To make way for glamping rooms planned at the W San Francisco hotel, the bees had to move.

The luxury hotel, as part of its food program, had bee colonies occupying outdoor terraces. Then the honey-producing insects were moved to a higher floor to provide more space for guests.

“They didn’t need that much space,” Brent Grubb, Skylab Architecture managing principal, said of the bees.

The insects’ move allowed creation of five indoor-outdoor glamorous camping rooms, which extend onto an outdoor terrace that overlooks the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.

Hospitality has come a long way from the days of continental breakfast.

Skylab Architecture was charged with designing an update for the W, which opened in 1999. The work involved nearly all of the guest rooms, event spaces and conference rooms in the 411-room hotel – one of the most prominent in San Francisco.

“How do we create a different hotel experience than the typical, ubiquitous hotel experiences?” Grubb said. “A lot of the differences are subtle.”

Only the ground-floor lobby was not updated as part of the project. It may be renovated in a second phase.

Lighting technology, for example, has improved by “leaps and bounds” since the ’90s, Grubb said. So color-changing LEDs were installed in meeting rooms and other public spaces to provide atmosphere for events.

Gold nuggets appear as a design motif throughout the hotel, reflecting San Francisco’s history. The city’s topography is reflected in the ceilings. A dust-like material gives the walls a shimmering quality in certain light, suggesting sunlight and gold. Fractal tile in bathrooms is an abstract representation of gold mining.

Skylab made other calls in consultation with the client. A swimming pool was removed in favor of a fitness room – the first of W’s new-generation FIT brand. The circular gym looks like something out of science fiction TV, with rows of machines arranged around sweeping, curved seating in the center. The center area serves as a self-serve lounge. The room is topped by a naturally lit glass dome.

“It feels like a whole new hotel experience,” Grubb said.

A new event space, Social, overlooks the museum on an outdoor terrace.

Conference room walls evoke waves with an angular form, and wood is used to remind guests of California’s redwoods.

In guest rooms, beds were lowered to provide better views through windows. Custom furnishings were added, including built-in lounge seating, window seats and counter-height desks that were designed to function as a standing workstation or cocktail bar.

TRACE, the ground-floor restaurant, features string drapes – meant to evoke San Francisco’s fog – to divide tables. The upstairs bar, in contrast, uses glass walls for noise reduction.

The project was designed before the COVID-19 pandemic hit, so no changes were made in response to it, Grubb said. However, the hotel has been closed, delaying the public debut of Skylab’s work.

Skylab has been engaged on the project for about four years (Grubb declined to release the project’s total budget). The architecture firm previously designed other W hotel renovations, including one for W Seattle in 2012.

Design Beyond Borders is a 91��Ƶ feature offering a look at the projects outside of Oregon being tackled by local architecture firms. To have your firm’s projects considered, contact the 91��Ƶ newsroom at 503-802-7221 or newsroom@djcOregon.com.

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Key Development‘s Sideyard fits snugly into place as one of the final pieces in the rapid redevelopment near the Burnside Bridge‘s east end.

In many Portland neighborhoods, Sideyard would stand out as a five-story building constructed with cross-laminated timber and a modern, geometric envelope. But that isn’t so at the bridgehead, where Sideyard’s older sibling, Yard, looms 21 stories and the brightly colored, swirling façade of Guerrilla Development‘s Fair-Haired Dumbbell competes for attention.

Skylab Architecture designed Sideyard, and Andersen Construction built it. Catena Consulting Engineers provided structural engineering.

Cross-laminated timber manufactured by D.R. Johnson Inc. in southern Oregon supports the structure. The compressed wood panel products were processed by Cut My Timber, a Northwest Portland company.

“It’s not only a beautiful building; it’s a special location at the Burnside bridgehead,” said Claudia Munk-von Flotow, chief operating officer of Key Development.

The location at 365 N.E. Couch St. offers two retail frontages – one on Third Avenue and the other facing the Burnside-Couch Couplet. Drivers traveling toward the bridge slow as they flow around Sideyard.

Key Development is well on its way to filling the approximately 25,000-square-foot building with commercial tenants. Ferment Brewing, which like Key Development is based in Hood River, will occupy one of the retail areas. Ferment focuses on traditional beer styles such as extra-special bitter, porter and saison; however, it also brews kombucha and makes a variety of pickled vegetables. Ferment will work with a chef-driven hospitality group on a food concept, Munk-von Flotow said.

Floors three, four and five offer approximately 5,000 square feet of office space at each level.

“We’re talking to a couple of creative agencies in town now to take all of it,” Munk-von Flotow said.

