Portland Architecture

“A different way of developing cities” — SERA Architects' Tim Smith discusses the OMSI District and civic ecology

Tim Smith at his his AICP College of Fellows enshrinement (SERA Architects)

 

BY BRIAN LIBBY

Last December, more than a decade after it was first announced, the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry unveiled plans for its OMSI District along the east side of Willamette River, which will turn surface parking lots and vacant land between the Marquam Bridge and Tilikum Crossing (and adjacent to the museum) into a high-density enclave. The district is projected to include 1,200 housing units, forming with the Burnside Bridgehead development to the north a residential bookend to the otherwise non-residential Central Eastside. There will also be mixed-use commercial buildings, as well as a waterfront education park focusing on indigenous heritage, and a Center for Tribal Nations on the OMSI property. There are ambitious sustainability goals here, its backers promise, and a commitment to equity.

Although ZGF is the OMSI District's master-plan architect (replacing Oslo and New York-based Snøhetta), SERA Architects is a partner on the development team, led by Edlen & Company; principal Tim Smith helped put together the development team. This comes as Smith, founder of the firm’s Urban Design and Planning Studio, was earlier this year named to the American Institute of Certified Planners' College of Fellows. Smith has also served locally as vice president of the Portland Planning Commission and the Mayor’s Central City Roundtable, not to mention as urban design advisor to the City of San Francisco for the Treasure Island Redevelopment. At SERA, he has also been instrumental in the firm’s long-range planning and urban design efforts for Google.

Anticipating an interview with Smith about OMSI and his long career on the occasion of his College of Fellows honor, I also watched a 2011 TEDx talk that Smith delivered called "A Living Community Framework for Sustainability," in which he discusses the social and equity-based components necessary for healthy and sustainable urban communities; that topic wound up guiding a lot of our conversation, including our talk about the OMSI District.

Brian Libby: Congratulations on your fellowship.

Tim Smith: Thank you very much. It just goes to show you that if you are standing upright for 40 years, they'll give you an award. So here I am.

I watched your 2011 TEDx talk earlier today, which focused on the concept of civic ecology and took inspiration from E.V. Walter’s Placeways, which puts human experience at the forefront of urban design as a way to address contemporary social and environmental dislocation. But you mentioned coming from Philadelphia, which got me thinking about Edmund Bacon’s seminal 1967 book Design of Cities. These are two very different perspectives about urbanity and placemaking, almost like Jane Jacobs and Robert Moses.

Edmund Bacon was actually my teacher [at the University of Pennsylvania]. Kevin Bacon the actor is Ed's son. I used to live down the street from all of them, so I have one degree of separation from Kevin Bacon. Ed’s approach was definitely a top-down, ego-driven one. When you took his course, he would show things that he had done, and if you questioned any of it, he would just not even respond. More importantly, in Design of Cities Bacon favors the axis—with its wide multilane boulevards—and other very formal aspects of planning. The axis is really an example of how to exert power in city planning, and I just really have grown to have difficulty  with the concept. In a city like Paris with many axes, what’s more interesting are the neighborhoods off axis, which are basically medieval, and whose fabric has been largely determined by people who lived in the neighborhood rather than something that was done from on high.

Conversely to Edmond Bacon, civic ecology argues that social infrastructure is at least as essential. It brings to mind Portland's turnaround in the 1960s and ‘70s, through neighborhood organizations: a kind of civic ecology. But some of that neighborhood activism has since come to be regarded as NIMBYism, or lacking inclusiveness.

One of the best outcomes of a civic ecology process would be something called a civic public-private partnership. The idea behind it is to eliminate the concept of NIMBYism: that you engage citizens as the third leg of a local government and private developer stool, so that they co-create the vision and the steps to implementation for change in any given place. Community stakeholders will have less reason to be against change if they are actually part of the sausage-making, as it were. I think Portland's success back in the ’60s and ’70s was rooted in neighborhood groups and the city and private developers being open to working with each other. I don't believe that's the case now in Portland. Many people say the neighborhood model is broken in Portland. That may be true, but what's really broken is the relationship: the constructive, co-creative relationship between those three entities.

 

Covers of Placeways (UNC Press) and Design of Cities (Thames/Hudson)

 

For years Portland was praised as a progressive boutique city with amazing street food and bike culture: a destination. Now, there’s this perception we’re struggling more than other cities to bounce back from the pandemic and the unrest. Given that you look at cities with a longer view, what do you make of this?

Cities have ups and downs, as do communities, neighborhoods, countries. It's all part of being a nested bundle of integrated systems. Occasionally all the systems are positively reinforcing each other, and occasionally a couple of them get sideways, and begin to kind of fracture things and slow things down. The best example of this is the community I mentioned in the TEDx talk, Chestnut Hill in Philadelphia, where I lived for a number of years. In the 1960s, that community was really suffering from the failure to compete with suburban development. Folks in the community bootstrapped a strategy to make it much more dynamic, forming a host of  civic entities that were able to localize the neighborhood’s decision-making. They realized that the city of Philadelphia with its limited resources couldn’t be as helpful and responsive as a local governance structure could. From time to time there would be issues of disagreement among people working within the civic-public-private structure, which caused the system to slow down or break, but eventually they always figured it out and moved on.

In Portland, obviously the issues are much greater.

How so?

We don't yet seem to have a unifying vision of the city. You might say that at the beginning of the Portland Plan, back in the ’70s, there was this unified vision of where we needed to go, which made neighborhood associations work. The problem with that vision is that it did not include the African American, Asian, Native American, Hispanic and other communities. So here we are years later and that vision has kind of faded. There's a real question out there about what's the new vision and whose vision should it be. Suddenly there's a lot of factions that are out there raising their voices, saying, ‘You need to pay attention to us because we live in this place, too.’ I feel like there's a call to action that the folks in city government are beginning to sense. I firmly believe we're going to be okay once we kind of get this together.

So what can we do? There’s a movement afoot to change Portland’s system of government. Is that a step in the right direction?

I'm very interested in this charter commission, to see what they recommend.  I wonder, however, if it might  have been better to develop a process of vision and unification first, and then ask the question, ‘What governance model and therefore charter do we need to actually make this new kind of vision happen?’ There are more complex forces out there that we need to embed in our city systems, and maybe we need a different kind of governance model. I think Portland will bounce back, because cities are resilient. If we can be much more inclusive and figure out a process to make this new vision happen, we're going to be even better than we were.

 

A view of the OMSI District site (SERA Architects)

 

That might be a good segue into talking about SERA’s urban design work with OMSI. It’s an interesting placemaking opportunity in the Central Eastside, which doesn't have residential except at the Burnside Bridgehead. OMSI’s property is also a crossroads with the Hawthorne Bridge and downtown, and on its southern edge it’s beside a new transit bridge leading to South Waterfront. For years Portland Public Market wanted to locate down there, and maybe still does. This area is also part of the so-called Innovation Quadrant. A famous architecture firm, Snøhetta, was hired to produce a master plan. But years have gone by without any groundbreaking.

Snøhetta’s master plan was interesting, but what really stuck out to us was that some of the sustainability goals didn’t have an implementation strategy behind then. Certain aspects of it didn't feel too buildable, to be polite. So when OMSI put out the RFP for a developer to implement the master plan, I helped put together the team that's working on it now: Edlen and Company, a company out of Cleveland called Long Haul Capital that is involved in the impact-capital world, the Farkas Group [an infrastructure, financing & development agreement advisor], and a company called Urban Systems that does a lot with smart-city infrastructure. OMSI also hired ZGF Architects to lead the Central City Master Plan process.

What about OMSI’s sustainability goals, and the opportunity for an eco-district?

We began to realize that a standard development approach would not be able to achieve the carbon-reduction outcomes and other sustainability goals district-wide. So OMSI and the development team applied for and received a grant from the Bullitt Foundation to have a series of design charrettes focused on the entire district, as opposed to a building by building approach. You're probably familiar with Bullitt’s headquarters in Seattle, one of the nation’s first to be Living Building -certified. They said, ‘We want to fund you to take this Living Building approach and do it for an entire neighborhood.’ In response to that challenge the team came up with ideas about integrated, equitable-district infrastructure that included shared energy, water waste, food systems, urban habitat, local economy, last-mile mobility, digital open-source economy. Edlen and Company is not an infrastructure developer, so we formed a brand new company focused on district scale infrastructure called InfraCenters LLC. It's a joint venture between SERA, Long Haul Capital and Civic Technology Ventures. In the OMSI district, InfraCenters will investigate: How do you actually create a district scale integrated system where the water, the energy, the waste systems of all kind, and last mile mobility are all supported by a digital platform.. Central to our mission is carbon neutrality and social equity.

How can you build that civic ecology along with the architecture itself? How can there be more than for-profit development down there?

We responded to a grant opportunity from Metro for equitable and sustainable development and have been working for more than a year with OMSI, the Affiliated Tribes of Northwest Indians, the Columbia River Inter-tribal Fish Commission, the City of Portland, Prosper Portland and others to create a Center for Tribal Nations and Waterfront Education Park in the OMSI district. We're getting close to creating a concept that will integrate with all these other ideas—perhaps a Portland Public Market, an Oregon Botanical Project—and act as a catalyst for an Innovation Quadrant. We've also been talking to a number of impact investors, including banks who through the Community Reinvestment Act are required to invest locally. We have gotten them interested in the idea of investing in perhaps a local entrepreneur space or even a clean technology hub within an actual InfraCenter building, whose focus would be BIPOC community entrepreneurs. It could be a live-work space. We want to provide a pathway for a diverse array of community members to participate in all aspects of the emerging  climate-change economy instead of limiting it to the usual experts

What has emerged is a partnership between Western science and traditional ecological tribal knowledge and perhaps  a more thoughtful and inclusive way to describe and address an issue like climate change. Because, ultimately, where we are going in terms of technology is back to traditional tribal knowledge about systems thinking and working with nature. Both OMSI and its inter-tribal partners are excited about telling that story in the district through the real infrastructure that we hope to create down there. So it's a mind-blowing opportunity.

 

Rendering of future OMSI District (ZGF Architects)

 

This sounds very different from traditional development, but with so many moving parts it also seems difficult to pull off: a puzzle with a lot of pieces.

What is really different about this is usually architecture and planning firms are waiting to respond to an RFP or a development opportunity and then, as a designer, you're at the mercy of what the developer is going to be able to pencil out to their investors. Bringing your own money to the table is an opportunity to change how development can happen. And I feel like we may be on the cusp of creating a different way of developing cities where the money gets directed to do really good things: social equity building.

It’s interesting to me that you work for an architecture firm, but a tenet of the civic ecology you talk about is that we can’t build our way to true sustainability.

My hypothesis is that the best way to address some of our complex issues is to start with the software—the resource flow systems, the relationships—and build the hardware—the physical change—on top of that. We've all been doing it the opposite way: building the hardware and then retrofitting software into existing structures. The real impact will not come from a bunch of green buildings sitting next to each other. It's going to be from an integrated neighborhood approach that contains an array of buildings, streets, and spaces interconnected through a digital platform that enables real-time response to human needs. In such a neighborhood, people will have control over their place and their livelihoods and can feel a sense of ownership of their community. And so that's the vision behind this. It's turning things  inside out and flipping the scale quite a bit.

 

Systems diagram for OMSI District (SERA Architects)

 

It reminds me of places around town where a big idea for redeveloping a neighborhood has either failed or achieved mixed results: the South Portland Urban Renewal Area in the 1960s, for example, which today feels like failed urbanism except for the Lawrence Halprin-designed fountains, or even the South Waterfront, which came a generation later and, though quite different, also lacks much urban energy.

I think the first problem with many new developments is a misreading of the opportunity—is this really a blank canvas or is there some underlying context that suggests a deeper and richer approach? Imagine if that original South Portland neighborhood had remained, and those wonderful fountains had been inserted into that? Those residents might have taken a deeper ownership of that neighborhood and thus those fountain spaces might have been a different kind of community infrastructure. It would have been a completely different outcome.

At the same time, we have to figure out how to keep neighborhoods like that from becoming so successful that they begin to price out the people that made them interesting in the first place. How do we broaden accessibility to all developments—racially, ethnically and financially—and make new development  permanently affordable: intergenerationally affordable and accessible? I think we have a great start at OMSI because OMSI is not going to sell the property. They're going to keep it on a 99-year land lease, which opens up all kinds of possibilities for enduring accessibility and attainability.

So really a unique, interesting landholder in that regard. What’s the key to making it work?

These developments work when people in the neighborhood feel a sense of ownership. People don't like having stuff handed to them from on high: ‘Hey, we figured this out. Now it's yours.’ It just doesn't work. It really doesn't. So co-creation is the whole basis of the civic-ecology model, which is that those who participate in the sausage-making are going to feel ownership and therefore it's going to have a life that goes beyond what the designers designed. Because it will always be being designed.

Could you talk about making some of these ideas into a kind of toolkit, given your work with Metro?

A number of years ago, we were hired by Metro for an initiative called  Great Communities.. Metro was seeking decision criteria to ensure that  Urban Growth Boundary decisions would not only satisfy growth requirements but also yield great communities. We developed criteria that addressed a number of Civic Ecology issues: How do you handle energy, and water? What about the local economy? Is the topography such that it would support a walkable community? The work was accepted by Metro and is now part of the criteria that they use to bring land into the urban reserve and ultimately the growth boundary. Now UGB decisions are likely to offer the opportunity to connect to existing neighborhoods, or to support a Main Street. When people impacted by these decisions can become part of the process and realize that what's going to happen isn't just a development to satisfy growth goals, but an opportunity to build a new or enhance an existing community it offers an opportunity to avoid a NIMBY conflict.

 

Rendering of future OMSI District (ZGF Architects)

 

And NIMBYism, even though it can turn negative, it’s often comprised of locals who are active in their community. Which, in theory, could be turned around into something positive. But often NIMBYism is specifically about opposition to height.

NIMBYism is a message that there is the potential to create a real community. There are people in the community who have the energy and the time to participate in something positive because they're able to organize against something. Imagine if you took that energy and organized it into co-creation, to begin to weave together all these aspects of their lives and future residents of this area: to achieve something much better than just arguing about six-story buildings or three-story buildings? Development can become much more aspirational. People then have a platform to say, ‘I want my community to evolve to a place where we're energy self-reliant, where we have urban agriculture, where we have developed relationships with farmers outside of our community, where local entrepreneurs can afford to live here, where there's affordable housing. We want all these things. And you know what? If we can be part of where these things happen, I would gladly exchange all the things I keep fighting against, like tall buildings.’ I think when you hear people saying negative things, it's really a call for help. People don't like railing just for the sake of railing. They're really sending a signal. You have to be open to the signal.

Tell me some great city like you have visited that inspires you.

There's a bunch of them. There's a beautiful city in southern France called Aix en Provence. Oh my goodness, it is so wonderful! It has got everything we've been talking about. There are certainly some great neighborhoods in Philadelphia where I lived for a while. I mentioned Chestnut Hill, but when I was living there it was a bit racially stratified. The adjacent neighborhood, Mt. Airy, is diverse and it’s one of the most wonderful neighborhoods in America. I’m originally from Detroit, and in the neighborhood I grew up in, North Rosedale Park, my father was president of the civic association and our entire family was deeply engaged in the community. Of course, with disinvestment in Detroit, it really suffered. But it’s a shining example of great urban neighborhood, and it’s coming back again.

What might Portland learn from Detroit?

Cities like that are fascinating because there are opportunities they have there that we don't have here. What has happened in Detroit is that they are so desperate that they seem to have moved away from bureaucratic siloing  and toward an integrated focus on problems. And they're actually getting a lot of stuff done. I think it's kind of what we need to do here.

That’s a very relevant discussion given that Portland might eliminate its arguably obsolete system of government, where elected city council members control bureaus but aren’t accountable to specific geographic constituency.

It's a real problem. I'm completely against the non-geographic focus. Commissioners in Portland are forced to be about bureau-focused silos. I sense they do not want to be and that they get interested in problem solving. It is just very difficult in any governance structure to think and act holistically. With our system it is even more challenging. But if they were in charge of a piece of geography and were able to work with all the bureaus, they'd be the first ones to want to de-silo those bureaus. I remember years ago a mayoral candidate took me out to lunch, because we were fellow TED talkers that year, and he asked, ‘Could you give me some advice on what I ought to do if I became mayor?’ I said, ‘The first thing you’ve got to do is break down the silos. Everyone will hate you and you'll probably be a one-term mayor, but you've got to break those silos down. Otherwise the city is just going to devolve.”

You’re a principal at SERA, and I admire how the firm has endured over generations, after being founded by people like Bing Sheldon and Don Eggleston. What advice might you give about succession?

I'm trying to get out of the way and maybe just advise. It's a very difficult thing to do. When you get to a point where you have a depth of experience, that is the time to step aside, become an advisor, and let other people discover things on their own. And I'll do that.

Bing was a mentor, and I always remember: he just leaned on me very closely for a number of years, until one day he came up to me and said, ‘You know what? You're on your own now. I think you know what you're doing. You know what to do. You come and see me if you need me. But I'm not your guy anymore.’ And that was that. And boy, is that ever a tough thing to do. I'm the second generation and we are now advancing the third generation in the firm. And I think one of the great things Bing and Don did was to make it an employee-owned firm, which means that people have different incentives than they do if they're working somewhere where the profit goes to a few people at the top.

Conceptually, it’s like some of what we've been talking about with civic ecology.

Yeah, I guess we're a civic ecology firm. And it works. It really works. In setting up the systems of relationships and flows of money and investment and everything, that helps you become a different kind of firm. We want to have an impact in the community and on the planet, and you can't do that just by responding to RFPs and making sure your work pencils out financially. We at SERA are on the cusp of a new paradigm and I think our industry is as well. It's all a big experiment – and lots of fun!

 

 

 

 

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The Architect's Questionnaire: Gabe Fonseca

Gabriel Fonseca (courtesy SmithGroup)

 

BY BRIAN LIBBY

Recently one of the nation's oldest architecture firms opened an office in Portland. In fact, SmithGroup is the longest continually-operating architecture and engineering firm in the United States that's not a wholly-owned subsidiary. Founded in 1853 in Detroit by Sheldon Smith, today the firm designs many college and university buildings as well as large civic buildings and even stadiums like Ford Field, home of the NFL's Detroit Lions.

To welcome SmithGroup to town, I invited principal Gabe Fonseca to participate in our ongoing Architect's Questionnaire series. Gabe earned a master's degree in architecture from Yale University and a bachelor's degree in architecture from the University of California at Berkeley, and had spent most of his career in the Bay Area before relocating to the Rose City. He's celebrating his 15th anniversary with SmithGroup this fall, and, as you'll see at the end, is a big fan of two great movies by Lucas and Hitchcock.

Portland Architecture: When did you first become interested in architecture as a possible career? 

Gabe Fonseca: Originally, as a child but not in a serious manner. I was good at drawing as a kid and drew most things I saw. My mother encouraged my drawing activities and often mentioned that I should be an architect. It was not until college that I seriously considered architecture as a path for me.

Spring semester of my freshman year, I needed a class to round out my schedule. I was sitting in the dorm lounge with other dorm mates when a friend of mine came in and mentioned that he was off to audit an architecture class. He invited anyone who was interested. I decided to go. In that class, the professor walked into the room, stood on stage peering at us out in the lecture hall. He then walked over to the wall, pulled a coat rack off from the wall and screamed, “What is this!” We all sat in silence. Someone finally got up the nerve and quietly responded, “A coat rack?” The professor screamed back, “Are you sure?... What about now?” He then dropped the rack to the floor and said, “Now it’s a trap!” He then picked it up and started swinging it screaming, “What about now?... Is it a coat rack or a weapon?” The point he was making is something that accepting an object as only existing for its preconceived function can be limiting. It's only when one thinks of possibility, does true creativity thrive. 

 

SmithGroup's Valley Children's Eagle Oak Specialty Care Center (Emily Hagopian)

 

Where did you study architecture and how would you rate the experience? 

After my first experience with the academics of architecture, I decided to pursue a degree in architecture at the University of California at Berkeley. After completing my bachelor of arts in architecture, and a few years working in the profession, I obtained my master's in architecture from the Yale School of Architecture. Both experiences were phenomenal and really helped me develop as a problem solver. 

What is your favorite building project that you’ve worked on? 

It was a project that was outside of my professional career. As part of my graduate education and in lieu of a construction sciences course, the Yale School of Architecture offered a course where the class entered a design competition for a single-family home. The client was a nonprofit developer of affordable housing. The winning design would then go into construction documentation phase and eventually construction, with all work being completed by the student body. I participated in the course my first year, built the winning design and ended up as a graduate student instructor my third year, teaching the first-year students the art of building. I spent my first summer out of graduate school, building with the students. The payback in socially-responsible work is what gives me joy. 

Who has been an important mentor among your colleagues? 

Every senior architect that I have worked for or under has had an influence on me in various aspects of my development as an architect. Some impacted my design thinking, or a way of seeing. Others offered practical exposure to the business of architecture, while others imparted ethics and social responsibility onto me. The point being that they all placed a little piece in the till. 

What part of the job do you like best as an architect, and what are you best at? 

Teaching the craft of building is my favorite part. Most of my career has been spent in the project architect role, managing the day-to-day technical work associated with design and building. As such, I often manage more junior architectural staff, which requires an approach centered around teaching and mentorship. 

 

Dekum Building (University of Oregon Libraries/Marion Dean Ross)
 

 

What are some Portland buildings (either new or historic) that you most admire? 

Having only recently relocated here during the pandemic, I have not had much opportunity to explore the built environment. Of the buildings and spaces I have visited or noticed, two stand out to me. For building, I really noticed and appreciate the presence of the Dekum building on Third Avenue. I generally tend to appreciate modern architecture more, however, the mass and weight of this building impressed me to the point of researching it further. To me, the building represents the history of Portland and local mindset as all the stone for the building was quarried locally. The other space that I find interesting is the Kennedy School, simply for the creative use of existing space and building to house new, fun and interesting functions. I find it to be very quirky and creative and a great representation of Portland spirit. 

What is your favorite building outside of Portland and besides any you’ve worked on? 

Of the architecture I have visited, the Centre Pompidou in Paris, France, stands out as one of my favorites. What I really appreciate about this project is the boldness of expression by flipping the “guts” to the exterior, which becomes the elevations of the building. Like my first experience in the architectural academic setting with the coat rack, the building rethinks the often-overlooked potential of some part or piece that can, if expressed differently, impart beauty and become the creative expression of the building.

 

Centre Pompidou (Wikimedia Commons)

 

Name a local architect or firm you’re a fan of that you haven’t worked for. 

In a different life, I think I would have liked to work at a firm that specializes in smaller scale single-family residential architecture. Without naming any single firm or architect, there are many here in Portland whose residential work I respect and would have loved to be a part of. 

What would you like to see change about Portland’s built environment in the long term? 

Unfortunately, what I would like to undo does not apply just to Portland, but many metropolitan areas across the United States. When I was an undergraduate architecture student, I was introduced to the book City of Quartz by Mike Davis. The main theme of the book is how the built environment and policy can segregate and exclude those that may be seen as marginalized or “other.” Discriminatory planning and zoning policies from the 1950s and 60s really changed the face of many cities by creating a building environment of separation and isolation. There are citywide movements that recognize the damage done and aim to rectify the conditions through redevelopment and thoughtful inclusive planning, with Portland being a city that recognizes the mistakes of the past and actively taking measures to try and mend the city fabric. 

How would you rate the performance of local government, whether it’s the mayor and City Council, Prosper Portland, or various bureaus? 

Being relatively new to Portland, I am often surprised at the types of projects that get built, especially at the residential scale. The neighborhood fabric of some of Portland's oldest communities are often interrupted by the “West Elm” style town home , often two on one lot with little to no front, side or rear yard, two to three stories over an on-grade garage level. Maximum density with for-profit developments seems to be the norm in Portland’s neighborhoods. To me, interventions of this type represent a lack of care on the part of city planning to preserve urban fabric and density. 

Name a famous or just a talented architect you’d like to see design a building in Portland. 

Unlike other cities I have lived in and visited, I feel that Portland is missing that one new modern public building or space, designed and completed by a well-known, highly sought-after architect. With that I would love to see a firm like OMA [Rem Koolhaas] or Herzog & de Meuron design a public building or space in Portland. 

What does your place of residence—the location, the type of architecture—say about you? 

I relocated to Portland in part due to the dominance of the craftsman style bungalow. I find this type of residence to be simple, comfortable, sturdy, strong in character and easy to understand architecturally. The clarity I see in the craftsman home as a residence type is what draws me to the type. In my practice, I also aim for clarity through simplifying the complex and emphasizing integrity and character through actions and service. 

What’s something besides architecture (sneakers, furniture, umbrellas) that you love the design of? 

Although I do not operate or own any, motorcycle design has always intrigued me as it is such a basic machine that can express itself so differently, across the types of bikes out there. For instance, I love a Harley for its expression of frame while its counterpart sport bikes embrace the notion of shell, an exoskeleton but all composed of two wheels, and an engine.  

What are three of your all-time favorite movies? 

In order... Star Wars: Episode V - The Empire Strikes Back, North by Northwest and Forrest Gump. 

 

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The Architect's Questionnaire: Julia Mollner

Julia Mollner (Carleton Hart Architecture)

 

BY LUKE AREHART

Continuing our now-multiyear series in which local architects talk about their inspirations, influences and key moments from their careers, the latest edition of The Architect's Questionnaire features Julia Mollner, a project architect and associate at Carleton Hart Architecture for the past six years. Also an adjunct professor in the Portland State University School of Architecture's Center for Public Interest Design, Mollner is also a longtime Habitat For Humanity volunteer. She holds bachelor's degrees in both art history and architectural studies from Washington State University, before earning a master's degree in architecture from Portland State in 2015. 

Portland Architecture: When did you first become interested in architecture as a possible career?

Julia Mollner: I studied art history in high school. We looked at a lot of old buildings and there were a couple that piqued my curiosity, such as the Sagrada Família in Barcelona, Florence's Duomo, and St. Peter’s Square in Venice. Alongside the art history course, our high school led a 70-day trip through Europe, where our teachers guided us on a whirlwind of European architecture, art and history. This experience was huge for me. I realized buildings can draw emotional responses from people, and inform our  and our well-being. Being able to experience profound spaces solidified my interest in architecture.

Also, during my high school years, I had an internship at both a graphic design company and with a residential architect. The architect designed multi-million-dollar single family homes and they were impressive. I started out building models for him; I liked the hands-on nature of it. In this internship, design was commissioned by individuals. I started noticing that whatever was built was experienced by more than the individual who commissioned it. Architecture is meant for everyone; it's not just meant for one person to experience.

Where did you study architecture and how would you rate the experience?

I studied at Washington State University in Pullman, Washington for my undergraduate degree. I got my masters in architecture here at Portland State University. They were different schools in lots of ways and both really great. Washington State focused more on the technical execution in the building science of architecture and constructability. This was due partly because we studied alongside the Construction Management program. PSU, on the other hand, is much more theoretical and art-based. This allowed me to study and explore human experience and phenomenology on a deeper level. I appreciated that I had the technical-execution knowledge before I dove into the theoretical aspect of architecture. I still talk to professors from both schools today; they made a lasting impact on me. 

What is your favorite building project that you’ve worked on?

Nesika Illahee, a housing project here in Portland. The name means ‘our home’ in Chinook, and it is my favorite because I was the most hands-on with this project. Early in a career, you're sometimes just drawing details and executing the design. You don’t always get the opportunity to have those interactions with clients and collaborate on the design together. My supervisors gave me the opportunity to own the design, and craft people’s experiences inside common spaces and dwelling units.  I was able to work on the building all the way through construction: the first project that I was on from beginning to end. It is an awesome residential building for Native American Family and Youth Center, Native American Rehabilitation Association, and Community Development Partners. The integration of art helped make it beautiful. The project was completed in January 2020.

 

Nesika Illahee (Josh Partee)

 

Who has been an important mentor among your colleagues?

Bill Hart, here in Portland [the co-founder of Carleton Hart Architecture], and Grace Kim [of Schemata Workshop], whom I worked for in Seattle. They both really encouraged my curiosity and encouraged me to follow my passions. In our conversations, they asked a lot of questions back to me, which helped me clarify what I wanted. Sometimes people can try and give you the solutions, or maybe not want to take the time to sit with you and have the silence. I felt like both were really open to the conversation, even if there wasn't a definitive outcome – which I appreciated. That helped me with my own confidence, because it was about them supporting the things that I was working through, or searching through, whatever it may be. It's the curiosity that they brought to conversations that I really appreciated.

What part of the job do you like best, and as an architect what do you think you most excel at?

What I like the most about the job - which I've been able to verbalize more recently - is being the translator of space. I like being able to hear clients’ and owners’ ideas and listen to the vision that they have and find the way that it translates into physical form. I think this is the essence of what architects do. The translation is also about creating quality spaces. Most architects have this skill to visualize 3D space in their head before it gets built. I think that's the most fun. I wish there was more of that in the job.

 

Mollner's Carleton Hart profile pic (Carleton Hart Architecture)

 

As far as what I excel at most - I've always thought that I'm action-oriented. I'm willing to play out the idea, whatever it may be, and make the follow-through. I want to talk about ideas and hear about why it works or doesn’t work, but I think there's a point of diminishing return if you talk about an idea too much, without seeing how it manifests in the world. The only way to get more information about whether it is a good or bad idea is to do something: test it out, and put something in motion.

My work diverting construction mock-ups is a good example of testing out an idea and seeing how it is responded to and evolves with others. This is a program I started developing in 2017 on my own time, called the Useful Waste Initiative. Over the last four years I have continued to refine it, engage new developers, architects, and contractors in the process, and adjust the program based on their feedback. At this point, we have diverted over 70,000 pounds of usable material from the landfill.

What are some Portland buildings (either new or historic) that you most admire?

I love the Watzek House by John Yeon.

I also really love the Portland Building for its ability to create conversation and dialogue. Part of its intrigue to me is that everyone has an opinion about it, whether it's good or bad. To me, that makes something withstand the test of time - cultural time - because there's enough conversation and dialogue about the building.

 

Portland Building, 2014 (Brian Libby)


Some debate if the Portland Building is a “good building” or “good architecture,” and I’d like to keep that conversation going. Even now during the ongoing pandemic, the Portland Building renovation is being re-evaluated. The design team was trying to compact people and optimize workspace. Then the pandemic hit and every company is looking critically at their space; to see if more space can be added to provide social distances, for instance. We are constantly re-evaluating what we built to work with current social and environmental needs. It’s fascinating to observe and participate in.

Further, I think architecture should make you feel warm and fuzzy, or trigger you to feel something else. You should feel good as a human in one’s body. I think that architecture needs to be something that empowers people and sparks thought, emotion, or action.

What is your favorite building outside of Portland and besides any you’ve worked on?

The Sainte-Chapelle royal chapel in Paris. This is a gothic church with the most breathtaking stained glasses windows: 15 feet tall, framed with very fine masonry. I recommend everyone experiences this space at least once.

 

Sainte-Chappelle, Paris (Wikimedia Commons)

 

What would you like to see change about Portland’s built environment in the long term?

I want to see more design and material experimentation. I also want to see more housing diversity. I feel that in our culture we started to lock into a couple housing types. As people we are more diverse than a couple types of housing, which means we need more diverse options for housing. I think that's going to have to be driven by code changes, or by people who are really willing to push that boundary. I think Dignity Village is one community that’s not given enough credit as a housing model when it started twenty years ago. It was created by the people who live there out of need. Villages like Dignity or Hazelnut Grove have received a lot of pushback because of outside social perception, not because of what they actually are and what they provide to the people and neighbors who interact there daily.

Who is a famous architect you’d like to see design a building in Portland?

One the first that comes to mind is Kieran Timberlake, out of Pennsylvania. I'm also a big fan of Jeanne Gang; I really love her firm’s work because of its balance of nature and innovation.

Name something besides architecture (sneakers, furniture, umbrellas) you love the design of.

Definitely art sculptures. The other one that comes to mind is floral arrangements. Also, the design of billboards is really interesting: size of graphics, composition and fonts. Have you thought about how billboards draw a response from you?

 

Humphrey Bogart in Casablanca (Warner Bros.)

 

What are three of your all-time favorite movies?

Little Miss Sunshine, Casablanca, and The Shawshank Redemption.

 

 

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Design for community: a conversation with Carleton Hart's Michelle Black and Brian Carleton

Michelle Black and Brian Carleton (KLiK Concepts)

 

BY BRIAN LIBBY

For quite a while now, I've been meaning to check in with Carleton Hart Architecture, and for a variety of reasons.

I first met co-founder Brian Carleton just over 20 years ago, when I was working at the local American Institute of Architects chapter and he was the chapter's president for a year. (Architect-members rotated as chapter president for yearlong terms, really acting more like a board chair, while an executive director ran the office.) At the time, the firm Carleton had founded with architect Bill Hart in 1994 was just starting to establish itself, but if you flash-forward to today, Carleton Hart Architecture has a large and impressive portfolio of community-oriented projects. Just as importantly, the firm has retained a kind of mission and focus.

"Bill and Brian established a firm that had a really clear vision from the beginning. It was community-focused; it was about how do you use architecture in a vision-driven way, whether that’s affordable housing or commercial or community engagement," firm principal Michelle Black told the Daily Journal of Commerce's Josh Kulla in an interview last March. "That was so clear from the beginning, and we’re still in that same zone, which is a testament to what their vision was in the beginning.”

Carleton Hart is also about one year into a new era: just Carleton, no Hart. Founding partner Bill Hart retired from the firm last year, to form Hart Development LLC, a real estate development and consulting firm. The architecture profession has long lacked diversity, both culturally and in terms of gender, and Portland is less diverse than many other large cities; Hart was one of the state's unfortunately few Black architects. But as the following conversation with Carleton and principal Michelle Black indicates, Hart's influence remains.

Most of all, though, I’ve become increasingly interested in Carleton Hart’s work as affordable housing has become more and more needed. This firm, a certified B Corporation and 2030 Commitment participant, has worked with a variety of communities and stakeholders and cultures to create a host of successful affordable housing and community-oriented projects. How do they make it happen? How did they get here? And like everyone else, how are they handling these disruptive times? Our recent Zoom talk provided a few answers.

Portland Architecture: Did I see correctly that the Carleton Hart offices are in what used to be the Willamette Week offices, across the street from Central Library?

Brian Carleton: Correct.

Small world! I was a freelance movie reviewer for Willamette Week from 1999 to 2006, and my partner ran the personal-ads section for a few of those same years, so I spent a lot of time there. But you're doing this interview from your homes. How much do you use the office right now?

Michelle Black: I work from home. I mean, the office is open to staff to use. You have to be masked for governor's mandate and all that. But it’s understanding that people have different home situations, and some might benefit from getting out of the house for a little bit. So the office is technically open to our staff to use, but we're not mandating any time in there right now.

So you’re kind of maybe kind of going by feel and see what happens, and just trying to give people flexibility.

Black: Yeah. It's been hard to know how to approach all this because we've, you know, no one has any experience with anything like this. And so we really erred on the side of caution. We're one of I think many firms that are working on a hybrid back-to-work model where we do have some required in-office time. But we will offer way more flexibility and really acknowledging that each of us is different and we have different project needs at times. So there's real benefit to having those options. In surveys from staff, people both acknowledge that they wanted more flexibility in the option to work from home in some level, and then they also wanted to be in the office where everyone was there at the same time. We are a team and there's a real benefit to that cross-pollination of ideas, specifically with people that you're not seeing on a regular basis. So how do you put together a system that is going to really help balance those needs?

 

Woodie Guthrie Place (Josh Partee)

 

I did some reporting on this topic earlier this year, and what you're saying is right in line with the survey data that I read. Something like 80 to 85 percent of people did not want to go back to the office five days a week, but almost as high of a number did not necessarily want to remain working five days a week at home, either. I’d imagine that’s a conversation you’re having with office clients, too.

Black: The pandemic has been interesting because we are obviously in a very unique position of changing the way spaces work for people, and yet we still have so many questions. We have immediate needs, but what are the what are the future needs? And so [it’s] being able to walk clients through those conversations and let them just take a pause and really think through what priorities they think their projects are going to need in the future. Lots of conversations about indoor air quality, for example.

It seems like the economy is kind of booming in some measurable ways, and then things are really messed up in other ways. What's it been like for your office in terms of like the kind of work that's out there? How's business?

Carleton: Business is booming. We we've been staying busy. We are trying to hire additional staff, and a lot of that is due to the affordable housing and community work. But our non-housing team that is currently focused on county/Metro/city work, it's mostly public sector. We're getting into a little bit of commercial. They're keeping busy as well, and we're trying to hire additional staff for their teams. The work has continued to flow particular to the housing world; there's a lot of funding flowing into that area of : affordable housing.

I imagine having a mix makes it easier. What's it been like given that you have a kind of mission that's beyond just being financially successful, in wanting to focus on community-based projects? How have you been able to strike the right balance?

Carleton: My perspective is that balance has kind of found itself. A focus leads to getting to know an industry really well and long-term relationships with clients. We've been working with some for 20, 25 years now. So it kind of just starts to feed it, so that work just flows and you get to be a certain age as a firm and your reputation is out there now. We've been able to develop a similar reputation with public-sector work, but just at a smaller scale. So it literally just kind of balances itself. Some of that does have to do with, as you rightfully called out, we practice with that sense of mission. Clients are drawn to us and as importantly, staff are drawn to us. They want to come work for Carleton Hart because of what we do. Therefore, we have people who want to do that work. It allows us that capacity to do that work, and it just kind of feeds it. We like to think we're real strategic and we sit in the conference room and planned this out five years in advance. Really, what happens is the phone rings and we decide whether that's a good project for the firm or not. And it just kind of builds from there.

Learning to say no once in a while can kind of define you as much as what you say yes to.

Carleton: Yeah. And I'm learning that. I surrounded myself with really smart people who know exactly that and are working with me every day to learn how to say no.

Black: I think the unique place that Carleton Hart is in is over the lifespan of the firm, like Brian said, like, we have had so many repeat clients, and we have this reputation within specifically the affordable housing world. That is 65 percent of our portfolio and could be well over 65 percent if we would let it. And so we are in the unique position of saying no to good projects. It is hard to say no to a lot of the things that we say no to. But we are only saying yes to something that we can do at our full capacity and full engagement.

It’s an interesting journey finding the right size for your company. I was talking about this with the founders of another firm, who a few years ago they had gotten up to something like 50 employees, but they realized that kind of just weren't happy. With more projects to manage, the founders felt they were getting too far away from what they enjoyed doing. So they downsized.

Brian, could you talk about 1994 and starting the firm with Bill Hart? Where were you in your lives?

 

Carleton and Hart early on (Carleton Hart Architecture)

Carleton: I had actually started my own firm three years earlier. I had been a partner at the Lee Ruff Waddell, which is now LRS Architects. Bill and I had met there and worked together—he was actually on loan with us for a while from YGH—and really kind of bonded. I was trying to convince the other partners to offer him a full-time position, and he wisely decided that wasn’t the right place for them. About the time they got to the point of offering him a position, he had found the similar position over Fletcher Farr. In '91, I left soon after that started my own firm. We kept in contact, actually did some work together. He came over and helped me on a really interesting project, a mosque/Islamic center down in Southwest Portland, using vacation time to come over and help me with that. And then we also worked on Friendly House Community Center together, me as a board member and Bill as the project architect over at FFA. So we kept the relationship real close and talked about this eventuality. He left Fletcher Farr and wanted the experience of starting his own firm, so he started William Hart Architects but rented a desk from me, and spent about a year doing that.  say this jokingly, but it's a story I love telling. We had an agreement where he was supposed to have access to my staff. He was building up work, but I was keeping my staff so busy that he could never get any time from them, and he finally realized he was just going to have to join me . It was something we had talked about and kind of planned for it. So then in '94, we hooked up and he joined the firm.

Did you feel like you had complementary skills? Some are good at drawing, some are good at working with clients, some are good at project management. How did your skills fit together?

Carleton: You know, that is a great question, and we got asked that a lot. And that's not how we looked at the firm. We both left our positions wanting to do a different type of architecture. We both came from firms and project types where we didn't feel we were getting that connection to clients and communities and mostly the people who were going to inhabit our buildings. Certainly, we had connection to clients, but there was always this kind of veil between us and the users of the building and the communities that these buildings would be for. And so it was really that common philosophy, about wanting to do community-based work and really connect with people, that bonded us in the first place and convinced us that we’d make good partners. It wasn't necessarily based on this very thoughtful strategic blending of different skill sets. We always practiced as two parallel partners, where we both wanted to be well-rounded architects that did a lot of everything. You know, certainly we had our different contributions. I was the writer in the group and took on a lot of proposal work. Bill was always great out in the public and would do a lot of presentations and stuff. But we both did everything and it would just support each other and work together.

Michelle, I saw on your LinkedIn page that you spent a lot of years in New York City. How did you make your way out west?

Black: I grew up in Lawrence, Kansas, a college town, and went to school there. I moved to New York upon graduation. My partner was doing his Ph.D. at Columbia, which took me out there, and I just fell in love with being in New York. And then and then, you know, life gets complicated. You're pushing a double stroller through 30 inches of snow in Brooklyn, and you think, ‘Maybe we should try something different.’ We have friends and family out here, and had been coming out here to visit for years.

I would love to hear just a little bit about what you guys are working on now or what's got you excited.

Carleton: I'll start and then Michelle will be eloquent. In one sense where we're still doing the same thing, and in other sense, it's just totally different. And that's what's exciting about the path we've taken. It's easy to say that we're still doing affordable housing or housing of all types. We’re doing shelters. We're in a transitional housing, we're into different types of intergenerational living. What's exciting is that we are constantly discovering new dimensions to that work. Currently we're doing a lot of permanently supportive housing and trauma-informed design and realizing the impact of trauma on the people we serve and the impact of being aware of trauma has on our design work. We're designing for all types of communities, whether they are culturally unique or ability-unique. We're starting to do some work with intellectually and developmentally disabled communities. There's just constantly these new dimensions being layered onto a work that keep it really exciting. We're always learning new things. So from that base of housing and community work, it just feels like we're growing. We get to work with the people we've worked with for a long time, who are also learning and excited to be trying new things and serving people in a different way. And so as a group, you know, clients, consultants, providers, housers—it's just an exciting time to be there and doing different stuff.

It seems like  a term like affordable housing is a kind of broad brush and actually there's all kinds of different types of sort of sub-types within that. It seems like there's more opportunity to serve individual audiences and less one size fits all.

Carleton: I really feel like it's growing out of our equity work. I think being more aware of it, putting the work in to diversity and equity has really led to this awareness that it's not one big world out there, that there's a lot of unique individuals and unique groups that we ought to be paying attention to and celebrating those differences.

Black: As difficult as the last few years have been, I think it has given us a shared language and an understanding that these things are important, and people are more open to ]a fuller discussion of who we're designing for and making sure that this isn't just a one-size-fits-all property. We do a lot of R&D work and talking to people ahead of projects because, once they get funded like we're trying to get units online as soon as possible. There's not a lot of time to sit and rethink. So when we’re doing, say, trauma informed design, it’s really looking at how we can be providing better, more sustainable, and socially and physically healthy environments. And so it's been really rewarding.

 

The Madeleine, for The Madeleine Parish (Pete Eckert)

 

How much do broader trends in architecture or even housing specifically like prefab or mass-timber construction permeate the markets you’re working in? How much are your nonprofit and public-sector clients interested, or do budgets allow for it?

Black: Some people really are explorers, and they want to try the next big thing, and some people aren't. The hard part with public clients or affordable-housing clients is there is a lot of pressure and even part of the funding responsibility is to be creating durable, lasting environments. It can be really stressful to take a take a chance. We have done research and cost analysis for modular versus stick built for multiple projects. We have wonderful clients who are who are willing to look at different, different ways to go about stuff. We’re all trying to just find the best tool to get people housed. And so I think for the most part, we get to work with visionaries who are who are willing to explore things. But it is difficult sometimes depending on what that what that new technology is, to get the funding to also agree, I guess.

What have you got under construction or coming up?

Black: In construction right now is the Susan Emmons housing project in the Alphabet District. That's with Northwest Housing Alternatives. So that's one that's in construction right now. I mean, it's a big project. So it's going to be under construction for a little while. There's the Behavioral Health Resource Center, which is downtown on Oak Street under construction right now. We have projects in Forest Grove and Gladstone under construction. We have a project out in Ontario that's under construction. I mean, we have a lot. You talked about the balance of finding the right number of staff, and we're at 39. We're trying to stay in that sweet spot of still being very much a cohesive team and knowing each other and all that. But you know, there is some freedom that that size gives us. We have our fingers in a lot of different projects, which exciting. And again, finding it hard to turn away clients is part of it, because we have so many wonderful clients that keep coming back to us.

Your firm’s restoration of The Madeleine just won a Restore Oregon award for historic preservation. It looks incredible!

Black: Yeah, that was a really rewarding project. When we first toured that space with them, it was being used as literally storage space. They had built this other bigger sanctuary. And so it had fallen out of use and therefore fallen out of being code-compliant. How do you put in completely new systems and air conditioning into a space that never had it—and you've got no place to hide ducts, right? And so it was about trying to problem solve. And this is where my work in New York comes into play, where you get used to just having to deal with a lot of old conditions, having to put in new code-compliant things into buildings that never, ever had that. I'm so pleased that they that it turned out the way it did, but also that they just gush over it, which is just the best thing: to hear how happy they are with it, and that they get to use that wonderful space again.

The Susan Emmons multifamily housing project struck a chord with me because I find it an interesting challenge going into a historic district and doing something that borrows from historical antecedents yet strikes the right note, where it doesn't seem like caricature. I also feel like how architects approach this has evolved over time. When I first started out writing about architecture 20 years ago, there was a lot more sort of hesitance upon architects to try and work in  a kind of neo-historic style. In retrospect, maybe there was like a little bit too much reticence. People like architecture that borrows from the past, and some of those old buildings in Northwest Portland are beautiful, so it’s natural to be inspired by them.

Black: I think what you're touching on is what makes architecture so hard, especially when you are an architect that wants to be respectful of context. It's easy to just go in create architecture that just sits as a sculpture, right? But that's not what we believe in at Carleton Hart. As we want to create beautiful and unique pieces of architecture, it must be responsive to the community, and some of that is not only just from an architectural context. You know, you're always approaching it from like, ‘This needs to feel like it belongs here.’ But it is a very delicate balance. We don't want it to seem like Disneyland—not that there's anything wrong with Disneyland. So how is it pulling from historic precedent and using it in a way that is modern and that is clearly not trying to be a caricature? It's tricky. You're looking at bigger ideas of form and mass and taking techniques but not replicating fully. That’s one of the starting points that that we use. Are there different, more modern materials that can we can use? You're clearly seeing a modern element. But also, what how are people going to feel about it in 20 or 50 I do think that you learn certain techniques, you apply them. If it doesn't look good, you go back and start again. Particularly when you are designing in in a place that is so beloved as the Alphabet District, you want to get it right. And so it just it takes time to get to do that.

 

Rendering of The Susan Emmons (Carleton Hart Architecture)

 

Carleton: We're applying a lot of what we learned on the Susan Emmons to a really large, affordable housing project down on the former Marylhurst campus right now and applying some of those same principles. There's a lot of pressure to fit into the campus, rightfully so. I don't see that negatively at all. But a lot of eyes on this project wanting to keep the culture of the campus, the feel of the campus, the architecture of the campus, even though there's a wide range of architecture. People have this sense of what the campus means. And so it's been really challenging designing this 100-unit, four- story building that fits in nicely to the campus.

One other past Carleton Hart project that comes to mind that I quite like is the Woody Guthrie Place. That one seemed like it had a nice materiality to it, and I liked the way it sort of seemed to float a little bit.

Carleton: That was a fun one. Rose Community Development brought the project to us. They already knew the name of it, and they wanted to honor Woody Guthrie's legacy in the neighborhood. You’ve got this inspiration there just handed to you. It was wonderful. And so we quickly picked up on the boxcar image of the rambling musician and just played with that.

I find it interesting, like working from a point of inspiration like that. There's a group of 1940s horror films I love where the producer, Val Lewton, would come up with the title first and then go to a filmmaker and say, ‘You can make any film you want, but you have to call it 'Cat People,' or 'I Walked With A Zombie.'

Black: I'm writing that down. We'll talk about these in the next interview.

 

 

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Looking at AIA Oregon Architecture Awards winners by Allied Works, Lever and more

Meyer Memorial Trust (courtesy Jeremy Bittermann/JBSA)

 

BY BRIAN LIBBY

It's that time of year again: accolades for the city's best architecture of the past year via the American Institute of Architects' Oregon Architecture Awards, this time juried by a trio of out-of-town architects: Pascale Sablan of David Adjaye Associates' New York office, Bryan C Lee Jr. of Colloqate Design in New Orleans, and Ricardo de Jesús Maga Rojas of STG Design in Austin.

Overall, the list of Honor, Merit and Citation Awards given out is comprised overwhelmingly of projects for public and nonprofit clients. There are two private residences and one private for-profit company office that received awards, as well as one luxury apartment. But that's basically it. A nonprofit headquarters and a nonprofit museum jointly won the highest accolade, the Honor Award, and most all of the Merit and Citation Awards went to high school and college projects, and to affordable housing.

One thing's for sure, though: when you're Allied Works Architecture, the AIA Awards mean you'd better keep expanding your trophy case.

Honor Awards

At last month's ceremony, the firm led by Brad Cloepfil took home AIA Oregon's top prize, known as the Honor Award, for the Benton County Museum in Corvallis. This adds to an already-unprecedented number of Honor Awards won by Allied Works in years past, including last year's top prize for the Providence Park expansion, in 2018 for the National Music Centre of Canada (in Calgary), in 2015 for its Pacific Northwest College of Art renovation here in Portland, in 2013 for the Sokol Blosser Winery tasting room near Dundee, in 2012 for the Clyfford Still Museum in Denver, and in 2008 for the Booker T. Washington High School in Dallas.

The Benton County Museum is an exceptional little jewel that fits well into its context of downtown Corvallis near a succession of historic buildings. While visiting and writing about the building for The Architect's Newspaper in October, I was delighted by everything from its Japanese ceramic tile exterior cladding to its light-filled gallery spaces to its endearingly eclectic collection, the latter of which was presented with the help of local design firm Renate. The building is laid out as four simple bays, with half of the third bay made into an outdoor courtyard, onto which the galleries open.

 

Benton County Museum (Brian Libby)

 

Allied Works' principal Chelsea Grassinger told me, "We were drawn to the hand-crafted quality of the ceramic tile: the rake texture and how the glaze dips into the valleys. Bringing something that had a kind of masonry scale was important, but marrying the historic context with a contemporary façade." But the design also sought "to open up that bay of the building to the courtyard," she added. "It goes back to breaking down the barriers, and creating some surprising opportunities for transparency. We had all of the typical technical requirements for daylight control and temp and humidity, but it was important to really open up the building visually and experientially."

Yet the other Honor Award winner at this year's AIA Oregon Architecture Awards, Lever's Meyer Memorial Trust, is the true Portland architectural project of the year. Located on Vancouver Avenue in North Portland, with a view of the Interstate 5 freeway that may soon be expanded, the project is exceptional as both product and process.

The Meyer Memorial Trust's designer, Lever Architecture, is also no stranger to AIA awards, having received the Honor Award in 2019 for Redfox Commons and in 2011 for the Design Animation Studio, as well as many lower-tier AIA Citation and Merit awards over the years for projects like the Treehouse apartments at OHSU, the Oregon Conservation Center in Southeast Portland (for The Nature Conservancy), the Flex spec-office space on 82nd Avenue, and the L'Angolo Estate Winery tasting room.

In an article for Metropolis magazine about the Meyer Memorial Trust headquarters, the nonprofit organization's CEO, Michelle DePass, reminded me that moving from the Pearl District to North Portland was a homecoming, as the trust's original benefactor, grocery magnate Fred G. Meyer, originally lived in the neighborhood. Yet with a renewed emphasis on empowering communities of color,  DePass added,  “We wanted to be in a place where people could walk by and say, ‘I know Meyer. Meyer knows me.’”

 

Meyer Memorial Trust (courtesy Jeremy Bittermann/JBSA)

 

The 19,800-square-foot Meyer Memorial Trust headquarters is set back from the street to encourage civic interaction. Metal cladding and a quartet of peaked-roof forms give the building’s exterior hint to both the industrial district and the residential neighborhood nearby. A relatively long, thin building footprint allows the building’s spaces to fill with daylight.

What's also noteworthy about the Meyer project is how its two distinct volumes are both wood-framed but built differently, for reasons related to community. A three-story office building utilized traditional materials and methods, while an adjacent single-story pavilion and gathering space called the Center for Great Purposes was one of the first structures in the United States to be constructed with mass plywood panels, beams and columns.

“Plywood gets used in buildings a lot, but it gets covered up by all the other finishes, and you never see it. It’s such an industrial material,” explained Lever Architects’ Chandra Robinson, who led the design and also won the Young Architect Award from the AIA along with the firm's design awards. The Meyer design utilizes traditional stick framing in the rest of the building "because some of these smaller subs were not going to have experience with mass timber,” Robinson added. “We wanted to pair standard construction they’ve done before with a chance to learn about building with mass timber. We really wanted to make sure that those folks could then go on to another bigger project after having that experience.”

The Meyer Memorial Trust and Lever also received the AIA's 2030 Award for its sustainable design.

One other thing about the two Honor Award winners: these projects were both led by female principals — Allied's Grassinger and Lever's Robinson. These two firms were founded by men, by two of the most highly acclaimed Portland architects of our time: Allied's Brad Cloepfil and Lever's Thomas Robinson (no relation to Chandra). Yet in a time when equality and opportunity have become more important than ever, these firms are empowering women and reaping the award-winning results. In Chandra Robinson's case as a Black woman, it's even more encouraging because architecture is traditionally nota  just male-dominated but white-dominated profession. It's not just what you build, but how you treat and empower people along the way, from the smallest subcontractors to the architects designing the whole thing. The award-winning results speak for themselves.

