Portland Architecture

Remembering Saul Zaik, last of the midcentury-modern greats

Saul Zaik, 2014 (Brian Libby)

 

BY BRIAN LIBBY

If I had but one thing to say to Saul Zaik right now, or one thing I could have said before his January 4 passing if I had it to do over again, it would definitely be this:

"You will not be forgotten."

I mention this promise because it's in response to a fear that this wonderfully talented and historically significant architect expressed to me on more than one occasion over the years. Saul Zaik believed he either was already or was in danger of becoming what he called "the forgotten man."

Maybe it was easy to feel insecure when you were a designer of modern houses in the 1950s trying to follow an act like Pietro Belluschi and John Yeon. After all, they were the pioneers of the Northwest Modern style in the 1930s with houses like Yeon's Watzek House in 1937 and Belluschi's Sutor House in 1938, both of which built on their time at the Rosetta Stone of Northwest Modern, the A.E. Doyle-designed Wentz Cottage from 1916 on the Oregon Coast. Yet neither Yeon or Belluschi was ultimately destined to be principally a house designer in the 1950s and '60s. By that time, Belluschi had graduated to much bigger buildings and was dean of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's architecture school. Yeon, though he was still designing houses, also had broader concerns and interests, be it protecting Oregon's natural wonders or collecting art and designing museum exhibits.

Into that void came Zaik and the 14th Street Gang.

Born in 1926, Saul Zaik was a native Portlander who upon graduation from Benson Polytechnic entered World War II as a US Navy radio operator, aboard a transport ship in the Pacific. After the war, he attended the University of Oregon on the GI Bill, earning his architecture degree in 1952. He worked for a trio of small firms his first two years and then at 28 joined the Portland office of Skidmore, Owings and Merrill.

 

Zaik in an undated photo (Legacy.com)

 

This was a seminal period for the SOM office, which had previously been the office by Pietro Belluschi before being sold to the legendary New York and Chicago firm. What's more, SOM Portland was about to produce two Oregon landmarks: Memorial Coliseum in Portland and Autzen Stadium in Eugene. But ultimately his time was short. In 1955, Zaik was set to marry his fiancée, Frances (Chris) Lowry. As he later recalled, the head of the office implied his job might be in jeopardy if he took a honeymoon. Zaik decided this was a good time to accept some of the home-design commissions he'd been offered.

By 1956 Zaik had started his own practice, first working out of his home and soon office space in an old Victorian home on NW 14th with a group fellow University of Oregon grads: William Fletcher, Donald Blair, John Reese, Frank Blachly, Alex Pierce, and interior designer George Schwarz. Known as the 14th Street Gang, They each had their own projects but often collaborated and helped each other. They shared drinks and ideas, and eventually helped popularize the Northwest Modern style that had begun with Yeon and Belluschi.

During this time, Zaik produced some of his most acclaimed residential designs, such as 1956’s Feldman House, which is my favorite of his works, with its low-pitched gable roof, exposed wood ceiling and cedar siding.

1A House (Bob Zaikoski), Feldman House (Brian Libby)

 

"[My generation of architects] were all World War II veterans, and we were out to change the idea of architecture," Zaik told me for a 2015 Dwell article on the Feldman House and its renovation (overseen by Jessica Helgerson Interior Design). "We were really just building boxes with a bunch of windows but experimenting with how you integrated indoor and outdoor spaces." 

But the Feldman is just one example. Zaik’s own house, completed in 1959, is also a delight, with a bridge connecting public and private pavilions.

 

1A House (Bob Zaikoski), Zaik Residence (Brian Libby)

 

Zaik was decades ahead of his time with the prefabricated 1-A House, a collaboration with the American Lumber Company that after its 1965 completion received an award from Better Homes and Gardens.  A number of the houses were built in the Cedar Hills area. Priced at $17,500 — the equivalent of $142,000 in 2019 dollars, adjusted for inflation—the houses provided value and style.

There's also the exceptional Fort House, which was renovated a few years ago, and the handsome Bigley House. And given the nostalgia that exists online for eye-catching, over-the-top 1960s houses, the Zidell House, which Zaik designed for Arnold Zidell with the home perched on a tall, thin ship’s mast made from a decommissioned Liberty Ship from World War II, is still surprising to encounter on Marquam Hill.

 

Fort House (Redfin), Zidell House (Portland Modern)

 

A 1973 portrait of Zaik in Symposia magazine started out with this description: “When one thinks of Oregon architecture one immediately envisions weathered wood structures resembling Willamette Valley farm buildings. The Oregon architect of the current generation most sympathetic and skilled with this vernacular is Saul Zaik of Portland. His residences, condominiums and apartments are to be found throughout Oregon, and like his predecessors Pipes, Brookman, Yeon and Belluschi, a Zaik home is easily identifiable. The shapes of his structures are sometimes complex, but always the roof lines are simple, and the resulting building is an easily understood statement of its use and its site.”

In a more recent interview, for the documentary Coast Modern seven years ago, Zaik said: "Four people can live very nicely in a 2,000-square-foot house. You don't need 20,000 feet. But when I talk to my son and to other architects...people want to live in that McMansion. But to live in a box with little windows punched out looking at your neighbor and a huge TV screen, that's their beauty is in that damn TV screen. I think people have to learn a little bit more about how they want to live in a house. What we should be thinking about is our environment and the fact that it does all relate. Wouldn't it be better if we had more of a connection?"

