This is much larger than what I was picturing for some reason. The design does seem pretty chaotic, hopefully the finished product will be more cohesive.

It certainly does look a bit hodge-podge. It could be cool if done right?

Design Advice drawings [PDF, 112MB]. First hearing scheduled for December 11th.

^^^^^^^^

Holy god it's horrible :yuck:

http://www.nextportland.com/wp-conte...n-vignette.jpg

http://www.nextportland.com/wp-conte...on-massing.jpg

http://www.nextportland.com/wp-conte...massing-02.jpg

I also put the floorplans and elevations up on Next Portland.

I think it's tucked away enough that it will create an interesting street experience and not be too loud. It seems like it could be cool.

Anyone could miss it. Kind of like Canada, all tucked away down there.

I'm trying to see the bright side. Maybe it'll apologize for its appearance everyday, like Canada.

The bright side is the built version will probably be a bland version of this mess of a building. Seriously, someone needs to slap an architect who clearly was at the bottom of their class with this kind of design work.

Let's commission a copyright-crazed artist to make a huge statue in front of it no one can take pictures of...

Wait, did this guy really put blank walls facing an interior courtyard? That better be glass.

What the WHUT? Why did he/they do that? Why? Wow. Why?

I agree that this location is in an odd enough spot that a weird building would be fine. It's sort of tucked away, yet not. But this design is a mess. Maybe it's a fake. Maybe they have a real design that they think will get shot down or dumbed down, so they present this instead with the intention of presenting their real design as if it's actually a compromise. Otherwise... wtf?

Looking at how the units are arranged in plan, I'm fairly confident that wont be blank facade.

As much as I'm recoiling at the facade treatment, I'm more concerned about the massing. A 15 story U-shaped building is going to be very very bulky.

Any ground retail?

30,000 sq ft grocer.

Hey, that's good! I do think the building is beyond bulky. It would look so much better as fine-grained density-- several different dorm structures to make it look less like a superblock.

Agreed. Portland already has one too many of those buildings in University Pointe. Time will tell.

Reminds me of this article I read recently:

Is Portland ready to start building streets for smaller trucks?

http://bikeportland.org/2014/12/01/p...-trucks-114065

It goes on about various sized delivery trucks, although I don't think they were related to grocery store deliveries, which normally require larger trucks due to the amount of stuff they get delivered. Still, there is room for improvement.

There are other buildings in downtown Portland where semi truck trailers backup into the loading zone and end up blocking traffic. It seems like a fairly common thing, actually.

Har, har. Your humor is coming up a bit short, mate.

Considering the building is on 4th, one of the busiest streets in downtown... with a really weak SW corner, which will probably be one of the most visible corner views in downtown Portland, I'd have to disagree.

The streetcar makes its turn towards South Waterfront right there, and the PSU food carts are a block to the SW. This thing is way too massive to ignore.

It's a turd. :titanic: