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ZGF's award speaks to its rejuvenated design acumen. The business has always been there for this one-time national AIA firm-of-the-year award-winner, from a host of hospitals and university buildings to the Portland International Airport's recent expansion (including a massive and stunning glass canopy over the arrival area), as well as a large condo downtown for the city's premier private developer, Gerding Edlen, that will serve in part as ZGF's new home.

In recent years the firm has invested in an army of younger architects and specialists, benefiting from the growing talent pool of young architects moving to the city.

"Portland has become not only a creative place for us as architects, but because of the social consciousness of this place," says architect Eugene Sandoval, one of the youngest partners at ZGF.

"It allows amazing growth and has amazing culture for a small city," continues Sandoval. "Yet it's ultimately still an affordable city to start a creative venture. In Los Angeles or New York, the risks are so much higher. There's also a symbiotic relationship here between different creative branches."

Architect Paul McKean, whose Neal Creek House outside Hood River, Oregon, won the other honor award, began his career in Portland at BOORA Architects, where he codesigned numerous award-winning sustainable, LEED-rated public schools on conventional budgets.

McKean codesigned the house with his wife, Amy Donohue, an architect at BOORA. Completing this relatively small, 930-square-foot (86-square-meter) home was difficult given tight constraints on the land, part of a 100-year floodplain set back from a creek.

But the boxy form, clad in Western red cedar with ample glass, cantilevers over a poured-in-place concrete base to make efficient use of a small floor plan and maximize the view — and all on a budget only just over $200,000.

"I think that's what people take away" says McKean, "that you can build a nice little box that you can afford."

The firm to receive the most awards is also one of the city's most promising talents: three-year-old Works Partnership Architecture.

Their design for the recently completed Olympic Mills Commerce Center, located in Portland's industrial Central Eastside district, won the second-tier merit award from AIA Portland. The project has given new life to one of the area's most massive structures: an eight-story cereal mill erected over a full city block in the 1920s.

Works created a beautiful array of wood-screened interior courtyards bathed in natural light and with a striking interior harp-like structure. Warehouse renovations are common today, but this is one that shows an exceptionally light touch and creates an unusually soulful experience for such a massive space — and on another tight budget.

"Anything you see is there because it was cheaper than the conventional way," says Bill Neburka, principal of Works Partnership, about the Olympic Mills project. "That's sort of the test for us. We know it has to be value-engineering proof, or it will get knocked out of the budget."

"I think we understand how to get things done in terms of the construction of our buildings," continues Neburka. "But it's also nice to be able to kind of rejuvenate yourself with projects that are really driven by ideas."

Works Partnership also received two merit awards for unbuilt work. One was for 2631 NW Upshur, a 120,000-square-foot (11,000-square-meter), 109-residential-unit, mixed-use building the architects have broken down into a series of smaller buildings with a central courtyard. The jurors praised its double-skin strategy "that gives the building a veiled nature and provides a screen for the exterior space."

Also receiving a nod was the firm's Encased Houses, a pair of separate residences that share some common spaces in a borderline area between industrial and residentially zoned structures. Both aesthetics inform the design.

Two other firms to win awards sound very similar, and each is a small firm with a high design reputation: Skylab and COLAB.

Skylab Design Group, behind founding principal Jeff Kovel, won for a prototype retail outlet design for Nau, a new sustainable athletic apparel startup cofounded by a longtime Nike executive.

Skylab is a previous AIA Portland design award-winner for a mixed-used project located downtown that houses Kovel's firm and private residence. The firm practices a sleek but expressive and tactile sense of contemporary design infused with local materials — particularly in another self-developed previous project, the wildly popular Doug Fir Lounge, with its log-cabin-meets-midcentury-modern coffee-shop motif.

The long-acclaimed COLAB Architecture + Urban Design, like Skylab, has not been able to land many choice commissions in Portland. But instead of developing their own work, they've balanced work for foreign clients in Dubai with a portfolio of small retail work.

COLAB's design for Split, a wine bar in suburban Tualatin, Oregon, was commended by the jury for its "restrained use of copper, leather and wood to evoke the vintner's process of making wine. There was no glitz on display, but rather a refreshing modesty."

Two local public projects were also honored. The Mayor's Award for Design Excellence, selected by Portland Mayor Tom Potter, went to the Community Campus at New Columbia by Dull Olsen Weekes Architects. New Columbia is a reclaimed urban neighborhood that houses both the green-designed Rosa Parks School and a Regence Boys & Girls Club in a community planned with New Urbanism principals in mind.

The craftsmanship award went to the suburban city of Wilsonville's Memorial Park Structures and Historic Barn by Hennebery Eddy Architects, which has also claimed numerous local AIA awards in the past. It was the firm's historic barn that most intrigued the jury through its simple adaptive reuse plan for a historic agricultural building.

Over the course of several days, the public voted on a people's choice award, which went to the architectural opposite of a local barn renovation: Al Bateen Wharf Hotel + Residences in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, designed by Otak, Inc.

That kind of diversity of design is an encouraging trend for this awakening conemporary metropolis. The city is gradually establishing an identity as a kind of design capital born from a blend of youthful enthusiasm, outsider spirit, regional traditions, and deep sustainable values.

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Brian Libby is a Portland, Oregon-based freelance writer who has also published in Metropolis, The New York Times, The Christian Science Monitor, and Architectural Record.

SUBSCRIPTION SAMPLE The living quarters of the Neal Creek House are raised above the floodplain on a full-floor concrete foundation. Photo: Brian Libby Extra Large Image Zimmer Gunsul Frasca Architects (ZGF) received an honor award for its work on the University of Oregon Athletic Medicine Center in Eugene. Photo: Basil Childers/ Courtesy ZGF Extra Large Image Contained within the University of Oregon's Casanova Center, the Athletic Medicine Center provides services to more than 400 student athletes. Photo: Basil Childers/ Courtesy ZGF Extra Large Image Hennebery Eddy Architects received a craftsmanship award for its work on the Memorial Park Structures and Historic Barn in Wilsonville, Oregon. Photo: Michael Mathers/ Courtesy Hennebery Eddy Architects Extra Large Image The Wilsonville Memorial Park includes new structures and a restored historic barn. Photo: Michael Mathers/ Courtesy Hennebery Eddy Architects Extra Large Image Works Partnership Architecture received an AIA Portland merit award for renovation of the Olympic Mills Commerce Center, originally a purpose-built cereal mill. Photo: David Owen/ Artifice Images Extra Large Image Inside the Olympic Mills building, a skylit courtyard anchors each corner of a rectangular circulation system. Photo: David Owen/ Artifice Images Extra Large Image The design for the Al Bateen Wharf Hotel + Residences in Dubai, by Otak, Inc., received the AIA Portland People's Choice Award. Image: Otak Architects   Click on thumbnail images to view full-size pictures.