Portland Architecture

AIA Oregon Architecture Awards winners: Mahlum, Allied Works, Waechter and more

Grant High School Modernization (Benjamin Benschneider)

 

BY BRIAN LIBBY

Each fall, the American Institute of Architects hands out its awards for the year's best architecture. Of course this year, the ceremony was held virtually, which may explain why I'm a few weeks late in writing about it.

The AIA itself is in transition. For generations, the Portland chapter was a place for local architects to come together and remain active, while a larger state chapter was mostly dormant. Now that seems to have been more or less reversed.

Yet it doesn't really affect the awards themselves, which are selected by a jury of out-of-town architects. This year the quintet was Gina Emmanuel of Nashville's Centric Architecture, Zena Howard from Perkins and Will's Charlotte office, Matthew Kreilich of Minneapolis's Snow Kreilich Architects, Patti Rhee of EYRC Architects in Culver City, and Scott Wolf from Seattle's Miller Hull Partnership.

Honor Awards

 

Providence Park expansion (Jeremy Bittermann)

 

The top prize from the AIA is always the Honor Award. Some years the jury gives out one, as was the case in 2019 (Lever Architecture's Redfox Commons) and 2017 (Kengo Kuma and Hacker's Japanese Garden Cultural Crossing). Other years they give out multiple Honor Awards, like in 2018, when Allied Works, Waechter Architecture, Fieldwork and ZGF all got one, or in 2016, when a pair of Honor Awards went to Works Progress Architecture and Beebe Skidmore. And occasionally they give out none.

This year the Honor Award went to three projects: the Grant High School modernization by Mahlum Architects, the Providence Park expansion by Allied Works Architecture, and the Society Hotel Bingen by Waechter Architecture.

As the pandemic rages worse than ever but hope for a vaccine builds, it's worth noting that all three Honor Awards went to gathering places. I'm not suggesting the jury was being sentimental. Instead, the inspiration felt by the architects, the input they got from passionate stakeholders, the opportunity of a larger-scale architecture that can accommodate many: it all goes into projects like these. A stadium is where tens of thousands can escape everyday travails and experience unfettered joy. A school sees a new crop of hundreds come through each year, and can literally change their lives for better or worse. A hotel in the Columbia Gorge might sound like a place to get away from other people, but this one is all about its inner courtyard and the energy generated there.

For Allied Works and Waechter Architecture, the Honor Award is old hat. I don't mean to suggest they're cynical or flippant about receiving one. But nearly every time in the last decade these firms have had a major project up for an award, it's taken home the big one.

For example, Allied won the Honor Award in 2018 for the National Music Centre of Canada (in Calgary), in 2015 for its Pacific Northwest College of Art design here in Portland, in 2013 for its Sokol Blosser Winery tasting room, in 2012 for its Clyfford Still Museum in Denver, and in 2008 for its Booker T. Washington High School in Dallas.

This year's Honor Award Winner by Allied Works, the Providence Park expansion, is not a surprise to see win. The design team was charged with fitting a lot of seats into a relatively small footprint, all while remaining congruent with the original stadium. As Allied Works' Chelsea Grassinger explained in a 2017 interview, the firm took inspiration from both La Bombonera, an urban soccer stadium for Boca Juniors in Buenos Aires, as well as the Globe Theater in London, each 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."

Waechter Architecture previously took home an Honor Award in 2018 for Furioso Vineyards in Yamhill County, in 2015 for the Garden House in Portland, and in 2011 for the J-Tea store in Eugene.

 

Waechter Architecture's Society Hotel Bingen (Lara Swimmer)

 

The Society Hotel project in Bingen, Washington started with the renovation of a school building, but the most compelling design move was a rink of individual cabins united by a shared roof, which cantilevers out to double as a covered walkway and porches for the cabins. The ring of cabins defines a shared courtyard. It's pure Waechter in that you can see a strong design idea that was never compromised along the way. Whether it's a house, an apartment building or a hotel, this is what the firm does best, almost like expert model-makers who get to scale up to architecture.

That Mahlum Architects would receive the Honor Award is less common but not unheard of. In 2011, the firm earned this top prize for the Early Childhood Development Center in Gresham. Mahlum has also received several AIA awards at tiers just below the Honor (known as the Merit Award and Citation Award) for a succession of quality K-12 school renovations, including Umpqua Community College in Roseburg and Thurston Elementary in Springfield.

