Favorite architecture of the 2010s (part three): apartments, condos and affordability

Works Progress Architecture's Slate (Brian Libby)

BY BRIAN LIBBY

Continuing this multi-post look at my favorite local architecture projects of the decade, some of which I named in a recent Portland Tribune column and others I'm noting for the first time here, we come to what is without a doubt the decade’s most talked about architectural need: housing.

Even before the cataclysmic election of 2016 and even the before the Great Recession caused by deregulation of financial and real estate markets, America was experiencing nearly unprecedented levels of inequality, which in turn has impacted housing affordability.

We see it on the streets every day: people in tents, people sleeping in their cars. And of course it goes far beyond such obvious markers: the scores of thousands on affordable-housing waiting lists, and the people quietly moving away.

So what did we do about it? Well, we mostly built apartments and condos for rich people in the central city, and some more cookie-cutter subdivisions full of McMansions. That's what the cynic in me would say. We did build some affordable housing too, thankfully: only a fraction of what we need, but certainly not nothing. So we've got the two most extreme ends of the economic spectrum taken care of. Now all we need is to build more multifamily housing for those of us in between.

Expose Yourself to Help

Remember Bud Clark? I'm thinking of this colorful Portland figure not just for being the Portland mayor in the 1980s who wore nickers, sported a handlebar moustache and said "Whoop! Whoop!" I'm thinking of former bar owner who was the naked model for that once-ubiquitous "Expose Yourself To Art" poster.

Thankfully there was the Bud Clark Commons by Holst Architecture, which provides both shelter and more permanent housing as well as a day center.

"Expose Yourself" poster (Mike Ryerson), Bud Clark Commons (Andrew Pogue)

Named to the prestigious national Top Ten Green Projects list from the American Institute of Architects' Committee on the Environment, the LEED Platinum-rated project provides a walk-in day center and a 90-bed temporary shelter as well as 130 studio apartments for homeless men or women seeking permanent housing with support services. Investments such as one of the region's largest solar hot water heating systems, a tight thermal envelope to reduce heating loads, and a heat recovery system help the building perform 51 percent better than code in terms of energy efficiency and 53 percent better in water efficiency.

Not only is the Bud Clark Commons impressively efficient, but it serves as a striking symbol of Portland's 10-year effort to end homelessness in the city, which turned out to be a noble failure simply because of its audacious goal but a success in terms of providing much-needed resources. Situated on NW Broadway between Old Town and the Pearl District, it's part of a kind of gateway into downtown and its form exemplifies Holst's long track record of exceptionally attractive, refined architecture. Though simple in form, a pair of long, rectangular brick volumes, Holst gives the building kinetic energy and charm with color and natural wood details.

Blackburn Building (Ankrom Moisan), Laura's Place (Joshua Jay Elliott)

There were any number of other award-winning projects that chipped away at the problem. Laura's Place by Architecture Building Culture is one example.

On a larger scale, there are more recent affordable housing projects I liked such as Ankrom Moisan's Eastside Health & Recovery Center (also known as the Blackburn Building) for Central City Concern. It is one of only five facilities in North America to integrate clinical services with transitional housing, palliative services, and respite housing under one roof. Ankrom's design breaks up this otherwise large mass into four digestible parts, creating a handsome building full of light. Though they're of different scales, these two projects even sort of look alike.

I also liked the recent Woody Guthrie Place by Carleton Hart Architecture, a 64-unit affordable housing project clad in wood that takes inspiration from the famous singer, who lived in the neighborhood in the early 1940s, and the simple boxcar in how the mass floats above its base like a railcar over the tracks.

Woody Guthrie Place (Josh Partee)

Bedrock Goes Modern

High-end apartments and big houses may have been built more than the affordable housing our society needs, but there’s no denying the kinetics of buildings like Slate by Works Progress Architecture (pictured at top), for Beam Development and Urban Development Partners and part of the broader Burnside Bridgehead development. (And here I thought the developer must have been Fred Flintstone's boss.)