Merit Awards

Four projects received the equivalent of the silver medal: the AIA's Merit Award. One of them is arguably a far-more prominent and widely seen project than any other in this awards program: the new Hayward Field at the University of Oregon in Eugene.

 

Hayward Field (University of Oregon)

 

Designed by SRG Partnership, the stadium project began in controversy, as it necessitated the demolition of America's most historic track and field venue. Sports architecture is not traditionally inclined towards historic preservation. Treasures like Wrigley Field in Chicago and the Rose Bowl in Pasadena are unfortunately exceptions to the rule. And when you're the University of Oregon athletic department, which has made newness its brand while taking advantage of Nike co-founder Phil Knight's benefaction, perhaps it was no surprise to see even this track Mecca remade. But you know what? The new Hayward looks pretty great.

 

Opsis's Multicultural Center addition for WWU (Benjamin Benschneider)

 

Merit Awards also went to Opsis Architecture for Western Washington University's new Multicultural Center addition in Bellingham, to DLR Group for Discovery High School in Camas, and to William Kaven Architecture for the Heartwood residence in Portland's Oak Grove neighborhood.

Opsis has practically made a career out of handsome university buildings like this Multicultural Center addition, with its striking zinc exterior sun shades, even as the firm has received distinction recently for public projects like the Patricia Reser Center for the Arts in Beaverton and a renovation to the historic Kibbie Dome at the University of Idaho. And DLR is veteran of award-winning K-12 school projects, although its highest-profile recent work has been last year's transformative renovation of the iconic Michael Graves-designed Portland Building.

 

Discovery High School (Top: Lara Swimmer, bottom: Alan Brandt)

DLR Group is a large multi-city firm and has designed K-12 and higher education projects for clients all over America. Discovery High School was designed around the idea of what's described as project-based learning. I'm not sure what that means, but I think the answer may come in part from the fact that none of the photography seems to depict a traditional closed-door classroom with a teacher lecturing to students. There are science labs and wood shops and apparently yoga classes outside, and it paints a collective picture of a better way, which the light-filled spaces only encourage.

 

William Kaven's Heartwood residence (Jeremy Bittermann/JBSA)

 

William Kaven is also a multiple award-winner, especially for houses. This year's Merit Award comes just a few months after its Royal residence in Portland received a 2021 International Architecture Award from The Chicago Athenaeum.

Citation Awards

There were seven Citation Awards (equivalent to a bronze medal) given out by the AIA jury: three for housing projects, two schools, an architecture-firm office and a park pavilion.

That park pavilion, the Gerry Frank Rotary Amphitheater in Salem by CBTWO Architects, is a striking covered gathering area at Riverfront Park, which functions a lot like Tom McCall Waterfront Park in Portland. Its curving forms are made with glulam beams and its translucent skin with fabric, and the basket-weave patterning was inspired by the native Kalapuya people living along the Willamette long before European settlers. And perhaps appropriately, the pavilion recalls architect John Storrs' design for the Lumber Industry Pavilion at the Oregon Centennial in 1959, it too a soaring wood sculpture as well as a shelter.

 

CBTWO's Gerry Frank Rotary Amphitheater (Matt Swain)

 

It may also be worth noting this Citation Award going to a Salem firm. Though these are called the AIA Oregon Architecture Awards, until a couple years ago these were always the AIA Portland Architecture Awards. When the Portland chapter was absorbed into the long-dormant state chapter, the awards seem to have become a de facto state awards, but in reality it's mostly still a Portland architectural awards ceremony. That's all the more reason, though, to highlight a non-PDX firm winning.

The Bend Science Station is the latest from perennial AIA award winner Hennebery Eddy Architects, and an interesting dual program. This building, part of the OSU Cascades campus, provides science-related educational space to K-12 students and training teachers. In essence, it's a space for both actual K-12 classrooms and a space to teach teachers. There are two learning labs, a research room, a teacher-training space, and most distinctively, a small tower. The Bend Science Station is also designed to achieve net-zero or even net-positive energy production.

 

Bend Science Station (Alan Brandt)

 

Another regular AIA award winner, Hacker, picked up two Citation Awards this year, for the Gilkey Middle School and the Bailey Residence.

The Gilkey building, part of the French American International School in the West Hills and completed in 2019 (the AIA's date-eligibility rules are generous), gives the campus a sense of place that it never had with its preponderance of double-wide modular buildings. Before this building, the school didn't even have its own cafeteria. Now, the boomerang-shaped Gilkey is full of light in every space, from classrooms to hallways to a central gathering spot and cafeteria in the middle.

 

Gilkey Middle School (Bruce Damonte)

 

When I wrote about the Gilkey Middle School for Metropolis magazine last year, I remember the head of Gilkey, Emmanuelle Burke, telling me that the building had an immediate impact. “I think this place is fostering community in a different way,” she explained. “It’s created a series of separate spaces, but they all relate back to public areas where we can meet each other, both kids and teachers. We have more space for teachers to work together, and we have more spaces for parents to come in and speak with us. We have spaces for all the people we’re hosting.”

The Bailey Residence is a circa-1972 house at Black Butte Ranch in Central Oregon, a resort community built in the '60s and '70s that at its best can feel like a sibling to the better-known Sea Ranch community in California. Hacker did not change the exterior much, simply adding a large window to the front facade to illuminate a central stairway. Inside, the firm's interior design team transformed the feel to something more nicely contemporary, yet maintained the essence of the original space with its pine wood paneling. "The exercise was really about stitching in new things that helped to elevate the old," Hacker's Jenny Fowler explained in a Dwell article by Melissa Dalton.

 

Bailey residence (Jeremy Bittermann/JBSA)

 

Citation Award winner the Custom Blocks Studio, a new home office for the Portland office of Mahlum Architects, is the first Living Building Challenge-certified project in the city.  Owned and occupied for more than half a century by the Custom Stamping company, a machine parts fabricator, the two-block cluster of warehouses was soaked in oil and grime before  developer Capstone Partners commissioned a 2018 core-and-shell renovation by Scott Edwards Architects to clean up and seismically bolster the structures. The southwest corner of the complex, where Mahlum set up its office, was built in the 1930s as a Chevrolet dealership.

The LBC comprises seven performance categories, or “Petals”: Materials, Place, Water, Energy, Health, Equity, and Beauty. Buildings achieving full Living Building status, like Seattle’s Bullitt Center, meet standards in all seven areas. Satisfying only some can earn Petal certification. Mahlum’s tenant improvement in the Custom Blocks attained certification in Materials, in addition to Place, Equity, and Beauty. From cabinetry and wall panels to desks and screens, Mahlum vetted over 350 manufactured materials, working with partners to confirm ingredients and avoid Red List chemicals and VOCs. The firm also commissioned a 50-year life-cycle assessment to help achieve net-zero embodied carbon emissions.

 

Custom Blocks (Lincoln Barbour)

 

“The good news is the industry is moving in the right direction. Large and small companies are rallying around this, and coalitions of companies are coming together around material transparency,” Mahlum's Jay Hindmarsh told me for a 2020 Metropolis article. “They’re saying, ‘Come to us first.’ But it’s still a fairly select group of people. When you call suppliers to trace their material ingredients, you still hear a lot of things like ‘It’s a trade secret.’ We need these LBC projects to prompt manufacturers to invest in transparency.”

 

The Louisa Flowers (Jeremy Bittermann/JBSA)

 

Another Citation Award went to Lever Architecture's design for The Louisa Flowers, the largest affordable housing development built in Portland in the last five decades at 12 stories and 240 units. It's named the African American pioneer and civic leader who settled in Portland in the late 1800s. Louisa Flowers's family was one of the first black families to own property on Portland’s east side, operating a farm and building homes near the site of this new building. It's nice to see Lever applying its talents to an affordable housing project, which along with the Meyer Memorial Trust perhaps marks the firm's move into more projects for the public good.

Raleigh Slabtown, the final Citation Award winner, is a luxury apartment building in Northwest Portland that has helped to give the neighborhood a pleasing fabric of medium-density buildings, shops and restaurants. The design does a nice job of nodding to Northwest's traditional apartment buildings while still seeming contemporary.

 

Raleigh Slabtown (Lincoln Barbour)

 

This emerging part of Slabtown really has a pleasing medium-density setting and the buildings, while none of them arresting, have a kind of collective simple handsomeness. In keeping with SERA's longtime track record for sustainable design, Raleigh Slabtown is also designed to earn a LEED Gold rating from the US Green Building Council.

Congratulations to all the winners.

 

 

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Design writer's diary: houses, a warehouse, a museum and an opera

Beaver Creek Cabin by Outside Architecture (Shawn Records)

 

BY BRIAN LIBBY

I’ve decided to try a new series of monthly blog posts in which I talk about the different articles I’m writing, places I’ve visited, others’ work I might have read, and any other relevant info or stories I can come up with. So here goes!

Going Outside

Recently I completed two articles featuring the work of Portland firm Outside Architecture.

For the current Fall 2021 issue of Portland Monthly, I wrote about a new kitchen that Outside founder Jeremy Spurgin designed for the landmark Platt House, by the great Pietro Belluschi.

Nearly every renovated midcentury-modern home seems to take liberties with the kitchen. Today people don’t want their kitchens isolated from the rest of the house, so at the very least, a couple walls usually come down. But I was impressed at how this kitchen renovation and expansion seemed to do something more. It actually provided a new level of connection and transparency, relating the kitchen to the magnificent garden.

As great as Belluschi was, be it as a designer of houses, office buildings, churches or museums, at the Platt House, the landscape is an equally important part of the design and the experience.

 

The Platt house's new kitchen (Josh Partee)

 

From the article: “In 1940, when then–merchant marine John Platt and his artist-gardener wife, Jane Kerr Platt, asked Belluschi to design a home for their two-acre property, it was not just a commission but an opportunity to marry architecture and landscape…clad in cedar shingles with floor-to-ceiling windows, its low-slung form hugging the top of the hillside almost as if it’s built into the earth. ‘He tucked it up right in the top end of the property so that this whole flow of aesthetic wonderland would be a part of this,’ says Lisa Platt, who lives there with her husband, David—John and Jane’s son. ‘Pietro knew the garden was going to become a primary piece.’ Indeed, 80 years later it’s a park-like oasis of oaks, flowers, and ferns.”

I also happen to be working on another article, this one for Dwell, about a second Outside Architecture design: not just a kitchen renovation but an entirely new house (pictured at the top of this post). It’s a small cabin near the Oregon coast, between Tillamook and Cloverdale. Spurgin and Outside start with a simple form: a pitched-roof building that looks like a Monopoly house. But the design carves a large deck into the side of the building, the roof form stretching over a substantial deck to provide an idyllic indoor-outdoor space on this seven-acre property.

Visiting the project, it was the wooded site with its winding trails that delighted as much as the house. Many were like mossy, fern-festooned versions of English-garden follies: destinations where you'd find old furniture or even an improvised hot tub.

 

A storm-downed tree on the Beaver Creek Cabin property (Brian Libby)

 

The article should be published at Dwell.com next month.

Return to Neal Creek

Speaking of Portland Monthly, last month I took a short three-night trip to stay at a cabin near Hood River now rented by Airbnb that I wrote about for the magazine back in 2012: an article called High-Water Haven. It was designed and developed by architect Paul McKean and his wife, architect Amy Donahue, and includes a water feature: the lovely Neal Creek, which creates a soothing white noise one can hear from the house.

 

Neal Creek Residence (Brian Libby)

 

“When McKean and Donohue discovered the vacant, 1.8-acre property in 2005, it had been wallowing on the market for over two years,” I wrote, “largely because the creek’s proximity made about 1.7 acres of it unfit for building. (Hood River County codes require structures to be set back 100 feet from the water’s edge.) By cantilevering the living space atop a 10-foot-high concrete base and two concrete pillars, he discovered, the dwelling would not only maximize the envelope of its small footprint, it also would rise well above the property’s flood line and provide an excellent vantage point from which to enjoy the surrounding views.”

Staying at the cabin, I thought about how architecture journalism is based on visiting a project for a very short time, maybe an hour or two, and today more than ever, most articles actually get written remotely, with the writer just looking at pictures. Spending a longer amount of time at the Neal Creek Residence, I got a much more immersive sense of the place: how the light and shadow change over the course of morning, afternoon and evening.

Light and shadow are particularly noteworthy at this house because of the wall of wood screening that shades the outer stairway and front windows of the house. I found myself filming the stairway and my walks up and down it, as if those strips of wood had created something irresistibly cinematic.

In fact, I felt inspired enough that a made a short video of the Neal Creek Residence, which you can watch here:

 

 

Factor and SUM

For a recent Portland Tribune column, I visited a newly-renovated warehouse, or what’s actually a pair of conjoining warehouses, in Portland’s Central Eastside Industrial District, between the east and westbound Hawthorne Bridge viaducts that were originally built in about 1920.

The project was designed and co-developed by SUM Design Studio, a firm I first wrote about for this blog back in 2007, in a post called Design + Development + SUM. Over the past decade and a half, co-founders Matt Loosemore and Eric Hoffman have built a handsome portfolio of both new buildings and renovations.

“The newly renovated and seismically-stabilized Factor Building is a reminder of the creative energy that’s possible in a high-density urban setting with architectural character,” I wrote in the column. “In a time when people can work from home more easily than ever, the antique charm of this restored warehouse—one occupied in the past by not only Miller Paint but a tin-can factory, recording studios and most recently a mushroom-jerky maker—makes it a quintessential future hot spot waiting to happen.”

 

Factor Building (Brian Libby)

 

My favorite part was a pair of entries, where SUM peeled back an upstairs floor to create a double-height space. In both spots, some crisply contemporary halo-shaped chandeliers were nicely juxtaposed against and also spotlighting the scruffy materiality of the exposed-wood ceiling above.

Cloepfil Does Corvallis

Growing up in a family of Duck fans, I used to think of Corvallis as enemy territory. But somewhere along the way, I realized its downtown was actually a lot nicer than Eugene’s. So when I drove down to Beaver territory to review the Benton County Historical Society’s new Corvallis Museum by Allied Works for The Architect’s Newspaper, I enjoyed getting there early: taking a walk downtown along the Willamette River and past a number of historic buildings.

I first wrote about Allied Works and Brad Cloepfil close to 20 years ago, I believe initially with a 2002 Q&A for Architecture Week magazine called "Interview with an Emerging Architect."

Libby: What was it about architecture that first fascinated you?

Cloepfil: First of all, the idea that architecture is about construction, and structure, and about the expressive possibility of those, and that architecture needs to respond to its current cultural context. To initiate an act of architecture is to initiate a dialogue: what's around it? There's the institutional context as with the art museum in St. Louis and its nature as a noncollecting contemporary art museum. Then there's the site of St. Louis, which has a complex urban history. There are so many layers of information to respond to.

It was the Wieden + Kennedy Agency World Headquarters that put Allied on the national map, but the firm then made its name nationally and internationally largely with museums. My first New York Times arts story was a profile of Cloepfil back in 2003 on the eve of his somewhat controversial transformation of the former Huntington-Hartford Building by Edward Durrell Stone into a new home for the Museum of Arts & Design.

That project had a lot of pushback from the preservation community. But as now-retired Corvallis Museum director Irene Zenev explained  to me in the Architect’s Newspaper article, it was that museum that prompted her to seek out Cloepfil.

“It was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen,” she recalled. “And when I read that he”—Allied founder Brad Cloepfil—“had moved the elevator from the center of the building off to make the galleries more accessible, I thought, ‘This guy knows what he’s doing.’”

 

Corvallis Museum (Brian Libby)

 

The Corvallis Museum is a delightful gem, both Allied’s design as well as the charming exhibit design by Renate, which seems to take its cues from children’s museums. My favorite room, called Hats and Chairs, was just that. But I also loved a room full of framed photos, with frames that could be turned on hinges away from the wall to reveal information about the shots.

About the Allied design, I wrote, “The 19,000-square-foot museum is wrapped in glazed ceramic tile, each piece hand-raked, which helps create varying arrays of reflection and shadow. Inside, the building is divided into four simple bays, with a small courtyard occupying the place of the third. The lobby and multipurpose event space, faced in glass, open onto the small but generous court, and from the event room the glass can slide away to create a hybrid indoor/outdoor space. Galleries are not sized for auras, but for people and objects, and full-size windows invite the street inside to a degree unthinkable for an art museum.”

 

Corvallis Museum (Brian Libby)

 

Which is to say nothing of Bruce, the taxidermy moose that greets visitors upon entry. The juxtaposition between high design and quirky ephemera at this museum was a constant surprise and pleasure. At times it felt like it ought not to have worked so well, but it did.

Before my tour of the Corvallis museum, I also took some time to walk through downtown Corvallis, and was reminded what a lovely collection of historic buildings there are, as well as a pleasing pedestrian-friendly scale to the urban fabric.

 

Downtown Corvallis (Brian Libby)

 

Opera at the Coliseum

Last month Memorial Coliseum really came alive. For the first time since the pandemic began, I and others had the opportunity to venture there for a Third Angle New Music concert featuring the debut of its commissioned opera “Sanctuaries” by Darrell Grant. The performance was actually outside, under the Coliseum’s pagoda-resembling entry canopy. It was a special night, with a jazz-inflected opera about gentrification staged outside a building that was part of a wave of urban renewal projects in the mid-20^th century that displaced hundreds of families, overwhelmingly persons of color who were already subject to redlining and other aspects of institutional racism.

Yet the Coliseum looked magnificent too. The opera was staged just after sunset, on the east side of the property away from the western sky, yet I could still see the last of the yellow evening sky through two glass walls of the arena itself.

An event like the “Sanctuaries” premiere isn’t just about my own impressions, though. Luckily I got to interview both Darrell Grant and the opera’s director, Alexander Gedeon, for a Third Angle blog post called "Resurfacing the Past, Reseeding the Future." It was a long post, but this sentence was perhaps the crux of the argument: "So how do we reconcile these truths? How can we make these discordant and consonant notes into a kind of melody? As Sanctuaries and its creators remind us, we can only tell the tale, and sing the song. But from that ritual, we can begin again. We can make the future our own."

Gedeon also told me, “Aesthetics can’t be divorced from ethics. That’s what the last couple of years have meant to me as an artist: part of activism starts from looking at your own footprint in your work...To be in a space where you’re also touching on things that are social and political and relevant and heightened, and also emotionally cathartic, it’s thrilling.”

Then I was able to get an extended version of that conversation published as an Oregon ArtsWatch story called "Opera, Albina and Architecture." I'm a big jazz fan, so it was a real treat to be able to interview Darrell Grant, who has long lived in the Rose City and taught at Portland State University, but before that was an acclaimed New York-based musician with a string of superb recordings. But his insight about gentrification and staging an opera for the first time in his career was also interesting.

 

One of three "Sanctuaries" performances at Memorial Coliseum (Brian Libby)

 

"I’ve been in Portland since 1997, so I did experience at least one wave of this incredible gentrification that has happened in this city," Grant said. "But what I didn’t know was this impact on neighborhoods: what was no longer there."

Grant's Portland journey has also been about getting past the hype: "We were being covered in The New York Times as this incredible place. There was that sort of utopian story, and Portlandia. But at the same time there was this story that existed below the surface. It wasn’t part of the myth. So learning about the internment of Japanese Americans, learning about the slaughter of Chinese miners, the lynching of Black people and the KKK, all those things that were not part of the narrative, I feel like over my time being here, over time I’ve had to relinquish the myth. Sanctuaries has been a wonderful opportunity to speak to that, to say, ‘This is the history, the continuity. The gentrification we’re seeing now is just the tip of an iceberg. As we look beneath the surface and see urban renewal and redlining and discriminatory housing laws, that’s the only way we can go forward. We can’t pretend that things that are true are not true. Once we see that, we are obliged to try and make decisions that truly do benefit all people."

Dawkins Does Christo

Finally I'd like to end with a tribute to my longtime neighbors, Jennifer Dawkins and Tony Faulkner.

Their beautiful American Foursqaure house in Ladd's Addition is a looker by itself, but their sense of fun has at times transformed the place in very creative ways. Earlier this year, they were a winner in the Rose Festival's "Porch Parade" contest for a yard and front porch in a Prince-themed design, complete with drops of purple rain. But in late September came something outright arresting.

 

Dawkins-Faulkner residence, wrapped (Brian Libby)

 

For their 25th anniversary, Jen took inspiration from this fall's wrapping of the Arc de Triumphe in Paris, conceived by the late artist Christo, and had their house wrapped in silver silk. Since they couldn't travel there, she explained, a bit of that Christo spirit could come to Portland.

Standing in front of the house, I found the wrap mesmerizing as the silk billowed in the wind, especially when I learned that the material was silk. It shimmered beautifully. What also interested me was that, because really only the front half of the house was wrapped, some birds still managed to find their way underneath it. The couple told me the site of a hummingbird flying around on the covered porch was a unique sight.

Happy anniversary, Jen and Tony!

 

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The Architect's Questionnaire: Doug Minarik

Doug Minarik (Minarik Architecture)

 

BY BRIAN LIBBY

It's been a long summer, with another wave of rising Covid infections, all-time-record heat, and wildfire smoke clouding our skies. And with a succession of writing assignments following a slow pandemic, my posts to this blog have been too seldom lately. I apologize for that, but there are several new posts on the way.

Over Portland Architecture's 16-year history, one of my favorite ongoing series as been the Architect's Questionnaire, where we learn about local practitioners' inspirations, mentors, key career moments, and cultural passions. And for much of this year I'd been meaning to invite architect Doug Minarik of Minarik Architecture to become our next guest.

I got to know Doug while writing a Dwell magazine article about the Springwater Trail Residence, a beautiful and impressively resilient residence overlooking the nature preserve and pathway of the house's name. It boasts a solar panel-and-battery combination that allowed its owner to keep the heat and electricity on during last winter's massive ice storm. There's an ADU upstairs that increases urban density and allows a revenue stream. And at one end of the boomerang-shaped house, hiding an exterior stairway, is a wall of latticed wood that I particularly enjoyed: it makes the simple Monopoly-like house sing. But that's just the start of Minarik Architecture's work. From houses to rehab to even bridges, I like their style.

Educated and beginning his career in Montana, Doug Minarik first came to Portland in 2008, where he spent three years at SRG Partnership and then two years at Works Progress Architecture, before founding his own firm in 2013.

 

Springwater Trail Residence (Brian Libby)

 

PORTLAND ARCHITECTURE: When did you first become interested in architecture as a possible career?

DOUG MINARIK: Touring hill towns in Greece was where I realized architecture was the right career choice, something clicked, architecture was much more than drafting plans for a house. That Greek trip was during my 4th year of architecture school. Up until that point, I enjoyed college, was good at both math and drawing and loved the studio projects, but I didn’t appreciate the full potential of architecture as a career.

Where did you study architecture and how would you rate the experience?

Montana State University. At 18, I was much more intrigued with the abundant outdoor activities surrounding Bozeman. I started in engineering but transferred to architecture after a semester. I lucked out in that MSU has a wonderful architectural school and I could get to a ski hill in 15 minutes. Being surrounded by such an amazing landscape instilled an appreciation for how buildings engage with their surroundings. My opinion that architecture is more about creating places rather than objects came from spending a semester in Greece and Italy, and school trips to NYC, Seattle and Portland. It was a great experience and I’d encourage anyone to pick a school in a place that supports your lifestyle and hobbies.

What is your favorite building project that you’ve worked on?

I’ve spent the last 15 years working with an amazing team of developers, engineers, contractors and other architects restoring the seven-acre Pea Cannery complex [in Bozeman, Montana, with Comma-Q Architecture] into retail, restaurant and office spaces. It has been incredibly rewarding seeing the land and buildings that had long expired their original use, be revitalized, get filled with people, become a community and be given a new purpose for the next 100 years. A close second is the Bridger Canyon House [also in Bozeman]: amazing clients and an amazing contractor (Archer Construction).

 

Before and after at the Pea Cannery (The Cannery District)

 

Who has been an important mentor among your colleagues?

John Harrison, a now-retired principal from SRG. In my brief time working with him, he made a number of comments about practicing architecture that continue to resonate. He had a matter-of-fact approach to the profession that prioritized quality, not taking short cuts, and upholding the integrity of a design.

What part of the job do you like best, and as an architect what do you think you most excel at?

I love getting lost in layers of trace, drawing by hand over and over until diverse project goals start to align and come into focus as a single idea. I am ultimately a left-brain thinker and ‘creativity’ is a careful meticulous process rather than a spontaneous one. I suppose I excel most at distilling an idea down to its core contributing elements.

 

Bridger Canyon Residence (Audrey Hall)

 

What are some Portland buildings (either new or historic) that you most admire?

Kengo Kuma’s Japanese Garden Cultural Village is at the top of the list for craft, detail and how it creates space with the landscape rather than be an object in the landscape. On the east side, I don’t know its origins, but there is a gem of a building from the 1960s  near our office where NE 19th dead-ends at I-84. I’ve stared at it a number of times admiring its clarity of design and material detailing.

What is your favorite building outside of Portland and besides any you’ve worked on?

The Clyfford Still Museum in Denver by Allied Works, especially in context with its neighbor [the Denver Art Museum].

Is there a local architect or firm you think is unheralded or deserves more credit?

Fieldwork Design & Architecture. They could always use another shout-out given their consistently great work.

What would you like to see change about Portland’s built environment in the long term?

Require all new apartments to be built for a minimum 100-year life span.

How would you rate the performance of local government like Prosper Portland, or the development and planning bureaus?

We’ve had mostly positive interactions with individuals at the city. The early assistance opportunities, combined with the potential for reviewer continuity during permit review has added a refreshing level of collaboration, necessary to get a project approved.  However, from what I can tell, there is a high level of dysfunction when it comes to making productive decisions related to the permit-review process and design guidelines. The actual permit-review process at an administrative level is arduous at best and the design guidelines are forcing buildings to be caricatures of place. For example, the archaic cornice requirement in the design guidelines: it is doing nothing but forcing cheap, tacked-on style.

 

Minarik Architecture's Lewis & Clark College Howard Bridge (Lincoln Barbour)

 

Would you rather live in a South Waterfront condo, a craftsman bungalow in Laurelhurst, a warehouse loft in the Pearl, or a mid-century ranch in the West Hills?

I lived in a craftsman bungalow near Laurelhurst for 12 years, which was wonderful. I love gardening so I’d try the mid-century ranch as long as it was within walking distance to a bakery and a park.

Who is a famous architect you’d like to see design a building in Portland?

Jeanne Gang for a downtown Portland building. Byoung Cho if it were a nice infill project in an eastside neighborhood.

Which would you rather be responsible for: an ugly LEED platinum building or a beautiful contemporary energy hog?

Yikes, I think if those were my choices I would pivot to a different profession. I have too many questions: What makes it ugly, and what makes it beautiful? Which is most adaptable to changing uses? I think beauty (the simplistic, non-stylized kind) has greater potential to stand the test of time. So, if it is an energy hog today, it seems much easier to improve in energy performance than an ugly LEED building which will get torn down sooner. Once torn town, we can hang the ugly building’s LEED certificate on the renovated modernist building.

Name something besides architecture (sneakers, furniture, umbrellas) you love the design of.

Bikes: I love riding them, staring at them, tinkering with them.

What are three of your all-time favorite movies?

I have a horrible movie memory. I also have two young daughters so Pixar movies cloud the memory. However, neither are movies, but The Wire and HBO’s recent The White Lotus are both outstanding. For a third, The Triplets of Belleville.

 

 

 

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After a long delay, visiting the new Multnomah County Central Courthouse

Ground-floor lobby at Multnomah County Central Courthouse (Brian Libby)

 

BY BRIAN LIBBY

In autumn of 2020, the new Multnomah County Central Courthouse completed construction. Normally that's when I and other press would have visited. But 2020 was no ordinary year, so it was only a few weeks ago—nine months after the opening and only as people got vaccinated—that any of us without immediate court business have been able to go inside. And because the courthouse has been encircled with protective plywood boards since last summer's protests, even as it's become totally open it hasn't looked that way.

Thankfully there were two really memorable architectural experiences awaiting inside this new courthouse by SRG Partnership: the soaring little lobby, and the views from its upper floors.

There's actually something to be said for living with a building like this for a while—seeing its presence on the skyline—before forming an opinion about its design. And with its prominent place in the front row of Portland's downtown skyline along the Willamette River, the MCCC is hard to miss. That's especially true for me living just off Southeast Hawthorne Boulevard. It's the first building I pass after crossing the Hawthorne Bridge into downtown.

As it overlooks both the bridge and Tom McCall Waterfront Park, there's nothing to obstruct a view of the courthouse's east-facing facade. Which, as it happens, is the back of the building. But without question, as it faces the waterfront, the building has a striking presence.

Façade

Even if it weren't so prominently sited, I think the building's asymmetrical limestone and glass façade patterning would still cause it to stand out against most other nearby downtown buildings on the skyline: nearly all of which, the courthouse makes you realize, are all uniformly symmetrical and, in most cases, pretty banal.

When I interviewed SRG Partnership's Steve Simpson about the Multnomah County Central Courthouse design in the spring of 2016, the architect cited three previous buildings as influences: the neoclassical US Supreme Court building from 1935, designed by architect Cass Gilbert; the more contemporary styled Lindsey-Flanagan courthouse in Denver, completed in 2010 and designed by SRG's Multnomah County Central Courthouse partner, CGL Ricci Greene; and the great Rafael Moneo’s Murcia City Hall in Spain, opened in 1998.

 

The courthouse as seen along the riverfront (Motoya Nakamura, Multnomah County)

 

“The US Supreme Court has a strength to it," said Simpson, who has since departed SRG. "It evokes this order, permanence and strength. And the Lindsey-Flanagan courthouse in Denver, it’s very transparent,” he explained. “Can we take the best of these attributes and invest them into how this east façade is made? The thing that gives the Supreme Court its power is its columns, its exposed structure. We’re looking at doing that on the east façade of the new building, to give it that sense of order."

"But we also feel the building should have a lyrical quality as well. It is a public building," Simpson added. "We feel as though the elevation needs to have that vitality. You can see the figurines in the pediment of the Supreme Court that remind us it’s a public building. And in a more abstract way the Murcia City Hall in Spain by Rafael Moneo. The random patterning gives it that lyrical quality. It’s random but it has order to it. We feel like the eyes should move around it. I think it will be compelling. That’s more evocative of the human condition: diversity, complexity, and it’s ever changing. Those two superimposed on each other is what we’re after."

He also explained the use of limestone. “It’s for that sense of permanence, but it’s also light,” Simpson said. “I think some of the best buildings in Portland have a real light quality to them. It’s overcast nine months out of the year. But also this sense of transparency: modern buildings should reveal the activity inside them, especially courthouses, because of that sense of transparency and justice.”

If you're the kind of person who reads a lot of design press, this asymmetrical façade look has been around for a while. Moneo's building is 23 years old. And I think of local buildings like the 937 condominium building by Holst Architecture, in the Pearl District, completed in 2008. So it's an odd sensation, but the look of the Multnomah County Central Courthouse exterior is to me both fresh and stale. Or rather, it's fresh compared to the buildings around it, but maybe a bit derivative in the broader context.

But what I think saves the exterior facade, as it faces the river, is that it's executed with clarity. It's just the limestone and the glass: a simple, elegant composition. I can't say for sure, but I think despite the very millennial style of the patterning, the building may indeed be simple enough to remain timeless.

 

Lobby staircase leading to jury duty, etc. (Brian Libby)

Entry and Lobby

When I wrote about this building for a recent Portland Tribune column, the first thing I mentioned was that the building's improved functionality becomes apparent before one even enters the building. Instead of waiting outside on the sidewalk in a long security line stretching from inside, accommodation was made inside the lobby of the Multnomah County Central Courthouse for an airport-style snaking-line path that will keep people out of the elements when it's busy.

Once through the security scanners, the lobby is arguably the best part of the whole building. It's a multi-story volume made possible by tall, relatively thin board-formed concrete columns and an upward sloping wood-clad ceiling that forms a canopy outside, and accentuated with a huge work of colorful glass art by Lynn Basa.

Those columns I found gorgeous. Tall and slender yet with a cool trapezoidal shape, they felt almost like a contemporary nod to Frank Lloyd Wright's iconic Johnson Wax Building. The combination of concrete columns and wood ceiling, especially amidst the multi-story volume of the lobby, also faintly recalled to me the great Louis Kahn. Only in the work of those masters, that DNA carries through to the entire building. Here the lobby feels a bit different from the rest.

 

Concrete, wood and glass, inside and outside the MCCC lobby (Brian Libby)

I guess this lobby is really SRG Partnership's moment to shine. The venerable Portland firm (for which, in full disclosure, I have done some freelance work in the past), though offering a broad portfolio with decades of public experience, won this commission somewhat against the odds, given that some other large, prestigious local firms were competing for the commission, as were internationally-renowned architects and firms like Rem Koolhaas and Skidmore, Owings and Merrill, both of which applied for the job. But SRG is on a roll, with two very prominent projects—this courthouse and the reconstructed Hayward Field in Eugene, at the University of Oregon—coming into use and getting plenty of attention this year, in coming-out parties delayed by the pandemic. Hayward in particular looks to be an instant landmark.

Just as Hayward's huge wood columns look striking, the Multnomah County Central lobby is so wonderful that it inevitably makes me wish it weren't just on one corner of the ground floor. Not only is the square footage relatively small, but the lobby faces the northwest side of the building, on SW First Avenue, essentially turning away from the river. Why not extend that lobby across the whole northern side of the building, allowing it to acknowledge and take in the Hawthorne Bridge and the Willamette?

My understanding is that Multnomah County was committed to keeping a holding cell on the ground floor, which necessitated a smaller lobby. I'm sure that's the most convenient thing for the client, and an architect has to respect the client's wishes and functional requirements. Even so, could they really not have budged? Were they really that stymied or unnerved by the task of moving prisoners up or down a floor? And could a bigger firm with more courthouse experiences like, say, SOM, have had more success in convincing the client to bend?

Relegating the lobby to one corner for this particular programmatic reason seems to say something symbolic: that open public space is at odds with and at times even overridden by security concerns. I can't help but think of Simpson's own words: "modern buildings should reveal the activity inside them, especially courthouses, because of that sense of transparency and justice." It makes me wonder: what if instead of moving the holding cell up or down a floor, they just made the walls between them and the lobby transparent? I suppose it would have violated prisoners' privacy or made those in uniform uneasy, being on display. But especially in recent times, added transparency might prove to be useful.

And let's not get carried away here, because the building seems to function and flow well enough that perhaps I'm overstating the importance of the lobby only occupying one corner. After all, the reason those lines were so long at the entrance to the old Multnomah County Courthouse was largely because of people coming and going for jury duty. And now, not only will jurors not have to line up outside to enter the courthouse, but once through security they'll pass up a two-story staircase leading to a vastly improved juror waiting area on the third floor that even offers something the lobby doesn't: views of the river. With an in-house cafe, waiting in the jury room becomes a little less of a confining chore and something to at least partially enjoy. I could easily stare out at that view all day. The stairway SRG does a good job of making a presence unto itself. But I still wonder if the ideal would have been to keep jurors on the ground floor.

Jefferson Station and (the) Niles Crane

Although the Multnomah County Central Courthouse is principally a new, L-shaped building, the project also retained the historic Jefferson Station building that's long occupied the southwest corner of the block. Dating to 1909, this former Portland General Electric substation now houses high-volume courts instead of high-voltage equipment. A massive crane inside was left in place, as was the original brick interior cladding, making this a handsome preservation win.

The crane, it's worth mentioning as a kind of pop-cultural aside, made me do a double-take. Affixed to this massive piece of steel just below the ceiling is a large painted label: 20 TON NILES CRANE. As many of you certainly already know, Niles Crane happened to be the name of a character on 1990s sitcom Frasier. As soon as I saw the label on the crane, I wondered if the TV character played by David Hyde Pierce had been named by the show's writers after this piece of industrial infrastructure, as some kind of obscure building-industry inside joke.

 

Jefferson Station and its ceiling crane (Brian Libby)

I'm really glad Jefferson Station was preserved. Inside, it's full of light and the brick gives it the best material ambiance in the entire building (or at least second only to that glorious wood lobby ceiling and the board-formed concrete columns). I've wrestled a bit, however, with how I think the two buildings fit together, or if they really do.

I guess, if you'll pardon the pun, the jury is still out on this one. I need to experience the old and new structures more than once to say for sure. But I guess what nags me is that an L-shaped building in some ways does not feel ideal, and so the tall new building that wraps around Jefferson Station pays a certain price for Jefferson Station's existence, especially when the two don't seem to have much of any overlap. At least on my first visit, they felt like two distinct things.

I think of the joy of visiting certain buildings that truly seemed to combine new and old architecture, like the King's Cross and Liverpool Street rail stations in London (the foreign city I've visited more than any other): how the texture of the old architecture made the new architecture better. Here, the old and new don't seem to embrace each other at all but instead are like friendly step-siblings.

What's more, what I experienced of the Jefferson Station building—those high-volume courts—was on the second floor. The first floor of that building, too, is part of a mostly closed-off first floor, a kind of shadow space at the base of the building, that the dramatic-yet-small lobby helps distract from.

Of course the Multnomah County Central Courthouse arrives in a time when its sister building a block away, the Multnomah County Justice Center, has for much of the past year and a half been the target of protests. Last summer, in the wake of George Floyd's murder, those protesters numbered in the thousands. This new building is for courts, not jails, but the fact that so much of the ground floor seems to have apparently been designated for handling prisoners, some of the DNA of the Justice Center seems to have been grafted to this Central Courthouse building.

The Courtrooms and Views

I can't talk about this new building without talking a little more about the breathtaking views of the Willamette River and the east side (and beyond) from its courtroom lobbies stacked along the east facade.

Visiting the courthouse and stopping on several different floors to both take in the view out and see different courtrooms, I was reminded of visiting the Mark Hatfield United States Courthouse back when it opened in 1997. At the time, I had just moved back to Oregon and was living in Portland for the first time. One evening there was an open-house at the courthouse (this was pre-9/11), and the public was invited to come inside. Looking out from the Hatfield's upper floors, the view of our new city was such a delight.

 

Views north and east from the MCCC (Brian Libby)

I got much of that same sensation looking out from the Multnomah County Central Courthouse a few weeks ago. I was even luckier on this private tour, because I got to go all the way to the rooftop, where the building's photovoltaic panels were a sight unto themselves and the view was 360 degrees. But even from just the ordinary public lobbies in front of each courtroom, it feels like one of the best and most panoramic views that have ever been available in Portland.

Perhaps because of the new building's L shape, the elevator core is not in the middle of the structure, where you'd find it in most downtown buildings. Instead, it's place along the north wall. On the ground floor it's adjacent to the lobby, while on the upper floors it basically forms the end of the L, so that you walk east, around the corner, to reach the courtroom lobbies, taking in views to the north and east in those few dozen steps. That leaves the entire floor plate on the eastern side available to stack courtrooms.

 Because this building is bigger than all other waterfront structures, I particularly enjoyed the unobstructed view north, taking in Mt. Saint Helens as well as the river's bend at the Burnside Bridge, and many downtown buildings like the US Bancorp tower (Big Pink). But of course Mt. Hood to the east is really always the star attraction. It's our Mt. Fuji.

 

Rooftop solar panels and Mt. Hood (Brian Libby)

 

One substantial difference between the Multnomah County Central Courthouse and the Hatfield U.S. Courthouse, though, is that the county was working with a more modest per-square-foot budget. The Hatfield, with a design lead by New York's Kohn Pedersen Fox in collaboration with local firm Bora as architect of record, has been called opulent for its comparatively lavish budget. It also was built at the beginning of the federal government's Design Excellence program, which awarded commissions to many of the nation's top architects in the years ahead. There was clear ambition in every way.

Multnomah County is not the federal government. This client had more modest aims: hire a local firm, deliver a better-functioning courthouse on time and on budget. Opulence would risk backlash against proper use of public funds, and a starchitect might be hard to control.

It's not to say the new Central Courthouse is bare-bones. As mentioned, the lobby is great. And the courtrooms themselves, stacked on each upper floor, offer with clerestory windows bringing in natural light and almost concert-hall-level interior acoustics that make it easy to hear someone across the room (a witness, for example). It's just not quite the same level of high-budget detail and materials you'd find at the Hatfield. That's not a criticism, though. And SRG's team of designers seems to have stretched that budget smartly. Maybe I was a bit surprised at the amount of plain white drywall I saw inside the courthouse, but always in conjunction with other materials.

 

Upstairs courtrooms (Motoya Nakamura, Multnomah County)

Overall, I find this a county courthouse to be one with moments where light, materials, volume and transparency come together to wonderful effect. Other times it seems a bit more utilitarian: a series of hallways and closed rooms next to a wall and a half of glass. I also think it's worth mentioning that the courthouse Multnomah County vacated is being restored into private-sector offices, because had that building been demolished, I would have, however unfairly, held this new building and its benefactor partially responsible. And, of course, I'll always wonder what SOM and OMA might have done. All that said, after visiting the Multnomah County Central Courthouse, my sense is of a job well done and a building that is poised to endure.

The courthouse is a reminder of the old curse may you live in interesting times. It was conceived in 2015 and early 2016, with SRG's first renderings released that spring. It was under construction during the Trump administration and then finished just as the pandemic and protests were at their zenith, millions of forest acreage burned and the air outside wasn't safe to breath. Now, it begins life in a new era, where for a time the skies are figuratively and literally clearer, but perhaps not for long. In all these times, we need justice: a series of principles that, at least in pre-2016 theory, don't bend. "The first duty of society is justice," wrote Alexander Hamilton.

And we need architecture that best represents and serves that process. Even the best building can't make up for human failures and tragedies, be it from civilians or within the government itself. Much as I love old buildings like the old Multnomah County Courthouse, that was a building with ghosts, just as the Multnomah County Justice Center has become. It's a fair argument that we could have spent the money for a new courthouse on, say, affordable housing. Even so, I like the idea of Portland's home county leaving those ghosts behind, and starting a new chapter in this courthouse.

 

 

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Infrastructure in its many forms: a conversation with PSU's Laila Seewang and Anna Goodman

PSU assistant professor Laila Seewang (Portland State University)

BY BRIAN LIBBY

 

This spring, Portland State University's School of Architecture has been hosting an online series of urban design conversations between designers in Portland and other cities called "Infrastructure of the Public City," addressing "both the large-scale systems and ideas that organize cities as well as concrete, contemporary urban design problems and projects," as the PSU website describes.

Whether it's roads and bridges or Internet access and social media, underground plumbing or bike routes, the web of connections we build is at least as important as the buildings we construct.

Honestly, I meant to write about this series when it began in April. Since then, there have been conversations about housing in Portland and Los Angeles, downtown struggles in Portland and Detroit, material usage in Portland and Tokyo, and urban memory in Portland and Montgomery. But I was able to do the next best thing: talk to two of the series' co-creators, PSU assistant professors Laila Seewang and Anna Goodman, about the conversations and the broader ideas that have emerged.

And of course all of this is happening in a tumultuous time for Portland. For years, the city was hyped with the help of media and TV, attracted to everything from its quirky youth population to its emerging role as a culinary capitol. People began moving here in higher numbers. More recently, as the pandemic caused downtown's windows to be boarded up  protesters took to the streets after George Flloyd's murder and President Trump sent federal troops to help the Portland Police tear-gas them, the city became an international flash point, so much so that a lot of speculative real estate developers here and in other cities have become a lot less bullish and some in local media are hand-wringing about our downward spiral.

In sports psychology they tell players not to get too high or too low. I think the Portlandia-era hype was just that, and conservative think-tank members editorializing about Portland as Pompeii are even less tied to reality. But without a doubt, it's worth talking about: not in a pointless false-binary argument between opposing sides, but between intelligent design thinkers around the world. Hence the online PSU discussion series, and hence my conversation with Dr. Seewang and Dr. Goodman.

 

Banner image for the discussion series (Portland State University)

 

PORTLAND ARCHITECTURE: Laila, I read that your research uses infrastructure as a lens through which to study environmental and urban design. Can you talk about your background, how you come to infrastructure as an architect? And did I correctly read that you studied 19th-century German plumbing?

LAILA SEEWANG: I grew up in Australia: Tasmania. I was in the capital, Hobart, a city of 250,000 people. I studied at Cooper Union in New York and worked at Pei Cobb Freed on urban design projects.

Slowly, over time, I realized that infrastructure is so significant to urban design—where they are and who gets to use it or how electricity is distributed—that it affects how we use the city. It also makes the experience of the city different for different people. Who gets power back right after the blackout? Who doesn't? I was living in New York when the World Trade Center towers came down, and in the year afterward we had two blackouts that really turned the city upside-down. People were terrified. But also, some people got power back in a day, while some parts of the Bronx were out for like a week. I suddenly felt the individual building is not really what the city is about. I think it's more about infrastructure.

By the time I got to Switzerland, for a Ph.D. in urban history, I focused on the municipal water infrastructure in Berlin in the 19th century. Once it's built, it is a whole other host of associations, a kind of path dependent on how the city can grow to be the city it is today. A lot of decisions are made by building this hard-infrastructure network. So I see infrastructure as all of the people and issues and cultures and ways of using. What are the resources that they tap? You can tell a lot about how we build cities and use resources just by looking at the infrastructure.

And Anna, what about you? I read that your work is focused on the politics of architectural practice and the role of making and craft. Where are you from, and how does your work and that of the Urban Design Collaborative relate to the series?

ANNA GOODMAN: I am an architectural and urban historian with a background in practice, and a lot of my work focuses on the way universities and other educational settings form architects into the types of political actors that they are in the world. How do they actually start to propose an intersection between professional and citizen? And how does that also create the potential for architects to adapt to different social movements or a different socio-economic or political context? I spent half of my childhood in New Mexico and half in Alabama, went to architecture school at Rice University, and then ended up bouncing around to Boston and living abroad for a bit and then coming back. I was actually working as an architect in Portland for some years before I decided to go to graduate school at Berkeley for a master's and then a Ph.D. in architecture history and what we call global metropolitan studies at the time, which is an interdisciplinary focus on urban questions.

I think what we're trying to do with the whole Urban Design Collaborative and the lecture series is to start to insert Portland State University as one of the actors or spaces where some actual political or material thinking can start to happen. We have all this interesting research and all these people in conversation with each other. But actually we can open up the university to the city in a way that's happened at different universities at different historical moments, where they become very key actors within cities, positive and negative. We want to think critically about what our position is within a city and even the region in the nation, to start shaping ideas about the future of architecture and urban design.

 

Anna Goodman (Portland State University)

 

It's an interesting moment to be having this series of lectures and conversations, looking at Portland in comparison to other cities. While we think we have really unique individual struggles, everybody else is having a similar type of struggle. Do you feel like in the lectures there has been some ‘We're not in this alone’ type of feeling?

SEEWANG: That was the motivation for the for the series: we in the Urban Design Collaborative at PSU thinking, ‘We're not sure that all of the people who need to be are at the table to figure out what this city could be. I was hired at the same time as two full-time faculty devoted to urban design issues, and I felt like we didn't know the city. So we were just having loads and loads of conversations with different people.

What have been some of your favorite conversations in this series?

GOODMAN: To look at downtown, for the April 23 talk we invited Dan Patera and Melissa Ditmer from Detroit, who had watched the city go through bankruptcy and how it is looking for strategies to renew the downtown. And having seen what's happened to Portland downtown in the last year, there was this question: could we learn anything from Detroit? What did they do? What did they learn? What do they think they did? It was just a very energetic conversation and I think there were overlaps.

Downtown Portland has been such a hot topic and I feel like it's been a difficult problem to untangle, because you have impacts of the pandemic and the protests, and the presence of riot police and federal troops. But then you also have a wave of deliberate misinformation impacting how many people see it all. There was a time last summer where I was arguing with all these people on social media from outside of Portland telling me that my city was on fire. I don't mean to make this a political conversation about that, but I actually was thinking that that information, too, is its own kind of infrastructure — and unfortunately, so is misinformation.

SEEWANG: Portland has become this poster child, I think. I'm not from here, but it just seems like Portland is always being used as an image of something. This week, we actually are talking about technology and data in cities and sort of the retreat to the virtual. What happens to public space if the next generation really finds the public realm in virtual space like this? Communication technology, I think, it is its own infrastructure.

GOODMAN: I moved to Portland in the mid 2000s when the city was in some ways coming into this progressive reputation. But to people who moved here in the ‘90s, it might have meant something different. Over time, I realized each wave of urban change has its own narrative. I think it's been very helpful to see these comparisons [with other cities] and put them in a more national context. And I think that it's been an effective way for me to reconsider some of the myths that I had internalized about the city and that some of the things that seem really puzzling when you look at the myth actually make a lot of sense when you hear the perspective of these different experts who really do know the histories and know the contemporary policy or other environments that have created the condition for what we're experiencing today.

 

10th Avenue Portland Streetcar stop (Brian Libby)

 

Can you talk a little bit more about some of the conversations that have taken place?

SEEWANG: Two weeks ago we talked about timber, which is obviously at the heart of Oregon’s history. Thomas Robinson from Lever Architecture and then Momoyo Kaijima from Atelier Bow-Wow really just talking about how architects can make better choices and what timber means and what biodiversity means, in terms of the geographical relationship. She's trying to do similar things in a way, like trying to think about a healthier relationship with natural resources. But of course, the geography is… It's still an architecture based on timber, on wood, and this cultural tradition of building with wood, but the types of trees are different and the geography is different, but similar problems to overcome in trying to negotiate that geography or that environment.

How does the lecture series fit into the broader context of what the Urban Design Collaborative is doing?

SEEWANG: I asked Mark Raggett, who used to run the Urban Design Studio for the City of Portland [now an associate principal at GBD Architects], ‘What do you think is the one of the biggest issues in urban design in Portland right now? And what would you like to have a conversation about?’ He said, ‘I think it's technology. Any changes we put into the city these days, we're basically designing the city for like 20-year-olds. For example, we love our public spaces. We love our plazas and parks. But to what degree is that going to be relevant for the next generation, and to what degree is the public realm inside technology? So then I said, ‘Okay, that's a conversation.’ He agreed to moderate it, and then we reached out to Hector Dominguez who runs, Smart City PDX. They just outlawed facial recognition in public spaces in Portland, and they're doing it a bunch of other related work. And then Hector actually then recommended Dawn Nafus, an anthropologist who ended up working at Intel for the ethics of data use. We were able have a conversation about how our data is used.

GOODMAN: The Urban Design Collaborative was initiated by the dean of the College of the Arts and the Toulan School of Urban Studies and Regional Planning. It really is an inter-departmental collaboration. Laila and I are from the Department of Architecture. The director of the Urban Design Certificate, Ellen Shoshkes, has been taking a big leadership role in the planning side. Her passion is almost a tactical urbanism and placemaking approach on the street. She felt very motivated by the pandemic to start to have conversations about how streets should be used in Portland in the short term and how that might affect longer, more transformative change. She's taking charge of that particular lecture or that particular pairing. And I think it will talk about some of the work that they've done. There's been three workshops that have combined, people from nonprofits, people from city agencies and PSU faculty and students, to talk about what are future pedestrian street possibilities or streets that could be used for dining or other things. What are the possible anticipated problems maybe with changes to code or changes to processes or permitting relative to equity or relative to other agendas? Jeff Schnabel, the chair of our department, has been really adamant that the Urban Design Collaborative is really multiple. It's a bunch of different initiatives that are going on under this umbrella. And so that's one that I think is going to have a presence and a momentum in the city.

It's interesting to think about how the way we use some of our existing infrastructure is changed. I can go jogging down the middle of the street in my neighborhood and it's become normalized. How we use streets was already changing, with initiatives of past years with Sunday Parkways. But it’s gained momentum. And similarly, automobile congestion patterns have changed a lot through the course of the pandemic, and if not everyone is going back to the office for five days a week, that could impact how we justify things like highways. So what do you think about the opportunity now? Maybe it’s kind of like the early 1970s in Portland: a time for big changes.

 

Pioneer Courthouse Square, January 2021 (Brian Libby)

 

SEEWANG: In the Urban Design Collaborative, we've spoken to a lot of people who were really invested in that change from the ’70s and ’80s, and you know, I don't see that what we're doing is anything different. We're just building upon the success that was already in place. I feel like there's now a good foundation to be able to talk about these things. And there doesn't seem to be much resistance from the people who would have thought that Portland has gone from doing the best to this. Because I don’t see that we’re trying to say that city had a lot of issues, but that city was great [at solving them], and how do we now address more contemporary issues? I think it's more a question of does that city still work today, and how can we continue the work?

I moved here from Zurich and everyone was saying how amazing the rail network [MAX and the Portland Streetcar] was, and I thought, ‘Yes, the hardware is great, but the software is a little bit…we still get stuck behind the cars. Like, why aren't the lights just stopping all the cars as soon as there's a bus there, and the bus goes through? That seems obvious. I think that there are a number of great things in place. And now’s a moment...I think it was Nolan Lienhart from ZGF [in an April 23] talk with Dan Pitera of the Detroit Collaborative Design Center] who said, ‘Now is not the time to start thinking about what the next city is. Let's just recover from the pandemic and recover from protests and emerge slowly. And then we will be able to change something about this city and the way we want to. But first, everyone has to get on board with a new narrative.’

It's about forming a collective vision, right?

