Portland Architecture

Classrooms in the forest: visiting Gilkey International Middle School with Hacker's Sarah Post-Holmberg

Gilkey International Middle School entrance (Bruce Damonte)

 

BY BRIAN LIBBY

It was a long time ago in a zip code far, far away: February of this year, across town.

On a rainy Tuesday, not knowing we were less than a month from quarantine beginning and schools emptying out (which is to say nothing of the police state downtown Portland would eventually become), architect Sarah Post-Holmberg of Hacker and I walked through the Gilkey International Middle School. It's part of the French American International School campus in southwest Portland, just west of Forest Park. And it's a nice place where students can come together.

Today the project and its 14 new classrooms sit empty, but hopefully later this year a return will be possible, for while middle school itself was for some of us a somewhat traumatizing time, this middle school building is a really pleasure to be inside. You get such a sense of the forest setting outside, and no matter where you are, be it a hallway, classroom or teacher office, there is a sense of transparency, a lot of soft, diffuse natural light, and a lot of natural wood. Moreover, the hierarchy of how different rooms and spaces are arranged and relate to each other, has to me a real sense of clarity.

When I visited the French American International School campus, one of my biggest surprises is that it's mostly portable classroom buildings: what I used to derogatively call trailers when they started getting added to my high school. Besides the Gilkey, there is only one other brick-and-mortar building, which mostly houses administrative offices. This isn't quite the bucolic campus funded by affluent parents that one sees at, say, Catlin Gabel School or Oregon Episcopal School. It's a private school, but a scrappier one, it seems — although the connections it provides to the world give FAIS and its alumni a different kind of wealth. Even so, the portable classrooms speak to the school's limited budget, which in turn is reflected in the Gilkey through the flexibility of its spaces. Here common spaces in particular serve multiple functions.

 

Entry and commons at Gilkey International Middle School (Bruce Damonte)

 

When I wrote about the Gilkey building for a recent Metropolis magazine article, the emphasis was on the design providing a path to net-zero energy usage. Hacker's design is compliant with AIA 2030 guidelines and the Energy Trust of Oregon’s Path to Net Zero program. That seems to come largely from the fact that the Gilkey building uses natural ventilation strategies instead of air conditioning. The design uses a combination of operable windows and louvers embedded in interior walls to cross-ventilate the building. To maximize energy efficiency, an automated outdoor temperature monitoring system tells staff when to open or close the windows. A three-inch concrete floor also acts as a basement like heat sink, harnessing thermal mass to passively regulate internal temperatures.

Arriving at the campus that rainy Tuesday in February to tour the building with architect Sarah Post-Holmberg of Hacker, I remember noticing two things first, both relating to the roof. The first was that at the Gilkey building's entrance, the angle of its roof line from outside resembled a mid-century Northwest Modern-style house, especially the work of Van Evera Bailey. That was in part because of how the building also spilled down a hillside, allowing it to keep a lower profile as it faced the street.

"As a firm we don’t have a set style. Instead, our design inspiration is born from the site and the people who will use the space. In this case, we wanted to make sure we were respecting Pacific Northwest typology and this residential neighborhood has a lot of mid-century modern," Post-Holmberg explained. "So how do we come up with something more inspired by the forest? And how do we invite the forest back up the hill, and make that forest interaction a primary and primal part of the student experience in a positive way?" Even though this is a multistory building, it seeks to yield to the forest, just as single story mid-century houses here do.

 

In the middle of the Gilkey's boomerang-shaped interior (Bruce Damonte)

 

The second thing I remember, roof-related, was the experience of standing just inside the school, near the entrance and the front office, where the different angles of the roof come together in a beautiful, tactile way. It's the kind of thing you have to stop and marvel at. The Gilkey is boomerang-shaped, and its two wings taper at the ends, so that the shared hallways are wider in the middle and shorter at their ends. They all come together at this point in the ceiling, where the room is at its widest.

"There were some geometric complexities resultant to choosing the boomerang shape with tapered wings," Post-Holmberg explained. "The ridge line, the center point of both wings, is at the same height along both wings and the eave is the same height all around the building, so, when you draw a line from the ridge to the eave, it’s much shorter here at the far end of the hallway than it is at the hub. Which means that the slope of the roof is constantly changing. The width of the building changes, so when you draw a line to the ridge to the eave there, it’s short. You’re essentially connecting two elevations and creating a different slope."

Beginning the tour, Post-Holmberg also touched upon the real clients Hacker had here. "I think embarking on this project, we recognized that middle-schoolers are a unique personality," she said. "Their moods can shift pretty quickly. They’re very social creatures, if you will. And you need to offer them a lot of flexibility for them to feel comfortable in the environment: a lot of choices. Whereas elementary and younger-school kids, they just want to keep a schedule and know what’s expected of them. Middle-schoolers need a little more freedom, and socially some of them want spaces that promote small relationships. Some people want to look out over a big social gathering without having to be a part of it. Some want to be right in the middle of everyone. Or there are other kids that need a little bit of everything throughout the day. So that’s what we tried to do in this building: just create an informal environment that offered a diversity of experiences, so that the kids could feel a sense of belonging."

 

Gilkey classrooms and hallways (Bruce Damonte)

 

Post-Holmberg also made a connection between the diverse, multinational student body and the forest setting that I found interesting. "We saw this site as an intersection between city and nature," she said. "If you actually look at an aerial map, you can see Forest Park sort of ends right here [pointing east] and there’s city again. Let’s think about that and what it means to create global citizens. And how do we use the power of nature to enhance their learning outcomes and hopefully inspire them to be stewards of our planet in our future?"

The architects conceived of the building as what Post-Holmberg called "cabins in the woods," with individual classrooms and small teacher offices treated like little buildings within the larger building. These rooms borrow wood cladding from the exterior, which emphasizes the sense of them float within the larger space, and makes the hallway almost like a kind of outdoor space. Each wing is laid out with a cluster of classrooms and teacher offices at the ends of the boomerang. "Both wings are laid out like this but they swap orientation," the architect adds, "so that one wing’s primary visual connection is the forest and the other wings primary visual connection is the campus."

The hallways in general, but especially the wider spaces in the middle of the building where the wings come, show more variety of use than most school hallways I've seen. They're often much more than pass-through spaces. At this point in the visit, Post-Holmberg and I were standing in a hallway next to one classroom where, as the architect put it, "you can see they’ve got a number of things going on." Looking through the huge picture window, we could see the teacher talking to most of the class, but out with us in the hallway, before another wall of glass looking out at the forest, other students were working separately. The hallway became a kind of secondary classroom.

Then there's the fact that the hallway, particularly the middle portion of the building on the lower level, called the Hub, doubles as cafeteria and social space. " They used to eat in their classrooms," Post-Holmberg explains. "The kids couldn’t really socialize the way they wanted to. Now they can go here, they can go downstairs in the Hub. They’ve got a lot more options."

 

Exterior views of the Gilkey from down-hill (Bruce Damonte)

 

I mentioned earlier the view of the building at the entrance, which appears single-story because of how the structure spills down the hillside and has a roof line not unlike a mid-century modern house. Viewing the building from the opposite end of the site, down the hill, it can look a bit more utilitarian: far more wall than window, and with a bit more sense of bulk, almost like a hotel from the Monopoly game, or the simple apartment building around the corner from the house where I grew up. Yet the space around the building is active, with a stadium-seating area allowing students from all buildings to congregate outside. The landscaping here, when it grows in, will also soften the architecture.

Yet I wouldn't want to dwell too much on the view of the Gilkey from outside, because this project to me, despite the wonderful forest setting just beyond the building, is all about its interior. No matter what language may be spoken within its classrooms (and despite the name, much more than French is taught at FAIS), the whole composition sings: the natural light, the materiality of the wood (I forgot to mention — this is a wood framed building), the flow from small to wide-open spaces, the connection with the outdoors, and the flexibility that allows one space to serve numerous functions.

 

 

Advertisements

 

 

PSU School of Architecture 2.0: a conversation with Jeff Schnabel and Clive Knights

Incoming PSU School of Architecture director Jeff Schnabel (PSU)

 

BY BRIAN LIBBY

As a new academic year arrives, changes are afoot at Portland State University's School of Architecture.

After 12 years, Clive Knights stepped down as director at the end of the summer, with professor Jeff Schnabel taking on the position. Knights will remain as a faculty member and can also devote more time to his artistic career, as an accomplished print maker. And Schnabel is essentially looking to continue what Knights has established.

When Knights took over in 2007, there was no School of Architecture and no accreditation; he guided the school through these processes and also oversaw the establishment of the Center for Public Interest Design, the nation's first research center in this burgeoning field. Accompaning this was cultivation of the school’s growing design-build program, which has manifested itself in some eye-catching temporary works of architecture through partnerships with the Pickathon music festival and other organizations as well as socially-minded efforts the POD Initiative to build homeless housing.

Schnabel has been along for the ride in many of these efforts as well, and he has been a leader in his own way: as a co-founder of the Portland Winter Light Festival and vice president of the Willamette Light Brigade.

Recently I sat down with Schnabel and Knights to discuss their vision for the PSU School of Architecture and what’s ahead.

Portland Architecture: Clive, are you glad to have more time to teach and make art?

Knights: Yes. I’m teaching five courses this term, and you probably have more influence on the program in regular teaching roles than as a director. The students hear your voice more than they hear a director’s voice. You’re in the trenches.

Schnabel: But it’s also to your credit, Clive, that as a leader you said, ‘These are the goals we have for our courses, but as long as you meet those, you have a lot of freedom to arrive at them.’ That’s part of the culture of Portland State. I remember when I went to Penn for graduate school, almost all the courses were really well defined; they would do the same studios year in and year out, regardless of which faculty members were there to teach them. I think if they were at Portland State, those professors would be arriving at architecture in a way that they felt more passionate about.

Knights: That’s actually why I left the UK in 1995 and came to what was essentially an art department [at Portland State], because the pedagogy [in the UK] was so predetermined by tradition. They’d literally white out the dates of the syllabi and recopy them. Much of the pedagogy here relates to enabling faculty to bring their imaginations to the studio. We wanted to stimulate the pleasures of teaching. The faculty needs to be inspired. That can’t happen when something is handed to them. You just need to frame it enough to trigger their imagination.

Schnabel: I haven’t quite thought of this before, but there is very little repetition of studios. The faculty, year in and year out, are being opportunistic. They’re finding maybe an interesting client to work with in the community, or an interesting site. But they’re very rarely repeating the same projects. That makes for a very different studio. As a faculty member, you’re investigating a project at the same time that students are. Of course if you repeat a project over and over the outcome can become predictable, and you start to guide students towards that predictable outcome. That does have some value in terms of an architectural education, but it’s a different kind of architectural education than everybody exploring and discovering at the same time. It makes teaching a kind of creative project.

 

Outgoing director and continuing professor Clive Knights (PSU)

 

And that’s bound to impact the student experience, right?

Schnabel: Right. It kind of sets up the idea of someone teaching this class being…mentor is the wrong word. Maybe it’s a master-and-apprentice relationship more than about the student and the institution. In some ways it feels more authentic to real practice this way, where each project does have a brand-new client,  [and] every client brings forth a different personality and different aspirations. Every new project has a new site, with all the push-pull of forces active on that site. And the building programs, there may me similarities between project types, like schools, but also differences. By giving faculty that autonomy, and for them to embrace that by envisioning a new studio project each time, it feels like it more closely approximates the real practice of architecture.

And then you’ve got to make sure you have a diverse set of teachers and points of view, right? I think of one of my favorite movies, 8½, where the swirl of people around a movie director while on location come to inspire his vision for the movie itself.

Knights: It’s interesting you reference film. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if you could reference a building to make that same point? There’s a lack of contemporary architecture of the recent past that can do that, with some exceptions. Alvaro Cesar buildings are utterly remarkable and there very skillfully manipulated geometries that move your body in certain ways and your perceptions are modified and changed. They’re not overly embellished buildings at all, and yet they’re so rich in the perceptual experience they give you: what you see and what you’re shielded from and how your body’s moving up ramps and stairs. It’s great.

Clive, your artwork and some of your academic research is anatomically-focused, if I’m not mistaken. How does that factor into the way you see teaching architecture?

Knights: In all the other arts, their primary function is to engage with the profound questions of what it means to be human: a good movie, a good novel or play, a piece of music. In architecture it’s a slight obsession with innovative technology or innovative materials, or it’s none of that and it’s just plugging along and responding to the pressures that are put on you: scheme architecture. That’s not good enough. And it’s not changed much since the ‘70s, since I started school. Architecture is a language. It’s a means by which culture expresses itself to itself. Our job as professors is to initiate interesting questions. But if you’re asking questions within a narrow field of reference, which means nothing to the person on the street, then you’re not relevant.

When you talk about impacting how a body moves through space, Clive, it makes me think about the idea that architecture is largely an experiential design, no matter how much media or the public may focus on exterior looks.

Knights: That’s something we’ve tried to bring to the pedagogy of our school: that experiential dimension—how the moves through space, how you engage with a building’s spatial qualities—as a primary concern. That’s how you begin to articulate meaning: how you receive the design, how it speaks to your body.

I find the idea of biophilia-minded design and daylighting design interesting for that reason: the idea of design responding to physiological needs.

Schnabel: I would say that obsession with the body runs pretty deep in the faculty. It’s not as pervasive as we’d like but we’re working hard to make it present everywhere, including in all the drawings. In my educational experience, I routinely did plans that were unfurnished, that didn’t have a body in the spaces. That is no way to generate architecture. So even in the very early stages, and at all stages, we have to be committed to the body in space, but not just there for scale, where you cut and paste a body into the section so people understand it’s a ten-foot ceiling and not an eight-foot ceiling. What’s that person doing in that space? Are they making love? Are they preparing a meal? Are they sleeping? And actually, having them engaged in that activity lets you know whether or the architecture is contributing in any way to that activity. But until you put a body in that space, it’s all just guesswork as to whether or not that is going to contribute to that. It’s so fundamental.

Clive, we were talking about giving faculty flexibility. Yet in some ways the school’s collective personality has started to emerge with entities like the Center for Public Interest Design or other efforts to aid the community through the design-build program. Was that part of your decision making process about stepping: knowing that a kind of foundation had been laid?

Knights I feel pretty happy. Even though we’ve had some faculty move on, people who made great contributions, I’m pretty happy with the people who have replaced them. We have three new faculty members this year, and are approaching fifty-fifty with women and men. We can’t do everything so we have to figure out what it is we want to be doing, and what we’re capable of given our expertise. There’s a kind of Penn mafia within the school, but that’s not meant to be derogatory: it’s a kind of sensibility that translates. There’s a kind of merger of practice sensibility, theoretical sensibility, pedagogical sensibility.

That’s interesting because in the past there was a Penn connection at the University of Oregon, too, which manifested itself as a Louis Kahn connection through professors like Thomas Hacker.

Knights: It’s a Berkeley mafia that’s taken over now as the Kahn mafia has retired.

Schnabel: Penn when I was there had Kahn’s disciples employed, had the AAA in London’s influence, had strong Postmodernism, serious classicism and classical orders, Antonio de Souza Santos bringing in colleagues from South Africa and their version of modernism. And they didn’t try to create camps. No one was trying to win. It was exposing the students to a full spectrum of architecture, and you make choices for yourself.

Whom are some of those professors who comprise that spectrum?

We have faculty like Juan Heredia, who thinks the plan should be the starting point for architecture. We’ve got Aaron Whelton, who is really interested in digital media and digital fabrication, and how new ways of making influence form. And there’s Andrew Santa Lucia, whose aesthetic comes from Miami. It’s strong and the students are drawn to it. He’s the one who’s not afraid of color. He’s not afraid of mixing forms and ideas in a way that isn’t at first completely legible. Rather than us take a position that this is good or this is bad, we’re curious. Why are the students drawn to this? We want get to the heart of a rigorous investigation of architecture, even if it’s not your version of architecture. We’re trying to resist boundaries. We’re placing students in landscape architecture firms. That’s not by teaching electives in landscape architecture. It’s by having landscape architects come in and teach architecture. If I let that fall away, then I’ve done a terrible job. Because that’s fundamental to the success of the program: that that culture is maintained.

 

 

Advertisements

Multnomah County and PSU students contemplate a new Burnside Bridge

Multnomah County's Mike Pullen and PSU students' site visit (NashCO Photography)

 

BY BRIAN LIBBY

Four years ago, a Pulitzer Prize-winning New Yorker magazine article by Kathryn Schulz awakened many in the Pacific Northwest for the first time to the fact that a massive earthquake could someday destroy our cities and towns. I particularly remember one seismologist saying everything west of Interstate 5 would be "toast."

Over the ensuing four years, Portland has made very modest progress in preparing for what could be a 9.0 reading on the Richter Scale. But one emerging priority that we might get some, well, traction on is the Burnside Bridge, which has long been identified as a priority east-west emergency route in the event of a seismic catastrophe. Interstate 5 and Interstate 84 would probably be incapacitated by collapsed overpass bridges, making Burnside Street and Sandy Boulevard the most likely routes for emergency vehicles and supplies.

Each day about 40,000 vehicles cross the bridge as well as 2,000 pedestrians and bicyclists. The bridge also passes over not only the I-5 freeway but the Union Pacific railroad and a MAX line on the downtown side. Burnside Street itself is also the one street in the city that touches the Southeast, Southwest and Northeast quadrants. But the Burnside Bridge is not strong enough to survive a major earthquake. Completed in 1926, its concrete columns include very little steel reinforcement. Weak unstable soil can cause its piers to collapse, a cracking of the pier and collapsing of the draw spans, falling into the river and blocking ship passage.

 

Stills from the video Earthquake Ready Burnside Bridge: Simulation (Multnomah County)

 

It's time to start thinking about a new Burnside Bridge. It's not yet a done deal that Multnomah County is willing to take that step. But they have decided to do something, whether reinforce the old bridge or build a new one. To that end, the county has been exploring its options and, after exploring about 100 different options, has settled on four: a renovation of the 1926 bridge, a fixed bridge that arcs high enough to allow river traffic to pass underneath, a drawbridge in the same configuration as exists now, and a drawbridge with a new access point from Couch Street.

One reason that it's statistically only a one-in-four chance that the 1926 bridge will be renovated is that it's only about 10 percent cheaper to do so than it would be to build an entirely new bridge. "So much has to be replaced," explains Multnomah County spokesperson Mike Pullen. "If the purpose of the project is not only renovation but seismic strengthening, you have to go deep underground under every column. There must be 15 spans just between the river and where that comes down. Each one of those columns has to have big seismic foundations put underneath. So new bridges are really on the table."

It's also quite unlikely at this point that a new bridge would be fixed. I mean, have you ever tried to walk or bike over Tilikum Crossing? It's climbing a small hill. And at this spot, such a bridge probably wouldn't work. "It’s looking like the fixed bridge would need to be so high because of the rose fleet and a few cruise ships that it would exceed what’s reasonable," Pullen explained. "It’s not in the grave yet, but it may have the most problems to eliminate it from contention." A fixed bridge also needs more of a lead-in from the blocks on either side, which would further disrupt the existing city fabric.

Pullen says the Hawthorne Bridge remains the most popular bridge for pedestrian and bike crossings because it's the opposite of a bridge like Tilikum, not just in that it's a drawbridge instead of a fixed bridge but  because it's the most even with the existing street. But the existing Burnside Bridge has this same flatness. It just feels less intimate because it's wider for cars and thinner for pedestrians and bikes.

Aside from the question of a fixed bridge or a movable bridge, at this stage, Multnomah County has not decided on a bridge type. If we build a new movable Burnside Bridge, it could be a bascule bridge like the existing Burnside or Morrison Bridge, where the two leaves tilt upward to let ships pass. Or it could be a vertical-lift bridge like the Hawthorne or the Steel Bridge. Those are among the oldest bridges in Portland, but there are examples of contemporary vertical-lift bridges, such as the Pont Jacques Chaban-Delmas in Bordeaux, France, completed in 2013 and designed by Lavigne & Cheron architects and Hardesty & Hanover. When I look at photos of that bridge and imagine a future Burnside Bridge that looks something like that, I get excited. But there are also great examples of contemporary bascule bridges out there.

 

Pont Jacques Chaban-Delmas bridge, Bordeaux (Wikimedia Commons)

 

All these questions about a potential new Burnside Bridge came up recently because of an open house held May 15 at Portland State University's School of Architecture in Shattuck Hall, where master of architecture students in professor Jeff Schnabel's class presented the results of their studio class projects devoted to Burnside Bridge designs.

Bridges really acts of engineering more than they are works of architecture, which meant that engineers from Multnomah County worked with the students to impose real-world constraints, something not always part of architecture school projects.

"There were many moments where the engineers would say, ‘That’s an interesting idea but it doesn’t work. Here’s why.’ In a traditional studio you’ve got quite a bit of room to be visionary without constraints," Schnabel explains. "Here, the county did impose some meaningful constraints. The students found that to be rewarding and at times frustrating. If they were choosing between a bascule or vertical lift bridge, they had to make sure they passed the eye test in terms of operation. If they were driving too many piers down into the river, the county would push back and say, ‘That’s a cost issue. The more you touch down, the more expensive it becomes.’ But those are the kinds of things that made the projects very real to the students."

Having real constraints meant that a good design idea within them meant that the county could take it seriously. "That may have been the case with one student project, which featured stairs going from the bridge down to a dock. "Before the earthquake it’s an amenity, an opportunity to get down to the river," Schnabel says. "Post-earthquake, they could see the value of that as part of a water taxi system that could assist in the evacuation of pedestrians from the city or the delivery of goods and service workers to downtown, taking some of the pressure off the surface of the bridge."

Overall, Pullen says, a major theme in student designs was figuring out to separate bicyclists and pedestrians from other motorists, "sometimes on a different level, sometimes in a kind of tube. One we almost nicknamed the Spanish Steps. It’s not just a staircase. It’s almost a block wide and it becomes an amphitheater at the bottom. I know that might bust the budget, but a connection between the pedestrians and Waterfront Park is a great idea. Thinking about ways to increase connections and connectivity is huge. Right now from both the Morrison and the Burnside you can’t get directly into waterfront park. The Hawthorne has stairs and that’s not the greatest option either."

 

A presentation by PSU student Rebecca Taylor (NashCO Photography)

 

I also enjoyed one other proposal, even if it's extremely unlikely. "One student looked at the buildings on the west side with all this unreinforced masonry, and envisioned this kind of scaffolding system that tied the buildings to the bridge," Pullen recalls. "The scaffolding created some covered areas down below that created gathering spaces. From a historic preservation standpoint, that might be hard to permit. But maybe there could be something done to make sure they don’t collapse."

Thinking about these options also made me wonder what form the process for designing a future Burnside Bridge might take. Would it be unrealistic, for instance, to suggest a design competition? After all, Multnomah County saw the value in connecting with students. Why not put out a call to some of the world's best bridge designers? After all, it certainly worked well for one of the city's last major infrastructure projects: the Portland Aerial Tram. But this is a county project, not a city one. And Multnomah County has a different personality and tendencies than the City of Portland. The new Multnomah County Courthouse, currently under construction downtown at the west end of the Hawthorne Bridge is a good example. Designed by Portland firm SRG Partnership, it figures to be a handsome building. But during the first round of selection for the courthouse, Multnomah County decided not to shortlist two of the top architecture firms in the world: the Office for Metropolitan Architecture (headed by Pritzker Prize winner Rem Koolhaas) and Skidmore, Owings and Merrill. It's one thing if they selected an SRG design over an OMA or SOM design. They're all just different three-letter acronyms, right? But not to shortlist these great firms—to write into the process an explicit preference for local firms—raised a red flag of what I'd call deliberate provincialism, at least for me.

A client that won't even consider the world's top firms for a riverfront courthouse doesn't sound like a client that will create an exemplary international design competition.

That said, the two projects are different, even if the client is the same. "I think it’s fair to say the county was happy that [for the courthouse project] the architect and the general contractor were local…I think when it comes to bridge projects, I’m not sure the rules allow that kind of preference." And besides, Pullen makes a reasonable follow-up point. If you look at a county project like the Sellwood Bridge, there are reasons to believe quality was as important as budget. "We have gotten away from low-bid in that we do a CMGC model. So basically you can veer from the low-bid, traditional contracting model, if you build a case and go to the state," he says. "If we can make a case that the project is either of such complexity, specialized skills, we’re able to make a case for a different project delivery model. In the case of the Sellwood project, we were able to hire a team based on skills in addition to price. We ended up there with TY Lin International on the lead with the bridge design. They’re probably one of the top bridge designers in the world and win a number of awards."

It has been four years since Tilikum Crossing opened and five years since the replacement Sellwood Bridge. Before that, though, several decades went by between our last bridge project, the Fremont Bridge, and the recent Sellwood redo. To put it another way, replacing one of our most prominent and central downtown bridges would be a major change to Portland's postcard image of itself. We are as much Bridge City as we are the Rose City or Stumptown. And the Burnside is more center-stage than Tilikum or Sellwood.

A design first has to work: to be functional for a variety of pedestrians, bicyclists and automobiles and to be well connected to the existing urban fabric, as well as the resilience to survive the Really Big One. That last one is the whole point. And Portland is not the sort of city that has the ambition, the financial willingness or the insecurity to invest in a showy design. Yet no matter what we build, it will have an aesthetic personality of some sort, and that should not be shortchanged any more than safety and function.

Bridges represent a unique opportunity. On one hand, they possess an aspect of humility because they are connectors: the places between places. Yet from the Golden Gate Bridge to the Tower Bridge, they inevitably become symbols. Free from the clutter of buildings or topography getting in the way, they stand proudly even when they are essentially flat.

I sometimes think of an idea credited to philosopher Martin Heidegger. In Building Dwelling Thinking, he argues that a bridge does not just connect banks that are already there. "The banks emerge as banks only only as the bridge crosses the stream," Heidigger writes. "The bridge gathers the earth as landscape around the stream."

In other words, a bridge is a connector, but it is also a distinct place.

 

 

 

Advertisements

Glass in session: visiting PSU's light-filled Karl Miller Center

Karl Miller Center atrium (Brian Libby)

BY BRIAN LIBBY

In a recent Portland Tribune column, I had the opportunity to write about Portland State University's new Karl Miller Center, the expanded home of its School of Business. So far I've visited twice in as many weeks, and I already can't wait to go back there again and bask in its five-story atrium.

Although I'm a good couple decades past my college years, and honestly would never have majored in business, the Karl Miller Center almost makes me want to go back for an MBA. But luckily you don't have to be a business major or even a PSU student to enter the space.

About 100,000 of the 143,000 square feet comprising this project is actually a renovation of an unremarkable existing building, constructed in two phases in 1979 and 1989. The Karl Miller Center design, led by acclaimed German firm Behnisch Architekten with local firm SRG Partnership as architect of record, creates a new building just to the north as well as an atrium between the two structures.

The new construction, clad in Alaskan cedar, is striking. Its five stories are comprised of a series of interlocking rectangular volumes. While the ground floor is set back from the street, for example, the second story cantilevers outward (with the help of a few stilts) to create a covered public space. The shifting volumes create a sense of kinetics and break up the mass that otherwise would exist there, which stands in stark contrast to the original bulky building on the south side of the block.

But the architects did make a rather bold choice in their re-cladding of the existing building: a combination of aluminum and stainless steel that undulates a bit to create shadows. My understanding is that the facade was initially all aluminum but after design review the stainless steel was added, by request. And indeed: for me the overall effect of the cladding seemed somewhere between the cheap utilitarian corrugated metal of industrial applications and something more shiny or refined. I also wondered if the reflective quality of the cladding helped bounce light into the adjacent atrium. Talking with architects Stefan Behnisch and Matt Noblett of Behnisch Architekten last week, I was told that was not really the case. But it at least makes sense.

Karl Miller Center atrium (Brian Libby)

The narrative of this building for me has everything to do with that atrium and natural light. Of course if you're a student or faculty member in the School of Business, you'll probably spend more of your time in the classrooms than in the atrium itself. But thankfully it's largely in service of those classrooms and their natural light needs that the atrium exists. Instead of light coming in just from the exterior windows, with less and less natural illumination the deeper you go into the building, the atrium brings in a bevy of light through the middle of the building and into those classrooms.

Touring these Karl Miller Center classrooms, I couldn't help but think back to the semester I spent in 2012 teaching a class at Portland State. The classroom was completely windowless. I was still able to do my job, of course. But it felt like I was in a bomb shelter. It was, I suppose, the opposite of what these classrooms felt like. Would I have been a better teacher in a light-filled Karl Miller Center classroom? Maybe not. But the students and I would have all been a little more alert; that's what the studies show.

Perhaps the classrooms and study spaces are the destination and the atrium is merely the interstitial space one journeys through to get there, but it's a heck of a journey. With a series of bridges and stairways crisscrossing the five-story volume, there is a constant sense of activity. The architects also used the central staircase as a gathering place, with a series of long benches extending from the stairs. I could see this being a place to do your homework on a rainy winter day, or to kick back with a coffee between classes.

As I mentioned in the column, during the media tour School of Business dean Cliff Allen admitted that a number of students actually go back to the parking garage and sit in their cars between classes. There was that little space in which to hang out indoors, which our rainy climate requires for much of the year. Allen expressed a hope, which I think is not unreasonable at all, that the Karl Miller Center atrium can act as a shared space for all the university, not just the business, marketing and accounting majors. And that would be good for the business school. I'm not going to say that majoring in business or marketing is wrong. Of course not. But it wouldn't hurt to mingle with some liberal-arts students.

The building is also well positioned urbanistically to act as a unifying space for PSU. It stands in between the university's major built effort of recent years, the Urban Center Plaza, and the majority of its campus. You could use it not just as a place to hang out, but a pathway through campus.

In the column, I also tried to put the Karl Miller Center atrium in the context of other atria in the city that have been constructed in the last 20 years. After all, not only does our rainy climate seem to call out for such winter garden-like architectural spaces, but some of our most acclaimed architecture in recent memory possesses some of the same basic qualities as PSU's new atrium.

I think of Allied Works' Wieden + Kennedy building, for example, in which a multi-story volume was carved out of an old cold-storage warehouse. It too has bridges and catwalks across a huge shared volume. More recently, and perhaps more similarly to Karl Miller, there is the multistory atrium in the Collaborative Life Science Center by CO Architects of Los Angeles (with Portland's SERA Architects as architect of record). I'd still rank the Wieden + Kennedy building first overall for its architecture, but both W+K and the CLSB are less connected to the street than the Karl Miller Center, because on two of its four sides, PSU's building also has glass facades. On the east side of the building, the glass facade tilts in a dramatic fashion, as if leading one up the slope of the site.

Karl Miller Center atrium (Brian Libby)

Portland has a wonderful community of architecture firms, any number of which could have designed a successful Karl Miller Center. Yet cities and design communities are enhanced by having firms from out of town contribute to our built environment. Behnisch Architekten may not be as much of a household name as so-called starchitect firms led by Renzo Piano, Jean Nouvel or Frank Gehry, but it has a stellar reputation for green architecture, and is particularly adept at the challenge met in the Karl Miller Center: bringing natural light deep into buildings.

That was true even 20 years ago, on landmark projects like 1997's Norddeutsch Landesbank in Hannover, Germany, which I interviewed Behnisch about in 2013. Designed without some of the high-tech tools available to architects today like energy modeling and parametric design software, it featured a chimney effect to move air from the building’s courtyard up through its double-skin façade.

1997's Norddeutsch Landesbank (Roland Halbe)

Before visiting the Karl Miller Center, I watched on YouTube an interesting presentation made by Stefan Behnisch at a Berlin lighting conference earlier this year, in which he talked about a variety of techniques used to bring more light into a space. In projects like the Allston Science and Engineering Complex for Harvard University and the Genzyme headquarters (both in Cambridge, Massachusetts), as well as a parking garage for the City of Santa Monica, Behnisch has introduced light by relatively uncommon means such as mounting heliostats on a roof to reflect extra light inside.

"I’m very interested in the sensation of light, the experience of light in a room. It appears, it disappears, it changes," Behnisch said in his Berlin talk. "The idea of daylight, of light, can really be a driving force in developing architecture."

That's certainly the case with the Karl Miller Center.

 

Advertisements

PSU students engage in Portland Provocations

A re-imagination of the Portland Building (Antonio Crossier)

BY BRIAN LIBBY

A few weeks ago during Design Week Portland, I happened to be speaking to a Portland State University architecture class taught by assistant professor Andrew Santa Lucia, just as an exhibit that was part of the festival and that he helped put together, called Portland Provocations: Architectural Visions for the City, was also opening just down the street. So after speaking to the class about the practice of architecture writing and criticism, it was natural to reserve time at the end of class to go see the exhibit together.

Speaking to the class that morning, I remember talking about how my sense of what it means to be a critic had evolved from when I was first starting out writing movie reviews back in the late 1990s. Back then, I had thought of a review more like a verdict, whereas today I think of it more like an opening argument: the idea being that it's the dialogue and exchange that matters more than any one point, or any one person. Visiting the Portland Provocations exhibit a little while later, I felt like that idea was reinforced, in that each of these student thesis projects, collated by Santa Lucia along with fellow PSU assistant professor of architecture Jeff Schnabel, there was another kind of argument being made.

I don't know about you, but when I was 22 or 24 years old I wasn't ready to make a coherent argument for how to transform some part of the future city like these students did. But that's precisely why I always enjoy visiting exhibits of student work, be it at PSU or the University of Oregon's Portland outpost: for the variety of ideas these students propose. It's a rare opportunity in one's life as an architect, it seems to me. Soon after architecture school you'll be hired by an architecture firm or perhaps start one of your own, or leave the profession for something else. In any of those scenarios, while doing other work of some kind, you probably won't spend the time researching and conceiving a way to change the city.

"The city of Portland has been narrativized and caricatured in popular culture to a degree enjoyed only by larger metropolitan American cities," goes the statement from Santa Lucia and Schnabel accompanying the exhibit. "However, this reasonable metropolis has forged an unlikely alliance with emergent technologies and progressive policies that have helped shape it as a space for provocative architectural interventions. Portland Provocations is a cross-section of architectural projects by bachelor’s and master’s level students at Portland State University's School of Architecture that engage with the nuanced complexities and projective ambitions of the city. With this exhibition, we aim to contribute to reshaping the discourse on architecture, ecology, and humanity in Portland, one project at a time."

Arguing for how to change the city, or narrativizing projective ambitions: it's all the same, really. It's about saying, "Why not this crazy idea?" Even if it doesn't get implemented, that idea can lead to other ones. It's a spark.

Take Antonio Crossier, an undergraduate who presented a radical re-imagination of the Portland Building, that postmodern landmark by Michael Graves that happens to be about to undergo a major renovation. Crossier writes that he's trying to "peel back the facade and uncover the hundreds and thousands of stories that create a messy but whole city. Using the deconstruction of the Portland Building as a way to peel away the constructed image of the city," he proposes this as "a way to re-engage the citizen into this civic structure that is so aptly named: The Portland Building."

A Portland building re-imagination (Antonio Crossier)

It's not that we're going to actually restore the Portland Building this way, but especially that the real restoration is going to be taking some liberties with the original Michael Graves design and substantially change the building, why not go all the way and talk about what a more radical transformation might look like? And Crossier is smart to identify that one of the biggest problems with the original architecture was its lack of transparency: by breaking open the facade in his design study, the building expresses an openness it has never otherwise had.

I felt somewhat similarly about an entry from graduate student Erika Warhus, called Literacy on the Lightrail, which imagines using individual MAX light rail cars as rolling literacy centers where people can learn to read. "Literacy is a matter of public health," she writes, "and community building and is directly related to equity and accessibility. In our society, a lack of literacy comes with a heavy dose of stigma." Her thesis project proposes that the existing framework of a MAX car "can encourage and sustain literacy by casually engaging commuters in a parallel path that is imbued with language, creating moments of learning, expression, and shared public experiences." She proposes a series of seven interventions that "foster interaction between public transit and language in new ways, offering lines of text, graphics, armatures for words, furniture, and fully enclosed spaces."

Literacy aboard a MAX train (Erika Warhus)

Again, it's not to say we're literally going to do this, but in a way a small form of it has long existed on these and on countless subway cars and buses: the "Poetry in Motion" series that placed poems on advertising panels. But more importantly, I like the broader idea that Warhus's thesis offers: that transit, particularly trains, could be given over to functional purposes.

The same is true for an entry by undergraduate architecture student Zephyr Anthony, which alters the Hawthorne Bridge to add a cafe, "giving commuters and tourists a place to rest while bridge lifts are in progress, and a sheltered vantage point from which to take in the expansive river views." It's a new spin on an old idea, for in cities like London and Florence there used to be bridges with all kinds of habitable space for retail or other purposes.

Cafe on a bridge (Zephyr Anthony)

Another entry, Vanport Necropolis by grad student Nicolas Pectol, offered a sobering and striking take on how to present the city's cultural history, namely the Vanport flood of 1948, which destroyed a mostly African American neighborhood and displaced thousands. Pectol designed "a funeral procession and burial ritual to honor those who died in the flood and provide them, and their city, a proper burial." He takes inspiration from shipbuilding, "an industry that played an integral role in the economic and social life of this ethnically diverse community," and includes a series of canals along the Columbia Slough.

Perusing the images, I thought of a memorial I visited in Berlin last year, the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe by Peter Eisenman and Bruno Hapold, which had a similar boxy geometry. But the canals of course made me think of Amsterdam and other Dutch cities. It's a beautiful concept.

A Vanport memorial in the Columbia Slough (Nicholas Pectol)

"Creating the Riparian City" by grad student Taryn Mudge imagines a response to the potentially rising waters of a future Willamette or Columbia river tied to sea-level rise due to climate change. Technically I'm not sure rises in sea level Portland would correspond with rising river levels, but even so, it's an interesting exercise to imagine the riverbanks like Mudge does, with a lot more room for a natural, wetland-like transition to land.

Mudge writes, "Can we find a solution that accepts the natural ebb and flow of the river’s invaluable hydrological functions, and begin to embrace the Willamette River’s degrading riparian ecosystem?” Her proposal proposes "the purposeful dismantling of targeted man-made structures such as building complexes and streets to make way for streams and new waterways...new overpasses, diverted public transportation, riparian agricultural solutions such as vertical food-growing towers, and new hydroelectric production facilities are introduced. Former streets within the flood zone become agricultural channels. The long-term plan would enable Portland to survive and even thrive in the advent of rising waters due to climate change."

"Creating the Riparian City" (Taryn Mudge)

What's also fun about Mudge's project is it gives a chance to imagine peeling back much of the downtown waterfront, both buildings and the barrier between land and water as we know it. Suddenly buildings in downtown or the Pearl once obstructed from view become front row attractions.

A project by grad student Kendra Bostwick Malkemus, begins with the notion of festivals and cultural gathering spaces such as parks and squares, but really her proposal is about something that has been seriously discussed by city leaders in the past: capping portions of the I-405 freeway to gain a series of city blocks, ideally gaining public space in the process.

Another project that seems relevant to real-world discussions was by Kyle Norman, which imagined a series of vertical gardens that could reduce the heat-island effect of the downtown core. This is the kind of thinking that is leading to the Green Loop here in Portland, for example, or a plan in Barcelona to add a large amount of greenspace to the city without removing wide swatches of buildings.

 And finally there was a project by graduate student Reid Weber that proposes a food waste processing facility in the Lloyd EcoDistrict. "Portland’s landfill is located in an undeveloped area 140 miles from the city and 6 miles away from the river, far from the eyes of most city residents," Weber writes. In an age of scarcity, "cities need to utilize more effective means of waste management to celebrate the reuse of typically wasted resources." Designed for the exchange of food waste and public interaction, this proposal provides environmental and social amenities that physically embody the ideas of reuse and a layering of public usage—answering the question “How can architecture make the waste process more transparent, so that residents of our community are more aware of how their waste is meaningful beyond its initial use?”

Waste treatment in the city center (Reid Weber)

Taken together, these projects "provide a lens to look at Portland not how it is but how it potentially could be," Santa Lucia said in a talk accompanying the exhibition. "And it’s not always an easy conversation. Perhaps it’s about provoking the beast. It’s sort of a testament to not only our thesis research models but our studio models that get at this question of producing work that challenges the city, not only to be better but to be more, and an unqualified more: a discourse within the city with architects, with people."

"What’s in a provocation? When you think provoke, perhaps it’s pejorative. It’s about fighting and what not. But ‘provocative’ does have this question of allure inside of it. It’s always about other: it’s about the provocation between you and another. What’s at the basis of provocation? I think it’s the idea of a mirror. But it’s interesting: what does it mean to provoke when you’re provoking itself? When your idea of the world is different from the world around you? We have work here that challenges this idea of the mirror."

 

 

Advertisements

AFO's Architects in Schools program: educating the community, but in need of more help

Sina Meier (left) with a Metropolitan Learning Center class (Opsis Architecture)

BY BRIAN LIBBY

Every architect has a story about when he or she first learned about the profession, or became inspired to design buildings for a living. Maybe it was a family friend or relative who was an architect. Maybe it was watching Mike Brady on The Brady Bunch. Or maybe it was learning to build a treehouse as a kid.

Today, we need architectural education more than ever. And for decades now, the Architecture Foundation of Oregon's Architects in Schools program has been providing just that. But they need help.

