Milau Viaduct, France, designed by Norman Foster 

The Columbia River Crossing, Portland and Vancouver’s planned new bridge over the Columbia, could be the great symbol of this generation: an affirmation of how the Portland metro area has risen to become one of the world’s foremost creative capitols.

Instead, this bridge project has become a disaster in the making.

There are too many people involved and yet no real leader. There no world-class architect or engineer leading the design process, and the powers that be seem to also dispute the need to even have a lead designer at all. Costs for the project have continually escalated, yet people are unhappier than ever with the emerging result. The decision to maintain quaint Pearson airfield at Fort Vancouver all but assures the bridge will be pancake-flat. The two cities that the bridge would connect are also approaching the endeavor with vastly different values about what constitutes a successful Columbia crossing. On top of all this, the bridge wouldn’t even address the worst bottleneck areas along I-5 in Portland, which come at the Rose Quarter and Delta Park.

The design community, it has been argued, is all but absent when it comes to advocating for a great bridge. That has allowed the debate to become hijacked by people apparently ignorant of what design really means - or at least willing to marginalize its importance.

For example, Governor Kulongoski, as far back as a year ago, was belittling the idea of prioritizing what he called “aesthetics.” How can we worry about making beautiful this transportation project, the thinking has gone, when we’ve got all these commuters and freight to move? How can we worry about something as superficial as the form when we have such a big functional task? Or as an Oregonian headline unfortunately put it, “Can we afford pretty?”

But as you know, informed readers, design isn’t just what something looks like. Design is how it works.

Alamillo Bridge, designed by Santiago Calatrava 

Rather than seeking out a great designer for the CRC, design of the project has been left to transportation engineers. It's not to say these people at the Washington and Oregon transportation departments are bad at doing their jobs, but traffic engineering is much more about moving cars than about creating the kind of landmark this location calls for. There are talented architects involved peripherally, like Jeff Stuhr of Portland's Holst Architecture and Carrie Schilling of Works Partnership, both of whom are on one of the CRC committees.

Had there been a talented designer involved early-on in the process, such as Norman Foster, Renzo Piano, Santiago Calatrava, even Sarah Graham or Miguel Rosales, some of the fundamental aspects of the bridge could have been better defined and solved. You don't become the top architects and engineers on Earth by merely acquiescing to state government traffic engineers and just prettying up the exterior packaging. But instead of seeking out the best, we are working toward laying down a lowest-common-denominator strip of concrete along the river Lewis and Clark once followed to the Pacific, a site and project that would make the Fosters and Calatravas of the profession salivate at the opportunity.

This is not to say design should cost more. The CRC is already too expensive. Superlative design talent is defined in part by an ability to work creatively within any necessary budget constraint. I also don't want to neglect the importance of things issues like sustainability, overall bridge size, and provisions for bicyclists and pedestrian. All that is part of the right design. Instead, the fixing the CRC is about process

I mean, what if you were cooking a gigantic cake and you hired dishwashers, waiters, people to wash the windows, accountants, consultants on what constitutes a good cake, and had committees big enough to weigh down the Good Year blimp, but no chef? What if you outright argued against its being delicious because feeding people is all that matters?

Meanwhile, efforts are being made to put wrestle back control of this careening car. To help people understand the CRC process and coalesce public support for strong design, the Architecture Foundation of Oregon and the PDXplore design collective have partnered to present “Crossing the Columbia: What Does It Mean?”, a multi-faceted forum at Pacific Northwest College of Art.

First there is the exhibit “PDXplore: Expanding Design Awareness” from March 22 – 26 in PNCA's Swigert Commons, featuring questions and design approaches to the Columbia River Crossing and its regional impact. That exhibit’s opening reception will be Monday, March 22 from 5:30-7pm in PNCA's Swigert Commons. On Tuesday (March 23) from 6-8pm there will also be a discussion called “Columbia River Crossing: An evening with members of the CRC Project Team”, also in PNCA's Swigert Commons. And on Thursday (the 25th) from 6-8pm, a panel discussion called “Design Perspectives” will be moderated by Portland State University’s Ethan Seltzer with panelists including Boston Globe architecture critic Robert Campbell; artist Ed Carpenter; outgoing National Endowment for the Arts director of design Maurice Cox; Toronto architect and urban design consultant Ken Greenberg; and Richard White, author “The Organic Machine: The Remaking of the Columbia River”.

Columbia River Crossing? 

While Kulongoski has disappointed clamored for a utilitarian solution, Mayor Adams has tried to advocate for good design. But he’s often been ignored or shouted down by the consortium of state transportation departments and state governors looking to push the CRC through.

In an interview Wednesday with Catherine Ciarlo of Adams’ office, she urged the design community to articulate why design matters and why the CRC is not up to snuff in that regard. “It’s hard for a politician to make a case for why it’s important,” she said. “It would mean more coming from designers. They can articulate how the bridge is a statement of our generation and how a landmark project like this it shapes our feelings about ourselves. But the more things Sam pushes on the more they say, ‘You’re out of touch, and you don’t understand the constraints.’”

“I think of the bridges on the Oregon Coast, for example, as a hallmark of a time and a place and how we interacted with the world. But Sam can’t say that alone. Getting other people join in would be incredibly helpful. The bridge’s cost is very high and the public is having a negative reaction to that. When Sam was actively engaged [in pushing for better design] last fall, our office got a lot of pushback and negative feedback from people saying, “Why are you worried about dolling up a bridge?’”

Even after following the CRC process in the news for years now, and even as a journalist focused on design and architecture, I’ve found it a Kafka-esque experience trying to understand merely who is running this. But it seems I’m not the only one. “All of us involved have sort of puzzled over it,” Ciarlo says.

Interstate Bridge, photo by Brian Libby 

But basically the CRC team is made up of representatives from the Washington and Oregon transportation departments and numerous consultants. There is a Project Sponsor’s Council of locally elected officials and representatives from the DOTs who make some key decisions about the direction of the project. But even so, the true center of power seems unclear. Word is that local officials ultimately have a lot less voice the process than the DOTs.

“It’s a big negotiation, between the inner representatives of the two states, the enterprise that is the CRC, the local jurisdictions and the constituents surrounding it,” Ciarlo adds. “It’s weird to have a project that isn’t run by one entity. It’s a challenge to do a bi-state project that spans two cities with dramatically different values. And two states that have different decision making hierarchies and are contributing different amounts of money and honestly have different desired outcomes: to move commuters better or to move freight better and protect the downstream flow on I-5.”

