Designing environments that promote equity and diversity is a big concern of landscape architects, so they’re holding an event on just that topic.

The American Society of Landscape Architects‘ Oregon chapter on April 9 will host a symposium at the University of Oregon‘s White Stag Building, from 8:30 a.m. to 5 p.m.

Oregon ASLA spokeswoman Rebecca Wahlstrom said the keynote speaker, landscape architect Diane Jones Allen, is a leader in designing for diversity and equality.

Allen was featured in the November issue of Landscape Architecture magazine for her work to convert empty lots into green community spaces in New Orleans’ Ninth Ward. She has also performed pro bono work on plans for restoring Claiborne Avenue in New Orleans, once a tree-lined boulevard that separated minority communities when it was replaced decades ago with an elevated freeway.

Allen is a principal of DesignJones LLC, a landscape architecture and urban planning firm based in New Orleans and Baltimore. Her talk is titled “Bridging Community, Practice and Academy to Create Equitable and Resilient Environments.”

Other speakers include Gabriel Diaz Montemayor of the University Texas at Austin, Nolan Lienhart of ZGF Architects, Joy Alise Davis of Design+Culture Lab and Tony DeFalco of Living Cully.

Wahlstrom said the symposium will also include a panel discussion. Attendance costs $165 for ASLA members, $200 for nonmembers and $30 for students. The symposium is co-sponsored by the John Yeon Center for Architecture and the Landscape at the University of Oregon.

The symposium will offer continuing education credits for landscape architects and also provide valuable information for people outside the profession, Wahlstrom said.

“They would be able to hear really diverse speakers and people who will touch on this topic of environmental justice and equity,” she said. “It’s something that we as landscape architects and as a culture don’t touch on enough.”

To learn more and register for the symposium, visit .

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The University of Oregon School of Architecture and Allied Arts will host next month in Portland an open house with displays of student work.

The open house will take place on June 4 from 6 to 9 p.m. at the White Stag Block, 70 N.W. Couch St. The free event is scheduled to coincide with the First Thursday art walk.

Among the open house displays will be the final thesis projects of graduate architecture students in the university’s Portland program. The exhibit, titled “VITALIZE,” will feature students’ studio projects addressing a range of issues affecting the built environment.

Student work in the exhibit includes projects from architecture professor Gerald Gast’s Soft Urban Waterfronts studio, the Willamette Falls Legacy Studio taught by John Yeon Center director Randy Gragg and Becca Cavell and Jake Freauff of THA Architecture and the (RE)Generative Architecture class taught by associate professor Hajo Neis.

Along with architecture studio projects, the open house will also include the work of students in the university’s digital arts and product design programs.

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The University of Oregon‘s John Yeon Center this spring will host a lecture series on landscape architecture and urban design.

The four lectures in the series, “A New City Beautiful: Landscape + Infrastructure = Public Space,” will take place in April and May at different sites in Portland.

Randy Gragg, Yeon Center executive director, will help lead the conversations with prominent designers. Speakers include Belgian landscape architect Bas Smets; David Rubin, principal of Philadelphia-based landscape architecture firm LAND COLLECTIVE; Tilikum Crossing architect Donald MacDonald; and Michael Singer, a landscape architect and artist.

Smets will give a free lecture, “Landscape is Fiction,” on April 16 starting at 6 p.m. at Jimmy Mak’s, 221 N.W. 10th Ave. The leader of Brussels-based firm Bureau Bas Smets will discuss his design philosophy and inspirations.

Rubin’s lecture, “The City is a Landscape,” is set for April 18 at 3 p.m. at Portland State University’s Shattuck Hall. His talk will be the first Douglas Macy Lecture on Landscape Architecture, presented together with the Yeon Center by the American Society of Landscape Architects‘ Oregon chapter. The admission cost is $10 or $5 for students at the door.

The third lecture, “The Spirit of Details,” will take place May 7 at 6:30 p.m. at the Collaborative Life Sciences Building, 2730 S.W. Moody Ave. The free talk will feature three members of the team that designed the Tilikum Crossing. MacDonald will be joined by engineers Semyon Treyger and David Goodyear to discuss the bridge’s cable-stayed design.

The series will conclude on May 18 with Singer’s free lecture, “Reimagining Beauty: Creating Living Public Space,” at 6:30 p.m. in the Miller Ballroom at the Portland Art Museum, 1219 S.W. Park Ave.

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University of Oregon graduate architecture student Jacob Simonson is fascinated by the challenge of bringing people back to the former Blue Heron Paper Co. site in Oregon City.

“It’s kind of an intriguing problem – more of a difficult problem – to address,” he said while peering over a large-scale model of the abandoned paper mill site.

Simonson and other students are building the model as they research the history, conflicts and redevelopment potential for the 23-acre industrial site. The dozen students are part of a yearlong studio class taught by John Yeon Center executive director Randy Gragg and THA Architecture principal Becca Cavell at the UO Department of Architecture in Portland.

The class examines ways to reuse the vacant industrial buildings that were abandoned when the Blue Heron paper mill closed in 2011, reconnect the site to downtown Oregon City and take advantage of the site’s proximity to Willamette Falls. At the conclusion of the studio next summer, each student will present their designs for redeveloping individual buildings on the site.

The course, one of the last the students will take before they graduate, is geared toward designing adaptive reuse projects, Gragg said.

“It’s the last opportunity for the students to be their own client,” he said. “It continues the imagining of the site. This is sort of an act of imagination for what can happen with the building stock.”

On Tuesday, the students marked the end of the studio’s first term with a presentation before the site’s new owner – Tacoma, Wash.-based developer George Heidgerken – and design professionals who created a master plan to encourage redevelopment.

The students shared what they’ve learned so far and sought professional feedback on their initial ideas for adaptive reuse projects. These include production facilities for bikes, food, canoes, outdoor shoes and other apparel. Students are also exploring design of fish and food markets, a mixed-use building, a brewery, an industrial design research institute, an outdoor camp and an interfaith institute.

One of the biggest appeals of the course was working with an actual site and reimagining existing buildings, Simonson said.

“This was just an intriguing site (with) a lot of potential,” he said. “I really enjoy and have done adaptive reuse projects.”

For the first term, the focus was on gathering as much background as possible to eventually inform students’ designs, class member Alex Brooks said. For inspiration, the class twice toured the site with Oregon City officials and traveled to Minneapolis, Minn. to see the Mill City Museum, which is built on the ruins of an abandoned flour mill.

“This studio was a major information download,” Brooks said. “It was about absorbing the site (and) the opportunities and the challenges.”

As a class, the students concluded that they would primarily seek to answer three questions over the course of the studio: What brought people to the site? Why did they leave? And finally, what will bring them back?

After hearing the students’ presentation, Walker Macy principal Mike Zilis praised their approach. The Portland-based landscape architecture and planning firm created for site redevelopment a master plan that recently was approved by the Oregon City Commission.

Zilis reminded the students to embrace what he believes is one of the site’s largest assets: a prime view of Willamette Falls. Any redevelopment should bring the falls back to prominence that was lost because of longtime industrial use on the site, he said.

“This place has been masked,” he said. “It’s been blown up and manipulated, and people can’t see it anymore. The way to build a market and bring people back (is) going to be about the draw of the site.”

Heidgerken said his team is exploring many redevelopment possibilities, such as a brewery or restaurant. Like the UO architecture students, team members have been careful to absorb the history of the site and consider which existing buildings should be preserved, he said.

“It’s not a matter of $5 million here, $30 million here,” he said. “It’s a matter of the site telling you what to do and the history of the site … What we want with this site is not something you see once. We want something that’s attractive to the general public. You come here once and you come back.”

At this point, plans to redevelop the Blue Heron site are open-ended. Heidgerken said he appreciates the architecture students’ visions.

“We don’t know (the plan) yet, but we will and meetings like this help,” he said.

Graduate architecture student Adrienne Fainman said class members are looking forward to sharing their final ideas with the developer.

“In June, we’re going to be presenting 12 projects,” she told Heidgerken. “We’re going to be pouring our hearts into this. We’re going to be able to hand that over to you – 12 fantasy projects.”