GOODMAN: Exactly. I think there was quite an energy to that Detroit-Portland conversation, where people were really feeling this was a conversation that needed to be had: that was floating around in people's living rooms but had never hadn't really fully been articulated. I think Nolan put it like, ‘We're facing all these things, racial justice reckoning, that moniker of the whitest city in America as well as the pandemic and how that's been handled, the attacks from federal figures. I think that he was saying, ‘We can address these things, we can look at it without necessarily denigrating some of the major achievements that have been that have happened with the city: those things that happened in the ’70s that really did change the quality of life for a lot of people, not everyone importantly, but a lot, and that we can be proactive there if we if we think carefully. We don't need to rush and we don't we don't need to make snap decisions because we don't really know how things are going to pan out for downtown. We could be next year looking at a very active situation downtown where everyone's pouring into the, or not. Some businesses might come back very strong. Others are going to be gone forever. It's nice to be setting up the sort of intellectual infrastructure or the infrastructure of this dialogue or communication, because that I think is going to bear fruit later on, maybe in the next ten years, not something that's going to be solved with one new plan, but rather when we have different institutions and organizations and thinkers who are in dialogue with each other, then potentially we can start to form that collective vision."

It's a reminder that there is a human infrastructure too: that consensus is powerful because it connects people.

SEEWANG: I think that's the idea. Infrastructure was always seen as this sort of decision that got made for our cities by engineers or technicians in some sense, like in a black box without it. It wasn't a public issue. It was merely technology. And I think what Anna says, by somehow having a conversation about it, making it public, it allows people to publicly become part of that conversation and say, ‘No, we want something different,’ rather than this sort of design and engineering of infrastructure getting dropped on everyone. Someone's designed it, clearly, along certain parameters with certain values. But now is the moment when we can say, ‘Hey, we want it to have different values.’ I have to attribute that to a graduate student in my class who sat in front of one of my seminars and said, ‘The system was designed, and it can't adapt very well to the new values we want wanted to have.’ Yeah, exactly. So that's why we have a conversation about it. And then when the chance comes, when Biden gives us millions or billions to redo our public infrastructure or pull down the I-5 and bury it , whatever it is like, then we can all say, ‘We've had this conversation. We think we know what we want now.’

 

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A conversation with Quang Truong: carbon fiber, zoning, and architecture's slow evolution

Quang Truong (Anna Shakotko)

 

BY BRIAN LIBBY

Architect Quang Truong has long been one of my favorite design thinkers in Portland. And that's before he wrote the world's first book about composite materials in architecture, became a Portland State University professor, and founded a software company to visualize complex zoning codes.

Raised in the Portland area, Truong originally came here with his family as a Vietnamese refugee. After receiving an undergraduate degree from Dartmouth College in studio art and engineering, he moved on to Yale University for a master's degree in architecture.

From there, Truong worked for a succession of the world's most acclaimed architects. After interning with Studio Rick Joy in Arizona, then Steven Holl Architects in New York, his first job was with Pritzker Prize winner Richard Meier. Truong later spent five years as a lead architect and project manager with another superstar firm, Diller Scofidio + Renfro, during which time the firm produced landmarks like the Broad museum in Los Angeles and began a redesign of New York's iconic Museum of Modern Art. (The year before Truong joined, DS+R had just overseen renovation of Alice Tully Hall at Lincoln Center, designed by Portland's greatest architect: Pietro Belluschi.)

Returning to Oregon in 2015, he worked for three years at Portland's Lever Architecture before setting out on his own. Truong won a Van Evera Bailey Fellowship from the Architecture Foundation of Oregon, which enabled him to begin studying carbon fiber and composite materials in earnest. His research included the development of a chair built from composite materials, and ultimately led to his 2020 book Composite Architecture: Building and Design with Carbon Fiber and FRPs, published by Birkhauser.

 

Cover of Truong's book, published in 2020 (Birkhauser)

 

Most recently, Truong co-founded Polytechnica, the technology company behind UrbanForm, a data-driven architecture and urban planning platform that integrates GIS and BIM technologies improve access to regulatory information, construction technology, and development opportunities by generating urban analytic models for policy and planning purposes.

Recently I talked with Truong to learn more about all these things: composite materials, zoning, education, mass timber.

PORTLAND ARCHITECTURE: In the book, you talk about developing an interest in composite materials and FRPs from an early age, as it showed up in a range of non-architectural designed objects. Was it tennis rackets that first caught your attention?

QUANG TRUONG: Oh yeah, and I still remember that tennis racket—it was a Prince Spectrum Comp. Back then, I guess, a composite racket was still novel enough that you would even put 'Comp' in the name. It was my first 'serious' racket and it meant so much to me at the time to be given something that was so expensive when my family was so poor. But it also just shows my age, that I grew up at a time when I had familiarity with all the different kinds of materials used for tennis rackets.

You had wooden ones lying around that nobody wanted anymore, and you played with those if you showed up to lessons and didn't have anything else, like me. But you also had metal ones that most other junior rackets were made of (and still are). And those rackets were always misshapen due to abuse from other kids. I think you really get a sense of the properties of materials when you're holding them and swinging them at a ball hundreds of times a day. I remember how heavy and flexible the wooden ones were, how relatively light and stiff the metal ones were.

The composite rackets, which of course are now the only material used for tennis rackets, were, by comparison, essentially magic. They were just so much lighter and stronger. You hit a ball with one and the ball just goes much, much farther. Not only that, but I realized simply by looking at the design that they represented a different technology. The wood ones were obviously made by somebody laminating cut sheets of wood together. The metal ones were just metal tubes bent into a shape. But the composite ones were seamless, had no joints, with varying profiles and widths and all sorts of shaped designs. I remember looking at them and having no idea how they were made. At least looking back, tennis was my first tactile and design experience with material technology. 

 

A 1990 Prince advertisement (Tennis Warehouse)

 

You also write about how the development in plastics during the mid-20th century was a turning point for the production of other types of polymers and composite materials. Obviously materials like carbon fiber and Kevlar are not plastic, but is it true that they are its descendants? In the book you talk about polymer resin being the “matrix” of composites, binding with fibers and additives. Is that right?

Oh the nomenclature thing is so complicated—I actually generated a number of charts and diagrams just to try and organize and track all the names and distinctions in my book. Doubly confusing is that like all words, even for technical terms, the meanings shift and change over time. In principle, you are right that composites are generally are fibers and matrices (or binders). I actually had a good conversation with a composite engineer at a conference a while back, and he lamented the name "composite," because it was so general as to be confusing.

Basically, composite means any mix of two or more materials to create something distinctly different, and it correctly applies to anything from straw-reinforced mud like adobe to even plywood or fiberboard—which is a mix of wood and glue. But recently, composites have begun to more specifically refer to a class of materials called fiber-reinforced polymers (FRPs), of which fiberglass, carbon fiber, and Kevlar belong. What adds to the confusion is that these composites are usually referred to by their fiber composition, and not their binders. For example, carbon fiber is actually made of the eponymous carbon fibers and a binding matrix—be it resin, epoxy, or some other polymer, which are sometimes plastics and sometimes not. For that reason, I don't know if composites can be called descendants of plastic—in principle, they've existed even before plastics (plastic as a word has its own complicated history). But as soon as synthetic plastics were invented, we were mixing it with other things to enhance their properties. I think people in the industry think of composites as their own world; sometimes overlapping with plastics, sometimes not. 

Your book highlights a number of significant projects around the world that have made use of composites. But as you obviously know, we still tend to build most buildings more or less like we did a century or more ago: with wood, concrete and steel. Why do you think the building industry has lagged behind others like aerospace or shipbuilding with regard to these materials?

Oh I love this question because it is kind of like the portal to a deep and fascinating rabbit hole in architecture. It's actually how I start many of my graduate classes in architecture—by posing this question to the students. And I've published some articles about it (link here and here).

Basically, in my opinion, it boils down to how we define a good building. And I don't think the answer is very clear in the minds of many people; or maybe more precisely, it's highly variable. We all know generally what makes a better airplane or car: something that goes from one place to another more quickly, efficiently, safely, and comfortably. But I don't know if people have a great sense of what makes a better building.

I think what is often underappreciated is how many different ways we want our buildings to serve us—and therefore, what constitutes a good building. Think of the difference between what makes a good church versus what makes good disaster-relief shelters—both types of buildings are the products of architectural work today, even from Pritzker prize-winning architects. And we have so many evolving considerations for architecture, too.

I think about sustainability as a good example of this. Today, we are very concerned about sustainability in buildings. But when I was in graduate school, this was barely on the radar for things to be concerned about. And certainly centuries ago, architects were not thinking of it in the way we do now. Wellness and equity are now a big part of the discussion right now; but those considerations are a bigger part of the picture than even a  little while ago. So we've evolved on what we ask our buildings to do. And when we evolve what we want our buildings to do, our definition of what 'good' is must evolve, too. If we don't know what's better, then we don't progress and innovate.

This is why I've advocated that all architectural projects be extremely explicit and transparent about their ambition from the outset. Not only does this align all the parties involved in working towards a goal; it also helps us measure success. When we have those measures, we can search for the material properties and processes that will help further them. 

How much do you see composite materials becoming more commonly used in the building industry in the future?

In an ideal world, we'd have a diversity of materials, with their diversity of properties and processes, being used for a diversity of architectural goals in a diversity of geographies. I think composites play a big part in this kind of future because of their properties, processes, and design potentials. They can do things no other material can and be made with processes that are unique. I think that's cool, and I would love to see more of it. I would shudder to think of a world composed of only a handful of building materials and methods. 

You say that in an ideal world the role of composites in mainstream building would expand, but in the real world, it seems as if we're remaining loyal to steel, concrete and other traditional materials. What has to change for carbon fiber or other composites to make it into, say, the average office building or school or house?

This is really a question of how to spur innovation in architecture. And it's also related to my previous answer, which is that it depends on what our ambitions are and how we measure success.

If you feel that our buildings and environment cannot get any better than they are now, then there's no reason to do anything but build things the way they've always been built. But if your goal is to improve things, then you'll be searching for the best materials and methods to achieve those goals regardless of whether they're traditional or not. At the very least, it's a more engaged, curious, and optimistic way of approaching work. But for things to change in architecture, to the point where someone would consider something besides wood, concrete, or steel for a building, it means many things have to change up and down the AEC (architecture-engineering-construction) process.

I think about it from the perspective of my partner, who's an economist: most everybody is primarily responding to their most immediate incentives. And in architecture and construction, almost everything is set up to reward the cheapest, easiest way to do things. To change this means changing the fundamental way we value design and construction—perhaps in part so that initial upfront costs are not the biggest factor in so many decisions, which is typically what drives processes towards existing technologies with the largest number of competitors.

 

SFMOMA expansion, one of 18 case studies in Composite Architecture (SFMOMA)

 

Though changing the fundamental way we value design seems like a big lift, I actually think it's very necessary, and it's starting to happen, at least in other fields.

For instance, if you look at infrastructural or civil engineering, where carbon fiber and composites are starting to find the largest market growth, it's because many people are starting to realize that building bridges, tunnels, and other infrastructure with initial upfront costs as the main driver means that you are essentially ignoring the future cost of maintenance and upkeep. And as we know, failing to maintain our civil infrastructure is an issue of life-safety. But if you factor in costs of maintenance, replacement, or you look at things through the lens of a life-cycle analysis, then that is where many non-conventional materials and technologies prove their value.

These expanded considerations change the calculus, and I think that is how things need to change in order to innovate in our built environment. We have to be able to advocate for value outside of the cheapest and easiest, and we can't really address the really important things that we say we value in architecture, like sustainability or equity, unless we address the way we value the process of design itself. We also have to realize that a novel ambition is an innovation in and of itself. That's why I say that clearly articulating ambition is the first step towards innovation. When we ask our buildings to do new things, then that necessity becomes the mother of invention. 

The fact that you've rubbed elbows with Richard Meier, Stephen Holl, and Diller & Scofidio is naturally going to pique people's interest. What did you learn from each architect or firm? And even if it's in safely diplomatic terms, could you tell us anything about these famous architects' personalities or the way they operate?

Yes, I wanted to mention the other offices a bit, as they've obviously had a big, if not absolutely fundamental, impact on the way I think about things. I also studied closely with Peter Eisenman at Yale, and was there at the same time as Frank Gehry, Zaha Hadid, and Greg Lynn, and that also played a big part.

I think the biggest impact though, in retrospect, was working with Steven Holl and Liz, Ric, Charles, and Ben at DS+R. Both of those offices approached architecture as fundamentally about ideas. For them, the ideas behind the architecture were primary, and everything else—construction, technology, detailing, etc.—should work to support the idea. It meant you worked hard to find the best idea to address the situation, and then worked hard to solve the technical problems to realize the idea, even if it meant that you were creating new technology to do so, or even if it meant you were not doing a building.

For everything I worked on at DS+R, we essentially had to create new technological solutions—which is where my experience with composite material technology in architecture came from. We tried using composites on a museum before aborting it and fully realizing it on a house. At the time, few others had done it, but it was the best technological application for the situation at hand. But that kind of approach is hard, takes a lot of effort and creativity, and doesn't always pan out. In contrast, every other architecture firm that I've had experience with approached architecture as a set of known technical solutions to whatever problem is in front of them. This is illuminated by the joke that when you approach an architect, no matter what your problem is, the answer is a building—and a building similar to one they've already done before. I think there is a time and a place for that, and it may be the most appropriate solution in many cases, but not always—it depends on your goals.

I think that was my biggest takeaway from working with Eisenman, Steven Holl, and DS+R is that everything you do should be in support of an idea. And a spirited debate about ideas is good. But if it isn't an idea that's leading your efforts, then it's something else. And you don't want the tail wagging the dog.

 

DS+R's Slow House, which utilizes composite materials (Diller Scofidio + Renfro)

 

You spent a few years in the 2010s working for Lever Architecture, which has become known for several projects utilizing mass-timber framing. Given your interest in composite materials, what do you make of the rise of mass timber in architecture in America in recent years? Will we see a proliferation of tall wood buildings?

I think it's exciting to see timber used in this way and I think mass timber has incredible potential in many cases. But mass timber is not at all the right solution in many cases. If we're talking structures for tall buildings, you'd have to be very smart about what function that wood will serve in those tall buildings. It's not a slam dunk to just use mass timber for every purpose, structural and aesthetic, in every building, tall and small. And that calculus changes from geography to geography and from use to use.

What I'd like to steer clear of is any superficial discussion of one material being 'better' than another, or only one material representing the future across all geographies and peoples and use-cases. I think if we can advance a more nuanced and thoughtful discussion of architectural goals and material intelligence, we can create a richer, more diverse, more sensitive, and ultimately, better built environment. 

Could you tell us a little bit about Urban Form, the online resource for zoning regulations you’ve been developing? How did you become interested? Where did you see a gap that could be filled?

I often wonder if people are curious about the link between my material research and my technology company. But one was born from the other.

As I was doing research for and writing my book about composite materials, I would often talk to people outside of architecture or I would be giving these talks at material conferences as the lone architect in a room full of material engineers. And when you talk to people outside of architecture, and you explain carbon fiber to them—it's a material that is ten times as strong as steel, is a fraction of the weight, it doesn't rust, it doesn't rot, and can be designed to make these amazing shapes and structures—the very next question everybody has is why carbon fiber isn't used more in architecture.

And then what all the material engineers and fabricators want to know is how to break into the architecture and construction market when from a purely engineering standpoint it's an absolute no-brainer. The advanced materials industry is continuing to grow and innovate in aerospace, nautical, and automotive industries, so architecture and construction seems like the next most logical large-scale engineering based application for their technologies—and it's a huge market. So I had to think long and hard and do lots of research to categorize all the reasons why architecture has so effectively resisted different technologies, material or otherwise.

That thinking formed the basis of my articles about innovation in architecture. But one reason for technological stagnation in architecture is because of regulations.

Regulations play a surprisingly large, but hidden, part of the reason why our buildings and cities look the way they do. And currently, those regulations are complicated, opaque, and hard to access. This creates inefficiencies across planning, real estate, architecture, and construction. If you could make this regulation more accessible, you open up the possibility for more efficiency and innovation. That's what UrbanForm does: it makes those complicated zoning regulations accessible, and it was born from a deep dive into material research and the obstacles for the adoption of innovation into architecture. 

 

A rendering by NC3D for Truong's new company (Polytechnica/UrbanForm)

 

How might you like to see Portland’s zoning change?

I love it when I show UrbanForm to people and they can immediately see how antiquated many zoning rules are. Zoning is created by legislation, and as we know, legislation is often added to and rarely removed or simplified. And so you end up with this incredibly complex layering and quilting of rules and regulations, documented in text form, but with three dimensional, spatial ramifications. And nobody has a full grasp of it—not the city, not any individual citizens, not even dedicated professionals who are more or less familiar with certain aspects of it.

Portland's zoning code is almost 4,000 pages long. It's just too complicated, and before UrbanForm, it took hours of reading and drafting to figure out what the spatial results of the zoning rules were for just a single piece of property. The goals of zoning are relatively simple: to help shape the growth of the city towards certain goals. But if nobody knows what the results of the rules are, nobody can control it. Furthermore, you have only a few people who are making the rules for it, with imperfect information. It's rife with inadvertent consequences, unintended incentives, and information asymmetries.

Right now, we deal with zoning essentially one patch at a time, which is the way architects and developers currently work with the city. Ideally, if you have the digital tools to understand the spatial results of the rules, you can involve more people and create better rules. 

You’re also an adjunct professor at Portland State University. How would you characterize its architecture department and the kind of education aspiring architects can get there? I think of the department being maybe less technologically oriented and more about artful thinking and community. What’s your take? And how do some of your fields like composite-material technology fit in?

Oh boy, I feel like I could talk about PSU all day. First of all, I love PSU and always have. I went to kindergarten at Helen Gordon (the childcare facility for children of PSU students and faculty), and my parents were given an education at PSU because of government refugee assistance programs in the ’70s and ’80s. I will always remember walking through the Park Blocks as a kid with my parents and being in awe at the people, students, buildings, and particularly the libraries. So I'm so happy to be a part of the PSU community now as an adjunct professor in the architecture department. But I'm also happy to be coming to teaching after a long professional career and with the experience of having attended and taught in east coast universities, as well.

Academia has a different set of incentives than the rest of the world, partly by design. The whole idea of academic tenure was set up just for that—to remove certain people from the pressures of the rest of the world, hopefully for productive reasons. There is a distance from which that academic remove from the real world can be productive, but there is also a distance from which it makes a department irrelevant. And it is the struggle for every department in every university to try and design the nature of that academic engagement with the rest of the world and balance that distance for certain purposes. This is something that I think the department at PSU is trying to figure out right now in light of all the contemporary issues of the city and architecture. 

What is great about architecture is that there are so many ways to contribute to the built environment. Certainly through artful thinking, as you state, but also through technical competence and innovation. I do think sometimes there is the tendency to think that architects (or an architecture department) contribute to one and not the other, but I might suggest that that's a false choice. You can do both, and the opportunity and challenge of architecture has always been to contribute to so many different aspects and functioning of our cities. Our buildings and cities are not just artful and community oriented or technologically competent—they're both, they're related, and one doesn't really function without the other. 

 

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Emporium uncovered: visiting the renovated J.K. Gill Building

Lobby of the renovated J.K. Gill Building (Brian Libby)

 

BY BRIAN LIBBY

If you're like me, the name J.K. Gill is both familiar and unfamiliar.

When I was growing up in Oregon in the 1980s, the company had about 30 stores across four western states and was a familiar presence in malls and on main street around the state. By that time, the longtime family business had been sold and its longtime flagship, downtown at SW Fifth and Stark, was already in the process of being rented out. But for a few generations of Oregonians, the company name remains a memory.

A 1980 J.K. Gill television commercial (via YouTube)

 
What I never knew about J.K. Gill was what a huge presence that flagship store and building were: a cultural hot spot even. You might even say it was Portland's top bookstore before the arrival of Powell's City of Books. And J.K. Gill may have started out as a book and stationery store in late 19th century Portland, but it grew to an emporium of musical instruments, office furniture, and much more.

In the early 20th century, it was even the kind of place that visiting celebrities like Duke Ellington and Nat "King" Cole made appearances at. Ellington appeared there just two days after the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941.

 

Duke Ellington at Gill's, 1941 (Ray Atkeson, via Thomas Robinson)

Ellington with Jack R. Moore's Edmund Cusson (ACME/Oregon Historical Society)

Last year, after being known as the Gladys McCoy Building since 1998, during which time it served as headquarters for the Multnomah County health department, this circa-1922 building completed a renovation designed by SERA Architects for owner/developer Urban Renaissance Group and was rebranded as the J.K. Gill Building for its original occupant. I'm late to the party in visiting, mostly due to the pandemic. But touring the space a few days ago, I marveled at its simple interior beauty.

Obviously there is much uncertainty about the future of the office. Over the past year during the pandemic, millions of workers have realized they prefer working from home, and today's technology allows for that seamlessly. At the same time, something is lost when we never come together in person. Studies show that over 85 percent of office workers don't want to return to a five-day-a-week presence, but that only a small minority want to work from home all the time. The average work/home preference going forward, according to surveys, is 2.5 days a week. That will likely mean that offices are increasingly devoted to meeting spaces and flexible workstations over cubicles and personalized desks. Yet office buildings that cater to creativity, with plenty of natural light and wide-open interior spaces have a leg up, especially if their locations are high-density and close to other attractions like parks, shops and restaurants. That makes the J.K. Building well-positioned. It's just that the building has not been a commercial office building before. It's taken time to give it a proper facelift. It's been hiding in plain sight.

For two years beginning in about 1999, I worked around the corner from this building and, despite passing it often, didn't pay it much attention. The clerestory windows were covered up, and there was no sense of transparency. And in the two decades since, I'd thought about the building even less. Viewed from outside, it's what you might call a fabric building: handsome, and a positive contributor to its neighborhood, with a dignified Commercial style that adds decorative classical touches at its parapet. Yet it also doesn't call attention to itself.

What's exceptional about the J.K. Building, though, is not how it looks from the outside but how it feels inside. That's especially true on the ground floor, where a huge two-story volume with massive cylindrical columns fluted at their tops add up to a grand, large volume of space that's full of light. Upstairs, the columns continue, giving this building a robust quality.

Upstairs at the J.K. Gill Building (Brian Libby)

There's a kind of paradoxical quality to the columns, in fact: whereas normally interior columns just feel like obstructions of sorts, these ones have a commanding presence. I realize it may sound a bit silly, or even paradoxical. But at least for me, there was something about the added girth of the columns that made them an attraction, even though they must take up rentable space and certainly interrupt one's view across these spaces.

Maybe it's also their cylindrical form and the way they angle at the top: they perhaps make the space feel a bit more classical, even like a public building. Obviously an emporium of office supplies, books and other ephemera is not a courthouse or a concert hall. I'm not saying the J.K. Gill building is the Acropolis. Yet it was more than I expected it to be, and that's because of the light, volume the columns inside.

The J.K. Gill's top floor is unique. Tucked behind the building's parapet, it has hardly any windows at eye level (mostly just clerestories) and not beautiful cylindrical columns but ordinary blocky ones. Yet the redesign added a large skylight, which is more than enough to make this a compelling space of its own. My photo here (and a habit of upping the contrast in Photoshop) makes it look much darker than it really is.

 

Top floor of J.K. Gill (Brian Libby)

But let's go further back, to the beginnings of this building and, before that, the business itself.

Joseph Kaye Gill was born on August 13, 1841 in Yorkshire, England and immigrated with his family to the United States in 1854, settling initially in Worcester, Massachusetts. While studying at the Wilbraham Wesleyan Academy, Gill met his future wife, Frances Willson, whose father had platted the town Salem, Oregon. After their 1866 marriage, Gill was offered and accepted a teaching position at Willamette University due to his late father in law's influence, but Frances also asked him to oversee book sales at a Salem drugstore she co-owned. Enjoying the latter, he dropped the teaching position and opened with partner C.F. Yeaton the Gill & Yeaton bookstore in Salem in 1868, even constructing their own building for it. But after just one year, Yeaton dropped out and the store became known as J.K. Gill & Co.

 

Gill's original store in Salem (Urban Renaissance Group)

In 1870, former Portland mayor and local tycoon William S. Ladd, along with then-U.S. Senator Henry Corbett, approached Gill at the State Fair in Salem and suggested that he take over the Harris & Holman book business in Portland, which was the city's fourth-oldest. (Stephen J. McCormick’s Franklin Bookstore had been the earliest bookstore in Oregon, founded in 1851. Gill's new Portland store, first called Gill & Steele (for a partnership with George A. Steele) descended from a bookstore that started in the mid-1850s by Adam R. Shipley.) Gill agreed, selling his in Salem bookstore and moving to Portland in 1871.

Gill invested heavily in stock, and the store's variety and quantity was said to be on-par with East Coast book stores. They also sold stationery as well as teaching supplies such as globes, maps, charts, and crayons. There was a large music department that included sheet music, instructional books, and a wide variety of instruments such as pianos, organs, flutes, violins, and accordions.

The J.K. Gill store, as it became known again a few years later, occupied a variety of the city's best late-19th Century buildings. In 1872, it moved to the Holmes Building on First Avenue between Stark and Washington (it's since been demolished). In 1881, the company relocated to the newly-built Union Block on First between Oak and Stark, considered the finest office building in the city at the time (also since demolished). In 1893, J. K. Gill initially occupied the basement, first, and second floors of the original Masonic Temple on Third Avenue (also demolished) . In 1913 they leased the five upper floors of the adjacent Hamilton Building (still standing — I even used to work on the ground floor 20 years ago when the AIA chapter was located there).

By 1921, Gill's was booming. They were the largest distributor of books and stationery in the Pacific Northwest, and the designated state depository for school textbooks.

Before building the J.K. Gill Building, which was completed in 1922, the company spent a full year searching for an appropriate downtown site. Over the past decade following the 1905 Lewis & Clark Centennial Exposition, population growth and a real estate boom had pushed downtown further west, across Fifth Avenue to the west and Alder Street to the north. They chose this site at Fifth and Stark (now Harvey Milk Street).

 

Shortly after the building's 1922 completion (Oregon Historical Society)

 

Architecture firm Sutton & Whitney designed the nine-story building. Albert Sutton and Harrison Allen Whitney formed their partnership in 1912. Their state architectural licenses were only the 16th and 18th issued. Richard Ritz notes in Architects of Oregon that the firm produced “some of the most outstanding designs in the Northwest during the 1920s and 1930s.”

Their portfolio included buildings still standing today such as 1921's Ballou & Wright Company building at NW 10th & Flanders in the Pearl District, and 1922's Meier & Frank Warehouse at NW 14th and Irving (today home to the Vestas company). After Sutton's death the firm continued (as Sutton, Whitney & Aandahl) and went on to design 1928's Weatherly Building, the tallest structure in Southeast Portland (standing near the east end of the Morrison Bridge).

Albert Sutton, a Victoria, B.C. native born in 1867, practiced in Tacoma and San Francisco before relocating to Hood River, Oregon in 1910. Two years later he formed the partnership with Whitney, commuting from Hood River for the first for years and relocating to Portland in 1916. Sutton died in 1923, the year after the J.K. Gill Building was completed.

Harrison Whitney, was an Iowa native whose first job in Portland was working for the Lewis & Clark Centennial Exposition. He also co-founded the Oregon chapter of the American Institute of Architects in 1911. Whitney worked for the city's most prestigious firm, Whidden & Lewis, before forming the partnership with Sutton, and after his partner's death, he lived on nearly four more decades, until 1962.

When the J.K. Gill Building opened in 1922, the ground-floor space was 22 feet high with a 4,500-square-foot mezzanine balcony. That's the vast space I encountered on last week's visit, enjoying how the clerestory windows had been uncovered for the first time since shortly after Gill's vacated the building. Back in the 1920s, a wide aisle separated the book department from displays of office equipment and commercial stationery on the ground floor. The upper floors housed an engraving department, displays of office furniture, and J.K. Gill's publishing and wholesale division. On the top of the building, books were packed and then sent down a twisting chute to several floors below where they were shipped out.

 

Ground floor of J.K. Gill, 1940s (Dede Montgomery)

The arrangement of the store interior changed over time. As described in its National Register application, later accounts of Gill's have mentioned a children’s floor, an extensive art supplies department in the basement, and an entire floor dedicated to sheet music. The store had a pianist who would play sheet music at a customer’s request so they would get an idea of what a piece sounded like. At one time, J. K. Gill was the largest retail outlet for sheet music in the Pacific Northwest.

After Joseph Gill’s 1931 death, the company continued to grow and opened additional stores in Oregon, Washington, and California. Ownership remained with the Gill family until 1970, when the firm was sold to Young & Rubicam. At that time, there were 11 J. K. Gill stores with $13.8 million in annual sales.

A 1967 sale at J.K. Gill (The Oregonian)

After selling the building in 1988, the J. K. Gill Company remained a tenant with reduced square footage until the downtown store closed in 1991. That's when the Multnomah County Health Department moved in, staying until last year.

Looking at photos of the Health Department space in the then-Gladys McCoy Building, it's easy to see how the bones and great features of the building were largely hidden away under drop ceilings, with clerestory windows blocked, and at the mercy of fluorescent lighting. That's the story of nearly every building that survived the mid to late-20 Century. Even so, particularly that ground floor of J.K. Gill's was also subdivided with several different partitions.

Yet the really compelling architectural experience comes from the space at its most wide-open. You can see that not only in my mediocre photos of the ground-floor space, but the renderings that SERA did for the building's new owner, Urban Renaissance Group. Of course a tenant can probably rebuild some of those partitions if they want, but I doubt that will happen. And I hope it doesn't.

I laugh at myself a little thinking of how in September of 2018 I visited the Expensify building just across the street from J.K. Gill and swooned at the renovated First National Bank building from 1916: its wide-open space, light and volume. It's hard to beat that magnificent space and its renovation by ZGF, but the ground floor of J.K. Gill is also quite memorable and impressive. Back in 2018, I called the building across the street a gem hiding in plain sight. Turns out the 1922 building facing it is another case. When you couple Sutton & Whitney's handsome original architecture with the cultural history of J.K. Gill's, one can only be glad that the combined story is coming to the surface again: not thanks to me, but thanks to the developers and architects who breathed new life into the structure.

 

 

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York and Portland's statues of limitations

York statue at Mt. Tabor Park (Brian Libby)

 

BY BRIAN LIBBY

Have we ever talked about statues more than we have in the last 12 months?

For those of you scoring at home, 2020 began with the unveiling of the Portland Building renovation, including unprecedented views from behind America's second-largest statue: Portlandia by Raymond Kaskey. Then a succession of statues came down.

On the eve of the Juneteenth holiday, a George Washington statue outside the German American Society in Northeast Portland was pulled down by protesters. In July, as several blocks downtown erupted with protests over police brutality and the murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis police (itself met by violent armed response), the city's beloved Elk statue by Roland Hinton Perry between Lownsdale Square and Chapman Square was preemptively removed; as federal troops entered the scene, the city became an international story. In October, statues of former presidents Abraham Lincoln (who of course signed the Emancipation Proclamation) and Teddy Roosevelt in the South Park Blocks were toppled, again a national story. Later that month, a statue of longtime Oregonian editor Harvey Scott at the top of Mt. Tabor Park was toppled.

To put it another way, protesters removed statues of all but one of the U.S. presidents who were commemorated on Mt. Rushmore, and they toppled a sculpture (of Scott) by the creator of Mt. Rushmore, Gutzon Borglum. To varying degrees, it was shocking—especially the Lincoln statue. But these acts also cause us to consider the nuances of the past, whereas statuary essentially asks us to do the opposite: to only gaze up in awe.

Now, though, after all those unsanctioned removals, last month there was the opposite kind of political activism. Someone actually clandestinely erected a statue: of York, the Black slave that accompanied Meriwether Lewis and William Clark in their famous exploration of the American west at the behest of President Thomas Jefferson (the fourth Rushmore honoree).

As a plaque on the statue explains, York crossed an untamed North American continent with Lewis and Clark and then had his request to be freed denied.

Back in October when the Scott statue was toppled, many may not have noticed because it followed the toppling of more prominent statues of more famous Americans. But this surprise arrival of the York statue and its heretofore-anonymous origin has once again captured interest far beyond the 503 area code.

 

The York statue from Mt. Tabor's Harvey Scott Circle (Brian Libby)

 

York and York

Let me just come out and say right away that I love this York statue and the chutzpah that went into making and erecting it. After so much destruction, it was nice to witness some creation.

Although the artist behind this York statue has so far not been publicly identified, he gave an interview to Artnet's Sarah Cascone (who identified the artist as male). "I’m very familiar with Mount Tabor Park, and seeing that empty pedestal often, it just came to me, literally in the middle of the night, that York belonged there, looking out over Portland,” the artist told Cascone. “I’m going to let the community sit with the sculpture for a while as I try to figure out the life of the sculpture in the future."

“What I’m hearing is people talking about York,” he added. “I didn’t know what to expect, so I am very pleased that the city and the parks service understand the value of the statue’s presence in Portland.”

At this point, however, I think it's important to note that there already is a York statue in Portland, and has been for over a decade.

It's called York: Terra Incognita and was designed by Los Angeles-based artist Alison Saar. It has stood at Lewis & Clark College since 2010. Granted that campus in Southwest Portland is not exactly a high-trafficked area, but neither is the top of Mt. Tabor.

 

York: Terra Incognita at Lewis & Clark College (Wikimedia Commons)

 

Knowing about Saar's statue gave me pause after I visited the anonymous York statue at Mt. Tabor. Although I had marveled at just how many people were visiting this act of guerilla art at the top of this little dormant volcano—and like the anonymous artist said, people have been talking about it, including in a New York Times feature—the fact that few have discussed York: Terra Incognita emphasized to me that, while many may profess affection for this new sculpture and its subject, a sizable part of that affection must be for the act itself: the toppling of the Harvey Scott statue and replacing it with York, without permission. That's understandable, because it's the same psychology that helps make a lot of graffiti art compelling. Even so, I found myself wanting visitors to seek out York and his story for its own sake, not just because for the theatricality of the statue's surprise arrival.

Long Term Consideration

One thing I've already been asked a few times is whether the City of Portland might allow this second York statue at Mt. Tabor to stay permanently. And to be sure, they have not been quick to remove it. Often illegally-placed art is removed the day after it's erected. In this case, city leaders seem to understand that's not the best move. Yet while the York statue is convincing, upon closer examination the head is made of hard plastic, and the front of its base seems to be painted wood or fiberboard.

The idea of some future permanent version of the York statue is intriguing, or perhaps an exhibit of the statue at an art gallery or museum, especially if the artist is willing to identify himself. I like the idea of some combined art exhibit featuring York, perhaps some of the artist murals created over the boarded-up windows of the Apple store, and maybe the Elk statue before it returns to its spot on SW Main Street.

 

Close-ups of Mt. Tabor's clandestinely-erected York statue (Brian Libby)

 

But what else might we do at this Mt. Tabor site in the long term?

Let's consider for a moment the Harvey Scott statue that was toppled. There were very good reasons for this political act, yet there are also reasons that the Scott statue could be restored, especially if it's paired with a second artwork.

The statue was created by Gutzon Borglum, who is also the artist behind Mount Rushmore. In fact, he was working on Rushmore in 1933 when the Harvey Scott statue was erected. And while I'm no apologist for a conservative like Harvey Scott, I do think it's a particularly well-done statue.

Harvey Scott is, with the hindsight of history, a complex figure with real accomplishments as well as some regrettable, even cringe-inducing views. He opposed women's suffrage, organized and public high schools, for example. It's also arguable that he was no monster. He became part of the Associated Press's national leadership, traveled the country promoting the Pacific Northwest, and as a child crossed the Rocky Mountains his family, helping to drive a team of oxen and persevering as his mother died along the way. As Oregonian editor for decades, Scott turned down two different ambassadorship offers to remain at the paper.

 

Harvey Scott statue (Landmark Hunter)

 

One doubts we would choose him for commemoration today given Scott's conservative views. Actually, that's the bigger overall problem with statuary: it seems to ask us to look at very human historical figures in simple good-or-bad terms.

Even so, Scott was also the brother of Abigail Scott Duniway, Oregon's greatest suffrage leader. I can't help but wonder if, instead of tearing down the Scott statue, it might have been better to add a statue of Abigail next to that of Harvey. Their sibling rivalry helped shape the Oregon we know today: one with a particularly strong duality between the liberal city and the conservative rest of the state.

Such precedent exists in Seattle. As I discussed in an interview with art historian Fred Poyner IV in a recent episode of my In Search of Portland podcast, about the Elk statue, at Pioneer Square there is a bust of Chief Seattle by James Wehn, completed in 1909. (Wehn was Caucasian.) But placed next to it is the 1991 work Day/Night by Native American artist Edgar Heap of Birds. The two works are in conversation with each other. It's not quite the same as a potential Harvey Scott/Abigail Scott Duniway statue combo. But the point is that we can change the context of the Scott statue, should it return.

 

Paired old and new artworks in Seattle's Pioneer Square (Seattle.gov)

 

What I also think we sometimes forget about the toppling of statues during protests: it's okay to re-erect them, and when we do so, a wave of new vandalism is not about to restart.

I'm not saying we should re-erect the Harvey Scott statue. But what if we were to re-erect the Lincoln and maybe the Roosevelt statue? What if the wave of citizen anger over racial injustice needed to be heard, and they needed a shocking act or two to get the public's attention, but afterward we established a public process to decide on those statues' futures?

Abraham Lincoln was no saint, but I suspect a majority of even liberals would favor that statue returning, as would a wide cross-section of local communities. But don't take my word for it: Let's put that to the test. And if substantial public opposition exists, then we rethink the statue's return.

 

Lincoln statue, South Park Blocks, before it was toppled (Brian Libby)

 

It's also time we returned the Elk statue to its original spot. No one ever deliberately toppled this statue. The City of Portland removed it when the base became accidentally damaged. The base of the statue still needs to be rebuilt. But we should at least be starting a public conversation about the Elk statue restoration. Were the base ready to accept it, we could bring this statue back today. Yet a public forum about its future is not such a bad idea. We could place it exactly as it was, turn it around to face the river, or brainstorm an entirely different location.

What's also special about the Elk statue is that it is not of a human. That's particularly important to note, however obvious it may seem, because part of the recent rash of statue-destruction happening worldwide has made me wonder if hagiography itself should be on trial. What if making statues of our leaders does something unwanted to them? What if it takes away from their true narratives, presenting a story with colorful nuances in high-contrast black and white? I think the Elk shows us the unifying power of choosing animals over humans. The Elk statue celebrates a majestic native species, but it also acts as symbolism. In Native American mythology, the elk is seen as a protector, much like the lion in Western culture.

 

Roland Perry's Elk statue, in storage (Brian Libby)

 

If there's more than enough reason to bring back the Elk and plenty of good reasons to bring back Lincoln or Washington, I am not sure I would vote against the Harvey Scott statue returning to Mt. Tabor, even if paired with an Abigail Scott Duniway statue — not simply because of Scott's conservatism and opposition to suffrage, but because of the Scott statue's sculptor. In fact, I can't help but wonder if Gutzon Borglum was the motivation for activists to topple the Scott statue as much as Scott.

No doubt Borglum's resume is impressive. Mount Rushmore alone would make him one of the most significant sculptors in American history. Borglum, who was born in 1867 in Idaho and died in 1941 in Chicago, also created including the Stone Mountain sculpture in Georgia (depicting Confederate president Jefferson Davis and generals Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson), the statue of Union general Philip Sheridan in Washington, and a bust of Abraham Lincoln exhibited at the White House by Theodore Roosevelt. But Borglum was also a member of the Ku Klux Klan. That's a deal-breaker.

Embracing Obsolescence

One other idea I've been thinking about for these statues is the solution found in former Communist-controlled Budapest's Memento Park: creating a collective resting place for obsolete statuary. Memento Park is located about seven miles outside the city center of Budapest, with statues of Lenin, Marks and Hungarian Communist leaders. What if we placed the Harvey Scott statue and maybe some others together in some place outside the central city? Again, I wouldn't quite feel comfortable seeing Lincoln and Teddy Roosevelt here, but I'm sure we could find a reconsidered leader or two to join Harvey.

Although it's a fair argument that the people we choose to pay tribute to in bronze may change in some cases over time, I still think even when we remove a prominent statue it should not necessarily be completely forgotten. That's what I like about the Budapest idea: by changing the context, it makes clear that these are no longer to be seen as unassailable heroes, but it also acknowledges that history without wiping it under the rug. And given that thousands visit Memento Park every year, looking upon these once-earnestly regarded statues in a more ironic way is part of the healing process.

Perhaps this also brings us back around to why the erection of the York statue at Mt. Tabor—an elaborate, thoughtful and sophisticated prank—is so welcome. If pulling down statues has long been part of societal upheaval and movements for justice, so too must the next step be followed: a deep look in the mirror, and a true consideration of what heroes we want to represent us in bronze: or even if we do at all.

 

 

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Neighborhoods, public involvement and pattern language: a conversation with Heather Flint Chatto

Heather Flint Chatto (Forage Design)

 

BY BRIAN LIBBY

About one year ago, the messages and press releases started coming. I didn't recognize the organization sending them, PDX Main Streets, but there seemed to be a sense of urgency. There were design awards for  urban design and architecture at the neighborhood scale to be voted on by the public. There were new design guidelines for a succession of new neighborhoods, created not by the City of Portland but through grassroots citizen-led efforts. There was a Historic Resources Code Project draft to to vet.

Eventually, I got curious: who were these people? Turns out that PDX Main Streets was co-founded by Heather Flint Chatto (with Linda Nettekoven and others), the person behind the outreach. She's a planner and urban designer with more than 20 years of professional work in environmental design, civic and regional planning and environmental policy practice. Now the head of her own firm, Forage Design, Flint Chatto has designed homes, tiny-house villages, stormwater management plans, neighborhood master plans, zero-energy tool kits, historic-district planning documents, and much more. These days, for example, besides main street planning, she's keen to talk about how kiosks can help encourage activity in public spaces.

PDX Main Streets is all about finding common ground and urban design solutions that allow Portland to continue increasing density while also protecting the neighborhood main streets dotting our city neighborhoods. The organization has helped several different neighborhoods create design guidelines meant to protect old buildings while recommending how pattern language can help a variety of building scales and buildings of different eras go together. These guidelines are unofficial and non-binding, with no official recognition from the City of Portland. But Flint Chatto believes they nevertheless have value as a guide to private development, and as food for thought as we continue to fine-tune our zoning codes and plans.

Following is an abridged version of two conversations I had with Flint Chatto over the past few weeks.

Portland Architecture: how did you get started with PDX Main Streets?

Heather Flint Chatto: I’m an urban planner and environmental designer and have been leading this initiative in partnership with many others for seven years. It was begun around the major redevelopment of Division Street. I’m an inner-Southeast resident and live near Division. We were concerned not about infill or density but about major redevelopment without community process. I was a redevelopment planner for local government years ago and feel the problem is the lack of public process and design tools to help new development fit our older narrow main streets with a bit more compatibility.

What has been your approach?

Our approach has been to keep it proactive and positive, focusing on developing tools any community can use. We led massive public engagement work over the first five years including public inter-neighborhood design committee meetings with elected representatives, hosting walking tours, many outreach events, two PSU design studios, surveys, and even hired a former planning commissioner to help us create design guidelines.

Our Division Design Initiative became the PDX Main Streets Design Initiative last spring, scaling up to a citywide effort as many other communities started adopting our design guidelines and more and more communities started asking for our help. Our Division Design Guidelines began for one street but really can work for any many street and are a tool to make better density with sensitivity.

These design guidelines have now been formally adopted by eight neighborhood and business associations for 12 streets in Southeast Portland, and we’ve been talking with [North/Northeast neighborhoods] Alberta, Humboldt and Boise about them as well. We’ve also been acting as a policy watchdog group.

 

Collage of Hawthorne Boulevard contributing historic buildings (Michael Molinaro)

 

Could you talk a little bit about what makes good compatible info? It’s more than style, right?

We’re doing the work typically done by cities and working to turn people on to density through design literacy. Our work is style-neutral and pro-pattern-language. When you talk about design, people think you are talking about style, which isn’t the case. We certainly love old buildings but our approach is style-neutral and focused on the design issues of building form, massing, durable materials, energy efficiency, connection to context, sustainable design, adaptive reuse, etc. Sadly, when you talk about design or any critique of a project, you get instantly labeled as anti-density which couldn’t be farther from the truth. Our work is about ensuring people have a voice and helping them advocate for what they want instead of what they don’t. When we teach the pattern language of main streets they stop fighting the issues they can’t control and start engaging more effectively with designers and developers.

How did you get interested in neighborhood planning the first place, and what brought you to Portland?

My background is as a 20-year urban planner and government planner and long-range planner. I grew up in Santa Barbara, when it was a hippie surfer town. My parents were hippies after living on a commune in southern Oregon. I was very interested in community from an early age, and wanting to help people see each other and connect with each other. Santa Barbara was influential in its walkability, the attention to details, the ways to be diverse and consistent. Then I worked as a planner for Santa Barbara County on Old town in Goleta. I think the opportunity to work in my hometown was kind of a dream: to be able to come back and work on shaping community planning and doing revitalization planning down there. There’s a lot of debate around design: should we be like Santa Barbara or be our own entity? Then I went to graduate school at the University of Washington. As we came to Portland, in 2008, the bottom dropped out of the economy. I got lucky and wound up working at the New Buildings Institute on zero-energy buildings: educating architects and engineers and local governments.

 

Flint Chatto and her new business card (Forage Design)

 

So the perspective you bring comes from a planning and sustainability background, but it seems like public involvement is just as important to you.

I really look at how you foster design that connects people. How do you foster architecture that is contextually appropriate but also artful and inspiring, whether modern or vintage? My undergrad [degree] was in environmental studies for teachers, so I’m really passionate about education, and giving communities a voice. How do you make that accessible to people who don’t necessarily have the language to express what they want, and to be able to inspire a community to not just say what they don’t want but ask for what they do want?

What about starting PDX Main Streets?

As I have done all this work on zero-energy buildings, and before founding Forage Design, for a time I wasn’t really working here in Portland, and I was hungry to do more design work that I’m passionate about. When our neighborhood started developing, it was a chance. There were several projects in the planning stages. Some more had been greenlighted for development. We were doing major redevelopments at the same time without a public process. We needed some tools to deal with that.

There was an opportunity with the Division Green Street/ Main Street Plan. It required a public meeting. We had that requirement because there were some design standards that got moved into a Division planning district in the code. We were lucky enough to get a required meeting with developers, but it was like two weeks before they submitted for development. Nothing could really happen. They were just checking a box on meeting with us. We needed to guide development to fit the place. It felt like there was a lot of contrast. And how did we connect with the community in a way to identify goals and design priorities, and what was Division for the future? We didn’t have any tools, any design guidelines.

I’d just had a baby but decided I’d get involved with the neighborhood association, and then we brought together a coalition of seven different neighborhood associations. We formed a design committee and went two years of monthly public meetings, and we ended up deciding we wanted to do design guidelines. We put out an RFP [request for proposals] and treated this as a professional planning project.

Cover of PDX Main Streets design guidelines (PDX Main Streets)

 

What’s been your approach to getting people involved?

We’ve done every kind of public engagement we could. I think planning a policy can be so difficult to engage community members on. We wanted to find a lot of ways to engage. We even did Mad Libs cards about what people liked on Division, how often they came, what their favorite buildings were: ‘I wish there was more of this and less of that.’ We turned those findings over to students at PSU. We had 300 people take that survey. People poured their heart out. The biggest thing I think besides parking issues—which was not our issue and we stayed away from completely—was the architecture. 450 people did these vision cards. There is so much data there to mine. We did a process that was equivalent to [what the City of Portland did for] Old Town Chinatown: we came up with a long draft and a short draft. We took it to everyone for community comments.

And then the Division guidelines started getting adopted by other neighborhood organizations.

With Division, we took that work and said, ‘This could be a living document. Let’s build on that and implement it more.’ Our design guidelines are pretty dense. We felt like there was so much need there. It’s a resources guide. Hollywood, Moreland and Woodstock adopted the guidelines. Hosford Abernethy just adopted them. And then we developed a separate one, a supplement to the Main Street guidelines. It’s the short version. I think that supplement is a great way to go. There are so many buildings that aren’t on the historic resources inventory.

What have you learned along the way, or what might be some of the misconceptions out there?

It’s not just about preserving things in amber. It’s not about old buildings or new buildings. We’re trying to show that there’s a pattern language. We’re trying to teach people that the language of buildings can happen in a newer building or a historic building but it’s completely style neutral.

When you’re evaluating a development—and this is the environmental technical researcher in me—we’ve also got these competing goals at the city. We’re not looking at the tradeoff. We’re looking at short-term outcomes and not the long-term impacts of our decisions, whether it’s environmental or social. Those little main streets aren’t just special in a nostalgic way. They’re the downtowns of each neighborhood. Development is an opportunity to leverage that development: to fill in the gaps.

What might you say to the criticism that such guidelines are limiting creativity?

It’s not that everything has to be like this. Kevin Cavanaugh and Guerrilla Development do incredible main street buildings, but they often break a mold. Or the Solterra building at Southeast Ninth and Division: it’s a striking building with a great mural, but it also has a base, middle and top—the common main street pattern. There’s a common language to all of these main streets in Portland. There’s a common storefront pattern of bulkhead, regular rhythm of recessed entries, clerestory windows: teaching people that language. You can have a small building next to a tall building when they speak the same language. It’s about the pattern. That’s what we’re trying to communicate, but I think we’re having a hard time. There’s a translation problem.

This is not some kind of hidden NIMBY effort. This is a way to turn people on to density. They’ll be supportive of taller buildings when they’re context-appropriate. It’s not just relating to what’s there. It’s keeping in mind where we want to go in the future, and what the desired patterns are of the people in that place. I think that’s been negated. We want to help people develop a vision and shape the tools they need. We’re having some difficulty translating that to decision makers. There really isn’t a pathway for community work to be recognized.

 

ARTfarm Conceptual Design Plan (Forage Design)

 

How would you assess the code and how the City of Portland is handling these neighborhood main streets and the question of preservation versus density?

A study called the Low Rise Commercial Building Study from 2006 by the Bureau of Planning and Sustainability mapped all these vintage main street centers that are not historic districts. They’re recommending a 65-foot threshold for design review. How do we get bigger buildings on Powell and fill in the gaps, where more and more people need access to jobs and services so they can walk? We’re not leveraging development for filing in those gaps. And what we do in the next 10 years will be the most significant. Building materials are 90 percent of the impact. Definitely do infill, but you shouldn’t be demolishing good buildings. I constantly hear people concerned about how we’re growing as a city. When you dig down, it’s not about the density. It’s about being context-appropriate. You can be compatible with contrast or incompatible with contrast. There are many examples. I’d like to put together a larger leadership summit to really talk about this centers and corridors approach. It’s really the small main street corridors that are one of our greatest civic assets, that we’re kind of trashing by over-building, and under building on the big wide corridors. We’re not suggesting down-zoning. But there may be a different treatment needed for this collection of streetcar main streets that formed the core of our neighborhoods in the city. Those centers deserve that kind of respect.

What about how neighborhood design guidelines have or haven’t been incorporated by the City of Portland?

When you look at the [Design Overlay Zone Amendments] and the historic resources code, there’s no mention of our work, the guidelines that neighborhoods have adopted. We [as a city] don’t recognize community-based planning, and that makes people feel disenfranchised.

What about how your own firm, Forage Design, dovetails with your volunteer work with PDX Main Streets?

Forage is my business name because it’s about using what you have. My bathroom sink sits on a sewing machine table. I try to think about that with land use too. How do we use the old buildings we have?

How does your ARTfarm project figure in?

One of my clients is a really innovative developer. We have a site, where there’s an existing single-family house with an opportunity to add 10 tiny houses on wheels. We’re trying to make this a replicable model. It’s a really sensitive way to adapt these sites: to leverage more actors and sites, help more inter-generational wealth, help more property owners develop their own housing on their property.



Flint Chatto's kiosk proposal (Patrick Hilton for Forage Design)

 

Could you talk a bit about your interest in introducing more kiosks to Portland?

We started looking for how could we take on a place-making entity as part of PDX Main Streets that could address houseless services. Prosper Portland wanted to fund but it had to be brick and mortar stuff. We ended up coming up with a kiosk with solar batteries to go with the train station. We worked with an Italian kiosk fabricator. It’s this placemaking through urban street furniture. It’s an opportunity for outdoor dining with Covid, and safer outdoor spaces. It’s a strategy you could use all over the city. They could be small wayfinding gateposts or coffee stands, or places for houseless services or other applications. They could really support a diversity of community placemaking.

In Lisbon they talked about this kiosk strategy to enliven dead spaces and reactivate places that are unsafe. What I’m seeing is this is a trend, that this longstanding urban street amenity, as urban furniture: there’s a variety of different applications, whether flower stands or newsstands or wayfinding posts or food vendors. It’s coming back.

 

 

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Enough of this ridiculous Portland-as-Pompeii routine

Pioneer Courthouse Square (Brian Libby)

 

BY BRIAN LIBBY

Late last Friday morning, I rode my bicycle around downtown Portland, the Pearl District and Old Town for the first time in several weeks. Though it was approaching noon on a weekday, it was remarkable how empty it was. Neighborhood shopping areas around the city are routinely busy now. Yet as we near the year-mark in the pandemic, it's astonishing to see the center of the city so devoid of people. Next to no one is going to work in office buildings, or sitting down in a restaurant or theater seat.

Lately I've heard a lot of talk about fixing downtown, and it's understandable. Vaccinations are underway and we all want to see life return to the urban core. But we have to be careful how we diagnose the problem before we fix it, because nearly as upsetting as what's happened to downtown Portland in the last year are the mischaracterizations of how and why, especially from outside the 503 area code. We are living in a time of unprecedented deliberate misinformation, which leads to exponentially more conflations. No wonder some have lost patience just as we're on the verge of turning a corner.

Recently I read two open letters and a Forbes opinion essay, all about downtown Portland's difficulties. One, a letter written collectively by 35 local members of the American Institute of Architects’ College of Fellows, is sober and wise, calling for collective vision and a holistic approach to the future.

