Spaces in between offer connections for city life
Daily Journal of Commerce
by Alison Ryan
08/08/2007
The sliver of urban fabric between the 16-story Civic condominium tower and the six-story apartment building rising next to it connects the commerce and chaos of East Burnside Street with fanfare of PGE Park. Across the city, on South Waterfront’s Block 46, designers envision a Euro-inspired concourse between the site’s two apartment and retail buildings.
Different projects, different dynamics. But the spaces between both two-building projects have potential to be destinations in themselves, say members of the Portland Design Commission.
Block 46’s apartments are contained in two six-story buildings. To the north, a horseshoe-shaped building outlines a courtyard at the block’s center. The building to the south caps the block.
The streetcar line will wrap around the site, said Dave Heater of Ankrom Moisan Associated Architects, and the design responds to that flow of traffic. The southern building’s undulating, multi-planed metal façade was inspired, he said, by stone that has been eroded and sculpted by the movement of water.
That movement is hoped to carry into the interior courtyard and the broad path that bisects the site, connecting Southwest Bond and Moody streets.
The project’s wider contribution, said Commissioner Jeff Stuhr, is in the context of South Waterfront’s broader urban planning.
“That really intense kind of urban space where people can gather had not materialized,” he said.
What could happen there, said Commissioner Andrew Jansky, is similar to what could happen at the Civic.
On East Burnside Street, the Civic’s 286 concrete-and-glass condominium units sit side-by-side with the wood-and-concrete affordable apartment units. The courtyard bracketed by the two, planned as a space to hold public art, the activity of retail, and resident life, could see the same kind of spill-over exterior buzz that designers of Block 46 are aiming for.
Space for life in the public realm, commissioners said, is as important as space in the private realm. And diversity of development and activity for the new district should be considered along with building design.
“Once it’s done, it’s done,” Commissioner Michael Mc-Culloch said. “Then it’s just front porches and poodles.”
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