For much of the last decade, the Pearl District has seen a succession of mixed-use condos built within the neighborhood while just across Burnside, the West End has, aside from a small project here or there, remained relatively stagnant. That changed, however, [...]
The Building Owners and Managers Association (BOMA) has announced the winners of Portland’s 2009 Office Energy Showdown. Now in its third year, the Showdown recognizes Portland-area office buildings that have made significant achievements in energy efficiency.
Participation saw a nearly 30 percent increase in the number of participants from [...]
This fall China has been on the brain of Portland's art and design community. Taking a cue from the Portland Art Museum's "China Design Now" exhibit, which surveys the latest in design, fashion and graphic design from China, the next installment in our Designs [...]
In the opinion section of today's Oregonian, architect Michael Willis takes a heartfelt stand against the ongoing stigma of public housing.
The Willis essay is actually a response to a previous op-ed piece written by Ray Hallberg, who criticized the Housing Authority of Portland' [...]
Imagine if there was a way to put the Portland area's countless unemployed architects and construction workers back to work. And while you're imagining, suppose this plan stemmed from an already-existing city program that has simply been shelved for the last four years. And finally, imagine that this endeavor would [...]
Recently I got together with the architects from local firm Architecture Office to hear about a proposed design for the Muslim Community Center of Portland.
The mosque would be home to the city's oldest Islamic congregation, formed in 1969, and is to be located' [...]
Three finalists have been announced in a Portland State University-administered design competition on behalf of the Portland Fire Bureau, the Portland Firefighters Association David Campbell Memorial Committee for the creation of a new memorial. It will be built on the Eastbank Esplanade beside the northeast [...]
This month the Rose Quarter Citizens Advisory Committee will begin accepting proposals for how to re-invigorate Memorial Coliseum (the latter of which is pictured above in an early rendering by architect Skidmore, Owings and Merrill).
"We expect to have a range of different proposers," the Portland [...]
Note: This is a guest post from Daniel Friedman, a member of the Portland Downtown Neighborhood Association board. Friedman is an emeritus psychology professor at Antioch College where he taught for 21 years before retiring and moving to the South Park Blocks in 2001.
Friedman grew [...]
As many in the design and architecture community have already learned, the legendary landscape architect Lawrence Halprin passed away on Sunday, October 25.
The Harvard-educated Halprin helped revolutionize public and open space design in the 1970s, with his attention to works that functioned well on [...]
Tonight as part of the AIA Architecture and Design Festival, the Center For Architecture will be screening a documentary about the late, great architect Samuel Mockbee.
Entitled The Rural Studio after Mockbee's project, the film chronicles how, starting in 1993, the Auburn University Professor Samuel Mockbee' [...]
Last week, after Works Partnership’s design for a new workforce housing project won an AIA Design Award (in the Unbuilt category), I sat down with firm principals Bill Neburka and Carrie Schilling and the project’s developer, Randy Rapaport, to talk about the project.
The building, which is [...]
When I first visited the exceptional China Design Now exhibit that opened this month at the Portland Art Museum, it caused a small epiphany: that for all the nation's hugeness both in terms of population and cultural influence, I could not name a single' [...]
The American Institute of Architects' annual Design Awards Gala has come and gone, and in years past that has meant the end of Architecture Week festivities. But this year, its successor, the Portland Architecture & Design Festival, continues through the rest of October with' [...]
You've got to love a project willing to call itself Tanzamook. What kind of name is that? It sounds like some sort of antiquated term of insult, like, "If I had a half-penny for every time that tanzamook tried to snatch my tam-o-shanter, I could'" [...]
The renovation of Shattuck Hall at Portland State University by SRG Partnership and the bSIDE6 mixed-use building by Works Partnership Architecture (pictured at left in a shot by Stephen Miller) walked away with the two Honor Awards (the highest prize given out) at last Saturday's' [...]
Apologies for the short notice (although I also mentioned the event in a previous post), but tonight at the Center for Architecture is the annual Jury Critique event featuring the three-member jury for this year's AIA Design Awards jury. There will be a 5:30 pm' [...]
Last night was a major treat: seeing my/our beloved Portland Trail Blazers return for a game at the arena where they began, the building where the team won the 1977 NBA championship as well as Western Conference titles in 1990 and 1992.
Even if [...]
Recently I received emails from two Portland Architecture readers with ideas that I'd like to pass on.
The first comes from a former Portland-based architect now working in Seattle. Traci asks: What are the ethics of laying off employees? Whom should be the first person an architecture' [...]
Yesterday I went to the Oregon Convention Center for the Wordstock festival to hear an old friend from my 1990s Willamette Week days, Dale Basye, read from his new kids book, Rapacia: Second Circle of Heck. After that, I happened upon another colleague, Oregonian [...]