But the Fellows’ letter specifically expresses solidarity with for another organization, the Rose City Downtown Collective, which itself has written an open letter; it's a mixed-bag wherein, after some initial conciliatory and progressive language, the latter letter strikes a different tone than the first. Most importantly it casts protests, not pandemic, as the ongoing reason for the emptiness, and that's hard to accept.

Then there's a Forbes opinion essay called "Death of a City: The Portland Story" by Lake Oswego-based economist Bill Conerly, who favors the hyperbole of comparing Portland to the ancient volcano-destroyed city of Pompeii. You'd think the pandemic was forecast to be here forever, that downtown's ills represented the entire city, and Adam Smith (1723-1790) was still our leading thinker.

I’m going to first publish here the entire text of the Fellows’ letter and its 35 signees (from firms like Hacker, ZGF, Bora, Merryman Barnes, Hennebery Eddy, SRG Partnership and TVA, among others), because I admire and have long respected many of these architects, and theirs is the most reasonable voice of the three. Then I'll quote from the Collective’s, which can be read in its entirety here, and the Forbes article by Bill Conerly, which can be read here.

The writers of these two open letters, the Fellows and the Collective, don’t appear at first to disagree with each other, and some names actually appear on both lists of signees. Even so, I think the two letters illustrate how people in different parts of the building industry can come at the same issue differently.

But at least these two groups of people are actually Portlanders and they seek consensus.

 

Apple Store (Brian Libby)

 

Something critical is missing from Portland’s future vision

At this difficult moment, exacerbated by COVID, economic uncertainty, political polarization and climatic extremes, it has become very clear that something critical is missing from the noble quality of life vision we aspire to create.

While Portland has succeeded in executing an enviable and beautiful physical infrastructure, we failed to match it with a social infrastructure that fully incorporates cultural and racial diversity and economic fairness and as a result we are now witnessing a level of frustrated rage and social breakdown not seen for decades.

In the near term, we support the efforts of Rose City Downtown Collective to clean up and revitalize our city.  There are important, longer term goals to be addressed as well.  So, what are these and what is to be done?

We believe it begins with optimism. This is a unique moment in time with much possibility for our entire community. Together we have a long history of creative innovation. In the same way that we modeled a healthy balance between vital urbanism, agrarian abundance and protected wilderness, we believe we can once again lead the way in the creation of a society that advances that foundation, and values fairness and equity as much as progress. This however requires a compelling guiding vision.

As architects we know that seemingly intractable problems can be solved through an iterative process of exploration which over time can lead to highly effective and self-evident solutions.

The first step is to convene a representative group of constituents who are committed to constructive and respectful creation of a shared vision. Information is then gathered which honestly considers all factors affecting and affected by the outcome - including existing strengths and assets which should not be lost but built upon.

Next is consensus about specific goals, aspirations and measures of success. With that firm baseline, extensive alternative solutions are imagined which are then thoroughly debated, ultimately to be championed or discarded. The hoped-for result is a shared understanding and passionate endorsement of a chosen vision with which to move forward.

It is important to note that there is strong precedent for this model. Many of Oregon’s most successful past innovations, most notably the 1972 Portland Downtown Plan sprung from grassroots creativity by a powerful alliance of business and community interests that inspired bold implementation by our elected officials. And while their intentions are honorable, the reality is that our current leaders are frankly overwhelmed with daunting immediate challenges limiting their time and ability to imagine a detailed pathway to a brighter future.

Since spring, as our country has faced a perfect storm of unconstrained pandemic, racial justice outrage, economic collapse and unprecedented polarization, our state's modest identity and progressive reputation has been both amplified and sullied as it has garnered extraordinary national and even international notoriety as a hotbed of political and climatic extremism.

In addition to extensive negative press, our formally vibrant downtown core like many other cities is experiencing reduced business occupancy, boarded up storefronts and many closed restaurants. Most heartbreaking of all is an extensive and highly visible houseless population. And if that was not enough, our planet’s relentless propensity for balance ignited unprecedented forest fires which for over a week gave many parts of Oregon the dubious honor of having the most unhealthy air in the world.

Not surprisingly, this has left many of us with a profound sense of loss. But Oregon has a reputation for addressing daunting challenges in innovative ways and this is a moment that demands creative action.

As architects, we tackle problems of vision and design every day – but reaching beyond today’s limitations to realize a future for our city that once again invites emulation around the world, we need to marshal the best talents across our entire community.  Our purpose is to advocate for a broadly based initiative to forge a vision and a way forward for Portland beyond the dispiriting experiences of 2020.

So in recognition of this conundrum and singular moment in time, we as passionate stewards of this extraordinary place we call home are hereby calling upon our fellow citizens of good will representing all facets of our diverse community to come together and lead by example in imagining a better way of being, where we can all equally flourish and fulfill our potential.

Respectfully submitted by the following individual Oregon Fellows of the American Institute of Architects in their capacity as caring citizens of Oregon.

Jonah Cohen FAIA; Paddy Tillett FAIA; Larry Bruton FAIA; Kent Duffy FAIA; Don Stastny FAIA; Martha Peck Andrews FAIA; Linda Barnes FAIA; Anthony Belluschi FAIA; Doug Benson FAIA; John Blumthal FAIA; Stan Boles FAIA; Will Bruder FAIA; Tom Clark FAIA;  Joseph Collins FAIA; Tim Eddy FAIA; Val Glitsch FAIA; Ron Gronowski FAIA; Mark Hall FAIA; Nels Hall FAIA; Bob Hastings FAIA; Alec Holser FAIA; Jim Kalvelage FAIA; Alison Kwok FAIA; Michael McCulloch FAIA; Nancy Merryman FAIA; Otto Poticha FAIA; Heinz Rudolf FAIA; Jeff Scherer FAIA; Jon Schleuning FAIA; Alan Scott FAIA; Bob Thompson FAIA; Michael Tingley FAIA; Ned Vaivoda FAIA; Jan Willemse FAIA; Bill Wilson FAIA

The meat of the Fellows letter is all about fixing the problem. They encourage us to regain our optimism by convening a broad base of people to forge a shared vision for action. That’s easy to get behind.

There was only one part that left me curious: when the Fellows early-on expressed solidarity with the Rose City Downtown Collective, a consortium of property developers, hotel owners and other local businesses that published its own open letter in early December.

 

Multnomah County Justice Center (Brian Libby)

 

“But…”

The Collective’s open letter begins with conciliatory words: “Downtown Portland, specifically on the blocks surrounding the Justice Center, has been the epicenter and the national stage for this important moment in history. Protest has long been the historical spark to ignite real change and the Rose City Downtown Collective could not be more proud to support the protests for civil rights happening in the heart of our great city.”

However, I found myself waiting, as one sometimes does in certain conversations, for one particular word: “But…” And I soon found it:

“But the focus of the movement has been blurred by the ongoing chaos and criminal destruction that is happening night after night, often after the protests are done, taking the attention away from the actual movement.”

 

Boarded-up entrance to the Pearl Building (Brian Libby)

 

Deliberate property damage, particularly if it impacts small business owners who lack the resources to bounce back easily, is not only against the law but in almost every case simply wrong.

Yet the letter’s next paragraph is concerning, because while it begins by noting that the pandemic has shuttered many restaurants and shops due to Covid, it then identifies vandalism as an equal scourge, and seems to politely threaten those in office for allowing it to happen — despite the fact that we’ve been experiencing a once-in-a-century deadly pandemic that emptied out downtown.

“Just like its citizens, Downtown Portland is hurting right now…Our elected officials let us down this year, but we are hopeful that the new City Council will step up,” the letter goes on. The Collective also says, they're "done passively waiting for help."

Is the Collective suggesting that Mayor Wheeler, City Council and the Portland Police have somehow been too lenient in the past? I'm not completely sure. Maybe the letter is suggesting lenience solely as it relates to graffiti and property damage and homeless people living on our streets. Even so, this gives me pause.

Most of all, for me the Rose City Collective’s open letter seems to not fully acknowledge that the pandemic is still going on, and it suggests the protests, not the pandemic, emptied out downtown.

The Collective would not be the first to conflate these circumstances. Way back in July, for example, as reported by The Oregonian’s Everton Bailey Jr., a reported $23 million hit to downtown Portland businesses mostly attributed to nightly demonstrations was almost entirely tied to Covid-related lost sale figures.

 

Lownsdale Square (Brian Libby)

 

To be fair, the Collective largely calls for reasonable actions: promoting cleanup of downtown, creating a graffiti reporting system, connecting vandalized businesses with resources for pursuing cleanup. What’s more, I like and respect a lot of the individual signees. The Collective also favors connecting like-minded local businesses with elected officials, and encouraging other volunteering. All those are fine ideas.

Perhaps tellingly, though, I don’t see any recommendations that have to do with helping the homeless find resources and shelter, or helping more people get tested for Covid, or that have to do with promoting police reform or other acts of social justice. In fact, when I look at the Rose City Downtown Collective’s wish list, it really only amounts to one thing: getting rid of graffiti.

Vandalism and Plywood

Despite the simple case of criminal mischief it’s sometimes purported to be, graffiti appears for different reasons. Sometimes it’s merely artistic expression, and other times it’s a way for gangs to mark territory. Sometimes it’s a form of political protest: a way for powerless people to leave a record; as we know, past social-justice movements such as the women’s suffrage campaigns of the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries came with attendant vandalism and graffiti, for example.

What’s more, in cases of politically-motivated graffiti, when demonstrators are brutalized by police and other authorities, the vandalism tends to increase.

 

The abandoned former Multnomah County Courthouse (Brian Libby)

 

Tagging itself has also long been found to occur in places where people aren’t looking, or places without architectural transparency: places that feel like crime might occur there. That makes downtown in 2020 and 2021 a vulnerable target: more like a peripheral neighborhood suffering from years of disinvestment than the financial and economic fulcrum of a million-citizen metropolitan area.

If the boards came down off more of the windows downtown, I strongly suspect the graffiti and vandalism would decrease. But one can also understand why the boards haven’t yet come down: because the missing ingredient is people, and the pandemic is still preventing us from going to most of the offices, restaurants and shops downtown.

While it’s of course true that the protests increased the level of vandalism this summer in particular, it’s still the boards and the emptiness of downtown, not the protests, that are the real issue. Graffiti is a symptom of an emptied-out, boarded-up downtown, not the cause of it. To suggest otherwise is to, however unwittingly, embrace an impatient, get-tough attitude that could do as much harm as good.

Studies have shown the majority interpret all graffiti as evidence of increased gang activity, as a sign young people’s disrespect for authority, or a threat to property values and neighborhood safety.

Maybe it’s no surprise, then, that when we unpack what the Rose City Downtown Collective has to say and who is largely saying it, this largely comes down to real estate developers and commercial property owners who are understandably frustrated with the caustic environment downtown.

They say progressive things about this summer’s protests and acknowledge at first the impact of the pandemic. But even as the pandemic rages and before many businesses have returned, there seems to be a desire to do something about the graffiti, and to do apparently do so before the boards come down.

 

South facade of Pioneer Place mall (Brian Libby)

 

Considering Authorship

Perusing the list of signees to the Collective’s open letter, there is certainly at first glance a long and diverse roster of businesses and their various owners and employees. The more than 200 names do include a hairstylist, numerous jewelers, a bike shop, a furniture store or two, a wine shop, and representatives of the Portland Trail Blazers and the Portland Timbers.

Yet the more scrutiny one applies, the more the Rose City Downtown Collective seems driven by property developers and hoteliers: the people who rent and sell downtown square footage. From developer Melvin Mark alone, for example, the open letter includes about 30 different signees. I also counted just over 30 more developers from other development and investment companies.

That means approximately 60 of the over 200 signees are property developers and real estate investors. In most cases, these are good people who happen to make their living from downtown real estate. But the profit motive may be more influential here than an altruistic feeling towards small businesses or a desire for true social justice beyond boilerplate expressions of support.

There are also several hotel employees, which is perhaps not surprising. After all, hotels are just residential real estate rented out on a per-night basis. There were 16 such signees, four of which came from the Society Hotel (although none represent its ownership, the hotel confirmed by email).

Then there's Bill Conerly, a freelance contributor to Forbes who gives the city last rites. He is the longtime chairman of the Cascade Policy Institute, one of Oregon's best known right-wing think tanks, and a former vice president at First Interstate Bank back in the late 1980s. He's quick to mention on his website that he has a doctorate from Duke University, and a little less quick to trumpet his bachelor's degree from the New College of Florida.

In other words, whom would you trust the most: (1) A group of local-architecture hall of famers from the AIA; (2) a consortium of largely commercial developers, real estate investors and hotel employees; or (3) the chair of a suburban conservative think tank?

 

Board-covered building along the North Park Blocks (Brian Libby)

 

Perspective and Listening

To some extent, who signed the Collective's open letter is not important because it’s no smoking gun. I can understand why it would seem like a good idea, or is a good idea, because it calls for a collective effort towards improving downtown’s appearance in a time when downtown is suffering.

I'm surprised, however, that a PhD-accredited economist like Bill Conerly would be so quick to make such rancid generalizations.

He suggests that Portland's economy rests almost exclusively on tourism and an influx of new residents caught up in cool-city euphoria and seems to assume that even when the pandemic has gone away that will still be the case. He mentions the city's tech and athletic apparel industries, but then drops them in characterizing Portland as an economically dying city.

Never mind that smaller cities have benefited from the pandemic-induced rush to remote communications and the mass realization that we can work anywhere. It's cities like New York and Los Angeles are seeing the most exodus, not a place with matchless natural beauty and a still relatively low cost of living. He also cites the city's increased homelessness, as if this is not a national and particularly regional problem. Oh, and he even question's Portland's decades-long commitment to density and urban sprawl.

Conerly purports to take an evenhanded, outsider perspective rooted in academic findings, but this piece is, at least to me, absolutely dripping with conservative armchair judgment rooted in unconscionable misreading of this summer and the current reality — really not that different from the Trump supporters in other cities who told me time after time this summer on Twitter that my city was burning to the ground, who told me that my eyewitness accounts were no match for what they'd seen on YouTube or read on Parler.

"Reputation may be Portland’s greatest damage," Conerly writes. "Coverage by newspapers, television and current affairs podcasts has been extensive, both across the country and worldwide. This is critical given that the area’s growth comes from in-migrants, mostly from other states in the U.S. Real estate developers and investors have significantly downgraded their attitudes about Portland real estate."

Maybe that quote is particularly telling. I think Conerly has been basing his opinion more on media accounts, but seemingly willing to dip liberally into extremist reportage rather than proven entities with journalistic integrity. Later in the same essay, he also cites the work of conservative activist Andy Ngo, who has made an art form of conveniently selective reporting and whose writing Powell's Books refuses to even carry on its shelves, as some kind of Edward R. Murrow of our time. A doctoral degree can't keep one from losing the plot. No wonder Conerly struck a more sober, evenhanded tone in a later interview with The Oregonian's Lizzy Acker.

Ultimately the AIA Fellows letter is the one I can get behind the most, because it’s a call to bring together a broad constituency and listen. The Fellows may represent a lot of firm presidents and partners, but they’re essentially advocating for a ground-up process that listens. There’s something about the Rose City Downtown Collective letter that feels like a work of veiled anger calling for top-down action, and something utterly cringe-inducing about even a highly educated economist like Conerly giving last rights to a patient with an increasingly rapid heartbeat.

If there’s one thing that 2020 taught at least me, it’s that both justice and effective policy can’t just be ordered from the top down but instead have to come by design, and by consensus.

One positive thing I do remember from my Friday morning visit to downtown and the Pearl: in numerous cases, I could see people taking the boards off the windows, or repairing the glass. Vaccinations are slowly rolling out, and as of this writing, new infections are down nationwide. We must remember that there is a horizon when we've emerged from these dark days — and that while it's right to want to clean up, pointing fingers can get messy.

 

 

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Discussing the new Gideon Overcrossing with DAO Architecture

Gideon Overcrossing (Brian Libby)

 

BY BRIAN LIBBY

I first came upon the Gideon Overcrossing while jogging, during the bridge's construction. Attracted by its heavy weathered steel and boxy form, initially (despite the very slow running pace) I didn't know what it was, because the project was tucked on a dead end of 14th Avenue. But as the elevators came in and the construction equipment disappeared, I couldn't help but feel a certain eagerness to check it out.

Designed by DAO Architecture, the Gideon Overcrossing certainly isn't the only small span Portland has built lately. There is the Barbara Walker Crossing, completed in 2019, which spans over West Burnside to connect Forest Park and Washington Park, giving pedestrians a more stress-free crossing of a thoroughfare. There is the new Earl Blumenauer Bridge currently under construction: a pedestrian and bike bridge over Interstate 84 that will also give people on two feet or two wheels an alternative to competing with cars entering the freeway. I look forward to writing about those bridges once I visit them.

In the meantime, I was interested in talking about the Gideon Overcrossing because of its particular aesthetics and bridge type, and because it's part of a larger urban design challenge. Namely, did they build this bridge in the right place? It feels to me like it wants to be part of the Clinton Street MAX Station at 12th Avenue. But that would have required the City of Portland and TriMet to acquire one of the industrial properties abutting the station, such as the Masons Supply Company. Apparently that was, if you'll forgive the pun, a bridge too far.

Recently I talked with DAO Architecture partners Joann Le and David Horsley about the project. I'd first met Horsley just over 20 years ago when I was working at the Portland chapter of the American Institute of Architects and he was a volunteer, then got to know the firm's work through residential projects like the Irvington Residence, a beautiful two story accessory dwelling that's just 13 feet wide and 950 square feet: a really smart, efficient use of space. So I was interested to hear about their approach and the challenges inherent to the Gideon Overcrossing, an entirely different kind of project but also its own kind of tight squeeze. .

Portland Architecture: I have enjoyed the boxy, industrial quality of the bridge. You get a strong sense of its structure, and the weathered steel gives the composition a kind of unifying quality. It reminds me of old bridges like the Burlington Northern railroad bridge over the Willamette or some of the bridges I see on the New Jersey turnpike when I'm visiting the New York area.

David Horsley: It's true that for Gideon, the architecture is the structure, and the structure is the architecture. It was a challenging project. It’s a two-headed client, Trimet and PBOT. It’s a super constrained site. There’s very few places it can land. We came up with about a dozen different alignments and bridge forms, and at the same time we wanted it to tap into the industrial nature of the site itself.

Gideon Overcrossing from SE Gideon Street (Luke Hegeman, MODUS Collective)

 

Why build the bridge here, away from the Clinton Street MAX station?

Joann Le: As context, TriMet had removed a bridge with the construction of the Portland-Milwaukie MAX line, the Orange Line, I believe around Southeast 16th Avenue. In fact, this replacement bridge is the final piece of TriMet’s Portland-Milwaukie light rail line. Initially they didn’t have sufficient funds, but then it turned out they had some dollars left over. That meant everything was in place. It was very constraining, however, as there was only one area for this bridge to cross both the MAX and Union Pacific Railroad tracks. Plus land the bridge’s supporting towers, its elevators, and bicycle friendly stairways. And they felt then an architect could help come up with a few alignment and structural options.

Horsley: It was good that they brought on the architect at the outset, before even structural. One of the challenges with this bridge is it doesn’t have abutments. It’s not over a gap. It’s literally lifted off the ground. That limits to some degree the possibilities the form can take. At the same time, there was an odd requirement from the city: that the structure of the bridge had to be separate from the structure of the elevator towers, so the inspections could take place independently. At the same time, it allowed us to create the open-endedness of the bridge and the cantilevers themselves.

What about designing for two different entities? How did that work?

Le: TriMet implemented and funded the project, but PBOT owns and will operate the bridge. So in some ways I think PBOT drove a lot of the decisions. We generated options, structural diagrams, bridge configuration alignments, for their and TriMet’s feedback. PBOT wanted a bridge that was safe for the users, that was efficient and economical and worked with their maintenance and inspection needs. That was the directive. 

 

Gideon Overcrossing from above (Luke Hegeman, MODUS Collective)

 

Horsley: Their main driver was practicality.

There's a not dissimilar-looking bridge over the railroad tracks nearby: the Lafayette Street pedestrian bridge by Merryman Barnes Architects. But it seems to have more of a clear separation between the elevator tower and the span, and the span is a different kind of truss, right?

Horsley: You’re right, there are a number of differences between the two spans. The trusses are a similar type, but the towers are a different form. Lafayette’s structure is also tubes, where Gideon’s are wide-flanges. Their similarity is they’re both weathered steel and a Pratt truss form, and neither have abutments. But other differences came from City or code requirements, which we took as opportunities that we needed to exploit. For one thing, the City preferred a bolted bridge rather than welded, so we took that as a challenge with the form. Which means it has less of a streamline aesthetic than our work would normally have. But it had constructability advantages. They could build it alongside the tracks and lift it in the middle of the night over about 45 minutes, kind of amazingly smoothly. So that was fun to watch.

Could you talk a little bit about the bridge type and the context?

Le: Given all these constraints and the schedule, it maybe wasn’t surprising to us that PBOT and TriMet selected the Pratt truss. Because it is efficient, it’s pretty straightforward, and we took that as a point of departure. In considering the existing Brooklyn neighborhood and the small light-industrial context, we started detailing the bridge with a nod to the industrial area and its history, while acknowledging the evolving Clinton Triangle neighborhood . In the future, the bridge will be surrounded by likely larger buildings. PBOT certainly wasn’t looking for an iconic bridge, but we felt if it was extremely straight-forward, the simplicity of its engineering would be its elegance. And that would emphasize its fit as part of its neighborhood fabric.

There's a certain heaviness to the bridge that I like, maybe because, as you said, the architecture is the structure. There aren't suspension cables or big arches. Instead, it's a kind of elegant box.

Le: Bridges and structures like this, the structural codes are not like your normal building codes. It’s more robust, more stringent, and requires just larger everything. We teamed up with Jacobs Engineering, formerly Ch2m Hill, who was the structural engineer on this bridge. The team wanted to refine the connections, make things a little bit more slender, more elegant. But it was challenging. They had to meet certain criteria, like the AASHTO [American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials] code.

Horsley: Certain parts of the span support towers we wanted to make a moment frames and they needed, for code compliance, to add braces. It’s a chunkier look at the base than we wanted.

 

Looking down Gideon's staircase (DAO Architecture)

 

What about the bridge type?

Le: We narrowed it down to two types of trusses, this Pratt truss and a Vierendeel. TriMet and PBOT did some costing analysis and the Vierendeel form isn’t as efficient, and therefore more expensive. So that’s how we ended up with a Pratt. But we thought the Vierendeel might be interesting, and it could be rendered to be more modern. They’re not technically trusses, more like moment frames on their sides. It’s as if you’re looking at a film strip, because there aren’t any diagonals.

I think the weathered steel gives the whole bridge a unifying quality: an aesthetic economy despite the heaviness.

Le: Obviously, it’s a material of choice now with a lot of projects. Here the City, again, was understandably very concerned about long-term maintenance. They’d rather not have to repaint the bridge every few years, so they wanted weathering steel. And we liked the material as well.

 

 

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In Search of Portland returns for second podcast season

The former 10th & Alder food cart pod (Nicolai Kruger Studio)

 

BY BRIAN LIBBY

After a long delay, I'm happy to announce that Season 2 of my podcast in collaboration with XRAY FM, In Search of Portland, just debuted yesterday.

I hope this post doesn't read as shameless self-promotion, but I think readers of this blog will find the show interesting. It's a slightly different focus than Portland Architecture, which is not to say that new buildings aren't of interest, but simply that on the podcast I like to feature places with layers of history. Be it a building completed in 2020 or 1920, those sites always have a past, and that past, along with the present and future of that site, collectively say something about our city.

For this first episode, our destination is what’s currently a construction site downtown at 10^th and Alder called Block 216. It’s set to become a 35-story tower: the city’s fifth-tallest building. A five-star Ritz-Carlton hotel is planned here, as well offices and condominiums.

The tower was designed by GBD Architects, the local firm I talked to last season for an episode about the Portland Armory. GBD has designed lots of towers like Block 216, but they’re complicated to pull off: veritable cities unto themselves. The client is BPM Real Estate Group. On its website, GBD explains:

"At 844,117 square feet, the project will likely be the largest Portland building of its era, and it will house a complex blended program: 160,000 GSF [gross square feet] of office, a 249-key five star hotel, and 138 for-sale private residences. Between residential and hotel uses, floors 19 and 20 are dedicated to amenities shared by the hotel and private residences. The amenity spaces on level 19 include a double-height pool, a spa tub, showers, lockers, a fitness area for residents and guests as well as a spa facility that will be open to the public. The amenity spaces on level 20 include a restaurant, and bar, and guest lounge. The ground level will bring 13,000 square feet of lively retail, three distinct entry lobbies for each use, as well as loading, trash, back of house, and the hotel bar."

 

Renderings of the future Block 216 tower (GBD Architects)

 

During the pandemic with millions filing for unemployment, I’ve wondered if construction might come to a halt. After all, that’s what happened during the last recession, to the nearby Park Avenue West tower. So far, though, construction on Block 216 has not ceased.

But ultimately the new tower is not why I decided to make a podcast episode about this block. Instead, I wanted to look back, first at the parking lot that was here for a half century starting in the 1960s, with special attention to the 10^th and Alder food cart pod located here until recently. I got interested in Block 216 for how it told a more than century-long story about the city.

For most of the past century , downtown has been dotted with surface parking lots. One company, City Center Parking, for much of that time enjoyed a near monopoly. These lots were consistently profitable. I mean, what’s better than an asphalt block that needs no upkeep, no investment, but regularly returns each month many thousands of dollars in revenue? Portland prides itself on being one of America’s more pedestrian-friendly cities, with an urban growth boundary encouraging high density over suburban sprawl. Even so, until recent years downtown was a kind of checkerboard of these simple surface lots.

Thankfully, though, that’s changing. The Goodman family sold City Center Parking 10 years ago and kept much of the land from those surface lots, allowing a nice re-invention as property developers. Many of these lots now have buildings on them, or will soon. That’s why Block 216 is a construction site today.

But I think most people walk past the construction crane at 10th & Alder and think about the food carts that were here. A little over a decade ago, Portland’s culinary scene exploded with mobile street food vendors, as a generation of talented young chefs and entrepreneurs went DIY.

And we all benefited, because in Portland’s food carts could find a lot of international cuisines you wouldn’t have been able to find in brick and mortar restaurants.

10^th & Alder was just one place out of many in the city to find these movable feasts. But in the late 2000s and early 2010s this block became a destination: not just for hungry office workers and students and tourists, but food media from all over the world.

In this episode, I first talk with Brett Burmeister, editor of the Food Carts Portland blog, about the 10^th and Alder food cart pod and the explosion of street food in Portland. Brett ate at his first food cart in 1991 and has roughly 1000 visits to street vendors in Portland and beyond. He’s has been featured by CNN, The New York Times, Saveur and The Guardian, among others. 

But before the parking lot and the food carts came an earlier history, with buildings dating back to Portland’s 19^th century beginnings.

There was the Selling-Hirsch Building, completed in 1896, which was not only a beautiful three-story work of architecture but over the first half of the 20^th century its tenants tell a story of America, from political activists protesting to give women the right to vote to the women’s suffrage movement to in the 1910s to a training center for Red Cross nurses during World War II.

 

Selling-Hirsch building, 1965 (George McMath, via Architectural Heritage Center)

 

There was also on this block the People’s Theater, part of a huge boom in Portland theater building that even helped prompt the renaming of Seventh Avenue to Broadway. It was completed in 1911 as just the second movie theater in Portland. It was built by the People’s Amusement Company, founded earlier that year, which eventually grew to control over thirty theaters across the Pacific Northwest. On its opening night of 11-1-11, a performance by opera singer Arthur Ellwell was followed by a comedy film short called A Disturbing Canine. General admission was ten cents.

Designed by Newcomb Engineering, the People’s Theater featured a Classical Revival style with three massive arched openings atop its elevated grand staircase, all modeled after 1875’sParis Opera. Carved classical muses to the left of the arched entries represented music, drama, and cinematic art. Inside, the lobby was trimmed in Mexican onyx and there was a custom $10,000 organ.

People's Theater (Architectural Heritage Center)

In 1929, the J.J. Parker Theaters chain purchased the People’s Theater and renamed it the Alder Theatre, with added seating and a new projection booth. But a year later, as the Great Depression arrived, it was sold again and renamed the Music Box (one of numerous downtown theaters to hold that name). But the theater closed in 1952, torn down shortly thereafter for the surface parking lot that remained there until 2019

The episode’s second interview is with Val Ballestrem, education manager at Portland’s Architectural Heritage Center. I talk with Val about the buildings that used to stand on this site like the Selling-Hirsch and the People’s Theater, and the people who built them.

One thing I realized working on this episode is that Block 216's past and present have a lot to do with recessions. It was the Great Recession of 2008 that helped give rise to the food-cart movement in Portland. The People's Theater was sold on the eve of the Great Depression. It was torn down during the recession of 1953. And going further back, it was the Panic of 1893 that set in motion a house on this block being torn down to make way for the first commercial building here, the Selling-Hirsch.

In the weeks and months ahead, our second season will feature seven more buildings and sites.

The second episode is all about the Ladd Carriage House, another 19th century gem that, against all odds, has survived all the way into the 21st — but only after surviving a demolition threat courtesy of owner First Christian Church in 2006. In that episode, I talk to architect and historian Paul Falsetto about saving the Carriage House, and interior designer Tracey Simpson about creating the wonderful restaurant inside: The Raven and Rose.

In Search of Portland's third episode focuses on Centennial Mills, the former complex of flour and seed mills that, perhaps more than any other site in the city, set Portland's economic engine in motion. Owned by the City of Portland for the past two decades, it was initially set to be cleared for an extension of Waterfront Park, but after public outcry over demolition, has seen a succession of redevelopment proposals fall through, and the city agency charged with managing the process, Prosper Portland, also has since demolished nearly all but the tallest flour mill building. In this episode, I talk first with historian, Portland State University professor and former Oregon Historical Society director Chet Orloff about Centennial Mills' history, and then with Prosper Portland's Lisa Abauf about efforts to redevelop the site.

I have to give thanks to all those who have helped make In Search of Portland. Nonprofit radio station XRAY FM produced the show, with a special assist from editor Jonathan Covington-Brehm. Mutual Materials and Capstone Partners are sponsors of the show. Architect and illustrator Nicolai Kruger creates an original drawing to go with each site we feature. Maxwell Griffin provided graphic design, including the show's logo. And the show's music is courtesy of Beauty Pill.

I was surprised to discover that in 2019, In Search of Portland was actually XRAY's top-rated podcast amongst the many it produces. It took me some time to learn recording from home, but it's great to be releasing these episodes again. It's fun to dig a little deeper.

 

 

 

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An upcoming departure: discussing ZGF's Portland International Airport redesign

Rendering of the future Portland International Airport (ZGF Architects)

 

BY BRIAN LIBBY

It has already been named America's best airport for the seventh straight year. Why change it? Maybe in order to keep being named the best. Airports are always changing.

And as nice an experience as PDX may be compared to larger, more cacophonous airports, it was clear that between the front door and the entry into various concourses — that whole first half of the experience — a seismic shift was necessary.

Recently the Port of Portland unveiled a series of renderings by ZGF Architects to show the major renovation coming. It will be perhaps the biggest transformation we've seen at PDX, even bigger than the removal of that carpet everyone loved.

The Portland City Council purchased the present 700-acre PDX site in 1936 and asked the Port of Portland to sponsor a Works Progress Administration grant to develop the site. Construction of the airport steadily employed over 1,000 workers, and has been called Portland's most significant public works improvement during the New Deal era. The land they chose along the Columbia River had been frequently covered by flood waters, which required the addition four million cubic yards of sand and a series of dikes to stabilize.

Opened in 1941, it was first designated Portland–Columbia Airport to distinguish from then-operating Swan Island Airport. During World War II, the airfield was used by the United States Army Air Forces. The airport originally had a terminal on the north side of the acreage, off Marine Drive, with five runways forming an asterisk. This configuration was adequate until a new terminal and a longer, 8,800-foot (2,700 m) east–west runway were constructed in 1952.

A new terminal opened in 1959, and though it has been expanded and altered numerous times, it’s essentially the terminal we have today. With it came construction of a second east–west runway to the north, and the asterisk became taxiways. "International" was added to the airport's official designation as Swan Island closed. The PDX terminal building was renovated and expanded in 1977 and again in 1986 and 1994, when Concourses D and E were added. The Oregon Marketplace, with its restaurants and shops, was added in the former waiting areas behind the ticket counters. An expanded parking garage, new control tower, and canopy over the curbside were finished in the late 1990s, topped off (both figuratively and literally) by PDX's signature glass canopy between the parking garage and the terminal, completed in 2000.

More recently, there has been unveiled newly expanded Concourse E  (designed by Hennebery Eddy Architects and Fentress) set to open next year, and a new Concourse B by ZGF Architects.

But the big Kahuna of a project is transform the airport’s core: the ticketing and lobby areas, which a new design by ZGF is poised to do. When the project is completed in 2025, they will nearly double in size. A few weeks ago, ZGF and the Port of Portland released the first renderings, and they're pretty dazzling — especially a wood and glass roof that will stretch over everything and fill the airport with light.

 

Rendering of the future Portland International Airport (ZGF Architects)

 

To learn more about the design and the thinking behind it, recently I spoke with Sharron van der Meulen, managing partner of ZGF's Portland office, and partner Gene Sandoval.

Portland Architecture: After the pandemic people are going to be excited to travel. The new PDX won’t be ready for years, but could you talk about the meaning of travel in our lives and how that impacted the way you approached the design?

Sharron van der Meulen: It’s one of the things that we talked about in the beginning stages. How do you get back to the romance of travel, and how do you express that in a building? There’s so many people, me included, who love to go to the airport and to travel. I think it’s really exciting, the experience, and we talked a lot in the beginning about how to channel that energy, and bring excitement into every step into the passenger experience, from curbside into boarding your plane.

We have somewhat of a paradox in that PDX is already top rated by media and in surveys, yet a lot of its configuration is outdated for how we travel today: focusing restaurants and shops pre-security, using spaces for security that weren’t designed for that purpose. What was your assessment?

Gene Sandoval: Everybody loves the Portland airport. Locally and nationally. That was the tall order. How do we evolve the airport when it’s really seven or eight buildings pieced together since 1954? How do you create that airport that people love? And don’t fuck it up, right? And also, Portland has evolved. This airport is really a generational airport. We have to forecast what Portland will be in 25 and 50 years. It will be more international. It will be even more of a gateway to the Pacific.

We studied a great amount of airports, so we know where things are heading: the passenger experience, the processing, the technology. And we also saw airports far afield. The challenge is you have this big floor plate and this big roof. That allows flexibility for when things change with processing passengers and security. But Portland is this quaint, intimate airport. How do you give it that flexibility with that big roof that ties it back to the past?

 

Aerial rendering of the future Portland International Airport (ZGF Architects)

 

One thing I’ve always noticed about Portland International Airport is that it’s quieter. There doesn’t seem to be the cacophony of noise that I associate with some big airports. Some of that is down to differences in size and passenger volume. But I’ve noticed that PDX is one of the few airports I’ve been to with carpet instead of hard-surface floors. Did  your preliminary research touch upon that?

Sandoval: We were on the project for about three years before we started designing. We wanted to know what makes it. It’s the sound, it’s the finishes, it’s the natural light.

van der Meulen: You’re kind of spot-on with the concept of the carpet, but what you might find interesting is that our acoustical engineers disagree. As we have learned, sound has a general propensity to travel upward. The surfaces on the floor don’t really do anything to mitigate. But what you’re getting at is probably even more important, and that’s the psychological idea of what that feels like. When you’re walking on something underfoot that’s soft, it’s more comfortable.

What are some of your favorite airports in the world? How might they have influenced the design?

Van der Meulen: Gene’s is gonna be Hong Kong.

Sandoval: That and Madrid.

Van der Meulen: I would say Hong Kong over Madrid. There’s a reason why they’re usually one and two on lists. I think that Singapore is also amazing: completely over the top and beautiful.

Sandoval: Don’t forget Oslo. It  was really the first big international airport done in wood. Hong Kong was the first modern re-interpretation of the airport in the world. It’s something a lot have used since then. Madrid was an evolution over Hong Kong. It had a cultural expression. It also has a wood ceiling. And it just feels like Madrid. And then Changi (in Singapore) because of the biophilia, the use of the natural environment and natural vegetation. It’s an airport in a garden, really.

 

Singapore's Changi Airport (Nat'l Geographic), Madrid's Barajas Airport (Diego Delso)

 

I’m curious about how the sequence of the major pieces of the experience might change in terms of layout or function: the ticket counter, the journey through security. Particularly when flying from gates on the south side of the airport, I’m aware of how dark and low-ceilinged the space is. It seems like something that could be opened up.

van der Meulen: This idea of compression is something we talked about from the beginning. It starts with the [outdoor] canopy we designed many years ago, this welcoming structure. We knew we needed to kind or re-celebrate that and look again at how that starts the experience: what it feels to enter it, to see it. And then you walk into essentially the new ticket lobby of the airport. We talked a lot: ‘Should it be compressed, should it be open?’ You get this one chance. We decided it needed to be a really tall space. But beyond that point, it gets compressed so you go through a threshold before you go into the new space we’re calling the Market Hall. It’s like the Oregon Market. It becomes open again, and you have wonderful views out to the airfield or to the apron. Then it compresses again as you go through security. It’s more quiet, and it’s a much more controlled environment, so that people don’t have to kind of deal with their stress in their environment. So it’s this kind of series of experiences of feeling very open and you’re in a large kind of space with skylights, to going into more of a compress.

With a lower ceiling, you can control the acoustics more. We all know that by far the security lane and that whole process for passengers is the most stressful. There could be a whole series of things that hold them up. And it’s all related to getting to your flight.

Speaking of which, I’ve always been curious as to how digital information could get more specific and up to date. Often when I’m picking someone up, the text I get from that person upon landing beats the airport’s own data on the TVs. Yet the question of digital information has also changed: what we used to look for from the TVs we can now retrieve instead on our phones. So how do you plan for that?

Sandoval: We always think about airports as physical spaces, but the digital experience is really tied to that. The experience of travel nowadays begins the night before you fly. You start that with your phone interface: whether you want to change seats or check in bags, then you wake up and look at your fight departure info. And a lot of things are changing. There was talk of Uber picking up your bags, for example. Every aspect, the phone could be incorporated into the process. That kind of joining of physical and digital interface is the future of flying.

van der Meulen: You’ve hit on one of the most important aspects, Gene, and that is total flexibility. You don’t know where the technology is going to take us. No one of our generation probably goes and checks in at the ticket counter, unless we have to check a bag. But believe it or not, 50 percent of the population likes to still go up to the counter and have some kind of exchange with a real person. We are caught between generations right now. As we move through the next five to ten years, we’re going to be depending on our smart phones more and more. We won’t really have to engage with too many people. Even with security: biometrics are really going to take over. Not to get into a whole Covid conversation, but that’s actually going to propel the US into pushing that technology forward.

Gene, I remember talking with you informally about the airport design in the past. You’d say something like, ‘I can’t show you yet, but wait until you see this. It’s the biggest project of my career.’ So to each of you, what about the design do you think will most get people excited? Forgive me for putting it this way, but what will be the Instagram-able moment?

van der Meulen: I think the new Instagram-able moment is really going to be the roof structure. You’ve seen the renderings, right? The inspiration came quickly but it took a long time to get it right. It’s a wood structure, obviously, and that seems like a natural for a lot of reasons—sustainability, and it’s a local resource. And we knew we wanted to celebrate that industry in a big way. I think this will be the largest project ever completed in the state of Oregon. I think every part of it needs to embody not just Oregon but the Pacific Northwest. I think people are going to be blown away by the roof structure. What they are going to see is how beautifully it’s detailed and how beautifully it interacts with natural light. It’s one thing to do a real cool form, but it’s another to work with the natural environment outside, and I think this building will do that.

 

Rendering of the future Portland International Airport (ZGF Architects)

 

Sandoval: The interior finishes are amazing. There’s a lot of inspiration. We had a conversation about Crater Lake Lodge and Timberline Lodge. It’s all about natural materials: granite, natural wood. I think this airport is going to be that way. It’s very Oregonian. It’s about the things that come from the land. So those will be the finishes. And we’ll capture a lot of natural endemic building materials.

van der Meulen: Obviously the wood roof is probably the best example of that, but there’s other ways we can tap the natural talents of this region, and whether it’s in ceramics or leather-making or other goods, we’re really trying to think about the industries in the Pacific Northwest that can contribute to a more intimate feel with building materials. This building needs to have a true Pacific Northwest story, from every level of every scale.

Sandoval: There was a lot of research, a lot of time spent to make sure they actually engaged local talent and local craftsmanship. The way the wood is made, it’s not really super high-tech. It’s diverse. It touches on many different aspects of the wood industry, around the region. Every aspect touches the building material trade. It’s bringing everybody together.

van der Meulen: It’s important because this is a public building. For the community to have a part in it, even a small part, it’s significant. This has given me a lot of ideas about how we can take this attitude and apply it to other buildings in other regions.

Sandoval: We had a big conversation about sustainability, and how it’s not just the performance of the building but actually sustaining the economic base around us. The community should have a stake in the way the money is spent. They’re going to be a part of it.

Can you talk about the process of getting input from the public and how that wove into the design?

van der Meulen: The Port of Portland orchestrated a number of charrettes, and they survey passengers on a very regular basis. We had access to the information that they collected. We also developed these passenger personas, and did some journey mapping. I think we had 12, which is a lot. It was building different scenarios. One would be a business traveler, one a travel and leisure passenger, one a kids’ sports team. We journey-mapped them through every single process to just kind of understand what were there stressors and where it made sense to have interventions to support those needs. If you look at the difference between a business traveler and a sports team, they have very different needs. Those are some of the things we did internally.

Could you talk a little bit more about the roof? Does it extend over everything?

van der Meulen: Yes, all of the things that happen in that airport. It’s over the ticket counter. It’s pretty much what you see today but it will be much more open space. A strong part of our design is the way in which we used light to assist the passenger in understanding where their next point is. I think it’s really important. We’ve got a big roof and skylights and we could have put those anywhere, but we wanted to do double or triple duty. As an example, the skylights are what we call the seam, the threshold between the ticket lobby and the Oregon market, a point in which you’re passing from one point to the next.

 

PDX terminal today (ZGF Architects)

 

What about the emotional or psychological impact that wood has?

van der Meulen: [ZGF partner Robert] Frasca used to have this simple saying about any building he was designing. To a certain point it needs to feel familiar, right? To a certain extent I think that’s what this building will do. That’s something if it were purely a steel structure just wouldn’t.

Sandoval: I think there’s a big focus on what makes it Oregon. It’s the scale, it’s a series of rooms, it’s the material in Oregon. The Portland airport was the first to incorporate a lot of wood and plants and natural daylight, going back to the 1970s, and the diversity of local: they were one of the first. Portland was first in a lot of things. And this will be one of the first to be mostly made out of wood. This can be almost like the Lewis and Clark exposition: a demonstration of how wood can be used in a modern way. It’s not just a flirtation with CLT [cross-laminated timber]. This is wood that can be supplied by big, medium and small outfits. Everybody within that industry can actually participate. Then I think you can talk about sustainability. This building is so efficient because of daylighting and mechanically and the kind of mitigations we’ve done with an efficient envelope. Then it is also seismically resilient, and that’s a big deal. Not only are we building a wood roof that’s six football fields big, but it’s seismically resilient.

I feel like a trend I’ve really seen in airport design is incorporating more plants, which ZGF’s design also seems to embrace.

van der Meulen: there’s a ton of research that tells us it’s a good idea — that it has a real impact on even how people breathe, their pulse rates. It really contributes to mitigating their overall stress. That’s an important aspect for sure. But it’s probably not the most important aspect. What we were trying to do is make it relevant to being of a place, of Oregon. What do you think of when you think of Oregon? People go, ‘I didn’t know it was so green.’ We would be remiss if we didn’t include that kind of lushness in the airport. It’s not everywhere. We were really strategic about where we placed it.

 

 

 

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Visiting 5 MLK: crossroads, terraces, transparency

L-R: Towne Storage, Yard, 5 MLK (Brian Libby)

 

BY BRIAN LIBBY

The east end of the Burnside Bridge has become a kind of architectural laboratory over the past five years, with a succession of eye-catching buildings.

That started with the 21-story Yard by Skylab Architecture and the 10-story Slate by Works Progress Architecture, both completed in 2016 and each fusing dark metal and glass. Then came 2017’s Fair-Haired Dumbbell by FFA Architecture & Interiors, not nearly as tall yet standing out even more thanks to a colorful artist-painted façade. And earlier this year came Sideyard, also by Skylab: a four-story, brick-clad mass timber building on a small patch of land created by the Burnside-Couch couplet.

Now comes 5 MLK, which is not officially part of the city-developed Burnside Bridgehead. But standing directly across Burnside at 17 stories, 5 MLK joins them to bookend the bridge with height.

When you factor in architectural neighbors like the Towne Storage building (dating to 1915 and renovated in 2017 from a designed by LRS Architects — now a headquarters for Autodesk), or the nearby Eastside Exchange (dating to 1925 and renovated in 2013 from a design by Works Progress Architecture), these few blocks clustered around the Burnside Bridge really start to feel like a neighborhood between neighborhoods: part Central Eastside, part Lower Burnside, but with a height and ambiance more its own. And bringing that energy across Burnside, as 5 MLK does, helps potentially bring that energy to the Central Eastside. That's important because the other Burnside Bridgehead buildings are in a sense hemmed in by two busy thoroughfares and the I-84 freeway.

In terms of height, 5 MLK project helps legitimize the other big buildings here: together they’re not so much outliers, as if exiled from downtown, but instead, coupled with the Lloyd District, are one growing East Side story.

 

5 MLK as seen from the southwest and east (Brian Libby)

 

For nearly 120 years, this site at the corner of Burnside and Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard was home to the Buckman Building, completed in 1900 and long known for its Fishel’s furniture store. But unlike the aforementioned Towne Storage and Eastside Exchange buildings, and unlike the nearby Vivian Apartments, a 1912 building renovated two years ago for Icelandic lodging chain Kex, the Buckman Building was torn down. I think quarter-block buildings under five or six stories tend to make for better placemaking. Yet this site is zoned for height and MLK/Burnside is one of the city’s most prominent and central crossroads.

The project was developed by Portland-based Gerding Edlen, which has spent two decades developing high-density, sustainable mixed-use buildings here and in several other West Coast cities. Here in Portland, the company really made its presence known starting in the early 2000s with the Brewery Blocks development, on the site of the former Blitz-Weinhard brewery. 5 MLK fits the brand: centrally located, glass-ensconced, and highly sustainable offices and apartment/condo spaces.

Gerding has most often worked with local firms like GBD Architects (which designed all five Brewery Blocks buildings for this client, then a few more) and ZGF (designer of the 12 West building in downtown’s West End). For this project, however, Gerding Edlen hired Chicago’s GREC Architects, which has designed a number of office and residential buildings there, perhaps most notably an Ace Hotel project from 2018. Last year the firm also served as architect of record for One Bryant Park, in collaboration with renowned architect Robert A.M. Stern.

The 450,000-square-foot, full-block 5 MLK has five levels of commercial space giving way to residential units above. But it’s not just a skinny tower sitting on a multistory stump, or even a simple L-shape, and not a clean break between office and apartment wings. The design underwent numerous iterations following criticism from the Portland Design Commission. Along the way, it seemed to lose clarity but gain in other ways, namely kinetics and transparency. It’s as if an ordinary podium-and-tower combination has been pushed and pulled apart. It's not enough to keep the overall composition from still seeming a bit corporate, but maybe a more enlightened corporate, rooted in sustainable principles and quality materials.

 

View of Slate and Fair-Haired Dumbbell from 5 MLK outdoor deck (Brian Libby)

 

Despite its girth, the design in some ways tries to keep a lower profile, or at least to be deferential. Its towers step downward to the corner on two sides, for example, bringing more light to the street and creating perhaps the building's most distinctive feature. It reminded me of Led Zeppelin's Houses of the Holy album cover, or terrace farming practices in Asia . At the same time, to emphasize its verticality, 5 MLK’s glass curtain wall is fused with vertical strands of thin porcelain, acting almost like drapery. The glass itself also seemed to have a mirrored quality, as if to make the reflections of other buildings its look.

But the look of the building from its exterior may not necessarily be the point. Height notwithstanding, its design seems more about the experience inside, looking out.

In my tour with two principals from GREC Architects, that sensation started in the lobby, where office workers and apartment-dwellers mix. With walls of glass, the lobby is set up as a kind of fishbowl onto this urban crossroads, interspersed with local art. It’s possible to look through the glass in four directions: west, north, east, or straight up through an oculus skylight. (Or be mesmerized by a multi-screen video installation by Portland’s Stephen Slappe.)

 

5 MLK from Burnside and MLK Jr. Boulevard, and a lobby skylight (Brian Libby)

 

I was also taken to an exercise room with such great views looking west at the Burnside Bridge and downtown that it felt a bit indulgent or even absurd to put a treadmill there. But as a runner, in the wet cold winter months I dream of such exercise scenarios.

Then there are the two outdoor terraces, the first of which is about halfway up the building and includes both covered and uncovered space. It's low enough to still feel immersed in the neighborhood, yet high enough to enjoy panoramic views. That said, the top-floor view is even more striking, with an outdoor pool and a  360-degree view of skyline and Cascade peaks.

 

Panoramic photo from 5 MLK top floor (Brian Libby)

 

Ultimately this will probably not be the most talked-about Burnside Bridgehead building. And maybe that’s just fine. There is visual interest to it from the outside—the terracing steps at the corners, the draped porcelain lines over the glass, the curving southwest façade, the outdoor decks, and how it’s all put together—but overall it’s a large glass building not wildly dissimilar from other large glass commercial and residential buildings.

Instead, I think 5 MLK can boast its design credibility in another way. It’s the building of this bunch I’d probably be happiest to live or work in.

 

 

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

Grant High School Modernization (Benjamin Benschneider)

 

BY BRIAN LIBBY

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

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

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

Honor Awards

 

Providence Park expansion (Jeremy Bittermann)

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

Waechter Architecture's Society Hotel Bingen (Lara Swimmer)

 

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

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

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

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

 

Merit Awards

 

Holst's Argyle Gardens (Josh Partee)

 

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

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

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

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

 

Glass Link by Scott|Edwards Architecture (Jeremy Bittermann)

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

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

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

 

Bora's YMCA Adaptive Reuse (Jeremy Bittermann)

 

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

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

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

 

Citation Awards

 

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

 

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

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

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

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

 

Meier & Frank Building renovation (Brian Lee)

 

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

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

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

 

 

 

 

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Happy 60th birthday, Memorial Coliseum

Veterans Memorial Coliseum (Brian Libby)

 

BY BRIAN LIBBY

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

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

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

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

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

Design

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

 

Rendering of Memorial Coliseum design (City of Portland)

 

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

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

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

 

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

 

History

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

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

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

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

 

 

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

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

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

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

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

Demolition Threats and Protections

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

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

 

Memorial Coliseum in 1960 (Art Hupy)

 

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

 

The Plan Going Forward

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

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

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

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

 

Coliseum interior following 2016 renovation (Brian Libby)

 

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

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

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

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

 

 

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Floating in the forest: a visit to William/Kaven's Royal Residence

Royal Residence (© Jeremy Bittermann/JBSA)

 

BY BRIAN LIBBY

It was a beautiful September day, just before the wildfires, when I visited the Royal Residence and stood in its signature space, surrounded by forest.

The house, named for the street on which it's built, just off Skyline Boulevard on the edge of Forest Park, is quite striking. Descending down a hillside, it's basically a series of black metal and glass-ensconced rooms that begin with the great room  as you walk in the front door. Of special note is how the extended living area cantilevers out over the hillside to fully take in the forest view.

Standing in that cantilevered portion, with glass on three sides and nothing but gorgeous evergreen trees in view, I felt totally enveloped. The cantilevered portion makes the living room feel a bit oversized, or like two small living rooms attached to each other. But who cares? That experience was wonderful enough that how the furniture is arranged becomes secondary.

"I toured a potential buyer through here the other day. She literally started crying," firm co-founder Daniel Kaven explained during the tour, as we checked out the view. "She was so struck by the view and everything. She came up here from Silicon Valley and got very emotional. She couldn’t even believe it."

 

Royal Residence (© Jeremy Bittermann/JBSA)

 

Kaven went on to explain that he designed into the living room a full-height bookshelf to serve as a divider between the two rooms. "This was kind of this cozy area," he said, pointing to the front area, "and this was kind of this reveal space," he added, pointing to the cantilevered space with the view. "But after we got into construction, I just kept coming in the front door and thinking, ‘There’s just no way you can cover that view when you come in.’"

The kitchen, adjacent to the cantilevered living room, benefits from a roof line that extends outward to meet it. Just beyond the kitchen island are large operable glass doors that allow one to bring in a bounty of fresh air without being exposed to the elements.

And in case that floor-to-ceiling glass that the whole great room looks through didn't bring in enough light, there is also a huge skylight over the kitchen island. The house's interior could easily be dark simply because there isn't a lot of light coming from this forested setting. Yet it feels almost as bright as being outside, or perhaps even brighter.

The Royal Residence was built on spec and is intended as the first in what could be as many as nine new homes on nine new lots. William/Kaven's development wing, Kaven and Company, has purchased most of the land near here, just off Skyline Boulevard in the West Hills.

"There were a lot of limitations to how we could build," Kaven says. "We could only disturb 5,000 square feet of the whole 20,000-square-foot property."

 

Royal Residence (© Jeremy Bittermann/JBSA)

 

Kaven also confesses that he's had some frustration getting these projects going.

