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While slogging through a workout at the gym, people constantly search for ways to make the time go faster: listening to music on their iPods, reading trashy gossip magazines, watching police procedural shows on television. Iain MacKenzie has found a different distraction to pass that time.

While he is burning rubber on the treadmill or pumping iron, MacKenzie zones out by listening to the audio from the Portland Design Commission.

鈥淚t does make the time go faster,鈥� MacKenzie said.

MacKenzie, 30, has turned his love of architecture into Nextportland.com, a website dedicated to making it easier to understand what’s being built in Portland. The site, which MacKenzie began in November 2014, features an extraordinarily detailed development map of projects in Portland as well as numerous posts per week following the goings-on in Portland’s building industry.

鈥淭here’s a huge amount of development going on in the city at the moment,鈥� MacKenzie said. 鈥淚 spend quite a lot of time browsing through the city’s website to see what is going on.

鈥淓verything that’s on the (city) site is all public information, but sometimes it’s very hard to find the information. It’s buried between four or five different locations on the city website. Sometimes you have to download 200 megabit PDFs to see it. I wanted to be able to take that information and present it in a way that was much more easily accessible for the public to view.鈥�

MacKenzie’s passion for architecture was kindled 25 years ago in the North Highlands of Scotland. While his parents were having their house built, MacKenzie was mesmerized watching the renderings by the architect being turned into the brick-and-mortar building where he and his family would live.

鈥淚 loved watching that house being built, and it wasn’t too much later that I decided that I wanted to be an architect myself,鈥� MacKenzie said, in a thick Scottish brogue. 鈥淔rom a very early age, I was always aware that being an architect was a career you could have.鈥�

While at university in Edinburgh and Glasgow, MacKenzie began studying architecture. He found learning to be an architect to be both challenging and rewarding.

鈥淪tudying architecture is difficult,鈥� MacKenzie said. 鈥淚t’s something you’ve really got to be passionate about to make it through.鈥�

One of MacKenzie’s favorite parts of his education was the crit鈥攕hort for criticism鈥攚hich is a big part of the reason he finds listening to audio from the Design Commission so fascinating.

鈥淥ne of the big learning experiences at the university architecture program is the crit, where you put up your work and people evaluate it,鈥� MacKenzie said. 鈥淲e weren’t just required to go to our own crit, we were required to go to everyone else’s too. Listening to the Design Commission audio is a bit like the crit, where you get people into a really detailed discussion about what’s working in the design and what isn’t. I just find it fascinating to listen to.鈥�

MacKenzie’s mother is American, so he has U.S. citizenship. In 2009, after he had graduated from university, he moved to Portland, where his sister was living. MacKenzie originally planned on staying in the Rose City for just a few months. Six years later, MacKenzie is still in Portland. He is not yet licensed as an architect in Oregon, but he is working at a local architecture firm and filling his website with content in his spare time.

It’s difficult for MacKenzie to quantify exactly how much time he actually spends on Nextportland.com. He estimates that it takes him about an hour to write each post, but he enjoys looking through the city’s website so much that he does not actually count that as time spent working.

鈥淭here are a lot of times when I’m just looking through stuff when I have nothing else to do,鈥� MacKenzie said. 鈥淏ut I wouldn’t really count that as time that specifically goes into it (Nextportland.com). I was doing that before I started the website, because I was really interested in what was going on in the city and what the firms were doing.鈥�

The problem with blog-style websites is that many do not adhere to the standards of journalism and are filled with far more opinions than actual facts. Nextportland.com is different in that the main purpose of the website is to be a hub for information.

鈥淔or people who are not in architecture and construction, sometimes it’s very hard to get a sense about what’s going on,鈥� MacKenzie said. 鈥淪ometimes I feel like people get a lot of bad information. I try to put things up, present them exactly as they are with no criticism or comment or anything 鈥� and to the greatest extent I can, just show what the thing is.鈥�

On an average weekday, the site attracts between 1,500 and 4,000 pages views, MacKenzie said. He is able to make a bit of money from advertisements on the website, but he mostly does it for fun.

Although MacKenzie believes there are ways to improve Nextportland.com, he’s happy for now with the product he has and feels lucky that he’s able to share what he loves with the public.

鈥淚 have ideas about how I could improve it,鈥� MacKenzie said. 鈥淏ut just the level of time it would take to take it to that level is beyond what I can commit to it.

鈥淲orking in architecture myself, I’m just very passionate about this.鈥