On Tuesday of this week, Mayor Sam Adams convened the second meeting of the Rose Quarter Stakeholder Advisory Committee. After spending the first meeting getting to know each other, the committee this time sat down for what was called "Rose Quarter 101", a series of presentations on the history of [...]
Every year the popular Street of Eames tour sells out its limited allotment of tickets with plenty of design aficionados left out in the cold unable to see the houses. So if you're looking to see some of the best contemporary residential designs in the city, the Small Spaces/Big Ideas' [...]
This Saturday from 6PM to midnight at the Portland Art Museum is Shine a Light: A Night at the Museum. The event consists of six hours of performances, installations, tours, workshops, and games inside the museum, hosted by 15 artists from Portland State University’s MFA, Art [...]
For the past year and a half, I have hosted a bi-monthly series at Design Within Reach called "Designs on Portland" featuring discussions with the city's top creative design minds, ranging from architects like Jeff Kovel and Thomas Hacker to editors like Randy Gragg, academic leaders like Tom Manley' [...]
Recently the American Institute of Architects announced the recipients of its 2009 National Healthcare Design Awards, honoring two built projects and one unbuilt project. And both of the built projects are located here in Portland: the Providence North Portland Clinic on Interstate Avenue, designed [...]
As reported yesterday by Matt Davis of the Portland Mercury and Mark Larabee of The Oregonian, the city's $46.6 million Resources Access Center for the homeless can now be built along NW Broadway in Old Town.
Financing for the Center had been' [...]Normally on Saturday if I'm awake by 10AM, it's a bit of an anomaly, especially if it has nothing to do with watching college football or eating lots of greasy bacon, eggs & hash browns.
But as it happens, this Saturday I'll be giving a talk at' [...]Note: This is the second in a series of posts by Portland Architecture guest blogger Corbin Keech. Corbin is looking at how the recession has affected recent architecture school graduates. We hope to continue guests posts by Corbin from time to time after that. Corbin received a bachelor's degree in' [...]
The list of Portland-based architectural photographers with eye-catching talent and a long history of work is surprisingly short. Michael Mathers is one photographer who has plied his trade here with an array of acclaim, and there are others like Sally Schoolmaster and Rick Keating. But [...]
Readers of Portland Architecture know that I've long been a fan of architects and firms developing their own projects. And Wednesday night brings a chance to hear from one of the Northwest's true pioneers in that endeavor: Steve Badanes.
Note: This is the first in a series of posts by Portland Architecture guest blogger Corbin Keech. Over three posts, Corbin will be looking at how the recession has affected recent architecture school graduates. We hope to continue guests posts by Corbin from time to time after that. Corbin received [...]
Last Friday I visited the City of Portland's archives buiding, which surprisingly are in a tiny brick building in a park on Columbia Boulevard that used to be a garbage incinerator. "The irony is not lost on us," one staffer told me of the' [...]
The Portland building community lost one of its most impressive, innovative and generous voices when Bob Gerding passed away last Tuesday at the age of 71 after a long bout with cancer.
Gerding was not an easy man to categorize, and that was part of [...]Developer Todd Hartman has a side business salvaging old wood from rivers and lakes. In one of the town home units I visited at the Sophia's View development a few weeks ago, he couldn't resist point out the Douglas fir stair treads made from [...]
This past weekend I traveled to Seattle to cash in on a birthday present received last May: tickets to see my lifelong favorite baseball team, the New York Yankees, play against the Mariners at Safeco Field. It wasn't my first trip to Safeco,' [...]
Sarah Mirk has a report in this week's Portland Mercury about how the city has made it onto another national list, only one far less pride inducing than being honored as a bike-friendly or livable city like the Rose City has in the past.
Portland, in a USA Today' [...]
A few weeks ago I got to know another Portland blogger, Dan Hanekow of Cafe Unknown, when we were both interviewed for a TV show, "Outlook Portland" on NW32, about local architecture.
Dan has two fascinating recent posts on Cafe Unknown [...]The new edition of Portland State University’s Real Estate Quarterly is hot off the presses, and this issue has a piece by PSU professor William Macht arguing that Portland is suffering from a downtown retail conundrum:
“We have too much ground floor area seeking too much retail [...]
Recently I paid a visit to the new new 256-room Courtyard by Marriott hotel, which opened a few weeks ago. No, my girlfriend didn't kick me out. I went there to check out the design by SERA Architects, which renovated a severely deteriorated 1970s office' [...]
A collection of photographs and thoughts by [...]
For the current issue of Architecture Week magazine I wrote a story that assesses the state of historic preservation in Portland.
The local design and preservation communities were galvanized somewhat earlier this year by the demolition threat to Memorial Coliseum, which seems to have avoided [...]For the first time since the team moved into the Rose Garden next door in 1995, this season the Portland Trail Blazers will play a game in their original home: Memorial Coliseum.
Granted it's a preseason game, but who cares?
This is the building' [...]
Wendy Miller has a sobering report in today's Oregonian: Of the 27 new schools approved by Oregon voters in 2006, only about one in four have achieved LEED certification at any level. That doesn't mean the non-LEED-rated schools do not have sustainable features but rather that [...]
On Wednesday afternoon Sohrab Vossoughi, founder of Ziba, and John Holmes of Holst Architecture led a tour of Ziba's new Pearl District headquarters. The multidisciplinary design and branding agency is set for an August move-in.
For those small Portland firms that are surviving the Great Recession without closing their doors, the path may be one of more modest projects: renovations over new buildings, and gritty low-budget affairs over granite countertops.
That description would fit SUM Design Studio, the two-person firm of [...]Sorry for the short notice on this, but today (Tuesday) at 5:30PM, the City Club of Portland will be hosting a free tour of Memorial Coliseum. The tour will be led by architect Rick Potestio, who has been part of the campaign to [...]
The University of Oregon in Portland and writer-editor Matthew Stadler have organized a new series called the "White Stag Block Talk", and the second iteration will be held Wednesday at 6PM. The talk, "Building a Collaborative City," will feature a panel with [...]
“I think it’s incredibly fascinating,” Perepelitza told me [...]
Last week the Memorial Coliseum received a huge lift to its preservation effort. As Oregon Public Broadcasting first reported, the building received unanimous approval from the state historic preservation office in its nomination to the National Register of Historic Places.
The nomination was [...]Wow, that was such a long title to the post I practically don't even need to write anything here. But here goes:
Tonight at Jimmy Mak's jazz club, Portland Monthly and Portland Spaces editor Randy Gragg will be talking with Dennis Wilde of Gerding Edlen Development and Ralph [...]A few weeks ago I spent a weekend at the Oregon Coast. While driving west on highway 26 through the Coast Range toward Cannon Beach and Seaside, I was appalled at the amount of forest that had been clearcut. From the road one could see thousands of [...]
It is a sad day for architecture and history in Portland. Riverdale Grade School, which carries the pedigree of having beee designed by the two most acclaimed architects in the city's history (A.E. Doyle and Pietro Belluschi), and a school that generations of Portlanders have' [...]
The Portland Development Commission (PDC) held its annual election of officers at its June 24 board meeting and chose Scott Andrews, president of Melvin Mark Properties, as the new board chair.
The agency has even prepared this video report on the election, posted to YouTube:Although Andrews only joined the PDC board [...]
The situation involving Timbers MLS soccer in PGE Park, Beavers baseball...somewhere, and the future of Memorial Coliseum is in a kind of limbo right now.
City Council has de-coupled the PGE Park soccer renovation plan from the fate of the Beavers, meaning the plan to upgrade PGE as [...]
Yesterday the consortium of public and private entities working on the proposed Oregon Sustainability Center released a draft executive summary and feasibility study.
Mike Francis had a nice piece in The Oregonian yesterday about the renovation of a historic YWCA building turned-Elks Lodge at North Williams Avenue and Tillamook Street in the Eliot neighborhood.
"A few years ago, it was a dilapidated building with holes in the roof and" [...]Britain's Guy Battle, director of the multi-disciplinary Battle McCarthy Consulting Engineers, has become one of the leading environmental building engineers in the world. And this Wednesday, he'll be in Portland to deliver the latest talk in the Cascadia Green Building Council's Transformational Lecture Series.
Guy Battle is' [...]Last fall the 937 Condominiums arrived just as the housing boom that made the project possible was coming to a crashing end. The building, designed by Holst Architecture and Ankrom Moisan, opened its doors in October, a time when most other condo projects [...]
In Sunday's New York Times Magazine, Duke University civil engineering professor (and author of popular books like Remaking the World and The Evolution of Useful Things) Henry Petroski has an article called "Bridging the Gap." The article cites a series of bridges along the Oregon Coast' [...]
A few months ago I visited what must be one of the most grand and impressive houses in Irvington, a Portland neighborhood already known for its historic homes (but most of them more modest foursquares and bungalows). The house is being featured in the current issue [...]
The Metro regional government is seeking public feedback on how to accommodate up to 300,000 new homes by 2030. To expand the urban growth boundary or not to expand. The Metro Council produced a preliminary report earlier this spring, and before the official draft comes out in [...]