"They’re trying to put these further protection layers on these lots that were created to have housing on them 70 years ago," he says, adding a directive to the city itself. "‘You guys need to focus on doing this outside the urban growth boundary.’ That is what that boundary is for. But to suppress the housing here because there’s this supposed one-foot dry creek bed that runs through part of this property is housing suppression. That’s why we don’t have affordable housing. The city has all of these extreme barriers to get stuff built. This house took like four years to get built. I mean, that’s kind of what you’re up against. You can’t create affordable housing when those are those kinds of barriers. Some people will be like, ‘Oh, this is just housing for a wealthy person.’ No. It is all housing."

There's a couple things to untangle there.

One, obviously, is how the city approaches private property that's adjacent to the borders of Forest Park. Looking at the Royal Residence on a map, it's easy to think it's actually part of the park itself. And by the time my car reached this house, I'd traveled to near the bottom of a ravine. I wouldn't be surprised if there are legitimate ecological reasons not to allow development on this land. But I can also see why one has to allow property owners to either fish or cut bait: to outright restrict development or to give the green light.

Two, there is the question of how the overall supply of housing affects market rates. In theory, Kaven may be right that if, say, eight homes are built and sold here, it means eight fewer potential buyers of some low-rent Portland apartment that's converted into a high-end condo. An increase in supply is proven to reduce scarcity. Even so, directly connecting environmental approval for a lucrative house site to the crisis of affordable housing feels a bit...convenient.

Yet I can understand an architect-developer feeling like pulling off a high-quality speculative development is an endeavor with many potential pratfalls. Even when the economy is booming, it takes a lot to shepherd a land parcel all the way through the construction of a beautiful house. Now that Covid-19 has delivered a haymaker to the economy and our national leadership is too clueless, self-serving and corrupt to get up off the canvass, real estate development is less of a sure thing. And the more the process drags out, the more it could seem like the Royal Residence may not lead to a Royal (Boulevard) family of houses.

One way or the other, though, I expect Daniel Kaven and his architect-partner, Trevor Lewis, to make this happen. After all, this forested setting is not the first place they've engaged in a multi-project, multi-year effort.

 

Silica (Daniel Kaven) and Parallax (© Jeremy Bittermann/JBSA)

 

Take the group of projects they've built on the Williams Avenue-Vancouver Avenue corridor, starting with 2007's North House, a triplex residence, and continuing in recent years with the Silica office building in 2018 and the new Parallax building, with 66 market-rate apartments over ground-floor retail. Silica, which I wrote about two years ago, is a gorgeous synthesis of heavy timber and glass. Parallax is a more handsome, high-quality version of the ubiquitous five-over-one residential building.

Of course the best-known William/Kaven project is not any of these neighborhood buildings but a pair of ultra-tall towers the firm proposed for the Broadway Corridor site. They were never part of any official plans or even, to my knowledge, an official proposal made to Prosper Portland as part of its developer-based selection process. But ultimately these towers got a lot more press than anything else to do with the multi-year, ongoing Broadway Corridor effort centered around the site on North Broadway being vacated by the US Postal Service.

 

Broadway Corridor towers rendering (William/Kaven Architecture)

 

A nearly 1,000-foot-tall building was always a non-starter here, let alone two of them. After all, the city's tallest building, the Wells Fargo Center, is at 546 feet only a little more than half that size. But William/Kaven still got something out of the design, and so did we. Prosper Portland-managed developments can have a lot of strengths, mainly to do with a focus on equity and stakeholder consensus. But the deals, part of complex agreements that can succeed or fail based on which direction the economy is headed, can sometimes fall through, and even when they don't, eye-catching architecture is not high on the list of priorities. Take Centennial Mills, where the preservation of the remaining historic flour mill building and the creation of open space along the river as stipulated by the master plan seems to get second or third billing after new buildings and parking, even after three failed development agreements going back a decade. The Kaven-designed towers challenged us to think bolder, about both architecture and density.

To bring it all back around to the Royal Residence, I suppose the feeling you'd get from an observation deck on one of those towers is not wildly dissimilar to the feeling you get in the cantilevered living room there. A house and an office need to do practical things, of course. But I think William/Kaven Architecture has a talent for glassy architecture that  harnesses emotion as much as a minimalist design language, even if they are entrepreneurs as much as they're architects — or maybe because of it.

 

 

 

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Keeping it in proportion: a conversation with Jones Architecture

The upcoming Northbound 30 Collaborative project (Jones Architecture)

 

BY BRIAN LIBBY

A few weeks ago, I received a press release about a new eight-building multifamily housing project set to break ground in Slabtown called the Northbound 30 Collaborative. Designed by Waechter Architecture and Jones Architecture, it caught my eye for two reasons, or maybe three.

One, the project's design is based on a series of easements that allow buildings to be arranged not in a row but like a checkerboard, creating numerous courtyards. That seemed uncommon and intriguing. Two, anything Waechter Architecture does is worth taking note of. But three, Jones Architecture was a firm I'd come to admire but not heard from in a couple years. Turns out they do have a lot going on: much of it a series of medium-density residential projects with a pleasing sense of proportion and craft, and much of these projects either under construction or—fingers crossed—about to be.

Two years ago when I visited the 16-acre former Conway property being redeveloped in Northwest Portland, among a series of new buildings there on a super-block site, my favorite was the Carson South. The double-sized block had been bisected by a pedestrian alley, faced by these three brick-clad, rowhouse-like buildings. They were only the foreground to the Carson Apartments, a much larger 14-story project. But Carson south was handsome and beautifully scaled.

I eventually realized that Jones Architecture founder Alan Jones (not to be confused with the local jazz drummer of the same name) had been a key designer at Holst Architecture for the past decade. He contributed to some of the other nicely scaled going up in Slabtown that Holst designed (with GBD) like 2015's LL Hawkins apartment and its predecessor near there, Sawyers Row, and was a project manager on 2016's gorgeous Olympia Place student housing project in Amherst, Massachusetts.

 

Carson South (Christian Columbres), Olympia Place (Christian Phillips)

 

Normally I don't do a lot of interviews with firms about their upcoming projects, because renderings can make even mediocre projects look good and you can't truly evaluate a building without going inside and talking to occupants. Plus I don't necessarily want to assist in PR. But I decided to reach out to Alan Jones and his firm, because once Northbound 30 caused me to take a second look, it turns out the firm has a lot of projects on the boards and under construction. 2020 is that kind of year.

When I talked with Jones and colleagues Meaghan Bullard, Jason Bolt and Sienna Shiga via Zoom recently, Jones was the only one in the firm's studio, in the Pearl District on the second floor of the Graphic Arts Building, overlooking the North Park Blocks.

"I’m here half the week, but everyone else has been working from home. It’s actually worked," Jones says. "There’s part of me that feels like we’re doing some of our best work right now."

Whether architecturally or psychologically, maybe surviving in these times is all about adapting — keeping things in proportion.

Even so, Jones was not feeling nearly as stable back in March, at the pandemic's outset. "I’ll be honest. It was very difficult to watch  people leave the office. I was very emotional about not having people together working," he says. "We were not set up from a technology standpoint with the way that our Revit models and our server was working. It was not cloud-based. We had to scramble to get set up online and adjust to everyone being at home…in a week. It normally would have taken years."

"Our office had all this pinup space, all this stuff up on the wall. All of a sudden, we were forced to communicate our ideas to each other another way," adds Jason Bolt, a Wisconsin native who got his graduate architecture degree at the University of Oregon.

 

Alan Jones, Meaghan Bullard, Jason Bolt and Sienna Shiga (Jones Architecture)

 

At the same time, this notion of adaptation has a broader connotation. Jones Architecture, like nearly all firms, has "learned to practice in this way that’s super fluid," Alan Jones says. "Projects are stopping and starting all the time." He stresses that there is no hierarchy at the firm: that everyone is equal.

Despite the uncertainty, despite the stops and starts many projects have experienced, the building industry and real estate economy actually seem to be doing fairly well this year, all things considered. Jones Architecture has had a number of projects put on hold, but also a number of new projects commissioned during the pandemic, and no outright cancellations.

"I think March and April were extremely scary because of the pandemic and the unknown," Jones says. "There were a lot of sleepless nights for people. But we’ve remained busy. The pipeline got thin a couple times but we have as much work right now as we ever had, which is remarkable. It’s hard to stay what’s going to happen. I think construction financing, it will be very telling what the banks are willing to do as…there are things on hold now. But there doesn’t seem to be a lack of interest in getting projects started. We’re very optimistic, cautiously. There are people really hurting right now. It’s very real. We’re fortunate we’re able to do what we do."

Alan Jones grew up outside Ann Arbor, Michigan working in his family’s fine millwork and earned an architecture degree at the University of Michigan. He came to Portland in 2001 after stints at architecture firms in Ann Arbor and Seattle focused on residential projects. "Several of us, Meaghan [Bullard] and I and Jason [Bolt] a little bit, started through the custom residential world," Jones says. "It was a high-touch-service approach where it’s a fairly intimate relationship with your client."

"It’s something we treat as its own design problem. Each client has different needs, different goals," says Meaghan Bullard, a Yale-educated Brooklyn native who previously worked at Manhattan's Murphy Burnham & Buttrick Architects. "We take it upon ourselves to dig into that, and translate that into a successful project, whatever that means.

It's par for the course that when an architect leaves a firm, he or she inevitably takes some of the client relationships along. Alan Jones is the first to admit that Holst's work in Slabtown helped set up his new firm with projects like Carson South. But he and staff members learned how to work collaboratively as a result.

"When I decided to leave [Holst] and start Jones Architecture in 2014, Slabtown was kind of booming and the economy was fantastic," he says. "There were a lot of growing pains. How do we get set up fast enough to do this? Here we are designing two full city blocks, Carson South in Slabtown and The Union in St. Johns, these full-block projects without a lot of infrastructure set up. It set things in motion in a way where we had to be super fluid and collaborative and figure out how to get things done. The firm had to set up quickly."

 

Pediatric Therapy Services (David Papazian)

 

What I like about both projects, and other residential works by Jones Architecture including the upcoming NB30, is their sense of scale and proportion. When I ask staff about style, they say there is no Jones Architecture aesthetic fingerprint, at least not an obvious one: that they adapt to and work from site conditions and client needs. Yet I look at these and other projects like the Pediatric Therapy Services project in Gresham and see some kind of connection: simple forms, repeated use of textured or traditional materials like brick, and an easy compatibility with older buildings. I would not call these neo-traditional designs at all, yet whether it's because of materials or the more human-scaled forms or some other reason, these don't exactly feel like they belong in a category with lots of glass-and-steel contemporary buildings, although they'd fit well next door to one.

"We really wrestle and think about scale and the pedestrian realm and what buildings are like to be around," Jones explains. "The Slabtown work, Northbound 30: what’s beautiful is it’s all five story. With a 50-foot-wide building, it’s a super-elegant proportion. If you go to the elevations, you get this vertical element. It’s Copenhagen. Copenhagen is all five stories, and the buildings are broken down into livable bays. It feels really livable. Then we played with textures to break it down further."

I too have loved Copenhagen ever since I visited in 2007. Turns out Jones spent a semester there during graduate school. "It was very informative," he says. "They’re very proud of housing in Copenhagen. We spent most of the semester studying housing. I grew up wanting to design houses. I always thought it was part of what I would do. But seeing the cohousing projects in Denmark influenced a desire to do more multifamily projects."

Copenhagen also figures into an upcoming Jones Architecture house project that caught my eye: the Princeton Street Residence.

 

The upcoming Princeton Street Residence (Jones Architecture)

 

"It’s for an interior designer I met in school in Copenhagen 25 years ago," the architect explains. "There’s a little bit of a Danish farmhouse appeal here, this super-simple gable. This project in the front was a part of the original house, which we more or less tore down except for the foundation. And there’s this piece in the back. The project gets larger as it goes to the back. We’re excited to work at this scale as well."

The firm has also done two local renovations that I appreciated.

One is the Lovejoy Medical Building in Northwest Portland, a very quirky circa-1965 building by architect James Gardiner that is somehow at once ugly and very cool. It's fronted almost entirely by screens, metal in front of a glass curtain wall and breeze block in front of the fire-escape-like outdoor stairway. It's essentially very good sustainable design decades ahead of its time. And in Portland's 2020 built environment, it's utterly unique. But from the street it's about as easy to see inside as a prison. Having visited the building a couple times as a patient, however, I can tell you the rehab really gave these interiors a new lease on life.

 

Lovejoy Medical Building (Christian Columbres), Fisk Tire Building (Josh Partee)

 

The other rehab was for the circa-1924 Fisk Tire Building on NW 13th Avenue in the Pearl District, part of the 13th Avenue Historic District. Currently a Room & Board furniture store, the interior is a fusion of natural wood and exposed concrete, and feels warmer than one might expect. This collection of buildings is truly one of Portland's architectural treasures, akin in collective value to the remaining cast-iron buildings on the waterfront and the collection of midcentury-modern houses in the city's West Hills.

Overall, though, so much of the Jones Architecture portfolio seems either under construction or about to break ground. In theory, 2021 could be a great year.

"The firm has been around for seven years and I’m surprised, in some ways. I can’t believe we’ve done this much. But in other ways it’s, ‘I can’t believe it’s taken this long to get things done.’ I suspect that people probably don’t know our work that well yet. But we have a lot of work in the pipeline that we’re excited about. For one reason or another, projects have been delayed for the last two, three years. There’s several that are ready to go."

The upcoming Northbound 30 Collaborative project (Jones Architecture)

 

Like Northbound 30, on the site of the former Royal Oak Metalcraft near Montgomery Park. "We had a few meetings with Waechter’s office and the developer. There were all these 50x100 sites," Bolt recalls. "How do you get into these buildings? I think it was just a light-bulb moment: ‘What if we offset these buildings and create these created these courtyard spaces?’ It just snowballed into a checkerboard pattern. It took a lot of planning in terms of the building easements on property lines. Each one has an easement to allow windows looking into the other spaces. We went through numerous rounds of appeals. What it allowed the project to do was create these small footprint buildings with lots of open space and lots of corner views. It was a win all around."

"There are examples in Portland of taking advantage of an easement on someone else’s property. But I don’t think there’s an entire development put together that way," Jones adds. "We had to go through a long code process to set this all up. and It did become an exercise in thinking about…like the bay sizes, studying Portland and how the properties are divided up. East of the Mississippi, it’s modules of 16 feet, 32 feet, 64. In Portland with the 200 foot blocks, the module is more like 12 and a half feet or 25 feet. How do you break it up into the proper proportions? And with multifamily, how do you get those to connect? Units want to be a certain width. Blocks are a certain width. What’s the module?"

 

The upcoming Tree Three (Jones Architecture)

 

Another house currently under construction is called Big Tree Three: a trio of units with arboreal presence. "It’s a collaboration between a fabricator we work with on a number of projects, Robb Rathe and Steelab, which does steel and wood fabrication for clients like Nike and Adidas," explains Sienna Shiga, a Reed College and UO grad who used to work as a sommelier. "It’s his house and he wants to develop the site into a duplex with an ADU in the back. He’s incredibly hands on and collaborative. We’ve worked with him so many times as a designer. He’s going to do all of the finishes and the interior. He’s fabricating this aluminum cladding formed into this hexagonal shape. Because he has the ability to do this, it’s going to have a beautiful and unique exterior."

One thing I've noticed about Jones Architecture is that the firm seems to often return to the same neighborhood or place. That's true in Slabtown and industrial Northwest, in St. Johns, and on the Oregon Coast. Alan Jones regularly vacations in Pacific City, and approached the owners of one popular local business, Pelican Brewing, which has led to a new outpost for the brewpub in Lincoln City. The firm is also designing the Kingfisher workforce housing project in Pacific City, currently in permitting.

 

The upcoming Siletz Bay Pelican Brew Pub, Lincoln City (Jones Architecture)

 

As we wind up our Zoom call, with Alan Jones sitting in the firm's studio alone and the rest joining from their homes, he takes a final moment to emphasize that while his name may be on the door, that's not the way to think of Jones Architecture.

In addition to colleagues like Bullard, Bolt and Shiga, he says, "There’s a whole other group of people coming up behind us that’s equally committed and influential. I always want people to know. It’s not just about me. It’s not just about the four of us. It’s about the whole firm."

 

 

 

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The Architect's Questionnaire: Scott Mooney

Scott Mooney (SRG Partnership)

BY LUKE AREHART

Our occasional interview series featuring architects and their inspirations continues with Scott Mooney, a senior associate at SRG Partnership. Mooney has worked on numerous sustainable civic and higher-education projects for the firm, and has also taught design studios at Portland State University and University of Oregon. He also currently serves as a Fellow in Practices at Portland State University's Center for Public Interest Design. Yet he may be best known for the Pinwheel ADU in Mooney's backyard, designed with his construction-engineer wife, Lauren Shumaker, which in 2018 was featured in Dwell magazine. This conversation is a bit of a time capsule, having taken place back in May of 2019.

Portland Architecture: When did you first become interested in architecture as a possible career?

Scott Mooney: When I graduated from high school, I knew I wanted to be in a creative field but didn’t quite know what that field was. I was a little bit of an academic omnivore and was interested in so many different areas. I started by stepping back and looking at an overview of all the different courses that were offered in school.

I went to Stanford University for my undergraduate degree. I discovered this unique degree that was called Urban Studies that had a focus on architecture and urban design. What intrigued me about it was that the program allowed you take courses in art history, studio art and design. This program was also was interdepartmental, so you also took courses in a large variety of areas like urban history, sociology, urban politics and political science. You also took courses in ecology, mechanical engineering and design thinking. I was just so fascinated that there was one degree that had all these different areas of study under a single umbrella. The more I started to connect the dots through this experience, the more I realized that architecture really is the intersection of all those different areas of interest for me and that's how I decided to become an architect. It was that revelation that I could concurrently work to solve all these different problems that I feel like architecture can address while still making something beautiful in the process.

Where did you study architecture and how would you rate the experience?

It was an incredible undergraduate experience because the curriculum exposed me to a lot of historic inequalities that I hadn’t been fully aware of in my life up to that point. My parents were both teachers. I grew up on a farm. I wouldn't say it was a sheltered life, but I also was not in a place where these issues were a part of our everyday conversation. My education allowed me to understand some of the big problems that needed to be tackled on a global and societal scale. It also gave me an awareness of those filters and ways to think about how we apply ourselves professionally to help solve some of those problems.

I met some incredible people who have gone on to do some incredible things. I was inspired by the motivation and passion amongst my peers, who I'm still close with today.

I went and eventually got my Master of Architecture at the University of Oregon, and I would say the same thing about those classmates as well. They are inspiring folks who are doing some remarkable work, both here in Portland and elsewhere in the world.

The reason I ended up in the University of Oregon is because I wanted to focus a big portion of my design career on sustainable design and understanding how we could create buildings that are more harmoniously connected to the natural world. It was an opportunity to help address the climate crisis, that even back in the early 2000s, was obviously a major issue and continues to be so.

What is your favorite building project that you’ve worked on?

I feel lucky because it seems like every project I've been able to work on has just gotten better in terms of the richness and the complexity of the problems. My most recent project, that's under construction right now, was a really great experience. It's Fourth and Montgomery. It is a four-owner building that is shared between Portland State University, OHSU, PCC, and the City of Portland. Each one of those groups is trying to make an impact in a different way. It's the Portland Bureau of Planning and Sustainability that's moving in on the top floor. The building will serve as the OHSU-PSU School of Public Health, which is a partnership between those two universities. It is the PSU Graduate School of Education, and it's also the PCC dental program space that are all sharing one roof. These users are in addition to shared classrooms, and retail at the ground floor.

 

Rendering of the upcoming Fourth & Montgomery (SRG Partnership)

 

It was a complex process that involved a lot of interesting problem-solving that we had to address and reach consensus between four owners. It was a fun challenge to tackle, and I think that we ended up creating a design that is successful in a lot of different ways. I'm proud of that. It’s an interesting project on an urban scale. We wanted to do what we could to expand the public realm at the ground floor. It's on the Montgomery Green Street so we're hoping to stitch the PSU park blocks down to the Halprin Open Space Sequence. We also were able to carve out what the Design Commission was referring to as a pocket park, which we are excited about because I think a well-scaled outdoor room is important for the public.

We were able to manage the floor plates so that in an open office scenario everyone has access to daylight and views at all the office levels. Even though it costs just as much as any other project of its type, in fact even a little less because of the resources that we had through these public institutions, we're still exceeding our energy targets on that project. We’re also getting 82% better than baseline for the 2030 challenge, which is not easy to do. That's without any real bells and whistles in terms of the technology of the systems. I give a huge credit to our engineering partners at PAE and the owner group for just being on board with all the different strategies that we implemented to get there. Most of this project was just being smart about the architecture and making sure that we were putting glazing where it wanted to be, not over glazing where it shouldn't be. We're also doing some interesting system strategies that allow us to be fossil-fuel-free.

Who has been an important mentor among your colleagues?

I've had a lot of great mentors over the years.

At Hacker, principal Charles Dorn was a consummate architect who really cared about design integrity and understood on a very deep level how systems integrate. I think Derek deVille (currently with ZGF) and Andrew Shilling at Hacker (currently with William Kaven Architecture) were also great mentors to me, in terms of just how to put together a good set of documents. Tracey Olson has been an awesome force in my career, because she brings energy, and challenges you on your ideas. I've really enjoyed having her as a colleague over the years.

I've worked very closely with Steve Simpson on both the Multnomah County Courthouse, and on the Fourth and Montgomery project. He brings a rigor and clarity of thought to the projects that I really value. He's not necessarily looking for additive solutions, but reductive solutions by asking how to simplify, simplify and simplify to the point where it's just the essence of the idea left in service to the larger value of the job. And I worked very closely with Laurie Canup on my last project. She's been a great mentor by showing how a job can be run successfully. She has a passion for the projects that we do which is infectious. It's sometimes hard to not get caught up in just how important the work we do is along with the difference it can make if we do our job well.

What part of the job do you like best, and as an architect what do you think you most excel at?

I like collaborating with the folks who will eventually be using the building, to find creative solutions and makes sure everyone’s needs are being met in a way that is responsible and beautiful. I like working to balance all those forces in a way that creates an outcome that everyone (for their own reasons) is happy and excited about. There are often a lot of different agendas when you start dealing with large user groups. When everyone is satisfied with the outcome then you know you've done your job well.

In terms of what I most excel at, I'm really interested in creating high-performance projects that don't necessarily look like high-performance projects. They don't call attention to the fact that certain strategies have been implemented. They just look like beautiful buildings and well-resolved design solutions. With that, there is a clarity of thought and execution that you look for in good architecture. I am also personally committed to creating projects that serve the public as a whole and aren't just necessarily for one small percentage of our society. Architecture should really contribute to the broader culture and, whenever possible, help ensure equity in the communities in which we live in. That is one of the things I've really tried to do in my career: be intentional about the kinds of projects that I work on from this perspective.

What are some Portland buildings (either new or historic) that you most admire?

If you were to think of the architecture of the building as an object, the Union Bank Tower is just a stone-cold classic: so well resolved and so clearly thought through. The execution on that project is still of the highest level that you'll find in Portland.

But with a background degree in urban design, I also just love good fabric buildings that make up the smaller parts of the whole. An example is the Ford Building in Southeast, close to the train tracks. The adaptive reuse is skillfully done. To see buildings like that be given another life, as opposed to be bulldozed for a larger project, is heartwarming because it's that kind of history and those kinds of structures that create a place. If we were to knock down every building from that era that we felt was underdeveloped, we would lose our history as a city. It's an interesting needle-and-thread situation in terms of which buildings we value and which we don't. I have a soft spot for inventive adaptive reuse projects. There's a lot of really good work happening in Southeast industrial areas right now and I'm happy to see that. We have so many parking lots in this town that we should not be knocking down beautiful old buildings when there are so many other places to build. Maybe once we fill up all the parking lots then we can have that conversation.

What is your favorite building outside of Portland and besides any you’ve worked on?

That’s sort of like asking if I have a favorite record: it depends on the context. Are we talking about a record for making breakfast on a Sunday morning, or for getting ready to go out on a Saturday night? There are so many different reasons to love buildings in different ways.

I think in terms of the space of a building, there's Grundtvig's Church in Copenhagen. It's designed in the 20s and built in the 30s and 40s. It's one of the best examples of what it would look like if folks took the principles of modernism but filtered them through the vernacular and building tradition of a place. The outside is sort of odd, almost like a jukebox. But inside you discover the purity of the form they created. It moves you and reveals itself in a way that is unexpected. The whole building is one material, locally quarried yellow brick. By just using one material, yellow brick, and by focusing on how light is reflected off the material, it makes for one of the most awe-inspiring spaces I've ever experienced. It's filtering hundreds of years of building tradition through modernist sensibilities of simplicity and minimalism.

 

Gruntvig's Church, Copenhagen (Ignant.com)

 

I'm as intrigued by the spaces between buildings the buildings themselves. How can buildings be a part of a larger whole that contributes to culture, and contributes to community? My favorite buildings are well crafted and thoughtful but quiet fabric buildings that make a place. When you think of cities like Rome or the hutongs in Beijing that were developed before the automobile was running the show, these are really great examples of the kinds of  rich urban spaces that architecture can help define.

Is there a local architect or firm you think is unheralded or deserves more credit?

The work that's happening at the Center for Public Interest Design at Portland State University is important work. The way that they are leveraging the opportunity we have with students to do real work and make real meaningful impacts in our communities through design is impressive. I am consistently blown away by the small things that they do that start to build towards larger movements in ways that are unexpected and exciting.

One of the most significant projects they've had thus far was the SAGE Classroom. Since money isn't being spent on creating more permanent infrastructure for schools, a lot of school districts are having to install portable classrooms. These portable classrooms are not healthy places for kids. Over many years and many students, the folks at the CPID, Sergio Palleroni, and Margarette Leite worked to create a new model. The SAGE Classroom is in production now and has been used in dozens of locations. It is healthy, naturally ventilated, fully daylit, portable classroom that, in terms of cost, is only slightly more than you would pay for a traditional portable classroom.

I’m also impressed with the work that folks like Todd Ferry and Marta Petteni doing with homeless villages, like the Kenton Women's Village. I feel fortunate that SRG Partnership has been deeply engaged in the work at Kenton Women's Village in partnership with the Center for Public Interest Design and Catholic charities.

 

Kenton Women's Village (Scott Mooney)

 

What would you like to see change about Portland’s built environment in the long term?

I would love to see our built environment become more equitable and accessible to everyone in our community. There are a lot of folks in town who are working towards that by using architecture and, more importantly, development as a vehicle to enact some of that change. I think the work that Guerrilla Development is doing in terms of pushing the development model and making it something that everyone can participate in; not just for folks who already have a large nest egg, but instead really opens it up to the general public for micro-investments, is really cool. The fact that they have an agenda for their projects, a social agenda, in addition to an economic agenda is important. Evolution in our models for development will likely have to be enacted via policy based requirements or incentives down the road. But until we get there, I have a deep respect for those who are being proactive about solving those problems ahead of time so that there's a model to point to when we do actually have to create those policy changes and say, "This has been done successfully before, and here's how."

In addition, mass timber is an important technology both in terms of supporting our local economy and helping solve our climate crisis, especially with respect to embodied energy. The folks at PATH Architecture looked at that issue and said, "We need to be building this way." They didn't wait for someone else to ask them to do it, they just found a way to make it pencil did it themselves. It's those proactive responses to these issues that we have in our community that we need to solve; I think we should hopefully see more of in the future. Especially in relationship to both the climate crisis and our housing shortages.

How would you rate the performance of local government like the Portland Development Commission, the Design Commission, or the development and planning bureaus?

They are doing a really good job helping to maintain a standard of quality in our public spaces. In my mind, Design Commission is there to help make sure we build a good city. When you look at the projects that go through the design review process, nine out of ten of them come out better on the other end.

Some folks have pushed back on the Design Commission for approving the Harbor of Hope Navigation Center. But the commission is recognizing these as temporary emergency solutions, meeting an essential need and addressing it through design. I think that's the role that we can play as architects: helping to make sure that some of these emergency solutions are done at a level that allows them to be embraced by the community.

I think Prosper Portland is doing a good job trying to address the equity issue. I think that's becoming more and more of a hot topic in terms of development. I'm excited to see that there is an increased requirement for affordable housing, and for transitional solutions. We could honestly stand to be even more aggressive on those fronts, which I have been trying to support via my involvement with the PSU Center for Public Interest Design.

Who is a famous architect or firm you’d like to see design a building in Portland?

I'm excited to see Snøhetta’s Willamette Falls project reach completion. They're an extremely interesting firm in that they have a very impressive portfolio of work that is tuned to the program and the place for which they're designing. They don't necessarily have a style per se. They just have a consistent level of quality in their projects that is always very thoughtful in terms of how it's solving the unique problem that it's tasked to solve. There's no starchitect involved, as far as I know. It seems like it's a legitimately inclusive process. I think the work speaks for itself in terms of the level of quality you can get through true collaboration.

I would love to see a project by Lake Flato make its way into our market. I have a deep respect for the work they do because they're one of those firms that wins as many design awards as they do AIA COTE (Committee on the Environment) Top 10 listings. Which means that they are balancing their sustainability chops with their design execution in a way that makes the two inseparable.

Name something besides architecture (sneakers, furniture, umbrellas) you love the design of.

I'm a pretty big music geek, and I used to be a college radio DJ. I've always really appreciated good album art and how that relates to the music, and how that can be an embodiment of what you're about to hear. I obviously love all the sort of iconic cover art, like Andy Warhol’s cover design for The Velvet Underground and Nico. I also appreciate the storytelling that comes with some of the stuff that's put out there.

There's a record label and store in town called Mississippi Records. Founder Eric Isaacson puts out this incredibly well-curated collection of artists from throughout history. He also creates hand-made designs for most of the record sleeves, pamphlets and inserts. It all has an incredible kind of folk-art aesthetic, and helps provide context for who the artists were and where they were recording. Added ephemera that is incredibly rich from a storytelling perspective.

There are some other labels that do that well too, like Numero Group which re-Issues a lot of obscure and hidden but incredible music from all these different sorts of forgotten corners of America and the world. I feel the same way about Light in the Attic, a Seattle record label that has put together some incredible compilations. They put out a box set of Native and North American indigenous rock and roll folk music from the 60s through the 80s that probably would have never been heard had they not worked with native communities to compile it. It's a beautiful object and contains a book that digs deep into the life stories of the artists that it features. It's like architecture in that respect, where you can choose to only interact with the object and listen to the music, but there's so many other aspects of it that make it meaningful in you’re interested in digging deeper. And behind it all is the process of getting it made that you never see but are important towards it being successful – not the least of which is ensuring that these artists receive royalties and recognition for their art that may have otherwise slipped through the cracks of history. I like that about those particular labels.

 

Mooney's Pinwheel ADU (Olivia Ashtonn)

 

What are three of your all-time favorite movies?

I was born in 1979, so Star Wars is pretty much part of my DNA. Growing up in that era. The attention to detail and the way that they created those worlds still inspires me as an architect. Each one of those places had an identity: even the Ralph McQuarrie conceptual artwork and story-boarding that was done. It was one of the reasons why I was interested in being in a creative professional in the first place. I used to draw in the margins all day in my classes in elementary school and high school, and a lot of it was trying to emulate the sort of illustrations that he was doing for the movies. I had this book called The Art of Star Wars that just was so inspirational to me in terms of just how he was able to convey an energy, and spirit of a place with just a few lines.

I also love Wes Anderson movies. The way that he builds these worlds around his characters, and the attention to detail that he has is truly awe-inspiring. And his use of music: his soundtracks always kick ass. There's a lot of humor in what he does, and he doesn't take himself too seriously. I like that. It's amazing to see somebody so meticulous who isn't afraid to inject levity. I think that's something architects suffer from sometimes: taking ourselves too seriously.

I also liked a movie that came out last year called Leave No Trace, about a veteran and his daughter who lived in Forest Park. It addressed a lot of different questions about how we treat each other in society, and what we really need to be happy. It also featured some performances from Michael Hurley and Marisa Anderson who are two of my favorite Oregon artists. There's a humility to it, and a simplicity to it that whether you're doing architecture or design or music or anything, there's so much to be learned from having something that's direct and heartfelt, beautiful and accessible.

 

 

 

 

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Visiting Mahlum's Custom Blocks office, first Living Building-certified project in Portland

Mahlum Architects office, Custom Blocks (Lincoln Barbour)

 

BY BRIAN LIBBY

Over the past two decades, I've probably walked, biked and driven past the Custom Blocks hundreds of times. But lately it's been a transformed place.

Located at Southeast Ninth Avenue and Madison Street, this two-block cluster of seven warehouse buildings was home to the Custom Stamping Company for a half-century. When one of its doors was open, it was possible to peer inside and see its huge stamping machines in action, shaping long metal sheets into various parts. Even when the doors were closed, you could hear their rhythmic clanging. In 2016, the blocks went silent and the property was sold to developer Capstone Partners. By 2018, a renovation by Scott Edwards Architecture was complete.

One of Capstone's tenants, Mahlum Architects, chose the southwest corner of the Custom Blocks for its new Portland office (the firm is headquartered in Seattle). The firm's ensuing tenant improvement has become a milestone: the first local project to earn Living Building Challenge certification for its sustainable design. I toured the project with Mahlum principal Kurt Haapala for a recent article in Metropolis magazine. Of course during my visit, the block had gone silent again, but for a different reason: the pandemic and quarantine. This time, though, the occupants are coming back.

As Mahlum began to contemplate leaving its longtime Pearl District office (in part due to seismic concerns), before signing on for a new home its leaders began by surveying employees. "We said, ‘What do you like about this place? What do you hope for in a new place?’ Number one was more collaborative space, followed by daylight and resiliency," he explained.

 

Mahlum Architects office, Custom Blocks (Lincoln Barbour)

 

When a member of Mahlum's staff suggested following Living Building Challenge procedures, Haapala recalled, it seemed daunting at first. "We considered the cost and we wrung our hands. ‘What does it mean? How do we know? Can we get it done in time when our lease is up?’ We also asked ourselves: ‘What’s the damage of saying no to the staff?’ It wasn’t pressure," he said. "But it wouldn’t send the right message to say no. We wanted our values in alignment. So we said yes."

"We have a fairly grassroots mindset at the firm about pushing sustainability as far as we can make it go on as many projects as possible," added Mahlum associate principal Jay Hindmarsh." If we’re going to be designing a new office for ourselves, it should really be everything our current office is, plus all our latest and greatest thinking about sustainability, which over the last 5-7 years has ballooned into so many different topics that it’s no longer LEED and low-energy and low-flow fixtures. It’s material health and low carbon and social equity. We did a really quick gut check. Should we be thinking about LEED, WELL? This was our opportunity to go for LBC. I think part of it was a number of folks including myself had been percolating in the material transparency ecosystem over the past few years. In the trade groups, at conferences. Especially in Seattle and Portland there’s been this groundswell of architects sharing their trials and tribulations with material transparency. It was a good time. We had just completed our certification label for the Mahlum organization through the Living Futures Institute."

The Mahlum office was also about walking the talk. "It was a way to demonstrate to material manufacturers and reps that yes, we’d be looking for material disclosures, but had gone through a similar process ourselves in terms of looking in the mirror and sharing that transparency," Hindmarsh said.

Before getting into the Living Building Challenge process and how it affected design, I'd like to delve more into the original building and company, and the Custom Blocks rehab by Scott Edwards Architecture.

"They operated the facility for like 50 years," recalled Capstone president Chris Nelson. "The day we signed the purchase agreement with the family, they had just told their employees they were shutting down. It was a pretty emotional day for them. When we signed the agreement, I think they were afraid we were going to tear it all down. I think it mattered to them, but they weren’t going to make any requirement. They just got tired of manufacturing parts and were ready to move on into retirement. But I think they were hoping somebody would save the project."

 

Archival shots of the Custom Stamping Company (Capstone Partners)

 

Then, Nelson said, the question became, "How do you save a building with this great industrial history that’s sort of raw, and build it forward to meet all the code requirements but save all the elements that feel old? The goal was, ‘Let’s not try to overthink the outside.’ That was the direction to Peter and his team: ‘Let’s walk in and feel like you’re not trapped in a dark old building.’"

Yet it would have also been a mistake, Nelson added, to be too heavy-handed with change. "When you get a building or buildings that dictate where major walls are and how they break up, it’s not a sliced bread kind of thing. It is what it is," he said.  "You need to be more patient and wait for the right fit. Some might say it’s too raw or industrial. Others who get it, they love it. Mahlum fell in love for their own reasons. So did I."

Although different portions of the two-block Custom Blocks were built at different times, the southwest corner of the Custom Blocks  was built in the 1930s as a Chevrolet dealership. A two-story wing on the north side was later added, with a large ramp so cars could be moved and stored upstairs. Between the buildings is one central hallway cutting through the entire block, taking advantage of the old ramp. The block-long lobby resulting was not part of the design brief but a suggestion from Scott Edwards.

It was the facility's time as Custom Stamping, though, that most impacted the buildings, even if the architecture itself was not altered.

 

Archival shots of the Custom Stamping Company (Capstone Partners)

They would take a variety of metals and roll it out onto these presses: kind of infinitely adjustable custom-dye presses," explained Peter Grimm of Scott Edwards Architecture. "You could put them in any combination and create almost any kind of metal part.  It wasn’t a foundry. They were just taking a rolled product—copper, aluminum, different types of steel—and bending, twisting, poking, punching and drilling those into various shapes for industry. At first it was mostly automobile parts. I think they worked for the aeronautics industry a bit. Really up until they sold the property, they were going strong. They had about 72,000 square feet of production, warehousing space, with a couple dozen big large stamping presses going at any given time. It was really a hub of activity. We toured it while they were still going full strength. It was loud, gritty. In the center was this oil bar,  where you got the oil you needed for your stamp press. It was just coated in metal shavings and oil."

To remove all that grime was extensive, but the developer and both architecture firms knew that ultimately the texture was a net-positive. After all, we're talking old-growth Douglas fir ceiling beams and columns, which were shot-blasted to remove paint, dirt and oil but left uncovered. While Capstone chose to replace a lot of the stained concrete floors elsewhere in the Custom Blocks, Mahlum wanted theirs kept, for the patina and the story it tells.

After cleanup, the second major move was a seismic upgrade, which can be seen in the X-shaped bracing at the edge of the building.

"Those buildings have been there 80 to 100 years and will stand for another 500 if you take care of them," Grimm said. "It’s the lateral load that is the issue. The science is changing. We’re aware of the Cascadia Subduction Zone earthquake [threat] and lateral movement. That’s what we do in the seismic upgrade: give the building the ability to resist sideways motion."

 

Inside the Mahlum Architects office during quarantine (Brian Libby)

 

Of the X-bracing, Grimm added, "They give the building the ability to flex without collapse. Pretty straightforward for a building like that. It’s a bay structure. From an engineering standpoint, you just integrate the X-frame as best you can. We wound up putting most of those on the exterior outside wall in line with the existing structure. You can use the minimum amount of frames. They’re big and beefy but few in number. That’s a dollar challenge because they’re expensive. It can range anywhere from about $50 a square foot to double or more for a complex building. We’re looking at one for a church right now that’s probably $125 a square foot because it’s a multistory, open-span space."

The Custom Blocks is not unreinforced masonry (URM). "Old URM buildings made of brick like those in Old Town, those are very expensive to rehab seismically. This is what we’d call under-reinforced masonry. They're really concrete or wood-framed buildings primarily, sometimes with a masonry cladding. In our case, it was all concrete and a little bit of masonry but not the primary frame." Seismically stabilizing a building like this is "more achievable," Grimm added, "because wood is really flexible and ductile. Concrete with some steel reinforcing does okay because the steel can flex."

At 7,500 square feet, the Mahlum office has space not only for desks (and, though it couldn’t have been foreseen at the time, post-pandemic social distancing) but also for a large kitchen, collaborative breakout spaces, and a large community room that could be used to host events. It also has many nice little touches, like a small foyer created with the help of salvaged wood shelving, on which are displayed various tchotchkes contributed by employees, dubbed the Curio Cabinet. As a University of Michigan grad, Haapala contributed a Bo Schembechler bobble-head doll.

 

Mahlum's reclaimed-wood foyer shelving (Lincoln Barbour)

 

There is also a bevy of house plants. I feel a bit funny mentioning them, because it's not usually a detail I touch upon. But it was clear in this case that it was a concerted effort, and there's enough plants that they really do contribute to the overall aesthetic, softening the linearity of the architecture and the hard edge of the surfaces.

As for fulfilling Living Building Challenge strictures, "It wasn’t so much designing. It was working to make sure every nut and bolt and washer met the red list material requirements, and the paper trail that was required," Haapala explained. While Mahlum had never designed an LBC-certified building before, Miller Hull, the Seattle firm next door to its headquarters, had and was willing to share its lessons. You can do this, the Miller Hull team told Mahlum’s. But it may take twice as long as you think. “They were right,” Haapala said with a laugh.

The LBC comprises seven performance categories, or “Petals”: Materials, Place, Water, Energy, Health, Equity, and Beauty. Buildings achieving full Living Building status, like Seattle’s Bullitt Center, meet standards in all seven areas. Satisfying only some can earn Petal certification. Mahlum’s tenant improvement in the Custom Blocks attained certification in Materials, in addition to Place, Equity, and Beauty.

“You have to hit one of three main Petals—such as Energy, Water, or Materials—as a starting point, then two or three others,” explained Jay Hindmarsh. The Place category was achieved by renovating the existing warehouse and not adding to its embodied carbon. The team met the Equity component by designing adjustable workstations, and Beauty by repurposing floorboards salvaged from historic Fort Vancouver in the aforementioned entry display.

Hindmarsh's team did the long, slow work of satisfying the Materials Petal and verifying that every last ingredient in every material brought into the office tenant improvement job was non-toxic.

 

Mahlum Architects office, Custom Blocks (Lincoln Barbour)

 

"It’s really having a design concept, having the technical and spec experience and expertise to call out all of those products that we know are compliant, and making sure in construction we have a process in place for proving out," Hindmarsh explained. "We may know we want this exact carpet in this exact color, but every single adhesive is different with its own inventory of ingredients. Put that in a spec and when it gets bid out, we have a process in place with submittals. Inevitably there are changes that come about during construction based on availability or finding a product we didn’t know we needed. We’ve got to get the information on what the product is and most of the time work pretty hard with the manufacturer or the rep to know who to talk to at the company who has the info about what the ingredients are and screening those against the red list."

After going through this process, Hindmarsh believes the industry still needs to do better. "Whether it’s lighting or door handles or flooring, they all have their own structure of how they’re made and what the distributor network looks like. There’s been a lot of movement over the last several years with supplier transparency, getting the whole web there, but I think we’ve still got a long way to go." When the team would make calls to suppliers, skepticism was not uncommon. "Inevitably someone had never heard of Living Building Challenge," the architect recalled. "I'd hear, 'Why is this important? Why would I tell you this?'"

But the bigger challenge is the granularity. "Even for question number one—has the manufacturer disclosed 100 percent of the ingredients to 100 ppm—even with a yes, there’s a bunch of different answers," Hindmarsh said. "We could pick a carpet that’s red-list free, made within 50 kilometers of the project site, no VOCs. It’s just really granular. But here’s often competing requirements. I may find a wire that doesn't have PVC jacketing, but it may come from a manufacturer in China. How do I balance competing priorities? But That’s where this concept of it being an advocacy tool and philosophy tool shows through. Just reaching out to people and letting them know that customers care about this, it shouldn’t be so difficult." After all, he added, "We can read the nutrition information on our yogurt."

A key going forward, Hindmarsh believes, is architects sharing information. He cites the recent AIA Seattle-sponsored Materials Matters series, a pilot for a national AIA curriculum "This idea of practitioners sharing their trials and tribulations and lessons learned in this space is still I think rare for architects," he said. "We’re not really good at sharing our mistakes and how hard things are. For me, coming to this group of people being open about how hard this was and how important it was, I was kind of blown away. For me it was a re-ignition around sustainability in a bigger sense: the willingness that people not just in the Pacific Northwest but nationally and internationally coming together and putting their lists out for the public."

 

 

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The Elk statue is just fine

The Elk statue in storage (Brian Libby)

 

BY BRIAN LIBBY

Last Friday I visited an old friend. This friend has been the subject of controversy lately, not only because it has been temporarily removed from its home. Its absence has also been mistaken for the statue's destruction and permanent removal. So I decided to request a visit to to make sure that it's actually just fine.

I call this statue an old friend for a few reasons.

When I moved to Portland in 1997, Elk, as the statue is officially known, was one of a handful of sites that I associated with one of my heroes, filmmaker Gus Van Sant, and his magical Portland-set early films like Drugstore Cowboy and My Own Private Idaho. A scene from the latter movie takes place at the base of the Elk statue, with Keanu Reeves cradling River Phoenix in his arms. But since 1998 I've been living in Southeast Portland and crossing the Hawthorne Bridge regularly to get to downtown, which soon afterward carries me on SW Main Street past the statue. I also like that this is one of the only statues in the city that is not devoted to a person. There's no hagiography to dispute here: just a tribute to one of the largest, most majestic animals to traditionally call rainy western Oregon home.

Dedicated in 1900, Elk is actually the second-oldest remaining work of public art in Portland. Only the Skidmore Fountain from 1888 predates it.

I was motivated to seek out and assure the statue's safety after reading a series of misinformed social media posts, particularly on Facebook. Several suggested that protesters had destroyed the Elk statue: those demonstrating against George Floyd's murder, the long legacy of police violence against Black citizens and eventually against the federal Homeland Security troops joining local police in attacking these protesters.

 

The Elk statue in storage (Brian Libby)

 

The suggestion was that an angry mob sought to destroy the statue as vengeance, when quite the opposite was actually true. Protesters clearly seemed to love the statue, and though it was a very bad idea to light fires at the base of it, those fires were essentially making the Elk a kind of shrine. In the statue's absence, protesters have used a succession of inflated and other temporary Elk homages in its place. But it is true that the granite at the base of the statue was at some point damaged, so the statue was preemptively removed.

This year is actually the 120th anniversary of the Elk statue's erection, a gift to the city by David P. Thompson, who had been mayor of Portland from 1879-82. Thompson also had served as governor of the Idaho territory from 1875-76, and U.S. Envoy to the Ottoman Empire under President Ulysses S. Grant, serving from 1892-93.

Born in Cadiz, Ohio in 1834, Thompson first came west while herding sheep across the Oregon trail. Apprenticed as a surveyor, he helped build the first railroad in Oregon, around Willamette Falls at Oregon City, which was then the largest settlement here. He then became deputy surveyor for the U.S. government, surveying public lands in both the Oregon and Washington territories. Thompson eventually became rich by investing in some of the land he surveyed: or, more specifically, the railroads that traveled them (particularly the Oregon Railroad and Navigation Company) and the mines that were dug by the hundreds after discovery of gold in California. He also gained wealth from banking and manufacturing investments.

As if those achievements weren't enough, beginning in 1891 David Thompson also served as the first president of the Portland Library Association (the forerunner of today's Multnomah County Library), and as president of the Oregon Humane Society, the latter of which may indicate a love of animals that saw him commission this statue instead of one honoring a person.

 

David P. Thompson (Wikimedia Commons)

 

By the time Thompson hired renowned New York sculptor Roland Hinton Perry to design Elk he had reached retirement age. But this actually the first of two statues he commissioned and donated to the city. The other, located in Washington Park and completed in 1904, is called  Coming of the White Man and was designed by Herman Atkins MacNeil and depicts Chief Multnomah and another Native American witnessing the arrival of Lewis & Clark. (Strangely, the name of this statue, with its title inscribed in granite, was used as the fictional name of the Elk statue in Gus Van Sant's My Own Private Idaho; the phrase can clearly be seen as Reeves holds Phoenix. In the film, Elk also has a rider.)

Yet Thompson never lived to see the second statue completed. In 1901, just a year after Elk was completed, Thompson fell ill just a few days into an around-the-world trip, returned to Portland and passed away.

Perry, the designer of the sculpture, is worth noting as well. Born in 1870 in New York, he was educated Paris's École des Beaux Arts. At just 24 years of age in 1894, he was commissioned to create a series of sculptures for the Library of Congress in Washington, DC, including the Court of Neptune Fountain in front of its main building. Perhaps this was the work that caught the attention of Thompson across the country in Portland.

Four years after Elk, in 1904, Perry designed two sculptures for the Gettysburg National Battlefield in Pennsylvania, and a year afterward the statue atop the Pennsylvania state capitol in Harrisburg.

 

Roland Hinton Perry (Wikimedia Commons)

 

Of course this statue on SW Main between Third Avenue and Fourth Avenue has seen a lot of change in 120 years.

Today this three-block strip of greenspace, including Chapman and Lownsdale Squares on either side of the statue as well as Shrunk Plaza to the south, is lined mostly with government buildings. The Mark Hatfield United States Courthouse stands just east of Elk, but only since 1997; from 1913-95 there was the Hamilton Hotel on that site. City Hall was completed on its current site, a block southwest of the statue, five years before Elk, in 1895. The Portland Building, nearest to the statue at SW Fourth and Main, dates to 1982. But perhaps just as significantly, before that there was a modest two-story building that was home to McElroy's Spanish Ballroom, a jazz club where Duke Ellington, Ella Fitzgerald and John Coltrane played.

And of course there are the three park blocks themselves. The U.S. government-owned Terry Shrunk Plaza to the south, which sits atop underground parking for the Edith Green Wendell Wyatt Federal Building, is where the Portland Trail Blazers' championship parade ended in 1977. It's where star center Bill Walton poured a can of beer over then-mayor Neil Goldschmidt's head.

Chapman Square and Lownsdale Square were donated to the city in 1869. The squares were initially divided by sexes: Lownsdale for men and Chapman for women and children. Chapman square even has all female ginkgo trees. But it also is the site of a small moment in technological history. In 1889, Chapman Square became the termination site for the first electric power transmission line in North America, operating at 4,000 volts of direct current coming from an electric generating station at Willamette Falls in Oregon City, 13 miles away.

For much of the city’s history, the two squares have drawn orators and political protests, including the Occupy Portland protests in 2011 and of course the Black Lives Matter protests of this year.

 

The statue as seen in My Own Private Idaho (Fine Line Features)

 

Visiting Elk at a storage facility last Friday with Keith Lachowicz, the Regional Arts & Culture Council's manager of public art, was a bit surreal at first. As I entered the room, I was surprised that it almost felt like an art museum or gallery with its white drywall and polished concrete floor; that is, if you disregard the Shop-Vac in the corner and a few other miscellaneous accoutrements. This was the only artwork of any kind in the space, standing in the corner and strapped to a wood palette.

I was surprised that the elk depicted in the statue wasn't as big as I expected. Lachowicz told me he believes it's slightly smaller than a real elk would be, but the effect in this case came especially from the fact that Elk was/is removed from its granite base, which itself stands five feet high.

The statue's bronze surface had a few specs of colored paint, which hit when the base was being tagged with graffiti during the protests, and Lachowicz believes there is a small bit of soot stain on parts of Elk as well. Yet the latter is hard to differentiate from the subtle patina taken on by the statue over time. Generally, I thought it seemed to be in very good condition, and Lachowicz agreed.

 

The Elk statue in storage (Brian Libby)

 

Exactly when the statue will be returned to its site on SW Main Street, Lachowicz and RACC do not know. After all, this is still a developing story. The protests have been going on for months at this point, and while in many cases the demonstrations have moved into Portland's neighborhoods, the Justice Center and to a lesser extent the Mark Hatfield US Courthouse have been targets of protesters' demonstrations. These have overwhelmingly been peaceful demonstrations, at least when gun-wielding right wing counter-protesters don't show up. Yet as hundreds of eyewitnesses and on-the-ground journalists will tell you, there is an inextricable relationship between violence used against protesters —tear gas, flash bombs and individual beatings—and the vandalism inflicted on these buildings. Time after time this summer, riots have been declared when the presence of a riot has been questionable.

One wonderful side effect of all this, though, is that in this divided nation, at a time when tensions between left and right are running so high as American democracy itself feels as under threat as any statue or building, everyone seems to love the Elk . Voters on opposing sides of the political fence may be offering different versions of what happened to the statue—facts and their opposite, which some now call alternative facts—but when it was removed, everybody suddenly was talking passionately. A silent majority revealed itself. We may not have talked about it much in the past, but we all love Elk.

 

The Elk statue in storage (Brian Libby)

 

Even aside from the damage to its base and the statue's preemptive removal, Elk is relevant to this summer's racial justice protests in another way: as part of a conversation about the future of public art and especially statues.

In several cities in America and even beyond, statues of Confederate Civil War generals and other leaders with racist histories have been removed and their names have been taken off buildings. If we remove, say, a statue of Robert E. Lee in Virginia, or of Cecil Rhodes at Oxford University, it ultimately becomes not just a conversation about the removal itself but what replaces it. I'm not the first one to suggest this, but what if it's not just racists whose statues we should consider removing? What if the very practice of venerating individuals, the hagiography itself, comes into question? It's not to say that we can no longer agree on any past leaders to honor in statuary, but instead to acknowledge that people, not persons, lead change.

What's interesting about Elk in this context is that it's a rare statue existing outside this conversation. It's not the only animal sculpture, even in Portland. Yet the practice is still relatively uncommon.

Of course there are animal statues, but not quite the same kind. I think of the lion sculptures outside certain famous buildings like the flagship New York Public Library branch on 42nd Street in Manhattan, or at the base of Trafalgar Square in London, or the bull sculpture near Wall Street in New York. Yet those sculptures are based on the ground, and they're meant to represent something specific: safety and security, or a bull market. I can't think of another animal sculpture that reaches quite this high up in the air, as a subject of veneration. Here the elk doesn't really represent something other than itself. Looking up at the sculpture, one is reminded not of some abstract idea or symbol, but the real elk that probably roamed this one-time clearing along the Willamette before it was settled.

