The Burnside Blog

By juan castaneda on Thursday, March 05, 2009 at 12:06PM PST

Pretty sour article… seems personal. why doesn’t randy gragg focus his energy on something more positive.. how about talking a bit more about the project and less about the architect/developers? that’s what people really want to know.. and by the way, unemployment in oregon is high enough, so please support and give local architects a chance instead of focusing on the design credentials of big firms from other countries..you know they would be doing the work and not the smaller local firms they paired off with. Not to mention the carbon footprint of having to fly people from other places because you don’t think that local firms are capable… I am a bit tired of of graggs critical views that seem to only feed the discontent few that always need to be critical about something. Personally I applaud PDC’s decision and the team they chose, they will do a great job and I am sure will deliver.

By Brian Libby on Thursday, March 05, 2009 at 12:18PM PST

I disagree, Juan. Randy is a venerable architecture critic and editor, and he’s offering his insightful opinion here about how the process shook down the way it did. These also are not opinions coming out of a vacuum. Randy is expressing what I and many others in the design community feel: that while Gerding Edlen and the firms it partners with deserve much praise for sustainable placemaking, it seemed like this was not really the ‘competition’ we yearned for it to be.

By Katie on Thursday, March 05, 2009 at 03:20PM PST

Referenced this post in my blog here http://www.djc.com/blogs/BuildingGreen/

By ben on Thursday, March 05, 2009 at 05:45PM PST

give local architects a chance juan? you don’t think GBD and SERA have HAD their chance already?!

By carless in pdx on Friday, March 06, 2009 at 12:54AM PST

Could we reformat this page? I thought bullets should each have their own line. The readability is awful for the lists.

thanks

By matthew on Saturday, March 07, 2009 at 11:27AM PST

Randy,

You mentioned Stephan Behnisch as a ‘heavy hitter,’ but didn’t mention Dr Ken Yeang. Were you aware that he was on two separate teams submitting for this project?

By Jeff Joslin on Sunday, March 08, 2009 at 02:02PM PDT

Though the presentations at City Hall inimtated this was a design-based process, I sense that event was a little mis-leading: more a typical PDC leveraging of the process to afford these finalists a platform to talk about their work in order to build pubic interest in – and support for – the project; not necessarily to inform the selection process.

The summaries from the PDC report really tell the story, and very much the story that Randy underscores – that this was ultimately more a risk-based process/decision rather than a design-based. What strikes me as odd is that, given this was a competition for a feasibility phase for a pioneering typology/assembly (neither a design or a development process per se), that the focus should have been – plain and simple – based largely on the ability to pursue and assess the innovations necessary to service the mission. In the spirit of that charge, a gutsier and more relevant basis would have been to stretch, to reward and take more risk, not to base the decision on the same ol’ ability to “deliver and complete the project on time and within the project budget (with the) lowest risk of project failure.

The RFP schedule was extended because of assumptions in the community that – due to GED’s involvement in an earlier assessment for PDC – that their selection was a foregone, path-of-least-resistance conclusion. After assurances that this was not the case, the processs continued. Unfortunately, the results as documented seem to support those earlier concerns.

By Bill on Sunday, March 08, 2009 at 03:25PM PDT

“But competent as they are, there isn’t a memorable building in the portfolio.”

I guess that depends on what you mean by memorable. Much of the Gerding Edlen Portland portfolio is indeed characterized by Portland values of modesty and understatedness; of preservation of the past while transitioning to the future. Still with respect to Gerding Edlen’s own projects, when a project opens up with the opportunity for scale—as in the Bellevue Towers project in Washington (www.bellevuetowers.com) I think you also see them revelling in the opportunity for design. Of course, that project is outside of Portland, and you may not be familiar with it.

Similarly you may not be familiar with their work in San Diego - where their winning design for the new city center was not only hugely more cost effective, but to my eye, far more strikingly beautiful as well. Here’s the article I found on it that contains links to the winning and seconc-place design concepts: http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/metro/20080815-1240-bn15civic.html. Judge for yourself - but whether you like the Gerding Edlen concept design or not, it’s clearly a realization that an “architectural icon” is called for, and proof that Gerding Edlen is perfectly capable of thinking this way, and revels in doing so. I hope they get a chance to build it.

But let’s accept that you are focused on the more understated Portland portfolio, and not the architectural boldness Gerding Edlen has demonstrated it’s perfectly capable of in the entire body of its work. Even within the Portland portfolio, I would have to question your conclusion that the architecture isn’t “memorable.”