Inspired by the first Earth Day in 1970, the Architects in Schools program began that same year, the brainchild of Portland architect Marjorie Wintermute, who created the program with the goal of developing awareness and understanding of the designed and built environment. Administered by the AFO since 2003 (taking over from the Regional Arts & Culture Council), the program has grown from annually serving 800 to more than 3,800 students in the Portland metropolitan area, Central Oregon, Salem, Eugene, Medford and Ashland.

Architects in Schools relies on an army of architect volunteers, who pair up with teachers of third, fourth and fifth graders to put on a six-week course.

For the past few years, Architects In Schools has been growing steadily, with about 100 more students added each year, and volunteer numbers stretching to meet the demand. This year, however, demand has soured. The AFO has received requests to serve over 1,400 more students than last year.

MLC students working on a project (Anna Sapienza)

In hopes of helping to inspire more architects to volunteer with the AFO, recently I talked with Sina Meier, an architect with Opsis Architecture who  recently completed her third year as a volunteer.

Meier first got inspired a few years ago after seeing an exhibit of student-designed projects for Architects in Schools in Opsis's lobby; four other architects from the firm had volunteered their time, prompting the firm to host exhibits. After signing up, she was paired with a third grade at the Metropolitan Learning Center in Northwest Portland, where Meier has continued to volunteer each year. "I've had a really good experience," she said.

The volunteer process begins with a training workshop and getting a copy of the manual Architecture As A Basic Curriculum Builder, which includes a simple drawing technique that quickly improves students’ abilities and their confidence; a pictorial survey of architectural periods and styles that coincide with studies of Native Americans, Pioneers, Victorians, and several distinct periods in the 20th century; lessons for measuring and designing floor plans; structured activities around questions, like: “What makes structures stand up?”, “What will cities look like 25 years from now?” and “What is Green Building?” Another lesson is called “A Special Structure for a Special Client” and asks students to program and design homes for clients.

Architectural model project from Meier's MLC class (Sina Meier)

"There is a guidebook with lessons and ideas for projects, but you can do your own thing. That’s what we did," Meier explains. "You usually go in once a week for an hour or two. It’s really up to you and the teacher how to structure the lesson. I started out usually with a slideshow. For about 20 minutes: that’s how long they can focus. We usually then had something more active. We went outside for a neighborhood walk and sketched things, or we measured parts of the school, or we had show and tell. We talk about making connections in our work: with light, with nature. And the kids come into the office too. For the last three lessons, that was all production: working towards that final project that’s then part of the exhibit in May."

Meier and Sapienza always begin with a discussion called "What is architecture?" "I talk about what I do. We have a show and tell where I’ll bring in drawings or materials from the materials library. I also like to have kids talk about what their ideas of architecture are. It helps you as a design professional talk to kids in a way they understand. That’s a big part of the program: making architecture accessible to kids. Things like scale and proportion they often already know about. It’s about getting rid of that esoteric language we have, and showing that architecture is all around us."

Her first year, Meier and MLC teacher Anna Sapienza created a unique curriculum. "That year Minecraft was very popular, so we used that to teach them about scale and proportion and modularity," Meier recalls. "It was also the 100th birthday of their school. It’s a brick building. We decided to make a model of the school. Every kid worked on his or her own section. We used building blocks we’d colored in different colors. We just built one elevation at scale and added trees and playgrounds and what the school could be. That was exhibited along with photographs and drawings we’d produced along the way."

 

Increased requests for Architects in Schools curriculum (AFO)

In other cases, Meier says, students' final projects "are not necessarily polished models but show what their process was like. Last year there was a series of models that had been crushed under weight. They’d tested different methods of structure and studied what happens when you apply pressure. They had photographs and writing that explained what they had studied."

"It’s that back and forth between learning something and hands-on making something," Meier adds. "That’s what attracts me to the program as a design professional. I’m inside all day. AIS is a way to get outside the office, to get out and make another kind of connection. And I think for kids it’s popular because it’s so hands-on."

Being an architect can often require some long hours, especially when you're young. It would be hypocritical of me to suggest all architects have a responsibility to volunteer for programs like Architects in Schools, because if you set aside my Memorial Coliseum advocacy I hardly volunteer for charitable causes at all. But particularly as someone who grew up in a small town, I know it's possible to get all the way to college without ever truly getting a chance to study and learn about architecture. That means a lot of potentially very talented architects never enter the profession. If we can reach kids at a younger age, and show them that careers like this are possible, where you can combine a steadier paycheck than mosts artistically-inclined people get with the chance to truly impact where we live, work and play and what comprises those spaces, then the entire built environment will be better off, and thus so will we. 

 

 

Advertisements

UO students tackle urban waterfronts

A project by Georgia Barnett and Brian Campbell (images courtesy UO)

BY BRIAN LIBBY

School's out for summer, and with it comes the arrival of architecture students' final thesis projects at the city's two architecture schools, Portland State University and the University of Oregon's Portland outpost. Recently I visited exhibits at UO of student work from three different classes, and have decided to share here some projects from one class, "Soft Urban Waterfronts," taught by Gerry Gast.

"I chose this topic as a positive reaction to the 'gloom and doom' projections of rising waters and more frequent storm events that threaten urban waterfronts throughout the world," Gast said by email. "Most urban waterfronts in the industrial era, including the Willamette River edge in Portland, were developed for economic and utilitarian purposes in response to the needs of  resource-based economies, destroying existing natural systems. Given the increasing storm threats we have a choice of an engineered approach by building more expensive levies, barriers, seawalls and dikes, or to re-naturalize urban waterfronts with more 'soft' environmental approaches that restore natural systems while creating places for recreation, urban habitat restoration and beauty."

"The latter approach may not resolve all threats," Gast added, "but it can go a long way to improve cities and reduce the need for hardened defensive waterfronts.  The process will take 50-100 years, almost as long as the period during which we destroyed natural systems within cities.  The restoration process has already started in many cities, including Portland, through new policies and projects that restore habitats and natural features."

I've always enjoyed seeing what students come up with in these end-of-term thesis projects. It's one of the only times in their careers they'll be able to dream up not just architecture but to act as social programmers, deciding who or what will occupy a site. Particularly when viewing the exhibits in person, you can see that some students are good at some things and some are good at others.

Following are images and descriptions from several of Gast's students. 

Brian Campbell & Georgia Bennett, Regenerating the North Reach

Two students, Brian Campbell and Georgia Barnett collaborated on a project called "Regenerating the North Reach" (pictured above), a master plan which "remediates a toxic brownfield site in Portland’s industrial waterfront with biological techniques, creating a model for sustainable future waterfront redevelopment." Then each contributed a building. Campbell's North Reach Bioremediation Facility (bottom image) establishes "a research facility investigating cutting-edge bioremediation and aquaculture techniques on the GasCo brownfield site." Barnett's North Reach Visitor and Education Center (middle image) is about "exploring and educating on the effects of bioremediation techniques of a brownfield site in North Portland through an experiential learning center."

Red Golbat, SurgeProof

"A restorative development that promotes the erosion of a hardscaped water’s edge into a resilient buffer zone that protects against flooding and storm surges while simultaneously setting the precedent of how to approach design for a future with higher ocean levels," is how Red Golbat describes the SurgeProof project in Brooklyn's Greenpoint.

"The site is a 30-acre plot that begins on the shore and extends into the East River," he writes. "The main building is a 20 story residential tower, where each floor is double-height. It offers primarily living spaces, but has some commercial uses mixed in. The tower sits on the edge of an ecological resilient buffer zone that will help reduce the speed of the water when floods and surges occur."

Noah Green, Urban Water Stewardship

"Re-envisioning a pivotal brownfield site on Portland’s waterfront into an urban-water research laboratory," is how Noah Green describes his project, which re-imagines the Ross Island Sand & Gravel site on the east side of the Willamette River (just north of the Ross Island Bridge) as a clean-water research laboratory.

"Up and down the Willamette River are industrial sites, some still in use and others abandoned, that contaminate and damage the quality of the water," Green writes. "These changes have significant implications for irrigation, consumption, hydropower generation, and aquatic ecosystems. Additionally, access to the Willamette River in Portland is limited, at best, and non-existent in most instances. Rehabilitating damaged industrial sites into valued social spaces is critical to the health and wellbeing of urban environments and those who use them. "

Isaiah Kent, Portland Opera and Concert Hall

Isaiah Kent's Portland Opera and Concert Hall, located on the east side of the Willamette River in Portland just south of the new Tilikum Crossing. The Opera "serves as a primary location for waterfront access for the central city," he writes. "With this location, the project aims to resolve several key issues. The first is a lack of much needed public space where people can enjoy waterfront activity. Another important project goal is introducing a civic amenities district to transition the surrounding site for future growth focused on pedestrian activity...The Portland Opera is intended to be more than just a place for occasionally performances, but rather it is a place to meet."

Christina Lin, Salt Folds

The Interbay of Seattle and its rising levels is the area of focus for Christina Lin, whose Salt Folds project "looks into ways of adapting to sea level rise while restoring salt marsh habitats before heavy urban development wipes out more natural areas and allows nature to penetrate into the urban environment."  Her Salt Folds Research and Interpretive center seeks to "re-create a habitat and natural waterway to adjust and circumvent destruction from rising sea levels," to "create a natural urban parkscape for Seattle similar to Central Park in New York that pays homage to Interbay’s origins," and "to teach the public about salt marsh habitats and the restoration process as well as connect to universities programs in the area dealing with fisheries and wetland wildlife."

Quisa Reyes, Rio Grande River Restoration

Few American waterways are as depended upon for water and recreation as the Rio Grande. Luisa Reyes looks at the river as it traverses two towns and countries: El Paso, Texas and Ciudad Juarez, Mexico.

"Restoring the river to its natural state will help to slow down floodwater during monsoon seasons and allow habitat to thrive again," Reyes writes. "The river was originally used to geologically separate the two countries but further implications have been taken for further separation. The big vision of this project is that this restoration of the river and new bridge proposal can help to blur the lines between the two countries." She envisions a new pedestrian and bicycle bridge, as well as a pair of cultural centers nestled on either side with space for outdoor entertainment and surrounding live-work neighborhoods.

Tim Schneider, Tether

Tim Schneider's "Tether" project is about "realizing the ephemeral and vulnerable nature of the Upper Mississippi to ensure a sustainable future for North Minneapolis," he writes. His design "seeks to reconnect residents to the river in an experiential way by placing three installations at key points of interest along the river. These installation sites enhance the unique natural features of the river and also act as water-testing sites, to show people the pollutant level of the water in real time." Meanwhile, an Environmental Research and Learning Center "will act as a source for subsequent development, but will also investigate current environmental issues of the river system, transform those issues into environmental policies, and educate the public."

Nick Shanks, Center For Human Performance

The Center For Human Performance by Nick Shanks is a sports training and research center for the City of San Francisco, occupying Piers 30-32. "The San Francisco waterfront, once a bustling place of shipping and industry, has long past its days as a working port," he writes. "The goal of this thesis is to examine the redevelopment of a typical waterfront site through the proposal of a newly constructed sports training and research center dedicated to the study of motion." The center is intended for professional and leisure athletes, sports medicine researchers, trainers and the general public.

Meaghan Whitehorn, Mission Bay Magnet School

The Mission Bay Magnet School by Meaghan Whitehorn, located on the San Francisco Peninsula, is "designed to bring students face to face with their natural environment in the hopes that they can learn to appreciate its power and importance and become stewards of our waterfronts," she writes.

"In many other parts of the city the old industrial uses for the waterfront have been returned back to their natural state, creating lovely outdoor recreation areas, like Crissy Field and The Presidio, for their local communities. Mission Bay’s waterfront is poised to have a very similar transformation, exchanging its disused port shipping piers for tidal marshes and kelp forests." The project seeks to merge "a previously industrial area with a new community of neighborhoods in order to create a soft border between the water and our citizens," as well as ways "in which water can become an integral part of design and using it for things like energy, filtration, and a tool to teach about environmentalism and the need for people to take better care of our surroundings moving forward."

Richard H. Wilson, Alameda Point Condominum

Richard H. Wilson imagines how a former Navy operations site can become home to a new neighborhood despite the fact that within a century it's project to be inundated by rising tides, with a project called the Alameda Point Condominium anchoring a cityscape largely elevated over a ground layer given over to the merging of land and sea.

"The proposal is to soften the waterfront, plant forests, provide a public beach, preserve non-human habitat and re-use existing post-Naval operations site materials," he writes. "Two deep concrete runways serve as the base for the proposed elevated platform, raised above the threat of encroaching tides. Compact development offers prospective developers opportunities to couple onto the new raised platform. This new kind of urban experience weaves a unique development pattern to be explored and tested."

 

Advertisements

 

PSU students raising funds to build food-cart parklet

Rendering of proposed Fourth Avenue mini-park (image courtesy PSU)

BY BRIAN LIBBY

If students from Portland State University's School of Architecture are successful in a fundraising campaign that concludes in a few days, downtown Portland may be getting something it could really use: seating for food-cart pods.

A student-designed mini-park (or park let, as it's commonly known), occupying a succession of curbside parking spots, has been approved by the city of Portland for installation in front of the Southwest 4th Avenue food carts. The park was designed with sustainability and community building in mind, using locally sourced building materials and native plants. It's also designed to be wheelchair accessible.

But to complete the project, it needs funding. PSU's School of Architecture, its Institute for Sustainable Solutions and the SoMa EcoDistrict Steering Committee have launched a crowdfunding campaign to gather donations—small and large— to finance building materials for the parklet. Luckily as of today, the project has raised $14,211 of its $15,350. Just a few more donations are needed. But the campaign only goes for four more days.

“Parklets—these small green spaces that extend out from the sidewalk—are being embraced by cities across the country as tools for community building,” says BD Wortham-Galvin, assistant professor at PSU’s School of Architecture. “We’re thrilled to have been approved by Portland’s Street Seats Program to build downtown’s first truly public parklet, and we can’t wait to construct this shared space in front of our popular food carts.”

Rendering of proposed Fourth Avenue mini-park (image courtesy PSU)

If fundraising is successful, Wortham-Galvin will teach an architecture class this spring that will focus on finalizing the design, constructing the parklet, and then installing it in front of the food carts over the course of one weekend. The park will provide much-needed seating for the popular lunch spot and add an attractive gathering space to the south end of downtown Portland.

What's more, even though this Fourth Avenue food cart area is perhaps not as popular or prominent as cart pods such as that on SW 10th Avenue at Alder downtown, the parklet here could create precedent for similar street seating areas at these and other food cart destinations. While food-cart pods outside of downtown often have seating areas in the middle, such as at the SE 12th and Hawthorne pod or the one at North Mississippi and Skidmore, downtown food-cart areas spend much of the year selling food to people who need shelter to eat it in. If patronizing the 10th & Alder pods, for example, if it's raining and one doesn't have a home or office downtown the best one can hope for is to traipse a few blocks to Director Park to eat under its awning.

"Daily lots of people go and purchase food and then leave," Wortham-Galvin says of food carts and their patrons. "They go back to offices, hallways and other interior spaces. If we provide a place for people to sit (alone or in groups), they can stay outside and revel in being in public. We are social creatures and even if we are eating alone, it's more enjoyable to do so when we can people watch. The parklet takes this into account and offers a variety of seating: a high bar stool type, group bench, and individual bench. It also makes the neighborhood a more interesting place when we give people a reason to interact with each rather than run back inside with their meal."

Rendering of proposed Fourth Avenue mini-park (image courtesy PSU)

The food-cart parklet idea is also part of a broader movement, one that transcends food carts: creating usable public space from curbside parking spots. Obviously we need to maintain street parking, but giving up a few spots here and there amidst the thousands of spots available is an easy decision.

In addition, the parklet design and campaign is merely the latest example of how PSU's young architecture school (accredited only in recent years) is making a name for itself not only with a focus on sustainability, but in making its students and faculty active in the community, and designing for real-world problems and opportunities.

"A 21st century university needs to bridge the gap between learning and applied knowledge," Wortham-Galvin says. "It also needs to be more issue based rather than siloed by discipline. With the design and building of this parklet, students are trying to answer a fundamental but critical question: How do we make and sustain great public places? Instead of writing a paper on it, they get to put their knowledge in service to others as well as themselves. When learning is a shared and public process, all of us have a stake in everyone's education."

 

Advertisements

PSU-designed SAGE classrooms: a brighter, greener alternative to portables

SAGE classroom in Edmonds, Washington (photo by Peter Simon, PSU)

BY BRIAN LIBBY

Today America's K-12 schools use some 350,000 portable trailers as classrooms. Lacking many windows, they have been shown to be insufficient learning environments compared to brick-and-mortar schools. But a new effort led by two Portland State University faculty members, Margarette Leite and her husband Sergio Palleroni, is starting to change that with SAGE ("Smart Academic Green Environment") classroom.

With the new academic year, nine SAGE classrooms have opened their doors at five schools in the Edmonds School District in Washington. In addition, the Corvallis Waldorf School will begin classes in a new  building sporting three of the classrooms. Three more SAGE classrooms will be installed at an Edmonds School District high school in December. A ribbon-cutting ceremony for the Corvallis Waldorf School classroom is scheduled to take place on Thursday, October 2.

These learning spaces, designed to meet LEED criteria by students in PSU's School of Architecture as supervised by Palleroni and Leite, feature plenty of natural light as well as the ability to maintain thermal comfort without using much energy thanks to high-efficiency energy-recovery ventilators, which take the place of traditional HVAC systems and are capable of providing 100 percent fresh air. Overall, these classrooms will cut energy use in half while providing approximately four times the windows of conventional portable classrooms. Other features include bio-based flooring, natural cork bulletin boards, VOC-free paints and high vaulted ceilings that expose the building’s systems, enabling students to learn about how these structures are powered and constructed.

SAGE classroom in Edmonds, Washington (photo by Peter Simon, PSU)

The SAGE initiative was supported by the PSU Institute for Sustainable Solutions and Oregon governor John Kitzhaber’s Oregon Solutions initiative, which helped connect the project to partners including manufacturer Blazer Industries, AIA/Portland, Energy Trust of Oregon, Oregon BEST, PAE Engineering, and many others. SAGE classrooms are distributed in the Northwest by Pacific Mobile Structures of Chehalis, Washington. Other national distributors include Satellite Shelters and Triumph Modular.

Recently I asked Leite a few additional questions about the sustainable classrooms.

Portland Architecture: How much do SAGE classrooms cost to produce, and how does that compare to the modular classrooms (a.k.a. trailers) that schools have used in the past?

Leite: The cost of a single SAGE is approx 90,000 (unit only, no site costs).  When compared with the average cost of new modulars that PPS purchased in 2009 and 2010 (so the cost may even be higher now but those were the numbers that were available to us at the time), that puts our cost at only 20% higher.  Granted, Portland chooses somewhat higher quality units so if you go outside of Portland you can find modulars costing around $50,000-60,000, but we are usually talking one window and cheap materials.

Is there some reason for optimism that there will eventually be more orders? Have you received inquiries from other districts?

Yes, there is strong reason to believe we will get more orders.  Our sales people at Pacific Mobile have received a lot of calls from other school districts, I'm just not at liberty to name them until the deals are done. In fact, we are getting calls asking about entire sage schools.  It seems the local buzz about modular classrooms in recent times has begun moving parents and teachers to pressure their school districts for better classrooms and we are seeing that shift in the numbers of districts inquiring about the classroom.

SAGE classroom interiro in Edmunds, Washington (photo by Peter Simon, PSU)
 

How many competitors does the SAGE have that are also trying to provide schools with sustainable and natural-light-filled classrooms, or are you alone locally?

In Oregon, we are not seeing a lot of options in green classrooms, which is why we began this process and why the governor's initiative (Oregon Solutions) was excited to support it. That doesn't mean that other companies don't offer greener upgrade possibilities to their clients; it's just that a comprehensive design that takes a lot of the guesswork out of the decision-making process for schools that don't have the time and resources to devote to that, hasn't been offered or it hasn't hit the right price point. 

With respect to the cost issue, as you can imagine it is difficult to compare as it depends on options chosen etc. Suffice to say that the classroom starts around $100/105 per square foot and can be anywhere from 20 percent more ( as in Portland) to twice the cost of the cheapest options. Of course, the buildings last twice as long and use half as much energy and offer amenities not found in most classrooms like energy recovery ventilation, low velocity fans, lots of windows, vaulted ceilings and solar powered ventilators.

 

Advertisements

Studying prefab's expanding possibilities

Rendering diagram from Jackie Davis's final project (courtesy UO)

BY BRIAN LIBBY

Over the past decade, prefab architecture has steadily gathered attention and investment, with the chintzy sheet-metal-clad, mass produced trailer-park homes of the previous generation giving way to high-end architecture that’s factory made but thoughtfully designed by architects like Frank Genry disciple Michelle Kaufman.