That said, an Honor Award for the Grant High School modernization is not a surprise. When I visited the project just over a year ago, I was continually struck by the fusion of this 1923 original building with contemporary additions. It had the bones of a wonderful neoclassical work of architecture yet the natural light of a new building.

While touring Grant last year for a Portland Tribune column, I remember talking with its principal, Carol Campbell, who told me that not only have student behavioral issues dropped but "the whole atmosphere is different." Kids told her the building felt like a college. Campbell recalled that her favorite moment was when a student told her simply, "I feel like people care about us."

 

Merit Awards

 

Holst's Argyle Gardens (Josh Partee)

 

And now for the silver medal of the AIA Oregon Architecture Awards. The Merit Award, as it's known, went to six projects this year: 72 Foster and Argyle Gardens by Holst Architecture, the Glass Link house by Scott|Edwards Architecture, Lyllye Reynolds-Parker Black Cultural Center at the University of Oregon in Eugene by Architecture Building Culture in collaboration with Maxine Studio, the Metro YMCA Workplace Adaptation by Bora, and Origami by Waechter Architecture.

Holst Architecture is another one of those firms that seems to win an AIA Award every year and quite often an Honor Award. The sustaining of that quality is particularly impressive given that Holst a few years ago saw its co-founders retire and sell the firm to its employees. Many firms don't survive their founders merely as it relates to business, so to keep winning awards is really something. Moreover, Holst has made an impressive transition from designing lots of market-rate condos to designing lots of affordable housing. All the better.

Argyle Gardens I find particularly likable. It's an effort to re-invent SRO housing as well as a modular prototype. It's built on a very modest budget and the group of buildings comprising this local development are full of color and light. As I learned while working on a Metropolis article about the project, it was also the first affordable housing in America to open during the pandemic.

Scott|Edwards has quietly seen completed a very nice succession of houses, and the Glass Link house in Portland seems to be among the best. It's not all the firm does, for there are plenty of commercial and even civic projects in their portfolio too. Even so, principals like Sid Scott, Rick Berry and their teams have a knack for configuring wood, glass and steel houses in simple, elegant ways.

 

Glass Link by Scott|Edwards Architecture (Jeremy Bittermann)

Architecture Building Culture is also no stranger to the AIA Awards, and like Holst, the firm has now won multiple times over the years for affordable housing, having last year won a Merit Award for its Jarrett Street 12 project in Portland in addition to its Citation Award for the Howard residence in Vancouver, British Columbia. There was also a 2017 Merit Award for Laura's Place, a transitional affordable housing project.

Bora's award-winning adaptive re-use of a former YMCA the firm originally designed in 1977 is no doubt eye-catching and beautiful: curvy, transparent, and sustainable. How many offices come with an indoor track? If I worked in an office during non-pandemic times, I would love to come to work here. Bora also has always had a strong track record with historic renovations, be it Lincoln Hall at Portland State University or the Adidas headquarters in North Portland, in the former Bess Kaiser Hospital.

It's a little surprising to see Bora's YMCA-to-office project win an award this year, only because the job was completed in 2017. The AIA Awards clearly allow this, and I wouldn't begrudge the firm for submitting. But think of it this way: Get Out was one of the best-reviewed movies of 2017. Should it have received an Oscar this year? Should Cleveland Browns quarterback Baker Mayfield receive the 2020 Heisman Trophy for his record-setting performance at the University of Oklahoma in 2017?

 

Bora's YMCA Adaptive Reuse (Jeremy Bittermann)

 

Though it involved a third-party developer, this YMCA project is clearly for Under Armour—the company's logo is emblazoned on the building—yet they're conspicuously unmentioned in the awards submission and on Bora's website for the project. There must be something about the industry that makes sneaker design feel like the Manhattan Project, because Nike is essentially the same way.

I've already written a bit about Waechter Architecture in this post given the firm's Honor Award, but Origami is a very handsome project: another beautiful architectural model come to life. Visiting last year for a Metropolis article, I enjoyed how this project from local developer Project also embraced the missing-middle housing type.

"We experimented with pulling and pushing and trying different forms,” firm founder Ben Waechter explained. “It wasn’t until we tried this one version, where we folded both the walls and the roof planes in a way that’s different from a typical of a gable, that we were able to get the right balance. It creates an identity for the community, but at the same time breaks the scale down.”

