(continued)

The Portland AIA chapter also organized a forum in which professionals and public shared concerns about urban design quality. Such concerns have become more urgent as the city's tightly controlled urban growth boundary concentrates the region's growing housing needs downtown instead of in the suburbs.

Architecture Week in Portland was not only for adults: high school students considering a career in design participated in "Job Shadow," spending a day at work with a practicing architect. And younger children explored architectural history and hands-on design at the Portland Children's Museum's Playshop studio.

Educating the Profession

Importantly, Architecture Week in Portland was also a time for the profession to undergo a self-examination, as manifested in both celebration and education. Professionals handed out design awards to their peers and educated each other about coping with the upheavals associated with technological changes in the field.

For example, a seminar on the Internet explored ways for architects, engineers, and builders to collaborate more effectively, share documents, and improve communications using "project extranet" systems.

Closely allied with the Portland chapter's events was a three-day conference on professional practice sponsored by the AIA at the national level. "Form! Function! Future!" included nearly 60 seminars on many aspects of practice. These included introducing new computer technologies, managing risk, expanding services, managing staff, designing for sustainability, and understanding new building codes.

In the words of the conference organizers: "In today's marketplace architects are discovering that the practice of architecture has quietly evolved to include the entire life cycle of a building. The nature of the services to be provided by architects to meet the needs of a rapidly changing client culture require that the architectural profession move beyond traditional design services to thrive."

Urban Design Lessons

A keynote speaker for this conference was Frank A. Wolden, principal of the San Diego firm Carrier Johnson. Wolden, an architect and urban planner, showed several examples of how the two fields support each other.

Carrier Johnson's Hoyt Street Yards project in Portland involved mixed-use redevelopment of an old industrial neighborhood to link the urban core to the Willamette River. The City of Portland had envisioned a series of parks to revitalize the derelict warehouse district.

Wolden's message to the audience was that successful urban design looks beyond the immediate site for form and inspiration. From the old railroad yard came the idea of a long, continuously meandering form. The firm proposed a sequence of mixed use buildings—retail, residential, parks, hotels, and restaurants, interspersed with gardens—along a continuous boardwalk that integrates the entire development.

"Consider creative ways," he advised the audience, "to design urban forms to relate to existing forms, which in turn support urban function." Impressed by this thinking "outside the box," the city has now commissioned the firm to develop still more blocks according to this vision.

Wolden's work in particular, and Architecture Week celebrations in general, point out how architects, urban designers, and the public can improve the built environment through a collaboration that begins with a shared passion for cities.

The proposed development of Portland's Hoyt Street Yards by Carrier Johnson envisions a vital urban community created through mixed-use elements. Image: Carrier Johnson Residential and commercial buildings, interspersed with gardens, will link the urban core to the river. Restaurants and shops with lofts above will occupy linear buildings along the proposed Boardwalk. Image: Carrier Johnson Plan of a Portland house by Kara Adams. Image: Kara Adams The stair-stepped windows look out over the dense woods of Portland's west hills. Photo: Kara Adams The Portland house by Kara Adams also serves as its owners' art gallery. Photo: Kara Adams   Click on thumbnail images to view full-size pictures.