Besides just single-family residences, prefab is increasingly being embraced for multifamily housing projects and commercial architecture. It’s perhaps inevitable given prefab’s substantially lower construction costs, a quicker construction schedule, better quality control and less waste. There are various forms of prefab and modular architecture, and it can, with the help of some kind of architectural structural framework, grow to the height and density of skyscrapers, such as with the 32-story residential tower under construction in Brooklyn’s Atlantic Yards development (which also includes the Barclays Center arena). But most multi-unit prefab housing projects are decidedly smaller.

This medium-density prefab was the topic of a University of Oregon architecture class’s final projects, which I checked out a few weeks ago at the invitation of professor William Macht. Macht assigned the prefab housing class to design housing that is “intended to be flexible in development and ownership, either by a single owner, multiple owners or collectively. The density, at 32 units per acre, is intended to go beyond ADUs but not to high-density. This should also permit an alternative infill development pattern both within cities and more urban fringe and suburban areas,” he explained by email. The idea of different sized units is to permit people of different ages to live in close proximity, whether unrelated or in an extended family. Age segregation is a large and growing problem.”

Alan Chou & Henry Smith's project (courtesy UO)

Set aside the notion of prefab for a moment and consider the broader land-use context. With continuing city and state goals for limiting sprawl and adding density via urban infill, it is often multi-family condo and apartment buildings that get the most attention and even sometimes controversy when such structures abut neighborhoods of single-family homes. We see headlines of such battles regularly, be it projects on Division Street or Williams Avenue to name two recent examples. But between these housing types is another a variety of medium density architecture that often goes overlooked but is an important part of the real estate market.

Into that equation, prefab has made modest progress, Macht believes, but none have truly been able to move far beyond single orders into broad mass production, where the profits lie. Existing models bear the added cost of transport of units on oversized vehicles at great expense as wide-load cargoes with lead and trailer cars needing expensive cranes at the site. 

Even so, particularly at medium density Macht believes prefab could be a way to build flexibly: adding as much as one can upfront with the option to add units later. It can also provide opportunity for extended families of different ages and generations to live together. More importantly in a region like ours with density borne from land-use laws restricting sprawl, the more efficient use of space multi-family prefab can bring can aid in that process. “Planning policies still overwhelmingly favor single-family detached houses with mandated front, rear and side yard setbacks,” Macht says. “A typical 2,000 square foot, single family detached house occupies about 1,000 square feet of land on a parcel of at least 5,000 square feet. Therefore the footprint comprises 20 percent or less of the land area, leading to housing sprawl.”

Projects by Rachel Peterson (top) Tim Dudley (bottom) (courtesy UO)

Obviously many people cherish their yards, and having some distance from their neighbors. But not all can afford that. Clustered prefab units stopping short of full-on condo or apartment buildings have a place in this market, perhaps especially in suburbs.

For the final project in Macht’s class, each student was asked to adapt an existing system, or propose an alternative system, for the design of four units of different sizes (500, 1000, 1500 and 2000 square feet, respectively) on a standard 50-by-100-foot city lot. They also had to come up with one parking space and private outdoor space for each unit; in the case of outdoor space, it could be combined into one common space. The total estimated development cost including land and system development charges, was not to exceed $200 per square foot.

I was there along with a small group of architects and a developer as part of a critique of student projects, although I felt as if I was learning more from the students than they’d learn from my comments.

Their presentations encompassed the range of modular types, which have to do with how much a unit is assembled before it gets loaded onto a big truck for delivery to the site. Some students chose versions almost entirely factory made, others designs with the walls and floors. One interesting aspect of this medium-density housing type is that it seems to pull the designer either in the direction of a single-family home or a larger multifamily building as its inspiration. Only some of the students seemed able to create variations on stacked modular units. Most simply arranged the long blocks of form on one side of a lot or another, just varying on how they divided up outdoor green spaces and parking spaces. But a few seemed to grasp three-dimensionally the idea that in the most efficient designs the roof of one unit becomes, say, the garden patio of another.

Project by Willie Sanchez & Adam Lawler (courtesy UO)

I also took interest in the non-architectural precedents and inspirations the students incorporated into their designs. One used the game Tetris, likening the arrangement its differently sized falling blocks to fitting various configurations of building onto a lot. Two other students used self-assembly kitchen shelving as inspiration, in which shelves snap on to metal poles for support.

For those students or architects looking to work in prefab, the job requires a different skillset and business model. One has to be more of a problem solver, particularly as it relates to space: these have to fit onto trucks to be transported. And with the added cost of transportation, reducing cost without compromising material quality is paramount. Even so, prefab and modular offer architects the chance to design for clients or to sell their own.

“It’s not for everybody,” says architect Stuart Emmons, who was part of the jury critique group for Macht’s class (and with whom, in full disclosure, I worked on the Coliseum campaign.) “It works for some things and it doesn’t for a lot of things. I don’t see myself as a traditional architect any more. I see myself as a quasi developer and provider of units. It’s a different way of designing, a different mindset. It’s almost backwards in some ways and forwards in others. It gets very technical. I guess the other thing is everything has to be figured out before hand. It’s like an industrial design product. That’s a very different animal than what architects are used to. I think it will slowly come in more in the United States, but Japan is way ahead of us. So are Sweden and Holland and other countries. We’ll get there.”

 

Advertisements

UO students imagine public space - and their own careers

Scott Winters' Bellingham Museum of Energy & Environmental Sciences (courtesy UO)

BY BRIAN LIBBY

Last week I visited the University of Oregon's White Stag building for what is an annual ritual: architecture students presenting their thesis projects. At the invitation of UO professor Gerry Gast, I perused the work of his graduate-level architecture studio class entitled "The Urban Stage."

Each year the event poses a dilemma: if one attends an official student presentation, there is the chance to hear in depth for up to an hour the ideas, details and inspirations behind a project. But with 16 students per class, and work from two other classes on display (Biosynergies Thesis Studio with professor Nancy Cheng and Regenerative Design Thesis Studio with professor Hajo Neis), if one only has a couple of hours to devote, that leaves time to hear maybe two presentations and none left to see other students' work. In the past I'd done the former, listening to a couple in-depth student presentations. This time I chose to wander on my own perusing all the students' work, although I found myself missing students' insight into their work.

[In full disclosure, the University of Oregon's architecture department is a Portland Architecture sponsor.]

Gast has been teaching at the University of Oregon since 1994, and has taught this public-buildings class for the past eight years. I asked him if students had changed much in that time. "There has been a remarkably small change in student attitudes. All architecture students tend to be filled with idealism and enthusiasm. That has never really waned," he says. "There’s been the ups and downs of the economy, but they are still very optimistic. I think that’s true of students in all fields: even though the jobs have been cut back, they’re confident in their career choice. We have maybe seen since '08 a little more interest in you might say courses that deal with more professional subjects and less in theory. But there’s still a balance. UO’s not a theory or a practice school. It tries to be both. Our students like to get into the details but still try to have a vision."

Ryan Tyni's Santa Barbara Boathouse (rendering courtesy UO)

To be an architect requires a diverse set of skills: the visual acumen to draw and render forms, the sense of social and physical engineering to create functional spaces, and the charisma to meet and understand and express clients' wishes and dreams. Part of the interest in attending student-thesis presentations is to see how those skills come together, or are in the process of doing so. To present a thesis isn't the same as being an architect, but it requires a lot of the same skills.

"The work needed to be able to stand alone without a student presenting it, as this was an exhibition as well as a review," said Becca Cavell of THA Architecture, who attended and critiqued the presentations this year and is scheduled to teach a UO studio this fall. "Some of the presentations were exceptionally well designed from a graphic standpoint – great overall layouts, strong use of color and tone, and good typographic design can generate immediately attractive spreads that draw you to them. The models help too – some of the large scale, detailed models exploring architectural tectonics did a good job of saying, 'Look at me.'"

A music school in Bend by Marayd Allen (rendering courtesy UO)

But, Cavell added, "The thrill of creating a 3-D model sometimes sidetracks students from the importance of providing reviewers with some basic information – good plans, sections and elevations are still useful for a quick understanding of a project as well as showing how a project has been appropriately developed. And while public speaking is easy for some, harder for others, excruciating for some, it’s an important part of life as a professional and one of the most under-taught skills in architecture school. Most of these students seemed well rested and had some idea about what they were going to say about their work, but some of them still struggled to convey the main themes of their work in a concise manner."

"My biggest criticism?  It was incredible how many students – the vast majority – failed to adequately educate the newcomer about their site and its context," Cavell said. "Weeks and months of exhaustive research and documentation was forgotten in the excitement of the final building design. We, the reviewers, need to know: where is this?  What are the neighboring buildings like? Which way is north? What is it like here? Without this information it is hard to formulate an idea about a project."

Peter Hamilton's Water Museum and freeway cap in Santa Monica (rendering courtesy UO)

The student projects from Gast's class, which were charged with designing some kind of urban public space, offered an interesting variety. Some, such as Ryan Tyni and Ashley Koger, imagined boathouses along the water as places for intermingling and forming community ties. Others, such as Natasha Shirazi, Colin Jensen and Sarah Lundy, created community centers centered around creative arts. Jeremy Katich and Patrick Taylor imagined artisan food emporiums, while Nate Wood and Scott Winters created museums.

Given that some student projects were set in Portland and others elsewhere, I asked Gast how much of an example our city provides. 

"We’re very fortunate in Portland to have so many good public space examples. We’re a good resource. But I also like to have people look at other places in the world where there are exciting things happening; projects like the Oslo Opera House, for example, are very stimulating," he said. "Portland doesn’t really have that kind of spectacular architecture that combines new public spaces with signature buildings. It would be nice to have a few more spectacular urban buildings like that. We have spaces like Pioneer Courthouse Square. But it doesn’t engage particular buildings. I tried with the studio to create interactions between buildings and outdoor public spaces and look at the tensions and relationships. We don’t have a space like the Seattle Library, which is a very stimulating interior public space, or the Olympic sculpture park. We really could use more of that. We really don’t have anything on the riverfront that’s provocative that’s been done recently."

Colin Jensen's Hood River Makers' Market (rendering courtesy UO)

"I think the students did investigate the whole idea of public space in depth," Gast added. "We looked at various philosophies of public space and writers like Richard Sennett who have written about public spaces as opportunities for diversity: to meet and engage with people not like themselves. I think our best example is Saturday Market: you have a whole wide range of people who show up for that. I think we need more events and spaces for that. if we could get a public market on the level of seattle or even a lesser example it’d be great. But I would hope we could get some public buildings like the Seattle public library that are open to lots of different people all the time and make some of our architecture more accessible and public. We really don’t have that kind of building here."

Still, it was illuminating to see these grad students complete the high-wire act of generating designs and presenting them to not only grading professors but members of the professional public with real criticisms to offer. If it's daunting, though, it also may be the way to a job.

"These end-of-my-life-as-a-student shows are also recruitment fairs," Cavell says. "Some students get this: they put out business cards and promote themselves well. Marketing is another under-understood aspect of our profession and some of these students are naturals. We should hire them."

 

Advertisement

PSU's Sergio Palleroni on creating the nation's first Center for Public Interest Design

Sergio Palleroni and students in Ladakh, India (image courtesy PSU)

BY BRIAN LIBBY

Earlier this month, Portland State University’s School of Architecture announced the launch of its new Center for Public Interest Design, a research center investigating the power of design to make social, economic and environmental change in disadvantaged communities worldwide. The Center is the first of its kind in the nation and is headed by Professor Sergio Palleroni, a recipient of the American Institute of Architects’ prestigious Latrobe Prize for Public Interest Practice in Architecture in 2011.

Recently I spoke with Palleroni about the Center's creation, how it reflects a changing profession, and how Portland figures in as its base of operations.

Portland Architecture: How did you get involved in this field?

Palleroni: I kind of grown into my role. I grew up in Latin America. When in came to the US I thought, 'Here’s a country with extraordinary resources.' I’d seen the other side of poverty and I thought here the research could be transformative. When I went into practice I was driven by those people in need. There were lots of people in need of our services but people weren’t aware of that. It was my journey to take them to the other side of the railroad tracks, people we didn’t see in architecture magazines. I could have spent the rest of my life designing one school or clinic after the other. But there was something missing. If we were going to make change it needed to be more systemic.

The CPDI is the first of its kind in the nation.  Is this emblematic of an emerging field? 

When I got the Latrobe prize I set out to look at public interest practice occurring: projects that were noteworthy and models of practice that make it possible to address problems we don’t traditionally address, or not for clients we don’t. What we’re doing is literally opening the door for people to begin to understand how these practices operate and to dig deeper.

We found these practices are incredibly synergetic. They survived better in the recession. It also made us aware that the set of skills these architects have. They have planning skills, skills writing grants coming forth and maneuvering a project through public process. Take a local designer like Kevin Cavenaugh, whom we interviewed. He decided the only way to do it is to become your own developer. That’s a new set of skills that you add and can address this need.

What kind of reach do you hope to have?

We are based here at PSU but our audience we hope to influence American education of students so people can teach this in studios or in outreach projects or in professional practice. We also hope to address the profession. How do we do this in learning units and educate professionals about needs they’ve seen but don’t’ know how to do it? Then there’s the research part, taking on strategic projects like the sage classroom, taking a modular building and breaking the nut of affordability. But it’s not just design or practice research but also the markets and communities, the contexts in which they exist. We’re going to continue to grow a database of practices about also adding new research into products like the sage. How do you operate in a constricted environment like that like modular construction? What is that role and how?

What we teach and research in schools needs to lead to greater opportunities to address growing public need. In 20 years a third of the world will be poor and 70 percent in cities. You think, 'How do I work in that environment?' We’re trying to provide some insights into how you might be doing that.

Do you sense a groundswell in the profession for public interest design?

I was in Berlin for a huge conference in December, Structures for Inclusion, that brought people from everywhere. What was interesting was we were all facing the same problem. The support for schools and situations is diminishing because we are strapped. But the need schools can provide is growing. As we talked, we realized we need to be more applied. The knowledge we teach in schools needs to lead to actual applications.

The late great Sam Mockbee spoke on it 13 years ago, but a lot of people were just starting in the field. It was the first time we all became aware we weren’t alone in this. We began to exchange stories. But we wanted to now: could we connect the dots and create a kind of transformative change in the system? Since then it’s been like going from BC to AD. After we started meeting, we got more systemic about it and started to learn from each other’s experience and a lot of us moving into teaching, because that’s one of the most affective ways to make change. We’ve gotten better in that way. We’ve continued to be practitioners but we’ve taken on tools we didn’t have.

The highest levels of the profession are saying, ‘Change is here: tell us what it’s all about.’ There’s a growing awareness. If you asked me 28 years ago if I imagined doing this, no. I imagined being in Guatemala building someone a school. I didn’t imagine myself actually analyzing what I do and teaching people how to do it, or how I could put more of the needs of the community within the structure of the exchange.

Why be based in Portland? How do you see the city given what you do?

In a way you might think I should have just gone to Mumbai, not in Portland where it’s like preaching to the converted. But it’s interesting. At some point you realize you have to be the most effective you can be. You have to go to places where people are trying to connect the dots. Because it advances things much further. Some of the best conversations are happening here in Portland about re-imagining what a city might be like, ideas of social equity and how we can feed ourselves from within a city.

When I’m in the middle of Africa or Mexico, an issue I’ve encountered has almost always happened here in Portland. I can sit there with a thousand other people discussing eco districts or urban farming and it can advance my thinking when I’m out there.

In every place in history there are places like this, which are trying to advance human thinking. People are really actually questioning some of the fundamental things we do. Some things Portland doesn’t do well. But I always find myself learning from the things that I’m seeing. Enough people come here and bring ideas that I’m always learning. Then the other thing is, you’ve got to find a place to live that is safe and where you can recharge your batteries and have a civil discussion about what you’ve experience and get feedback from people who understand. Portland is magic in that way and I’m thankful.

It’s like The Odyssey. Eventually you come home.

SAGE Classroom (image courtesy PSU)

Can you talk about some of the projects the Center is involved with, such as the SAGE classroom, and an orphanage and technical school in Titanyen, Haiti?

There are three scales working really well as we launch the Center.

At one level we have the Haiti project, which we took on because of this development grant we got from France and allowed us to have this great partnership with the Ecole Speciale d’Architecture. We’re creating the orphanage in Haiti with a radical mission to make street orphans the environmental stewards of Haiti’s future. We’ve completed all the dorms and classrooms and are about to build a bakery. It has a couple hundred kids who are moving very fast. We’re hoping the rest of the landscape will be a model, a case study, of how to rebuild.

The Sage classroom is based on a national problem: that we’re building modulars for our school needs. We were one of the showcase buildings at Greenbuild. It’s had a huge success. We’ve got to the process of copywriting the design, creating an open source copyright were profits go into future research. We’ve sold it to all the major distributors in Canada. This summer we’re launching projects in several states where they’ll be implemented. I’ve learned a lot about legal mechanisms and schools and how you make change in something that’s industrial and systemic. It’s taken a long time to rethink the system. I’m just going into a meeting with the business school about how it can be marketed.

And we are working with the Rosewood community in Portland, helping them come up with a series of design guidelines that will guide economic development.

How do these projects track three different aspects of where you're headed?

We’ll develop them, and synthesize what they tell us about the possibilities for new forms of practice. It’s everything from planning to landscape design to financial planning to planning and industrial processes. They’re inextricable, a ball of string where it all goes back to the same source. That’s the cool thing about doing practice now. We no longer assume one central paradigm defines practice. We’re starting to assume the practice is messy and complex and can engage more issues than we’ve given it or thought possible to work with. Design is all of a sudden this hot commodity. We’re collaborating with the Stanford business school. Design thinking is the kind of complex thinking that’s needed to get to the future.

We need to go back to asking ourselves the fundamental questions, and understanding the world’s complex, and the ideas we’ll need to engage it are too. It’ll take us into realms that are not strictly designed, but maybe how a building gets financed, or how we implement something. Designers are beginning to realize essential parts of practicing in the modern world: how we might to that constructively. How do we even know the questions we can ask of other professionals and how we engage them?

The cool thing is if you think about it, it makes it easier to lead in my mind a productive and peaceful life, a life where you feel realized. Rather than architecture being your day job, the things that you’ve read in the newspaper can come into your designs. Why can’t the feelings we have about the world be part of design?

Housing for the homeless in Haiti (image courtesy PSU)

How challenging is it to find funding for these different endeavors?

One of the problems is we keep thinking that this is necessarily not a way to make money. One of the most fundamental conversations I have with local organizations like Outside In and Central City Concern is that Oregon has really become a pilot case for Obamacare: people are considering that housing for people who can’t afford it actually saves the state money over that person winding up in the emergency room and receiving treatment. It’s cheaper to help that person with housing than to turn you back on them. So how can we change the logic of this?

We’ve painted ourselves into a corner of how things work. We need to rethink things from the ground up. Say, is that true? Is it verifiable? Is housing the poor a net loss, or does it make us richer as a community? That’s one of the most exciting conversations I’m involved with. If that is true, there are literally hundreds of jobs for Oregon architects to be involved with. It’s actually preventative healthcare.

Should the health care money actually fund housing? That might be the best health care investment.

After a while we stop questioning. We know that the system has fundamental problems. Business as usual is not going to solve them. We need to go back and ask is the logic of things working? That’s what the center is about. Where do opportunities come from?

 

Advertisements

Seismic resilience in public schools: talking with Ted Wolf

Roosevelt high School (photo by Matthew Ginn)

BY BRIAN LIBBY

Last November, voters approved a $482 million school construction bond for Portland Public Schools by a two thirds majority.

The bond will fully renovate three high schools - Grant, Roosevelt and Franklin - while replacing Faubion School (which serves Pre-K through 8th graders), strengthening several other schools against earthquakes, and repaying previous loans that funded 9 roof replacements, 47 boiler conversions, and construction of the Rosa Parks School. The bond will additionally increase access to schools for students, teachers and visitors with disabilities and upgrade science classrooms at middle grade schools.

Although the $482 million will do much to address ongoing physical needs at these schools, neither their upkeep nor funding will ever be complete. The average age of PPS schools is more than 65 years old. More than half of PPS schools were built in the 1940s or earlier. What's more, the district's funding structure means PPS must continually go to voters hat-in-hand for funding in a manner that means they are always fighting from behind to keep up with deferred maintenance.

In anticipation of a continuing-education symposium on June 7 at the Portland chapter of the American Institute of Architects called "Seismic Resiliency in our Schools" (which unfortunately uses the non-word "resiliency" rather than "resilience"), I spoke with one of its organizers, writer Ted Wolf, co-founder of Oregon Parents for Quake Resistant Schools.

Portland Architecture: Why do you think last fall's $482 million bond was successful with voters while other past bond measures have failed? Did we become less cheap-skates or was it a better bond?

Wolf: First it was a school bond proposal that put earthquake safety as a priority. Voters embraced that priority.

The second is in the specifics of the program actually proposed they did some very significant things. The school bond selects four schools for complete rebuilding or modernization: Franklin, Grant and Roosevelt are three of the oldest complexes in the district, approaching 100 years old. They also have significant amounts of unreinforced masonry (URM) in their system. They are three big buildings with big potential liability. They’re not the only three URM schools in the district, but the district is touching more than 50 percent of the enrolment in their unreinforced masonry schools I don’t know of any school district anywhere that’s made such a smart choice about the schools they selected. 

The fourth was Faubion, a K-8 school in the Concordia neighborhood. It’s going to be rebuilt as a partnership with Concordia University. Faubion is in this really crappy building. It was built to take on an overflow of students after the Vanport flood. It was supposed to be a temporary school. So Faubion will be rebuilt from the ground up.

Also, it is worth mentioning that the bond also directs significant investment, on the order of $70+ million, to seismic upgrades and re-roofing projects that will be performed at dozens of Portland schools in summer projects over the next 8 years -- beginning this summer with a seismic retrofit project at historic Alameda Elementary School. Those smaller projects also make a considerable contribution to the seismic resilience of the district as a whole, and to the safety of schoolchildren and teachers.

There's been talk of Vernonia's new school serving as an example; even though it's designed to resist floods rather than earthquakes, the thinking behind it seems innovative. What are some successful school designs in our metro area?

I think the experience of Vernonia is going to be carefully considered. Other high schools like Sandy are considered state of the art. There are ones in the Vancouver district. And school architects are very attuned to those projects.

Franklin High School (photo by Matthew Ginn)

Particularly with the recent tornado in Oklahoma, there has been increasing talk of how schools can serve as community resources and shelters in times of emergency. Could future bonds address this?

That’s challenging because it’s expensive to incorporate into schools. The pro-forma that guides that is life safety. A school building is usually designed so it can withstand disaster without posing threat to the building occupants: so people can leave the building safely before it collapses. But to go to a higher level of performance, what's called immediate occupancy, that people need to go back right into and use, that’s a lot more engineering and expense. People are generous to schools, but usually not that generous. If it’s going to be a shelter, there may need to be additional funds for that beyond school bonds. Just building a school to 2013 standards is not enough to deliver what people expect in terms of that community safety.

How does the June 7 symposium fit into the conversation?

It’s a bookend in a way. In 2011, not long after a previous school bond failed, AIA/Portland held a symposium called Preparing For Seismic Certainty. They asked a lot of profound questions of design and the future of old buildings. PPS had a good contingent of facilities staff who attended that and participated. With this event now, this bond is in place and the plan is rolled out and we’ll begin this summer. It’s an interesting thing for the design community to look at this from a position of strength. We have new resources available. How will that affect the future of the school district? We’re getting down to brass tacks, and that’s exciting and instructive. And they’re incorporating a lot of design experience from Seattle and projects elsewhere.

 

Advertisements

Designing an architecture school: a conversation with PSU's Clive Knights and Jeff Schnabel

Ecological Learning Plaza, Shattuck Hall (photo by Brian Libby)

BY BRIAN LIBBY

The fall term at Portland State University doesn't begin for a few weeks yet, but on a recent visit to Shattuck Hall, the architeture deparment's home, there was already a palpable energy.

As my bicycle pulled up to the renovated circa-1915 Shattuck on SW Broadway, a new plaza presented itself as the department's new front yard cum outdoor laboratory. At the Ecological Learning Plaza, planned and built by PSU Department of Architecture faculty and students over the course of the last year and intended as a green testing ground for designing and researching sustainable building materials and methods, there are currently, the two main experiments taking place. One is a mockup of a sloped green that will inform the design of the much-larger green roof being planned for the Conservation Discovery Zone at the Oregon Zoo. In an experiment funded by Metro, there are also four vertical growing systems (also known as green walls) with several different irrigation types, which will provide data about the quality and quantity of water runoff from the walls.

Moving inside, Shattuck Hall itself is an exceptional space following the red brick former elementary school's $13 million renovation in 2008 (overseen by SRG Partnership). With walls removed and hallways enlivened with a bevy of experimental furniture projects, it's a kind of enlightened hive of naturally-lit studios with a rooftop gallery, digital lab, and facilities for model-making, woodworking, metalworking and digital fabrication.

Inside Shattuck Hall (photo courtesy PSU)

After touring the building with Department of Architecture chair Clive Knights and professor Jeff Schnabel, we sat down to discuss the department's evolution over the past five years to develop its own accredited graduate architecture program. After beginning the process in 2007, the department is set to receive its third and final inspection from the National Architecture Accrediting Board (NAAB) that will give accreditation in perpetuity.

Now that PSU is a full-fledged graduate architecture program, I asked Knights and Schnabel what kind of identity they wanted it to have.

"First is that we all buy in to the idea of making," Knights explained. "Architecture has a cerebral dimension but predominantly it’s a physical act, a communication through materials: getting in the process of making something for someone else. It’s not solipsistic. It’s about offering it to a community or to an “other”. That’s a really powerful idea to practice, to find new things to say to others through the intermediary of the product. Having stuff in our hand and manipulating it with an idea in mind: if we lose touch with that, we’ve lost touch with our foundation."

A culture of making is one of three emphasis points, Knights said. The second is that the Department of Architecture must always be engaged in topics that matter to the city. Portland itself becomes a laboratory. Third is "being aware that we’re involved in a process of helping communities form and express their identity through the work that we make for them," Knights calls it. "Again, everything is for the sake of others. Students are always making within the context of Portland, and those issues are drawing a community other than ourselves."

Schnabel also emphasized PSU's identity as going deeper. "When two of our students were given internships at Nike, a really nice compliment that was paid by the recruiter: that their work had a narrative quality," he explained. "They had something to say about the work that was rooted in culture. It wasn’t just programmatic requirements. Architecture, we believe, goes beyond just a building. Something rises to the field of architecture because it connects to larger cultural ideas." 

"I’ve always maintained we don’t want to be just another school," added Knights. "What do we want to be, then?  We want to be media diverse, whereas some schools are becoming technologically obsessed. We want to remain rooted in craft and making things. That by its nature is different from other schools. We have to make sure that work gets out into the public realm. I think the identity of the school is tied to the work produced there. Making our work more publicly available is a big goal."

"To a large extent it’s already happening," Schnabel said. "We’re attracting students internationally that want to work specifically with Sergio Palleroni [who has been acclaimed for numerous projects serving under privileged people in developing nations]. They know his work and the awards he’s won, and the want to be part of that, particularly when it’s doing design for populations typically underserved by designers. We’re also attracting students interested in the intersection of architecture and urban design. They’re seeking out B.D Wortham Galvin here. I think the word is out in certain kind of key areas of our mission, and the individuals we’ve been able to bring on."

"We know who we are and who we want to be," Knights added, "and it’s important that we stay true to that."

 

Advertisements

Master class on a simple structure: UO and OCAC students collaborate on imaginative Burn Box shelter

Burn Box at OCAC (photo by Brian Libby)

BY BRIAN LIBBY

In recent decades, smokers in public buildings and spaces have been pushed further out to the margins: not just outside the doors of architecture, in some cases, but a stipulated several yards away. But when you're an art school, it's par for the course that some students are going to smoke. Without condoning smoking itself, why not give smokers a better place to smoke?

That was just one of the motivations behind the new Burn Box, a shelter recently constructed at the Oregon College of Art & Craft as part of a collaborative design-build project involving students at both OCAC and the University of Oregon.

"As things started going forward we were really interested in having this conversation between hands-on competence, this knowledge through making, but also this idea of architecture students bringing something," explains OCAC professor Karl Burkheimer, who head's the school's wood department oversaw the project along with UO architecture professor Nathan Corser (also of IDC Architects) as part of a joint-school design/build class.

Top: Burn Box exterior, Bottom: interior  (photos by Brian Libby)

When OCAC expanded its hillside campus (off SW Barnes Road) with new buildings by Boston-area architect Charles Rose, the lower pathway leading into the school became more or less the front door. While the Rose buildings are handsome and thoughtfully designed, one first encounters leading to them a large concrete wall as part of an accompanying stairway. At the bottom of the hill beside the parking lot, a makeshift tin-roofed smoking smokers' shelter had been built a few years before, but the OCAC and UO students, working through their ideas with San Francisco-based architecture firm Anderson Anderson Architecture, decided to build a new shelter into the hillside.

"It’s not so much about smoking but a place where everybody can hang out, the smokers and the non-smokers," Burkheimer adds. "And so this was an idea of really having a pavilion or some meeting point, some recognizable point of gathering. "

The Burn Box is constructed using stacked pieces of standard 4x4 wood. "The 4x4s intrigued us because it was just one size of wood," one student, Michael Prohov, told me on a recent project tour. "At this point in the game we were still designing as we were building, so having the same sized module allowed us to start work while we were still figuring out some of the other elements of the design. it also matches with some of the old shingled buildings around the campus. Anderson Anderson Architecture had an interesting charrette process, where we were really freely sketching ideas by hand and doing some modeling. That got things started, and at a certain point we narrowed it down to three concepts. This 'stacked' concept is one that we all really liked. Everybody was really drawn to this idea because of its simplicity, and it terms of material and construction we all felt we could get it done in the 10-week span. It’s trying to preserve the idea of stacked dimension of lumber and then carving it out and creating a connection on the outside. It's also adding clarity to the arrival point of campus, and circulation for how you get up to the visitors center, and just as a statement that tones down that concrete wall as it relates to the landscape."

The stacked wood pieces were charred on the outside using an ancient Japanese technique called shou-sugi-ban meant to provide protection against rotting and insects. But it also became an aesthetic move, especially after OCAC students painted the edges of the stacked 4x4 pieces. From a distance, the smoking shelter now looks like a stack of matchsticks.

Top: Burn Box from above, Bottom: exterior detail (photos by Brian Libby)

Inside the shelter, the natural color of the Douglas Fir was retained. Overall, both inside and out retains a kind of fundamental roughness, a textural patina that nicely compliments the more pristine Rose buildings. It's not just the roughness of the 4x4s and their charring, but how some of the Burn Box's small mistakes were celebrated. When students had to drill into a piece at the entrance, art students made small little carved coverings for them.

"I think that really is what the success of the project was," Burkheimer says. "That’s kind of our philosophy here: we avoid mistakes but when we make them we’ve got to do something with them. This building really was very much, I think for these guys, an expression of that. You move forward without tearing it down and starting it over. It didn’t have to be pristine. It needed to be used more than pristine. And there's a sense of ownership that's come out of that. Sometimes architects want something to stay precious and pristine for a long time. It needs to match the photographs for the next five years. But I think whenever you photograph this piece, it will be different. That’s part of that craft language: who ever has it takes it and adds to it."

Burn Box under construction (images courtesy UO/OCAC)

The Burn Box has a deceptively simple form, like a square tunnel or a shoebox open at either short end. That said, the walls are not rigidly straight but instead have a subtle undulating shape. The project was hand-modeled, but it seems to show the influence of parametric 3D modeling software students and architects often use today, such as Grasshopper 3D. Sitting inside, the walls, floor and roof all are partially permeable. It brings an ideal balance of feeling protected from the elements but able to see out from a variety of vantage points through the lattice-like facade. When people approach the structure you have a kind of hint that someone’s coming but you still have this private space to yourself. One student even used the Burn Box as a setting for a trial run thesis exhibition, festooning it with countless flowers. The small cubbyholes created by the crisscross of stacked 4x4 pieces have also inspired OCAC students to fill them with small figurines, toys and found objects.

Burn Box ceiling (photo by Brian Libby)

"People have drawn to it immediately," Burkheimer says. "It’s become a real gathering spot. And the fact that the OCAC students have started decorating it and using it for installations is a sign it’s being accepted readily by the community."

What's more, the Burn Box shows how much inter-school and inter-disciplinary efforts such as these can bear fruit. Burkheimer says discussions are already underway about future design/build projects shared by the schools, be they permanent or temporary constructions, art installation or practical architecture - or both. "I think you find a lot of times in academia a separation between art school and craft school and design school," he says. "It’s realizing these constructs are sometimes not as strong as we think they are."

 

Advertisements

Reinventing Portland Community College: a conversation with GBD Architects' Kyle Andersen

PCC's Sylvania Campus (image courtesy Portland Community College)

BY BRIAN LIBBY

In the first decade after World War II, the G.I. Bill made it possible for a generation of former service members to obtain an education. And obtain they did, on a massive scale. A total of 2.3 million students enrolled in higher education programs in 1947 swelled to nearly 5 million by 1960. In many cases, it wasn't traditional four-year colleges this wave of new students attended, but one of the literally hundreds of community college and junior colleges built in that period.

Portland Community College's Sylvania campus came a little later, in 1968. But it is the oldest facility in the PCC system, as well as the largest. Like many community colleges in the area and in the nation, it has the institutional feel of the era from which it came, that of Brutalism: a subset of modernist architecture from the 1960s and 70s that was most often concrete in form and, while utopian in its idealistic intent, was often practically the opposite in reality: with banal, repetitive forms that today, despite their clean-lined geometry, feel oppressive for their lack of human scale, natural light and warm materials. In the hands of a few select masters, such as Louis Kahn, Brutalist architecture could be sublime. But walking amidst the concrete ubiquity of PCC Sylvania or, one yearns for the small forest adjacent to the campus. (Sylvan literally means "wooded".)

Currently, however, GBD Architects and Gerding Edlen Development are working with PCC on a group of initiatives, some being enacted as we speak and others on a future wish list, that will help the school potentially save millions of dollars in energy costs while giving PCC a new role in training workers the emerging green economy.

The E6/Net Zero Project, as it is known, seeks to transform PCC Sylvania both in terms of how it operates and how it feels to be there. If the school greenlights all of the sustainable investments recommended, it will actually become a net-producer of energy, generating more electricity than the campus needs. The plan also calls for the school to have close to net-zero water usage by collecting rainwater and recycling water.

Nowhere is the need for reinvention more evident than the central DeBernardis College Center building ("CC" for short), which houses administrative offices, a dining hall, the Women's Resource Center, the Multicultural Center, and more. It's the closest thing to a student union, but unless you're in a select few private offices, it could be noon or midnight and you'd never be able to tell inside the public gathering spaces. And environmentally speaking, although concrete holds its thermal mass like a basement and is thus energy efficient as a material, much of the wintertime heating and summertime cooling disappear through single-pane windows.

Students in PCC Sylvania's CC buiding (image courtesy Portland Community College)

"It's got solid bones," GBD Architects' Kyle Andersen says of the concrete-ensconced PCC campus in Southwest Portland. "This thing is so stout. It’s all columns and beams and waffle slabs. You like to stand back and say, 'What were they thinking?' The architecture really handles you. Now those things are called barriers, and they cause problems for people with mobility issues and it’s disorienting. We talked about removing those barriers and humanizing the space.There’s a lot we’re doing taking private offices away from the windows and create smaller impromptu meeting spaces."

Besides the mechanical and energy side of reinventing PCC Sylvania, the architects are looking at humanizing the campus, where an open area between the buildings in the middle is disjointed because of a convoluted series of passageways and raised platforms, seemingly one added to the other without a sense of the congruent whole. When one moves from the center to the other buildings, it's a matter of following another prescriptive concrete pathway. Then there's the fact that PCC Sylvania students arrive overwhelmingly by car, thus making a surface parking lot surrounding much of the campus a kind of suburban-style banality of asphalt. Along with building design, the challenge is to make people change the way they get to the school.

Although net-zero energy and water are goals, the initial work at PCC Sylvania will focus on 165,000 square feet of renovation for existing buildings, within the strictures of funding in place via a recent bond measure. There will also be new construction, for a child development center construction. But for the most part, Andersen says, "These buildings are 40 plus years old. It’s upgrading the technology, adapting them for new ways of learning."

"Right now we’re base-lining the buildings: measuring the buildings’ performances so we can measure their improvements," the architect adds. "That’s really what it’s about to reach that net zero: starting with energy efficiency savings, and adding alternative energy over time. We’re looking at wind turbines, PV, even fuel cells."

"Students, faculty, facilities people—there are a lot of participants in the discussion. It’s really about consensus building. We meet with them depart by department, document their needs, draw it up, and give it to the contractor to see if it lines up with our budget. If we get it lined up, we have a framework plan. And we do that for every building. We’ve got to prioritize so there’s the most economic benefit and environmental benefit to the campus."

Infographic of PCC Sylvania buiding age (courtesy Gerding Edlen Development)

In some cases, Andersen says, grand plans gave way to the need for band-aids. "The whole E6 thing was supposed to come in and do all these changes and modifications. But then you realize there are changes in the system themselves that need changing. Insulation was falling off," he explains. "There are these tunnels under the buildings, with pipes running through them. There’s valving that was stuck open. We’re insulating pipes and replacing valves. We found that the boilers were really low-efficiency. We found by the time it got to the swimming pool, the hot water dropped by 30 degrees. We’re also adding a de-humidification unit, and taking the waste heat to pump it back into the air or water. That thing will save a couple hundred thousand dollars a year in energy."

As changes big and small are made, students will be along for the ride, not just receiving a better Sylvania campus but learning the kinds of trades that will bring them jobs in the emerging sustainable economy. "The workforce training that’s going on at PCC is a key component," Andersen says. "You'll be able to how to take care of building commissioning, photovoltaic cells. That’s why community colleges are bursting at the seems, why enrollment at PCC Sylvania up 30 percent in last year or two."

Already ties are being made. Vestas, the wind-turbine manufacture that recently located its American headquarters in Portland, now serves as an adviser for the Renewable Energy Systems Program offered at the PCC Sylvania Campus. The program is part of Sylvania’s Electronic Engineering Technology Program. SolarWorld is also a long-time partner organization with PCC’s Microelectronics Program, housed at the Rock Creek Campus. Over time, these partnerships and initiatives can combine and be centralized at Sylvania -- even if there's a boiler to fix, parking to reconfigure, and a host of concrete buildings to re-imagine.

"Our path has changed considerably. It’s been totally modified," Andersen explains. "We’re having to put money in different places to get to the root causes. But we still have our sights on that net zero campus. It's just a question of how we get there."

Advertisement

An urban barn raising

MFA students from PNCA/OCAC barn building (photo by Brian Libby)

BY BRIAN LIBBY

The very phrase seems somehow so very Portland, as if would inspire writers for the Portlandia TV show to immediately stand up and take notice: an urban barn raising.

That was the event I attended Saturday at the Bison Building, headquarters for the MFA program in Applied Craft and Design offered jointly by the Pacific Northwest College of Art and the Oregon College of Art & Craft. The barnraising - both the construction and the collaboration necessary to pull it off - was headed by grad student Billy Rueck.

How do you build a barn inside a building? Well, it was a small barn and a big building. The Bison, located on NE 10th Avenue near Glisan, consists of two warehouses next to each other. In one warehouse, a vast empty space allows students and faculty room to experiement. The other warehouse is a hive of different student studios. In one, I noticed an artist working with several reclaimed old teddy bears. From the ceiling was suspended a wood sculpture that seemed like a model of Noah's ark made with sticks, which turned out to be the result of a lesson from artist Patrick Dougherty, who designed the "nest" (a small meeting room made from woven sticks) at advertising agency Wieden + Kennedy. And in the back is an old Airstream trailer that serves as the office for JP Reuer, head of the MFA program.

Whiteboard diagram and wide view at Bison Biulding barn raising (photos by Brian Libby)

"Connecting design thinking to design doing," the program's website explains, the Applied Craft and Design MFA is grounded in hands-on making, entrepreneurial strategies, and social and environmental engagement." Students work one-on-one with "designers, makers, and scholars in a self-directed curriculum that challenges them to bring to life the full strength of their ideas and skills." It's a cross-disciplinary studio environment "in which the workshop is a lab to collaboratively explore design and making processes."

As it happens, this Friday, May 6, the Applied Craft and Design program will be having an exhibit of first-year students'  work from 6-10PM, which includes Rueck's finished barn. The Bison Building is located at 421 NE 10th between Flanders and Glisan.

Barn raisings, traditional ones at least, are interesting in they are half construction, half community event. Common in 18th and 19th century America and Canada, traditional barn raising were events in which everyone living in a small village would join together (often a mandatory act) to assemble a barn for one of its households. A barn was often the largest and first structure built by a new settling farm family, and the most expensive. And while not everyone participated in the design, the gathering of materials and other acts before the raising itself, these final-act raisings by an entire community helped create one of its initial and fundamental acts of social welfare.

Barn raising in DeKalb County, Indiana, 1900 (image courtesy Wikipedia Commons)

Contemporary popular culture has often ridiculed barn raisings as quintessentially antiquated acts, part of the accoutrements of agrarian society - particularly Amish and Menonnite ones - along with overalls, long beards and horse drawn buggies. Yet, like a modern Habitat for Humanity construction job rendered with time-lapse speed, a barn raising is a gift of labor to those in need.