As a result, Elk as a sculpture is partly about power and grace like a heroic-human sculpture usually is, but it's also about humility: our humility, before the natural world. The bronze elk statue in the middle of Oregon's biggest city is a kind of reminder, just like seeing Mt. Hood, that living here we are closer to the forests and beaches than most urban denizens. For a lot of us, it's a big part of why we live here.

I suspect that people on both sides of today's political dramas project ideas like these onto the Elk statue. Maybe for some traditionalists, nostalgists or masculine types, it conjures hunting and a time when life was freer, and Oregon was a real frontier. Maybe for social-justice protesters, seeing that statue is a reminder that Portland is just weird enough to erect statues to members of the deer family instead of just old white men; in other words, it's not drowning in its own history and corresponding misreadings of that history.

If so, that's all the more reason it will be great to have this fella back. It won't be tomorrow, or the next day, but we could say the same thing about a lot of current problems and their resolutions. Even so, the Elk has a rendezvous coming up with its old stomping grounds, and the City of Portland has a promise to keep.

 

 

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Making buildings safe again by testing exhaust air: UO has a plan

Kevin Van Den Wymelenberg: ESBL, IHBE and BioBE director (University of Oregon)

 

BY BRIAN LIBBY

In these pandemic times, we're hearing a whole lot about Covid-19 testing, be it America's world-leading numbers of positive tests or our federal government's failure to provide enough testing kits.

But what if the key to ending or at least curbing the otherwise-necessary quarantines is to test not just people but buildings?

That's the epiphany being offered by the Kevin Van Den Wymelenberg and a group of interconnected entities at the University of Oregon he directs and/or co-directs: the Energy Studies In Buildings Laboratory, the Institute for Health in the Built Environment, and Biology in the Built Environment.

As Van Den Wymelenberg explained in a recent video, testing exhaust air regularly for biological evidence of the virus can act like a kind of radar for spotting infection invasions long before individuals who have contracted Covid-19 start showing symptoms.

"The key to restarting the engine of the economy is revealed by the unseen within buildings," the video narration goes. "By focusing on testing exhaust air for the virus, we can get a rapid signal of the presence of any individual with the virus. Empowered with that knowledge, we can act to support health and safety, triggering contact tracing and targeted human testing. We can implement building operational controls to avoid outbreaks. By retesting we can build confidence in our engineering solutions to minimize transmission risk."

 

"Blueprint to Save Lives AND Restore Livelihoods" (University of Oregon/YouTube)

 

"We cannot test every person for Coronavirus every day, but we can test every building every day. And soon, maybe every hour or every minute. Testing exhaust air provides an integrated signal for low-cost and frequent assessment of exposure risk. This awareness guides tactical actions. Every building has a range of engineering, design, and behavioral solutions to reduce transmission risk and support human health. Modified outside air exchange, humidification, filtration, and deep cleaning strategies, paired with spatial distancing, personal behaviors and policy controls create the necessary bundle of measures to enact a smart open and operations. Testing buildings for pathogens like Coronavirus is the key to restart the engine of the economy and can be layered into emerging reopening plans."

The idea is intriguing enough that Van Den Wymelenberg was even interviewed recently for a segment on TV's Good Morning America. I think that's because it's a rare glimmer of hope that actually has rigor, in the sharpest possible contrast to the quackery being peddled from the White House.

Recently I spoke with Van Den Wymelenberg to learn more about this potentially very impactful plan.

Portland Architecture: How were you and your team in the Institute for Health in the Built Environment and its sister organizations, the Biology in the Built Environment Center, well positioned to come up with this idea?

Van Den Wymelenberg: We’ve been studying microbes in buildings for about a decade. When I said that six months ago, people said, ‘That’s interesting—weird, but interesting.’ I might have also said we were looking at pathogens in hospitals and infections. People might say, ‘I’ve heard of that,’ or, ‘My niece got that.’ But of course with the pandemic it’s on top of everyone’s mind. We’ve found ourselves in a unique position with a lot of responsibility. There aren’t a lot of people who study microbes in buildings, even to the extent of I’ve done more media in the last six months than my entire life before that. But it’s an important piece of the campaign. This crisis is touching everyone. Sharing multiple modes of knowledge is so important.

So is it Covid-19 microbes you're testing for, essentially?

We were the first ones that we know of that looked at building air handling equipment and identified the RNA, the genetic material, associated with the virus. We’re testing for the presence of the RNA of the SARS-CoV-2 virus. With our technique, we can detect the presence and abundance of the RNA of that virus. If you say virus you’re implying it’s a viable virus and potentially infectious. We’re testing for the signal of the virus. It could be viable virus or relic-RNA.

Has it been put to the test anywhere beyond the laboratory?

We've been collaborating with a local company, Enviraltech, that's been testing senior care centers this way. We’ve been sharing our experiences with one another, because we’re a university research lab and they’re in the private sector. They’ve had tremendous success. By testing the building surfaces with swabs, with Q-tips basically, identifying the RNA of the virus on a keyboard where staff members were clocking in, basically, they found it there and they quarantined the shift and asked folks to get tested. Within 24 hours they identified the person who was positive and asymptomatic. They say that was five days before that person began to show symptoms. They’re attributing that to preventing an outbreak. And they actually have several other stories like that. That’s evidence that this concept can work.

 

From "Blueprint to Save Lives AND Restore Livelihoods" (University of Oregon)

 

How often would building testing need to occur? What's realistic?

Just walking into a building and testing once is not what this should be about. It’s a surveillance model. It can be a subscription model. Eventually I think it could be a more low-tech version of the test that’s actually completed on site.

Has sustainable design and the increasing sophistication of air-handling systems helped enable this?

Yes. These are well established energy efficiency management concepts. You use CO2 measurements to drive fresh air accordingly. The same is possible with this. We can be doing surveillance to see if there’s a spike in the RNA. If you see a surge when you’re testing at least once per day, then you are probably seeing a surge of infectious virus. But if you only test the building one time, you can learn something about areas where you might have greater risks but it is harder to use just one data point to guide building operations.

Can you talk a little bit about how the process would work, and how building occupants might use that information?

If you subscribe to a surveillance protocol, a testing protocol, a classroom that was occupied on Monday you can test Monday night to see if anyone in that class had an exposure. If you did, you could self-quarantine. You could do more human testing, you could do deep cleaning. If you don’t have enough capacity to test all those people, then maybe you send out a notice saying, ‘There was some risk in class. If you’re high-risk or concerned, Wednesday’s class could be offered online. If you’re comfortable coming in, we’re going to be available.’

What if you walked up to a building and saw there’s a green light, a yellow light or a red light? That could be based upon the recent history of exposure in that building. You’d know what you were walking into: remind you to wear a mask, decide how long you wanted to stay. Maybe an event at a gymnasium for a couple hours is a bad idea. Maybe going in to buy a bottle of milk is okay.

At the end of the day, it seems like the RNA-surveillance system you're talking about for building exhaust systems could be cause for some optimism: that even if there isn't a vaccine anytime soon, we can further normalize life with Covid-19.

Absolutely. I think you hit it on the head. We’ve been fighting this kind of invisible problem. This in many ways is a way to visualize the problem and help bring data to guide action. I don’t think this is going to replace masks in the near term, or good hand protocols and hygiene. But I think it can be a layer of protection. More than anything, it’s a layer of knowledge, and so much of what we’ve been fighting has been with a lack of knowledge.

 

 

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Bora embraces Design Justice and Critical Race Theory training

A recent Design Justice training session (Bora)

 

BY BRIAN LIBBY

Designers are by nature problem-solvers. Sure, being an architect requires a range of other skills, knowledge and talent, be it technical or artistic or a matter of persuasive charisma. But I think a lot of architects have looked at the huge, historic challenges facing the country and the world these days and wondered how to help: how to be part of the solution and not part of the problem.

We saw this as the pandemic first arrived this spring. With hospitals locally and all over the world scrambling to find enough masks and other protective equipment,  design firms like Lever Architecture, Skylab Architecture, GBD Architects, Superfab, Nike and The Good Mod got busy using their 3D printers and other resources to make face shields and other equipment.

In recent months, as Portland has seen week after week of protests following the killing of George Floyd by Minneapolis police, nationwide polling has shown that two in three American voters support these racial justice demonstrations. Locally, I'd expect those numbers to be substantially stronger in favor of the demonstrators, especially given arrival of federal troops who have escalated the conflict and raised worldwide alarms about an increasingly endangered American democracy. So it ought not to come as a surprise when I recently heard from architecture and interiors firm Bora about two trainings their staff participated in.

What I came away with after talking with Bora's Jeanie Lai and Amy Donohue was that this is all a matter of making one a better designer: more aware of different stakeholders needs, and possibly more empathetic. These aren't constraints being placed on architects or other designers, but simply a heightened awareness.

Think of it this way: we ask architects to engage in officially-sanctioned and accredited continuing education courses in order to keep up to speed on code issues, new materials, and other aspects of building design and construction. Maybe these trainings are just a kind of human-based continuing education.

The catalyst was Bora's client: Portland Community College. For a renovation of its Metropolitan Workforce Training Center, the college asked Bora to undergo training what's known as Critical Race Theory. The firm worked with consultant Amara H. Pérez of Intent & Purposes LLC (a former PCC instructor), who authored the school's Critical Race Theory-based facilities plan report in 2018, which the Workforce Training Center follows.

 

Workforce Training Center redesign (Bora Architects)

 

Pérez described Critical Race Theory in the report as "a movement of activists and scholars dedicated to studying and transforming relationships among race, racism, and power." It originated in legal studies, but has since gained influence in education and other social sciences.

CRT is essentially an acknowledgment, she adds, that racism "is embedded and ingrained in all aspects of society and exists as a permanent feature of American life." Once acknowledged, Critical Race Theory goes on to address a series of "dominant narratives purporting equal opportunity, meritocracy, and color blindness, that is, tropes that function to conceal systems and structures given to the maintenance of racial inequity…master narratives and social myths that function as a hidden curriculum in the reproduction of racial hierarchies."

For Bora, the takeaway was that, as Donohue put it, "design has a role to play. We’ve been looking at it as this framework for understanding that space is not neutral. We can’t just say our designs have nothing to do with power structures and whether people feel welcome. It’s actually quite involved in that. Each person has a unique experience in a physical place. Architecture really does communicate often times underlying power structures and white privilege. We’re part of the problem and I think hopefully part of the solution."

The other piece of the training, known as Design Justice, was implemented by New Orleans architect Bryan Lee of the nonprofit firm Colloqate, a partner with Bora on the Workforce Training Center project. Design Justice, as Lee describes it, is the idea that race, culture, and architecture are inherently connected in a way that links art to racial equity and design to cultural space.

 

Bryan Lee's 2016 TED talk on Design Justice (YouTube)

 

"Design Justice is about rethinking the process by which you go about design," Donohue explains. "It really centers the people marginalized by design and invites them to be part of the process. It’s gathering: ‘What is your lived experience in these spaces and what can we learn to design differently?’ They’re both frameworks, I would say. Neither one is a guidebook that says, ‘If this then that.’ Design Justice doesn’t to say to design with this material or this structural system. It’s more of an approach for us to live with these experiences as part of our design. Our colleague noted it’s similar to designing with universal access in mind. For a long time every university building had a big set of steps that led to the front door. If you’re mobility challenged, you might not be able to get into the building at all. Over the last 30 years, the ADA has broadened architects’ perspective to be mindful of a diverse set of mobilities. This is similar. We have to expand our notion of who is welcome and make sure people understand that."

Bora's Jeanie Lai found that training process has helped her be a more thoughtful architect. "We all agree that architecture is affecting people, right? I always knew and understood that about designing spaces. But there’s just so much more in terms of people's experiences that I don’t experience in my personal live, that I’m not thinking about enough," she explains. "This allowed me to think more broadly and from more perspectives as I go about my work: to consider everyone who might use the building or even walk by the building. We have to be more cautious about the decisions we make to make sure there isn’t an unintentional impact."

"We say we are designing under the lens of Critical Race Theory and Design Justice," Lai adds. "That’s for me a good way to put it. You can’t un-see it once you are shown those things. It becomes a part of the way in which you go about designing. Just like architecture theory became part of how I approach my architecture."

So how much can this kind of training and awareness permeate the architecture world?

"I think it has some far-reaching implications," Donohue says. "If we design schools or training centers or housing or museums to welcome a broader audience, more people of different races and backgrounds will be together. Right now we live in places where we think a lot like the people who live next door to us and don’t get a broad perspective. Diversity can be helped by making space where lots of people feel welcome."

 

Donohue and Lai with Bryan Lee of Colloqate (Bora)

 

"I like the idea of this being part of architectural training programs," Lai says. "It’s always been very Eurocentric. All of the theories we’re practicing are for the most part Eurocentric. The literature is more reflective of that perspective. I think it would be really good for architectural education to introduce broader thinking."

For the Workforce Training Center, which is still in the late stages of its design process, the task is to make it more welcoming inside and out. Since opening in 1998, the center has helped thousands of people learn new skills and better position themselves for future employment. It’s a valuable resource that helps people help themselves. But this former Safeway near Northeast 42^nd and Cully, is not exactly welcoming. This concrete-block eyesore is nearly windowless, with a confusing layout for nervous first-time clients.

"The clients that come to this building are getting workforce training for themselves and their families. It’s a 60-month program. Social workers and counselors and coaches are in the building. It’s very stressful to be in the program, though, because when you get to month 59, you know your financial aid is ending soon. What can this building do to bring comfort and a sense of ease and really lift up the humans who are really struggling quite a bit?"

Where Critical Race Theory and Design Justice come in is what in my Portland Tribune column about the project I called "design by listening."

 With the help of Pérez and Colloqate, the design team carried out an extensive set of interviews with not only occupants but neighborhood stakeholders.

 

Workforce Training Center redesign (Bora Architects)

 

"That’s a huge part of it," Lai says. "With Critical Race Theory, Amara [Pérez] is part of the program meetings. Brian Lee too. As architects we have our set of questions that we asked, but they upped that level of inquiry. I think there was a whole list of questions that the typical architect may not be asking and should be asked. That’s the way you listen to the public and the users."

As a result of the interviews, the architects say they've been more mindful of how the building interacts with the public realm outside, such as bus shelters and sidewalks.

"It’s not to say nobody thought about that stuff before Critical Race Theory, but it becomes a bigger part of the conversation," Lai explains. "Today we were talking to the lighting designer. These are people who have had trauma in their life and are working with tense and stressful moments. We were thinking about soft lighting and reflecting off the wall instead of down lights with a lot of glare, which are not the friendliest. Having another lens to think about people's needs helps us address all these other nuances of the design."

"Sometimes architects think, ‘If I listen to their story, that becomes a directive on how to design.’ But it’s not," Donohue adds. "It’s getting more information to drive our creativity. It’s not a how-to. It’s, ‘This is what I need.’"

 

 

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The Fox Tower at 20, and the Heilig Theatre at 110

Fox Tower, 2000 (Brian Libby)

 

BY BRIAN LIBBY

It's easy to forget given all the upheaval that's been going on in 2020 from pandemics to police brutality, but this year three Portland landmarks are celebrating their 20th anniversaries: the Fox Tower overlooking Pioneer Courthouse Square, the Lan Su Chinese Garden in Old Town, and the Wieden + Kennedy World Headquarters in the Pearl District.

Last fall I got a little ahead of myself and did a post about W+K's 20th anniversary (when it was really 19 and a half), including an interview with Allied Works Architecture founder Brad Cloepfil. I've got an interview about the Chinese Garden with architects Nancy Merryman and Linda Barnes in the can waiting to go. But this time around, let's talk about the Fox Tower site: both that building, completed in 2000, and the theater that stood there for 87 years prior.

The Fox Tower arrived in 2000, and yet I think of it as a 1990s building: reflective of those times and styles. It's also a product of the 1990s economic boom. I've learned that any time of economic growth result in an oversized architectural presence in a city for that time period. That's true in Portland of the early 1910s and much of the 1920s and the 1950s, for instance. The 1990s were in retrospect a kind of Pax Americana before the 21st century dramas of 9/11, Trump and the Covid-19 pandemic. There were a number of downtown buildings that arrived in this decade, but arguably the city’s most prominent 1990s building stands at the southwest corner of Pioneer Courthouse Square: the Fox Tower, a 27-story office building completed in 2000.

This is an early example of an architectural type that later became commonplace: the slender tower rising from a wider podium built to the sidewalk. The Fox Tower is also distinctive for its curving east façade, which helps minimize shadows falling over the square. Yet like a subdivision named after the landscape it replaces, the Fox Tower is named for one of the city’s most beloved old movie houses, the Fox Theatre, one of a few different names by which it was known while occupying this block from 1910 to 1997.

The Fox Theatre's demolition left the Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall as one of the sole reminders that Broadway was once lined with such theaters. While the Fox Theatre was known principally as one of the grandest Portland movie houses, it was also known (both at the beginning of the theater’s history and the end) a performance venue that hosted three of the century’s most famous names, each from a decidedly different era: Nijinsky, Monk, Cobain.

 

Heilig Theater postcard (Oregon Historical Society)

 

The two buildings standing here along Broadway over the past 110 years were the visions of two different men of the theater world a half-century apart: Calvin Heilig and Tom Moyer.

Born in Reading, Pennsylvania in 1862, Heilig ultimately came to own over 200 theaters in seven states, but the Heilig Theatre, as the Fox Theatre was originally known, was Portland’s largest upon its 1910 completion and said to be the largest west of the Mississippi with1,500 seats. Clad in brick with a Romanesque architectural style, the Heilig was designed by English-born architect E.W. Houghton, a specialist in theater designs.

The interior was appointed like an opera house, with two rear balconies as well as individual boxes along the sides of the auditorium. The most unique feature was hidden at the rear of the lower balcony: a private viewing box connected to Calvin Heilig’s adjacent upstairs apartment. That meant he could watch onstage performances from his home.

Although the Heilig Theatre principally featured traveling vaudeville theater shows and plays produced by Heilig’s stock company, in 1917 it hosted the world’s most famous ballet dancer: Vaslav Nijinsky. Over the prior decade, Ballets Russes, the company started by the legendary impresario Sergei Diaghilev, had introduced ballet to the world, with Nijinsky as star dancer

 

Vaslav Nijinsky (History Collection)

 

By the time he performed in Portland in 1917, Nijinsky had spent two years under house arrest in Budapest following the outbreak of World War I, but after intervention by Diaghilev and several international leaders, the dancer was allowed to leave for New York and an American tour with Ballets Russes. Shortly after performing in Portland, however, Nijinsky’s mental condition deteriorated, and by 1919 he was committed to a mental asylum, never to perform in public again.

From the beginning, the Heilig Theatre had been equipped to show moving pictures, for a 1913 advertisement pictured in Gary Lacher and Steve Stone’s Theatres of Portland mentions “Edison’s Talking Pictures” prominently. The formal switch came in 1919, when the theater changed its name to the Hippodrome. In 1929, it was leased by the Paramount-Publix chain and changed its name again, to the Rialto. That’s when capacity for screening movies with sound was added, as well as the theater’s eye-catching marquee: a waterfall of neon lights. Beneath it was the theater’s signature island-style ticket booth, a silver-clad capsule in a Streamline Moderne style. Yet the timing couldn’t have been worse, for the Great Depression sank the new owners, who sold to the J.J. Parker chain. Now the venue was known as the Mayfair Theatre, which hosted both double-feature movies as well as stage shows.

In 1944, the Theater hosted two of the all-time greatest names in jazz: pianist Thelonious Monk and saxophonist Coleman Hawkins. At the time, Monk was a relative unknown and Hawkins was the famous bandleader, although it’s Monk that is now a Mt. Rushmore-level figure in the history of bebop jazz.

 

Thelonious Monk, 1947 (William Gottlieb/Wikimedia Commons)

 

When they arrived in town by train the group, all African-American, was refused service at the first restaurant they entered. With few Portland hotels willing to accommodate black customers, a local minister helped find local families with whom the group could stay. Ads for the Mayfair show boasted an “All Colored All Star Jazz Symphony that could play everything from Brahms to Boogie!’ On December 4, 1944, they played a matinee and evening show before moving across the river for a week-long gig at The Dude Ranch, a jazz club on Northeast Broadway in the present-day Leftbank Building.

In 1954, the Mayfair Theatre was sold and extensively renovated from a design by local firm Dougan and Heims, at which point it finally became the Fox Theatre, tied to 20^th Century Fox studio. It was equipped with CinemaScope wide-screen technology, which made it the second-largest screen in the United States (trailing New York’s Roxy Theatre by two feet). For its August 12 premiere, the studio flew several of its famous actors to attend, including Van Heflin, Mamie Van Doren, Rita Moreno and Johnnie Ray. That evening the street was closed outside the theater and 2,000 spectators filled bleachers to watch the stars file in, greeted by the Rose Festival queen, to a new interior in an undersea decor theme.

The Fox continued as a popular Portland movie house for over 35 years, with 1965’s The Sound of Music its longest-running film with a run of over two years.  In 1990 the historic venue finally stopped showing movies, but as owner Tom Moyer planned and then shelved an office building on the site, the Fox Theatre continued for another seven years as a performance venue. On October 29, 1991, Nirvana and its iconic singer-songwriter Kurt Cobain played their first Portland show since the release of the band’s classic album Nevermind; it was also one month after the debut of their video for “Smells Like Teen Spirit,” the song that launched Nirvana to superstardom.

 

Kurt Cobain (Frans Schellekens)

 

By that time, though, the Fox Theatre’s days were numbered because its owner had already transitioned from movies to real estate development. Born in Southeast Portland’s Sellwood neighborhood in 1919, Tom Moyer grew up working in his parents’ movie theater, where his father had gone from projectionist to proprietor. But this was also a family of boxers, and Moyer dropped out of high school to pursue a career in the ring. He ascended the ranks quickly, winning 145 of 156 amateur fights. In 1940 Moyer narrowly lost to one of the era’s greatest boxers, Sugar Ray Robinson, who today may be best remembered from the 1980 Martin Scorsese-directed classic Raging Bull. The Robinson-Moyer bout had been to decide who would represent the United States at the Olympic Games. When Robinson decided to turn pro instead, Moyer received the coveted U.S. team spot. But then the 1940 games were canceled by the outbreak of World War II. Moyer turned pro instead and won his first 22 bouts, but then quit to join the Army after America entered the war. He served in the 41st Infantry Division and was awarded a Bronze Star. During that time, Moyer also his future wife, Marylin, whom he wed in 1946.

After the war, Moyer took over the family business and built the company into a large regional chain of theaters. In 1966, he founded the Eastgate Theater on 82^nd Avenue in Portland, the first multi-screen theater in the region; a year later followed the nearly identical Westgate in Beaverton (where a decade later I saw classics like Star Wars and ET: The Extra-Terrestrial for the first time). The company’s growth wasn’t without casualties, for Moyer went to court with his siblings over ownership of the business. But under his leadership, Moyer Theaters at its peak included more than 350 screens, becoming one of the nation’s largest theater chains.

In 1989, Moyer sold the company to Act III Theaters (now Regal Cinemas) for $192 million. He also retained the land underneath several of his theaters, including two prominent sites on Broadway: the Fox Theater and that of the Broadway Theater just down the street. That led to demolition of the Broadway, replaced by the 1000 Broadway office tower in 1991, then the Fox Theatre demolition in 1997 and completion of the Fox Tower in 2000.

The Fox Tower became the most prominent downtown Portland building by Thompson Vaivoda Architects, which after its founding in 1984 by Robert Thompson and Ned Vaivoda—who between them brought years of experience working for the legendary Marcel Breuer and Skidmore, Owings and Merrill—had become known for designing Nike’s pioneering corporate campus in suburban Beaverton: more than 20 different buildings housing design studios, research labs, restaurants, athletic training facilities and office space.

 

Robert Thompson and Ned Vaivoda today (TVA Architects, C2K Architecture)

 

Looking back today, TVA design principal Robert Thompson sees the similarities in his two career-making clients: Phil Knight and Tom Moyer, for whom he was working with concurrently in the late ’90s as Nike pursued a major campus expansion at the same time as the Fox Tower. “Both men were very soft-spoken gentlemen, both surprisingly quiet yet clear and decisive in articulating their goals and vision,” Thompson recalls. “When they spoke, you listened.”

Coincidentally, Nike co-founder Phil Knight would not only have been familiar with the Fox Tower's architects, with whom he worked, but also with this particular intersection and its significance, and I'm not talking about Pioneer Courthouse Square. Across the street was the original home of the Oregon Journal newspaper, in the Jackson Tower. Knight's father served as the Journal's publisher for 18 years beginning in 1953. Its offices had moved out of the Jackson Tower by the time Knight was leading the paper, but this building was its original home.

Indeed, the Fox Tower was essentially designed three different times. First was Moyer’s initial unbuilt 1991 venture, with 23 floors of offices above a three-story retail podium and four levels of underground parking. But the numbers didn’t add up for Moyer and the project went cold. The second design came in 1996 when Moyer struck a deal with the city to provide a subsidized Smart Park garage underground and then wanted TVA to add an additional six levels of above-ground parking. But city leaders convinced Moyer to cut a deal with Act III Theaters (now Regal Cinemas), the very chain to which he had sold Moyer Theaters, to add a ten-screen multiplex to the podium instead.

“That came very late in the design process but it allowed us to get rid of the above-grade parking which we were struggling with in terms of how to elegantly incorporate it into the massing and form of the tower,” Thompson says. “It was a fabulous programmatic change that lead to a complete redesign of the building at that point.”

The podium was a response to an earlier generation of downtown office buildings, all of which lacked ground-floor retail space. Office buildings of the 1960s had been set back from the sidewalk and did little to encourage active street life. The Fox Tower took advantage of its prominence to Pioneer Courthouse Square to attract large retailers with its podium’s two-story glass retail frontage. “For me the retail connection to Pioneer Square as well as how pedestrians experienced the building at the street level was critical to the success of designing a tower that activated and energized the city both in the day as well as night," says Thompson. "When I drive up Broadway at night, I am still taken by the degree of transparency, the bright lights and the energy that radiates from the retail stores that occupy the base of the tower."

 

L-R: The Fox Tower and TVA's later Park Avenue West (Hoffman Construction)

 

The Fox Tower’s curving northeast façade, which makes the otherwise boxy office building distinctive, was a response to city regulations. “The city zoning code at that time did not allow any shadow from the tower to be cast directly onto Pioneer Square on April 21 at noon,” the architect recalls. “This condition quickly became a positive in the development of the tower design. The building is a simple rectangle in plan but with the introduction of the soft curve in the curtain wall, it energized the form of the building.” It also gave them leverage with their client. “Every project we designed for Tom Moyer looked to maximized the available FAR [floor-area ratio] that was allowed on the site. That was one of his most important programmatic goals,” Thompson recalls. "I loved Tom. As a developer he was very much driven the economics of the bottom line, so every square foot counted. He was quick to let you know what the loss in rent looked like over a 10 to 20-year period for every square foot of area not incorporated into the building design.”

The curve at the top of the Fox Tower is part of a broader trend I call the ’90s Curve. Every central-city building I can think of that was constructed in that decade featured some kind of curving roof or façade, although always as part of an overall rectilinear form. Other ’90s buildings like 1000 Broadway or the Hatfield U.S. Courthouse felt gimmicky, but at the Fox Tower, the curve is what brings the design alive. Perhaps that’s because it’s not just pure aesthetics like a barrel or dome-shaped roof but instead it’s a functional move.

"I would say the reason you feel positively about The Fox’s radius and curvature is because it has a purpose," Ned Vaivoda explains. "The radius portion of the façade is a clear and direct response to mitigating shadows on Pioneer Square. When you consider the others, most are largely form-driven and lacking a fundamental purpose. While the Fox’s radius is firstly functional and intentional, there is a thoughtful and formal composition of the tower elements that unite the radius and the orthogonal. The Fox is a 26-story building adjacent to the City’s most celebrated public space. I think that purpose is legible, and that’s why you find it compelling."

 

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No room for racists: let's rename the rest of Stark Street

Benjamin Stark, 1861 (Old Oregon)

 

BY BRIAN LIBBY

In the overwhelming majority of cases, we are right to celebrate the city's founders: naming streets and parks after them as both a gesture of gratitude and a way of continually remembering our history. Portland is a younger city than most, which makes those early settlers who turned a clearing where the Willamette River bends into a future metropolis of millions.

This is why we have Lovejoy Street and Pettygrove Street, after the two men who flipped a coin to determine which man's hometown (Portland, Maine or Boston, Massachusetts) this new settlement would be named after. It's why we have Chapman Square and Lownsdale Square downtown, named for two of the city's earliest landowners: William Chapman and Daniel Lownsdale.

However, not every founding father of Portland has received such an honor. For example, Stephen Coffin was one of those early landowners too, and he helped build the first plank road to Washington County (today's Canyon Road), which was one of the most important factors in Portland, not Oregon City, emerging as the largest center of urbanity. Yet nothing to my knowledge is named after him. I suspect it's because of his last name. Who wants to live on Coffin Street, or hang out at Coffin Park? (Actually, this might be a more fitting name for Lownsdale Square, in front of the Justice Center.) But the point is we have no real obligation to be comprehensive in giving every original Portland landowner naming rights.

All of which to say: Stark Street has got to go.

It's not to say that Benjamin Stark, the man for whom Stark Street is named, should be forgotten. We must always remember that Oregon's divisions are long-standing and that Portland's progressive reputation comes amidst Oregon's early history being among the most conservative of northern States. But none of which gives any compelling case why Stark should still be honored in this way.

Stark was a pro-slavery politician who was sympathetic to the Confederacy. That's more than enough reason not to have a street named after him in Portland. But he also was only an Oregonian for 12 of his 78 years.

Born in New Orleans in 1820 and raised in Connecticut, Stark came to Portland in 1845 by ship from New York on behalf of his employer, A.G. and A.W. Benson, to accompany a large sale of goods consigned to one of the city’s first landholders, Francis Pettygrove. While there, Stark quickly identified a real estate opportunity and purchased a portion of Asa Lovejoy’s property for $390. Stark didn’t stay long, but he returned here to live five years later, on the eve of Portland’s incorporation as a city.

Stark arrived to a rude awakening: that the three men who controlled the rest of Portland’s land (Daniel Lownsdale, William Chapman, and Stephen Coffin) had been selling lots in his absence. They agreed that Stark would take ownership of a triangular-shaped 48-acre parcel along the Willamette bounded by now by Harvey Milk and Burnside Streets. Stark complained that the other three got the more valuable land. But he continued to make money and gain influence, and within two years of arriving was named to Oregon’s territorial legislature as a member of the Whig Party. There his conservative political leanings first became apparent. Stark opposed taxation for public schools, for instance, but donated heavily to Trinity Episcopal Church and co-founded a Masonic lodge chapter.

On the eve of the Civil War in 1860, Stark, now a Democrat following the Whig Party’s collapse, was elected to the Oregon legislature. There he was a firm supporter of slavery and argued for its continuation in the rest of the United States should the Confederate states’ secession become permanent (he also supported their right to do so). When war broke out, he called it Northern aggression.

A year later, Stark was appointed to the U.S. Senate by Governor John Whiteaker, a fellow Southern sympathizer, when Oregon Senator Edward Baker was killed fighting for the Union side at the Battle of Ball’s Bluff in Virginia, one of the Civil War’s earliest conflicts. It showed just how divided Oregon was, with rural conservatives (including my great-great-great-great grandfather, state senator Solomon Fitzhugh) holding sway in the southern portion of the state and more progressive voices usually prevailing in Portland (not unlike present-day).

The pro-Union (which is to say pro-American) Oregon Statesman newspaper in Salem called Stark a “secessionist of the rankest dye and the craziest professions…as far as words spoken can constitute treason; he is a traitor as infamous as any that disgraces northern soil.” His appointment was delayed by several weeks as Stark’s opponents tried to prevent him from being seated, but finally he began serving in June of 1862. But he only was in Washington for three months, because by September, Baker’s term was up and the more Union-sympathizing Oregon legislature replaced him with Benjamin Harding. It was just enough time for Stark to vote against the historic Homestead Act, which after being signed into law by President Abraham Lincoln encouraged Western migration by granting acreages to settlers.

After being unseated from the Senate by the Oregon legislature in 1862, Stark was done with his adopted city and state. Instead of returning to Portland, he went back to his hometown of New London, Connecticut, where he served in the state legislature and continued to collect rent from his Portland landholdings.

 

Benjamin Stark in 1885 (Oregon Encyclopedia)

 

Knowing what we know about Stark, it's a bit surprising or at least not a good look that we didn't rename this street a long time ago.

Of course in 2018, the downtown portion of Stark Street—about 13 blocks, or 0.7 miles—was renamed Harvey Milk Street, for the late San Francisco gay rights leader. This was entirely appropriate given the fact that a portion of Stark's original landholding falls within the Burnside Triangle, a major concentration of gay and lesbian-friendly clubs, bars and other establishments. But Stark Street continues on the east side of Portland, continuing all the way to suburban Troutdale. This means we renamed less than one mile of Stark Street and left the other 15 miles intact with the name of this pro-slavery Confederate sympathizer.

Of course I write this as Portland, like cities and town all over America, has seen its streets filled with protestors, demanding justice for George Floyd's murder by a Minneapolis police officer and accountability from an increasingly militarized and police force. Floyd's murder was just the latest in a long line of atrocities, but thanks to video evidence of the gruesome attack, it has, like the Rodney King police brutality case and subsequent officer-acquittal in early 1990s, become a moment that inspires millions all over the world to say, "Enough." This is nothing less than the second great Civil Rights movement, beginning earlier this decade as a response to victims like Michael Floyd and killers like George Zimmerman, but now exploding across the United States with more force than we've seen since the 1960s and the last years of Martin Luther King and Malcolm X.

And while this is overwhelmingly a conversation about justice for Black citizens, for this community is by far the most common target of police violence, it so happens that rates of police killings in America are abnormally high for Latinx and, to a lesser extent, even Caucasian citizens. When we rightfully say "Black Lives Matter," we are calling for a better and more just America for all.

That's why change has been coming in recent days that goes beyond police brutality itself. Take the University of Oregon in Eugene, which announced this week it will consider renaming Deady Hall, which was named after Matthew Deady, who ran as a pro-slavery delegate to the Oregon Constitutional Convention in 1857. In Belgium, they are removing a statue of King Leopold II, who ruled the country for a half-century but led Belgium's brutalization of the Congo that killed an estimated 10-15 million Africans. Even NASCAR and the United States Marines are getting into the act, by banning the Confederate flag.

In arguing for the renaming of the rest of Stark Street east of the Willamette, naturally I wonder how many might oppose the move and why. Perhaps some of a more conservative political bent would make accusations that in doing away with the Stark Street name, Portland would be wiping away its history in the name of political correctness. That of course would be absurd, because a street name is not the keeper of history but rather a symbolic act: an expression of whom in our past we value the most. I also suspect that some who might use the don't-erase-history argument against a name change from Stark might also be some of the same people all too willing to tear down a historic building if there was money to be made.

Besides, even ithough Stark was a key figure in Oregon history, it's not as if one could argue he was either a native Oregonian or someone who stayed here once arrived. The guy lost his US Senate seat, which as an appointee he hadn't even truly won in the first place, and then was done with Portland and Oregon — except, of course, the Portland building rents he continued to collect back in Connecticut. If he'd never hightailed it back to the East Coast, and spent decades after the Civil War doing good things for the community, maybe the case for renaming Stark Street wouldn't be so...well, stark. But to me the departure would seal the deal if it weren't already airtight.

What should Stark Street in east Portland be renamed? Well, if the downtown blocks are already renamed Harvey Milk Street, that's the overwhelmingly obvious choice. And given that Milk's legacy was about fighting bigotry, honoring his legacy feels like a great choice. Of course Harvey Milk didn't have any Oregon connection per se, but neither do some of the other great Americans whom we've named streets after, like Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. or even George Washington for that matter. Obviously some historical figures transcend individual places because they affect us all from afar.

As one reader pointed out to me [these next two paragraphs are an addendum to the original post], if we did rename Stark Street something other than Harvey Milk Street, curious as that would be, one other possibility would be a return of sorts: to Baseline Road. This name already exists in Hillsboro, and it relates to the Willamette Stone marker in the West Hills where Burnside Street splits with Skyline Boulevard. The actual stone itself is no longer there; a stainless steel marker is there now. But more importantly, they mark the origin point of Oregon and Washington's land survey system.

 

Historic BLM survey map and Willamette Meridian marker (Wikimedia Commons)

 

The intersection was established in June of 1851 by General Surveyor John Preston for the Territory of Oregon. All townships and sections of land in the States of Oregon and Washington are measured from this point. 1851 is, not coincidentally, the year Portland was incorporated as a city. This was the beginning of officially dividing up the land. The origin point at the Willamette Stone marker created two perpendicular survey lines, or meridians. The Willamette meridian runs north–south, and the Willamette baseline runs east–west. And that Willamette baseline lines up with what we now call Harvey Milk Street downtown and Stark Street on the East Side. There are even several old stone markers still there at mile points along the way.

I personally would vote for Harvey Milk Street over Baseline, because honoring Harvey Milk and the LBGT rights he represents is a better response to the racism of Benjamin Stark. Baseline Street or Baseline Road, despite the historic significance, just doesn't have the same ring to it, at least for me. But I do find the meridian-survey history fascinating.

Back to Benjamin Stark, for a moment, and why rekindling the idea of renaming is coming now: As a Caucasian, these days I want to be sure and listen more than I talk. But I also don't want to refrain from speaking out. Silence can equal tacit acquiescence to the status quo, and much about the status quo is unacceptable.  So I tried to add to the conversation something I don't hear much talk about. Over the past year I've spent a lot of time delved into Portland's history as I work on a book manuscript, and while Benjamin Stark's name was familiar to me, his story and views were not, at least until recently. He's someone who should be remembered. But his legacy is too compromised to honor so symbolically. We need more than symbolism to change in this country, but our symbols say a lot.

 

 

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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.

 

 

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Ten weeks without architecture

Near SE 12th Avenue and Market Street (Brian Libby)

 

BY BRIAN LIBBY

This Wednesday brings a milestone I never would have expected. It will be ten weeks since I exited a grocery store at Southeast 11^th and Belmont. That was the last time I was inside a building other than my own home.

Yesterday also happened to be the 40^th anniversary of the first major Mt. Saint Helens eruption, which somehow seems fitting. No matter what we build, nature always has the last word.

On May 18, 1980, as a massive ash cloud rose over the mountain, it could easily be seen 108 miles away from my home in McMinnville. I remember climbing onto the roof of a neighbor friend’s house to gaze at the eruption, which resembled photos I’d seen of a nuclear bomb’s mushroom cloud. The next morning, my parents and I awakened to a loud crashing sound, as the gutters fell off the roof of our ranch house, weighted down by volcanic ash.

Covid-19 is in some ways the opposite. Instead of driving people out of doors to watch the eruption together, the pandemic and its ensuing quarantine have driven us into isolation, indoors. Yet instead of being destroyed, our homes have become our sanctuaries—even if they have to double as offices and schools.

It’s not exactly that I refused to go inside a building. But when the quarantine arrived, I simply stepped up something I’d already been doing often: having groceries delivered. Because I hate standing in lines, I was already a fan. You can’t get beer and wine delivered with your groceries, but several very good local microbreweries deliver separately. And all the to-go food I’ve picked up has been handed over through a window or doorway, so I never step inside.

At some point I did start to become aware of the no-buildings streak and began wanting to see it continue. I suspect it’s not just a desire to stay safe that inspired me, but a kind of personal protest…against the protesters.

Certainly the quarantine has hit many people hard, not simply the medical threat but how the economy has been devastated. We’re basically already in a second Great Depression, and for millions it has upended their livelihoods. Yet to strap a gun into your holster and menacingly storm a state capitol—against the recommendations of the entire medical community and in a way that not only threatens people with violence but risks starting new chains of Covid-19 infections—is not a good look.

Right now judges in more than one state have struck down governors’ stay-at-home orders. It’s perhaps legally correct given the constitutional right to free assembly, but it essentially re-affirms peoples' right to behave irresponsibly. Luckily this is a tiny minority of the population, and there are next to none of these people in my neighborhood, except for the regularly-visiting son of an elderly shut-in down the street, who has a series of hand-scrawled angry messages affixed to his dusty white van.

Meanwhile, despite the title I gave this post, it hasn’t really been ten weeks without architecture. For starters, there’s my own building.

I’ve lived in the same Southeast Portland apartment for 22 years. It’s the only residential unit in what’s otherwise a single-story commercial building constructed in 1927, originally as a gas station and automobile repair shop. The other two current tenants, a dance studio and a brunch restaurant, were both here when I arrived in 1998. Even after 22 years, I’m the most recent arrival.

Yet because of Covid-19, both these businesses face a very uncertain future. I think the restaurant is already closed for good, and the studio has hung on through the generosity of a GoFundMe campaign that bought it two months’ rent worth of time. Even so, how many parents will sign up their kids for classes this summer, this fall?

This building makes me laugh in one architectural way. On its 12^th Avenue side, it has little Tudor details: a bit of half-timbering along its roofline. But it also has a pitched parapet hiding its flat roof, which is embellished with clay roof tiles that make the building look Spanish. Who ever heard of a Tudor-Spanish work of architecture? It’s like Henry VIII went on holiday in Ibiza.

 

Near SE 12th and Market (Brian Libby)

 

Inside, although this two-bedroom apartment has enough windows to be full of natural light, the best part may actually be the basement, which replicates the entire 900 square feet downstairs – only not at the low ceiling heights of a single-family home’s basement. An old sofa and my turntable, along with the radiant cool that basements provide in summertime, have made this subterranean space my fortress of solitude.

That solitude is a lot easier these days thanks to the building’s two other tenants being out of commission, but it reminds me of the old Chinese curse: may you get what you wish for.

This circa-1927 building has very thin walls.  For years, the clanging of the restaurant’s dishwashing and the march of 20 dance students hopping up and down at once has been a constant soundtrack. Yet now that I have my precious silence, it doesn’t feel so good. I just worry about Tim and Sherie, the dance studio owners who work 80 hours a week at their business and don’t have a Plan B.

The location of my apartment is a nice launching point for explorations. The building sits on a kind of seam, where the industrial Central Eastside gives way to leafy neighborhoods like Ladd’s Addition, Richmond, Buckman and Sunnyside. That means on walks and bike rides I have two distinct environments to choose from.

 

Scenes from residential Southeast Portland (Brian Libby)

 

On weekends, I like moving through the empty Central Eastside streets, but many of these businesses are still open, so on weekdays I instead dodge hundreds of other pedestrians, cyclists and skateboarders in Ladd’s. Yet the unusual layout of Ladd’s Addition, with its central traffic circle and X-shaped layout of streets, discourages through traffic and, in effect, naturally acts like the shared-streets configuration we’ve ascribed with barricades to 100 miles of mostly residential streets.

Without the experience of being inside buildings, I think I’ve become more attuned to the experience of moving through my neighborhood, and to the varying landscape.

It starts with nature and the blossoms of spring: a saving grace with its bounty of color and beauty. Then there’s the houses of my extended neighborhood I walk past regularly: the Craftsmans and Victorians, the American Foursquares and Dutch Colonials. The old houses and the massive tree canopy make it look idyllic, especially this time of year. Yet in the other direction, in the industrial Central Eastside, there are more homeless encampments and more graffiti than ever. It’s rough out there for a lot of people.

Scenes from the Central Eastside (Brian Libby)

 

How I move through these streets has also changed. Because I’m an avid runner, and the etiquette of quarantine is that runners without masks should stay off the sidewalk, I’ve taken to going running down the middle of the street. Of course I still have to retreat to the sidewalk now and then for a delivery truck or the occasional other motorist. Yet I can’t help but feel a bit gleeful doing something that would have felt deviant a few months ago and doesn’t today.

This is just one of the silver linings that has come with quarantine life, like the world’s massively reduced emissions and pollution. I mean, there are dolphins in Venice’s harbor again.

It’s hard not to wonder if to some degree these gains by reduction can be retained.

I’m also hopeful that as a runner I’ll never have to go back to the sidewalk, for example: that in residential areas, drivers will accept that they have to share the road with many other modes of transit, be it scooters or bicycles or even pedestrians.

Oh, and the idea of a massive freeway-widening project at the Rose Quarter? It seems more absurd than ever now.

While it’s hard for many to work from home, particularly those with younger children, I think it’s also dawning on millions of office workers that they don’t need to be commuting to the office every business day. Even if most go back to the office following the pandemic’s eradication, just taking a portion of that activity on the roadways can have a transformative effect. We already should have favored congestion pricing to widening anyway, but now it really makes no sense to lay down all that additional asphalt.

In going ten weeks without entering a work of architecture, what stands out as the places I want to visit when I can?

As an introvert who already worked from home, I’ve adapted to quarantine life more easily than most. Yet I do find myself looking forward to shopping for records and books again.

Obviously you can buy stuff online. I just got some Thelonious Monk records and Portland history books in the mail the other day. Yet it’s the sense of discovery that I miss: entering Powell’s or Jackpot Records, Mother Foucault’s Bookshop or Tomorrow Records, Music Millennium or Broadway Books, without any particular title in mind but rather a desire to wander through the collections and see what I find.

When I’ve cheered along with 60,000 others at a winning Oregon Ducks touchdown in Autzen Stadium or gasped with an audience at the plot twist in a Portland Center Stage theatrical production at the Armory or a movie at the Hollywood, it’s not just the action on the field or the stage or screen. It’s the act of us together, falling into the same rhythms and intently following the same narrative.

The other architecture I miss the most will take the longest to come back: our large gathering spots — stadiums, arenas, concert halls, theaters.

Not only do arts and sports give us entertainment and food for thought, but seeing them makes one part of the crowd, which can have a power all its own. To be swept up with hundreds or thousands of other people gathered together in one place is to feel both extraordinarily small and powerfully large: small in the humbling sense of being just one out of many, but large in the sense of being a part of a collective emotion.

Jackpot Records, Hollywood Theatre, Autzen Stadium, Eugene (Brian Libby)

 

Yet it’s hard to imagine these larger venues being filled to capacity anytime soon. Even after there’s a vaccine, there will be a psychological hangover.

That said, of course we will get through this. “We” does not mean everyone, for there has already been a staggering number of human casualties, in America more than anywhere else in the world: approaching six figures. And our utterly clueless, corrupt national leadership has made it all so much worse. Yet just as it did in 1918, the pandemic will subside.

These days I’m sometimes reminded of an article I was commissioned in late 2001, not long after the September 11 terrorist attacks. The assignment was to ask whether the era of tall buildings was effectively over given this terrorism threat. Of course in hindsight the idea is absurd. But now I’m thankful to think of that overreactive absurdity in light of the gloomiest projections about the future.

Which brings me back to Mt. Saint Helens with yesterday’s anniversary still on the mind.

The mountain erupted not just on May 18 but several times over the ensuing weeks and months. It changed the landscape forever, but while the peak itself and Spirit Lake never came back, nature has restored the ecosystem.

So too will it be in our communities. It’s going to take a long time, and the human landscape will be permanently altered. Yet hopefully we can emerge not just scarred but determined as well: to capitalize on once-in-generation opportunities that have accompanied the tragedy.

 

 

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A culture of mentorship: Rich Mitchell and Dietrich Wieland discuss Mackenzie's 60th anniversary

Dietrich Wieland and Rich Mitchell outside the RiverEast Center (Mackenzie)

 

BY BRIAN LIBBY

It began in 1960 as a sole proprietorship: Tom Mackenzie, Consulting Engineer. A West Point graduate, he'd spent years building buildings and rifle ranges and dams for the Army Corps of Engineers, then became the City of Portland's lead structural engineering consultant. Now, as the Kennedy administration ushered in a new era, Mackenzie decided to venture out on his own.

He didn't stay a sole proprietor for long, though. By 1962 he had an office downtown at 10th and Stark. By 1968, it was a multi-person structural engineering firm with a new name: Mackenzie Engineering, and had moved to occupy an old house on Southeast Abernethy Street. That same year, architect Rick Saito joined the firm as a drafting intern, and in 1977 a separate architecture firm was founded: Mackenzie/Saito & Associates. By 1996, those companies came under one umbrella: Group Mackenzie, provider of architecture and engineering services. For the past six years, 'Group' has been omitted and the firm has simply been known as Mackenzie.

But across those names and service offerings, the firm now celebrating its 60th anniversary has been part of a wide range of projects.

Mackenzie's portfolio includes a large number of fire and police stations all over Oregon and the Northwest — including in my hometown of McMinnville. There are also many industrial buildings: warehouses, distribution centers, office parks. Grocery stores and retail outlets are plentiful too, as are parks and small sports stadiums, medical clinics and pet hospitals and schools. You might say that many of these are not so much high-profile landmarks but rather the bread-and-butter architecture of our cities and suburbs. Yet these projects are well built and efficiently built, and the combined offerings of engineering and architecture make Mackenzie relatively uncommon.

Most of all, though, as I talked recently with outgoing (retiring) firm president Rich Mitchell and new president Dietrich Wieland, I was struck by the culture of the firm. Mackenzie is a place that lacks ego and doubles down on giving its people opportunity. That's something any number of firms might say. But the degree to which it's given importance at this firm is reflected in the fact that Mackenzie enjoys a higher retention rate than most of its competitors. Wieland, for instance, has spent his entire 23-year career at the firm, and his experience is not uncommon. But it's perhaps Mitchell, who took over leadership of Mackenzie in 2009 but has been there far longer, who has most made a culture of opportunity at Mackenzie a reality — well, him and the founders.

"This is a service company," Tom Mackenzie said in a 2015 video interview. "You really want to serve rather than create your own monuments."

When I first met Rich Mitchell just over 20 years ago, he was a member of the board of the directors for the American Institute of Architects' Portland chapter while I was working there. His main focus as a board member was bolstering what was known as the Intern Development Program: helping more young architecture grads get ready for license exams. That sense of wanting to invest in young talent only continued as he assumed the president's role at Mackenzie.

 

KOIN Center lobby renovation (Josh Partee)

 

Below is an edited version of my recent conversation with Mitchell and Wieland.

Portland Architecture: Rich, you're retiring after just over a decade as Mackenzie's president. If you could, what might you tell the 2009 version of yourself? Or to put it another way, what has been a key to the firm's success over that time?

Rich Mitchell: Certainly there were things that happened I didn’t expect. There are challenges or situations you have to navigate. But I had a kind of road map from Tom and others that served me individually and the company as well. I came into that role at Mackenzie with a strong passion about building people. I’ve always felt that the industry and certainly our firm can be the best it can be if the people are put in the position to be the best they can. It’s not an individual thing. It’s been a focus on mentoring, coaching, teaching, developing people. That was my platform. That was my passion. And that’s really what I spent my entire tenure on. It’s helping people spread their wings as far as they can: to challenge themselves, guide them, mentor them, coach them. I felt that if we took that approach, people and the company would flourish.

If you ask me what the success of Mackenzie has been in that time, it’s that people have come to the company and they’ve thrived. It’s all them. Sure, I’ve coached them. I’ve fostered a sense of mentoring and coaching my entire career. But those people have risen up. And frankly, Dietrich is one of those.

I appreciate the fact that you're focused on your team and your process more than the buildings themselves. It seems uncommon to me. How do you see that in context of the industry?

Mitchell: You’re right. It’s probably rare. That’s not why I selected that path. It’s more of a DNA thing or a passion thing. It seems to me that to succeed at the highest level of anything, whether it’s sports, whether it’s producing athletic wear, whether it’s in the high tech industry or a medical clinic or an architectural practice, it comes down to people, and if you can take everyone and give them the chance to blossom, so that their potential is maximized, that’s a big thing.

I felt confident that one thing would enable the other: that investing in people was exactly what you needed to invest in great work. I knew Mackenzie would evolve to doing more sophisticated design work, being able to produce broader kinds of projects within the market—that we would diversify, that Mackenzie would mature and grow and develop, in ways that look like a high performing, progressive design and engineering practice.

It’s just something I’ve felt passionate from the beginning. You can succeed at the highest levels if you create a culture of professional development in any industry you're in.

Could you talk about how your personnel is divided up — how you arrange teams? There are a lot of ways to decide who works on what project and how the company is organized.

Dietrich Wieland: there’s fundamentally a tendency in firms, and Mackenzie to an extent, to organize teams by market sector. There’s value in that because you get a level of expertise in a certain subject matter. Although we’re fundamentally organized that way, I think it’s naturally evolved to be organized more by relationship. You still have those market sector leaders and subject matter expertise, but you start organizing teams based more on client relationship. A client doing a lot of industrial work might go into another type. You build with a client over time. You still bring in certain team members to meet the knowledge need, but then you’ve also got that conduit of a relationship[p across projects. They’ve got a point of contact. That’s what I’ve enjoyed. I think that what allows, going back to Rich’s point on mentoring: it provides some variety to a team within their workload. There’s a caution of pigeonholing people. How do they grow and learn?

Mitchell: Even though we have these different areas of specialty, we also have a culture, and we’ve tried to maintain this, where it really is whoever can rise to the occasion, you have the stage. It’s not like the principal or the lead designer or somebody more established dominates the project. It really is more about who can help us win. Sometimes that’s somebody that’s been out of school three months. Sometimes it’s somebody who has been with the company 20 years. And with that culture, you get people taking risks thinking: ‘I’m going to try this,’ or, ‘I’ve only been here six months but I’m going to speak up.’

Wieland: That’s why I’m still at Mackenzie after 23 yeas. It’s the only firm I’ve ever worked at. That’s what’s drawn me to want to stay and continue. I can’t think of a time I didn’t feel supported. Even those early years in the career. Or sometimes take an opportunity and ask for permission later.

What can you tell me about Tom Mackenzie and Rick Saito?

