Can Portland Fix a Building That Pretty Much Everyone Despises?

It ’s basically a Portlandia sketch : What if a city hold a rally to save a construction in trouble and no one came ? As part of our seriesPreservation Battle , we look at significant structures at a crossroads , and today we ’re examine Portland , Oregon ’s very - endangered — yet almost - universally - hate — Portland Building .

Designed in 1982 by Target teapot - design architectMichael Graves , the edifice is one of the first - ever postmodern anatomical structure , created as a playful reply to pure , cold modernness . It was build for only $ 25 million , a cost that was , as Graves once absurdlybragged in an interview , “ lower than a specification house would be built for in the suburbs . ” Turns out the building was constructed so affordably that it ’s falling asunder : Arenovation will cost $ 95 millionto fix water equipment casualty and structural job . It ’s essentially a white elephant . With light-green bowing on it .

The city might be able to overlook all that and pony up the cash if it was n’t for one simple fact : It is not a beloved building . Many Portlanders would preferably say good riddance to Graves ’s PoMo cube . What ’s a preservationist to do ? Portland - ground architecture journalistBrian Libbyfaces off against Gizmodo urbanism editor in chief Alissa Walker to adjudicate the destiny of Portland ’s most misunderstood piece of architecture .

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When it comes to trophy building by internationally renowned architects , Portland usually pales in equivalence to its prominent west - coast neighbors , Seattle and San Francisco . And that has been a point of superbia . In those with child city northward and Confederate States of Oregon , recent decennium have brought eye - catching buildings by Pritzker Prize - winning starchitects like Frank Gehry , Rem Koolhaas , Snohetta , Stephen Holl , and Herzog & DeMeuron . Portland , meanwhile , has pursued another form of design excellence : that of a enceinte city , one that balance small blocks , greenspaces , historical conservation and transportation while privilege pedestrians over the auto . In Portland , architecture is praised for gibe into the urban textile , not stand in contrast to it .

The Portland Building is business on the bottom , political party on top , exposure byArt History Images ( Holly Hayes )

Yet if you open up any history of American architecture , two Portland buildings are always included , not just because they ’re by remarkable designers but because they pioneered whole eras — and stood out proudly from the average : Pietro Belluschi ’s Equitable Building ( 1946 ) , credit as the first office building in the United States with a now - universal meth drapery rampart , and Michael Graves ’ Portland Building ( 1982 ) , which was the humanity ’s first major work of postmodernist computer architecture .

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In its 32 years , the Portland Building has in many ways not aged well . Small window think metropolis business office workers , devoid of natural light , take more sick daylight than their colleagues in other buildings . The building was work up cheaply , which today has prompt an approximate $ 95 million in repair costs , as well as the attendant individual - look about whether a refurbishment is worth the money ; after all , even at that price tag it would still be a miserable place to operate inside .

What ’s more , postmodernism never quite take off as the replacement to modernism . While it ’s true that in the 1970s and ’ 80s the stylus provided a needed antidote to concrete - laborious Brutalism and the corporate cliché of broody - glass position towers , sum up semblance and whimsy to city horizon , postmodernism was a victim of its own cartoonishness . postmodernist architecture star topology like Graves , Philip Johnson , Peter Eisenman , and Robert Venturi adeptly cover past historical architectural form , but in an outsized way that felt like mockery as much as court .

The bogus green ribbons are cartoonish , photo byKeith Daly

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Given the Portland Building ’s built-in structural problem and its comically dated - count exterior ( specially the fake ribbons ) , it would seem that if there were ever a time for a metropolis to tear down its most historically meaning work of landmark architecture , this would be it . Yet for a urban center that bills itself as unique among west - coast American metropolises , one that emblemizes the economic and societal value of placemaking , Portland ca n’t just bring in the wrecking ball . The Portland Building question is n’t just one of saying yes or no to preservation . It ’s one that demands a sort of third way .

Whether it ’s via a aim contest or by re - hiring Graves , the city call for a hybrid solution for the Portland Building . Its morphologic decay and built-in national conception flaw give precedent for something we seldom see from a watershed building : a attentive trade union of one-time and new . Most all conservation labor seek to faithfully repair what was there and , if any young elements are create , match them as closely as potential to the original , or they go for demolition . Yet there are countless examples of intercrossed architecture that ’s compelling precisely because of the juxtaposition of old and new .

