Official Name: Veterans Memorial Coliseum
Architects: Skidmore Owings & Merrill
Project date: 1957
Construction dates: 1960
Neighborhood: East Side
Location: 300 N Ramsay Wy, Portland, OR 97227
Type: Arena, Entertainment
Tags: Trail Blazers, RIP City
Photographers: Julius Shulman

Project description By SOM

Located in Portland, Oregon, the Veterans Memorial Coliseum directly expresses SOM’s conviction that successful architecture depends on the balanced union of art and engineering. The design team, led by Myron Goldsmith, used a grid of reinforced concrete columns and cantilevered steel trusses to form a square building, 360 feet wide on each side. Unlike most arenas, SOM wrapped the building in modular 3.5-foot by 9-foot glass panels, flooding the interior with natural light.

Composed of gray-tinted glass, the glass walls are capped at the top of the building by a white strip of acrylic overlaid on plywood fascia. To cover the 80,000 square feet of windows, SOM designed a special blackout curtain which, at the time of its installation, was the largest continuous curtain in the United States. When it opened in 1960, the building was also the only glass-walled International Style stadium in the Pacific Northwest.

Inside, terraced seating wraps the arena in an oval bowl made of free-standing concrete. From outside the building, a viewer can see the bowl’s curved form through the grid of windows. The elegant contrast between fluid and rectangular shapes gives the coliseum its unique sense of equilibrium.

The coliseum is listed on the National Park Service’s National Register of Historic Places, and the National Trust for Historic Preservation has declared it a National Treasure.

Official Name: Beaverton City Library
Architects: Hacker Architects
Project date:
Construction dates:
Neighborhood: Beaverton
Location: 12375 SW 5th St, Beaverton, OR 97005
Type: Library, institutional, education
Tags: Thom Hacker, Timber, 00'
Photographer: Unknown

Project Description by Hacker Architects

This full service central library is designed around a significant public room, constructed of an "orchard" of graceful wooden columns arching upward into a wooden lattice of roof framing, architecturally invoking the city's nickname of the City of Trees. Light-filled open spaces for reading and browsing, separate children's and teen areas, public meeting rooms, and a large auditorium accommodate a variety of uses and noise levels. In addition to supporting typical library services, the facility hosts events from community meetings to local theater productions.

Official Name: Mississippi Workshop
Architects: Waechter Architecture
Project date: 
Construction dates: 2022
Neighborhood: Northeast Portland
Location: 4224 N Mississippi Ave, Portland, OR 97217
Type: Mixed use, Low rise
Tags: Corten, Mass timber
Photographers: Lara Swimmer

Project Description by Waechter Architecture

The Mississippi Workshop is a mixed-use, mass timber building located on a prominent commercial avenue in Portland, Oregon among structures of varied type, character, and construction. Mississippi was designed, developed, and built by Waechter Architecture as a proving ground for sustainable building systems and ‘all-wood’ construction technologies, and equally, as a forum for new creative conversations.

Mississippi is the first commercial project in Oregon to use mass timber construction for all components of the building’s structure. Other than a ‘rain jacket’ of weathering steel on the exterior and radiant concrete flooring, all surfaces within the building are exposed wood without the need for additional finishes or fireproofing. This approach creates a simplicity and wholeness that is absent in standard CLT or traditional frame construction and creates spaces with uncommon warmth, beauty, and durability.

With the principles of economy, constructability, and agility serving as key drivers, the organization of Mississippi creates distinct zones for programs and services. The building is comprised of six equal rooms, stacked in three tiers on each side of a shared courtyard. These clear span volumes are proportioned to accommodate a range of uses and may be outfitted for autonomous use, or as an ensemble with other units. Operable windows throughout the building allow for efficient cross ventilation and generous daylight. A compact service and circulation bar connects these two wings along the northern edge, housing bathrooms, stairs, and elevators; acting as a spring point for future kitchen and plumbing tie-ins for the main spaces.

At the heart of Mississippi, an open-air courtyard acts as a semi-private civic space offering a retreat from the busy street, and a venue for events, presentations, and informal gatherings.

Every decision, from the building’s simple and clear organization to the integration of healthy materials and efficient building systems such as all-electric, refrigerant-free, hydronic heating and cooling systems, embodies the principles of resilience and enduring design. The ultimate goal of the project was to create a a replicable and adaptive model for a future-proof building that also possesses a strong sense of identity, grace, and permanence.

Model

Plans

Official Name: Aubrey R. Watzek House
Architects: John Yeon
Project date: 1937
Construction dates: 
Neighborhood: West Hills
Location: 1061 SW Skyline Blvd, Portland, OR 97221
Type: Single family housing
Tags: Critical Regionalism
Photographers: Jeremy Bittermann

Project Description

by John Yeon Center for Architecture and the Landscape

Designed for the lumber baron and civic patron Aubrey Watzek when John Yeon was just 26 years old, the Watzek House instantly became an icon for bold, new regional interpretations of the Modernist movement. The Museum of Modern Art published the home in its 1939 10th anniversary book, Art of Our Time, with Le Corbusier’s Villa Savoye and Frank Lloyd Wright’s Jacobs House. Built from a veritable symphony of regional woods and inventive distillations of historical motifs, Yeon described the design as “a sequence of revelations.”

In 1935, when Portland lumber magnate Aubrey Watzek wished to build a house for himself and his mother, his friend John Yeon undertook to find a site and propose a design for the house. When Watzek balked at the untraditional design, Yeon suggested he contact Pietro Belluschi, who was then directing the A.E. Doyle architectural firm. Yet after seeing Belluschi’s design, Watzek returned to Yeon and the original proposal. Yeon worked through the Doyle office and managed the production drawings. When he finished the construction drawings in early 1937, work began on the house. Yeon was just 26 years old.

Sited on 3.62 acres in the southwest Portland hills, the design included the main house on the east portion of the property, and a chauffeur’s house on the west part. The site afforded magnificent views to the north (Mt. St. Helens), east (Mt. Hood), and south (Tualatin Valley), of which Yeon would take full advantage. It was Yeon’s intention to make the house a part of the landscape and not an imposition upon it.

The construction of the house progressed rapidly under the direction of contractor Burt Smith, an extremely skillful builder, and by the end of 1937, the house was occupied. The house is U-shaped, centered around a formal courtyard, with two major axes; the west-east axis, which runs from the courtyard through the living room and culminates with a spectacular view of Mt. Hood through the living room windows, and a north-south axis that runs from the dining room, through the entrance hall, and culminates in the living room. The service wing flanks the courtyard on the north side, and the bedroom wing flanks the south side. A garden wall and covered porch flank the courtyard on the west side, and connect the garage to the rest of the house. The interior spaces include the large living room, library, guest room, dining room, two formal bedrooms, two servants’ bedrooms, kitchen, pantry, five bathrooms, and a large basement

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