 

Citation Awards

 

Beebe Skidmore's House on 36th (Jeremy Bittermann)

 

The equivalent of the bronze medal went to a quartet of projects: Waechter Architecture's Blu Dot Showroom, Beebe Skidmore Architects' House on 36th and office in St. Johns, and Bora's Meier & Frank Building Redevelopment.

Heidi Beebe and Doug Skidmore's firm is another veteran of the AIA winners circle. Like Waechter, the firm won its first AIA award in 2011 and has been a regular pretty much ever since. Their office, one of Beebe Skidmore's year's two Citation Awards, occupies a renovated concrete-block building that was once a small soap factory. Their house on 36th transformed a 1950s cottage.

I'll skip the Blu Dot store because it's been covered in a previous blog post and a Metropolis article, and because the firm is already well represented in this post. But Waechter breathed new life to the historic Kerr Building with an economy of moves: namely a curvy partition and a canopy.

The Meier & Frank Building is quite special, but would also present an interesting challenge as an office. It officially opened in 1909 and was continually expanded until 1932 to reach its current form. This was the first major commission for A.E. Doyle, Portland's most acclaimed architect of the first third of the 20th century: the man who designed Central Library, the Benson Hotel, Reed College and much more. And the era this building was part of, with its steel framing, elevator and glazed terracotta cladding, was despite its Beaux Arts style is like an early forerunner of the modern tall building. Then there's the fact that Meier & Frank was for well over a century the city's premier homegrown department store. Clark Gable even sold ties there before he became the Oscar-winning Hollywood actor who uttered the iconic line "Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn" in Gone With The Wind. Meier & Frank moved out many years ago, and the Nines Hotel moved into several floors, but Macy's limped along here before the building was finally converted to offices by Bora.

 

Meier & Frank Building renovation (Brian Lee)

 

I was always surprised these two department stores survived as long as they did in the building, for one basic architectural reason: the strange lack of natural light and perimeter windows. You can see the windows from the outside, but as a Meier & Frank shopper they disappeared when you went inside. I remember for years shopping there and wondering why I couldn't look out. (The elevators in front, facing Morrison Street, don't help.) Bora finally added some transparency in its renovation of the first five floors for offices, including the restoration of some perimeter windows.

Thinking about this year's AIA Awards and the memorable projects completed this year that I didn't see, a few projects come to mind: the Portland Building restoration by DLR Group, SRG Partnership's Multnomah County Courthouse and Hayward Field designs, Mahlum Architects' Portland Studio, William Kaven's Parallax and Royal residence, Hacker's Gilkey International Middle School and District Office. In many of these cases, these projects were finished late enough in 2020 to make holding off until next year's awards a good idea. And besides, next year's awards will probably be held in person.

In some ways, architecture has been a bright spot in 2020, in that the building industry has largely continued to chug along even as joblessness and other economic indicators seemed to....well, indicate the worst. At the same time, many of this year's openings were somewhat surreal, in that the doors flung open and then promptly had to close again because of the pandemic. This year's AIA Award-winning projects were conceived long before the pandemic, so it will be interesting to see how future awards programs reflect short and long-term changes. But as Steve Jobs said, "The design is not just what it looks like and feels like. The design is how it works."

 

 

 

 

Advertisements

Happy 60th birthday, Memorial Coliseum

Veterans Memorial Coliseum (Brian Libby)

 

BY BRIAN LIBBY

In this unprecedented year, it's been easy to miss the 60th birthday of Veterans Memorial Coliseum, which opened in 1960. It would be even easier to miss that a years-in-the-making renovation for the arena has had to be placed on hold.

Yet the darker and more divisive things get, the more Portland needs this building: as a light-filled place for the community to come together. Writing this on election day, I'm reminded that The Coliseum's architecture is itself a symbol of transparent democracy: a secular cathedral.

And the restoration is still coming. It just may have to wait another year or two. But after 11 years since the Coliseum was first threatened with demolition, what's another?

Portland Memorial Coliseum, as it was originally known, arrived in a time of optimism. John F. Kennedy was elected president that year, NASA astronauts were about to blast into orbit for the first time, and the Civil Rights Act was signed into law.

The city was also feeling ambitious. The Coliseum was seen as part of a broader venues push that included the ill-fated Delta Dome and intimations of an Olympic Games bid. Interstate 5 was also under construction, and so was the South Auditorium Urban Renewal Project at the edge of downtown. There's no denying that most of these developments were planned to take the place of neighborhoods where immigrants and minorities lived. But with the economy booming, both local and national leaders were in a mood for sweeping change.