The Great Court at the British Museum , viaFoster + Partners

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Think of Norman Foster ’s Great Court at the British Museum , for exercise , and how its glass canopy made the museum ’s central courtyard work better than it ever had before , becoming a visual signature for twenty-first one C London along the way . Think of how SHoP Architects ’ imaginatively cantilevered a fresh , soundly modernistic , zinc - festooned addition off the back and sides of a 1905 Renaissance Revival building : like a tree diagram saphead rising out of a stump . In each case , the new architecture did n’t just work in harmony with the old : it completed it .

Imagine a futurity in which the oppressive Portland Building national of fluorescent luminosity and low ceilings gives way to an atrium that fills the center of the space with natural clarification . Think of its fundament , a prison house - like configuration of ground - floor retail rig back behind a paries , becoming a glassy spot to gather over a key signature Rose City cupful of shade - develop constituent chemex brew .

The Portlandia statue in front of the Portland Building , photo byjoevare

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In recent years Portland has enjoyed a newfound vibrancy on the cultural mathematical function , born from a DNA of defiant crotchet . The television show that celebrate Portland ’s armada of bearded hipster , earnest age hippies , and wire startup entrepreneurs is even called Portlandia , after the statue ride atop one side of the Portland Building . Some calling for demolition have suggested the namesake statue could be moved to the bank of the Willamette River flowing past downtown , but it ’s not that simple-minded .

This is n’t merely a query of whether or not to demolish a building , or even a far-famed one . It ’s a referendum on what kind of city Portland want to be . Is it one that talks big about being progressive and innovative as it sidles up like a slacker for another soy latte , or one uncoerced to be as different from the average as Graves ’ conception sought to be ?

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It ’s common knowledge that the Michael Graves - designed Portland Building is one of the ugliest buildings in the public , presiding over the urban center ’s civil nitty-gritty like a cardboard box that took a wrong good turn on the way to the military provision store . But it ’s not just ugly , it ’s uncommonly ugly . It ’s train wreck - ugly . It ’s so - bad - it’s - commodity surly . I dare you to divert your eyes from the beige cube . You ca n’t !

hulk on the horizon , photo byphilosophygeek

Not that I ’m charge Graves for the design — this is his style . Graves ’ building are n’t as much buildings as they are urban follies . They ’re like showy brooch affix on the black wool lapel of a monotonous cityscape . The Portland Building is intend to be relish for its frivolity , its salmon stripes and emerald bows chasse in the clean reflections of grey glass towers . Its pops of color are a welcome ken on the skyline , especially in a metropolis so often shrouded in clouds and angst .

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But a cute kit does not make a great building . We ’ve all heard the horrors of what it search like inside — dark , windowless , mauve . ( in reality , does anyone really know what it face like inside ? I could only encounter afew blurry photos . Do the municipal workers who have their office inside sign an NDA ? ) It ’s not even a undecomposed neighbour . The shroud arcades are not all at street level and are therefore useless to pedestrians . The main entrances turn their back on an adjacent Mungo Park .

So it ’s pretty obvious that as a piece of computer architecture it does n’t work . Pietro Belluschi , who design Portland ’s other most noted construction , might have said it best : “ I call back it ’s totally awry . It ’s not architecture , it ’s promotional material . ”

It ’s really just a graphic wrapper . And it count great in photos .

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Which takes us over to Portland Monthly , where Randy Graggposes an excellent question : Does actually experiencing the building matter ? Yes , we can all apprise the Portland Building as an important part of many thing — the city ’s architectural history , the mantra to Keep Portland Weird , even Graves ’s own postmodern legacy . But you could do all that without really ever mistreat invertebrate foot inside of it .

You get it on how some buildings are street - despicable , but then you go inside and your whole life is suddenly transformed ? For the Portland Building , it ’s better from a distance . The Portland Building is a package , a shell , a sugary layer of artificial - sample fondant folded over a sheet patty . It ’s essentially a large study of graphical invention . It does not matter what ’s deep down . It exists in the man only as a window dressing , nothing more .

So does the Portland Building need to exist as three - dimensional body structure ? No . Can proper hold and recognition of this picky building occur through our own interpretations , and images ? I say yes . And Portland , you’re able to do it in a way that honors its legacy — and your future .

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The construction photographs supremely well — those dimensions are much made for Instagram — so have an en masse software documentation session for the construction : a luck for the whole urban center to fete the body structure , click some photos , and donate them to the city ’s archives via hashtag . Then , tap Portland ’s telling creative community — graphic designer , photographers , motion artists , filmmakers , illustrators — to capture and see the Portland Building one last time in the mode they ’d like to remember it . You now have the building celebrated and memorialise in hundreds , if not thousands , of unlike plant of artistic production , all unique , all better than actually tread inside the edifice itself .

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iuGcFqJK7FM

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