Tour begins at AIA Portland Center For Architecture, 403 NW 11th Avenue. 1PM Friday, February 2. $15.
Aging in Norway: Rob Wilson
Portland State University masters of architecture student Rob Wilson, recipient of the School of Architecture’s 2017 L. Rudolph Barton Travel Fellowship, traveled to Norway to investigate how informed design and planning can facilitate dignified, healthy, and happy lives for people as they grow old. In this latest installment of the Fridays@4 talk series, Wilson will discuss his journey and share his findings from this exploration of the Norwegian eldercare model through three case studies, collectively generating a dialog between architecture, urban design, and the needs of an aging population. Portland State University, Shattuck Hall, Broadway and Hall Streets. 4PM Friday, February 2. Free.
Light Science Talk: Jeff Schnabel
The Portland Winter Light Festival was inspired by light-based events from all over the world. This presentation by co-founder Jeff Schnabel of Portland State University will explore how a wide spectrum of cities feature light art to create community, celebrate culture, and enhance their economies. Schnabel serves on the board of the Willamette Light Brigade, a not-for profit organization that illuminates Portland’s bridges, and teaches in the PSU School of Architecture at Portland State University. Oregon Museum of Science and Industry, 1945 SE Water Avenue. 6PM Friday, February 2. Free.
Backdoor Revolution
Author and accessory dwelling unit expert Kol Peterson will be on hand to discuss his new book, Backdoor Revolution: The Definitive Guide to ADU Development. The book provides a framework for understanding the large-scale, informal ADU housing phenomena that exists in cities throughout the United States. The presence of informal ADUs can be viewed as an ad-hoc housing response to restrictive municipal regulations for ADUs found in the vast majority of US cities and towns; regulations which have historically hindered homeowners from developing formally permitted ADUs. The book offers insightful analysis of the municipal and institutional barriers for permitted ADU development in American cities, and a succinct regulatory prescription for addressing these key barriers. Holladay Park Church of God, 2120 NE Tillamook Street. 6PM Saturday, February 3. Free (registration required).
Downtown Portland's "North End" Tour
Explore the abundant architectural and cultural history in the downtown neighborhood wedged between Old Town and the Pearl District. Along the way, attendees on this Architectural Heritage Center tour will see 19th century gems like the Mariner’s Home, which has been rehabilitated and turned into the Society Hotel, while also learning how the area became New Chinatown, and later Japantown. The tour also includes landmark buildings like Union Station and the former US Custom House. Tour meetup location to be announced. 10AM Tuesday, February 6. $20 ($12 for AHC members).
Christie Coffin and Jenny Young: Making Places For People
San Francisco architect Christie Coffin of The Design Partnership and University of Oregon architecture professor Jenny Young will be on hand to discuss their book, Making Places for People: 12 Questions Every Designer Should Ask. The book explores twelve social questions in environmental design while revealing deeper complexities in addressing basic questions, such as: What is the story of this place? What logic orders it? How big is it? How sustainable is it? Providing an overview of a growing body of knowledge about people and places, Making Places for People stimulates curiosity and further discussion. The authors argue that critical understanding of the relationships between people and their built environments can inspire designs that better contribute to health, human performance, and social equity―bringing meaning and delight to people’s lives. University of Oregon, White Stag Block, 70 NW Couch Street. 5:30PM Tuesday, February 6. Free.
Resilience is the New Sustainability
In the 20+ years since The US Green Building Council's LEED [Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design] rating system was introduced, disasters like Hurricane Katrina, Superstorm Sandy and the Christchurch earthquakes have exposed the need for our buildings to not only have a low impact on the environment, but for the environment to have a low impact on our buildings. The US Resiliency Council was founded to assist architects and engineers in communicating the value of resilience against earthquakes and other natural hazards to their clients and the public. This AIA Continuing Education presentation by Resiliency Council executive director Evan Reis will introduce resilience based design and give architects useful tools to 1) set explicit performance objectives for projects, 2) perform cost-benefit and return on investment analyses of design options, and 3) implement and promote USRC building ratings on projects that add an additional dimension to their overall sustainability services. AIA Center For Architecture, 403 NW 11th Avenue. 5:30PM Thursday, February 8. $15 (plus $2.89 service charge).