It reminds me of a comment that political strategist James Carville makes in the D.A. Pennebaker documentary The War Room, about Bill Clinton's 1992 presidential race. Clinton has just won the presidency, and Carville, manager of the campaign, is thanking his staff in the Little Rock campaign headquarters. “Outside of love," he says, breaking into tears, "the most precious thing you can give of yourself is your labor…you people showed you could be trusted.”

MFA students, barn builders (photos by Brian Libby)

In the case of the urban barn raising I attended, it admittedly wasn't a highly populated community event. Only a few students, faculty and mentors were there in the Bison Building warehouse working on the project between bites of Voodoo Donuts. Yet if PNCA and OCAC indeed seek to provide a laboratory for collaboratively exploring design and making, reviving such old-time endeavor as a barn raising could not be more ideal. (That said, I do wish updating the MFA program blog was an equally focused endeavor. There was nothing about the barn raising on the site.)

Yes, today architectural design is more high-tech than ever. Frank Gehry started using CATIA software intended for NASA well over a decade ago. From e-coated glass to structurally insulated panels, building materials are rapidly becoming able to deliver efficiency and sustainability without compromising aesthetics. Yet there is also a parallel trend, a rediscovery of hands-on craft. It's not just for grandmothers making afghans, or hippies making clunky pottery and cobb benches.

That a student might build a barn with wood, hammers and nails, and a few fellow students, only twelve blocks from the river that bisects the center of a city of over a million, and then someday go on to work with sophisticated BIM (building-integrated management) design tools, is arguably the type of yin-yang we need on a broader scale: a future of invention that is rooted in the fundamental, always relevent lessons of the past.

 

Advertisement

Funding our crumbling schools: when the levy breaks (with the bond)

Franklin High School (photo by Matthew Ginn, Homestead Images)

BY BRIAN LIBBY

A new pair of ballot measures in support of local schools, set for a vote by Portlanders on May 17, is turning out to be a confusing question even for those with every intention of giving local education everything it needs. But, as President Obama likes to say, it’s also a teachable moment about education funding and building.

Over the weekend two high school students knocked on my door with a flyer urging support for Measures 26-121 and 122 in the upcoming election. The flyer makes a dire case that, as its italics, upper-case and underlining suggest, “OUR SCHOOLS ARE IN TROUBLE." Not THEIR schools, in case you didn't get it. OUR schools.

“The bond measure raises $548 million for Portland’s 85 school buildings using a ‘pay as you go’ approach that will save over $200 million in interest payments by issuing these school bonds to spend over six years instead of the traditional 20 years,” it explains. “Independent construction engineers have prioritized the bond projects for urgency and cost-effectiveness. The cost of the bond is approximately $2 per $1,000 of assessed value. An Independent Oversight Committee, annual audits and monthly reports will ensure dollars are spent as promised.”

There’s no doubt plenty of architectural horror stories are available. As the flyer’s array of bullet points indicate, almost half of Portland schools depend on old oil furnaces that are inefficient, expensive and potentially hazardous to fire. Electrical systems are out of date and cannot support contemporary telecommunications equipment. Every one of Portland’s 85 school buildings needs more classrooms and upgrades to its HVAC systems. The supposedly temporary nature of the add-on trailer has become a permanent fixture beside most K-12 facilities in the district. Think about it: your kid likely studies in an unofficial mobile home park. And we wonder why the Chinese are kicking our educational butts? And of course in this rainy climate, numerous schools are leaking. At one elementary school in the PPS portfolio, ten 50-gallon barrels are required to collect water whenever it rains.

Grant High School (photo by Matthew Ginn, Homestead Images)

So why in the world would some of the very people who would seem to care most about improving the woeful state of Portland’s public elementary, middle and high schools be asking voters to reject half of the May 17 schools ballot?

The “Learn Now, Build Later” is asking voters to support the levy for schools but reject the bond.

The levy is essential, they say. If it fails, Portland will have to cut more than 300 teaching positions or 21 school days and educational programs.  And even if it passes, we will still lose roughly 115 teachers or 7 school days.  

At the same time, the “Learn Now, Build Later” campaign say adding the bond to the levy is too great a burden for local households. 

“We had go-go years for the last nine years and the economy was strong, and the school board did nothing,” says architect Stuart Emmons, a Lincoln High parent and one of the co-leaders of the pro-levy, anti-bond campaign. (In full disclosure, Stuart and I co-led the Memorial Coliseum preservation campaign.) “All of a sudden they wait for unemployment to go into doing this.”

If voters approve both the levy and bond, the owner of an average home worth $230,000 will see a $500/year annual increase – about $350 for the bond and $130 for the operating levy. Many homeowners face annual increases of $700-$1,000 or more.

“Learn Now, Build Later” also argues that while surrounding districts are consolidating smaller schools to conserve costs while offering a solid education, PPS has illogically and wastefully prioritized rebuilds of small schools over larger schools with worse facilities rankings. “It’s a really poorly thought out bond,” Emmons adds. “They’re not getting enough bang for their buck or distributing the money right.”

“I served on the PPS Board from 1995-2003.  For six of those years, I chaired the budget committee.  For seven, I chaired the facilities committee.  I am a dedicated progressive, and have voted for every PPS measure until now, but I cannot support the bond,” says Marc Abrams, another pro-levy, anti-bond campaigner.  “It targets the wrong buildings, at the wrong price.  In addition, I do not believe PPS has truly made the facilities reductions that were necessary and which I advocated over the years.  Had they done so, some of this would have been avoidable.”

Column outside the former Washington High School (photo by Brian Libby)

Emmons also argues that, while marketing for the levy and bond “yes” campaign has emphasized seismic stability as part of what the bond will address—a timely mention given the recent Japanese earthquake and tsunami—in truth seismic upgrades would comprise a relatively small portion of the bond, somewhere in the range of 10 percent (not including the two schools planned to be rebuilt entirely). “I can see all these TV commercials with ceilings crashing over kids’ heads,” the architect says. “But there’s just not enough going to seismic in this bill.”

He also criticizes Portland Public Schools for a lack of long-term strategy. “I don’t think they’re ever going to get caught up,” Emmons says. “They need to think of how after five or six bond measures we’ll be completely there.”

Besides just waiting two years to write a better bond measure, Emmons argued in a recent Oregonian editorial for an alternate plan: rebuilding every high school in the city. “Imagine the number of students that would be impacted. Imagine the excitement in all corners of our city, as students from kindergarten through 8th grade will look forward to learning in a new 21st century high school,” he writes.

By no means does everyone among parents and progressives support the “Build Later” campaign.

“I feel like the two measures leverage each other,” said Katharine Sammons, a Chapmant K-8 School parent, in a January 24 Portland Tribune article by Jennifer Anderson. “I’ve been in a lot of these schools. Particularly with the earthquake (in Japan), it’s scary.” At West Sylvan, where her daughter will be in three years, Sammons explained, there’s dry rot on the windows, “it’s leaking all over the place,” and there are asbestos pipes within kids’ reach with large danger warnings on them.”

This issue will be the topic of an April 22 City Club Friday Forum called “The PPS Bond Measure: What would $548 million buy?” with Peyton Chapman, principal at Lincoln High School and Charlene Williams, principal of Roosevelt High School.

Perhaps there is some reason for skepticism about the “Learn Now, Build Later” campaign. Take the notion that the recession makes this the wrong time. A leader like Franklin Roosevelt might have countered that economic downturns are precisely the right time for a public works project because they bring jobs to builders, architects and many subcontractors.

What’s more, if we wait for Portland Public Schools to produce a smarter, better-targeted bond, it might be a case of Waiting For Godot. Why wait two years or more when this bond is already on the ballot? Even if the money isn’t allocated ideally, it’s at least, upon passage, being allocated. Clearly regardless of whether the bond targets the right schools in the right combination, pretty much all 85 schools in the PPS district need work.

There is also plenty of room for creativity and greater skepticism about how the bond system works. As Emmons pointed out, for all of the millions the bond is asking for, it doesn’t even provide enough funds for the work being sought. This is a common tactic with public bonds, asking for just a little less than they actually need.

What’s more, why must such bonds for parks and schools always be presented as an all-or-nothing decision? Why must we either spend $548 million in state property tax money via levy and bond or nothing? These initiatives should be done in cooperation with the philanthropic community, which can selectively help with donations and fundraising. We don’t just need to potentially wait two years for a better bond, but to re-think bonds, levies and the overall mechanism of K-12 school funding. It needn’t be a continuous case of famine, feast and famine again. There also needs to be more opportunity for individual schools to assess and fundraise for their own needs.

Honestly, I don’t yet know how I’m going to vote. PPS doesn’t seem to have done Portland many favors with the timing, content and presentation of the levy and bond. Yet it’s dangerous when one is standing in a barren desert, overcome with thirst, and passes up a savior of a bus stoppping because the next bus that comes is a better ride. Sometimes we may need to get on the bus and hope to influence the next one.

UO students tackle Ankeny/Burnside plan

 

Sinnott House/Simon Facade concept (rendering by Blake Scott)

BY HENRY C. KUNOWSKI

The issues for moving key elements of the Ankeny/Burnside Development Framework Plan forward created an excellent opportunity for investigation by an urban design studio at the University of Oregon’s Department of Architecture.  The studio held its mid-term “pin-up” on Friday, February 4th at the UO Portland Center in the White Stag Building with a series of outside-review critiques.

While a complex set of interrelated dynamics are involved—urban, social, cultural, architectural, economic—the fundamental question posed is whether the development issues of zoning, floor-area-ratio and height are approached from a performance-based standpoint rather than fixed prescriptive numbers? 

Since its completion in 2007 the Ankeny/Burnside Plan and its proponents have attempted to move several concepts forward to fruition with little success.  While the plan itself is a example of what stellar documents city bureaus, PDC and effected stakeholders can produce, it has not fully achieved what it supported. The fundamental vision for the area, refined through a multi-faceted visioning process, is to “create a vital and vibrant district that retains and reinforces the history and character of the Ankeny/Burnside area.”  No one involved with the creation of the A/B Plan or even those not involved will argue with this vision. Why is implementation of this vision such a difficulty with the appearance of no forward movement? While there are five implementation strategies recommended, few have been advanced.

Site analysis sketches by Jennifer Pecenka

As noted in the A/B Plan the five priority implementation strategy action items are:

• Development of six catalytic opportunity sites
• Demonstration of support for Saturday Market
• Improvements to the public realm
• Revisions the existing regulatory framework
• The identification of a management entity for the district. 

The second and third strategies moved forward to some significant degree while items four and five have stalled. A national review of five case study sites investigated for the A/B Plan found items four and five critical for a successful implementation. Nevertheless, the first strategy has been the focus of at least two recent proposals that have ended with no resolve.

As a research, study and design vehicle for a senior/graduate level urban design studio, the key issues raised in the A/B Plan are what constitutes an “Edge Opportunity Site” and whether the current perspective on density and zoning height limitations in this duel historic district area the right approach.

The design studio is investigating the Edge Opportunity Site located on Block 28, between NW Third and Fourth Avenues and NW Couch & Davis Streets. The principle focus is the KIDA Company site at NW Third and Davis, but for the purposes of the studio, the entire block will be studied.  This approach offers a greater opportunity for addressing the broader urban design issues that cannot be addressed by looking at any one single development parcel. 

The project site is located within two historic districts, Skidmore/Oldtown National Historic Landmark and New Chinatown/Japantown Historic District and as such contains a split zoning height limit with the eastern half at 75-feet and the western half at 100-feet and hence will not serve to function as a “transitional site” to the remained of a “modern city” as noted in the A/B Plan.  In reality, Block 28 is not an “edge” but the heart of two historic districts and is viewed as such.

Study for building on Third Avenue (rendering by Jennifer Pecenka)

To further add another layer of complexity to the design context, the Skidmore NHL is listed for its architectural significance, primarily the 19th century cast iron of the Victorian era Italianate style with influences of the Richardsonian Romanesque and Chicago/Commercial styles.  On the other side of the spectrum, New Chinatown is listed for its significance as it relates to the early settlement of the Chinese and Japanese communities, in other words, there is no architectural record of this district but a cultural one.  The only building in the New Chinatown area that reflects the cultural traditions of the Asian population is the Chinese Consolidated Benevolent Association, CCBA, built in 1911 and located at 312 NW Davis.

There are 15 students in the class with eight of them working on the two historic buildings, the circa-1883 Sinnott House, 1883 and Simon Façade dating to 1892.  The other 7 students are working on designs for two new buildings to replace the extant non-historic structures, the KIDA Company and Great China Bldgs, both facing NW Davis.

The studio is charged with three primary objectives:

Objective 1: Design two new adjoining mixed-use developments with criteria that are viewed from a “performance-based” approach to compatibility in the historic context vs. a “prescriptive approach” that works with the current and proposed height increase. The KIDA Co. site may also utilize the Simon Building Façade.  New developments will evaluate their impacts and effects on the adjacent historic Hung Far Low Building, 1916.

Objective 2: Design an “adaptive reuse” of the extant historic Sinnott House, 1883, as a either a “Boutique Hotel” or student housing; including consideration of a roof-top addition.   Use of the Sinnott will also utilize the adjacent historic Simon Building Façade, 1892. The adaptive reuse should satisfy the requirements of a “certified rehabilitation”, if not, use of the Secretary of the interior’s Standards for Rehabilitation and the proposed Skidmore/Oldtown Design Guidelines with the inclusion of the Richardsonian Romanesque and Chicago/Commercial style as building types. 

Objective 3: All developments will be following the guidelines of the “Living Building Challenge” 2.0 for environmental sustainability. 

Four of the 5 parcels on the block will be redeveloped to meet the strategies identified in the A/B Development Framework Plan, i.e. mixed-use as noted in City’s Title 33 Planning and Zoning Code, Chapter 33.130 (Table 130-3) Commercial Zones: CX.  For the purposes of this studio a “mixed-use” will encompass; Residential, Retail, Commercial and Professional uses.  The specific uses for each of the 4 sites are defined in the site parcel description.  Further, the specific retail and commercial uses will be defined by an informal class survey of extant similar uses in a three block area surrounding the Block 28 site.

Assumptions: Air rights above the one-story Hung Far Low Restaurant on the corner of NW 4th and Couch have been secured to prevent future high-rise development on that site and open the view-shed for the adjacent properties.   The KIDA Co. site and the former Great China Restaurant site will be co-developed so that, in concept, they will share a central light-well type court or, to put it another way, independently they may have a basic “U” shape plan configuration.  The Simon Building Facade site could also be developed to utilize this area for a possible hydraulic parking structure to serve either/both the Sinnott House and the KIDA Co. development. 

The final design studio solutions will be presented for design review critique the week of March 7th in either Eugene or Portland with details and schedules pending.

Henry Kunowski is an architectural historian and adjunct instructor of architecture and historic preservation at the University of Oregon. He is a past Chair of the AIA/Portland Historic Resources Committee and is currently working for Dewberry + Davis, Consulting Engineers in Fairfax, Virginia and Zaik Associates in Portland Oregon.

 

Matthew Ginn's Portland Public Schools photo tour: Marshall and Franklin

Franklin High School (photo by Matthew Ginn)

For the past several months, photographer Matthew Ginn has been touring Portland's public high schools with his camera for a continuing series. Today, we reach the last two school on Matthew's list: Marshall and Franklin.

The two schools make an appropriate conclusion to the series, because they represent Portland Public Schools at its best and worst. Franklin, as the photographer aptly describes it, is "definitely the best-looking high school in the PPS system, and the staff are rightfully proud of their building." Marshall, on the other hand, faces outright closure. In PPS' game of musical chairs to determine which school will face budget-necessitating end to its existence, the outer Southeast Portland high school will no longer be there in its dual role of educating children and anchoring the long under-privileged Lents neighborhood.

In my previous post, which looked at tall condos built in the past decade, a commenter urged that equal attention be given to more under-funded public buildings instead of these architectural symbols of affluence and overzealousness during the 2000s real estate bubble. Well pal, here you go! No buildings in our community, or most anyone's, better signify the ongoing inadequacy of public funding than our K-12 schools. Portland may be a liberal city, but it is also part of a tax-phobic state. For this an a host of other related reasons, many of the Rose City's high schools as well as elementary and middle schools, are practically crumbling. That may change with Portland Public Schools' emerging plan to cut some facilities like Marshall out altogether and hope for a new bond to pass that will bring renovation and expansion funds for the schools left. Passing large public bonds at a time of 10 percent unemployment is a tricky proposition, but most of us can agree the maintenance at these PPS facilities is in most cases deferred.

If or when a large amount of funding does come for local public school construction and renovations, it will also be a challenge to balance the current era's emphasis with green design, energy efficiency and sustainability with historic preservation. Whether it's a nearly century-old school like Franklin or a mid-20th century structure like Marshall or Madison, these buildings ought to be preserved in some form. If not schools, then at least as facilities like McMenamins Kennedy School, itself occupying (as you can read more about below) significant bit of local school architecture history. 

As with previous posts in this series, pictures of the schools - all by Matthew Ginn and courtesy of Homestead Images - will be matched with abridged versions of the architectural descriptions on the PPS website.

First, the star-crossed Marshall High School. I'm deliberately going with Marshall first, even though Franklin is prettier. It's the least we can do.

Marshall High School (photo by Matthew Ginn)

"Marshall High School is located 3905 SE 91st Ave. in the Lents neighborhood of southeast Portland.  Built in 1959, the 23-acre campus includes only the main school building (1959, 220A).  The three-story building’s internal functions, such as the stairwells, hallways, library, auditorium, and gymnasium are clearly communicated by the building’s fenestration patterns, overall massing, and varying building heights.  

The building mixes an external skin of variegated tan-colored brick with expansive banks of plate glass windows that form the building’s curtain walls.  Cantilevered overhangs shade the windows on each floor on the west and south sides, while no eaves are present on the north and east sides. The interior follows a square shaped corridor plan that provides access to all classrooms, the auditorium, cafeteria, and the gymnasium. 

Development in the surrounding area consists primarily of single family residences built between 1945 and 1970 as well as large scale retail with the presence of large “big box” stores situated to the west at Eastport Plaza."

Marshall

"The school is approached via a U-shaped drive that affords easy student drop offs and access to surface parking lots as well as the playing fields.  An oval track, football field, and grandstand as well as other playing fields are located to the south of the main building. The main (east) entrance into the school consists of three double door entries that are recessed into the building as the second floor is supported by a single round concrete column.  The west elevation exhibits only two floors while the remainder of the building features three stories due to a change in the topography that descends from west to east. While banks of plate glass windows extend to the north of the entry, a large round edged double height volume, the auditorium and music wing, extends to the west.  The north elevation features three floors of plate glass windows interrupted at three points by three floors of small square windows that mark stairwells. 

The high school also features an entirely enclosed, terraced courtyard that descends from east to west. A central walkway provides access from the east to west corridors as well as through the corridors directly to the exterior.  The library intrudes into the courtyard and is supported by a series of cylindrical columns on the bottom floor. 

In 1945, the citizens of Portland approved a ballot measure that provided $5,000,000 over five years to construct, improve, and rehabilitate its public school buildings to respond to the explosive growth in school-age children that had occurred in the city as a result of the arrival of defense plant workers and their families, as well as the deferred maintenance arising from the lack of funds during the depression. Beginning with this initial bond measure, PPS embarked on an effort to improve its school facilities through renovations, additions, and new construction of over fifty schools between 1945 and 1970."

Marshall

"Emphasizing the need for economy and rapid construction, the designers adopted new materials that were standardized and mass-produced including steel, plywood, glass block, and aluminum. In many buildings, architects achieved flexibility through the building’s structure by employing non-load-bearing partitions walls and zoned ventilation and heating systems. 

Although many of the architects for schools in Portland continued to design their schools to be extensible, designers turned away from the two-story schools with centralized massing and the period revivals that were popular in the 1920s.  Instead many architects adopted the principles of the Modern movement and its regional variant, the Northwest Regional style, choosing to express functional areas through massing and materials to create innovative forms. Classrooms featured extensive built-ins that included sinks, slots for bulky rolls of paper, and coat storage. Many buildings incorporated interior courtyards, which facilitated access to the outdoors and expanded the opportunities for passive ventilation and daylighting. 

Designed by Stanton, Boles, Maguire and Church, John Marshall High School was originally called Southeast High School until it was renamed for the U.S. Supreme Court justice. A native of Iowa, Glenn Stanton graduated from the University of Oregon and Massachusetts Institute of Technology, returning returned to Portland where he worked with Morris H. Whitehouse, eventually becoming a partner in the firm of Whitehouse, Stanton & Church. In 1955, Stanton formed the partnership of Stanton, Boles, Maguire, and Church – a firm that would be responsible for designing Madison and Marshall High Schools in 1955 and 1960, respectively as well as structures for the new Lewis & Clark College Campus, and the Stadium Branch of the US Nation Bank.  Stanton was also known for supervising the restoration of the McLoughlin House (1846) in Oregon City."