This is a different building depending on whether you're viewing the north and south facades or the east and west facades. It's really a long building, and those long sides are simple flat facades of metal panels and glass: simple and elegant and nicely detailed. Yet it's the west and east façade that really pop thanks to a wide range of depths and frames to the different units.

It's a kind of pattern language one saw somewhat often a few years ago, both in the WPA portfolio and in architecture magazines, and I'm not surprised. Call it a fad if you like, but it reminds me of different picture frames hanging on a wall. It gives this Slate facade a sense of being not one building but a cluster of individual units. There are all kinds of moves architects can make to break up the mass of a building, as it's often called. Many of those moves I find unsuccessfully superficial moves: the change in material or the cut into a facade to make a fat building look thinner, or the small strip of pretty stained wood in calling your attention away from of a sea of cheap HardiePanel siding. Yet at least in Slate's case, I think the device really works. Whenever I come across it, I want to stop and stare, as if I'm going to be able to see those units actually move, the way their kinetic architecture all but implies.

Wintour Light

I also picked the Cosmopolitan Condominiums by Bora for Hoyt Street Properties as one of my favorite multifamily residential buildings of the decade. I find it attractive because of its (relatively) tall, slender proportions: a rare quality in Stumptown.

Cosmopolitan Condominiums (Jeremy Bittermann)

The northern Pearl District has been hit-and-miss when it comes to its build-out over the past decade. Unlike the southern Pearl, where an existing fabric of old warehouses and industrial buildings led to many new structures which aped that architecture both in material (bricks) and scale (relatively short but often squattier than the older buildings due to occupying full or half blocks), the northern Pearl was more of a blank canvass: an opportunity to go taller and perhaps more contemporary. It's not to say there aren't some glassy buildings to the south or brick buildings to the north, but the Cosmopolitan to most of the rest of the neighborhood felt more like a New York building, even though it would have been dwarfed in Manhattan: it gets a leg up aesthetically just by being taller and more slender.

Yet Bora's design had nuance as well, using balconies and other indentations to cut into the facade and enhance that slenderness. When a building isn't quite so rotund, it's also easier to spread natural light across every unit — a far cry from some of the Pearl District condos of old, with proportions like bowling-alley lanes.

Meet Me at the Plaza

Not every big multifamily housing project was new construction from the ground up. I was a big fan of the Portland Plaza condominiums restoration by Opsis Architecture (which, strangely, does not seem to have the project on its website) with interiors by Studio Staicoff.

Portland Plaza (Brian Libby)

Completed in 1973, the Portland Plaza was the first condominium highrise in the city. It was initially supposed to be twin towers, but the building, often nicknamed The Norelco for how the interlocking circles of its footprint resemble that brand of electric shaver, has plenty of presence as a single.

The Portland Plaza's site comprises an entire city block, but the building itself is substantially set back, giving it a surprisingly large grounds in back, all of which Opsis transformed without losing the essence. The facade is newly crisp, and the building actually makes a fitting companion to the Keller Fountain one block east.

Joys in the Hood

More than I had room to make note of in my Portland Tribune best-of-the-decade list (even if you include the honorable mentions), I wanted to applaud a variety of mixed-use buildings with residential units above — projects that fit into their neighborhood contexts well.

One such project is Makers Row by Risa Boyer Architecture. Full of natural light, the project in Northeast Portland combines 19 apartments with ground-floor commercial space in a highly energy-efficient envelope. It's also visually compelling in how the design seems to combine the cantilevered balcony and second-floor deck into one form.

Maker's Row (Risa Boyer Architecture), Division Street Housing (Hacker)

Although I try to make it out into the city and all its quadrants, there are three projects near where I live in Southeast Portland that I've now passed many times and gone into at least a few times. These projects have all grown on me a lot over time, either for the simple beauty of their forms or their natural textures. One is the 3339 Division Street by Hacker Architects. (I find this kind of non-name refreshing. It's a lot better than naming another one after some developer's daughter or through some trite marketing exercise). Though it looks nice from the street, what's really special is its public courtyard.