The Gerding-Edlen team has been at the forefront of driving deeper green for 15 years - that’s what those LEED platinum and gold “firsts” mean of course, and it’s nontrivial, despite your airy dismissal of “LEED points.” People come from all over the country - all over the world—to see how they do it, what they’ve done, where they’re going next. In the field of green buildings, the world not only remembers, but looks to, the Gerding Edlen way of innovation in design, in all of its depth and complexity.

And aside from the less-visible aspects of these buildings that LEED tends to measure, despite your dismissive remark about “design elements”, I think you might acknowledge that the Portland buildings are designed with a certain lasting elegance that pays homage to and preserves the past, while enabling a transition to a highly enjoyable, denser. and more efficient lifestyle.

The design criteria for this center in Portland are about deep, deep green—a proof of a different way to live, not just a mechanical demonstration that “net zero” is possible, but a social demonstration that energy-neutral living can also make the heart glad and the community stronger (in fact, that the two concepts, engineering efficiency and a community that works, are closely related.) As a pioneer in that field, Gerding Edlen is without peer, and in this space Gerding Edlen’s Portland projects are powerfully “memorable.”

I view separately your comments about the “local emphasis” in Mark’s remarks. I find your comments to be very Oregonian (the culture, not the newspaper.)

We have here such a weird reverse provincialism—we don’t just overlook, we actively disparage world-class local talent, for the hubris of daring to be world-class; for the foolishness of thinking the local community might value local business, local jobs, local talent, local leadership, a local tax base funding local teachers, firemen, police, roads, local revenues driving support for, well, local websites about architecture supporting local writers.

But it isn’t foolish to prioritize local. We celebrate buying local if it’s farm produce or wine; we celebrate local jobs if its the corner store, or the artisan at Saturday market; we extoll the values of localism in recreation and education and charity. Why do we treat it as a negative in this context, or view it as inappropriate to raise the issue?

It is so incredibly Portland to prefer greatness be remote, and to deign to come calling periodically, rather than to be too involved locally. In fact we have this way of actively demonstrating our lack of provincialism by engaging in the ultimate provincialism, the put-down of our neighbors for being hicks, and of our officials for being too stupid to be able to see what hicks they are.

You do it in your article. Here are the words you use to describe Gerding Edlen: “…cozy relationship with the Portland Development Commission” .. “desperate to get the job..” … “breathtakingly jingoistic” … “Lego kit spec condos and office towers” … my favorite, the sarcastic “some have “design elements”…” and your coup de grace… “growing kingdom of Gerding-Edlen-ville.”

Here’s how you describe the from-afar competition: ”...firm’s abstract elegance.” ... “heft of FXFowle…” ... “New York’s first green skyscraper”... “partnered … on the NY Times building” ... “decades breathtaking blends …” “batting away any cliches about sustainability..” “even the cliches can result in compelling buildings.”

Now really. The Conde Nast tower, which you cite approvingly, is flashy, and I suppose in that sense iconic, but it’s also just incredibly ugly. http://www.nyc-architecture.com/MID/MID109.htm. Would you really want to live next to it? If it were in Portland instead of Manhattan, wouldn’t you have torn it apart? It’s a hodgpodge of styles mixed and matched and topped with a huge flashing billboard, for crying out loud. There are beautiful green buildings to be sure—but your recitation of this particular one seems to owe more to this architect’s New York address than to their iconic design capabilities.

And take a look again at the New York Times Building. Look at the building, not the city it’s in, or the iconic name of its owner: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_Times_Building. It’s a fine completely ordinary stack of office floors; there’s nothing remotely interesting about it, with the possible exception of a few green elements. If Gerding Edlen had built it in Portland, you’d be savaging it.

ANY tower is necessarily to some degree a stack of floors—that’s why they’re built. But what makes the New York Times building “iconic” to you, while the Bellevue Towers are ordinary? I see them quite the other way around.

I know that no man is a prophet in his own land, but this Portland tendency to disparage our own demonstrates our provincialism rather than the opposite. Why not be comfortable in our own skins? In New York; in San Francisco, in Paris, in London, in Tokyo—being of the community would be a cause for celebration, and it would be understood to be perfectly natural, normal, and in accord with every logic to select someone from home for the work if you could, to keep the work and the multiplicative effects of the cash flow associated with it local.