Saul Zaik didn't just design houses. He and his collaborators also worked on several renovations of historic Oregon landmarks, including  Vista House at Crown Point, additions to Timberline Lodge and Crater Lake Lodge. The Timberline addition was so seamless that today people forget it's not part of the original. His residential work also included renovations of houses designed by masterful local architects like Wade Pipes and Herman Brookman. 

Yet I haven't even arrived yet at what may be the best thing about Saul Zaik: the fact that he was so committed as an architect, so loving of his craft, that he continued coming to work right up until the end. Zaik certainly wasn't the first architect to work into his 90s. Thanks to famous architects like Philip Johnson and Frank Gehry, or Frank Lloyd Wright before them, the notion of an aging but still-practicing architect is practically a cliché. Yet it's still uncommon, for an architect or a member of any other profession. As someone who has always yearned to be liberated from the pressures of making a living, I'm blown away by people coming to work who don't have to. Yet you can see in this video by Bob Zaikoski, featuring an interview with Zaik about his drawing, that this wasn't a job. It was fun that he got paid for.

 

"Architect Saul Zaik" (Bob Zaikoski)

 

Over the years, I had the good fortune to get to know Saul Zaik in a series of conversations. He used to call me from time to time, eager to talk about architecture. The word that comes to mind is irrepressible. He was getting older, and his gait was pretty slow, but his mind was always sharp. I think he felt like he was still making the case for himself, even though he had been named an AIA Fellow way back in 1973, the year after I was born. And it's true: some of his best houses have been altered over time, and there's not yet any book that re-photographs all his work and puts the totality of his career in context.

Yet the architecture itself still compels. The thing is that Saul Zaik's houses, like those of other Northwest Modern contemporaries who followed Yeon and Belluschi such John Storrs, William Fletcher and Van Evera Bailey, are really what completed the promise of that earlier generation. I'm a tennis fan, and it reminds me of what's called consolidating the break. Yeon and Belluschi started something, but it only really became a genre when the next generation continued and expanded the vision. Zaik's houses weren't happening in a vacuum. Earlier this year, I wrote about a midcentury house in Spokane that was quite similar looking to Zaik's Feldman House. These designs became something larger than any one architect: a regional movement in a time when Modernism was rendering local vernaculars largely obsolete. They took international Modernism and made a version of it that was our own.

We'll never forget that, Saul, and—rest assured, my friend—we'll never forget you.

 

 

Advertisements

 

 

 

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.

 

 

Advertisements

 

 

Favorite architecture of the 2010s (part two): going public

Providence Park expansion (Jeremy Bittermann)

 

BY BRIAN LIBBY

Continuing this multi-post look at some of my favorite architecture of the 2010s, let's step away from all those offices and turn our attention to public buildings of one kind or another: gathering places, university buildings, nonprofit community centers.

As I mentioned in last week's initial post chronicling favorite architecture of the 2010s, this is not meant to be a comprehensive list. I know there are some exceptional buildings and designs I didn't visit. This is merely a group of seven projects I did see that have really struck a lasting chord.

Park Life

In my magazine-writing work, I've wound up over the years writing more about stadiums, arenas and concert halls than perhaps any other type of project. I grew up going to Oregon Ducks football games at Autzen Stadium and Trail Blazers games at Memorial Coliseum (now officially Veterans Memorial Coliseum), not to mention the occasional play or musical at Keller (then Civic) Auditorium. There's something about thousands or even hundreds of people coming together, be it for sports or performing arts, all immersed in a collective experience that can inspire mass joy and sorrow, all step for step with what's happening on the stage, court or field.

Over the past decade, the collective energy coming from sold-out Providence Park during a Portland Timbers match is something to behold. Though the park's capacity is small, it has long generated one of the most intense home-field environments in global team sports. The crowd gives it that energy and makes the noise, but the design of Providence Park has never hurt: specifically the large overhanging roof from A.E. Doyle's original design, which ricochets much of the noise that would otherwise drift away. Plus the old former baseball park has always had atmosphere. The seats hug the field, and there isn't a bad one in the house.

All of which must have made the Providence Park expansion that was unveiled in 2018 a challenge for Allied Works. It wasn't that they were replacing a portion of the old stadium. This side, where the old baseball outfield used to be, had already been rebuilt a decade or so ago. When the latter expansion was announced, it seemed a bit absurd. But the popularity of the Timbers and the smallness of the stadium and the large season-ticket-holder waiting list created enough justification. And the Allied design was compelling enough that, once completed, the new Providence Park addition made it easy to forget the previous renovation.

 

Providence Park expansion (Brian Libby)

 

As I wrote in my Portland Tribune column summarizing my best-of-the-decade pics, "It's not easy to expand an intimate stadium without losing its essence, but the design by Allied Works only makes Timbers and Thorns soccer games louder and more exuberant. Led by Brad Cloepfil, the city's most acclaimed architect of this generation, Allied designed a host of noteworthy Portland projects this decade after spending much of the previous 10 years focused on museums and cultural buildings in other cities. That they so clearly scored with the firm's first stadium project will hopefully lead to more." Indeed, if Autzen Stadium ever gets expanded again (following an addition in 2002), I wouldn't mind Allied getting the commission.

The architects took inspiration from Estadio Alberto J. Armando in Buenos Aires, Argentina, better known as La Bombonera (, which "really stood out being surrounded by city on all four sides," Allied Works principal Chelsea Grassinger explained in a 2017 interview, "and one of side is narrow like along 18th [Avenue in Portland]. And we were inspired by the nature of it: the wall of fans and the intensity that brings. That was really the one that stuck out as inspiration for what we could do here." The Allied team also took inspiration from theaters like the Globe in London and the Teatro Oficina in Sao Paulo, for "the stacked wall of audience close to the stage and the action, and really being within the action but also intensifying the stage and the activity," Grassinger added.