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A frequent concern for Gerding Edlen CEO Mark Edlen is the impression that the Portland-based development company’s projects will make on neighborhoods.

“We used to think sustainability was a big deal, but today for us it’s building communities,” he said. “I think people are looking for more, richer ways to interact. To us, that’s what we think community is about. We think the buildings that we build have an enormous impact.”

With Portland communities in flux because of a boom in development, Edlen on Thursday joined three other industry professionals on a panel to discuss how to create inclusive, livable neighborhoods across the city. The “Designing Better Neighborhoods” event was hosted by Design Museum Portland at the Portland office of engineering firm Glumac.

Panelist and moderator Randy Gragg, executive director of the University of Oregon‘s John Yeon Center, steered the discussion toward topics that included identifying ways to improve East Portland and addressing concerns about demolitions of older residences.

“We have a lot of heartburn going on in terms of change in historic neighborhoods,” Gragg said.

Panelist Jeff Stuhr, co-founder of Portland-based Holst Architecture, said it’s important for architects to investigate whether it’s possible to save an existing building or replace it with a thoughtful design.

“We’ve yet to elevate that conversation beyond historic preservation,” he said. “When we take down buildings and replace them with inefficient buildings, that’s not what we want to do. I think we need to change the conversation. I think this process of renewal and growth is natural.”

Acknowledging neighborhood opposition to development is crucial, said panelist DeAunne Denmark, a Pacific Northwest College of Art instructor who teaches a course that applies the principles of cognitive and behavioral neuroscience to design thinking.

“You get this vehement pushback, and it’s often because they want to feel like they have a stake in it,” she said. “If you don’t design well for the culture that’s in place you see these problems come out around it. The design process itself has to change. If the neighborhood itself wants historic preservation, it behooves you to find out why.”

The longevity of a development is one reason why its design must consider the larger impact, Edlen said.

“In our industry it’s very capital intensive; there’s a tremendous amount of risk,” he said. “One of the things we talk about a lot (is) … it’s a 100- to 200-year asset. It’s going to be around for a long time.”

Panelists also discussed ways to create better neighborhoods in underdeveloped areas in Portland east of 82nd Avenue.

“How can we create a sense of a neighborhood out there from this very piecemeal urbanism?” Gragg asked.

Some basic city amenities would be a great start, said Edlen, a Portland Development Commission board member.

“I think we’ve got to move faster,” he said. “We’ve got to have a public process, but we’ve got to move the needle faster on issues like parks and sidewalks.”

Stuhr pointed out that the larger lots available in East Portland could be advantageous for future development.

“I see this as a great potential benefit for the city rather than having to design the 200-by-200-foot square,” he said. “From a design standpoint, we have opportunities that we don’t have anywhere else. This is going to be the next big opportunity for density in the city.”

Redeveloping East Portland will also involve consideration of the needs of lower-income neighborhoods with more diversity than in other parts of the city, Denmark said. What worked downtown or in the Pearl District may not apply, she said.

“You can’t just impose those values on people that don’t want them,” Denmark said.

That doesn’t mean the standard of architecture in East Portland should be different, Stuhr said.

“Design makes a difference, and a lot of times when you’re working with a marginalized community you have to convince them of that,” he said. “People out there deserve good design just as much as we do in the inner city core.”

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When a committee of local industry professionals first convened last spring to advise the city of Portland on plans to renovate the Portland Building their message was clear: Don’t make the same mistake twice.

“The city thought the best strategy would be fix the obvious problems, which are really limited to the structural issues and the building leaks,” said committee member Bing Sheldon, co-founder of Portland-based SERA Architects. “Our advice was, ‘Look, you got into this mess in the first place by budgeting too little for this building.’ I think everybody felt very strongly that if the city was going to fix the building, they ought to make it a 100-year building.”

City officials are taking this recommendation and others made by the six-member volunteer advisory committee seriously as they move forward on investigating the costs and best moves to make in renovating the historic — and controversial – postmodern structure, said Fred Miller, the city’s chief administrative officer and director of the Office of Management and Finance.