It is all but certain that the Pearson airfield will remain, meaning the bridge has to be low-to-the-water, at least on the Washington side. Adams advocated for a vertical element on the Oregon side of the bridge. That would add visual impact to the bridge if it was done by a talented designer, and rescue the bridge from being a repeat of the pancake-like Glenn Jackson Bridge nearby, carrying I-205 motorists over the river. But when the CRC committee did its most recent cost refinements, Ciarlo says, the provision was dropped.

This isn’t just a bad sign for the look of the bridge, but a symptom of a larger problem.

“Because of the nature and how much of a multi-jurisdictional project it is, Sam can’t be the only voice in favor of design if this is going to be successful. I believe it would take a governor who also believed it was important, at least on the Oregon side. I also think there’s plenty of people in the public who can understand why a beautiful bridge is important. But that point hasn’t been framed and echoed very well. The people driving this need to know that the constituency cares.”

Meanwhile, Portland faces a make or break point in the history of its built environment. Is flat concrete really the statement we want to make to the world, and what we want to be looking at for the next half century as we cross one of the most majestic rivers on the planet?

Or, to put it another way: can we afford ugly?

Photo by Brian Libby 

Mike Francis, a member of The Oregonian's editorial board, had an editorial published Saturday that explores the intersection of sustainability and historic preservation.

Francis tells of meeting recently with David J. Brown and Anthea Hartig, the executive vice president and the western director for the National Trust for Historic Preservation, when the pair were in Portland last week. (Individuals and groups continually seek out the paper's editorial board to make their case for something.) 

Brown's primary message was, as Francis recalls, "that saving and reusing buildings is more environmentally friendly and economically sound than tearing them down, even if they are replaced by the greenest, LEEDiest structures imaginable."

Brown cited a National Trust-commissioned report by Rutgers University that examines the economic effects of the Federal Historic Tax Credit. 

The report concludes that the Federal Historic Tax Credit is a highly efficient job creator, and has accounted for the creation of 1.8 million new jobs over the life of the program. The report also finds that the Federal Historic Tax Credit has generated jobs more efficiently than other stimulus options, and that the economic activity leveraged by credit returns more tax revenue to the U.S. Treasury than the cost of implementing the program.

"The case for preservation improving sustainability is more intuitive," Francis writes. He goes on to say: 

"Of course it's less wasteful to reuse a building than to tear it apart, cart away the rubble, and import and erect new piles of steel, glass and concrete. That was what so maddening (to me, at least) with the arguments of those who wanted to tear down Memorial Coliseum to erect a "green" baseball stadium. As much as I appreciate the presence of baseball, beer and warm summer evenings, it seemed crazy to demolish a perfectly usable building a couple of miles away from the Beavers' current home to relocate the team. The only argument in favor seemed to be that nobody had yet figured out how to put the coliseum to use since the Trail Blazers moved next door, so better to tear the place down than re-use it.

That kind of thinking is what threatens a lot of the places where we work, live and play. Sometimes, we manage to make the best of it, as when civic leaders created Pioneer Courthouse Square on the block that housed a grand Portland hotel until it was demolished for parking. Sometimes, we do a halfway decent thing, such as pouring money into the Pioneer Courthouse next door, although it was an enormously bad idea to, essentially, privatize the place by evicting the post office and carving out an exclusive underground parking lot for the visiting judges there. 

Most often, sadly, we tear down something of cultural, emotional or historical value in order to make way for something else, usually of lesser value. When that happens, we're all the poorer for it."

Of course one of the key landmarks under threat of demolition or radical alteration Francis talks about, Memorial Coliseum, still has its fate hanging in the balance.

Photo by Brian Libby 

It is arguable that all three of the remaining finalists selected by the mayor and PDC's Stakeholder Advisory Committee are at least partially preservation oriented in that they preserve the exterior. But only the Blazers' Jumptown proposal actually retains the inside of the building as an arena without compromising the integrity of its signature bowl-in-a-glass-box design. Oh, and in this Great Recession, retaining the Coliseum as an arena is the cheapest option and the most sustainable. And have you been in this building with the curtain open, like it was meant to be? I've met few Portlanders, even the natives, who actually have.

As it happens, National Public Radio ran a story on Morning Edition a few days ago ("Building Law Seen As Threat To California History") about the intersection of sustainability and preservation. The story profiled Paul Song, who, after demolishing his home, is now building a $1 million LEED-Platinum house which will be the first “100% energy-independent” home in Santa Monica. The piece went on to quote Linda Dishman, Director of the Los Angeles Conservancy, saying that the U.S. Green Building Council’s LEED standards don’t do a particularly good job of recognizing the value of building reuse.

However, the NPR story also, in the opinion of Portland's Ralph DiNola of Green Building Services (as written on his blog), "painted a picture that new green buildings can outperform historic buildings and that rehabilitation of existing buildings takes more time or costs more than demolition and new construction, while also leaving the impression that LEED does not adequately credit historic rehabilitation projects compared to new construction projects."

DiNola goes on to look at LEED and historic buildings in his post:

"Perhaps rather than focusing on our desire to have LEED award more points to historic building rehabilitation projects (hopefully they will based upon more advanced LCA methods in the near future), let’s look at the other LEED points that a project can already earn through rehabilitation.  Under LEED for New Construction and Major Renovation (LEED NC), a rehabilitation project can actually earn four points for building reuse. In LEED for Core & Shell (LEED CS), there are five points available plus an additional one point if 95% of the building is reused for a total of six points.  Elsewhere in the rating system there are other nods to existing building rehabilitation projects, such as Energy and Atmosphere Credit 1.  Here, existing buildings get more points for the same level of energy performance compared to new buildings.  For instance in LEED NC, if a rehabilitation projects reduces design energy cost by 24% it will earn nine points, while a new construction project will only earn seven points.  That’s two more points for historic buildings.  There are also two points available for materials reuse, and we have found that existing buildings more often incorporate salvaged materials than new construction projects.  There are also additional opportunities for credit in LEED in the Innovation and Regional Priority credit categories.  In Portland, Oregon for instance, the Building Reuse credit is identified as a Regional Priority credit, thus offering one bonus point to projects that earn this credit. This intentional allocation of points suggests that LEED strategically favors, rather than challenges, reuse, as is sometimes implied."

"Portland has served as a virtual laboratory for sustainable preservation, yet we still struggle with these issues," he concludes. "These are indeed exciting times for historic preservation advocates and green building professionals as American values shift from valuing our history to valuing the new."