A few blocks southwest of that building, on Southeast Clinton Street, is the CYRK Building by Deca, which is a really nice natural-wood-clad building that almost feels like a template for contemporary neighborhood mixed-use fabric architecture. I also quite liked the Langano Apartments by WPA, a four-story, 30-unit mixed use building on Hawthorne Boulevard that won a regional AIA award shortly after its completion.

CYRK Building (Deca, Inc.), Langano Apartments (Joshua Jay Elliott)

Origami by Waechter Architecture was one recent favorite. I find the composition of this building gorgeous. Designed for developer Project^, it plays with a row house typology in a compelling, contemporary way.

Though I was thoroughly impressed visiting the building for Metropolis magazine a few months ago, and Waechter Architecture is definitely one of my two or three favorite Portland firms of the decade, I hesitated slightly about adding this building to my decade-favorites list simply because one of the units I visited had a closet and a bathroom taking up most all of the space next to the front windows. But the truth is I'd be happy to live in one of these units, especially the ones on the side of the building that come with their own built-in ADUs. Origami is also particularly worth cheering for because it provides that crucial missing-middle housing our city really needs.

Origami (Waechter Architecture)

Bionic Timber

I'd like to end with what's been the decade's most exciting architectural trend, one that is happening worldwide but is particularly relevant and a pioneering phenomenon here in Portland: mass-timber buildings. Specifically the proliferation of cross-laminated timber, an engineered product first popularized in Europe that is as strong as steel and allows wood-framed high-rises for the first time, has led to several exceptional projects that point the way forward. It's like the Steve Austin of architecture (as in The Six-Million-Dollar Man, not some fake wrestler).

Mass timber buildings are inherently sustainable because of how wood sequesters carbon. They're naturally more seismically resilient. And being in a wood-framed building, especially one where the timber ceilings have been left exposed, is a quietly magical experience.

"The Six Million Dollar Man" (MPTV Images), Carbon12 (Andrew Pogue)

One condo tower, Carbon12 at Fremont Street and Williams Avenue by Path Architecture for developer Kaiser Group, was at the time of its completion the tallest wood highrise in the United States. To me Carbon12 is also specifically about Ben Kaiser, whose firms both developed and designed the project, and who is all but an evangelist for mass timber. "To make an impact around environmentally conscious construction, you have to start with the big idea,” he told me for a 2018 Architect Magazine article.

"Everyone has realized that the term ‘wood structure' needs to be re-imagined as something far different than it once was. These products, when correctly manufactured and installed, act much more like concrete than the wood we're accustomed to."

The guy has taken some flak, in large part because Carbon12 sits on Williams Avenue beside some single-family houses. A case could indeed be made that the zoning of Williams and Vancouver Avenues allows taller buildings than would be congruent with the adjacent neighborhood. But we also very much need density, and to some degree I see these sometimes abrupt changes in scale as part of city life.

Framework (Lever Architecture)

Another CLT-framed tower planned for the Pearl District, Framework by Lever Architecture, was an even more impressive design but has not been built. Designed for Project^ and the winner of the US Department of Agriculture's Tall Wood Building Competition for innovation in mass-timber architecture, it combined ground-floor retail with both office space and 60 units of affordable housing. That it seems to have not penciled out after the architects and developers went to all that trouble to test and prove CLT's fire resistance at this height is really unfortunate. But hopefully that pioneering design work will continue to be replicated in the rest of Lever's exceptional emerging portfolio.

Let me reiterate a point I made in a previous in this favorites-of-the-decade series of posts: I know there must be projects I missed that rise to this level. If you're an architect reading this and feel you've been unfairly left out, lay it on me man. I can always do a post about the great stuff I missed. I just don't have the time I'd like to see everything when most of my rent is paid by writing about stuff out of town.

All that said, looking at these projects collectively makes me feel once again encouraged by the talented group of firms we have here.