Mitchell: Tom really focused on client service: on listening to the client. What is it that the client is looking for? How can we add value to the client’s needs through design? The other aspect was Tom was this West Point grad, military guy. His focus was to work hard but he also understood that you need to have fun doing whatever you’re doing. Tom was the first to support things like the Mackenzie running team, which today does Hood to Coast or back in the day did the Cascade Run-off. Lots of other things: baseball, softball. Tom was athletic, physical. He wanted to create a culture where people enjoyed being with each other. And employee families were also important. Tom knew the person he saw at the office, but the other half of that person’s team was at home. So he developed several employee benefit initiatives such as a college scholarship program for the children of employees, and a profit-sharing plan was put in place.

 

Tom Mackenzie and Rick Saito (Mackenzie)

 

Rick Saito was the one that diversified the company, taking it from structural engineering into full-on integrated design and engineering practice. Tom’s original clients loved him so much, but they knew that architects were the prime consultants on their projects. The clients appreciated the drive, the problem-solving of Tom Mackenzie and Mackenzie Engineering so much that they said, ‘Is there some way you could add architecture? Then clients wouldn’t have to hire these other architects, and Mackenzie wouldn’t have to sub-consult. So enter Rick Saito. He and Tom saw eye to eye on so many things: the family part, the work-hard-play hard. Rick was also just very driven. He would seek excellence at the highest level.

Is that what began to expand the company's portfolio?

Mitchell: Definitely. When we were just an engineering firm and sub-consulting, we were doing industrial projects and manufacturing and warehouse facilities. Enter Rick and we’re starting to get into people-oriented spaces: educational facilities, offices. Then Rick got to a point where he said, ‘If we’re going to take the next step, we probably need to bring in from the outside some other voices, because we’re getting to an area where we’ve grown as far as we can with the clients we have. I want to diversify and bring in some others’. Up to that point, Mackenzie had grown by Rick and Tom bringing in very young people and then growing them.

Rick got to the point in ’88, ’89, where he started to hire experienced people from outside firms, and that was a first. That’s when I came in, I had eight years of experience in other firms, Dick Spies came from BOOR/A [now Bora], and Tamio Fukuyama came from GBD. He started bringing in people from the outside that would mix with people on the inside and take us in a stronger direction. That pivot really launched us.

 

Albany Fire Station (Mackenzie)

 

The first thing that strikes me about Mackenzie's project list is the breadth of it: education, health care, infrastructure, offices. But I also noticed the firm has really done a lot of fire stations all over the state. Maybe it's just the kid in me, but I'd love to hear about the particular challenge of designing fire stations — beyond the pole, of course.

Mitchell: There’s several building blocks that go into a fire station. The space we see the most is the “garage”, otherwise known as the apparatus bay. That’s where you see the big beautiful red trucks when the bay doors are open. That’s usually the majority of the space. But feeding that is a large number of rooms to store equipment and clothing, and when they need to repair their vehicles. The fire district mechanics are often Nascar-level pit crew types with full-service shops, tools, and equipment needed to make any and all repairs to the vehicles. There’s the rooms and areas to support the firefighters as they gear up and de-contaminate when they come back: soot all over the helmets, masks, coats, boots. So there’s rooms to support all that maintenance of the gear. That together is maybe 60 percent. The other 40 percent will include offices for the chief and assistant chief, training rooms, etc.. Yes you’ll have sleeping quarters, and staff spaces to unwind, because they work in multi-day shifts. And in headquarter stations, there often is a community requirement. Sometimes districts bring the public in to conduct first aid classes. In the fire station we did here on Bainbridge island, the main headquarters functions as sort of an urgent care facility. People come up to the fire station thinking they may be having a heart attack, and they want help. There are facilities designed into this station that medics can use to help people urgently.

 

RiverEast Center (Mackenzie)

 

When I think of Mackenzie, I also think of renovations like the RiverEast Center at the east end of the Hawthorne Bridge, where the firm has also long had its headquarters. The design really did a good job of cutting into the old masonry shell of that warehouse and giving it transparency without obliterating the original. But then there's also the Clay Creative building, on the site of the burned-down Taylor Electric building. I love how you maintained some of the graffiti from the burned-out building shell. Could you talk about that?

Wieland: I remember that building catching fire. It was on the news. Our build-out on RiverEast was underway at the time. I remember seeing the smoke and worrying it was our building. All that was left of Taylor Electric was the floor slab and the exterior walls. It just sort of sat there, and it became a favorite of taggers and graffiti artists. I actually had the opportunity to participate in the design of the new building there twice. We designed the building initially around 2008, 2009. But because of the Great Recession, the project went away. Then Killian Pacific got involved and we had the opportunity to work on it again. By that time, it had become an iconic place for graffiti. People were breaking in for wedding photos. When we took the project on it was like, ‘How can we retain some of this?’ We kind of laughed at the irony of designing a mass timber building at the site, given the concerns that code people used to have about fire safety.

That's right. It was a relatively early mass timber building, right?

Wieland: Yeah at the time, that was pre-CLT [cross-laminated timber]. It was a laminated timber building. It was by far one of the more aggressive ones in Portland. It’s as much about working with the jurisdiction on understanding how to interpret and review mass timber as it applies to the code. I think it had a lot to do in terms of the city understanding how to complete that process. Killian made a calculated bet that they could offer something unique in the market. Sure enough, they were on the front end of that and the building leased up quickly. Now you’re seeing it all over the place.

 

Clay Creative (Mackenzie)

 

So what does this 60th anniversary mean to you?

Wieland: I don’t want to lose sight of the narrative on people. I like that quote that the culture of a company is in the heart of its people. But also important: You heard Rich say people a lot and me say relationships, and when I think of relationships it’s also our clients. For me, getting into this profession to do projects, I’m still interested in that as much as the next architect. But for me it’s become about relationships: with our clients, our brokers, our partners. If I were to sum things up, the word would be 'relationships.'

Maybe that speaks to Portland and its collaborative culture. We're not quite as cut-throat as other cities' design and architecture communities.

Wieland: Absolutely, and now more than ever. As architects, we’re a competitive bunch, but we also know how to come together. I’ve got friends at a lot of firms around town. What’s been really exciting to see is how the firms have tried to support each other through this. We’re all struggling with the same challenges. There’s a lot of collaboration. I have a text group where we talk a few days a week: how are you doing this? How are you doing that? We have a common interest in seeing the city get back to work. That camaraderie is really coming out right now.

 

 

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Favorite architecture of the 2010s (part five): home renovations

Lincoln Street Residence (Lincoln Barbour)

 

BY BRIAN LIBBY

In this continuing occasional series discussing my favorite architecture of the 2000s, we've already looked at two types of housing: multifamily and new single-family houses. Now let's turn our attention to renovations of single-family homes, including in some cases conversion of another building type.

As I mentioned in previous posts, there surely are all kinds of worthy projects I won't be writing about here. I only realistically see a portion of the projects out there, so this list is not an argument that the projects I'm talking about are the best per se. I'll be the first to admit that I'm also drawing from my own archive of magazine and newspaper stories to a large degree. But if you feel strongly that there's something I've unjustly left out, let me know. A couple of times after previous posts, people have written to argue for their work or I've simply remembered more projects that I loved, and I've amended the original posts to include them.

Where Old Meets New

That preamble notwithstanding, if asked to name house renovations that really caught my attention, two bold alterations of historic early 20th century houses in Southeast Portland immediately come to mind: Fivesquare by Lever Architecture and the Lincoln Street Live/Work by Beebe Skidmore.

There probably are some people out there who look at the classic American Foursquare house that Lever expanded with a glass cube on top, or the large Craftsman that Beebe Skidmore gave a much glassier and contemporary-styled new west-facing facade and think they've been desecrated. On some level I can understand that aversion, because Foursquares and Craftsmans like these are beautiful in their own right. In each of these cases, the contemporary alteration or addition is jarring to the original composition.

However, there are still a whole lot of Foursquare and Craftsman houses out there, and none of them are like these houses. What's more, each project says something about the desire to adapt these homes to modern living or how to expand them.

In the case of Fivesquare, they could have expanded it the way most do: simply adding more in the back of the house. But it's not as if that doesn't change the overall composition too; it just doesn't change the view from the street like Fivesquare's little third-story cube does. Doing it this way lets the original house be itself and the addition be its own thing.

The new square footage expands the unused attic space perches on top of the original 1910 house, at a 45-degree angle, like a modern treehouse, offering panoramic views of the neighborhood. “When we came up with this idea in the studio, everyone liked it,” Lever founder Thomas Robinson told The New York Times in 2015. “I was thinking, ‘Their neighbors are going to hate them — and the historic people are going to think we’ve desecrated this little iconic house.’ But it was intriguing.”

In the case of the Lincoln Street residence, the new glass facade is transformative in terms of the natural light it adds to the space. While it's true that from a side or diagonal view the juxtaposition of the new glass cubes on the west facade against the original Craftsman is quite eye-catching, one can still look at the house straight ahead from the sidewalk and not even notice the change.

I also appreciate the point architect Heidi Beebe made about the spirit of the original. When the house was built over a hundred years ago, she noted in a 2018 New York Times interview, it wasn’t considered nearly as conventional as it is today. In fact, “it was sort of over the top,” she said, with the large decorative beams beneath the overhanging roof and the wooden lattice pattern running down the side of the front porch. “Some people still build Craftsman homes today, but they tend not to have all the flair and oddities of the originals.” Maybe these glass insertions are a little over the top too, but in a way that suits the original spirit. Maybe there's always been a touch of the Postmodern style to this house and we just didn't see it.

 

Fivesquare (Lincoln Barbour)

 

If they're a little jarring at first by adding contemporary elements, these additions are actually following historic preservation best practices in a way that many old-home expansions are not. In any non-reservation building project like an office or school, the idea is to make it very clear where the original architecture ends and the new alterations or additions begin. Most historic single-family homes that get renovated or expanded don't do that. They try and disguise that work. In this way, Fivesquare and the Lincoln Street Residence may boldly contrast old and new architecture, but they do it honestly.

Near where these projects stand there are lots where old homes have been torn down and oversized, tritely neo-historic homes have been built in their place. This is another reason to like the two Beebe Skidmore and Lever-designed projects: they're realistic about giving customers the larger, more light-filled homes they want. But they don't eradicate what was there only to patronizingly build something there in a warmed-over, dumbed-down version of that historic style.

One other house comes to mind as a true fusion of the original architecture and a contemporary language. In this case, the original house was midcentury-modern, so it's not a case of juxtaposition so much as the repeating of a rhythm: the Council Crest House, in which Seattle architecture firm Bohlin Cywinski Jackson (in collaboration with Don Tankersley Construction) transformed a 1952 house in Southwest Portland's Council Crest neighborhood by architect Roscoe Hemenway—which, incidentally, was designed  for inventor Karl Kurtz, who developed stereoscopic devices for Sawyer’s, maker of the famous View-Master toy.

 

Council Crest Residence (Nic Lehoux, Ian Allen)

 

"There’s a natural progression and sequence: a sort of unfolding and choreography as you go through," said Robert Miller of BCJ in a 2019 Dwell article about the project.

The ground floor’s ceiling was raised to allow a ribbon of clerestory windows, filling the interior with light—especially after a wall separating the dining room and living room was removed.  The door and windows on the ground floor were also moved about four feet toward the road, and a wall of basalt fencing added just beyond the exterior to increase privacy. But it is divided into three large sections, allowing passersby on the street to see straight through the interior to the view beyond.  A new top floor, a kind of penthouse suite for the couple, was also added, but set back along the north and west from the ground floor to keep a lower profile, with a wall of ipe cladding extending past the edge of the house to form a secluded terrace to the south. The architects also cut a swath of glass into the middle of the top floor on the street-facing side to introduce more light.

"We extended roof lines, decks, and hardscaping as far as we could go," said homeowner Greg Hoffman. "There’s a couple views from the exterior that scream, ‘This is something unique,’ but certainly from an interior standpoint, it’s just really well-executed craftsmanship, with an emphasis on harmony and balance. It’s hard to fully appreciate unless you’re in it." 

I have to agree. While the house viewed from outside really does seem like a true hybrid of Hemenway's 1952 original and BCJ's 2018 transformation, the interior is just a cocoon of wood surrounding beautiful furniture and art that gives way to stunning panoramic views.

Warehouse To House

Two of my favorite single-family home projects that transformed their original architecture started not with old houses but warehouses.

The Bowstring Truss House by Works Progress Architecture, completed in 2013, was adapted from a 5,000-square-foot former warehouse and auto repair shop in Northwest Portland. It's all about the wide-open space enabled by a series of four bow-string trusses and the beauty of this exposed roof framing. The design had to then insert a standard residential program that the clients could live among. 

 

Bowstring Truss House (Matthew Williams)

 

The project had a fairly long gestation. The owners, artist Linda Hutchins and her husband, John Montague, first came across the warehouse in 2006, when she was looking for a new studio. But after walking through the space, Hutchins recalled in a 2015 Dwell article that she told her husband, "I don’t want my studio here. I want to live here." With the real estate market booming, the architects initially recommended tearing down the warehouse, building a new multistory condominium building, and living in the penthouse. "But that really wasn’t why we bought the building," Montague says. The warehouse had to stay.

Make no mistake, though: WPA made the project sing. Key to the whole thing is a small atrium carved into the middle of the space, as well as 11 skylights dotting the roof. There's a couple of bedrooms when you first come in, and more in the back, but the living room and kitchen go around the wood-clad atrium in one big room, with light pouring in from above and from a small adjacent courtyard.

Another warehouse conversion I quite like from the past decade is the Division Street Residence by Emerick Architects. The project began with an 8,000-square-foot one-story building that had been a corner grocery, a printing press and a mechanic’s shop. The intent was to construct an industrial loft on top inspired by the clients’ former apartment in the TriBeCa neighborhood in New York. "We lived in New York in the heyday of loft conversions,” homeowner Joan Childs told Amara Holstein in The New York Times. “The rawer it was, the cooler you were.”

 

Division Street Residence (Lincoln Barbour)

 

The 2,400-square-foot loft created on the second story is lined with 13-foot-high windows, which were custom-made to replicate 1930s steel-framed factory windows, only they're made from wood and come with double-paned glass. The interior has few walls save for a single bedroom and bathroom off to one side. Like the atrium does for the Bowstring Truss House, here a large fireplace anchors the combined living and kitchen area. Downstairs includes a guest apartment and two-car garage. But the whole thing looks not much different than the warehouse did before the project began. The upstairs addition feels like it was always there.

Some additions are bold and a juxtaposition of two architectural languages, and others feature additions meant to blend in. There's no wrong answer, just good and bad. Or in this case, good and good.

Midcentury Southwest

There are several houses renovated over the past decade that don't necessarily radically alter what was there, but fine-tune and update the homes, especially the kitchens, in a way that helps these homes come alive again. Just about all of these seem to be located in Southwest Portland or just beyond, in Beaverton.

Many of the projects I'm about to mention were chosen based on love for the original homes as much as the excellence of the renovations themselves, yet a few small moves by contemporary designers and architects can really become some of the best parts of what gets subsequently unveiled.

Take this 1959 William Fletcher House, renovated by Jessica Helgerson Interior Design, where a series of built-in bookshelves, skylights and a red tile-covered kitchen island stand out, and make a nice pairing with the wood surfaces enveloping much of the rest of the interior. 

 

The William Fletcher-designed Ruell residence (Grant Harder)

 

"It was about being inspired and taking cues from midcentury design," project manager Emily Knudsen Leland of Helgerson's office said in a 2016 Dwell article by Amara Holstein, "but also bringing in modern pieces that fit." 

Some of these same qualities exist in Jessica Helgerson Interior Design's renovation of the Feldman House by Saul Zaik. "The house had some really lovely things about it and some really problematic things," Helgerson recalled in Dwell. "But our goal was for it to look as if we hadn’t done anything, to be authentic to the era of the house. What would Saul do?"

The Saul Zaik-designed Fletcher Residence (Grant Harder)

 

One of my favorite renovations of the past decade to visit was the Sutor House by Pietro Belluschi, its restoration overseen by his son, architect Anthony Belluschi. The Sutor is particularly special in Pietro Belluschi's portfolio. Although it wasn't the first house he designed, it was really the first in what came to be called the Northwest Modern style. It also arrived just a year after the Watzek House, located just a few hundred yards down Skyline Boulevard. Both houses exemplify the marriage of Modernism with Northwest vernacular traditions such as farmhouses, barns and ranch houses. In the case of these two houses, though, they also show a strong Japanese influence, whether it's the Watzek's courtyard or the way the Sutor almost resembles a pagoda.

Inside, Anthony Belluschi's design reconstructed the former maid’s quarters, which had been turned into a breakfast nook, and modernized the kitchen to gain space by moving a wet bar to the dining room. And some of Pietro's original design details look better than ever, such as the woven-wood ceiling at the foyer and the curving wall of zebra wood. Yet the most intriguing aspect of the Sutor renovation may be outside.

While designing the Sutor House, Belluschi befriended Jiro Harada, a professor at the Imperial Household Museum in Tokyo and author of numerous books on Japanese gardens and architecture who was in town as a visiting professor at the University of Oregon. Influenced by Harada, Belluschi and Gerke created an elegant, Japanese-style strolling garden at the house that in later years disappeared through neglect. Homeowner Aric Wood and his family have uncovered that original garden one shovel-full at a time. "It was so overgrown you couldn’t even find the rock wall," Aric Wood said in Dwell. "But we uncovered the rock wall to find the stone steps. We dug out the stone steps and discovered pathways leading down into the forest. It’s been kind of a continuous process of uncovering."

 

Sutor House (Brian Flaherty)

 

Then there's the Watzek itself. Although it didn't undergo any kind of renovation that would noticeably alter what's there, the roof has been replaced and other acts of maintenance performed over the past several years. But what's most significant is that starting in 2011 the Watzek House became accessible to the public. it had been bequeathed to the University of Oregon in 1996, but on the condition that Yeon's partner be allowed to keep living there. The arrangement continued until 2011, and now each summer the house is available for public tours. I've been a few times over the years, for tours and a couple private dinners and public talks.

That living room at the Watzek never ceases to amaze me, with its coffered wood ceiling and exquisite detail. The dining area with its floor-to-ceiling glass is also exquisite. Being at the Watzek is like experiencing some kind of handover from traditional architecture into modern, maybe because the furnishings are more traditional. In any case, it's a masterpiece, and quite probably the best house in Oregon.

 

Watzek House living room (University of Oregon)

 

I also would like to mention a recent remodel by architect Paul McKean of a Richard Campbell-designed house in Southwest, also just off Skyline Boulevard.

In the early 1960s, architects Richard Campbell and Joachim Grube acquired a parcel of forested land in Portland’s Sylvan Highlands west of downtown that had gone undeveloped because of its uneven topography. Soon the partners co-designed for themselves and their families a pair of houses nestled on two small swaths of high ground.

This Campbell-designed house was completed in 1962 and won an award in Sunset magazine shortly thereafter. For more than a half century the house went unchanged, occupied by Campbell's ex-wife. It's in the main room as one enters, where the kitchen, dining area and living room are combined under one massive pitched roof where one feels submerged in a cocoon of wood.

Cain-Wong Residence (Spin Photography)

"There’s not much drywall in that house," McKean said in Dwell, "just those beautiful cedar ceilings and the Douglas fir beams."

Finally, there is the one house on my list that's not in Portland but rather Beaverton: the Heather Court residence by Garrison Hullinger Interior Design. It's a remodel of one of many homes in the area built by Robert Rummer, and to my eyes this is one of the best Rummer treatments I've seen.

Rummers have always had an inherent challenge, I think: their atriums. I've been in several of these homes over the years, and often there are these spaces between the entry and the main living/dining area. They bring in light and work almost like covered outdoor areas, but homeowners often seem clueless about what to do with them. They're not literally outside, after all, yet they're also not a traditional room of the house that has a function.

Heather Court Residence (Blackstone Edge Studios)

Like most, this house's atrium had become an extended foyer. But Hullinger’s team, led by interior designer Nikki Maeda, made the atrium feel more fully like the outdoors, adding a naturally stained teak deck and even placing clusters of river rocks in the corners, as if the deck were a floating dock. Next to a cluster of garden chairs, a wall of decorative patterned concrete tiles draws the eye. Instead of a pass-through space, the glass-roofed atrium now acts more like an enclosed front yard.

As I write this, almost all of us have been spending more time at home than ever. It's shelter from the elements and from exposure to Covid-19. Sensing that this pandemic may take years for the world to fully recover from, especially given the tragically inept response from our corrupt national leadership and how it's cost us many lives, it may be that home designs and home renovations in the years ahead become more modest. Or given how international travel seems destined to become more seldom and more expensive, perhaps we'll instead double down on fixing up our homes.

Yet these renovations are perhaps also a reminder that both good and bad times come and go. These houses have seen many decades, and chances are they will survive both the pandemic and the threat to democracy we face today. That's comforting.

 

 

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Emerick Architects at 20: a conversation with Melody and Brian Emerick

The firm's staff in pre-pandemic celebration mode (Emerick Architects)

 

BY BRIAN LIBBY

During this time of quarantine, many of us are looking back in some way. Some seem to be going through old boxes of childhood mementos, others simply reminiscing about travels taken or events attended, back when we could do that without worry. And if your architecture firm is celebrating its 20th anniversary, as is the case for Emerick Architects, it's an even better time to take stock.

The firm is a partnership in more ways than one. It was founded in 2000 by the husband and wife team of architects Melody and Brian Emerick. Over the past two decades, the firm has developed a laudable reputation for historic preservation projects and a string of both sustainable and eye-catching houses, increasingly they have also branched out to a variety of mixed-use commercial and residential projects, much of it new construction. I'm thankful for a number of old buildings they've designed the renovations for, like the Ford Building and Fire Station No. 7 in Southeast and the Sovereign Hotel downtown. Yet it's not strictly a renovation-focused firm at all. I'm also a fan of houses they've designed like Alberta Lookout Residence. And when I was looking for suggestions for my best-of-the-decade list a few months ago, a number of people suggested Emerick Architects' 1930 Alberta building, an Art Deco-inspired recent mixed-use structure.

Recently I talked with Brian and Melody Emerick by phone.

Portland Architecture: when and how did you meet?

Brian Emerick: The two of us met at the University of Oregon, within the first week of classes starting. We were both in architecture school, and a mutual acquaintance introduced us. We became fast friends and were in classes together. Pretty soon we were inseparable.

Melody Emerick: We got engaged in college, and married before we graduated. But we actually went to the same high school.

Brian: I’m a year older than Melody, and Hillsboro High School was pretty big, with 1500 kids. But were both in this advanced art program, and the teacher was an inspiring person in both of our lives. I actually did a drawing of Melody back then, when I didn’t know her, because she acted as a live model for one our classes. It’s something we connected over when we finally met in college: a love of art and curiosity about creating things.

 

The firm's founders (Emerick Architects)

 

After settling in Portland in 1994, you both worked at MCA Architects for a few years, but then you started Emerick Architects still early in your careers: you would have both been in your late 20s. It must have been an extra challenge that you were both taking the plunge, and because neither of you could depend on the other having a salaried job. Can you talk about that motivation to go out on your own?

Melody: We didn't know what we were getting into in starting our business—the risk we were taking which is the best approach for big changes in your life. I was at MCA and they offered Brian a job too; we worked there together from 1995 to '97. Then we started a family. I left the firm to be with our first daughter. They offered Brian a partnership, which was huge. It was a firm of 50-something. But that’s when Brian and I had a heart-to-heart talk. We had a list of reasons why to take the partnership. And only one for why we wanted to start our own firm: it was our dream. We just went for it.

Where do you think that entrepreneurial inclination came from?

Brian: My dad had his own business when I was growing up. It gave me the sense that this was something you could really do. He was really successful. That was part of the inspiration. Ultimately it wasn’t about money for us. We were all-in and passionate about architecture and creating great places in our community. But to call the most important shots, you need to be in charge of the company too. You have to be able to not take a job sometimes. There are a lot of decisions you make, some from a business lens but some from a mission lens. That was a big driver of why we wanted to start our own firm and do that.

 

Alberta Lookout Residence (Emerick Architects)

 

Even if going out on your own an be higher-risk, it gives you a chance to curate the work, right?

Brian: Definitely. At MCA I was around the 15th person and Melody was the 12th. They grew to 55 within a few years: all this aviation work all over the country. But the travel gets old pretty fast. I was working in NY and Chicago a lot, on these huge projects for United Airlines. Melody and I just realized we wanted to get back to working in our own community: not all this corporate stuff. It was great experience, but not us. And a few months after we left, 9/11 happened. If we’d hitched our wagon to the partnership, that would have been a huge challenge. It taught us to follow your own passions and dreams. But it made a rough start to our own business.

Melody: I was also nine months pregnant with our second kid. We paid our way through college and we had all this student loan debt. Nothing about this looked like a good idea on paper. But that’s the benefit of being young. We said, 'What’s the worst that can happen? We’ll just live out of our truck somewhere or beg for a job.'

Brian: You have less to lose. As you get older it’s harder because you have more to lose.

 

1930 Alberta (Built Photo)

 

You were able to secure some important commissions early on. Could you talk about making that happen?

Brian: We jokingly call it out Founders’ Club. We were fortunate to have a great residential and a great commercial project right out of the gate, which enabled us to get the machinery rolling and some accomplishments under our belt. The fist was a super-awesome custom home out in Yamhill County. The clients had been our neighbors across the street here in Portland. They’d sold a software company in the dot-com boom and retired early. They selected us to do this house was on 40 acres. It was before LEED, but very sustainable. He was on the Nature Conservancy board. We harvested all the rainwater, rebuilt this historic barn as part of the complex, did geothermal heating. It was a really cool substantial project to be entrusted with.

Melody: Almost every single thing in that house was custom-designed. We got to know trades people and that set the tone for us: environmental, custom, artists, being connected to a place.

Brian: The other Founders Club project was with Venerable Properties and Art De Muro. He became a repeat client. We did a full seismic upgrade to the Porter Building, a quarter-block 1920s building on Glisan. I volunteered with the Historic Preservation League of Oregon [now Restore Oregon] and became the AV specialist for the shows they did at the Aladdin. I knew Art through that and got in touch with him. He entrusted us with this big project, their largest at the time.

 

The Porter Building, completed in 1922, renovated in 2002 (Emerick Architects)

 

Melody: Those two projects were critical because they set the tone for what you see in our work: custom, thoughtful design, environmentally focused, adaptive re-use, community-based. We did a whole handful of projects with Art as well as other clients: renovations like the Ford Building and Grand Central Bakery, and many homes.

I know that you're not strangers to working from home because you worked out of your office for those first three years, right?

Melody: We were on 31st and Clinton. The business was in that house for three years while employing a couple of employees and having a toddler and baby running around.

Brian: Our parents thought we were nuts buying a house in Southeast. Coming back into the city wasn’t that popular at that time. It’s crazy if you go there now, how different it was. Back then, there wasn’t even a coffee shop.

Melody: I remember we did two houses for Art Alexakis and he came to our bungalow to look at the plans. He said, ‘This was my neighborhood too.’

Brian: He’d also just recorded an album with Everclear at Kung Fu Bakery recording studio on Division during that time.

Melody: Our history, it’s been the people we’ve worked with. We’ve worked with some really fun people. The people who come to us really, really care about their house or their building or their neighborhood. That’s been really rewarding. It could be a schoolteacher. It could be a new business owner. It could be another creative professional. We’ve even worked with CEOs of Fortune 500 companies.

You've also made yourselves your own client, designing and building your own house in the Hillsdale neighborhood in 2007, which we covered in a post. I remember visiting it back then, and it was ahead of its time in terms of sustainability.

Melody: We had the dream of doing our own home for ourselves. We kept trying to find land in Southeast since that was the area we knew and loved and we just couldn’t. We struggled. Finally a realtor said, ‘You have to cross the river.’ It’s the divide that no one crosses. But we found one acre of land in the forest in SW Portland. We went for it. It was in an environmental zone with a lot of restrictions, which was perfect for a couple of architects to try and navigate. At that time LEED for Residential was a pilot program. We were able to get Gold status for that house. That was 2007. The first projects we did were really popular which helped launch us to more projects and bigger projects. With our house, we continue to get a lot of comments on it.

 

The Emericks' 2007 residence (top: Sally Painter, bottom: Built Photo)

 

How much residential versus commercial do you do, and how intentional is that?

Brian: Mostly it’s been a 50-50 split. In recent years, it’s been a bit more commercial. Here in the studio, for the most part everyone works on both project types. Each informs the other. The residential team brings a level of detail and craft to our commercial work. There’s not always the budget to support all that, but it’s a mindset of detail and execution. On the residential work, most residential firms aren’t the size we are. They’re more like sole proprietorships. We’re bringing a more efficient approach. Our team likes working on both.

Do you want to do other types of work?

Brian: One we really wanted to try and hadn’t done much before was an infill development. That’s something we’ve been more successful with in the last five years or so. Most of what we do now is pretty close in to city center or in historic neighborhoods. It’s nice to be able to show that you can do high quality urban infill.

Melody: The Alberta Building was one of those. We identified quality infill work as something important to us as a project type. We’re also working on a large affordable housing project.

Can you tell me more about that?

BE: It’s called the Anna Mann House and it's in the Laurelhurst neighborhood of Southeast. It’s taking a manor house and adding a larger complex. It’s an interesting challenge to work with the neighborhood and the Portland housing bureau. It’s a cool opportunity. I’ve spent time on the Landmarks Commission and Restore Oregon’s board. A lot of time there’s this perception that historic architecture is elitist and not accessible to the common person. To take this resource and make a big equity move and give access to the Laurelhurst school district, it’s a pretty cool opportunity.

I know you're also working on projects like a winery in Dallas, Oregon and an expansion of the historic Viewpoint Inn in the Columbia Gorge. And there's the Hallock-McMillan Building along our downtown waterfront: the oldest commercial building in Portland. What do these and the other projects say about the firm today?

Melody: It’s hard to define what we do because the work is so different and interesting. We love these challenging puzzles. Going from a quarter-block on Alberta to this winery where everything is hand-built to the Hallock and McMillan: it keeps the curiosity and challenge for us and helps us attract quality talent in the studio and hold it. I think because the work’s so interesting, the business is the vehicle to do the architecture, but the architecture is the mission.

 

Division Street Residence (Lincoln Barbour)

What about the firm's size? I'll bet you could have grown more than you have.

Melody: We’re a firm of 15. We’ve always been very purposeful of our size. We want to be big enough to be able to do a range of projects. But it’s a size that allows us to hold the quality we want. It’s a challenge to actually resist the chance to grow, but for the people who work for us, it’s a huge trust they put in us to keep a diverse portfolio and fun environment.

Brian: Rather than grow, we’ve decided to curate the work. Going all the way back to MCA, being in a firm that was 15 was really fun, and by the time it got to 55 it was more of a corporate experience. There’s just a certain firm size that keeps it creative and fun. Melody and I want to be able to practice architecture too, and not become just a business manager.

I respect that. It reminds me of how so many sports-team coaches leave the small- market teams or less prestigious programs they’ve successfully built into winners, only to fail at doing the same with a large-market pro team or blue-blood college team. Or how some pro sports-team coaches take on more responsibility selecting players only to drift away from the essence of what they do: coaching.

Brian: It’s almost un-American in a way to say, ‘No I’m going to stay small.’ But maybe it’s actually more rewarding to coach a small-market team than to take on all that extra pressure and take you further away from what you love.

Melody: Our initial goal was to do work in the place we love. Portland was very different then [in 2000]. It was this hidden gem. We just wanted to have a place here and do the best work we could. Now there isn’t a neighborhood we haven’t worked in. If we were 50 people, we probably would have had to look outside Portland for business.

 

Vintner's Home, Yamhill County (Custom Built Photography)

 

What about your different skill sets? Running an architecture firm and being an architect take a lot of different skills, from drawing and client relationships to entrepreneurial stuff, etc. What do you each do best?

Melody: Great question. They share a surprisingly large number of traits, actually. Running an architecture firm, or a small business for that matter, forces you to keep your eye on the big picture, take calculated risks, know when to edit down to what is most important. No matter the size of your business at some point you will need to lean on others that know more than you and share your goals. You need to take the time to ask questions that might be hard, and really listen to the answers. You need to make big decisions quickly and then move on. You need to sweat the details that set the tone for the character of your company just like you would a building. There are personalities involved and you need to know how to navigate the emotions around stress and dreams and money and time management. All of these skills are without a doubt valuable as an architect and business owner. For Brian and I, the biggest strength that has helped us as business owners as well as architects is our ability to stay positive and focused on the goal even as we navigate lots of setbacks.

 

Lake Oswego Residence (Jeremy Bittermann)

 

Related but different question: what can you say about working together as romantic partners? Not every couple would be able to do it. Is there anything to which you attribute your compatibility as business partners?

People ask us all the time how we work together and if we have any tips. Over the years we have discovered lots of things that have and have not worked for us and frankly this can be a moving target, as it can change based on what it going on at work or at home. Probably number one for us is we have discovered more dates is the secret to our happiness. Wednesday night date night has been a staple almost since we started the business. We were too broke in the beginning to afford a babysitter and dinner, so we would put the kids to bed early, open a bottle of wine and cook up something. We still block out Wednesday nights and generally go out, but we look forward to them just the same. Which is actually funny because we spend so much time together, but time to just be us without having to be parents or leaders of a company grounds us and keeps us connected. As far as personalities, I tend to be the big picture person and Brian tends to be the details person, and that has worked too. We both know we are after the same goals, and we appreciate that each of us goes after those a little differently. Between us with our different strengths we feel we are lifting the other up to be their best, which in turn hopefully helps us create our best work. And without the amazing team that works for us, none of this would be possible.

 

 

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Visiting the renovated Portland Building, and seeing the light

A second-floor meeting area overlooking Chapman Square (Brian Libby)

 

BY BRIAN LIBBY

Because of the extraordinary times we're living in, with all kinds of public events across the spectrum cancelled, it was easy to miss or forget the fact that the Portland Building's grand re-opening was originally scheduled for last month.

After more than a year of construction, and years of hand-wringing about what to do with this leaky and nearly lightless architectural landmark, the city's most famous building has been not just renovated but transformed.

Perhaps that's not so clear to disinterested passers by, who see the same colorful cladding as the scaffolding comes off and the tarp is removed from the Portlandia statue. But on the outside the Portland Building has been re-clad in an entirely different material, something that normally would be a big no-no for any such historically significant building. And that's not even the biggest change. It's inside where one can hardly believe this is the same place.

The new facade we've all been looking at for the past several months. It's what represented the most controversial aspect of the renovation, because normally, one of the most essential proverbs of historic preservation is that any material replacement, particularly on the exterior, must be "in kind": the same material, and hopefully unrecognizable from what was originally there. In this case, however, that wasn't really possible — that is, not unless one committed to the notion of lots of preventative maintenance (patching potential leaks) for the life of the building.

 

Portland Building in overcast skies from Fourth Avenue (Brian Libby)

 

To put this another way, nobody would try and build a building with a painted concrete facade today. It's considered downright primitive. So after extensive research and consulting facade experts, instead the architects from DLR Group, along with contractor Howard S. Wright and their client, the City of Portland, chose an aluminum rain screen exterior. There was understandably concern that it would look different, that it would catch the light differently.

But the facade, at least to my eyes, looks quite good. From a distance, it looks like the same Portland Building it ever was. Up close, it does seem true that at times in the morning or afternoon when the sun hits the building, that aluminum catches the light. It doesn't reflect it per se, but it's certainly less of a matte surface. However, there is no oil-canning, or visible waviness of the material. I mean, it's not as if this is the same quality or grade of aluminum that makes soda pop cans.

 

Portlandia from a Portland Building conference room (Brian Libby)

 

From the moment one steps inside, it's clear things are very different. The elevator core in the middle of the building is the same, but right there in the lobby, which had been one of the building's spaces most devoid of natural light, you can now see through the building in all four directions. Straight ahead upon entering from the west, it's possible to see straight ahead through floor-to-ceiling glass toward the east. Because the ground-floor retail spaces have been incorporated into the lobby, there are views through the glass to the north and south as well. Particularly on the ground floor, the Portland Building actually feels like a glassy building. Think about that for a minute: a building that used to feel like a bunker inside now feels transparent.

Upstairs offices were the real test, however, because there was no opportunity to create new glass walls on the upper floors. The only move the architects really had available was to make the heretofore dark glass clear and make some of the shadow boxes (where there was glass on the outside but a solid surface on the inside) true windows.

 

Looking out from an upstairs Portland Building window (Brian Libby)

 

Except that's not really true, I realized while touring the interior. They also removed the drop ceilings, which gave these floors more height and exposed the original and previously always-covered concrete coffered ceilings. This has allowed light to not only pass through the now-clear glass but to bounce off the walls and ceiling, to "wash" the rooms with light, as designers would say. It makes these offices not just brighter than they were before, but pretty much as bright as any office building considered well-lit. And they don't just feel well-lit. Because of the exposed ceilings, they feel more spacious. It's true that mechanical equipment is now exposed in the ceilings, but that's a small price to pay.

What's more, the newly-exposed concrete coffered ceiling adds a new ingredient to the Portland Building design, or perhaps more accurately, it reveals something inherent to the building that no one ever thought about before. Postmodern architecture was not just a response to decades of Modernism. I think more than anything it was a rejection of Brutalism, which rose in the late '60s and early '70s and placed an emphasis on concrete interiors and exteriors alike. Today with the hindsight of history, we can see a certain beauty in Brutalist buildings. But no doubt the Postmodernism practiced by the likes of Michael Graves, Robert Venturi and Peter Eisenmann was to Brutalism what Johnny Rotten was to Emerson, Lake and Palmer: a rebellion. Yet when the coffered ceiling of the Portland Building was exposed, it revealed a truth hiding in plain sight: being built from concrete, the Portland Building has the pieces of a Brutalist building that it then simply covered up with paint and fake ribbons.

 

Portlandia from a Portland Building conference room (Brian Libby)

 

DLR Group principal Carla Weinheimer, who oversaw the project, laughed when I suggested this and agreed, saying: "It's Brutalism in a dress."

Stripping away some of the interior clutter and making the facade glass clearer and more prevalent also better connects the interior to its Postmodern skin, or at least to its famous statue outside. I don't ever remember being able to look out at the back of the Portlandia statue before, or to look past the statue to the view outside. And I know there was never an observation deck to the side of the statue before. Now it's likely to become a tourist attraction.

 

Portlandia from a new observation deck (Brian Libby)

 

There's no doubt that this building is vastly, vastly better to work in. But let's return for a moment to the question of the Portland Building, historic preservation and precedent. It's still true that the approach to this renovation is the exception to the rule. The principles that organizations like DoCoMoMo argued for in opposing this approach to the Portland Building project are still sound: that our most important historic landmarks have to be protected, and that starts with their integrity. That integrity is normally always based first on materials, especially with regard to the exterior. And for the most part, that should not change.

However, the principles of historic preservation and how to go about it are based on our approach to an earlier generation of buildings that were well-built and used time-tested construction techniques. Many aspects of building design and construction in the 1970s and '80s turned out to be ill-suited for long term viability. Everyone knows the old adage that they don't build 'em like they used to. I think buildings like the Portland Building embody that.

As a result, we have to think differently about how we preserve certain buildings of this era. That's also necessary and even appropriate given that the intentions of Michael Graves and his design team, once they accomplished the practical tasks of creating an office building, were all about color and expressiveness: not necessarily the materials themselves. After all, did any of us ever look at the old Portland Building and think specifically about the material of its exterior cladding? I don't think so. It was all about the color and the expressiveness of the other decorations like the faux garlands.

How do we know this? After all, Michael Graves passed away before the Portland Building renovation happened, and before the design approach was announced. But the employees from his firm who were there at the time of the Portland Building's design and construction all concur that Graves would have been fine with the new cladding material. The building as built was a huge compromise of Graves's vision, because the budget was so small. Graves just wanted to get the commission, which he won mostly because his design was on budget and the other two proposals were not, and he just wanted to get the building built, like any architect. But he was willing to agree to almost any value-engineering to make the project happen, and in a visit to Portland during the time the Portland Building was threatened with demolition, he made it clear that he was fine with a variety of changes, from making the ground-floor retail spaces part of the lobby to changing out the glass.

One quibble I do have with the Portland Building renovation is that the top is now dominated by large and very visible mechanical equipment. It's not very obvious at all from the street, but I happened to have spent the past year receiving physical therapy treatments on the 17th floor of the 1000 Broadway building, and from there it does not look so good. But that's because the redesign moved the mechanical equipment from where it had been hidden on the second floor: the second floor! That meant intake vents for fresh air were just one floor above Fifth Avenue and all the carbon monoxide coming from the Bus Mall. Now that space has been repurposed. And the equipment had to go somewhere. It's tempting to think of how the original design included some small little houses on top of the Portland Building that were not included in construction. In theory, those could have been introduced for the first time and used to house the equipment. But that would have been a step too far. I guess the rooftop mechanical is just the price that has to be aesthetically paid.  

 

The trident of Portlandia (Brian Libby)

 

One threat that has been hanging over the Portland Building restoration was that the approach would cause the National Park Service to rescind the building's National Register of Historic Places listing. It seems that might still happen. But you know what? It doesn't matter. We already know that the Portland Building as we see it today is not the same Portland Building that was completed in 1982. But we also know that it is small-H historic even if it's not officially capital-H historic. In fact, we know it's still far more historically significant than at least 90 percent of the National Register-listed structures in Portland. There are college-dropout friends of mine who are clearly more intelligent and learned than friends of mine with doctoral degrees. It's not about the piece of paper.

More importantly, rather than fixate on a historic or not-historic binary way of thinking, I'd rather we embrace the Portland Building as a hybrid of new and old. The more we are upfront about it being neither strictly old or strictly new, the more this work of architecture can be seen for what it is: something in between. That's not to say it is compromised but that it is a fusion. Maybe it's just the Herbie Hancock fan in me, but sometimes fusion can be even better its component parts.

I think that's the case here — so much so that it's actually arguable that the new Portland Building completes the original vision of Michael Graves and his team better than the building completed in 1982. Maybe this isn't a renovation so much as the decades-later final stage of the original building.

 

 

 

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Visiting Tree Farm: color and whimsy enliven an ordinary office

Tree Farm as seen from Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard (Brian Libby)

 

BY BRIAN LIBBY

It was only a month ago that I visited Tree Farm, the new Central Eastside office building designed by Brett Schulz Architect for Guerrilla Development. But of course late February, before the coronavirus pandemic reached our shores and quarantining set in, now seems like a year ago.

What does the coronavirus have to do with Tree Farm? Why even mention the pandemic? Well, in a time of anxiety, when we have quickly learned to follow death counts and infection rates, the whimsy of such architecture is only more pleasing. Or at least it is to my eyes. In a sense, the wallpaper-like colorful painted exterior walls and the series of small tree plantings suspended from its facades are like the springtime blossoming flowers and tree branches accompanying this period of otherwise grimness.

 

Tree Farm's west-facing facade (Brian Libby)

 

The first thing to say about Tree Farm isn't about the trees or the paint job on its façade, however, but its location.

Walking there, I first came to City Liquidators, that longtime Central Eastside institution with a quirky array of used furniture and other items. The many colorful little flags strung over the street between its two buildings made a perfect processional leading to Tree Farm. It's also right beside the extended Morrison Bridge ramp over the railroad tracks, which gives drivers a close-up view of the building's upper stories as they cross the Willamette or prepare to merge onto Interstate 5.

 

Flags and used signage outside City Liquidators (Brian Libby)

 

Yet right at the same intersection, next to the other side of the ramp, is Montage, another place that's been around for decades and, like City Liquidators, has a delightfully strange ambiance that's part old New Orleans, part Tom Waits song, and part Portland underbelly — with oysters.

In the context of this block, it would almost be weird if a conventional-looking building were built here.

And with the popular Lebanese restaurant Nicholas scheduled to relocate to Tree Farm's ground floor, this ought to be a fairly busy urban hot spot, and a sign of the times that the Central Eastside is continuing to transform. There may still not be people living here, but the Central Eastside's destiny is not industrial per se. Re-zoning of the neighborhood has set all this in motion.

 

Montage, Tree Farm's neighbor (Brian Libby)

 

We can't really talk about Tree Farm, however, without mentioning its predecessor, the Fair-Haired Dumbbell, about a half-mile north at Burnside and Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard. Developed by Guerrilla and designed by FFA Architecture and Interiors with completion in 2017, its wildly colorful facade, painted by Los Angeles artist James Jean, has continued to be a conversation piece.

Certainly these mural-like facades are not to everyone's taste.

"Rather than let architecture do its own heavy lifting and command the eye through the poetical and functional qualities of form and space, architects are increasingly taking the easy way out and shoving more and more of the responsibility for beauty and spatial interest onto the realm of two-dimensional art," wrote art critic Richard Speer in a recent Visual Art Source review.

Referring to the Dumbbell specifically, he added: "During construction the exterior was an appealing eggshell color, which accentuated the project’s quirky shape and lent it an ambiance that felt at once prehistoric and futuristic. At last, I thought as I saw it taking shape, a building we can be proud of: an individual among clones! Then one day as I was crossing the bridge I saw what can only be called a bastardization in progress: the pristine façade was being desecrated with a vulgar hyper-chromatic mural depicting what looked like abstracted protozoa as viewed by a lab tech on L.S.D. The building’s form had been lost in a glut of cutesy, iPad-generated-looking claptrap."

 

The Fair-Haired Dumbbell (Brian Libby)

 

I've long been a fan of Speer's art reviews, and though I'm a fan of both the Fair Haired Dumbbell and Tree Farm, I think he makes some fair points. It's true that the irregular patterning and sizes of the Dumbbell's facade, which would be eye-catching and unique on its own, competes with or may even be obscured by the loudness of the colorful mural. By that rationale, the small trees suspended in pots from this building's façade compete with the colorful exterior paint job. Both buildings read as quite busy, aesthetically speaking.

Yet I'm not sure I would characterize the relationship between murals and architecture in exactly the same way that Speer does. For starters, I would distinguish single-wall murals seen mostly on windowless portions of buildings from the four-sided painted patterns on the Dumbbell and Tree Farm.

It's true that in recent years we've seen a proliferation of murals in this city as regulations (originally meant to minimize billboard advertising) were eased. But when I go looking for murals, it's rare that I ever find one on anything but a windowless façade, and I can't recall a single one that took up more than one wall at once. In most but not all cases, these are simply blank walls that, without a mural, would simply be blank walls.

 

Murals near NW Third Avenue and SE Sandy Boulevard (Brian Libby)

 

To me the Fair-Haired Dumbbell and Tree Farm form a slightly different category from windowless facades painted with murals. Once we have that established, it's perhaps easier to see them for what they are: relatively cheap office buildings.

Today commercial office design is undergoing somewhat of a transformation. For higher-end companies, it's increasingly about having large shared spaces: a multitude of places where one or more people can take their laptops and work. When I've visited high-profile, award-winning works of commercial architecture, the places where people cluster their desks are almost an afterthought compared to shared spaces full of plants and sofas, and highly transparent interior architectural spaces that break down the barriers between indoor and outdoor. There is already developing as well a preference for mass-timber buildings over traditionally drywalled office interiors and low ceilings.

The funny thing about both Tree Farm and the Fair-Haired Dumbbell is that for all the wild paint colors on their exteriors, or in the latter case for all the trees festooned to its four facades, these are actually rather no-frills, even throwback office buildings. If you're inside the Dumbbell and you forget for a moment the irregularly-patterned and irregularly-sized windows, it's actually a bit like being in a commercial office in 1998. I don't mean that as a wisecrack or even a criticism per se. But I think it might serve as a bit of an explainer, and in a way it brings these two buildings back around to partially resembling the mural-covered facades I just got done saying were different.

 

Tree Farm facing east, from MLK Boulevard (Brian Libby)

 

If I think about these colorful facades and Tree Farm's signature trees in the context of being just vibrant wrappings for modest-budget office buildings, it makes sense that they would be effective signifiers to a certain segment of the creative class that couldn't afford high-end spec offices teeming with glass and secondary hang-out spaces but also didn't want to settle for some dreary office-park setting. Renting office space in one of these buildings, there is no rooftop deck or sun porch to hang out at, no room for extra sectional sofas and tropical plants. But there is an architectural coat of arms that people remember. It's the youth hostel to a high-end spec office building's boutique hotel.

Tree Farm's colorful painted exterior, and the Dumbbell's, also for me harken back in some hard-to-define way to the quirkier side of the city's personality, the one mocked on shows like "Portlandia" but very much a badge of honor, particularly as a nostalgic antidote to homogeneous gentrification. It reminds me of a car that used to often be parked on my street in Southeast Portland in the late '90s and had been hand-painted in a rainbow of different colors.

Tree Farm's paint job is a bit more like wallpaper than a mural in some ways. Whereas the Fair-Haired Dumbbell was required to go through a public and open artist selection process in step with Regional Arts & Culture Council strictures, this building started non only with the architects consulting an arborist, but also a color consultant who picked out a custom blue color on which local artist Michael Paulus could then create a kind of floral stencil pattern.

Perhaps because Tree Farm's patterning extends to all four sides, while it may not remind me of any single wall mural, this building and the Fair-Haired Dumbbell do remind me of Miami's Wynwood district, where a whole stretch of blocks with old warehouses has been painted in vibrant colors. I guess for me, Tree Farm and its sister building could be seen as the beginning of something. Why not remake the Central Eastside in color?

Then there are the trees themselves. The intent, as architect Ben Carr of Brett Schulz's firm explained, is for the strawberry trees to grow no more than about ten feet tall — only a foot or two larger than the trees as you see them in these pictures I took in February. Strawberry trees, I'm also told, are native to the Mediterranean but have been in Oregon a long time.

Why have trees affixed to the side of the building? Well, it means that when you look out from the building, you'll always be looking past vegetation, much as I'm doing as I write this: looking past a rose bush by my apartment window at the view beyond. And the more urban one's existence is, the more we need touches of nature. Will these strawberry trees have a big impact on anyone's mental well-being? Probably not. Again, the trees may be more of a signifier: that along with those who love colorful quirkiness, environmentalists are welcome. That sounds pretty trite, actually, but I think there's a kernel of authenticity there. If you can't have your office building built in a grove of trees, why not bring the grove of trees to the architecture?

Don't get me wrong: there is a skeptic inside me that, on occasion, looks at Tree Farm or the Fair-Haired Dumbbell and thinks it's all a bit absurd. But you know what? We don't have enough absurdity in our architecture. What we do have is a huge amount of cookie-cutter buildings. So while I may not necessarily be the target market for these relatively cheap yet colorful and vibrant office buildings, I am very glad they're there. It's kind of like how I hate tattoos but I'm glad there are tattoo parlors. The best cities are the ones that feel like the widest diversity of communities and generations have made left their fingerprint.

And in grim times like these, I certainly welcome a little fun.

 

 

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Streaming two local concerts, and feeling connected

Screen capture of Portland Baroque Orchestra's 3/13/20 concert (YouTube)

 

BY BRIAN LIBBY

Like most anyone who can, I've spent the last several days in self-quarantine mode. It's relatively easy when you already work at home and happened to have been stocking up on groceries for the past week or two.

Like pretty much anyone, however, I've yearned a little bit for human connection, or even just a chance to be transported out of my apartment. Exercise in the outdoors helps, and I'm very lucky to live near the Springwater Corridor, where I can bike through nature and along the river. But it's still not human connection. With no live sports on TV, no performing arts to attend in person, it has felt a bit like a desert of sorts in the middle of the city.

But last weekend I was surprised by just how much solace — how much of a resonant feeling of experiencing and being moved by art and architecture vicariously — came from watching two local concerts via live video streams: one by Portland Baroque Orchestra at First Baptist Church downtown, and and the other by Cappella Romana at St. Mary's Cathedral in Northwest.

Of course I've watched concerts online before, but this time it felt different. I felt more than I ever usually do watching a live event by video stream or on television that I was somehow closer to being there in those two houses of worship, a ticket-buyer in the audience.

Why did it happen? Why did these concerts feel so much like I was there?

Of course it starts with the concerts being a kind of antidote to feeling stir-crazy. The ability to imagine being in one of those churches, hearing the music in person and seeing the players in person, was stronger precisely because I couldn't be there. I wanted to be there all the more because it was off-limits. I was more likely to feel connected to the musicians because I was feeling isolated.

Or maybe it was just my fascination with the theorbo, a lute or guitar-like instrument with a ridiculously long double-neck. It felt like the classical equivalent of one of those '70s/early '80s bands like Deep Purple or the fictitious Spinal Tap. Only in this case it was cool.

Screen capture of Portland Baroque Orchestra's 3/13/20 concert (YouTube)

 

I think it also helped that I've previously attended concerts at both St. Mary's Cathedral and First Baptist Church. I even specifically recall going to see Portland Baroque Orchestra at that venue before: a previous season's performance of Bach's Brandenberg Concertos. Though I hadn't seen a concert by Capella Romana before, I'd certainly seen concerts at that Catholic church on Davis Street. That meant even though I wasn't at these concerts on this night, my mind could draw from past memories of being at those concerts and, to some degree, fill in the blanks subconsciously: the feel of the place when you're sitting in the pews watching music performed.

The fact that I knew these concerts were local may have also helped: the fact that I could imagine these musicians playing and singers singing just across the river. They were only a short bike ride away. I could almost convince myself that if I stood outside, I'd somehow be able to hear them naturally.

I mention all this not just to tell the story of some musical solace. I'm interested in the idea that the imagination can be more powerful than we think. That's something valuable to remember in a time of virus quarantine.

It's not to say anyone reading this would have necessarily had the same response I did to the music, but I did happen to note while watching the Capella Romana performance that about 800 people were watching at any given moment, which is likely considerably larger than the amount of people who would have been there in person. Of course, people watching via video stream are not, in most cases, buying tickets. These artists can't perform their work for free. That's why I believe I owe both Portland Baroque Orchestra and Capella Romana donations. Yet my point is really about something else: that the more we feel isolated in our quarantined surroundings, the more it may be possible to visualize and imagine ourselves being connected.