Photo by Brian Libby Mike Francis, a member of The Oregonian's editorial board, had an editorial published Saturday that explores the intersection of sustainability and historic preservation. Francis tells of meeting recently with David J. Brown and Anthea Hartig, the... Brian Libby

Images courtesy Skylab Architecture and Method Homes 

Skylab Architecture has established itself as one of Portland’s most admired design firms with projects like Doug Fir, the 12th + Alder mixed use project (winner of the top local AIA design award in 2007, the Honor Award), the upcoming Weave building on Burnside, NAU retail stores (also an AIA award winner) the Hoke Residence (made famous as a key location the first “Twilight” movie), and the Departure Lounge atop the Nines Hotel.

Now, the firm headed by Jeff Kovel has become involved with designing…manufactured homes?

FEMA trailer, not by Skylab or Method 

Granted these aren’t the trailer-park eyesores of yesteryear or even the nicer if traditional manufactured-home style prevalent today. My brother-in-law in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania selling modular and manufactured homes doesn’t offer anything like what Skylab and partner Method Homes of Seattle have in mind: the HOMB.

Kovel, speaking recently over coffee, said the intent with HOMB is to create well designed single family homes that in the past only the wealthy could afford, “to create an avenue that doesn’t exist right now: to bring architecture to a broader market.”

  

The modular design of the HOMB, which can be customized and configured in numerous different layouts and design, is based on and built using a series of 100 square foot triangles. Skylab experimented with a variety of different patterns that could be alternatives to the simple box construction of a traditional manufactured home. By erecting the homes on site from these triangular structural pieces, there are countless ways for each client to determine a proper size, layout, and budget. And because these are more than just boxes, there is the chance to embrace more design choices such as double-height living rooms.

“You set your budget, and you build only what you need,” Kovel adds. “Single family home project delivery is flawed, because budgets vary until it’s built. That doesn’t happen with this plan. You’ve eliminated 60 percent of the potential (cost) problem, and you still have this kit of parts to play with. We’re creating a system rather than a single piece that’s designed.”

 

To keep budgets down (HOMBs sell for approximately $160 per square foot), Kovel and Method worked to reduce what is ordinarily a 16-month building process down to six months. The design-construction partners have also embraced digital production capabilities to construct the chassis of each house, basically creating assembly process instead of measure-and-cut. This allows for greater cost control with fixed building, delivery, and installation expenses. It also affords developers the opportunity to build as they go, reducing risk, and potentially trading a one-size-fits-all for custom building for clients.

The idea is that an entire neighborhood could be constructed of HOMBs, and yet there would not be that stereotypical Levittown ubiquity of house after house that’s alike. Houses could be built to different scales in a HOMB neighborhood, but the houses would fit together despite varying sizes out of shared stylistic cues. It’s endless variety born from very simple initial building forms. “It’s won the battle against the spatial lmits of a traditional approach,” the architect says. “But we also didn’t want you to feel trapped in a triangle.”

HOMBs will also utilize a spectrum of sustainable design and construction, such as FSC-certified wood, choices of high-efficiency radiant or heat-pump heating and cooling. But the most sustainable thing about a HOMB, Kovel says, is the efficiency of the process. “You could build a LEED rated stick-built house and it’s still not very sustainable because of the waste,” he added.

“I’m not naïve about how challenging this is. But I think this could have a broad impact.”

Images courtesy Skylab Architecture and Method Homes Skylab Architecture has established itself as one of Portland’s most admired design firms with projects like Doug Fir, the 12th + Alder mixed use project (winner of the top local AIA design award... Brian Libby

Photo by Tim LaBarge

If you’re walking along the east edge of Mt. Tabor Park, as I was last weekend, you can see the house Webster Wilson designed and occupies nestled into the hillside just beyond the park’s picnic tables. And it's worth keeping an eye out for.

The house, which was included in last year’s 11 x Design homes tour, is built on four levels, the bottom level reserved for an additional apartment that Wilson’s family rents out. One enters at the second level into the kitchen and dining area. At 2,600 square feet, it  includes four bedrooms, 3.5 bathrooms in addition to a 550-square-foot accessory dwelling unit studio apartment below. The main house’s master bedroom, on the fourth floor, includes a 400 square foot top deck.

The house has radiant heat throughout with stainless steel countertops in the kitchen. The main floor and bathroom floor/walls clad in domestic Vermont sea-green slate. Bathroom countertops are black Eastern Canadian granite. The upper floors and all cabinetry are certified German beech, and FSC-certified mahagony was used on the decks, which add another 200 square feet of space.

Looking east from Mt. Tabor, the house enjoys views of Mt Hood, Mt St Helens and the eastern cityscape, which drove the design. But the house is also a work of simple but intricate geometry and highly detailed finishes. I particularly liked the house’s two-story vertical window wall for capturing the view, as well as the design’s floating wood loft and stair. Also a big part of the exterior look of the project, at least on its back side with the east-looking view, is a wood and metal stairway attached to the building and giving it extra structural support.

Photo by Brian Libby 

Photo by Tim LaBarge

Photo by Brian Libby 

"It just seemed perfect,” Webster said of the vacant lot he and wife Maya Foty found on the edge of Mt. Tabor. “Our prerequisite was we were looking for a lot with a view and light and air. There are limited areas in Portland that have that, in a family friendly neighborhood. We also liked the idea of doing an infill project. It was limiting but also liberating to do a small lot. I think a lot of developers had looked at this lot and said, ‘I can’t do a huge duplex here.’”

Although it’s the first house in Portland to be designed by Wilson it is not his first overall. Wilson has also designed striking houses in Hawaii and Vermont. One of his first projects, a sauna, received a Wood Design Award in 2004 and was published in Dwell, Sunset and Fine Homebuilding magazines.

Wilson earned a master’s of architecture degree at the University of Washington and, during those years, interned under renowned Seattle architect James Cutler. “I guess my formative experience was working for Cutler,” he says, “because of all the wood construction and high level of design. It had a little bit of an old world philosophy. The emphasis was on hand drawn details.” Webster also spent a summer interning in Paris for architect Gerard Grandval and, before moving to Portland, previously worked in New York City for Lee Skolnik, a noted museum and exhibit designer.

Photo by Chad Kirkpatrick

Photo by Bob Zaikoski 

Although Wilson works for himself, this wasn’t exactly a sole practitioner’s design. Wilson’s wife Maya is also an architect, specializing in historic preservation. “She was there all along,” Wilson says of her influence on the house. “I kind of generated ideas, but she was definitely a driving force. I think she made it more humanistic too. I was focusing on the tectonics and the detail side of it, and she was focusing on keeping it family friendly and being responsive to the neighborhood and the city.”