Old Town/Chinatown Walking Tour
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 . On this Positively Portland walking tour, attendees can see survivors of the cast-iron era and swing through Portland's Chinatown, which isn't really Chinatown anymore. Like many neighborhoods in Portland, this district is changing with the times and those changes involve the re-purposing of many underutilized buildings. The tour also includes a look at some prominent success stories and works in progress including the US Custom House (1901), now a We Work office space, and the Sailors Mission (1881), now the Society Hotel. Tour begins at AIA Center for Architecture, 403 NW 11th Avenue. 1PM Friday, February 9. $15.
Indo Pacific: An Instantaneous Region
In 2013 Australia officially moved to the Indo Pacific, a region that expands from South America to the Gulf of Mexico, Southeast Asia to East Africa. The aim of this lecture, by visiting PSU professor Urtzi Grau as part of the Fridays@4 lecture series, is to quantify its physical and intangible dimensions, to articulate facts in order to make visible the cosmopolitical edifice that holds the region together. Due to its abrupt conception, the maps and the histories of the Indo Pacific Region – the social, political, economic, technologic, eco-systemic, and spatial relations that define it – are currently being constructed. Thus, design decisions are still possible. As an imaginary space relentlessly becoming real, this parafictional region is architecture's ideal site. When he's not teaching at PSU, Grau is an architect, director of the graduate degree program in architectural research at University of Technology Sydney and co-founder of Fake Industries Architectural Agonism, an architecture office that has received the AIA New York New Practices Award, has been shortlisted in the MoMA PS1 and the Miami Design pavilions, was finalist the Guggenheim Helsinki Competition, and represented Australia in the Chicago Architectural Biennial. Portland State University, Shattuck Hall, Broadway and Hall Street. 4PM Friday, February 9. Free.
Portland Then and Now
As Portland’s built landscape transforms at an unprecedented pace, our connection to the city’s past faces challenges that can only be met through preservation and documentation. Dan Haneckow, a Portland-based historian and the author of the recently updated and re-issued book Portland Then and Now (Pavilion Books, 2017), will talk about the changes Portland has experienced, while sharing photos from his book as well as unpublished photos from his personal collection. Architectural Heritage Center, 701 SE Grand Avenue. 10AM Saturday, February 10. $20 ($12 for AHC members).
Honoring the Life of Bob Frasca
ZGF Architects founding design partner Robert J. Frasca passed away January 3 at the age of 84 from complications of chronic lymphocytic leukemia. This memorial service honors his legacy. Since its beginnings in Portland in 1966 as a regional practice, ZGF has grown to be one of the premier architectural firms in the world with more than 600 staff members across six offices in the U.S. and Canada. The firm is known for design excellence in a variety of building types, from health care to universities to projects for the U.S. State Department. In 1991, with a portfolio of distinguished work designed under Frasca’s direction, ZGF was honored with the AIA Architecture Firm Award. Reed College, Kaul Auditorium, 3203 SE Woodstock Boulevard. 4PM Sunday, February 11. Free.
Classical Downtown Portland tour
Downtown Portland contains an extensive collection of classically influenced buildings, many of which are clad with glazed terra cotta, a building material that was at its height of popularity in the early 20th century. On this Architectural Heritage Center tour, attendees will see the city’s first “skyscraper”, a bank that could have been a Greek temple, and learn about several architects from this period who left an indelible impression on Portland including A.E. Doyle, the firm of Whidden and Lewis, and the Reid Brothers from San Francisco. Tour meetup location to be announced. 10AM Tuesday, February 15. $20 ($12 for AHC members).
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