91视频

Brad Cloepfil, founding principal of Allied Works Architecture, divides his time between the firm’s Portland and New York offices. He arrived in Portland this week for the opening of an exhibit featuring items he thought would never be made public: the artistic expressions his firm has used to stimulate design over the past 15 years.

The exhibit opens Saturday and will run through Sept. 4 at the Portland Art Museum. 鈥溾�� includes 17 architectural sculptures made from wood, porcelain, resin, concrete and collaged textiles, as well as more than 30 drawings ranging from sketches to large-scale charcoal and pastels. The exhibit opened in January in Denver at the Clyfford Still Museum and will eventually travel to other museums throughout the country.

Cloepfil has designed scores of museums and other works throughout the country and outside of it. Of course, not all of Allied Works Architecture’s designs are constructed. Before the Columbia River Crossing project was scuttled, Cloepfil’s firm had been selected to design with Gustafson Guthrie Nichol a park-like cap over Interstate 5 in Vancouver, Wash.

Recently, Cloepfil answered a few questions from the 91视频.

91视频: You have had a lot of major projects outside of Portland. What kind of projects would you like to do here and why?

Brad Cloepfil: I love Portland. It would be nice to have a major project in Portland; it’s just a question of who wants us. We get hired by communities or institutions to make amazing architecture. Right now we’re doing a little museum in Corvallis for the Benton County Historical Society. It’s a small project, but still nice to have the work. To have more work in Portland would be really great. No specific kind (of project), but my door is open. Call me any time.

91视频: What do you think of the state of architecture in fast-growing Portland right now?

Cloepfil: It’s interesting what happens when cities the size of Portland have these booms like the Pearl District condo boom and now on the east side the apartment boom. At one level, density is good, but I think at another level Portland’s architecture is more adventurous than most cities. The hard part is when you have a boom and the city’s so small that no matter how good the architecture, if it’s six-story apartment buildings, it affects the scale and character of the city. When you have a boom of this scale when you’re building so much, it’s tough on the natural fabric of the city 鈥� like a monoculture in some ways. It’s challenging, but it’s happening to a lot of cities, not just Portland.

91视频: Do you worry that with all the activity some poor quality buildings are going up?

Cloepfil: Again, I honestly believe there is higher quality for the kind of development it is. It’s just fact that everything is 鈥渙f this moment鈥� and there’s a kind of a lack of diversity. When you’re filling whole neighborhoods with new buildings, you lose historical context, you lose scale of the neighborhood and create a monoculture, like MLK (Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard) and Vancouver Avenue. It’s just a bit much when all that development is concentrated in such a short amount of time. Neighborhoods lose the kind of richness they would have if they were developed more slowly over time.

91视频: This is the first time you’ve shown any of your early concepts in public. Why now?

Cloepfil: We had been approached by (museum) curators and directors for the last 10 years and I didn’t want to do it because these were never intended to be art objects. But now architecture is driven almost exclusively by image and architectural development as much as to sell a project. The exhibit will show a side of research and discovery and exploration. It’s a position piece for us. There’s lot of novelty out there 鈥� going back to MLK, you see a lot of novelty for novelty’s sake. The show in some way is a counterproposal to that. This show is about a search for thought and ideas over images.

91视频: Oregon is known as a place where people make things with their hands. How does that tie in to your approach to creative design?

Cloepfil: Huge impact. I think Oregon has a history of making things with their hands and I think my interest and tendency to look at artworks as inspiration always has benefits. A lot of these abstract pieces of walnut or porcelain or glass come from a history of making in the Oregon that I grew up in and also from learning from various artists. Really, those bits and pieces and sketches are a desperate investigation to find the architecture. Our job is to do whatever we can to try and find why the architecture exists and to give the project meaning.

91视频: Do you think architecture overall would improve if more architects used your methods to unlock their creativity?

Cloepfil: Most architecture is a product, but we are lucky enough to get projects, whether it’s institutions or houses, where we can pursue ideas 鈥� an all too rare opportunity in our culture today. Our process is just a reflection of my belief in architecture. It should be about ideas, an exploration to show one reason we chose to do a project. It states a position that I believe that architecture is too much about imagery and not enough about content and meaning. So these objects and sketches in the show are not intended to sell images to clients; they are intended as a search for ideas and a search for understanding. Ninety percent were never intended to be shown to clients; they were just for us.

91视频: How did you feel when the Columbia River Crossing failed and your design for the Vancouver Community Connector was scuttled?

Cloepfil: That was hard. That was a really fun project 鈥� such an interesting project 鈥� a piece of infrastructure. The (proposed) park unified two sides of city. It was an interesting competition and I was surprised at aspirational qualities of it, that they would think of spending that money. From a design point of view, we win projects and then some go away or go on hold. But for the cities of Vancouver and Portland to have said they support it would have been really exciting and also would have been great for Vancouver.

91视频: What is the main thing you hope the public takes away from seeing this exhibit?

Cloepfil: That we are architects and share a process with artists and other visual thinkers about discovery and ideas and investigation. It’s not just making the newest, coolest thing. In the world of architecture, that’s more about artistic inquiry.