Indeed, the stacked upper decks of the Providence Park expansion look unique, even though they're of an existing type. So many stadiums in America get designed by a small handful of Midwest architecture firms like Populous of Kansas City and HKS in Dallas. Allied made its name internationally with creative renovations like the Wieden + Kennedy Building and a string of acclaimed art museum projects from New York to Seattle to Denver. Design is problem-solving first, so they figured out the basic task of stacking more seats into a confined former outfield bleacher (including a cool arcade created by hovering over the sidewalk), but they also did it with style — or, more specifically, a striking visual language that both continues and expands the Allied Works voice.

Refresh as First Step

If we're talking about stadiums and arenas, how could I leave out my beloved Memorial Coliseum? Actually, I did leave it out of my Portland Tribune list of the decade's best projects. That was in part because I didn't want to seem biased. I was involved in a grassroots effort to save the building from demolition ten years ago.

What was called a "refresh" of Veterans Memorial Coliseum (as it's officially been known since a 2011 renaming) was a $5 million investment in mostly things we don't see, like a new roof. But along the way, the design by Merryman Barnes Architects also smartly removed the unnecessary glass partition at the entrance, it refinished the bottom of the glulams between the glass in a natural stain, and much more.

Memorial Coliseum refresh (Brian Libby)

The campaign to save and restore Memorial Coliseum almost perfectly paralleled the decade itself, only it got a head start. In 2009, Mayor Sam Adams announced the Coliseum would be torn down to make way for a new minor league baseball park, following the Portland Beavers' displacement from Providence Park by the Portland Timbers and owner Merritt Paulson, as part of a jump to Major League Soccer that necessitated a soccer-only stadium.

After that plan was abandoned and a stakeholder advisory committee convened by the mayor arrived back at the multi-purpose-arena plan that has always been the Coliseum's reason to be, Adams then brought to council a $32 million restoration plan that failed to come to a vote for various back-room reasons. The arena continued to break even, but then in 2016, Commissioner Steve Novick introduced a measure in City Council to demolish the building. That measure was defeated, and helped prompt a successful application to the National Trust for Historic Preservation for what's called National Treasure status, which was awarded in 2017.

This refresh is just the first step towards a larger renovation that will hopefully be in the many tens of millions. A third-party economic study commissioned by Mayor Charlie Hales found that a Coliseum restoration would pay for itself in the increased bookings as well as $2 billion in economic impact over 20 years. But thanks to the refresh, the Coliseum is already turning a profit.

Smaller Stage, Big Impact

If Providence Park is a distinctively designed gathering place, so too is the Pendarvis Farm in Happy Valley during the annual Pickathon festival.

In 2019 for the sixth year in a row, Portland State University School of Architecture students designed and built its treeline stage. This one utilized 160 wooden apple-harvesting bins to create an immersive environment suggesting an orchard of towering trees—reaching 40 feet high at the tallest point. Taking inspiration from the structure of the apple blossom, the PSU architecture students and faculty constructed a series of towers using the apple bins, lent by a Pacific Northwest fruit producer.

In 2018, the students created what they called a "grove of columns." Built using more than 2,000 pieces of lumber, the stage structure featured a grid of 113 monumental 32-foot columns that formed a wooden grove at the edge of the forest and wrapped the stage a labyrinthine series of intimate spaces for festival goers to explore, and with hundreds of cross braces towering above like tree limbs.

 

Pickathon 2016 and 2019 (Pickathon)

 

The stages, which began in 2014, have also followed a diversion-design-build concept. The stage’s building materials are re-used. In 2018, it was to construct structures at transitional houseless villages in Portland.

In an age where inequality is greater than at any point in generations, and those in the upper one-percent of incomes seem to spend ever more lavishly, these Pickathon stages represent a new generation of designers and architects who not only want to get their hands dirty building things but want to serve the public. PSU has made design in service of the public a cornerstone of its School of Architecture, and it's impressive.

Stuttgart on the Willamette

There's actually a stadium connection allowing my transition into another type of public building: the Karl Miller Center on Broadway and Harrison Street at Portland State University. The building was designed by Behnisch Architekten, which originated in Stuttgart but now has offices in Munich and Boston.

Though founder Stefan Behnisch has become an internationally renowned architect in his own right, thanks to landmark sustainable projects like 1997's Norddeutsch Landesbank (which I got to interview him about for Architect magazine in 2013), he is also the son of German architect Günter Behnisch, who designed  the stadium for the 1972 Summer Olympics in Munich (as well as the West German parliament in Bonn).

The project, designed by Behnisch in collaboration with SRG Partnership, began with a remodel of the business school’s existing home, a 100,000 square foot, six-story building dating to the 1970s that was bulky and unimaginative. “Grim doesn’t really even begin to describe it,” Behnisch partner Robert Matthew Noblett recalled to me in a 2018 Metropolis magazine article.

 

Karl Miller Center (Brian Libby)

 

But the Karl Miller center is really all about the additions. A 45,000-square-foot expansion to the north, clad in Alaskan yellow cedar, arranges perpendicularly intersecting boxes so that they cantilever to provide shade to outdoor plazas at the northwest and northeast corners of the lot. And the real showstopper—the story of the building—is the five-story atrium bridging the gap between old and new. It fills the interiors of both adjacent buildings—especially the spaces furthest from exterior windows—with natural light.

“It’s structured in a little bit of a European tradition,” said Stefan Behnisch in the Metropolis story. “Normally in Europe for good daylight we would say, ‘Don’t make any floor plan deeper than 14 meters.’ It is something that drives us whenever we build here in the United States.” 

