Sorry urbanpdx. You'll have to find the answers to your questions somewhere else, or do some serious thinking about the ones you've received so far. I'm more interested in how the design of this building might ultimately work out under this design-build principle.
I re-read some things, so I think I understand that in this case, PSU assumes the role of developer, inviting architects partnered with contractors to produce these guaranteed to stay within a predesignated budget designs. So they've chosed YGH whose plaza side looks pretty good, but maybe not the others.
What I'm wondering now, is what the status of the design relative to the budget might be. If PSU were to come under a lot of pressure from say, the board of directors to modify the street side (more windows for example) could they be obliged to do that even if it would require an adjustment to the budget? What kind of effort would be required to have PSU modify the design if one seems called for? And if they did subsequently upwardly increase the budget, wouldn't the losing contenders react to such an action as unfair, or would the current contract have built into it a provision that would allow for such adjustments?
I think we all need to see the rest of this building, at least I do, before being able to have a better idea about how this thing might go.
Saturday, February 2nd
I'm just adding a bit here about possible answers to questions raised about the rec center design selection process. They're offered over on portlandarchitecture.com via a response by Ernest Tipton, PSU's campus design and planning manager to Gragg's Oregonian article and Brian Libby's own blog article about the rec center project. Many of you may have read that blog. Here's the link:
http://portlandarchitecture.com/
Tipton was miffed at Gragg and Libby, the former for reporting what Tipton considered to be misinformation, the latter for compounding the error. His comment concludes with a clarification of the current status of the team proposal having rated the greatest number of points according to the system chosen for this purpose by PSU:
"A recommendation has been sent to administration that PSU enter further negotiations with the Shanska/ YGH team. No team has yet been awarded the project and there is as yet no “Winner”.
The process of Architectural design is never complete until the building is fully functional programmatically and aesthetically. In referring to both urban and building design Virtuvius defined these as economy." Ernest Tipton