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Portland skyline
Photo: Richard Luebke |
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Commonwealth Building
(Pietro Belluschi, 1948)
Photo: Richard Luebke |
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Cast-iron storefronts
in Old Town
Photo: Richard Luebke |
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Portlandia" above
the entrance of the
Portland Building
Photo: Barry Sears |
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Pioneer Courthouse Square
with
Jackson Tower (1912)
Photo: Barry Sears |
Study Tour to Portland, Oregon
October 22-25, 2009
Think about Portland: green, livable, sustainable, great
public transit. It’s a magnet for today’s urban
traveler.
Far-sighted governors and mayors of the 1970s and 80s helped
lay the groundwork. A 1973 state law created an “Urban
Growth Boundary”—meant to protect farm and forest—in
effect limiting sprawl and keeping downtown vital. An early
move to light rail, now followed by a streetcar system and
even the nation’s second urban aerial tram, has made
Portland a public-transit star. The city’s planners
will address us.
Portland had its own Daniel Burnham in A. E. Doyle, whose
firm designed many of the elegant downtown towers from the
early 20th century. His Benson hotel was modeled after Chicago’s
Blackstone. Among the city’s noteworthy architecture:
the Commonwealth Building (Doyle partner Pietro Belluschi,
1948) is the nation’s first truly “modern”
office tower, beating Chicago by a decade. The first large-scale
project in the post-modern style, the Portland Building
(Michael Graves), became a sensation in 1982 on the covers
of both Time and Newsweek.
In recent years, while other cities hired international
stars for new construction, Portland excelled in adaptive
re-use. Contemporary architect Brad Cloepfil made a national
reputation for his firm, Allied Works, with the 1990 renovation
of a 1910 paint warehouse into dramatic headquarters for
the Wieden-Kennedy Company. It’s rated LEED-Platinum,
highest category of the U.S. Green Building Council. So
is the nearby Gerding theater complex, developed by Gerding/Edlen,
which began life in 1891 as the Portland Armory. The firms’
principals will interpret both projects for us.
A Portland city block is only two-hundred feet square, the
smallest of any major American city. That means more light
at street level and more corners for stores. People live
close to downtown, where there’s a vibrant restaurant
and craft-brew pub scene.
Local planners have a habit of turning parking lots into
parks, even replacing a riverfront expressway with a swath
of green. Architect firms shamelessly promote their Green
credentials, landing business in other cities eager to imitate.
One firm, Thomas Hacker Architects, has created a “Platinum
Tour” and a “Planning Tour” for visiting
professionals. They’ll share these tours with CAF
travelers.
We’ll tour two outstanding gardens, Japanese and Classical
Chinese, each considered the best of its kind in the U.S.
And the Portland Art Museum will host us for a reception
in its distinguished entrance wing, an early modernist Belluschi
design from 1932. We expect this to be a memorable tour!
Price TBD
For more information contact Vickie Apostolopoulos at Vickie@architecture.org
or Barry Sears at Bsears@architecture.org.
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