Steps to improve drab city government offices in the building the project could include replacing tinted windows with clear glass to bring in more light, tearing out drop ceilings and opening up floor plans. Renovation plans could also call for upgrading heating, ventilation, mechanical and electrical systems, and elevators, and improving access for people with disabilities.

Earlier this year, a city report concluded that $95 million worth of repairs are needed to fix up the Portland Building, which was completed in 1982. After considering several options, including building demolition, city officials could soon seek proposals from developers, architects and contractors for a remodel. Miller said he hopes to secure financing by early next year for a supplemental study that will look into the costs of various renovation options and the feasibility of making those upgrades while portions of the building are still occupied.

“We know the route we’re headed, but it could end up in various ways,” he said. “A lot of people don’t want this building torn down. If you’re going to maintain it, why not invest in it?”

Seeking outside input

The renovation project will involve considering that the Portland Building was listed two years ago on the National Register of Historic Places and that its designer, renowned architect Michael Graves, is still alive. Miller said city officials plan to seek input on the renovation plans from Graves, a principal of Princeton, N.J.-based architecture and design firm Michael Graves & Associates.

“We don’t want to do anything that violates his sense of the building,” Miller said.

Earlier this month, Graves visited Portland at the invitation of the University of Oregon‘s John Yeon Center to give a lecture during Design Week Portland where he discussed how to improve the Portland Building. Graves’ comments during the lecture in favor of replacing the building’s tinted glass and modifying the ground level to better support retail space will be helpful as the city moves ahead with gaining approval for changes to the historic building from the National Park Service, which oversees the National Register, said advisory committee member John Russell of Portland-based Russell Development.

“His coming here and being open to changes is very important because it is a landmark building,” Russell said.

Along with consulting Graves, Miller said he felt it was important to reach out to local professionals who’ve worked on similar projects. The advisory committee he assembled for this purpose includes industry leaders in architecture, real estate, development and construction. Seeking proposals from developers, architects and contractors on how to renovate the building could further help in the planning process, Miller said.

“We need to do something. We can’t just let it go,” he said. “We’re definitely going to capitalize on outside expertise.”

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Looking beyond $95M repair estimate

Miller said he’s long wanted to know more about the city’s options beyond the $95 million in repairs outlined in an in-depth assessment completed by Portland-based FFA Architecture and Interiors on the building’s envelope and structural elements.

“I can’t be comfortable with that until I know what the alternatives are,” he said.

A more accurate cost estimate on renovating the Portland Building will help the city determine how much is needed for bonds to finance the project, Miller said. Since the $95 million estimate is strictly to fix leaks and structural problems, a more extensive renovation will likely cost more, he said.

“It’s got to function like a new building,” Miller said. “You want something that’s functional and represents a good investment.”

Sheldon said a renovation that does more than repair the building will be worth it.

“Politically, this is a stubbed toe anyway so as long as you’re being criticized you might as well do it right,” he said. “These are big problems. That’s why the price tag is as big as it is.”

One potential savings could be avoiding the estimated $28 million cost of temporarily moving everyone out of the building while it’s renovated, Miller said. ��This could be achieved by only renovating several floors at time.

Russell said he believes the Portland Building can be fixed seismically without taking everyone out. This could be similar to an asbestos abatement project his company did on the 200 Market Building in downtown Portland while it was still occupied, he said.

“There is a huge savings if the building is fixed when it’s partially occupied,” Russell said.

Sheldon disagreed. Extra costs would be incurred while moving workers around and much of the construction work would have to happen at night, he said.

“The biggest problem is it will take longer to do it that way and it’s more expensive,” Sheldon said.

He recommended a renovation to the Portland Building similar to a modernization project designed by SERA Architects that transformed Portland’s Edith Green-Wendell Wyatt Federal Building.

“The first thing you do is you remove all the suspended ceilings and remove all the ducting, and that’s exactly what we did in Wendell Wyatt,” he said. “All of a sudden you have a much more pleasant environment.”

Removing the ceilings in the Portland Building would be transformative, Russell said.