So maybe it’s time for a sea change in our thinking. Until our critics, our media, ourselves, are able to overcome our own reverse provincialism, we’re hamstrung in attempts to lead. We need better. The essence of “local” for our own companies, is that this is where our pioneers first test their theories, and grow their wings; to learn to earn the trust of the public agencies and the community; to establish replicable and testable values. That’s not bad, and it isn’t cause for disparagement, and calling on it isn’t jingoistic. Maybe if our critics, whose voices we need, would attempt to dig a little deeper; to challenge their own facile assumptions about the nature of power and the basis for decisions—it could really help our community understand what we have, and what it will take, and what’s really at stake.

By Randy on Sunday, March 08, 2009 at 07:57PM PDT

Whew! Bill, where to start?

Time permits just a couple of notes in my defense, rather than a point-by-point refutation of a lot of wild speculation about my opinions about and experience with these various buildings.

I have seen buildings in situ - not just hyperlinked pictures - by all the competing architects and, I’ll tell you, Behnisch and his partners work, in breadth and depth is simply way beyond anything work being done here - no exceptions. As for my inability to “see” the local, I think I have a pretty good record for offering praise when praise is due. Indeed, perhaps with a little jog of your memory, you might recall the piece I wrote on the New York Times building in The Oregonian - specifically about the contribution made by Portland’s Benson Industries, manufacturers of the very-far-from ordinary ceramic bris soleil that clads the building. Comb the archives of ol’ O, not to mention Architectural Record’s Greensource, and you’ll find plenty of well-earned praise for Gerding/Edlen and GBD. Indeed, I once even refuted my own first opinion on Block 2 of the Brewery Blocks. Let me add to that list: I’ve come to really like the Museum Place Apartments. In my initial mild thumping of some aspects of that building (within a lot of praise) years ago, I failed to see how its massing would one day stand up beautifully to its neighbor, the Eliot.

OK, but this really isn’t about me. It’s about those occasional opportunities a city gets to inspire: itself and the world. Consider, for instance, the Portland Art Museum expansion: Oops, a big whiff—our “recycling” of the Masonic Temple got a series of bowling alley galleries connected to a circulation scheme that will take an act of god to fix. Better to have torn the old Museum School wing down and built anew. The aerial tram: a solid base triple cut short of a home run by Perkins Will’s failure (and everyone else’s) to convince OHSU of the need for a great PUBLIC upper landing. I could go on, but I won’t.

A “Center for Excellence” for anything located in the state’s largest university adjacent to the busiest transit stop in the region deserves to be something exceptional. Perhaps the GED/GBD/SERA team can deliver it. But, ignoring the whole local, non-local argument, consider this: Could a more thoughtful competition have done a lot more to assure it? Imagine, for instance, the PDC took the $299k they’re paying GED for the first “study” of the building and instead divided it between the four finalists to each propose schemes? Particularly in this market, we would have got a lot more study, not to mention ideas, that whoever ultimately won the contest would benefit from.

Instead, as Jeff Joslin notes above (and he was WAY closer to the proceedings than I) what we got was a lot of effort to camouflage what were clearly the intentions from the start.

By ben on Sunday, March 08, 2009 at 08:10PM PDT

Actually Bill, It is Portland’s constant insistence on hiring our own while pumping ourselves up on the success of our mediocrity that is the problem here. The fix was in from the beginning on this job and it is a shame, because one thing I’ve learned from cities like New York, Paris, London, and Tokyo is that they succeed in creating inspiring places when they search the world for talent for their most important structures, and they fall short when they give the biggest jobs to the hometown insiders.

And as a side note – if you truly think the Bellevue Towers are more beautiful than the New York Times building (or presumably the work of Stefan Behnisch) then we really cannot have a serious conversation.

By Scott on Monday, March 09, 2009 at 10:37AM PDT

I love the unabashed snobbery of this statement “if you truly think the Bellevue Towers are more beautiful than the New York Times building (or presumably the work of Stefan Behnisch) then we really cannot have a serious conversation.”

Isn’t this a matter of personal taste, some people prefer chocolate, some vanilla…neither preference is superior…

I personally would probably choose the Bellevue towers as well…the NYT building seems pretty bland, IMHO.

However, is there a specific example of Behnisch’s work you can point to that you feel is extraordinary? I went to the corporate website and wasn’t particularly impressed by anything…but I didn’t dig terribly deep.

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