A few months ago Portland Architecture began a new, occasional series called "The Architect's Questionnaire", in which a local architect answers a prepared set of simple questions about his or her profession and experiences. So far architects Nathan Cooprider and David Hyman have been profiled, and' [...]
Earlier this morning, I did something I normally never do, especially on a weekend. I set the alarm. In fact, I set it for 7AM. And it was worth it to be there for the Rose Parade as it originated from inside the arena, with Memorial Coliseum's upper curtain open' [...]
Tonight's First Thursday walk will mark the opening of "150 Years of Oregon Architecture" at the American Institute of Architects/Portland chapter's Center for Architecture in the Pearl District (403 NW 11th Avenue).
The exhibit includes scores of historic and archival photographs documenting the architecture of our state over its century [...]For decades, one of the most striking and unique features of Portland's circa-1960 Memorial Coliseum has been hidden away: the ability to flood the arena with natural light by opening the black curtain that encloses the top of the seating bowl.
This Saturday,' [...]The online version of today's New York Times includes on its 'Green Inc.' blog a post by Libby Tucker about a prototype classroom at DaVinci Arts Middle School that may indicate a future design path as Portland and the nation renovate and retrofit schools sustainably over the coming decades.
' [...]
The Willamette River Bridge Advisory Committee meets Thursday to look at the three bridge finalists: a cable-stay, a refined cable-stay, and the Miguel Rosales hybrid concept. Actually, you could call it four finalists: the cable-stay has a 2-pier option and a 4-pier [...]
Understanding the process for the Willamette River bridge has been difficult.
In the last few days since TriMet announced its selection of Donald MacDonald as the bridge's designer (his cable-stay Ravenel Bridge in South Carolina is pictured above), it has seemed that Miguel Rosales's popular "Hybrid" concept [...]Daybreak is a new, 30-unit cohousing community set to opens this fall near Portland's Overlook neighborhood. Residents will live in compact flats and townhouses and share the use of many community amenities like a kids' playroom and a commercial kitchen and dining room for group [...]
In an update to their original post, Portland Spaces' Tim DuRoche and Randy Gragg have a new interview with bridge designer Miguel Rosales that offers a strong case that the fix was in from the start in TriMet's bridge selection process.
Next Thursday, they report, TriMet will [...]Tim DuRoche is reporting on the Portland Spaces Burnside Blog that Trimet has decided against pursuing the Hybrid bridge design (pictured above) for the new Willamette River MAX and pedestrian proposed by acclaimed Boston architect Miguel Rosales.
Instead, it seems, the agency is pursuing the cheaper, off-the-shelf [...]Looking at this decade's apparently now-completed economic boom times, it's easy to focus on big buildings by big developers: the tall condo towers, the industrial neighborhoods transformed into dense urban enclaves, or the companies like Gerding Edlen, Williams + Dame and Hoyt Street that [...]
Kyle Andersen of GBD Architects wrote recently with an intriguing invitation.
His team at GBD, along with colleagues from SERA Architects, Gerding Edlen Development, Green Building Services and others, have been working on a design for the Sustainability Center for Excellence for [...]A group of local architects and their friends - including Matt Loosemore of SUM Design Studio, Matt Janssen of Ankrom Moisan, Chris Maycut of V3 Studio and Jason Jones of Mahlum Architects - are holding an event this Saturday to raise money in the fight against cancer.
"All In 4" [...]The April issue of Dwell magazine has an article about the Stump House in Portland's Alberta Street area, designed by local firm Architecture W.
I wrote the article (photos here, and in the article, are by John Clark), and it's actually the second time I've' [...]The Portland architecture and historic preservation communities lost one of their most accomplished members this week when Alfred M. Staehli passed away on Monday, May 4, six months shy of his 80th birthday.
Born in Pasadena to an immigrant Swiss woodcarver but a Portlander singe the age of 2, Staehli graduated [...]As first reported Wednesday evening by Mark Larabee of The Oregonian (and shortly afterward by Matt Davis of the Portland Mercury), Mayor Sam Adams has announced that Memorial Coliseum has been spared from demolition.
The City of Portland and Portland Beavers owner Merritt Paulson will [...]Last weekend I made a long overdue visit to the Smith and Bybee Wetlands Natural Area just off North Marine Drive near where the Willamette and Columbia Rivers meet. I'd been there a few years ago, but in the interim had forgotten what a lovely little swatch of nature exists' [...]
Starting Wednesday, the Living Future conference will be taking place for three days at the Nines Hotel downtown this week.
Presented by the Cascadia Region Green Building Council, Living Future is labeled as "the unconference for deep green professionals" on its website. An accompanying video says, "Together imagining a world [...]