Design

The Coliseum was designed by Skidmore, Owings and Merrill, the legendary Chicago and New York-based firm that became America's premiere office-tower designer, be it the gorgeous Lever House in the 1950s or the One World Trade Center from 2014. Yet the firm was also a local one, having purchased the great Pietro Belluschi's firm after Belluschi's 1951 hiring as dean of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's architecture. SOM's Portland office, which operated from the mid-1950s until the early 1980s, designed not only the Coliseum but landmarks like the US Bancorp Tower and Autzen Stadium.

 

Rendering of Memorial Coliseum design (City of Portland)

 

SOM designed the arena to offer 360-degree views from its seating bowl to the outside. For most of the building's history, however, a retractable black curtain has blocked that view except for on a few special occasions like the annual Rose Festival Grand Floral Parade. I once watched the sun set over the entire downtown skyline from my seat at the top of the seating bowl during a Blazers exhibition game in 2010.

The building is also quite an engineering marvel. Despite being the equivalent of nearly three city blocks in size, the entire building is standing on just four columns. And the concrete seating bowl sits completely detached from the columns and the glass curtain walls that surround it.

Shortly after its completion, Memorial Coliseum was photographed by America's most acclaimed 20th century architectural photographer: Julius Shulman. His photos communicate the idea of the Coliseum as a kind of glass temple. Perched over the river and completely transparent, the Coliseum gleams. But Shulman wasn't the only talented photographer to turn his lens on the building. Seattle's Art Hupy took a series of nighttime pictures of the Coliseum that serve as an ideal complement to Shulman's daytime shots.

 

Memorial Coliseum in 1960 (Julius Shulman/J. Paul Getty Trust)

 

History

I can't believe I've written over 500 words so far and haven't even mentioned the Beatles or Blazers.

As the city's largest performance venue from its 1960 completion until the Rose Garden opened next door in 1996, Memorial Coliseum hosted the great musical acts of the mid-20^th century. Most notable was a 1965 concert by The Beatles. In the audience that day was also the legendary Beat poet Allen Ginsberg, who composed a poem called "Portland Coliseum," in which he referred to the building as "the new world auditorium."

In the 1960s and '70s, Jimi Hendrix and The Rolling Stones played there. In the 1970s, Led Zeppelin, Bob Dylan and Fleetwood Mac all took the Coliseum stage. In the 1980s I saw Van Halen, Rush, Sting and Billy Joel there (the latter was my mom's idea).

Naturally the lone contender that Beatles concert has for the all-time #1 event at Memorial Coliseum would be the Portland Trail Blazers winning the 1977 NBA championship there. This was the most joyous moment in our city's history, as a wave of pandemonium overtook the city.

 

 

"It was like the fall of Rome, the opening of the West and the discovery of atomic power," Robert Olmos and Steve Erickson wrote in a front-page June 6, 1977 Oregonian article. "The fall of Rome because Philadelphia 76er coach Gene Shue’s empire collapsed...The opening of the West because when the horn sounded ending the game, 12,951 fans stomped, cheered, cried and stampeded onto the court where the Trail Blazers had just made history. The discovery of atomic power because...well, you should have been there...A stranger in town would have thought Portland had gone mad. He would have been right. Blazermania had become a reality.”

A second NBA championship was won there in 1990 by the Detroit Pistons over the Blazers. Hall of Fame players like Detroit's Isaiah Thomas and Portland's Clyde Drexler competed in that series before Vinnie Johnson's championship-winning buzzer-beater at the Coliseum in Game 6. Two years later, the Coliseum hosted the NBA Finals for a third and final time, with Chicago winning two of three games in Portland before clinching back at Chicago Stadium in Game 6.

Two other basketball games at Memorial Coliseum were part of sports history. First, the 1965 Final Four was played there, won by UCLA as part of its 11-championship dynasty under head coach John Wooden.

And in 1992, the first ever "Dream Team" — a United States Olympic team comprised of professional players — played its debut game at Memorial Coliseum, as part of the Tournament of the Americas, a qualifier for the Barcelona Olympic Games. I was there that day in the audience with my dad as the United States defeated Cuba by 79 points.

Sports and music weren't all. How about Evel Knievel? He made one of his largest indoor jumps here. Or on a more serious front, two of the most world's most admired leaders of the past half century also spoke here: the Dalai Lama and Barack Obama. Not only do their names rhyme, but on this election eve, they couldn't be any more different than the incumbent of the past four years.

