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David Otte believes in the inherent tenet of human dignity.

As Holst Architecture鈥檚 lead architect on the Bud Clark Commons shelter, a new eight-story center for the homeless at the base of the Broadway Bridge in Portland, Otte has been questioned a lot about the design and materials selected for the project.

Typically, homeless shelters are built with durable materials that are cheap and easy to install. Bud Clark Commons, however, features designs and finishes that Otte said work to the scale of the human form and impart warmth in an attempt to 鈥渟queeze humanity out of the materials.鈥�

Working with a mix of issues that many designers would find frustrating, Otte rose to the challenge by becoming the right architect at the right time on the right project.聽His brother was severely disabled and confined to a wheelchair, something that taught Otte said taught him a great deal about creating designs to give people with and without disabilities opportunities for equal access. It also helped him maintain empathy and consideration about the people for whom he was designing.

After graduating from University of Texas in 1998, he was hired by Zimmer Gunsul Frasca Architects. He enjoyed his eight years with the firm, but he often found himself working alone on small elements of big projects. He longed for an environment where he could be part of a group of designers, collaborating together on all aspects of a single project. He found that scenario when he joined Holst Architecture.

The influence of a range of ideas from a variety of sources and emotions rather than a single mindset is evident in Bud Clark Commons.

鈥淩ather than flat, smooth walls, we put in thin strips of wood stained with a warm tone,鈥� Otte said. 鈥淚t looks beautiful, and there鈥檚 a comfort you sense from the room that a cold institutional approach lacks.鈥�

When project funding was cut by $4 million, Otte and his colleagues at Holst saw it as a new parameter to work into the design, resulting in stacking what was at first conceived as side-by-side three- and five-story buildings into a single eight-story structure. The bottom two floors of the project are an open-to-the-public day resource center. The building, which earned a Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design platinum rating, also has a 90-bed men鈥檚 shelter on the third floor and 130 apartments for the most medically vulnerable clients on the upper floors.

鈥淲e had to give up 15,000 feet of retail space,鈥� Otte said, 鈥渂ut it鈥檚 a better building.鈥