Marshall

"The school featured a square corridor plan with the various functions of the school decentralized around all parts of the square.  The gymnasium, auditorium, cafeteria, were all designed to serve as appendages to the square corridor plan.  The building, largely constructed with exterior curtain walls that consisted half of brick and half of glass, also featured cantilevered eaves on each of its three floors on only the south and west sides of the building to reduce the amount of glare caused by sunlight. Other components of the school include an undersized auditorium to reduce the size of heated spaces, sliding partitions that could increase classroom sizes and permit work with team teaching techniques, as well as a large terraced courtyard located in the middle of the building.  

Marshall has not been extensively modified over time and retains most if not all of its character-defining features.  Even so, it does not appear to be eligible for the National Register of Historic Places. Although associated with the suburban expansion of southeast Portland, the high school’s overall design was not noted as being necessarily innovative for the time period."

And now, Franklin:

Franklin High School (photos by Matthew Ginn)

"Franklin High School is located in the South Tabor neighborhood of southeast Portland. Intended to be expanded over time, it was designed in a distinctive Colonial Revival style and the campus was organized according to a multi—part plan. The 18-acre campus includes the original classroom and school office building and boiler building from 1915, a manual arts (west) wing built a year later, an auditorium dating to 1924, a fieldhouse from 1950, a gymnasium built in 1954, and an industrial arts building from 1981. 

The campus occupies an expansive 18-acre rectangular-shaped parcel that is positioned between SE Woodward St. to the south and Division St. to the north. The core group of two story brick-faced and concrete buildings feature a balanced and largely symmetrical fenestration, colonial revival embellished porticos and entryways, staggered quoins on building corners, modillion cornices, jack arches with keystones over all windows, elaborate terra cotta panels, the retention of original twelve-over-twelve sash windows, and a centrally-placed, highly detailed clock tower with glazed cupola. The property also includes expansive playing fields that include a football field and baseball field. Just to the east of the school are playing fields and tennis courts that are part of Clinton Park and Atkinson School. 

Approached from the south, the main school building is a concrete structure with a brick veneer laid in an all stretcher bond. The main school building, auditorium, and west wing retain a beveled water table, staggered terra cotta quoins, jack arch with keystone above each window, and modillion cornice, as well as hipped roofs."

Franklin

"Decorative emphasis is most prominent on the front and rear entrances. The ceremonial or north entrance features a two story portico with both rounded and square shaped columns with acanthus leaf capitals. The columns support a pediment with a festoon-adorned tympanum as well as a modillion cornice. The three double-door entrances each feature elaborate transoms with leaded traceries as well as terra cotta surrounds. These surrounds are composed of Doric friezes decorated with triglyphs and metopes filled with panels decorated with cartouches, festoons, fruit bowls, swags, and sheaf of wheat with scythes. Immediately above the frieze is a soffit replete with mutules and lozenges. The more commonly used rear entrance slightly projects from the main building. Rather than columns, this entrance exhibits three portals decorated with terra cotta surrounds. 

Immediately above each door are terra cotta panels decorated with cartouches and festoons. Three large single hung fanlight windows illuminate an interior stair. The entrance composition is completed by a closed bed pediment that lies above the second floor and a modillion cornice. 

The most prominent feature of the main building is the clock tower, which is symmetrically positioned in the middle of the building. Mirroring much of the embellishments below, this all-white structure features staggered quoins, clocks framed by an open bed pediment and corner urns, as well as an eight sided, glazed belfry. The top of the tower exhibits urns as well as a bell cast roof and weathervane."

Franklin

"Ancillary entrances exhibit Federal era-inspired door surrounds consisting of sidelights, slender pilasters with acanthus leaf capitals as well as a dentil cornice, and semi-elliptical leaded fanlights. Some of the secondary entrances also feature pediments as well. Nearly all of the windows on the first three units have been retained and exhibit their original twelve-over-twelve sash windows.

The interior of the main building consists of a U-shaped corridor plan that is then attached on opposite ends to east and west wings by two story hyphens. In the main foyer are plain pilasters at each corner, boxed ceiling beams, as well as a set of staircases that lead to the second floor. At the head of the stairs on the second floor is a painting by WPA-era artist John Balletor entitled “Benjamin Franklin at Liberty Hall, Philadelphia” which was completed in 1935.  

Franklin High School was part of a dramatic building program begun by Portland Public Schools in the early 1900s. Gradually influenced by John Dewey’s Progressive Education Movement, Portland Public Schools responded to changing city demographics and ideas concerning school safety, sanitation, and child centered instructional methods beginning in the first decade of the 1900s. By 1905, it became increasingly clear that dramatic increases in school-age children outstripped the district’s current classroom capacity and existing schools could not effectively serve areas of the city with new residential development .

In 1908, Portland Public Schools created the Bureau of Properties in an effort to centralize the management of the district’s various properties and take on a more formalized role in the design and maintenance of school facilities. Two of the most influential district architects during this period included Floyd Naramore and George Jones, who designed a majority of the schools from 1908 to 1932.

These new school buildings were often constructed of brick and concrete and were one or two stories in height. The buildings also contained more differentiated and increasingly specialized instructional spaces such as libraries, gymnasiums, science rooms, music rooms, as well as assembly spaces. The architectural details of the new schools were largely encompassed by the Classical Revival, Colonial Revival, and Collegiate Gothic styles; architectural revivals that were viewed as inspirational and appropriate for educational settings."

Franklin

"The architect of Franklin High School, Floyd Naramore, who in his tenure at Portland Public Schools designed 16 schools for the district including the Kennedy School, which gained notoriety as a single story response to the issue of fire safety in American public schools. Naramore’s success led to a similar position in Seattle, where he designed many of the city’s most renowned schools and would be a founding principal of the still-flourishing firm Naramore, Bain, Brady & Johansen (NBBJ). 

Franklin High School is eligible for the National Register of Historic Places under Criterion C. The high school is also eligible under Criterion A for its association with the rise of higher education in the 1910s under Superintendent Alderman, and for its association with the development of southeast Portland."

Advertisement

Matthew Ginn's Portland Public Schools photo tour: Benson and Cleveland

Benson High (photo by Matthew Ginn/Homestead Images) 

Portland photographer Matthew Ginn of Homestead Images has been at it again, photographing local public schools as part of a continuing series for this blog.

Last month Ginn photographed Wilson and Roosevelt High Schools. This time the subject is Benson and Cleveland High Schools.

Benson High School is located at 546 NE 12th Avenue in the Kerns neighborhood of northeast Portland, just across I-84 from Lloyd Center. The 8.7 acre campus includes the original main classroom building, a work in the classical revival style completed in 1916, as well as a later gymnasium wing and auditorium wing that form the west part of the campus.

Here is some additional info gleaned from the Portland Public Schools website:

"These three buildings form a core group of two story brick-faced and concrete buildings that feature a balanced and symmetrical fenestration, classical revival style porticos and entryways of terra cotta, dentil cornice, brick panels, as well as bas relief panels and latticed transoms.  The interior entrance of the school is also noteworthy for the survival of distinctively Georgian-Revival wood paneling and pilasters."

 

Benson High (photos by Matthew Ginn/Homestead Images) 

"Approached from the west, the main school building is a concrete structure with a brick veneer laid in an all stretcher bond.  The main school building, auditorium, and old gymnasium retain character defining features of the Classical Revival style.  The exteriors of the these three buildings exhibit Classical Revival porticos and entryways decorated with terra cotta surrounds, dentil cornice, brick panels, as well as bas relief panels." 

"The visual focus of the principal elevation is the Doric order portico consisting of four fluted Doric order columns with plain block bases and an egg- and-dart echinus.  The plain frieze features a series of four panels that depict an open book, cog, and two torches.  The most impressive decoration found on the portico is found immediately above the three sets of double doors.  Each terra cotta panel depicts two bas relief student workers involved in various industrial arts activities.  In the plain frieze of the portico reads “Benson Polytechnic School Erected ANNO Domini MCMXVI.  The west elevation of the auditorium is nearly entirely sheathed with terra cotta embellished by a front balustrade with flanking staircases, four unfluted pilasters, and three double door entries with latticed transoms.  The frieze features four terra cotta bas relief heads.  The west elevation (front) of the original gymnasium wing did not receive as much architectural detailing as the auditorium wing; no entrances appear on the west side of the gymnasium wing."

Here is some info on the history of the building from the Portland Public Schools site:

"The first purpose built high school in Portland was the 1883 Portland High School built on Southwest Fourteenth and Morrison.  Before it was even built, the school was the subject of a serious debate among prominent citizens, including George Atkinson and Harvey Scott as to the necessity of a publicly funded high school. Despite the conflict, the 1883 “Transition Gothic” styled Portland High School established a high design standard for the city’s high schools as it was prominently featured in William Thayer’s Marvels of the New West in 1887.  Future high schools in the city would be built on a similarly grand scale."

 

Benson High (photos by Matthew Ginn/Homestead Images) 

"Beginning with the construction of the main building in 1916 and followed by an additional two units and two shop wings constructed between 1917 and 1930, Benson High School was part of a dramatic building program begun by Portland Public Schools in the early 1900s. Gradually influenced by John Dewey’s Progressive Education Movement, Portland Public Schools responded to changing city demographics and ideas concerning school safety, sanitation, and child centered instructional methods beginning in the first decade of the 1900s."

"The need for a school that specifically tailored to improving the skills of students with an aptitude for the industrial arts was also recognized during the early twentieth century by Superintendent Frank Rigler.  Rigler recognized the key to the economic and industrial growth of Portland was a skilled and educated workforce.  In 1908, the School of Trades was first opened in the old Atkinson School at 11th and Davis Streets. The school would be moved several times until in 1915, retired logging magnate Simon Benson donated $100,000 towards the construction of a school specifically dedicated to the industrial arts."

And now for Cleveland High, and some more info from the Portland Public Schools site:

"Beginning with the construction of the main building and attached auditorium in 1929, Grover Cleveland High School was part of a dramatic building program begun by Portland Public Schools in the early 1900s."

Cleveland High (photo by Matthew Ginn/Homestead Images) 

"Two of the most influential district architects during this period included Floyd Naramore and George Jones, who designed a majority of the schools from 1908 to 1932.  George H. Jones, the architect for the Grover Cleveland High School, was well versed in the design of school facilities through his role as the school district’s architect. Jones was born in Portland in 1887.  After attending Oregon State College for two years, George Jones obtained a degree in architecture in 1913.  Jones worked in New York for several years before serving with the U.S. Army Combat Engineers during World War I." 

"The idea for a creating a school of commerce began in 1919 when the school board created a school dedicated to developing the commercial acumen of students.  Originally housed in the Shattuck School, the school of commerce was soon overcrowded, poorly funded, and lacked the necessary equipment.  Eventually PPS planned to move the Clinton Kelly School to another location and use the former lot for the new high school."

"By 1923 parents of students declared the building that occupied the property as unsafe and demanded another school be built (Oregonian 6-4-1923).   It was not until 1928, however, until designs were prepared for the building by George Jones.  The former Clinton Kelly Elementary School was demolished and PPS began construction of the then-named Clinton Kelly School of Commerce in 1929 just as the Great Depression began.  The school opened in 1930 and was immediately inundated with students such that between 1930 and 1933 the school could not accept first year students (Powers and Corning 1937:  239). In 1948, the school was renamed Grover Cleveland High School after the former President."

 

Cleveland High (photo by Matthew Ginn/Homestead Images) 

"With all of the additions placed on the east side of the school and in spite of the replacement of its original windows, Grover Cleveland High School remains eligible for the National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) as it retains much of its historical integrity. Cleveland High School is also a good example of the Classical Revival style and retains much of its integrity."

Thanks very much to Matthew Ginn for providing the photos of Benson and Cleveland. The series will continue soon.

Matthew Ginn's Portland Public Schools photo tour: Roosevelt and Wilson

Roosevelt High School (photos courtesy Homestead Images) 

This summer, local architecture and construction photographer Matthew Ginn of Homestead Images has taken on a project to photograph Portland's public schools. His first two schools visited are Roosevelt High and Wilson High. I'd like to share a few of his shots interspersed with info obtained from Portland Public Schools about the sites.

Interestingly, these buildings are not included in Bart King's otherwise comprehensive Architectural Guidebook to Portland. But one look at these buildings, or numerous other high schools, middle and elementary schools around town, and it's clear they are both highlights and cornerstones, so to speak, of the city fabric.

Roosevelt High School (photos courtesy Homestead Images) 

Roosevelt High School is located in the St. Johns neighborhood of north Portland. The 17 acre campus includes the original school building (built in 1921) as well as additions of an auditorium in 1930, a gymnasium in 1950, a library and more classrooms in 1960, and even an observatory in 1964.

The Roosevelt High School campus represents a partially realized expandable campus; two of the three parts of an extensible plan were constructed.  The two-story main building and auditorium were designed in the Colonial Revival style. Its principal character-defining features include a main portico lined with Corinthian columns, and something described by PPS as "closed bed pediment with festoon adorned tympanum."  The building also exhibits a "modillion cornice, jack arch lintels with a keystone above all windows, staggered corner quoins of brick, a beveled watertable, and a clock tower replete with open belfry".

Here's more from Portland Public Schools on Roosevelt:

In 1869, the first high school, housed in two rooms of the former North School building in Portland, was opened. Despite early struggles in the development of a consistent curriculum, the high school persisted at the will of the city’s residents until the Oregon School Code, adopted in 1878, officially authorized the construction of high schools in the city. The first purpose built high school in Portland was the 1883 Portland High School built on Southwest Fourteenth and Morrison.  Before it was even built, the school was the subject of a serious debate among prominent citizens as to the necessity of a publicly funded high school. Despite the conflict, the 1883 “Transition Gothic” styled Portland High School established a high design standard for the city’s high schools as it was prominently featured in William Thayer’s “Marvels of the New West” in 1887.  Future high schools in the city would be built on a similarly grand scale.

Roosevelt High School (photos courtesy Homestead Images) 

Beginning with the construction of the main building in 1921 and closely followed by an additional auditorium unit constructed in 1930, Roosevelt High School was part of a dramatic building program begun by Portland Public Schools in the early 1900s. Gradually influenced by John Dewey’s Progressive Education Movement, Portland Public Schools responded to changing city demographics and ideas concerning school safety, sanitation, and child centered instructional methods beginning in the first decade of the 1900s.

By 1905, it became increasingly clear that dramatic increases in school-age children outstripped the district’s current classroom capacity and existing schools could not effectively serve areas of the city with new residential development. After several well-publicized school fires elsewhere in the United States, calls for a more fundamental change in the building stock of the district began as early as 1906 when Mayor Lane called for the construction of new “fireproof” school buildings.

The District architect took on a more formalized role in the design and maintenance of school facilities. Two of the most influential district architects during this period included Floyd Naramore and George Jones, who designed a majority of the schools from 1908 to 1932.  These new school buildings were often constructed of brick and concrete and were one or two stories in height. The buildings also contained more differentiated and increasingly specialized instructional spaces such as libraries, gymnasiums, science rooms, music rooms, as well as assembly spaces.

Roosevelt High School (photos courtesy Homestead Images) 

The Roosevelt architectural plans, for instance, showed that the school would have a chemistry room, sewing room, library, and general science lab.  Designed in the Colonial Revival style, Roosevelt High School fell within stylistic trends of the period as most schools in Portland featured the Classical Revival, Colonial Revival, and Collegiate Gothic styles; architectural revivals that were viewed as inspirational and appropriate for educational settings. 

According to the Oregonian, the lead draftsman for Roosevelt High School, school district architect George H. Jones, reused most of the architectural drawings from Franklin High School to lay out the plans for Roosevelt (Oregonian 6-25-1922).  The architectural drawings also note that Thayne J. Logan drew and “traced” the plans.  George H. Jones, was well versed in the design of school facilities through his role as the school district’s architect.

The son of Thomas J. Jones, who had also served as district architect for many years, George Jones was born in Portland in 1887.  After attending Oregon State College for two years, George Jones obtained a degree in architecture in 1913.  Jones worked in New York for several years before serving with the U.S. Army Combat Engineers during World War I. Following his return to Portland in 1920, Jones obtained his architecture license.  He quickly assumed the position of school architect after his predecessor became district architect for the Seattle School District.

Roosevelt High School (photos courtesy Homestead Images)   

Woodrow Wilson High School, the other of Ginn's subjects, is located in the Hillsdale Neighborhood of southwest Portland. Its famous alumni include former Trail Blazer Damon Stoudamire, whose Wilson team I once saw defeat Beaverton in Memorial Coliseum for the OSAA state basketball title.

The 26-acre Wilson campus includes the original high school building, built in 1953). The two story, International Style school building is a U-shaped plan with the gymnasium, auditorium, and music wing all differentiated from the main classroom sections of the school by different massing, building materials, heights, and overall shapes.

Wilson High School (photos courtesy Homestead Images)

The classroom sections of the building were constructed of “lifted” concrete slabs and the auditorium, gymnasium, and music wing were constructed using the more conventional tilt slab concrete.  Most of the main classrooms lie behind a glazed curtain wall and the second floor library is cantilevered over the first floor.

Here is some info about Wilson from the PPS site:

Most classroom spaces feature a curtain wall composed of three part plate glass windows with an opaque panel below.  The bottom plate is typically a functional hopper window. The remaining sections of the school – the auditorium, gymnasium, and music rooms are sheathed with face bricks laid in an all stretcher bond.

Wilson High School (photos courtesy Homestead Images)

The main entrance to the school overlooks broad athletic fields that sprawl to the west of the school.  The topography descends from the school down to these facilities. The main entrance, consisting of two sets of double doors, is recessed into the building and sheltered by classrooms above that are supported by two columns. The west elevation also features a one story extension that houses administrative offices located immediately beside the main entry. This elevation also exhibits a cantilevered bay on the second floor which creates additional space for the library. The gymnasium also projects from this side of the high school.  It is largely unfenestrated.

The main classroom “fingers” extend to the east forming a grassy courtyard with a central concrete planting bed.  Due to changes in the site’s topography, these two sections of the school rise three stories.  The music wing projects northward from the south finger and is differentiated from the other classrooms by its lack of windows, its projected volume, and by a series of round columns that support it.  Between the two fingers is a one-story projection that houses the school cafeteria. The exterior of the cafeteria is entirely glazed with plate glass windows.

  

Wilson High School (photos courtesy Homestead Images) 

The south side of the high school is dominated by the auditorium.  A curtain wall of windows projects from the south side of the auditorium, but this component of the building is otherwise unfenestrated.  The function of this section of the school is communicated by its angular-shaped walls and double-height volume. 

Thanks to Matthew Ginn and Homestead Images for supplying these images. Matthew is tentatively set to photograph more Portland Public Schools sites this summer and I hope to be posting those photos as part of a continuing series.

If other photographers would like to have their photos of local architecture exhibited on this site, contact me anytime at [email protected].

More UO student projects: "Places Full of Time"

Danielle Meyers, "Layers of Time", image courtesy UO

Recently I wrote about visiting an exhibition of architecture student projects from a University of Oregon called "Experiential Harmony" taught by Kevin Valk and John Holmes of Holst Architecture. During that same visit, the work of another class, taught by Gerald Gast Ghast was also on display.

The class was called "Places Full of Time" and students were tasked with creating projects of urban regeneration. "During the nine-month process," it explains in the class syllabus, "students select the final 'capstone' project of their professional education, conduct in-depth research, prepare a design program, and develop rigorous design studies that include a high level of tectonic development. The emphasis of the studio is development of a comprehensive architectural project backed by a creative and rigorous research effort."

The syllabus description of the "Places Full of Time" concept and assignment follows:

"Renzo Piano recently remarked that the projects he found most stimulating were those with a depth of physical and cultural history.  They often require reworking or adding to an existing building, transforming a derelict site to create a renewed place, or recovering the roots of a culture that is associated with the history of a site or neighborhood."

"From the late 1960’s, the influence of Jane Jacobs’ prolific book The Death and Life of Great American Cities, the growing interest in preservation and conservation, and the environmental movement have all converged to orient urban architecture toward a more time-layered approach."  

"In his book and drawings, Radical Reconstruction, Lebbeus Woods advocates retaining scars of the past, including tragic ones with unpleasant memories.  In the German Ruhr, one of the most environmentally-devastated industrial districts in the world, an ambitious regeneration effort emphasizes retaining the archeology of abandoned factories and industrial sites as part of  a “green” environmental and economic revitalization at a regional scale.  Closer to home, revival of historic public places, cultural landmarks, and neighborhoods that experienced post-WWII decline, have invigorated city centers with new energy.  Sensitive community-based efforts in small rural places, exemplified by the work of Rural Studio in Alabama, demonstrate that exceptional architecture need not be limited to high-end budgets and new signature museums by star architects.