Speaking of PSU

Portland State University actually got two new gathering places this decade (not to mention three spots on this favorites list), and like the Karl Miller Center, Viking Pavilion, an honorable mention in my decade-best list, is really a renovation plus expansion—in this case of the Stott Center— yet feels like an entirely new place. Designed by Woofter Architecture in collaboration with Sink Combs Dethlefs (now part of Perkins + Will), the building's name appears to refer not just to the school's sports mascot but to the wood-cladding on the arena as one moves inward from the lobby — it looks like some ancient ship's hull.

 

Viking Pavilion (Brian Libby)

 

The Stott Center was basically an ancient rec center (it actually dates to 1966) doing double duty as the home of a Division I college basketball team, and to say it was inwardly focused is being kind. Now Viking Pavilion actually faces the South Park Blocks, which was a no-brainer, and it does so with lots of glass.

Viking Pavilion is only 3,000 seats, which is still small for college basketball, but it's much more than an arena. There is a range of student gathering and study areas, classrooms, and a cafe. The arena itself is also flexible. When I visited, there was not a basketball game but a school science fair happening there.

Speaking of Vikings

On a smaller scale from these projects, Nordia House by DiLoreto Architecture, on SW Oleson Road near the Tigard border and the Washington Square mall, was perhaps the decade's best community building.

Home to the nonprofit Nordic Northwest, which celebrates the cultures of Denmark, Iceland, Finland, Norway, and Sweden, the roughly 10,000 square foot building is, as I wrote in a 2016 Portland Tribune column, "a humble but wondrous symphony of wood and natural light." Centered around a glass-walled main hall are a gallery, an outpost of the popular Nordic-themed Portland restaurant Broder, and space for everything from concerts and movie screenings to classes and dances to church services (a Lutheran congregation holds Sunday services there).

 

Nordia House (Jeff Amram)

 

When I visited Nordia House on a  weekday morning, it place was teeming with life: a throng of locals hanging out in the café and a steady stream of visitors to its gallery. Part of the appeal is the setting in which it exists. Set back from busy Oleson Road, Nordia House looks out onto a protected wetland, its tall trees casting a dappled light through the glass. If you're there in a time of precipitation, the rainwater captured on Nordia House’s roof becomes a delightful waterfall at the entrance.    

Community of Books

In best-of-the-decade lists I think it's easy to unwittingly favor stuff that's more recent, from late in that ten-year span. Maybe that's why I almost forgot the Vancouver Community Library by the Miller Hull Partnership of Seattle.

This was one of two Vancouver projects I had on my best of the decade list, along with the Vancouver Waterfront development, which I'll cover in an upcoming post.

The signature of this building is not on its relatively straightforward exterior but rather inside: its four-story, nearly 200-foot long atrium, which cantilevered balconies from upper floors look out upon, and beneath a beautiful slatted wood ceiling. I guess I am a sucker for any kind of wide-open atrium space.

 

Vancouver Community Library (Miller Hull)

 

Each floor has a specific collection and services with its own distinct character—I particularly remember the colorful children's section— to allow patrons to find the environment that suits them. The bottom of the atrium can feel like a public street, while the wood-wrapped reading room on level five and feel cozy. There's also an expansive rooftop deck with views to the Columbia River and Mt. Hood.

Libraries are an interesting project type. On one hand, the digitalization of media and literature means that people do not necessarily need or use libraries in the same way. Yet most libraries I visit are usually teeming with people. They're part community center and part learning center, part job-training center and part oasis. And given the unprecedented economic inequality plaguing our society today, which has only been hastened by the election of 2016, libraries are more important than ever as resources for those in need. Yet earlier this week, there was also a book-banning bill proposed in Missouri that would actually imprison librarians for sharing certain unapproved books. In this Orwellian nightmare that is Donald J. Trump's America, libraries are intellectual life preservers.

The Vancouver Community Library was LEED Gold rated, continuing a broad portfolio of work from this firm, whose work in Oregon also includes the Tillamook Forest Center and the Water Pollution Control Laboratory.

Ulysses' Opus

One of the architectural pleasures of this decade has been seeing Portland Public Schools embark on a multiyear effort to renovate and rebuild some of our local high schools. So far I've visited three renovated schools: Roosevelt, Franklin and Grant. They all had design qualities I liked, and in varying degrees they have been interesting fusions of old and new architecture.

I think of this three, though, my favorite is the most recent one I visited: Ulysses S. Grant High School, recently renovated by Mahlum Architects.

 

Grant High School (Benjamin Benschneider Photography)

The culmination of a five-year process that included a two-year student and community engagement effort as well as two years each of design and construction, the renovated Grant High is a vibrant, light-filled learning environment. Though its old hallways and classrooms retain the essence of the old architecture, including a choir room memorable for its use in the movie Mr. Holland’s Opus. The project also includes a handsome brick-clad new wing that meshes well with the original building.

Yet what’s perhaps most compelling is how Mahlum’s redesign clarified the original classical revival design by Knighton & Howell, which had become cluttered with ill-advised alterations. The architects also made creative use of old materials. Hallways are festooned with wood salvaged from the old gymnasium floor. Grant has become a better version of what it always was. The ornamental entry to gorgeous separate arts building, for instance, can be seen for the first time from across the courtyard because the old gym that used to stand there, a shabby 1950s addition, has been demolished and is no longer blocking it. In back, the trailers have given way to a courtyard that allows students to enjoy the school’s bucolic park-side setting.