“The new cutting-edge standard for workplaces is the ceiling is removed,” he said. “That’s a perfect solution for that building.”

Open floor plans would also make the building a better place to work, Sheldon said.

“Design the interior so that instead of how it’s chopped up into private offices, it’s open,” Sheldon said. “If that were done than the Portland building would be a remarkably better building. It’s not impossible. To me, it’s not condemned. I think you could make significant improvements.”

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Barry Bergdoll, departing chief curator of architecture and design at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York, will be in Portland on Saturday to speak about the relationship between museums and architecture.

The lecture, “Barry Bergdoll: Architecture, Museums and the Art of Advocacy,” will be hosted by the University of Oregon‘s John Yeon Center and begin at 2 p.m. in Whitsell Auditorium, at the Portland Art Museum, 1219 S.W. Park Ave.

Bergdoll announced plans last year to leave his post at MoMA to take a position as the Meyer Schapiro Professor of Art History and Archaeology at Columbia University. His successor at MoMA, Swiss architecture and art history professor Martino Stierli, will take over in March 2015.

During his Portland lecture, Bergdoll will reflect on the long history of museums’ relationship to architecture. He will also discuss his seven-year tenure at MoMA, including curating exhibitions on the Bauhaus design, Soviet modernist architecture and the early career of German-American architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe. Currently, Bergdoll is working on an exhibit surveying mid-century Latin American architecture.

Tickets for the event are $15 for adults and $12 for seniors or students and can be purchased online at .

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After Kevin Cavenaugh, managing member of Portland-based Guerrilla Development, purchased a century-old former horse barn in Southeast Portland, he decided to convert the industrial-style building with no windows and 24-foot-tall ceilings into four residential lofts.

The challenge included peeling away a portion of the roof to create a central courtyard that lets light inside.

“It’s fun because it’s an experiment,” said Cavenaugh, a designer. “It was more about: Can anybody live in here? Can I make this thing habitable?”

Now the building, called Dr. Jim’s Lofts, is where Cavenaugh and his family call home.

Dr. Jim’s Lofts is one of eight urban infill developments that will be featured Oct. 11 on a hosted by the American Institute of Architects’ Portland chapter.

“For the most part, they’re really creative uses of old lots,” said Dave Otte, president-elect of the AIA Portland board, said of the structures included on the “” tour.

A committee of AIA members selected the homes – all completed either this year or last year – as prime examples of custom urban infill projects designed in harmony with inner Portland neighborhoods. Several of the homes strive to bridge the gap between residential and commercial areas. Others balance out contemporary designs by taking cues from nearby structures.

Designs by Portland-based Works Partnership Architecture for the Bowstring Truss House and Overton 19, adjacent developments in Northwest Portland on the tour, fit their surroundings, Works Partnership principal Carrie Strickland said. The live-work lofts blur the line between industrial buildings across the street and townhomes to the west, she said.

“I think it works really well in that neighborhood because it’s sort of a transition neighborhood,” Strickland said. “You set up a project scale that helps blend that transition line.”

When Portland architect Rick Potestio was tasked with helping turn a Southeast Portland parking lot into a contemporary three-story apartment building, he took a close look at the neighborhood first. His design for the Gragg Apartments, including the home of University of Oregon John Yeon Center for Architectural Studies Director Randy Gragg, will be featured on the AIA Portland tour.

The concrete base of the apartment building uses materials that are common in the neighborhood and colors that are compatible with nearby structures.

“I designed the base of it to reflect the rest of the buildings on the block,” Potestio said. “That’s actually my philosophy is work with your context.”

Like the Bowstring Truss House and Overton 19 projects, the Gragg Apartments sits between industrial and residential areas. It’s one reason why Potestio said he decided to incorporate a large covered porch into the top-floor unit.

“The porch is a homage to the big covered porches on the residential side,” he said.

Another home on the tour, the Pavilion House in Northeast Portland, matches the setbacks, massing and scale of neighboring single-family homes, said Portland architect Ben Waechter, who designed the project. Yet it’s distinctly contemporary.

The design features an open central room on the first floor with a second-story “pavilion” supported by pillars around it.