Wilson also has an ace up his sleeve when it comes to his house’s artwork. His father is artist Mark Wilson, a pioneer of computer art whose work was recently part of a retrospective devoted to the genre at London’s Victoria & Albert Museum. “On the 11 x Design tour, we got about as many questions about the art as we did the house,” the architect laughs. But certainly there are no hard feelings about the extra attention, of course: Web had his father design a special artwork that was laser-cut into the house’s front door.

Photo by Bob Zaikoski 

 
Photo by Chad Kirkpatrick 

Initially Wilson had the house on the market, but he and the family (including two young daughters) ultimately decided to occupy the home themselves. After all, if you're the architect of this project, it makes a pretty good calling card. And indeed, I would place Wilson firmly in the group of talented up-and-coming firms that participated in the 11 x Design tour last year, a small fraternity of home designers that could, as with generations past in Portland, come to have a much bigger imprint on the city's architecture in the coming decade(s).

Photo by Tim LaBarge If you’re walking along the east edge of Mt. Tabor Park, as I was last weekend, you can see the house Webster Wilson designed and occupies nestled into the hillside just beyond the park’s picnic tables.... Brian Libby

Whiting Tennis, "Bitter Lake Compound", courtesy Greg Kucera Gallery/Portland Art Museum 

This Thursday (March 11) the Portland Art Museum will host the latest in its ongoing series of artist talks, in which artists and other creatives select pieces in the museum’s permanent collection to talk about with an audience.

This time around, writer-editor Matthew Stadler will talk about two paintings by Seattle artists: Mark Tobey’s “Western Town (1944) and Whiting Tennis’ “Bitter Lake Compound” (2007).

Followers of the local art scene may remember that Whiting Tennis was the winner of the Arlene Schnitzer Prize from the Portland Art Museum's inaugural Contemporary Northwest Art Awards in 2008.

"Whiting Tennis’ early works chronicled the settling of Jamestown and infamous massacres of Native Americans, while recent paintings and sculptures reflect a nostalgic view of the abandoned detritus of the American experience, inspired by rural outbuildings, make-shift shelters, and mountains of discarded junk," explained Jennifer Gately, then PAM's curator of Northwest art, when the awards were announced.

Mark Tobey was a well regarded abstract expressionist who was regarded as one of the "mystic" Northwest painters and was an influence on the great Jackson Pollock. In a book about Tobey, author Chapin Seitz explains that the artist's painting "Western Town", which Stadler will talk about, "is a generalized city where architecture dematerializes into the mist of a central vortex. The compartments appear densely populated. Above and toward the center the atmosphere is electric with presences, yet not a figure is depicted."

"Both were painted in Seattle and display interesting compositional strategies that are somehow corollary to urban environments in that city at those two very different times,” Stadler says.

“In both cases, the painters were trying to create a compositional space and strategy that could refigure the urban environment around them into something legible and, somehow, dynamic. I will read the paintings, in part, as corollary to the urban environments that they were dealing with...Tobey's vortex of a centered city flying apart and Tennis's overall field of flat, dimensionless sprawl. I've had some interesting discussion with Whiting about this, and will share them, and I'm still going through the Tobey materials at PAM's library to find the ways he articulated his intentions with the city paintings.”

Stadler is a novelist who also has written about art and architecture for various publications, including Frieze, Artforum, and Dwell. He also was co-founder and editor of Clear Cut Press. Currently Stadler runs Publication Studio, a print-on-demand publisher and storefront in Portland, with Patricia No.

The artist talk series at PAM occurs the second Thursday of each month. All talks depart at 6pm from the Hoffman building lobby, and are followed by a social hour with the artist until 8pm with complimentary food and beverages. Free for members or with Museum admission. Reservations are not required, but space is limited to the first 60 attendees. To confirm attendance, advance tickets and group sales are available at the box office. Future artist talks will involve the great Oregon painter James Lavadour (April 8), writer-artist-curator Jeff Jahn (May 13), superlative painter Storm Tharp (June 10), and photographer Christopher Rauschenberg, son of the great Robert Rauschenberg (July 8).

Whiting Tennis, "Bitter Lake Compound", courtesy Greg Kucera Gallery/Portland Art Museum This Thursday (March 11) the Portland Art Museum will host the latest in its ongoing series of artist talks, in which artists and other creatives select pieces in the... Brian Libby

Photo by Brian Libby 

Two weeks ago I attended an open house at the Audubon Society of Portland, a chance to meet and see up close the organization's educational birds, those injured or otherwise unable to survive in the wild now used to teach about habitat and conservation - such as Jack the Sparrowhawk, Julio the Great Horned Owl, Aristophanes the Raven, and Ruby the Turkey Vulture.

Some of these are not birds ever likely to be common to urban landscapes, even those with a massive forest inside city limits like Portland. Even so, it was such an inspiring site to see these magnificent birds up close that it got me wondering about efforts to re-introduce nature and wildlife into the city through ecoroofs, bioswales and greenspaces.

Portland has become a national leader for ecoroofs, particularly ones that are designed to capture stormwater. But what if the city's collection of green roofs could, once expanded, go a step further and actually become a functional habitat for birds and wildlife - part of a green infrastructure in the city? Ecoroofs do a lot for buildings themselves, insulating them better and reducing energy bills, besides capturing stormwater to prevent runoff. But it wouldn't take much for them to be bird magnets as well.

As it happens, March is being promoted as "Ecoroof Month" by the City of Portland, the Audubon Society of Portland, and the Urban Greenspaces Institute. Events will include "Ecoroof Portland," a free two-day event this Friday and Saturday (March 12-13), as well as an ecoroof tour of South Waterfront on March 27, lectures on March 30 and 31 by London ecoroof expert Dusty Gedge, and an ecoroof tour of downtown Portland on March 31.

As Bob Sallinger, conservation director for the Audubon Society of Portland notes in the organization's wonderfully titled newsletter, the  The Warbler, there are already 200 ecoroofs in Portland, and the city has set a goal of increasing vegetated rooftops to cover at least 39 acres by 2013. An incentive program initiated by the city in 2009 provides property owners with up to $5 per square foot to install ecoroofs. According to the City's ecoroof website Buildings can also receive bonus FAR (floor area ratio) based on three ranges of ecoroof coverage in relation to the building’s footprint: 10-30%, 30-60% and 60% or greater earns one, two and three square feet of additional floor area per square foot of ecoroof respectively.

Multnomah County Central Library ecoroof, photo courtesy Jaysonphoto via Flickr 

Chicago is the only American city with more ecoroof area then Portland, with 534,000 square feet of ecoroof space compared to the Rose City's 423,000 as of 2009. But how are we doing compared to Europe, where ecoroof building leads the world and dates to the 1970s? We've got a lot of catching up to do.