"We take it for granted that historically-significant buildings and districts are worth preserving, but what about the archeology of more ordinary urban places, sites and buildings?"

I particularly like the idea of this class because I've long felt that too many old buildings, particularly historically protected ones, are restricted in the ability of architects to imagine new futures for these structures as hybrid architecture. But the examples of projects that have become new-old buildings includes some of the most impressive architecture in the world, such as Norman Foster's renovated Reichstag in Berlin, or Herzog & De Meuron's Tate Modern museum in London.

Danielle Meyers, "Layers of Time", image courtesy UO

One of the student projects, that of Danielle Meyers, is an adaptive re-use of the Pabst Brewery complex in  Milwaukee, Wisconsin (pictured at top and above). One can't help but see the similarities to the Brewery Blocks here in Portland, the adaptation of the former Blitz-Weinhard brewery into a vibrant mixed-use area.

 

Jessica Kreitzberg, "A Building That Heals", images courtesy UO

Another student, Jessica Kreitzberg, created  "A Building That Heals", situated in the Old Town-Chinatown district of  Portland. The project is a medical center combining western and eastern medicine.

 

 
Nicholas Lopez, "San Francisco Maritime Museum", images courtesy UO 

Nicholas Lopez created the "San Francisco Maritime Museum" project along Pier 70. It's an adaptive reuse of the historic Union Ironworks industrial district, the oldest surviving industrial district in San Francisco.

Kristopher Celtnieks, "Relief School, Philadelphia", images courtesy UO  

Kristopher Celtnieks designed "Relief School, Philadelphia", a demountable school and building system for temporary use when inner city schools are closed for renovation, overloaded or stressed with unexpected events. The great thing about these student projects is the creators have license to dream and imagine without real-world constraints. Like a lot of these projects, I couldn't help but feel a little seduced by Celtnieks' images.

 

 
Ellen Hagen, "Sustainability Integration Learning Center", images courtesy UO 

Ellen Hagen designed the "Sustainability Integration Learning Center", located along the Ballard Locks in  Seattle. I enjoyed how the building seems to integrate well with the landscape.

 

Stephen Varady, "Bootstrap Union", images courtesy UO 

Stephen Varady's project, "Bootstrap Union", is a business incubator for the Detroit inner city. And of course in Detroit, America's Pompeii, there is ample need for a business incubator, and lots of opportunity for adaptive reuse. Although I wonder if the word "Bootstrap" is ideal in the title, for the phrase "pulling yourself up by the bootstraps" has long been a kind of conservative code for arguing against public assistance and equality programs such as welfare and affirmative action. Chances are people in Detroit getting small-business assistance wouldn't be this sensitive, but a building title should always send the right message.

 

 
Tony Walsh, "Portland Adaptable Housing", image courtesy UO 

Tony Walsh was one of the students contributing a locally focused design.  "Portland Adaptable Housing" is targeted for Northeast Portland.

These are the final projects for these students as they complete architecture school. Most all of them will face grim prospects as they enter the job market amidst a building industry that has largely collapsed from its boom of the 2000s. There won't be lots of half-block condo buildings or office towers to work on. They'll have to possess not only ingenuity and talent but perseverance. But we can't ask design students from this class anything more than they've already given: their passion, their ideas, and themselves. Congrats, gang, and Go Ducks! 

UO architecture students seek "Experiential Harmony"

Marc Holt, new central library/I-405 cap, image courtesy University of Oregon 

A couple times a year, architecture students at local schools like PSU and U of O give the public the chance to view their enlightened daydreaming, through open studio exhibits like the one I attended last week for Kevin Valk and John Holmes' class, "Experiential Harmony".

What does that term mean? Here's a description from the professors, who both come from Holst Architecture:

"Experiential Harmony is the study of space through experience and perception. Architecture is seen as the manipulation of three dimensional space based on the requirements of a number of factors: budget, program, structure and perhaps most importantly an innate feeling of harmony. The whole being different than the sum of its parts.

The intent behind the studio has been to immerse the student in a direct and visceral 'experience' of architecture, a process by which one is encouraged to engage in the kinesthetic experience of space, light and texture in-order to arrive at beauty and harmony. All criteria for successful design will be measured against the human experience, not theoretical complexity."

What I like best about attending these architecture class studios is the fact that, although these students don't yet have the experience of working in the building profession as architects, they are imagining Portland and other cities with fresh eyes, and seeing possibilities that we've sometimes forgotten.

Student Marc Holt, for example, resurrected an idea first proposed by then-mayor Vera Katz in the 1990s: a cap for Interstate 405, complete with a new central library between Yamhill and Morrison Streets (pictured at the top of this post). Holt chose this site "because of the potential for reconnecting two parts of a city that is very much separated by the interstate transportation corridors," he wrote in his project narrative. "Portland is known for its ability to reclaim land that was occupied by highways, such as what is now Tom McCall Waterfront Park."

Of course Portland already has a wonderful Central Library, a Georgian-styled gem designed by one of the city's top architects in its history, A.E. Doyle. But there's no reason why a student like Holt can't challenge the assumption that Doyle's building will be the only downtown library space we'll ever need.

Mark Schmidt, School for the Industrial Arts, image courtesy University of Oregon 

Another student, Mark Schmidt, designed a School for the Industrial Arts, on Water Avenue in the Central Eastside Industrial District. The school incorporates three main components: The industrial arts school (the foundation for the project); Industrial arts museum (tower element, providing public display and visibility to the project); and lastly the roof sculpture garden (the most public element of the program).

"The district, an eclectic mix of legacy industrial and independent art studios, is the last true artist stronghold in the city of Portland," Schmidt writes. "Affordable rents due to the flexible reuse of industrial space have allowed the district to absorb fleeting refugees from previous gentrified artist communities. The goal and aspiration of the School is to be a beacon for the district that celebrates the qualities and character that the district embodies."

Courtney Nunez, culinary school, image courtesy University of Oregon 

Courtney Nunez also targeted the Central Eastside, but in her case for a culinary school. "The project celebrates the life of food by providing spaces for growing and raising food, curing and preserving food, cooking and eating," she says. "Each of these spaces is given a unique character appropriate for its craft, and interaction is encouraged by way of a path, which acts as a backdrop for the food while connecting the earth to the river and taking the user from the garden to the table."

 
Jason Riffle, Peninsula Center, image courtesy University of Oregon 

Jason Riffle created "The Peninsula Center" in St. Johns (above), a mixed use project offering transitional housing, educational and vocational opportunities to homeless and at-risk youth, and an "urban  living  room" for the North Portland neighborhood. The latter is a public commons set back from the Lombard Street corridor, and reflects the site’s residential exposure to the northeast. 

Chris Iverson designed a Beaverton Performance Theater, seeking to act as a catalyst for downtown Beaverton. "The concept driving the design of the theater revolves around the relationship between the audience and the performers on stage," he writes. " The stage is the life of the theater, where the unfolding events portrayed by the actors are fixated on by the audience."

Chris Iverson, Beaverton Performance Theater, image courtesy University of Oregon 

"In the translation to the building, the wooden auditorium becomes the stage with the audience, the public, focusing on the theater's main auditorium space," Iverson adds. "The glass facade provides a heightened transparency to the project, giving that extra emphasis on the wooden auditorium."

Kelly Wyland created a more souped-up renovation of the circa-1928 Meier & Frank Warehouse in the Pearl District than developer Gerding Edlen and architecture firm GBD have proposed.

"This project set out to tackle the problem of how you preserve but still have a relevant and functional building," she writes. Her design converts the original building into mixed-use and adds a new structure for a residential tower.

Kelly Wyland, mixed-use Meier & Frank warehouse, image courtesy University of Oregon 

"The idea was to preserve the original facade as much as possible," she adds. The design cuts a courtyard into the middle and the new addition grows right through the original building like a sapling out of a tree stump. The new residential tower is constructed of reinforced concrete with a light glass facade.

Congrats to these students on their ingenuity. I hope to be able to post more student projects in the days ahead.

PSU students imagine a café on the Hawthorne Bridge

A Portland State University architecture studio class led by professor and former architecture department head Rudy Barton has set its sights on an unexpected building site, the Hawthorne Bridge, for imagining a new café.

"Bridges are some of the most significant pieces of infrastructure citizens have," Barton said. "Bridges should be places to be, not just places to quickly get across. When one thinks of the world's great bridges, from New York City's Brooklyn Bridge to London's Millennium Bridge, they are wonderful places to see the city and contemplate the natural and manmade worlds. The middle of the river could be an unforgettable place to stop and have a cup of coffee."

To explore that idea, Barton's students investigated the creation of a café on Portland's Hawthorne Bridge with a simple program:  a café serving coffee, tea, and light refreshments, accommodating 15-25 customers. It had to be right on the bridge, but still allow the drawbridge to function (if you call going up and down when there is no water traffic a "function").

Over the course of five weeks students designed cafés using three general strategies: on top, on the side, and underneath the bridge. Half the class selected a location underneath the bridge in order to provide access from both sides and to develop a closer connection to the river and back to the city. Another group of students developed schemes that were on either the north or south side of the bridge, and yet a third group positioned their buildings on the upper reaches of the bridge's towers. In each case, the café became a clear additive element that could be attached to the Hawthorne Bridge.

"This project started with the art and craft of making additions to buildings," said Barton. "Since the overwhelming majority of architectural work focuses on the remodeling of existing buildings, I felt it was important that our students confront the tough design issues of adding on to an existing structure. The Hawthorne Bridge is probably the toughest site we've ever worked on and our students rose to the challenge."

The four student projects shown here are by (in order of top to bottom) Jamie Tausen, Stephen Christian, Johnny Karam, and Zephyr Anthony.

I love this idea. Is there any chance of taking this proposal out of the classroom and into the real world? I also think the Hawthorne would be the perfect bridge for this. Being Portland's oldest bridge, it would provide a wonderful context to a new structure grafted onto the span. And because the Hawthorne goes up and down all day regardless of whether there's river traffic (in order to keep its ancient parts moving), one could often use a place to hang out until the bridge is back down.

The notion of having programmed space on a bridge is also one with lots of tradition. Bridges in London three centuries ago often were crammed with housing or other functions, for example. And I've seen numerous amateur proposals for new bridges like the one planned for the Willamette south of downtown to carry MAX. It's a fun, intriguing idea about how to invigorate crossings as places and destinations in their own right.

UO architecture students tackle Burnside Bridgehead (updated)

On Monday I had the pleasure of spending the afternoon with several graduate students from the University of Oregon's School of Architecture & Allied Arts, who presented ideas for the Burnside Bridgehead project as part of a class taught by architects from Mulvanny G2 (led by Suenn Ho), one of the firms that has been involved in the job.

Ironically, being with these grad students, professors and architects from UO cheered me up after I'd thrown a small temper tantrum earlier that morning about their school, when the nation's top-rated running back prospect, Bryce Brown, announced he was attending Tennessee over Oregon (the perceived front runner for his services.) A giant cross hanging from his neck, Brown had reportedly prayed and fasted in search of the right decision about where to matriculate, but then chose Tennessee because it was his fastest route to the NFL and millions of dollars. So it was great to spend time with Oregon students who saw their education as more than a personal means to an end disguised in flamboyant piety.

The format, as architecture school jury critiques seem to go, was to have each student present his or her idea to a handful of us jurors (non-grading, just opinion-giving) over about a half-hour. Unfortunately I didn't get to see all 11 grad student presentations, but the ones I did see were a treat. 

I've also attached at left an image from a presentation I didn't see by student Fai Chong, called "Learning Hub" for "using intentionally-designed landscaping in an urban area to evoke our imagination on how to use the land and what to build on it, informing the future programs of the site." At the bottom of this post is an image from Elisabeta Curea's project.

Masaye Harrison (pictured above) offered the most realistic plan for Burnside Bridgehead, which she branded the "B-side Blocks". She spoke about re-establishing the city grid here, and better connecting this large parcel with the surrounding urban fabric. Her plan an incubator for creative industries in the spirit of other nearby projects like the Olympic Mills Commerce Center, developed by Burnside Bridgehead developer-in-waiting Brad Malsin and his Beam Development company.

Harrison also had the simplest and perhaps most singularly effective design idea, not to mention the cheapest: The Eastbank Esplanade connects to the Burnside Bridge's edge with a stairway on the south side, she pointed out, but not the north side. Simply by putting in another stairway on the north side of the bridgehead, Masaye's plan established a better connection. No other student presentation I saw did anything like this exceptionally simple move to connect Burnside Bridgehead with the Burnside Bridge.

That said, two other students had the kind of bold ideas that we can only get from young, idealistic designers with open minds.

Kevin Ellingson imagined a relatively banal series of traditional buildings occupying the core of the Bridgehead site, but he also created a perimeter of very sculptural, curving architecture to ape the contour of the adjacent I-84/I-5 freeway interchange. Ellingson's design, which you can see a little bit in the photo above, looked like a long piece of origami, all folded triangles and angular facade. Were it to be built, the structure would become an instant icon for the city.

Then there was Kristopher Celtnieks, or "Special K," as I heard a fellow student call him. Celtnieks (pictured at left) proposed--are you ready for this?--a working dairy farm for Burnside Bridgehead, complete with cows grazing on the sloping green roofs of the buildings there. It wasn't something the designer pulled out of nowhere, though: He did all the research to prove that an urban dairy was not only possible for the site, but came up with a business plan that could turn a profit. 

Special K's plan also included a public market, which is actually a very viable idea for Burnside Bridgehead. Some of his buildings, curvy and classy with large overhangs, also recalled the landmark TWA terminal at New York's JFK airport by Eero Saarinen.

And if the dairy idea seems outrageous, I liked the fact that he was trying an idea so different. If you're not going to brainstorm wildly in a college setting free from the budget and client strictures of everyday practice, when will you?

Marc Holt had some of the best-looking displays for his project (a rendering is at right), which started with a more conservative, real-world idea: relocating Columbia Sportswear to the site. Within that simple plan, though, his designs offered some of the strongest ideas for how to energize the site with broad sweeping plans and integration with the surrounding streetscape. As it happened, one of the fellow jurors offering commentary alongside me during Holt's presentation on a Columbia headquarters was Eric Cugnart of Mulvanny G2, who served as a lead designer for another sports corporation headquarters in Portland, the Adidas Village, while working with BOORA Architects earlier this decade.

Cugnart, who happens to be French, also offered some of the most frank insights and commentaries to the students, which made good theater for the rest of us, being Americans more concerned with politeness. Cugnart wasn't afraid to say, "This doesn't work," when some of the rest of us weren't. I don't mean to imply he was nasty; Eric's a good guy without a doubt. But overall, I appreciated being part of a forum where my fellow jurors, people like architects David Horsely, John Duncan, and Kevin Valk (among several others) gently nudged students to both articulate their ideas and learn from opportunities not fully met.

Although this was clearly not an official brainstorming session for Burnside Bridgehead (I seriously doubt a dairy farm will go there, much as I enjoyed Special K's presentation), it was also good to see real decision makers there to participate, like the project's presumed actual developer, Brad Malsin, as well as Amy Ruiz from mayor Sam Adams's office.

In the future, Portland could very much use an integrated, collaborative approach to generating ideas for public-funded sites at key intersections such as this. Together the public and private sector should invite the academic portion of the design community to help generate ideas with as wide an initial net as possible. Kudos to UO and Mulvanny G2 Architecture for making this happen.

Oh, and Duck football fans: don't forget to root against Tennessee!

Update, 3/19: I've added some additional images from students below; the first four are of Kristopher Celtnieks' dairy project and the last two are from Jon DeLeonardo, a mixed-use public market project.

 

Also, I forgot to mention one other idea I had for Burnside Bridgehead. In Marc Holt's presentation, one of the jurors suggested his proposal might be better with a taller, more dramatic building at the point closest to the river. Hearing that, I thought: What if, were the Blazers and Portland Beavers intent on building a baseball stadium next to the Rose Garden--which I think is a terrible, disastrous idea--instead of letting Memorial Coliseum be demolished, what if it were to be disassembled and rebuilt at to the Burnside Bridgehead site? Obviously plenty of liberties would have to be taken with the design, but why not preserve the Coliseum at this prominent Burnside Bridgehead site as a concert hall, public market, or other space?

PSU's Portable Classroom On Alberta

Portland State University architecture professor Matthew Bietz is teaching the first phase of an architecture studio that will be designing and fabricating a portable classroom on NE Alberta Street at 15th Avenue, on a vacant property Bietz purchased next door to his home.

The classroom will be not for Bietz’s students, but for fellow PSU professor Harrell Fletcher’s Social Practice students going for their masters of fine arts. The Social Practices program emphasizes community engagement through non-studio creative activities executed in the field. “I heard that Harrell was looking to collaborate with the Architecture department at PSU," Bietz explains, "and that his new Social Practice class has no studio space on campus. Also, [then architecture department head] Rudy Barton has been asking me to teach a design-build class for some time now, because of my experience in Mexico with Steve Badanes and the University of Washington’s design-build program.”

There will be a hands-on construction studio beginning in July, with completion and ‘arrival’ of the project on site as part of PICA’s TBA festival this fall.

The site is a 50x100 empty lot. Once on site, the project will become the base of operations and community outreach center for the Social Practice students. After a 3 to 6 month stay, it will remove itself from the site and travel to a new location in a different neighborhood to repeat the process.

The intent of Bietz’s studio is to explore architecture as a mode of social outreach through community engagement, with specific focus on portability, prefabrication and recycled and re-used materials.  The process began with 15 concepts that were then condensed into five projects. The projects range from panelized systems and tent structures to expanding shipping containers and unfolding spaces on wheels.

Bietz moved to the Alberta neighborhood in 1998 “when houses were still under $100K and an architecture intern could afford to buy a house in Portland.” A decade later, “my house has appreciated to the point that I could afford to refinance and purchase the lot next door to me, for a possible development. But with the current mortgage crisis, and no one willing to lend me 500K for speculative housing, I started looking for other ways to use the property. Put that all together and you have a pretty interesting potential project. One that needs some funding, but will no doubt be built this summer.”

In the images above, the first is the "Sliding Cube and Tent Structure" by Junior Carbajal, Hussien Al-Baiaty and Gulia Gulnara. The second is "Dynawall" by Ralph Loielo and Paul Nordlund. The third is called "Unfolding Shipping Container" by Max Dehne, Craig Moore and Olga Reuven.

PSU Seeks Accreditation...Again, UO Cash For Graduation

This just in from FOPA (friend of Portland Architecture) Matt Janssen: Although the effort has been in the works on and off for years, this coming weekend, Portland State University kick starts the process of becoming only the second accredited architectural program in the state of Oregon. The National Architectural Accrediting Board is sending a team to begin the multi-year long evaluation process whereby PSU could/should have a graduate program in place in the fall of 2009 with full accreditation coming in the summer of 2011.

There will a reception (read: free beverages and food) occurring this upcoming Monday at 6:00pm at the AIA Center For Architecture at 403 NW 11th Avenue. As Matt reminds us, "A strong show of support from the architecture community would go a long way in letting the NAAB team know that you/we believe in the creation of a second venue for architectural education within Oregon."

With a new Portland campus in Old Town, I'll bet the University of Oregon isn't too keen on PSU giving them competition with an accredited school of their own. But even as the Biggest Ducks Fan In the History of Humankind, I'd argue that PSU getting accreditation is a great move.

Although ours is increasingly a city becoming known for its quality design, Portland lacks enough accredited architecture schooling. PSU isn't ever going to be a top American architecture school, most likely, but it'd help the overall case for design here to have more kids able to start and finish their architectural education here in town - without having to spend time in Eugene or elsewhere. I hope PSU gets its accreditation, that UO doesn't fight it, and then they play in football with a 63-2 Ducks victory.

Oh, and speaking of UO, graduating Portland-based architecture students will be holding a variety/talent/cabaret show Friday at 7:00PM at the school's new facility at the White Stag Block in Old Town. For $5 you can see these future architects reveal their hidden performing talents. Why are they putting on the show? Because the school doesn't provide any funds for their graduation ceremony, I'm told. Isn't that just pathetic of my beloved Ducks? With all the UO architecture alumni in town, not to mention 'Uncle Phil' out in Beaverton (yes, Nike is in Beavertron, no matter what they say), you'd think these builders and dreamers of Portland's future wouldn't have to resort to this. Perhaps they could rig a deal to have caps and gowns with a swoosh and faux-diamond plating. But failing that, I can vouch for the fact that one of the students, my friend Adrienne, plays a wicked clarinet.