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Portland’s Burnside Bridgehead area is sort of a blank canvas for architects.

“The fact that it’s the eastside makes it feel less constrained somehow,” said Brett Schulz, architect for Guerrilla Development‘s Fair-Haired Dumbbell project on Northeast Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard. “The culture of the eastside is more quirky.”

The Dumbbell, designed as a six-story commercial building with a flowery skin inspired by wrapping paper, is one of a slew of creative projects in the works near the east end of the Burnside Bridge. Portland architects are taking advantage of a district in a transition by crafting contemporary designs that account for a history of industrial use and an influx of younger workers and residents.

Portland Design Commissioner David Keltner, a principal at THA Architecture, said design proposals have fascinated him.

“Every time someone brings in a project from the district, it’s not like anything is inhibiting them,” he said. “What’s special about that area is there’s really little relevant fabric to respond to.”

Many of the planned projects in the area, at the northern end of the Central Eastside Urban Renewal Area, will be built on land previously owned by the Portland Development Commission. The city agency is set to soon sell the property where the Dumbbell will be built, at 11 N.E. Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd., to Guerrilla Development.

Nearby, projects planned on former PDC properties include Key Development Corp.‘s Block 67 and Beam Development’s and Urban Development Partners‘ Block 75. Skylab Architecture designed Block 67, a 21-story mixed-use tower between Northeast Couch and North Burnside streets, and Northeast Second and Third avenues. Works Partnership Architecture is designing Block 75, a nine-story mixed-use building at 111 N.E. Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd.

The area’s project diversity fits into the Burnside Bridgehead Framework Plan, adopted in May 2010 to guide redevelopment efforts in the neighborhood, said Geraldene Moyle, PDC senior project manager.

“What resonated with many of our stakeholders was the authenticity and grittiness of the Central Eastside,” she said. “I think you see that in those projects. You get that variety. You get that authenticity of development.”

The parcels’ shapes, like the traffic island of the Dumbbell, also are driving unique design in the area, PDC senior project manager Eric Jacobson said.

“These are small, awkward-shaped parcels that really require someone to look at it in a different way,” he said. “The parcels are in themselves unique, and they need unique solutions and require a lot of creative development.”

Work Partnership Architecture’s designs for the Burnside Bridgehead area also keep in mind a surge in Central Eastside creative office redevelopment geared mostly toward young adults, said Will Ullman, a project architect.

“There is a kind of reverence and willingness to uplift existing buildings and use them in a more contemporary way for offices,” he said. “I think that’s also what’s fueling the creativity as far as the architecture.”

Ullman said conversions of warehouses into office buildings helped inspire the firm’s designs of both Block 75 and bSIDE6, a seven-story commercial building at 524 E. Burnside St. completed in 2009. Classic warehouse elements, such as big windows and high ceilings, were incorporated into Works Partnership Architecture’s designs, he said.

“Our buildings are trying to exploit views and light,” he said. “That kind of simplicity and clarity of how place is expressed is what we carry into more contemporary buildings.”

The Dumbbell has a contemporary exterior, but the interior will pay homage to the area’s industrial past with concrete floors and heavy timber beams, Schulz said.

“(Creative office users) all want to be in these old concrete buildings,” he said. “It will be a warm industrial feel.”

Vallaster Corl Architects has designed projects near the Burnside Bridgehead area, including the Central Eastside Lofts, at 111 N.E. Sixth Ave., completed in 2012, and the Lower Burnside Lofts, at 30 S.E. 10th Ave, scheduled for completion in 2015. The neighborhood presents opportunity, partner Don Vallaster said.

“If you’re in the Alphabet District in Northwest, you can’t do much in contemporary design,” he said. “It’s nice to establish a neighborhood character for future projects that can be creatively designed.”

Getting a chance to design in the area has been liberating, Schulz said.

“It’s what all architects live for,” he said. “It’s an iconic site that you’re just not going to get every time. I just can’t wait to see the whole neighborhood built out. It’s really going to be something.”