For example, the metro area in Stuttgart, Germany, home of the exquisite Mercedes-Benz brand, has 10.7 million square feet of estimated ecoroof area. Dusseldorf, Germany's overall metro area has 7.86 million square feet. Basel, Switzerland - just the city, not its metro area - had 7.53 million square feet of ecoroof area as of 2007. London has 5.38 million, not including its suburbs and exurbs.

"Portland is particularly well positioned to learn from the European experience with ecoroofs and the emerging trend of biodiverse ecoroofs," writes Jim Labbe of the Audubon Society, also in The Warbler. "Efforts in the United Kingdom, Germany and Switzerland clearly indicate an ecoroof building boom is possible with the right public policies in place. These include adequate incentives and regulation to strongly encourage or require ecoroofs on new development where technically feasible. However we also need local research to help improve designs of biodiverse ecoroofs adapted to our unique climate, flora and fauna."

Photo by Brian Libby 

"By investing in and expanding biodiverse ecoroofs in Portland, we can dramatically expand urban habitat diversity, enrich our local and neotropical bird populations, and help keep nature nearby in our densest neighborhoods."

In 2006 I wrote an article for Metropolis magazine about Tanner Springs Park and its design by German landscape architect Herbert Dreiseitl, which was indicative of an an emerging philosophy regarding wild-life protection in a high-density urban setting. "Instead of just setting aside one or two larger parcels on the outskirts of the city, Portland planners favor also introducing small pockets of nature throughout," I wrote back then. “We’ve done a lousy job of protecting nature in the city until very recently,” added Mike Houck, urban naturalist for the Audubon Society of Portland and director of the nonprofit Urban Greenspaces Institute. “This is a new phenomenon.”

In seeking to become a sustainable capitol, can Portland also become an innovator for nature in the city? Sure, if the Europeans haven't beaten us there first. But Portland also boasts something these older European cities perhaps don't, or at least not in as much supply: enough space, and enough of a connection with the surrounding natural landscape, to enjoy a more substantial connection between city and nature. In that way, the urban growth boundary is as important as ecoroofs. But as with urban planning, it takes both macro and micro level design and implementation to make the unified whole work successfully - a unified plan for growth, and means to make it happen block by block, or in this case, roof by roof and park by park.

Photo by Brian Libby Two weeks ago I attended an open house at the Audubon Society of Portland, a chance to meet and see up close the organization's educational birds, those injured or otherwise unable to survive in the wild... Brian Libby

"Ziba Street" by Jeff Jahn 

Beginning with an opening party this Thursday evening and continuing throughout March, the AIA/Portland's Center for Architecture is exhibiting "8xPDX: Photographs of Portland Architecture". I curated the show, which includes (as the name indicates) the work of eight photographers: Jeremy Bitterman, Chris Hornbecker Jeff Jahn, Shawn Records, Sally Schoolmaster, Susan Seubert, Michael Weeks, and myself.

Collectively, the 20 photographs portray not only local architectural icons -- such as the Wieden + Kennedy building, the Portland Aerial Tram, Memorial Coliseum, the Jackson Tower, Portland International Airport and the Lovejoy and Forecourt Fountains -- but also unfamiliar and less obvious segments of the urban fabric. There are simple representational images but also more abstract presentations. It was important for me that the show have both familiar and unfamiliar visual imagery. On one hand I love many of the city's well known local landmarks, but on the other hand the best designed thing in Portland is the totality of the city itself. What's more, I hoped some pieces, particularly the ones of less familiar portions of the city, would speak to the textures and colors of this place.

"Forecourt Fountain" by Susan Seubert 

Artist bios (excluding my own) with a few extra personal notes are as follows: 

Jeremy Bitterman is the owner of Bitterman Creative, providing architectural photography and art direction. He is also art director for Allied Works Architecture. I've known Jeremy for several years through his work at Allied. One of his photos in the show, of Memorial Coliseum, was taken as a favor to the Friends of Memorial Coliseum, the preservation organization I'm part of. The shot was taken during last summer's Rose Parade, which originates in the Coliseum.

"Memorial Coliseum" by Jeremy Bitterman 

Jeff Jahn is a curator, artist and cultural critic. His photography has appeared in Art News, NYArts Magazine, Willamette Week, and the Portland Mercury, among others. Jahn also publishes Portland’s most-read visual arts publication, PORT.

His two photos in this show portray the Holst Architecture-designed Ziba headquarters and the Portland Tram. Jeff, whose writings I've read for years, is also a cousin of the architect Helmut Jahn and seems to be ever-present in the local visual arts world, a testament to his drive and smarts.

"308mm" by Chris Hornbecker 

Chris Hornbecker is a Portland based professional photographer who shoots portraiture, sports and fashion photography for commercial advertising, advertising agencies, editorial and directly for clients including as worked with clients including Nike, Adidas, Miller High Life, Comcast, Vonage, The Fader, Sports Illustrated, Ad Week, and Bust.

Chris is one of two photographers whose work I didn't know of before curating the show; he was recommended by Kristan Kennedy, who heads visual arts programming for the Portland Institute for Contemporary Art. His contributions to "8xPDX" include an ethereal shot of the largely ZGF Architects-designed airport in fog, as well as a shot and one of my very favorite Portland buildings, on SW 10th Avenue downtown, familiar for its multicolored checkerboard-paneled facade.

Photo by Shawn Records, from the Portland Grid Project 

Shawn Records is a Portland photographer whose work has been exhibited at the Castillo/Corrales Gallery in Paris and Blue Sky Gallery in Portland, the Museum of Contemporary Photography in Chicago, the Camera Club of New York, and the Pomona College Museum of Art, among others. Records was included in the 2006 Oregon Biennial at the Portland Art Museum. He earned an MFA in art and photography from Syracuse University in 2003 and a bachelor’s degree in photography from Boise State University in 2000.

I first became aware of Shawn's work through his collaboration with writer Matthew Stadler a few years ago on a series about Beaverton, which I reviewed for The Oregonian. Shawn's pictures in "8xPDX" are from the Portland Ground project, in which numerous local photographers participated. One of Shawn's shots in this show also features his son, Max Records, who recently starred in the Spike Jonze movie Where the Wild Things Are.

