Posted Feb 3, 2015, 8:31 PM
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Join Date: Jan 2009
Location: Portland
Posts: 7,399
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Quote:
Will PNCA’s Landmark New HQ Spark a Renaissance in Old Town?
We take a look at the transformation of Portland's first post office into the growing art school's beating heart.
Tom Manley, the president of the Pacific Northwest College of Art, distinguishes between two educational models: programs and platforms. “Programs,” he says, cupping his hands like a bowl, “are like a pediatrics department at a hospital, geared to deal with one set of protocols really well.
“Platforms,” he continues, fingers stretching outward, “are like emergency rooms: you don’t know what’s coming in the door, and you have to be ready to improvise anything.” Manley has reshaped PNCA—and the college’s new digs in NW Broadway’s historic 511 Building—into a platform, he argues, for “an open-ended future.” PNCA will christen its headquarters with a late-winter party; classes begin February 2.
The building heralds a new phase for the city’s most prominent art college—and, potentially, a new creative center of gravity for Portland’s west side. The 511 will house specialized facilities you’d expect at an art school: printmaking, photography, painting, etc. But the former US Post Office, remodeled by noted local architecture firm Allied Works, will also feature flexible “lab” spaces, where students can invent projects tackling everything from new communications technologies to rising global temperatures to just earning a living. Above all, Manley hopes the college’s new HQ will leverage the resource he believes most distinguishes fast-growing PNCA from rivals like the Rhode Island School of Design or LA’s Art Center College of Design: Portland itself, via a web of urban and cultural connections anchored by the 511.
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...continues at Portland Monthly.
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