“The house could be described as having a second-story body that’s supported by four legs kind of like a table,” Waechter said. “The idea was to place these legs strategically in places where they create privacy within the room that aside from these legs is all glass.”

Along with taking cues from surroundings, designs for Dr. Jim’s Lofts and the Bowstring Truss House take advantage of the context within the existing industrial buildings.

Preserving the open warehouse feel of the Bowstring Truss House was important, Strickland said.

“We didn’t want to interrupt that visual continuity across the space,” she said. “None of those walls go all the way to the ceiling, so you can always see over them.”

When Cavenaugh opened some of the roof of Dr. Jim’s Lofts, he left the truss system in place. This created a dynamic setting, he said.

“It’s take-your-breath-away space, and I have nothing to do with that,” he said. “The building, I just let it go.”

If you go …

What: American Institute of Architects Portland Homes Tour: Crafted + Creative Urban Infill

When: Oct. 11 from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.

Where: Eight contemporary Portland homes. Participants in the self-guided tour will receive a printed booklet with maps and descriptions of each home.

Cost: Tickets are $40

More information: aiaportland.org/aia-portland-homes-tour-2014

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A free lecture series this fall will be hosted by the American Institute of Architects’ Portland chapter and focus on the design process.

One “In-Process” lecture is scheduled in September and another in October at the Center for Architecture, 403 N.W. 11th Ave. The first lecture, on Sept. 11, will take place from 5:30 to 7 p.m. and feature Skylab Architecture principal Jeff Kovel. The second, on Oct. 1, will run from 5:30 to 6:30 p.m. Portland architect Rick Potestio and Randy Gragg, director of the University of Oregon John Yeon Center for Architectural Studies, will discuss the design of Gragg’s Southeast Portland home.

AIA Portland’s Center for Architecture is hosting the lecture series so that architects and their clients can talk about the design process with design and build industry professionals as well as the general public, said Dave Otte, president-elect of the AIA Portland board.

“The In-Process (lecture series) is about opening this place up to the public so they understand more about design,” he said.

The lecture series is a primer for Design Week Portland, set to kick off Oct. 4. AIA Portland also that week will host a home tour (/news/2014/08/20/aia-portland-to-offer-self-guided-tour-of-homes) that will include Gragg’s house, Otte said.

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John Yeon was a self-taught architect whose career was studded with award-winning designs. The Watzek House, a masterwork that Yeon designed in the West Portland hills in 1937 at age 26, was immediately recognized as an architectural landmark; it was featured in the 1938 New York Museum of Modern Art exhibition.

The property, deeded in 1995 to the University of Oregon School of Architecture and Allied Arts, now serves as the home of the John Yeon Center, a place to foster ongoing discussions about the future of design and architecture.

At the helm is newly appointed Executive Director Randy Gragg, a journalist whose passion for architecture shaped his career and led to his selection to head the center.

“From the time I landed in Portland, I had a deep interest as an advocate for the building environment,” Gragg said.

He spent 17 years writing primarily about architecture as a reporter at The Oregonian, and later as the editor at Portland Monthly, where he continues to contribute as an editor-at-large.

Gragg met Yeon in 1982. Accompanied by the architect, Gragg toured both the Watzek House and The Shire, a Yeon-designed landscape in the Columbia Gorge across the river from Multnomah Falls. During the tours, Yeon shared with Gragg how his concepts had come to fruition on those projects.

“He was an avid environmentalist,” Gragg said. “He believed that architecture and landscaping should be woven into the natural setting.

“As a preservationst, he was also very particular about what needed to be saved.”

Gragg is taking Yeon’s ideology to heart in his role as director of the center.

“My job is building a constituency for properties – not museums, but active places for discussions, conversations about working on more than preservation. This is a venue for thinking about the future.”

To that effect, Gragg spearheaded a recent $2.5 million campaign to restore four Lawrence Halprin-designed fountains in a Portland area that was among the first urban renewal projects in the country.

“This is another extension of what we want to do here – build a constituency for these properties and invest in the legacy of good planning and building,” Gragg said.

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