Susan Seubert regularly photographs for National Geographic Traveler, Geo Saison, and The New York Times, among others. The Portland-based photographer was also a 1999 recipient of Columbia University’s Alfred Eisenstaedt Award. Since receiving her BFA in photography from the Pacific Northwest College of Art in 1992, Seubert has exhibited continuously in the United States and abroad. Her work was included in the Portland Art Museum's 1999 and 2001 Biennials and the Tacoma Art Museum's 2009 Northwest Biennial. Most recently, Seubert received an International Photography Award for her piece entitled, "Nest". In the fall of 2010 Seubert will lead two expeditions for the National Geographic Society and is leading two expeditions through the Columbia River Gorge. I've long been a fan of Susan's work, and she's one of the only local photographers working simultaneously and successfully in both commercial and fine art.

The two photographs by Susan in "8xPDX" are from the recent book "Where the Revolution Began: Lawrence and Anna Halprin and the Reinvention of Public Space," edited by Portland Spaces editor (and former Oregonian architecture critic) Randy Gragg.

Sally Schoolmaster is chair of the photography department at the Pacific Northwest College of Art in Portland. Her photographs have appeared in The New York times, Architectural Record, Wallpaper and many other publications, as well as the 2006 book "Architecture in the United States", published by Taschen. Schoolmaster received her BS from the University of Oregon and her MFA from Ohio University.

"Ominous" by Michael Weeks 

I've long been a huge fan of Sally's pictures of the Wieden + Kennedy building - the completed project by Allied Works, that is. What I didn't know about until meeting with Sally for this show was that she has just as many shots of the building before it was re-imagined and rebuilt. The photos of this former cold-storage warehouse are drop-dead gorgeous.

Besides one "before" and one "after" shot of W+K, Sally will also be exhibiting three small photos of temporary facilities designed by BOORA Architects for the Portland Institute of Contemporary Art's Time-Based Art (TBA) Festival.

Michael Weeks is a Portland photographer and owner of Weeksy Photographer as well as a student at Portland State University. I found his HD photograph of the Jackson Tower on Flickr and was blown away by it.

"Ziba Street" by Jeff Jahn Beginning with an opening party this Thursday evening and continuing throughout March, the AIA/Portland's Center for Architecture is exhibiting "8xPDX: Photographs of Portland Architecture". I curated the show, which includes (as the name indicates) the... Brian Libby

Image courtesy Portland Bureau of Planning & Sustainability 

Portland is a planning Mecca and it's time to update our Koran: The Portland Plan, a broad, strategic plan with objectives and policy directions. Currently the city is going through what’s called Periodic Review, which was enacted by the state Legislature in 1981. It establishes a "factual basis" in several topic areas per state law such as land supply, development potential, and employment and housing needs.

On January 26 and February 9, the first two in a series of meetings began to review the Portland Plan, and the next meeting is scheduled for March 9. The topic will be nine “action areas”:

Prosperity, business success & equity

Education & skill development

Arts, culture & innovation

Sustainability and the natural environment

Human health, food & public safety

Quality of life & civic engagement

Design, planning & public spaces

Neighborhoods & housing

Transportation, technology & access

There are two main stages to this process: an evaluation of the existing plan and then potential updates made. In September 2009, the city decided on a three-year work plan with three components: (1) Land use inventory and analysis (we are in this stage through fall of this year); (2) Consideration of alternative courses of action; and (3) Selecting preferred alternatives and implementation pf policies, zoning code and map updates (2011-2012).

According to my friend Eric Engstrom of the Bureau of Planning & Sustainability, there are a number of factors here of interest to the design community. “The Portland Plan raises the possibility,” he says, “of further historic preservation work in outer East Portland, where we have never cataloged historic buildings.”

Further, Engstrom says, “It could create a venue to discuss desirability of having some mid-century historic districts in the future, to preserve examples of atomic ranch subdivisions. It creates a venue to discuss relationship of sustainability to retention and re-use of existing structures (embodied energy of existing buildings, recycling buildings, reducing carbon footprint, etc.). It could lead to stronger policies on that issue.”

Image courtesy Portland Bureau of Planning & Sustainability

The plan also creates, Engstrom says, “a place to discuss our overall policy of how we re-use iconic buildings. It won't necessarily prevent battles like Memorial Coliseum in the future, but offers a way to create/refine a policy on how we approach those issues.”

And the Urban Design report “raises the question of how we re-design public spaces,” he adds, “especially the street right of way, to serve more than cars, to make them actual places, rather than ugly space you must pass through to get where you want to go.”

Some population and housing figures are particularly important to the Portland Plan. 

Metro forecasts that 464,438 to 619,628 new households will be located in the greater Portland area by 2035. It’s also forecast that Portland itself will accrue 105,000 to 136,000 new households by 2035 (1.2 to 1.6% annual growth). That means 3,500-4,500 units need to be built each year just to keep up. By comparison, 29,300 units were built between 1997 and 2007.

Metro also forecasts that regional employment would increase from just under one million jobs in 2005 to between 1.36 and 1.85 million by 2035. In Portland proper, the forecast is for 113,000 to 202,000 jobs.

Image courtesy Portland Bureau of Planning & Sustainability 

The Planning Commission will next be meeting about this on March 9th at 1:15pm. Topics will include land supply assumptions and maps, future hearings and recommendations to City Council. Public testimony will be heard at this meeting from 1:15-3pm in the 2500A room of the 1900 SW 4th building.

Want to make your voice heard? Fill out a survey by March 31 to indicate your preferences on a range of issues. The Planning Commission will continue with meetings in March, and then Round 2 Workshops will be held in April and May.

Image courtesy Portland Bureau of Planning & Sustainability Portland is a planning Mecca and it's time to update our Koran: The Portland Plan, a broad, strategic plan with objectives and policy directions. Currently the city is going through what’s called... Brian Libby

14 House, photo by Jeff Beck 

Ever since the Street of Eames tour began four years ago, tickets have sold out nearly as soon as they've gone on sale. So it's not for lack of demand that this will mark the final year for the tour.

Street of Eames has raised more than half a million dollars for homeless students in Portland, particularly at Chapman Elementary. But, says Sherri Nee, who co-founded the event with another then-Chapman parent, Caroline Fenn, they are ending Street of Eames because they've reached their goal: a stable funding infrastructure for those efforts.

"We found a social service agency to take over providing the after-school program as well as fundraising for it in the form of grant writing," As Nee told Bridget Otto in The Oregonian, "Friendly House in Northwest Portland has agreed to do both. It started providing the program for homeless Chapman students beginning in September. The Street of Eames folks will continue to fund this Friendly House effort during this transition as it ramps up its grant-writing for these students."

This year's tour is scheduled for Saturday, April 17. Tickets are $50 each, or $40 for students. Tickets go on sale at 9 a.m. Monday, February 22 at streetofeames.org. Advance ticket packages (two $50 tickets plus $150 donation) are on sale now through Sunday.

White House, photograph by Kim Blau 

There has always been a limited number of tickets available: one thousand. I assume that's a way of limiting the amount of foot traffic traipsing through these owners' homes. But this year there will be 200 more tickets made available, for a total of 1,200. 

There are eight houses this year, up from the usual six or seven, and the hours of the tour have been extended.

The tour includes three contemporary homes: the Z-Haus by Ben Waechter (pictured below), the Park Box by Path Architecture, and the 14 House by Seed Architecture Studio. The Z-Haus and Park Box were featured in last year's oft-mentioned 11xDesign tour. Seed was also had a previous house on that tour, but the 14 House is something new. It's just finishing up construction as we speak; I visited the house recently and it's gorgeous.

Storrs House, photo by David Papazian 

Yeon House, photograph by Kim Blau 

There are also five mid-20th century modern homes, including designs by the great Portland architects John Yeon and John Storrs.

Yeon is probably the most acclaimed local residential architect of the 20th Century along with Pietro Belluschi. As Randy Gragg writes in the Oregon Encyclopedia,

"Few architects have influenced the state of Oregon as broadly as John Yeon. A planner, conservationist, historic preservationist, art collector, and urban activist, as well as one of the state's most gifted residential designers, Yeon was one of the founders of the Northwest Regional Style of architecture and one of the earliest visionaries in the realization of the Columbia Gorge National Scenic Area."

Storrs is best known for designing Salishan, the Oregon College of Art & Craft, and the World Forestry Center, but his houses are equally exceptional. As Phil Favorite wrote in an Oregonian story last year, "Storrs, who died in 2003, was part of the second generation of architects who established Northwest style: an Asian-influenced architectural form noted for its use of natural wood and stone, ample windows to bring the outdoors in, and its subtle, understated buildings that blend in with the land."

There is also a house by Bob Origndulph, a retired principal with BOORA Architects, a Robert Rummer house in Beaverton, and a house by noted Portland architect Warren Weber House that was renovated by Architecture W.

Rummer House, photo by David Papazian 

Oringdulph House, photo by David Papazian  

In the case of Oringdulph, Otto's Oregonian article also chronicled a visit by the architect to the house he designed in 1958 (for his brother) to meet the current homeowners and see how renovations have changed it:

Just over two years ago, Nicole and Brett Olszewski bought the house Oringdulph designed and his brother built.  "Being a lumberman," Bud says of Fred, who died in 2006, "there's wood everywhere." 

Three-inch-thick cedar decking vaults overhead, while a stunning, unchecked, old-growth cedar beam runs the length of the living room. 

Bud says he was fresh out of the University of Oregon's architecture school when his brother approached him about designing a house where a family could grow. 

The Olszewskis wanted the same for Grace and her older brother, Nathan, 4 1/2. 

"It's a good place for kids," Bud says, walking through the recently remodeled house he hasn't been in for years. 

"You're cloistered into the back," he says of the home, which turns its back on the street but opens to a spacious interior facing a backyard full of mature trees, shrubbery and a pool. 

Oringdulph's name is not as much associated with Portland's midcentury modern houses as perhaps John Yeon, Pietro Belluschi or Van Evera Bailey. But discovering the residential work of these midcentury star architects is one of the joys of the annual Street of Eames tour.

"That's what's fun," says Becca Cavell, who has worked as program director of the tour since its inception five years ago. 

It's disappointing to learn that this will be the last year for Street of Eames. After all, as laudable as fundraising for homeless kids is, didn't the Street of Eames organizers also see some value to the community in the tour itself? Maybe Chapman Elementary's homeless assistance program doesn't need Street of Eames anymore, but the disappearance of the tour will be a substantial loss for Portlanders who appreciate contemporary and midcentury modern architecture.

Z-Haus, photograph by Stephen Miller 

Park Box, photograph by Ty Milford 

 

14 House, photo by Jeff Beck 

More than any other homes tour in Portland, Street of Eames was a wonderful introduction to both the city's impressive collection of mid-20th century homes, and also to some of the top residential architects working today. Isn't that of value in and of itself?

Nee, Fenn, Becca Cavell (of THA Architecture) and others involved with Street of Eames have given thousands of hours of their time, all on a volunteer basis. They deserve a break and a pat on the back. But it would be great to see somebody take the Street of Eames torch and continue on the tradition. One could even make a lot more tickets available and please some of those unable to procure them in the past.

Meanwhile, though, enjoy this year's Street of Eames tour swan song. And if you're not one of the 1,200 able to get a pass, the houses from this year's tour will also be on display in April as part of a Street of Eames exhibit at the AIA Center for Architecture .

Over the past year the New Oregon Interview Series, an initiative of the nonprofit organization New Oregon Arts & Letters, has held a broad array of discussions ranging from music and film to visual arts, food, fashion and literature. Later, the interviews are set to be published in a printed anthology.

"Portland has bloomed into a top destination for creative culture," the OIS website opines. "Media from the New York Times to MTV tout our city's creativity, sustainability, and livability. Where are we heading now?"

For the latest in the New Oregon Interview series, host Nora Roberts will be talking with Mayor Sam Adams, Portland Monthly editor Randy Gragg and architect Brad Cloepfil to discuss "their work in shaping urban space, new city re-development like the Coliseum, and the meaning of world-class architecture, among other topics."

The talk will be held Monday (February 22) from 7-8:30pm at Urban Grind East (2214 NE Oregon Street). Admission is $5.

Adams has made a point of courting the local arts community, dating back to his time as a regular City Council member and, before that, as Mayor Vera Katz’s chief of staff.

Cloepfil is Portland's most renowned architect of the current generation, responsible not only for local projects like the Wieden + Kennedy building but also major art museums in St. Louis (the Contemporary Art Museum), Seattle (the Seattle Art Museum) and New York (the Museum of Art & Design). His firm, Allied Works, also recently won a major design competition for a music center in Canada.

Gragg, who was The Oregonian’s architecture critic for eighteen years as well as a Harvard Loeb Fellow, is currently Portland Monthly magazine’s editor-in chief.

 “A lot has changed in the past decade,” Robertson says. “The best perspective comes from the artists themselves—and the designers, writers, chefs, and venues who make things happen here.”

There will certainly be a lot to talk about, from the Columbia Crossing to the urban growth boundary, green building and MAX trains to economic recession and ballot measures. The mayor of any city, let alone with as weak a mayoral system, can only do so much. But Adams is ambitious, and has the opportunity to show that he is smart about design. Cloepfil is precisely the kind of local talent we want for Portland's most significant projects. And Gragg, despite Portland Spaces magazine's ceasing to exist as a separate entity form Portland Monthly, remains active not only with the latter magazine but a constant stream of exhibitions, writings, public talks and much more.