 

Cappella Romana's Mark Powell opening the concert (Cappella Romana)

 

Is a video feed the same as being there? Of course not. No one is saying that it is. But watching these two concerts, I felt the architecture as well as the music. As happened when I went for a long bike ride along the Willamette River, my spirits and sense of well-being were lifted. Only, I really did ride my bike by the river. I only watched those concerts on a little screen. And that's what I'm getting at: that however difficult it is to set aside our worries and our responsibilities, the long road through these weeks of quarantine requires us to make a series of mental leaps: the knowledge that someday relatively soon our public realm will be restored, our economy will get back on track, and that we will get through this.

Today we're being asked to live more of our lives not just remotely but vicariously: to see a digital connection as more of a primary connection than it did when frequent in-person connections were still possible. That is, like most things, a challenge and an opportunity.

There is so much to be anxious and fearful about right now. And isolation can intensify those fears. But as these concerts prove, at least to me, it is still possible to maintain a connection, or the feeling of a connection, to architecture and people we can't physically reach.

In a way, perhaps it is wishful thinking to say all this. But I did have a streaming experience that transported me more than most, and honestly the sensation made me think of chili peppers.

I used to dislike any spicy food, but eventually, as an adult, something clicked. I began to crave spicy food, even though it makes my forehead sweat to an embarrassing degree. The reason I mention this is because I've noticed that my forehead will also start to sweat when I simply think about spicy food — or more specifically, when I know I'm about to eat some. I can't just conjure sweat automatically, but if the food starts to seem real and attainable in my mind, and I know that habanero salsa is coming, the effect of the capsaicin can come, in theory, without eating at all.

If that's the case, so too can the feeling of being in a place without really being there. It's not easy to conjure, but it is possible. Maybe Vivaldi and Tchaikovsky are not your cup of tea. But it's not about classical music. It's about transporting yourself without leaving home. It's about getting that sweat going.

 

 

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Visiting Waechter Architecture's Blu Dot store, and exploring the Kerr Building's past

Blu Dot's Portland store (Jeremy Bittermann)

 

BY BRIAN LIBBY

A few weeks ago, I visited the new Blu Dot furnishings store as part of its grand opening. Or perhaps I should say I visited the new Blu Dot store in the circa-1921 Kerr Building. But only in being attracted by the store and its interior design did I then learn the building's name and its history, despite admiring it for many years.

The building and the store are right across the street from the better-known Wieden + Kennedy Building at NW 13th and Everett; it's  always been the building you see when exiting W+K itself or Bluehour restaurant, on the building's west side.

The Kerr Building is a handsome brick warehouse that's part of the broader 13th Avenue Historic District: the succession of former warehouse and industrial buildings that includes gems like the Chown Pella Lofts (1915) near 13th & Glisan, the Fisk Tire Company Building (1923) near 12th & Flanders, and the Armour Building (1910) at 13th & Flanders. After the 1905 Lewis & Clark exposition, this one-time residential area quickly became dotted with warehouses and industrial buildings.

 

Kerr Building, Armour Building, Chown Pella Lofts (Brian Libby)

 

As for Blu Dot, it's the first brick-and-mortar retail outlet in Oregon for this Minneapolis-based furnishings brand, which was co-founded in 1997 by John Christakos and Maurice Blanks (with Charlie Lazor) and has become one of America's most admired contemporary furniture brands. In 2018, for example, Blu Dot received a National Design Award from the Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum. The two were on hand for a tour of the store with Ben Waechter, whose firm, Waechter Architecture, designed the store.

Locating in the Pearl District was a no-brainer, Christakos explained, because the neighborhood is a bit of a furniture-store hot spot. "We like to be next door to our competitors," he said. "You buy furniture infrequently, and when you do, it’s nice to park once and be able to hit four or five spots in a row. We don’t want to be the one store that’s across town from that sort of controlled zone. This space was exactly the right size, good architecture. It was not in the best shape when we took it over, but perfect location, good size, good space."

 

Blu Dot founders Maurice Blanks and John Christakos (Cooper Hewitt/Smithsonian)

 

The portion of the building occupied by Blu Dot, essentially a ground-floor space but raised a bit with a loading dock, had previously been partitioned as offices. But much of that had to go. The intent was to uncover this heavy timber-framed building's bones.

"When we all visited, and really probably why we gravitated toward the spaces, was just the beauty of the heavy timber structure, the beauty of the grid, the fact that it’s on the corner so you have daylight from two sides," Ben Waechter explained.

"After we demo’d it, it was like, ‘Wow, that’s really cool. How do we kind of keep that?’" Christakos added.

Waechter has a particular gift for bringing clarity to both interior and exterior spaces. On facades, he uses a minimum of trim to make even simple inexpensive materials look elegant. Indoors, there is often a sense of calm you get from how a whole room, from its floors to the walls to the ceiling, can be made to feel like one container.  Here in this old former 1920s warehouse, he recognized that the timber structure was worth calling attention too, but even after you took down the walls, there was still a lot of clutter, including a mezzanine that obstructed most of the double-height volume, a chunk taken up by the elevator and tenant entrance on Everett, and a bunch of mechanical equipment.

 

 

Blu Dot's Portland store (Jeremy Bittermann)

 

"How can we do a single gesture that incorporates and makes sense of those things that are impeding the beauty of the space in a clear way? Essentially it was making a ribbon around the space," Waechter explained. And sure enough, the signature move of the whole store design is really this curvy partitioning that forms both a kind of curtaining on the mezzanine (overall reduced in size) that hides a lot of that clutter, and also forms portions of the walls.

"You guys really solved a lot of problems with this," Blu Dot co-founder Maurice Blanks told Waechter during our tour. "It looks pretty straightforward, but we wanted it to be clearly separate from the heavy timber building, so the details of it had to be just right."

Both Waechter and the founders used the word "intervention" numerous times as we talked about this curvy wall and mezzanine form, as if aware that it's the first thing one's eye is drawn to as you enter the store. It brings to mind a balance perhaps any retailer is looking for: eye-catching design, but not too eye-catching. "This is a larger intervention for us than most of our stores," Christakos said. "The risk is that it becomes about the architecture and not the furniture. That didn’t happen here. I think it still ends up being a nice, quiet, interesting background. You notice it. It really elevates our stuff. But it’s not foreground."

 

Blu Dot's Portland store (Jeremy Bittermann)

 

Indeed, the gentle curve of Waechter's wall and mezzanine-screening surface becomes the sort of unspooling ribbon that leads one through the store, sometimes peeling back partially to reveal a carved-out furniture display on a platform or at the bank of windows. It looks a little bit like a stretched accordion, as if the whole thing could conceivably expand and retract. Even so, it does not compete with the furniture per se. The furniture is the only thing that isn't white. The floors and walls of the original building match the ribbon-screening, so the sofas and chairs and beds and tables provide the pops of color and texture. They also join with the ribbon as curvy alternatives to the rectilinear architectural container.

"We could have wrapped the outside with straight lines," Waechter explains, "but somehow visually and spatially it wouldn’t be a nice compliment to the rectilinear-ness of the grid."

As I left the Blu Dot store, however, it nagged at me that I didn't know this building's backstory. Luckily, though, the answer was easy to find because the Kerr Building is part of that aforementioned 13th Avenue Historic District, as bequeathed by the National Trust for Historic Preservation. That meant the application can be found online, via the National Park Service, which administers the National Trust program.

This quarter-block site was purchased in 1909 by Alexander Kerr, who co-owned with his the Wadhams and Kerr Bros wholesale grocery company. Under the Monopole and Palace Car labels, Wadhams and Kerr Bros, packaged fruits, vegetables, fish, oysters, jellies, jams, peanut butter, olives, pickles, coffees, teas, spices, extracts, baking powder and other items, much of it in self-sealing mason jars that Kerr had patented. This became part of Kerr's other business located in the building: the Kerr Glass Jar Manufacturing Company (which has been bought and sold many times but survives today as part of the Dublin, Ireland-based Ardagh Group). They also all but invented the practice of shipping fruit juices in concentrate. Alexander Kerr also became a valued local philanthropist, founding the Albertina Kerr Nursery for orphaned children, which today is still in operation as the Albertina Kerr Center (which now serves children and adults with developmental disabilities).

 

 Kerr Building (Brian Libby)

 

However, the Kerr companies were not the only tenants, even at the beginning. One original tenant, for instance, was the Edison Phonograph Company, which occupied the first two floors (with Kerr above). The building was also an early location for the Sherwin-Williams Company. Developer Homer Williams and his company, Williams & Dame, also had their offices here.

The building was designed by the firm of Strong and MacNaughton, but that's somewhat misleading because it actually wasn't an architecture firm but rather engaged in asset management. Ernest Boyd MacNaughton (1880-1960) was trained as an architect and practiced locally many years after emigrating from Boston. From 1907-1910, he partnered with Ellis Lawrence, who went on to become one of Oregon's most esteemed early 20th century architects and founded the University of Oregon's School of Architecture and Allied Arts. But by the time MacNaughton's firm took on this Kerr Building commission, he was only keeping his toe in architecture while Strong and MacNaughton rose as a trust company. Within eight years of the Kerr Building's opening, MacNaughton had become a trustee of First National Bank and in 1932 its president. From 1948-52 he also served as president of Reed College and from 1947-50 was president of the Oregonian Publishing Company.

The building is (to paraphrase the National Register listing) clad in a white-colored brick laid in a stretcher bond and is divided vertically into three sections: the ground level, three upper floors capped with a parapet wall, molding and flat roof. The north and east-facing elevations are divided into six equal bays divided by brick piers. The upper story windows are groups of three double-hung, wood decorative concrete molding at the third-story level.

Next year, the Kerr Building will be celebrating its centennial. Though the Pearl District has gentrified from its days as an industrial district, in some ways perhaps stories like this one represent buildings coming full-circle. Blu Dot furniture is not cheap, but perhaps not quite as expensive as some high-end furniture brands it competes with. Regardless, it's just another commodity being sold here, and in that way not wildly different from phonographs or mason jars or paint, all of which have been associated with Kerr Building owners and tenants. And the architecture is able to endure for generations because it's well-built and flexible, and the combination of brick cladding and large windows is timeless.

 

Blu Dot's Portland store (Jeremy Bittermann)

 

By comparison, once you build cheaply, it's hard to go back and fix that. Look at the city's most famous work of architecture, the Portland Building, which is reopening this month after construction costs of over $100 million. That's for a building originally completed in 1984. The mayor at the time, Frank Ivancie, had campaigned on fiscal restraint and insisted that the Portland Building be built for far less per square foot than a conventional office building. Architect Michael Graves was eager enough to win the design competition that his firm was the only one of three competitors to propose a building for the proposed budget, but in order to do so, the designers and builders had to resort to compromise after compromise, which in turn caused the building to leak repeatedly over the decades, no matter how many times its painted-concrete facade was patched up. Only by completely re-cladding the whole building with an aluminum-covered rain screen system could the problem be solved once and for all.

By the time the Portland Building opened, the Kerr Building was already 63 years old: older than the Portland Building is now. I'm not saying it's better than the Portland Building. In terms of ambition and intent, they couldn't have been more different. One was utilitarian and industrial, the other a government office building packaged as a statement about architecture itself. But there is a kind of tortoise-and-hare theme that seems to emerge when you look at them in tandem.

Ultimately, I'm glad we have both: the fabric building and the attention-seeking confection. Maybe, then, what makes Waechter Architecture's Blu Dot store compelling, at least for me, is that in that curvy accordion partitioning — however functional it may be — the design introduces just a bit of confection to that humble, respectable host.

 

 

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Design calendar: March 1-15

St. Johns Bridge (Brian Libby)

 

BY BRIAN LIBBY

Merchants and Markets:  Historic Yamhill District Tour
Exploring the heart of Portland’s late-nineteenth century commercial district, this Architectural Heritage Center tour visits the Yamhill Historic District and nearby historic buildings of SW Second and Third Avenues. The route is packed with the names of prominent city pioneers who made their mark as merchants, developers and architects as well as providing some of the city’s finest examples of cast iron, Richardsonian Romanesque and Classical buildings. The tour also will visit the Willamette’s first bridge, the first public market, and the city's first Chinatown as we discuss how the district spearheaded the first preservation efforts for Portland’s downtown. Tour meetup location revealed with ticket purchase. 10AM Tuesday, March 3. $20 ($12 for AHC members).

Designing Size-Inclusive Spaces
Designers hold immense power to create spaces that make all people feel seen and welcome. More than a third of the American population is considered very plus-size. So why don’t our offices, restaurants, retail, or public spaces reflect this through size-inclusive design and furniture selection? What does it look like to design an equitable world with a literal seat at the table for everyone? How do we advocate for size inclusion with our project clients and peer designers? Hosted by the American Institute of Architects' Oregon chapter's Committee on Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion, this discussion on size-inclusive design best practices will be presented by Rebecca Alexander, founder and chief executive of AllGo, a startup focused on plus-size accessibility issues, and Hannah Silver of Informal/Function, whose work is focused on creating equitable experiences for people of all abilities in the built environment. Center for Architecture, 403 NW 11th Avenue. 12PM Thursday, March 5. Free.

Walking Tour of Historic St. Johns
St. Johns was a separate, incorporated city from 1902 until it was annexed into the City of Portland in 1915. With a distinctive development history and one of the most beautiful suspension bridges on the West Coast, St Johns has an identity all its own. This Positively Portland Walking Tour will pass though the historic center of St Johns and then make its way down to Cathedral Park for an up close view of the landmark St Johns Bridge. Tour begins at McMenamins St. Johns Pub, 8203 N Ivanhoe Street. 1PM Friday, March 6. $15.

Railroad Architecture and the Northwest: Economics, Ethos, and Culture
Railways were one of the driving forces in the settlement and urbanization of the United States. As a result, rail stations also profoundly impacted the country's architectural legacy. From humble wooden depots that pioneered the concept of franchise architecture to grand urban depots displaying the power of the country's newly-minted late-19th century millionaires (also known as Robber Barons), these structures embody the story of America's Gilded Age. Portland and the Pacific Northwest include fine examples of these structures, and collectively contribute to the understanding of our region's past. Presenter Alexander Benjamin Craghead, author of Railway Palaces of Portland, Oregon, is a historian of technology, representation, and landscape, and teaches in the American Studies program at the University of California, Berkeley. Included in his presentation will be restoration of two of the region's grand urban stations with ties to important works of Italian architecture, as well as theeleventh-hour rescue of the oldest depot in Oregon. Culminating the presentation is a unique look at the history of Portland's landmark Union Station of 1896. Architectural Heritage Center, 701 SE Grand Avenue. 10AM Saturday, March 7. $20 ($12 for AHC members).

Pearl District Walking Tour - A Century of Preservation and Change
Over the last 20 years, the Pearl District has been transformed from industrial enclave and rail yards into one of Portland’s most popular residential, cultural and retail districts. A century ago, the area went through a similar transformation, from a working class housing area at the edge of a marsh to the city’s biggest industrial and warehousing area. Many of Portland’s best known architects of the period designed buildings for important local and national companies. Most of these buildings remain, with their exteriors intact, and new uses inside. But as the recent demolition of the Pacific Northwest College of Art's Feldman Building (a renovated old warehouse) reminds us, the current wave of development could threaten more historic buildings. Tour meetup location revealed with ticket purchase. 10AM Tuesday, March 10. $20 ($12 for AHC members).

The Lloyd District — Then and Now
In the early 1960s, urban renewal created the Lloyd Center shopping mall and Memorial Coliseum. Though not connected, collectively they made the largest sports/entertainment center in the city. Today, the Lloyd District is in transition. On this Positively Portland Walking Tour, Eric Wheeler leads an easy urban stroll in this Northeast Portland neighborhood that the city of Portland hopes to transform into another high density, livable urban enclave. With several high-rise residential projects now completed, the Lloyd District is poised to become Portland's new east side "downtown". The tour will also focus on the stories of two ambitious entrepreneurs, Ben Holladay and Ralph Lloyd, whose legacies live on in name and in spirit. At the end of the tour will be a presentation about the history of the Bonneville Power Association and the legacy of Woody Guthrie in the Pacific Northwest. To pass through the security at BPA, one will need a government-issued photo ID. Tour begins at Temptations Cafe, 1130 NE Holladay Street. 1PM Friday, March 13. $15.

"Number Please" — Portland and the Architecture of the Telephone Exchange
In the early 20th cenury, the development of the telephone created a need for large buildings to house both operators (who manually connected each call) and equipment. Things changed, however, by the by the mid-20th century, as rotary-dial telephones replaced older hand-crank models dependent upon operators. These buildings that had once housed hundreds of workers in Portland were seen as obsolete. Yet today, several Portland area telephone-exchange buildings still exist. The majority are clustered in downtown or are located on the east side, mostly repurposed as offices and often showing little evidence of their original purpose. This Architectural Heritage Center presentation by architectural historian Positively Portland Walking Tours founder Eric Wheeler will provide a short overview of the early years of the telephone industry in Portland and feature several photographic then-and-now comparisons for exchange buildings that for more than 50 years electronically connected commerce and community. Architectural Heritage Center, 701 SE Grand Avenue. 10AM Saturday, March 14. $20 ($12 for AHC members).

Trio Untold at The Gordon House
As a fundraiser for its ongoing preservation, and in a presentation from Portland Jazz Composers Ensemble, the Frank Lloyd Wright-designed Gordon House welcomes the students of Willamette University and PJCE Records recording artists Trio Untold for a two-part concert. Comprised of guitarist Mike Nord, pianist James Miley and percussionist Ryan Biesack, Trio Untold's eponymously-titled debut album was released in in 2018. Following the performance by the Trio, a student performance will take place following a short intermission. VIP ticket holders will also be treated to refreshments and a private museum tour. All funds raised will benefit the nonprofit Gordon House Conservancy. The Gordon House, 869 West Main Street, Silverton. 5PM Saturday, March 14. $25 ($15 for students, $75 for VIP package).

 

 

 

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Favorite architecture of the 2010s (part four): new houses

Ash + Ash (Josh Partee)

 

BY BRIAN LIBBY

It's time to talk houses in this continuing series of posts highlighting some of my architectural favorites of the past decade.

But in this case, If I'm talking great houses, it could refer to a tower, a village, a warehouse, a glass cube, a music box, and in one case not a home per se but a HOMB. Maybe it's my own bias, but I'm often not talking about a house with a huge garage in front. I'm talking about slender but not skinny. I'm talking about clients ranging from John & Yoko to a group of homeless women. I'm talking about new construction and remodels alike.

When I look at my list of favorite single-family residences, it's at 17 projects and counting, and the first thing I notice is that only a handful are single-family houses that are site-built from the ground up on traditional lots and not classified as accessory dwelling units, skinny lots or other types of dwellings. That may say something about my own architectural tastes and interests. I do love a mid-century modern renovation, or bringing an old bungalow alive. Or it might say something about the existing housing stock in Portland. There aren't many vacant residential lots left in Portland proper, and not everyone has the stomach (or wallet) to tear down a perfectly good little house just to build a new one.

For now, let's look at just these new single-family houses. I should specify that I'm restricting the conversation here to houses in the Portland metro area. And as always, this is not a list of the six best. There are always great projects out there that I miss. (Please tell me what they are!) These are just five I got to see and really liked.

Let's start in no particular order with Ash + Ash by Hennebery Eddy Architects. It's the home of firm co-founder Tim Eddy.

 

Ash + Ash (Josh Partee)

 

Completed in 2014 and winner of AIA Portland's 2030 Challenge design award for its sustainable features, it's the recipient of a LEED Platinum rating due to its highly-insulated thermal envelope, geo-exchange heat pump system, under-floor radiant heating, a rainwater reclamation system with for domestic and potable use, triple-glazed windows and deep overhangs.

But none of that occurred to me when I visited Eddy's home so much as its resemblance to the iconic Case Study Houses constructed in mid-century Los Angeles. The use of naturally stained wood cladding to compliment the white stucco on the exterior helps mark this as a Pacific Northwest home, but the house's glass and horizontality still for me harken back to those gems.

I also was a fan of the Music Box Residence by Scott|Edwards Architecture. The first thing I always remember about the house is that it was designed for two musicians named John and Yoko. Alas, it's obviously not that John and Yoko, but the house itself is what you might call a Double Fantasy. 

 

Music Box Residence (Pete Eckert)

 

The clients both perform as classical musicians and tutor young musicians. “It’s two boxes with a lot of glass connecting them,” firm principal Rick Berry told me for a Gray magazine article. “You’ve got kids, a family, different types of music going on. There’s so much that has to go on in the space, so there’s a lot of flexibility.”

Another favorite from the last ten years was Tower House by Waechter Architecture, completed in 2013. Constructed on the steep slope of a ravine, a lot that had never been developed because it was thought to be unbuildable, the footprint is only about 538 square feet. But instead of cantilevering outward, the Tower House, as its name indicates, goes upward. I love that while it's an unassailably crisp, contemporary design, what it most resembles is a medieval fortified tower. Even so, the exterior cladding in black corrugated metal, with radiused corners to eliminate the need for corner trim, is vintage Waechter.

The four story house mostly treats each floor as its own room, so the design doesn't feel confining. The living room and kitchen occupy the top two floors to take advantage of the view, while the master bedroom is nestled at the bottom. Because it's such a small footprint, the natural light is amazing, and so are the views.

 

Tower House (Lara Swimmer)

 

Of course this is just one of several houses by Waechter Architecture from 2010-2019 that I could have named, and as it happened, we're not quite done with the firm as it relates to this series of posts; you'll see them again in a post about ADUs and alternative-lot houses. And I could have picked a couple other houses by the firm on traditional lots. In fact, I'd argue that Waechter Architecture has been the premiere single-family home designer of the decade in Portland. There are other individual houses by other architects that are just as compelling, but to my mind nobody built so many excellent houses as Waechter in the 2010s.

Next there's the Rahman Residence by Scott Pitek. The lot in North Portland that Pitek had to work with was nearly ten times the 500-square-foot footprint of the Tower House. But it did already have a house on it. Instead of tearing down the circa-1919 bungalow, Pitek's design took advantage of the fact that the original house was situated at the back of the lot and simply went up next to it. It wasn't built on an expensive budget, either: about $122 per square foot.

Rahman wanted a modern house that could also fit unobtrusively into the existing neighborhood of homes built between the 1890s and the 1930s. And that it does. Completed in 2012 and clearly of our time, this gabled house has a classic feel to it, and the steep pitch of the roof allows its attic to become habitable space. What's more, Pitek's design makes inexpensive materials like Hardie panel siding sing by employing a simple lap that gives the facade texture.

"The first thing I did was spend a month with her just trying to understand her, her goals, what her style and aesthetic was—not just in on a superficial level but her aesthetic of living," Pitek says. "We also asked how could that align with creating a mutual house? I say ‘mutual’ in the sense that it’s appealing to anybody, it’s laid out in a way that’s flexible, you can add walls in certain locations, and it’s logical. We wanted to create a shell that she could live in but that at the same time had no market detraction if she ever wanted to sell it. That, basically, was the goal."

"We thought, What are some of the really simple, classic forms of structures, and there was the simple gabled-roof house," Pitek explained in a 2014 Dwell article by William Lamb. "She didn’t want to build a basement, so we thought, okay, a gabled-roof house is great because you’ve got all your storage up in the attic."

 

Rahman Residence (Steven Scardina)

 

It's a bit of a stretch to include the Karuna House by Holst Architecture in a list of Portland or even Portland metropolitan area residences. I mean, it's in the country outside Newberg, in Yamhill County. I grew up near these parts, in McMinnville, and I never think of these towns as being part of Portland. Yet the reality is they've become a bedroom community for the city, and so I'm using that as an excuse to include what's an incredibly green home.

In fact, Karuna House is the first building to be receive a Platinum LEED for Homes rating from the US Green Building Council, achieve Passive House PHIUS+ certification, and registration with the Swiss MINERGIE rating system. It's actually the first MINERGIE-certified building in North America. All this, and it's a net-zero energy house too, thanks to a large onsite array of solar panels. Astonishingly, thanks to its robust building envelope and high-performance windows, the house uses 90 percent less energy than a conventional home designed to code.

 

Karuna House (Jeremy Bittermann)

 

"We knew we wanted to push the boundaries in terms of design, which you don’t see as often with passive houses, especially in the US," Holst co-founder Jeff Stuhr explained in a Gray magazine article. "That, right off the bat, was appealing to us. Could we break the code, so to speak?"

"Meeting these different rating systems' strictures at the same time added an almost ridiculous degree of difficulty, and even just building to Passive House standards alone impacted a lot of design decisions. "There was quite a bit of complex modeling done with where the materials had to come together, and what we needed to do to hold this stuff without creating huge thermal bridges between inside and outside. In school we learned bout tectonics and expressing the structure," Stuhr added in a Portland Architecture Q&A. "In Passive House it’s not impossible but you have to be much more deliberate, and much more careful about the envelope and what becomes interior versus exterior structure, almost to the point where they never touch. You’ll see in the living room or bedroom where we might have buried the steel on the outside wall within the window wall. We had to keep it completely inside because steel is such a terrible conductor."

One other house to achieve Passive House certification comes to mind: the Skidmore Passivhaus by In Situ Architecture, led architect Jeff Stern. Somewhat uncommonly for a Passive House, it's actually comprised of two separate buildings, accessed through an unheated passageway. But this is a live-work scenario, so it makes sense. And for a house that's all about staying tightly sealed, there is nevertheless a strong connection to the outdoors, thanks to large expanses of glass.

 

Skidmore Passivhaus (Jeremy Bittermann)

 

This house is so well insulated, in fact, that Stern and his wife, who occupy the house, barely even need any heating. "It's the equivalent of four hair driers and yet we were perfectly comfortable," the architect said in a 2014 Portland Architecture interview.

Looking at this quintet of houses, what do they have in common? The first thing I noticed is that four out of five have flat roofs. All five are generally comprised of a whole lot of rectangles. But then again, aside from pitched roofs, aren't most all houses? Weirdly given its uncommonness as a design feature, two of these houses are entered via small bridges. Two of them alternate beautiful natural-wood cladding and white stucco, and two have some kind of charred or darkly stained wood cladding, but two make use of more inexpensive, utilitarian siding materials.

Next I plan to write about some of the stand-alone houses I omitted here: ADUs, etc. But if there's a great house I've missed, please let me know. There have already been a few stragglers among the offices and institutional buildings I've written about for this favorite-architecture-of-the-2010s series, so these lists can always be amended. The point is to share and revisit designs that are compelling and endure.

Funnily enough, I've never owned a home of my own, and since leaving my parents' McMinnville house for college in 1990, I've never even lived in a rented house. In all those 30 years, it's been dorm rooms at first and then a succession of apartments. But you know what? We just got pre-approved. Single-family houses are destined to no longer comprise such a high percentage of dwellings. In the future, more and more will live in higher-density housing. Yet the pull of one's own house remains strong. I can't wait to read my book on the front porch.

 

 

 

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Design calendar: February 16-29

Liberia Hotel, Monrovia, Liberia, 1965 (Wikimedia Commons)

 

BY BRIAN LIBBY

Monrovia Modern: Urban Form and Political Imagination in Liberia
Like cities across the global south, the Liberian capitol city of Monrovia is dominated by the ruins of modernist urban forms. The International Style once marked the city as cosmopolitan and contemporary. Today, many Monrovians inhabit the remains of this infrastructure in unintended, improvised and transitory ways. Architects, urban designers, anthropologists, historians, geographers, photographers and filmmakers have all seen in these novel attempts to inhabit ruins a new popular politics of the city. Drawing on fieldwork with male ex-combatants in Monrovia, many of whom live as squatters in the city’s ruined infrastructure, this talk and multimedia presentation by Danny Hoffman, who chairs African Studies in the Jackson School of International Studies at the University of Washington, is an effort to understand the limits of this emergent popular politics. Portland State University, exact location undisclosed. 4:30PM Monday, February 17. Free.

BIM in Wood Construction
This workshop hosted by the TallWood Design Institute, an interdisciplinary research collaborative between Oregon State University and the University of Oregon, is an introduction to IFC, an Open BIM technology platform meant to enable the exchange of information between different software tools, in order accelerate input and reduce transmission errors. Presenter Michael Marzy of design software firm Dietrich's will explain the basic functions and the necessary setup to use IFC effectively. From dimensions to materials, from organizational to business information, from the first drawing on a napkin to the CNC machine output, the possibilities will be demonstrated with successful case studies and examples. Oregon State University, Portland Center. 555 SW Morrison Street. 1PM Tuesday, February 18. Free.

On the Boards: Learning Environments in Process
Join the Association for Learning Environments for an evening of presentations by school designers and facility planners as they share projects that are currently in the design process. Each presenter will share a single upcoming project, in an abbreviated Pecha Kucha style slide format: 10 slides x 20 seconds per slide. Projects can be at any point in the design process, from concept to construction documents. IBI Group, 907 SW Harvey Milk Street. 5:30PM Tuesday, February 18. $15 (free for ALE members).

Resilience, Passive Design and Smart Grid Optimization
Hosted by the Energy Trust of Oregon and presented by Forest Tanier-Gesner, a building performance specialist for local engineering firm PAE, this edition of the Building Energy Simulation Forum training series will cover critical synergies that are emerging among renewables, energy storage and passive design strategies that take buildings and electrical grids into a reduced carbon future while also supporting resilience. Whether planning for business continuity or disruptive events, participants will learn about energy load reduction and backup power use possibilities based on Oregon climate analysis. Mercy Corps, 45 SW Ankeny Street. 12PM Wednesday, February 19. Free.

History of Oregon’s Energy Code and ASHRAE Standard 90.1
Beginning in 2019, the State of Oregon is moving away from a highly modified energy code to a new, quicker adoption cycle using the latest version of ANSI/ASHRAE/IES Standard 90.1. For designers, the format of the new code requires some changes to design documents. And with a quicker adoption cycle, designers can look for a new code within one year of the release of the latest 90.1, which means another energy code update in late 2020. In this course, presented by the Construction Specifications Institute, presenter Mark R. Heizer of Oregon’s Building Codes Division will review COMcheck and other compliance materials required for submission, as well as an overview of how the move to 90.1 effects designers and spec writers. 920 SW Sixth Avenue, Suite 1300. 6:00PM Wednesday, February 19. $10 ($5 for students).

Bold Type Talks: Grit
"Grit" is the theme in this latest edition of the bi-monthly discussion series Bold Type Talks, which seeks to inspire and empower female-identifying and non-binary Portlanders as a forum where women in architecture, art, and design can meet and inspire one another. Attendees will hear some inspiring stories from tenacious people, about how to muster through tough times and keep one's long-term goals in sight, even when the going gets tough. Then, the group will create a game plan to remind each other of short and long-term goals, pitch ideas and get some collective feedback & encouragement. My Financial Girlfriend, 1455 NW Irving Street, Suite 200. 6PM Thursday, February 20. Suggested donation.

Sellwood Bridge to Powers Marine Park Tour
Powers Marine Park is a little-known city park that runs north-south for one mile between the Willamette River and the Lake Oswego Trolley line. This Positively Portland walking tour will make its way west over the Sellwood Bridge and down to the trail in the park to complete a full-circle route. Tour begins at The Muddy Rudder Public House, 8105 SE Seventh Avenue. 1PM Friday, February 21. $15.

Care Practices: An Exchange
How is care sited and how can it be scaled? As part of an ongoing initiative in design for spatial justice, The University of Oregon School of Architecture & Environment is hosting a two-day exchange and workshop on care practices in architectural design, preservation, and landscape architecture. Examining social and material precarity together from the intimate to the systemic, the event will engage with the work of repair, relief, recovery, maintenance, access, and support toward more critical forms of sustainability. This introductory reception will include presentations from Menna Agha, a visiting assistant professor of architecture at UO and a Fellow in its Design for Spatial Justice program; Jonathan Beaver, a principal with landscape architecture firm 2.ink Studio; Gail Dubrow, a professor of architecture, landscape architecture, public affairs and planning at the University of Minnesota; Michael Geffel a visiting professor of landscape architecture at UO, and Andrew Santa Lucia, an assistant professor at Portland State University and director of Office Andorus. University of Oregon, White Stag Block, 70 NW Couch Street, Fifth Floor. 6:45PM Friday, February 21. Free.

Care Practices: The Workshop
How is care sited and how can it be scaled? As part of an ongoing initiative in design for spatial justice, The University of Oregon School of Architecture & Environment is hosting a two-day exchange and workshop on care practices in architectural design, preservation, and landscape architecture. Examining social and material precarity together from the intimate to the systemic, the event will engage with the work of repair, relief, recovery, maintenance, access, and support toward more critical forms of sustainability. The second day features a workshop entitled "What is a Recovery-Enhancing Urban Environment?" Presenters will include Cory Parker, a visiting assistant professor of landscape architecture and a Fellow in the Design for Spatial Justice program at UO; Chad Randl an assistant professor at UO and director of its historic preservation Program; Gail Dubrow, a Univeristy of Minnesota professor of architecture, landscape architecture, public affairs and planning; Daniel Klinkert, the Old Town Community Association's community development director; Cathleen Corlett of Corlett Landscape Architecture; and Scott Kerman, executive director of Blanchet House. University of Oregon, White Stag Block, 70 NW Couch Street, Fifth Floor. 10:00AM Saturday, February 22. Free.

Uncovering Barriers and Benefits of Net Zero Schools
Energy Trust hosts this talk by Dr. Ihab Elzeyadi, who has been involved in the design, construction and research of high-performance buildings for more than 25 years as a University of Oregon architecture professor and director of its High Performance Environments Laboratory. As a Net Zero Fellow, the goal of his research is to offer owners and design teams evidence-based data to support decision-making when developing net-zero schools. His research will inform various stakeholders, school districts and economic analysts in the key barriers and benefits to planning K-12 building design. Mercy Corps, 45 SW Ankeny Street. 12PM Tuesday, February 25. Free.

Getting to LEED Zero Energy and LEED Zero Carbon
How do architects and building-team members take LEED and high-performing building to the next level to mitigate the impacts of climate change? This workshop from the Cascadia chapter of the US Green Building Council demonstrates how LEED Zero supports expands the verification life-cycle of high performing buildings, while identifying key energy and carbon management concepts reflected in LEED version 4.1. Oregon Conservation Center, 821 SE 14th Avenue. 1PM Tuesday, February 25. $100 ($70 for employees of USGBC-member firms).

Material Health and Transparency in Affordable Housing
Co-hosted by the Emerging Professionals Committee and the Sustainability Committee of the Construction Specification Institute's Portland chapter comes this discussion from interior designer Kim Stanley of Carleton Hart Architecture. Stanley's firm has completed numerous sustainably designed affordable housing projects. Carleton Hart Architecture, 830 SW 10th Avenue, #200. 5PM Wednesday, February 26. Free.

Architecture 2030 Working Group
Join the American Institute of Architects' Oregon chapter and the Energy Trust's New Buildings program for a discussion on how Oregon firms are tracking and meeting Architecture 2030 goals through the AIA’s Design Data Exchange reporting tool. This working group meeting will focus on the successes and challenges for firms implementing a 2030 reporting process. AIA Center for Architecture, 403 NW 11th Avenue. 12PM Thursday, February 27. Free.

Van Evera Bailey Fellowship Celebration
The Architecture Foundation of Oregon and the Oregon Community Foundation annually award the Van Evera Bailey Fellowship to practicing architects and related professionals in order to advance their professional development and make greater contributions to their profession and community. In this talk, architect Jennifer Wright of Telford + Brown Studio Architecture, a VEB Fellow, will discuss how she researched and established construction workshops for women in architecture, further addressing gender inequity within the architecture industry. Two recently awarded Fellows, Jackie Santa Lucia and Harley Cowan, will discuss their plans. Santa Lucia, a sole practitioner architect, is using the fellowship to expand Your Street Your Voice, an immersive program for high school students to learn about the intersection of architecture and social justice, and design spaces that reflect their communities. Cowan, an architect and photographer, will use a large format camera to document architecture in Oregon that is at risk or in need of documentation.  AIA Center for Architecture, 403 NW 11th Avenue. 5PM Thursday, February 27. Free.

Architectural Styles of Portland Workshop
This Architectural Heritage Center workshop hosted by Arciform's Anne De Wolf will demonstrate that Portland’s architecture styles are wide and varied and ready to be discovered Attendees will learn to identify architectural styles like Victorian, which is defined by verticality and formality, and Prairie, with its low-pitched roofs, deep overhangs with boxed eaves, and extensive porches. Architectural Heritage Center, 701 SE Grand Avenue. 5:30PM Thursday, February 27. $10.

Craig L. Wilkins: The Age of the Activist Architect
Join Craig L. Wilkins, the Pietro Belluschi Distinguished Visiting Professor in the University of Oregon's College of Design and a fellow in its Design for Spatial Justice program, for a talk entitled "The Age of the Activist Architect." When he's not at UO, Wilkins is a lecturer in architecture at the University of Michigan’s Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning. A recipient of the 2017 National Design Award from the Cooper-Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum, Wilkins is a self-described hip-hop architectural theorist, architect, artist, academic, and activist. His creative practice specializes in engaging communities in collaborative and participatory design processes. The former director of the Detroit Community Design Center, he currently is creative director of the Wilkins Project, a social justice and strategic design alliance that provides architectural, urban design and planning services, public interest design solutions, and expertise in engaged public discourse. His practice includes both written and built work. Wilkins is particularly interested in the field of public interest design and the production of various forms of space; understanding publically accessible and responsive design can radically transform the trajectory of lives and environments, especially for those on the margins of society. University of Oregon, White Stag Block, 70 NW Couch Street. 5PM Friday, February 28. Free.

 

 

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Projections of light: a conversation with artist Laura Fritz

Laura Fritz's "Convocation" (Jeff Jahn)

 

BY BRIAN LIBBY

I first began following the work of Portland artist Laura Fritz over a decade ago. With her months-long exhibit at the Portland Art Museum coming to a close on February 23, I wanted to spotlight her work while there's still time to see it.

"Spotlight" actually has more than one meaning in this case.

The Fritz exhibit I saw back in 2009 and reviewed for The Oregonian was an installation at Southeast Portland's New American Art Union called "Evident" that consisted of little more than a projector beam of light in a dark room, but the more one observed the small details, the more mysterious and meticulous her work seemed. There was a wardrobe in the corner, its door slightly ajar. The projector itself was covered with by box with a pattern of circular holes cut into its sides and a mirror inside the box angled in front of the lens that multiplied the effect, sending beams onto all four walls. And while the beams at first appeared to be clear patterns of light, in time it became clear that Fritz was using abstracted images of insects for her footage. It was if she was introducing something organic into a clean room.

At once, Fritz's work was all about conjuring a mood, and she used a fascinating blend of minimalist architectural sensibility, auteur-driven cinema and an entomology as her vocabulary. As a former visual art and movie writer, I guess I'm always drawn to people who blend those influences with an interest in design and architecture. So I decided to ask Fritz a few questions about her art and inspirations.

PORTLAND ARCHITECTURE: Has film always been a passion of yours? I'd love to hear about a few that have influenced you as an artist. Hitchcock and particularly The Birds quickly come to mind: not just the swarming but that Hitchcockian sense of menace. And of course Kubrick seems like another clear reference point, not just in this show but past exhibits of yours: something about the cold meticulousness. Are there other filmmakers who have played such roles? I wondered about David Lynch, for example: another filmmaker with a highly idiosyncratic vision born out of menace. But that may be a little to surreal. Jeff mentioned that your favorite film is Harold and Maude, and that seems less intuitive for me as an influencer, although of course it's another great movie.

LAURA FRITZ: I’ve always had an interest in the psychology and setting of mood in spaces, which correlates to both film and architecture. When I first headed to college, I was interested in pursuing interior design, but I realized that I didn’t enjoy drafting all that much and I didn’t want to create a typical kind of utilitarian space. I had previously developed an interest in set design from when I had acted in plays as a child. The changing of the scenes on stage just by switching out a few pieces of furniture and placing the items strategically for the audience to view really intrigued me. I loved how just a few details, and lighting, could have such a complete effect on the mood and bring the audience to a new understanding of time and place.

As far as film-makers, I wouldn’t say I’m directly influenced by very many specifically. Hitchcock’s The Birds made an impact on me, though. The build-up of suspense with the menacing sight of so many birds congregating, and especially the silent space surrounding them, was something I kept in mind ever since I first saw the movie as a child.

 

"The Birds" (1963, Universal Pictures Company Inc.)

 

Surprisingly, I never watched anything by David Lynch until after I had already made my first video installation, "Section 1," which involved a moth pacing in circles in a flickering white space. After people saw this piece, they kept telling me I needed look into David Lynch, and when I finally did, I was really hooked on Twin Peaks.  When Twin Peaks had first come out, I was in college and had heard of it, but didn’t own a TV and was spending most of my time working in the studio anyway. 

Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey really made an impression on me with its use of space and silence, and the unknown. The scene at the end, where the main character is put in the white space made to look like a fake French Colonial room, and especially the fact that his every move was under complete observation, was so creepy and haunting to me. In fact, I remember the feeling more than the details of the room and this is a sensibility I carried to my work.

 

"2001: A Space Odyssey" (MGM)

 

I also feel like when I combine this PAM show with other past exhibits of yours I've seen, there's something to be said for a kind of cinematic influence that goes beyond specific movies. It feels like you also may be influenced by projection equipment itself. I imagine that like me, you grew up with analog slide projectors at home and film projectors in school classrooms. Is there something about that analog equipment you respond to? Or aside from the equipment, what about the simple act of projection itself? Just the act of casting a limited band of light in an otherwise dark space is an artistic act of its own that can be manipulated and be an inspiration, right? Is that true for you?

It's not so much the projection equipment I’m interested in, but the light itself and how it can really influence the viewer’s perception. It can highlight and draw the attention in a certain direction, obscure, or even become a sculptural material. It can also influence expectations, such as making it the subject seem imposing or vulnerable. For instance, when a subject has a small spot light focused on it, it appears more exposed and could suggest that it is there to be observed by us or that something may happen to it. But when a piece is lit from within, such as [the] video installations "Convocation" or "Alvarium 2" in my APEX show, or some of my cast objects that catch light and glow, the subject then appears to almost have a life of its own. It becomes something we might feel the need to watch out for, and could make us feel more vulnerable in the space.

In some ways, the structures in my video installations, which often resemble some kind of hybrid between scientific equipment and ergonomically awkward domestic furnishings, actually take on the role of the projection equipment when video projects from within. Instead of looking like straightforward functional equipment, it feels more Gothic, yet clean and minimal. It serves to further re-focus the viewers’ attention to themselves and their relationship to the space and the apparent goings on in the room.

 

Fritz with "Convocation" (Jeff Jahn)

 

You grew up around a lot of mid-century modern architecture. I've been writing about some mid-century modern house designs lately, and the thing I keep coming back to is a sense of horizontality. But when I think about larger-scale modern architecture, like the Mies building at Drake you mentioned or Memorial Coliseum here in Portland, what is compelling to me is all the light and wide-open volume. What do you respond to in mid-century architecture?

I think what I respond to the most is the contrasts, which balance and bring out the best in all of the elements. A couple examples are the glow of light through glass and the way heavier materials compress open spaces. The voids open up questions and possibilities. Then there is balance, such as in Mies van der Rohe’s Meredith Hall at Drake University, of a horizontally oriented building with vertical windows that is stunning when contrasted against the snow or the grass alike. The proportions and lines really stand out since there is a general lack of ornamentation. Combining this with the organic can be a very powerful contrast as well. One example is the Paul V. Galvin Library by Skidmore, Owings and Merrill (with Walter Netsch as lead designer) at the Illinois Institute of Technology, which is covered by foliage. In my show, and my work overall, I contrast the controlled minimalist aspects of design with the organic. In contrast, the organic elements, such as the movement of bees or a murmuration of birds, may appear to be chaotic, but they are actually adhering to a different system that is not man-made. Both bees and birds are under increasing pressure as human construction continues to encroach on their environment. That tension and empathy really interests me.

 

Galvin Library (Étienne Taburet), Meredith Hall (Illinois Institute of Technology)

 

Also, when I look at your PAM show, I feel like I see a reverence for other historic architectural styles, like how "Specimen AO38" is reminiscent of perhaps a Gothic cathedral or an old schoolhouse. Does that ring true?

I was thinking a lot about church architecture, shrines, and stupas when I designed the enclosure for "Specimen." Since the installation is in such a large room with soaring ceilings, I wanted to direct the attention to the tiny object, or specimen, and elevate its importance while at the same time protect it from handling. The somewhat arcane structure that I built to frame "Specimen A038" evokes Victorian and Gothic Revival architecture and spiritualism. With limited viewpoints and a focused spotlight above, much like an oculus, it is reverent and troubling at the same time, and also feels scientifically engineered. Organic technology is present.

 

"Specimen A038" (Ben Cort, Jeff Jahn)

 

"Angular Wall Piece" also creates a Gothic chapel feel, especially with the cathedral ceiling of the Belluschi-designed room. I chose to have all of the skylights covered except for one, just above the piece, to accentuate the verticality and be somewhat suggestive, but not explicit about what the object actually could be. There have been several interpretations, such as crucifix, doorbell, resting bird or bat, or some sort of omniscient being.

 

"Angular Wall Piece" (Jeff Jahn)

 

I know in the catalog interview you talked with curator Grace Kook-Anderson about making that Belluschi-designed space in the Portland Art Museum your own by manipulating the skylights and other moves to establish your own atmosphere. But did this experience, of using the building as a backdrop and inspiration, impact how you see this work of architecture, or Belluschi in general? When the exhibit closes, will you feel differently about his design(s) than before the exhibit opened?

As a space, the gallery is very idiosyncratic and required many visits to get a feeling for how to best use it.  I have a very intuitive process.  I made multiple prototypes and foam core models and brought them in on several occasions to see how they felt in the space.  I wanted to make sure the proportions worked with the architectural details in the most optimal way.  There were some features of the space that I initially didn’t want to highlight because I didn’t think they would work well with my installation, but I ended up incorporating them into the overall design and grew to like them.

An important aspect of Belluschi’s designs are the use of light.  One thing I admired about another of his buildings nearby, Zion Lutheran Church, is the use of compressed light, which is something I often use in my own work and initially came into contact with in Paul Schweikher’s buildings.  My ceiling-based video installation, "Convocation," functions by compressing and releasing light in the form of video projection at various eye levels on all four walls of the APEX gallery. The quiet dimness of the room, due to closing off the skylights, sets off the haunting swarm video footage of murmurating swifts surrounded by white light.

 

Zion Lutheran Church (Jeff Jahn)

 

When I designed the video’s enclosure, I made numerous models to test out the shape, settling on the five-sided structure that resulted with angles nearly mirroring those of the pitch of the ceiling.  Through a series of studio studies, I had determined that a four-sided structure would be dull and six sides would look toy-like or too closely resemble a honeycomb.  Very few things are built with five sides, so this gave it a kind of arcane otherness.  The way the paired circles of video punctuates the space is almost musical, slightly like the rhythmic way Belluschi built the punctuations of light in the otherwise heavy walls of Zion Lutheran church. 

I also mix the cues of the scientific, sacred, and domestic so, unlike an architect or an interior designer, I’m unmooring the programmatic cues of the space.  This gives the space a surreal or supernatural feeling and leaves space for the viewer to conduct some investigation of their own devising.  The viewer gets to complete the circle.

 

 

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Design calendar: February 3-15

Last year's Portland Winter Light Festival (Brian Libby)

 

BY BRIAN LIBBY

Daniel Toole: Tight Urbanism
Portland architect Daniel Toole will be on hand as part of the University of Oregon's ongoing Portland lecture series to discuss his 2010 book Tight Urbanism, which documents travels in American, Australian and Japanese cities to explore and document their alleyway architecture. Toole, who received his undergraduate architecture degree from the University of Oregon and a master's degree from Harvard University's Graduate School of Design, previously worked for Portland's Allied Works and Tuscon's Rick Joy before founding Daniel Toole Works LLC in 2013. University of Oregon, White Stag Block, 70 NW Couch Street. 5:30PM Monday, February 3. Free.

Structural Glass Design of the Seattle Space Needle
This monthly meeting of the Portland Building Enclosure Council features Richard Green, founder and owner of Green Facades LLC, a specialist facade consultancy, design and engineering service in Seattle. In this presentation, Green will share the design principles being developed for the American Society for Testing and Materials' Structural Use of Glass standard, how they were implemented on the Seattle Space Needle, and how these new standards will allow architects and engineers to achieve bolder designs with lower risks. Green is currently the technical chair for the ASTM Structural Glass Committee. Mercy Corps, 45 SW Ankeny Street. 12PM Tuesday, February 4. Free.

InProcess with West of West & Parallel Studio
As part of the InProcess quarterly lecture series presented by the American Institute of Architects that explores the creative process of local architects, designers, makers, and creators comes this talk from West of West's Clayton Taylor and Parallel Studio's Ethan Rose. West of West emerged from over ten years of professional collaboration between Clayton Taylor and Jai Kumaran. The firm has offices in Portland and Los Angeles, and its portfolio includes an in-progress restoration of the Wells Fargo Center. Parallel Studio is a sound-focused design firm specializing in environmental and interactive sonic experiences. The firm has created branded environments for clients such as Microsoft, Nike, Dolby, and the University of Oregon. AIA Center for Architecture, 403 NW 11th Avenue. 5:30PM Tuesday, February 4. Free.

Portland Winter Light Festival
Now in its fifth year, the Portland Winter Light Festival returns with a vibrant mix of light-based art installations across the city. Presented by the nonprofit Willamette Light Brigade, last year's festival showcased over 100 illuminated art installations and over 60 performances and live events, all attended over its three days by 150,000 guests. This year's fest will once again concentrate most installations near OMSI on the east side and the Hawthorne Bridge head on the west side, but there will also be installations and events held throughout the city. Various locations. From sunset Thursday-Saturday, February 6-8. Free.

Boutique Hotels Walking Tour
New hotels in re-purposed historic buildings continue to be popular in the heart of Old Portland. This Positively Portland Walking Tour event will include visits to several new additions, beginning at the newly minted Kex Portland located just east of the Burnside Bridge, then continuing into Old Town/Chinatown to view The Hoxton, The Harlow, and the Society Hotel. Tour begins at KEX Portland, 100 NE Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard. 1PM Friday, February 7. $15.

Railroad Architecture and the Northwest: Economics, Ethos, and Culture
Railways were one of the driving forces in the settlement and urbanization of the United States. As a result, rail stations also profoundly impacted the country's architectural legacy. From humble wooden depots that pioneered the concept of franchise architecture to grand urban depots displaying the power of the country's newly-minted late-19th century millionaires (also known as Robber Barons), these structures embody the story of America's Gilded Age. Portland and the Pacific Northwest include fine examples of these structures, and collectively contribute to the understanding of our region's past. Presenter Alexander Benjamin Craghead, author of Railway Palaces of Portland, Oregon, is a historian of technology, representation, and landscape, and teaches in the American Studies program at the University of California, Berkeley. Included in his presentation will be restoration of two of the region's grand urban stations with ties to important works of Italian architecture, as well as theeleventh-hour rescue of the oldest depot in Oregon. Culminating the presentation is a unique look at the history of Portland's landmark Union Station of 1896. Architectural Heritage Center, 701 SE Grand Avenue. 10AM Saturday, February 8. $20 ($12 for AHC members).

 

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Remembering Saul Zaik, last of the midcentury-modern greats

Saul Zaik, 2014 (Brian Libby)

 

BY BRIAN LIBBY

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

"You will not be forgotten."

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

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

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

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

 

Zaik in an undated photo (Legacy.com)

 

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

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

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

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

 

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

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

 

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

 

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

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

 

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

 

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

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

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

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

 

"Architect Saul Zaik" (Bob Zaikoski)

 

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

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

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

 

 

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

Works Progress Architecture's Slate (Brian Libby)

 

BY BRIAN LIBBY

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

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

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

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

Expose Yourself to Help

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

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

 

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

 

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

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

 

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

 

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

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

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

 

Woody Guthrie Place (Josh Partee)

 

Bedrock Goes Modern

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

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

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

Wintour Light

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

 

Cosmopolitan Condominiums (Jeremy Bittermann)

 

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

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

Meet Me at the Plaza

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

 

Portland Plaza (Brian Libby)

 

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

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

Joys in the Hood

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

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

 

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

 

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

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

 

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

 

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

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

 

Origami (Waechter Architecture)

 

Bionic Timber

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

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

 

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

 

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

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

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

 

Framework (Lever Architecture)

 

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

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

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

 

 

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

Providence Park expansion (Jeremy Bittermann)

 

BY BRIAN LIBBY

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

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

Park Life

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

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

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

 

Providence Park expansion (Brian Libby)

 

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

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

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

Refresh as First Step

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

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

Memorial Coliseum refresh (Brian Libby)

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

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

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

Smaller Stage, Big Impact

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

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

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

 

Pickathon 2016 and 2019 (Pickathon)

 

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

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

Stuttgart on the Willamette

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

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

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

 

Karl Miller Center (Brian Libby)

 

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

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

Speaking of PSU

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

 

Viking Pavilion (Brian Libby)

 

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

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

Speaking of Vikings

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

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

 

Nordia House (Jeff Amram)

 

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

Community of Books

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

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

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

 

Vancouver Community Library (Miller Hull)

 

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

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

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

Ulysses' Opus

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

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

 

Grant High School (Benjamin Benschneider Photography)

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

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

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

 

 

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Design calendar: January 16-31

The former Multnomah Hotel (Embassy Suites by Hilton)

 

BY BRIAN LIBBY

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

Portland Japanese Garden Cultural Crossing (Brian Libby)

 

BY BRIAN LIBBY

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

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

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

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

 

Turning Japanese

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

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

 

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

 

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

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

 

Walk This Way

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