There's still more to come in this series on favorite architecture of the 2010s. I haven't talked about any housing yet, be it condos or single-family houses, ADUs or tiny houses or homeless housing. And there's a few offices I forgot to mention in my last post. Oh, and then there's infrastructure and landscape design. But public buildings are in some ways my favorite.

 

 

Advertisements

Design calendar: January 16-31

The former Multnomah Hotel (Embassy Suites by Hilton)

 

BY BRIAN LIBBY

Self-Image and Branding
In a co-offering of the Construction Specifications Institute's Portland chapter and the Emerging Professionals Happy Hour series, architect Richard Heiserman of Ankrom Moisan will host a panel discussion of local Portland professionals (their names and credentials thus far undisclosed) intended tohelp improve one's overall well-being, self-image, networking and social media skills, fitness, mind and public speaking skills. One can also learn what project managers are seeking in individuals pursuing specifications-writing careers, and meet the PDX Revit User group along with other invited organizations. Ankrom Moisan Architects, 38 NW Davis Street. 5PM Thursday, January 16. Free.

Luxury Hotels in Downtown Portland
Portland has a robust inventory of historic hotels, as well as some striking contemporary newcomers. This Positively Portland walking tour with guide Eric Wheeler will start at the Heathman Hotel continue through downtown to view several more distinctive hotel lobbies before ending the tour at the historic Multnomah Hotel (now part of the Embassy Suites chain). This is a perfect tour for cloudy, potentially wet weather in downtown, as it will take place mostly indoors outside from brief walks from hotel to hotel. Tour begins in lobby of Heathman Hotel, 1001 SW Broadway. 1PM Friday, January 17. $15.

The Oregon Rail Heritage Center: Rescuing Oregon’s Railroad History
Portland's railroad heritage includes three steam locomotives donated to the city in the 1950s. These engines sat adjacent to Oaks Park until 1974, when the first of the three, Southern Pacific 4449, was restored to pull the American Freedom Train in celebration of the US Bicentennial. A generation later, the Oregon Rail Heritage Foundation was formed to raise money for a new showcase for these treasures of the city's railroading past. The Oregon Rail Heritage Center opened in 2012 as the city's first new locomotive house in over half a century and the region's only facility built for the care and restoration of steam locomotives. In this Architectural Heritage Center discussion, Oregon Rail Heritage Foundation president Roy Hemmingway will be joined by architects David Wark and Dan Petrescu of Hennebery Eddy Architects. Architectural Heritage Center, 701 SE Grand Avenue. 10AM Saturday, January 18. $20 ($12 for AHC members).

CSI Learning and Libations: Women in Construction Event at TopGolf
The Portland chapter of the Construction Specifications Institute hosts this combination panel discussion, networking event and golf outing. Of Engineering News-Record’s Top 100 contracting firms and the annual Fortune 500 list of companies, 44 percent currently have women in executive roles such as vice president and director, but only 16 percent have women in C-level roles like chief financial officer and chief marketing officer. The evening will include a discussion of these and other statistics on women in construction and seek to provide resources to hopefully help increase the number of women in positions of leadership in the construction industry. Panelists will include Jennifer Willard of Intel, Amy Winterowd of JE Dunn Construction, Dana Johnson of Quantum Construction, Kim Wall of Interface Engineering, and Emerick Architects' Ali LaManna, the CSI Portland Chapter president. Golf will follow. TopGolf, 5505 NE Huffman St, Hillsboro. 6PM Wednesday, January 22. $100.

Architectural Design Opportunities in Historic Buildings
FFA Architecture + Interiors associate partner Edward Running and associate project architect Tim Mitchell will lead this interactive panel discussion about the critical importance of synergy among disciplines when saving historic structures. University of Oregon, White Stag Block, 70 NW Couch STreet, Room 451. 11:40AM Friday, January 24. Free.

Bank Lobbies in Downtown Portland - Old and New
Since the early pioneer days, bank buildings have had major role in defining the streetscape in downtown Portland. From modest to monumental; financial institutions continue to make an aesthetic statement and at the same time provide a visual sense of security for their customers. We'll take a look at several elegant bank interiors that span over 100 years of Portland architectural history.

Thresholds and the Liminal: A Tale of Three Portland Landmarks
The word threshold usually denotes a physical crossing, but sometimes it can also refer to moving from one era to another. The word liminal refers to a place of betweenness that gives us a momentary break from the ordinary. For this Architectural Heritage Center lecture from retired architecture professor Bob Hermanson on three historic architectural styles in Portland—Richardsonian Romanesque, Vienna Secessionist and Modernism. Landmark buildings in these style tell stories about their time and place, but also where they came from, and where it led us. Collectively they also represent that pause which allows us to contemplate the meaning of architecture through the liminal. Architectural Heritage Center, 701 SE Grand Avenue. 10AM Saturday, January 25. $20 ($12 for AHC members).

Cultivating a Client Appreciation Culture
This discussion hosted by the Oregon chapter of the Society for Marketing Professional Services is devoted to the idea of transforming one's business development process from one that focuses on talking about experience and prescriptions for a client and project to one that is built on active listening. An authentic investment of time and attention shows clients that it’s not all about the consultant and will lead to stronger, more respectful relationships. Speaker Lisa Keohokalole Schauer of the consulting firm PointNorth will explore methods that will help one's firm unlock what clients want and need to win more work and cultivate a client appreciation culture. David Evans and Associates, 2100 SW River Parkway. 7:30AM Tuesday, January 28. $75 ($65 for SMPS members).

 

Advertisements

 

 

 

Favorite architecture of the 2010s (part one): a treehouse, passageway and dumbbell

Portland Japanese Garden Cultural Crossing (Brian Libby)

 

BY BRIAN LIBBY

A few days ago in a Portland Tribune column, I picked 25 of my favorite works of architecture and urban design for the 2010s (with 10 honorable mentions). I'd like to talk a little about the choices, although I'm going to break this up into a couple of posts.

Before I begin, though, I want to say that these are just 25 projects I happen to have really liked. The list is obviously in no way a definitive verdict, and I'm sure there are some great projects that may have deserved to be on this list but I somehow missed. Notice, if you will, that the Tribune chose a headline naming this Portland's best architecture of the 2010s. Here I'm just saying these are my favorites.

Why the distinction? It's not some act of false modesty. It's because I only wish I could cover Portland architecture full-time and see a lot more local projects than I do. But in an age where no newspaper or magazine in Portland has architecture writers on staff, I have to spend a lot of my work time covering projects in other cities. This year some of my biggest writing assignments had to do with, to name a few: the Chase Center arena in San Francisco, the Obama Presidential Center in Chicago, the Canadian House of Commons in Ottawa, cannabis dispensaries in Florida and California, a hotel renovation in Virginia, houses in Seattle and Spokane and British Columbia, a concert hall in Guangzhou, memorials in Alabama and Boston, an apartment in Venice (Italy), and a warehouse conversion in Austin, among others. I love my job as it is, and I like writing about projects in other cities. But it doesn't leave as much time as I would like to visit every cool project in the Portland area.

I did, though, make it to these projects, all of which struck a major chord, and which for my own amusement I've separated out with subheadings named after old pop songs.

 

Turning Japanese

If the 25 in the Tribune column weren't necessarily completely in numerical order, an exception was my top pick, which I arrived at relatively easily; or at least it came to mind quickly and decisively: the Portland Japanese Garden Cultural Crossing by Kengo Kuma and Associates with Hacker Architects.

In particular, my thoughts first went to a café with no coffee: the Umami Café, a glass box nestled into the hillside that offers a view across the forested treetops. I may not be able to get my usual double espresso there, but the delicacy of the glass and wood composition and the treehouse-like experience it provides was a delight that transcends beverage options.

 

Umami Café, Portland Japanese Garden Cultural Crossing (Brian Libby)

 

And the Umami Café is just one of three buildings comprising the Cultural Crossing. There are two additional buildings, with spaces for gallery exhibits and lectures, classes, and a gift shop. Recalling classic Japanese pagoda architecture yet rendered with contemporary materials, it's a union of past and future. The moss-covered green roof recalls thatched roofs of Japanese farmhouses but its overhangs are made of crisp aluminum. The floor-to-ceiling glass is paired with slats of wood that filter the light in beautiful shadows. The buildings are laid out in zigzagging patterns that create more corners and bring more light inside. And the sequence of walking up that wooded hillside and up the new stairway is a kind of processional, making the Portland Japanese Garden feel even more like an enlightened oasis.

"I am convinced that the Japanese gardens can play a big role in busy urban environments. They can introduce a new way of thinking to people, a particular philosophy of contemplation and deep connection to nature and maybe even themselves, which is completely different from western-style gardens," Kuma explained in a 2015 interview. The new buildings, he added, "can function as a social space and a passage to the rest of the garden. My purpose has always been to give an identity to the building with its surroundings. Integration of the structure and its environment is what I aim for in design, and this design for Portland Japanese Garden is no exception."

 

Walk This Way

Although I picked the Cultural Crossing as my favorite, Union Way by Lever Architecture for developer Project^, also quickly came to mind.

It's not so much that this is an eye-catching building from the outside. It's not that this is the most ambitious projects on the list in terms of square footage or budget or even much showiness. Most of all, it's also a beautifully simple idea. Renovating an early-20th century auto repair shop in the West End that had relatively little street frontage, the design cut a central spine down the middle and lined it with micro-sized retail outlets. It acts as a passageway between two cultural landmarks: the Ace Hotel and Powell's City of Books. But being inside this passageway is really being at a place of its own. It's lined with native Oregon poplar, left naturally stained, with a succession of skylights above.

 

Union Way (Jeremy Bittermann)

 

As a result, being at Union Way almost feels like one of those artworks from the Light and Space movement by the likes of James Turrell. The purpose is to create a kind of street: to make this interior hallway feel almost like it's outdoors. Yet being there, I like to stop and stare upward for a moment, enveloped by natural materials and light.

Union Way was just one of several projects by Lever Architecture that I could have named to this list. Just a couple blocks away from Union Way is ArtHouse, an excellent dorm for Pacific Northwest College of Art. Up on Marquam Hill is the excellent Treehouse housing project for OHSU. There's Albina Yard, one of the first cross-laminated-timber-framed project in the city. There's Redfox Commons, which I have as an honorable mention on the list, and the unbuilt Framework building, which would have been Portland's most impressive and innovative CLT building. One other project, the Fivesquare house, I had on my list right up until the end but bumped off the list to add more firm diversity. But it's terrific too. Lever is definitely in the conversation for top firm in town.

 

True Colors

In rainy Portland, we don't just need big windows and skylights, but also, arguably, a dose of vibrant color now and then. That's why I smile every time I pass the small Fair-Haired Dumbbell office building by FFA Architecture + Interiors for Guerilla Development at MLK Boulevard and Burnside Street, and why I quickly thought of the design for this list.

Recalling the Portland Building by Michael Graves, it's an example of using the façade as an artistic canvas, in this case not riffing on architecture's past but simply becoming a mural. Absurd? Maybe. Timeless? Perhaps not. Irresistible? Definitely.

 

Fair-Haired Dumbbell (KuDa Photography)

 

The Fair-Haired Dumbbell is actually an office building, although I think more than most, people never really stop to consider its purpose because the colorful facade is so much its story. It has small windows like the Portland Building, but because the overall footprint is small, the natural light levels inside are much better.

This has been a divisive project: like the other buildings at Burnside Bridgehead that have been completed, people either seem to love or hate them. When I've professed my affection for the Dumbbell in social media, people have often argued against the building by saying the paint will fade over time and that it's not very robustly built. I don't disagree, but a repaint isn't such an impossible thing, and I don't mind some thin walls if the place has some kind of inspiring presence, which it does. The Dumbbell is also a counter-balance to the other Burnside Bridgehead buildings, all taller and tending to be clad in dark metal, with its vibrant colors and in its modest scale.

The Fair-Haired Dumbbell also comes in the context of Guerrilla Development's portfolio, into which it fits more congruently than FFA's portfolio, quality firm as FFA is. Whether it's renovating older buildings, such as The Zipper or other buildings on Sandy Boulevard from utilitarian single-story warehouses and car dealerships, or new construction like The Rocket on Burnside or the Dumbbell just down the street, Guerrilla stands out for its quirky creativity and how these seem like passion projects more than pure business ventures.

 

9 To 5

From here I'm going to move from individual buildings to a category. My Tribune list was more of an art than a science, I guess you could say. I wanted to think about trends and project types and what they said about the economy and society along with beautiful buildings. So I'm going here with some commercial projects.

We tend to think of housing as the story of the decade: the overwhelming need for affordable places to live, the proliferation of accessory dwelling units and tiny houses, the march of mediocre apartment buildings. Yet as the economy boomed after recovering from the Great Recession and the upper income brackets disproportionately benefited (especially after t2016), office projects came in large numbers, and often with large ambitions.

Today with more and more people telecommuting, and especially with digital and mobile technology allowing one to work anywhere, offices buildings are competing for tenants with greater emphasis on shared spaces inside and outside — amenity spaces, as I've often heard them called: someplace you can take your laptop to work, or meet a friend for coffee. We have seen the open-office configuration come to more and more companies as well, although seemingly often to the chagrin of employees, who like the greater variety of workspaces but not the loss of their cubicles and privacy.

 

Expensify (Garrett Rowland)

 

One of my favorite office projects transformed an old bank. The Expensify headquarters by ZGF Architects at SW Fifth and Stark, for the app developer of the same name, reminded us that the First National Bank downtown had always had an incredible atrium, but the design also transformed the space with contemporary insertions into the Beaux-Arts shell.  I particularly like the two floating metal-and-glass boxes at the back of the atrium, which provide extra meeting space while also juxtaposing stylistically against the ornamented original setting.

In adding Expensify to the list, I wrestled with that age-old question when it comes to renovation projects: how much credit should go to the original building, and how much to the renovation architects? Often it's a matter of how the original was transformed. That's why projects like the Wieden + Kennedy Building by Allied Works, for example, have always ranked high. In the case of Expensify, the two contemporary boxes floating in the back of the atrium definitely make it clear that this is not simply a fixed-up old building. There is also some exceptional interior design work in some of the attendant spaces surrounding the atrium. Yet it is still that original light-filled atrium that makes the place special, with its glass roof creating the sensation of a Victorian railway station. All that wide-open volume and light: it's the kind of architectural space I love the most. Yet I still decided to give ZGF enough credit to put this project on the list, because sometimes when you have a wonderful architectural experience, it's best not to over-think it too much. Walking into Expensify was one of my favorite building tour experiences of the last decade. It was the fourth project I thought of after the Cultural Crossing, Union Way, and the Fair-Haired Dumbbell.

The headquarters for ad agency Swift by Beebe Skidmore at NW 17th and Overton, for (once again) developer Project^, had less to work with in renovating a group of utilitarian adjoining concrete-block warehouses in Slabtown. In that way, it's more akin to the aforementioned W+K space. That's probably not a coincidence, since firm co-founders Heidi Beebe and Doug Skidmore worked for many years at Allied. In both cases, you feel the bones and textures of the modest but large original, but no one would mistake the new building for the old one.

 

Swift Agency (Jeremy Bittermann)

 

The firm has a way with breathing new life into old structures, be it a warehouse or a house, with big, bold geometry and plenty of glass. But their work also has a kind of organic quality, as if they've responded to conditions as much as they've imposed their architectural will. There are often little architectural quirks with a Beebe Skidmore project born from responding to an existing condition. They don't just seek the blankest canvas they can create in that old shell. Their Lincoln Street Residence also made my top 25, although I'm going to hold off on talking about that one until the next post; suffice to say it boldly reinvents a traditional Craftsman-style house. Without question, this was one of my favorite firms to emerge in the 2010s.

One North by Holst Architecture, built at North Williams and Fremont for developers Eric Lemelson, Nels Gabbert and various partners, is a curvy confection outside and offers light-filled atrium of its inside. In this decade there seemed to be a lot of creativity with window apertures: either giving them wide or angular surrounding frames or, in this case, having the window seem to curve outward from the facade. Was it a move born of function? Doesn't seem to be. But does everything really have to be resolutely functional? You can trace the case for delight as a central responsibility of architecture all the way back to Vitruvius. On one website, I read a description of one north as "Gaudí-esque."

 

One North (Andrew Pogue)

 

Holst went through a big transition in the 2010s. Firm co-founders John Holmes and Jeff Stuhr (the first two letters of each's last name gives Holst its name), though still relatively young for architects—a profession where practitioners often seem to work past traditional retirement age—sold the firm and retired. I say more power to them. I wouldn't mind retiring right now. It also gave the group of employees who bought the firm from their former bosses—Kim Wilson, Kevin Valk, Dave Otte and Renée Strand—a chance to leave their own mark.

The buildings that have come since naturally have a slightly different voice than Holst buildings with the founders. But it's dynamic, responsive and attractive stuff. I could easily have added a new-era Holst building to the list, such as the excellent 72Foster or the Rockwood Boys & Girls Club. But I believe some of the new leaders and continuing staff members had a hand in One North too.

 

Field Office (Hacker Architects)

 

As an honorable mention on the Tribune list, I also had Field Office by Hacker, one of numerous handsome office projects the firm completed over the decade. I could have easily included the firm's design for First Tech Credit Union headquarters in Hillsboro, at its time of completion the largest CLT-framed office building in the United States, which also had a nice atrium of its own. But Field Office, like its name indicated, was an interesting exercise of trying to integrated indoor and outdoor space in a variety of places within what was also a fairly long, thin constrained site along the railroad tracks. Oh, and guess who the developer was? Project^.

I could also have easily chosen any number of other office projects, especially interior renovations of old warehouses. As more and more creative businesses moved to the Central Eastside Industrial District in the 2010s, many made thoughtful use of the raw spaces available. Others breathed new life into some of the wonderful 19th century buildings of Old Town and the Skidmore Historic District, which in its way is more valuable to the city than the construction of some entirely new office tower — and inherently more sustainable.

I've only covered a portion of the 25 buildings on the list and the 10 honorable mentions. You can read the Tribune column to get the whole roster, but in the next post I'll be looking at some of the public buildings, multi-family and single-family housing, and some urban/landscape design projects that were favorites as well. And in a post to follow, I also hope to look at some great designs by local architecture firms of the past decade that I didn't include on the list but are just as compelling: their work in other cities.

 

 

Advertisements

 

 

Design calendar: January 1-15

Inside Portland City Hall (Brian Libby)

 

BY BRIAN LIBBY

Downtown Civic Spaces from the Inside
This Positively Portland walking tour explores several of Portland's most important public buildings dating from the middle of the 19th century to the early 21st century. Attendees will have a chance to view these city icons from the outside and inside while enjoying some great views of downtown. Included on the tour list: Pioneer Courthouse, Portland City Hall, the Edith Green Wendeel Wyatt Federal Building, and the Mark O. Hatfield United States Courthouse. Tour begins at Pioneer Courthouse, 700 SW Sixth Avenue. 1PM Friday, January 3. $15.

OSSC Update Seminar
The 2019 Oregon Structural Specialty Code went into effect on October 1, 2019 with a three-month phase-in process. This course, taught by Code Unlimited principal Samir Mokashi, will focus on changes between the most recent Oregon codes and the 2019 OSSC adoptions, including 2018 IBC codes. Regulations on the issues common to most building types and those that may be commonly misunderstood or misapplied will be covered. This course will explain what changed, why it changed, and how to apply these updates correctly in your projects. AIA Center for Architecture, 403 NW 11th Avenue. 12PM Friday, January 10. ($50 for AIA members, $35 for Associate AIA members or those not seeking AIA Continuing Education credits, $5 for students).

Museums of Old Town/Chinatown Tour
Old Town/Chinatown is know for many things, but not often as a location for small-scale neighborhood museums. This Positively Portland walking tour will make a brief visit to several of these niche museums that tell the story of several immigrant communities in Portland. Attendees will hear from staff about the history and mission of each museum but won't actually tour the museums. This tour will introduce one to each of these historic treasures and encourage one to return for more exploration later. Moving from site to site, the tour will view the architectural fabric of the neighborhood and discuss the historic context of each museum. Tour begins at Lefty's Cafe, 724 NW Davis Street. 1PM Friday, January 10. $15.

Ben Holladay's Portland
When Ben Holladay of Overland Mail and Pony Express fame arrived in Portland in 1868, the city’s dreams of a railroad were stalled. Within three years, however, Holladay was building rail lines toward California on both sides of the river. The railroad reshaped Portland. Downtown began to move inland and a new city rose on the east bank. Holladay built the city’s first streetcar line and laid out the large addition that bears his name. He hired thousands of Chinese railroad workers who gave Portland the largest Chinatown north of San Francisco. His planned bridge across the Willamette, thwarted by the financial crises of 1873, was a decade and a half ahead of its time. A controversial figure with extravagant dreams and legendary appetites, Holladay upended Portland norms and dominated its politics. This Architectural Heritage Center lecture from writer Dan Haneckow focuses on the years 1868-1874, the height of Halladay's influence as Oregon’s so-called railroad king, a dramatic time in which Portland shed much of its pioneer character on its way to becoming a metropolis of the Pacific Northwest. Architectural Heritage Center, 701 SE Grand Avenue. 10AM Saturday, January 11. $20 ($12 for AHC members).

Multnomah County Central Courthouse Tour
Construction of Multnomah County’s new 17-story Central Courthouse is on schedule and on budget less than one year before its grand opening later in 2020. The Portland chapter of the Construction Specifications Institute co-hosts this tour along with project team members including builder Hoffman Construction, architect SRG Partnership and mechanical contractor Interface Engineering. Multnomah County Central Courthouse, SW First Avenue and Madison Street. 5:30PM Tuesday, January 14. $40 ($30 for CSI members).

 

Advertisements