Over the past year the New Oregon Interview Series, an initiative of the nonprofit organization New Oregon Arts & Letters, has held a broad array of discussions ranging from music and film to visual arts, food, fashion and literature. Later,... Brian Libby

Vancouver Olympic Village, photo by Nathan Veldhoen, via Flickr  

Over the last decade, Portland's skyline has been substantially transformed by the addition of several condo towers that were taller and thinner than just about all of the local high-rise buildings that had come before them.

In neighborhoods like South Waterfront and Pearl District--but also in places like Northwest 23rd, downtown and along West Burnside--we saw a succession of these new buildings. Usually they incorporated a two- or three-story base, or podium, where the building extends all the way to the street, and then a thinner portion rises 20 or more stories from there. In most cases, these projects take up entire blocks by themselves.

In the past, Portland's central city was zoned to encourage shorter, squattier buidings built to the street and going straight up from there. But there was a rallying cry in the late 1990s and early 2000s for zoning to be changed to allow buildings to go taller in exchange for being thinner, their upper floors set back from the street to diminish shadows and allow more light on the street. Portland’s model for this type of building—and the type of neighborhood it fosters--was primarily Vancouver, British Columbia, which has become known for a succession of these towers since beginning to incorporate them into their skyline some twenty years ago.

Vancouver Olympic Village, photo by Michael Tedesco, via Flickr 

Yet as Vancouver prepared for the Winter Olympics over the last few years, the city made a conscious decision to move away from point towers when it transformed a former industrial area, just across False Creek from downtown, into the Olympic Village. Although currently housing hundreds of athletes, the Olympic Village will spend the rest of its life as the Millennium Water development composed of mixed-use condos, greenspace and a community center. And the Millennium Water condos are decidedly mid-rise buildings, not tall thin towers.

A few weeks ago, while reporting on the architecture of the Vancouver Olympics for The Architect’s Newspaper, I interviewed Scot Hein of the City of Vancouver about (among other things) the decision to go mid-rise. Here’s some of what he had to say:

"Right now our idea of urbanism or ‘Vancouverism’ has expanded well beyond the tower podium typology. It’s not one size fits all. Every precinct of the city is telling you something different and giving you cues about scale and pattern. Before the Olympics were awarded, we were pursuing a direction based on tower podium. Towers are easy to build and they have a lot of value. But the design professions here rallied around the fact that for this part of the city, the opposite side of False Creek adjacent to industrial buildings, there should not be tower form but a lower scale that was supportive and reinforcing of the kind of fabric that was (originally) in this part of the city. Very prominent architects wrote letters and caused our city council to rethink tower podiums. We ended up redistributing that density to upwards of 13 to 14-story buildings in a courtyard form where things are pushed to the edges."

“In the Olympic Village we have these full block developments broken down in to 4-5 pieces. They might have contiguous floor plates but they don’t read as singular super-blocks. There’s variety within the block. When you add eight of these, it’s got a lot of modulation to it.

“While mid-rise might not be as promising as a singular sculptural statement, there’s much more variety, complexity, and articulation. We love towers too, but they’re usually going to be glass curtain walls. Mid-rises open themselves to whole new markets of materials and facades. We get a lot more color, use of wood, fenestration, architectural shading and screening—layering of things you can put on mid-rise to make them interesting.”

So if Vancouver has eschewed point towers in favor of mid-rise buildings (at least in False Creek), what does that signal for Portland? Obviously during this continuing recession, it’s a relatively moot point because the market is over-built. But someday, there will once again be a shortage of high-density urban condos and apartments, and the housing market will be on an upswing. It may be as soon as 2011 or it might not happen till 2015. But eventually Portland will be building high-density multifamily housing again. And when we do, should point towers be the continued model, or should smaller mid-rise buildings like Vancouver has turned to in False Creek return to the table?

Simply walking north through the Pearl District you can see both highrise and mid-rise residential buildings.

In the southern portion closer to Burnside, the units built in the 1990s are largely mid-rise, particularly the units built by the major developer in the neighborhood, Hoyt Street Properties. Many of these projects are modest, buildings from an architectural standpoint. They don’t call attention to themselves, but they make a pleasant urban environment with their small scale and proximity to the sidewalk.

South Waterfront (L-R: Atwater Place, The John Ross, The Meriwether), photo by Brian Libby 

Then as you head further north in the Pearl, there are taller, thinner condos on podiums, from The Pinnacle (Ankrom Moisan) to The Metropolitan (BOORA and Jeff Lamb) to The Encore (BOORA). There are also such buildings in the Brewery Blocks, such as the Louisa Apartments (GBD Architects).

And of course virtually all the buildings in the South Waterfront are versions of point towers, from The John Ross (TVA Architects) to The Meriwether (Peter Busby & GBD Architects) to Atwater Place (THA Architecture & GBD). Some of these projects I’m quite fond of, at least as sculptural objects. They flesh out the modest Portland skyline and are often beautifully detailed – I’m particularly fond of Atwater Place in that regard. And coupled together, point-tower areas allow more sunlight to reach the street.

But I’m not sure about creating whole neighborhoods out of the point-tower form. South Waterfront feels a little too large of a scale to make an inviting neighborhood at the pedestrian level, even though plenty of attention has gone to pedestrians. Mid-rise buildings are an essential part of the urban mix. Quite honestly, I’d rather live in a mid-rise building and a neighborhood than a forest of point towers. It feels more cozy and, well, like a neighborhood.

But I also spent numerous years in the 2000s arguing for the city to allow point towers, because it seemed like Portland had too many short, squatty buildings. What’s more important, how a building feels to a resident or to the city? Don’t feel like you need to answer that question – I don’t think there is a perfect answer. 

937 Condos, photo by Brian Libby 

What’s more, notice that Scot Hein mentioned their mid-rise buildings are 14-15 stories, while ours are typically smaller. The 937 condo (Holst Architecture) in the Pearl, for example, is 16 stories and considered a high-rise.

Scot Hein also stressed that Vancouver only chose mid-rise for the Olympic Village buildings in False Creek. Even so, it’s still a major course change for the city that made point towers a quintessential building type of the 1990s and 2000s. Does Portland follow Vancouver back to our previous future? Personally, I hope it never becomes an either-or scenario. As always, the best urban environments are ones that have many differently sized and different looking pieces.

Vancouver Olympic Village, photo by Nathan Veldhoen, via Flickr Over the last decade, Portland's skyline has been substantially transformed by the addition of several condo towers that were taller and thinner than just about all of the local high-rise buildings... Brian Libby