Demolition Threats and Protections

In 2009, the Coliseum was nearly demolished when Mayor Sam Adams and Portland Timbers owner Merritt Paulson announced a plan to build a new minor-league baseball stadium for the Portland Beavers next to the Rose Garden (now the Moda Center). The Beavers' longtime home, Providence Park, was being converted from a multi-purpose stadium to a soccer stadium, as part of the Timbers' joining Major League Soccer. After citizen opposition, Adams abandoned the Coliseum-demolition plan and sadly, a number of suburban municipalities explored for a minor-league stadium sight did not pan out, causing the team to move.

Meanwhile, the Coliseum was accepted to the National Register of Historic Places, giving it an additional (but not unbreakable) layer of protection. About that time, the name was altered from Memorial Coliseum to Veterans Memorial Coliseum, spearheaded by veterans who helped fight to save the building from demolition. (I respect and admire veterans but personally prefer the original name.)

 

Memorial Coliseum in 1960 (Art Hupy)

 

Adams and Prosper Portland (then known as the Portland Development Commission) then led a Stakeholder Advisory Committee to determine a new use for Memorial Coliseum, but the committee was being asked to determine single uses for a busy multi-purpose arena hosting over 100 events a year.

Eventually, the Adams administration moved forward with a proposed renovation of just over $30 million, but the plan was pulled from a planned City Council vote and shelved, after which Adams left office.

His successor, Mayor Charlie Hales, commissioned a third-party economic study that confirmed the Coliseum's value as a mid-sized venue that otherwise doesn't exist in the city. The study found that a renovation would pay for itself in increased booking revenue for the arena, and would bring $2 billion over 20 years in economic impact. Yet Hales too left office before further action was taken.

In 2015, Commissioner Steve Novick introduced to City Council a new plan, to tear down the Coliseum in order to build affordable housing. Yet both planning and affordable housing professionals found the Rose Quarter site to be insufficient for housing, given the lack of amenities and the island-like setting bounded by thoroughfares.

The Novick-led demolition plan did not move forward, but the threat was enough to see the Coliseum in 2016 receive another distinction when the National Trust for Historic Preservation named the VMC what's called a National Treasure, a distinction that has applied to less than 100 buildings and sites in the United States.

 

Blazers exhibition game at Memorial Coliseum, 2009 (Brian Libby)

 

The Plan Going Forward

So what now? Over the past three years, the city has spent about $5 million restoring the building. But that’s just a start. Since last year, the City of Portland has been taking steps toward a full-scale restoration.

As confirmed by Karl Lisle, who manages spectator venues for the City of Portland's Office of Management and Finance, the city hired acclaimed architecture firm Perkins + Will, and the firm is engaged in phase-one design work. But for now, the project is on hold until the pandemic is tamed and the funding situation becomes clearer. Money had been set aside, but that was before budgets took a hit citywide amidst the events of 2020.

As a co-founder of the Friends of Memorial Coliseum, it’s frustrating to see the Coliseum finally about to be restored, only to face an unexpected eleventh-hour hurdle. On the other hand, the important thing is the City of Portland intends to restore the building. It's not to say the restoration is guaranteed to happen, yet the period in which we question the Coliseum's long-term survival seems to have—knock wood—ended. And rightly so.

Preserving a large arena like Veterans Memorial Coliseum goes against a lot of tradition. After all, no stadium or arena can be protected by its historical legacy. We tore down the Boston Garden and we tore down Yankee Stadium. Yet those buildings didn't have a reason to be, a role to play, whereas the Coliseum does.

 

Coliseum interior following 2016 renovation (Brian Libby)

 

The one caveat, of course, is that it's not just Memorial Coliseum that needs a renovation: it's the entire Rose Quarter.

This place is arguably the biggest urban-planning failure in central city Portland over the past quarter-century or more. It's a dead zone when there isn't a Blazer game or concert.

But that's not because of the two arenas. It's because of everything else: namely three above-ground parking garages and One Center Court, which is a hybrid of office building with a fourth garage. You could have the Taj Mahal on the Rose Quarter site and those surrounding garages would still make this place a dead zone. Bury that parking underground, and the Rose Quarter will be transformed.

Meanwhile, let’s just take a moment to toast this extraordinary work of midcentury-modern architecture by one of the great American architecture firms. Let’s hope that someday soon we can all visit the restored Coliseum, and that the urban setting it’s part of is one of pedestrians and connections to the river, not parked cars.

 

 

Advertisements