Most likely, two tenants will take the three floors, she said.

“Nothing is inked, but we’re having serious conversations,” she said.

Tamer Riad, a commercial broker with Debbie Thomas Real Estate, is representing the property.

Sideyard is part of an emerging generation of cross-laminated timber office buildings, particularly in the Central Eastside. The Portland-metro area is quickly becoming the premier one in the United States for cross-laminated timber construction. CLT is regarded as more environmentally friendly than concrete-and-steel and often is quicker to erect. The material lends itself to open-floor designs with exposed wooden beams that have proved popular with office tenants.

Andersen had limited elbow room to construct Sideyard. The parcel – known as Block 76 West – had served as a construction staging area for earlier projects. There was no such empty parcel for construction of Sideyard.

“It’s a postage stamp,” Catena Consulting Engineers principal Jason Thompson said of the site. “CLT works well for that kind of construction.”

At Sideyard, the use of concrete shear walls keeps lateral forces in check. Also, mass plywood is employed in the staircase.

For Key Development, Sideyard’s opening is a milestone. The developer first became involved at the Burnside bridgehead in 2010 by responding to a request for proposals from the Portland Development Commission (now Prosper Portland).

Key Development in December 2016 made a profitable exit from Yard, for $126.68 million to a Thailand-based investment firm. Munk-von Flotow said there are no plans to sell Sideyard.

“We’re not particularly interested in letting go of this jewel box,” she said. “We love this building. Our partners love this building.”

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A boutique ski hotel in Northern Idaho designed by Portland-based Skylab Architecture will break the mold of a classic luxury getaway, bringing snowy vacations into the contemporary era while retaining elements that shape the identity of the local skiing culture.

The design team’s working vision statement: “Seattle cool meets Idaho ski bum.”

Construction recently began on the 30-room hotel at Schweitzer Mountain Resort near Sandpoint, Idaho.

Internally, the building references old ski equipment and bright ski suits of the 20^th century, with materials like granite, basalt and Douglas fir honoring regional identity. But on the outside, cedar, metal and an abundance of glass will make the place thoroughly modern.

“What Skylab’s trying to do is interpret the regional history and culture of Schweitzer, and then kind of put a twist on it,” Skylab designer Jamin AAsum said. “It’s a modern aesthetic, it’s a modern take on a ski lodge.”

AAsum said the hotel is being designed to compete with other ski resorts in Idaho, such as those in Sun Valley, while also attracting a new generation of younger skiers. He said the hotel aims to “bring Seattle to Schweitzer” with its modern amenities and styling. It’s a “ski-in, ski-out” hotel, which means guests can hit the slopes right from their rooms.

Skiers can seek refuge from the slopes at a 50-seat restaurant or in unique bar and lounge areas, and a terrace will provide outdoor gathering space on fair-weather days.

Guest rooms offer views of nearby Lake Pend Oreille, while common areas are oriented toward Schweitzer Mountain. At the opposite end of the building from the restaurant and bar is what AAsum called “the living room,” a place for families to relax and play games, and a rooftop space will contain a spa with hot tubs and an outdoor shower.

There are challenges to building on the side of a mountain, AAsum said. Construction crews can only access the site via a nine-mile-long road between the months of June and October. Due to the grade of the site, the 42-car below-grade parking garage is essentially being cut into the side of the hill.

Foundation work is currently under way at the project, which is being built by Spokane-based general contractor Walker Construction. The Spokane office of DCI Engineers is the project’s structural engineer, and Denver-based Dunn + Kiley is the landscape architect.

While the initial design is being built for skiing, AAsum said the ultimate goal will be to create a year-round, modern facility that can be used for summer activities as well.

“It’s a little rebellion,” he said. “It’s not quite the quiet ski hotel.”

Design Beyond Borders is a 91��Ƶ feature offering a look at the projects outside of Oregon being tackled by local architecture firms. To have your firm’s projects considered, contact 91��Ƶ architecture and engineering reporter Alex Visser at 503-802-7224 or avisser@djcOregon.com.

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The Portland Critical Mass Timber Meetup group is preparing to shine the spotlight on a couple of prominent projects in Portland. The Mass Timber Projects Showcase will look at The Canyons, by PATH Architecture, and Block 76, by Skylab Architecture.

The event is set for May 23, from 5 to 8 p.m., in room 2047 of the Meier & Frank Building at 555 S.W. Morrison St. Emily Dawson from PATH Architecture, Brad Nile from Andersen Construction and Jill Asselineau from Skylab Architecture will be on hand to speak about the projects and share information ranging from testing to project design, development, construction and more.

For security reasons, building doors will be locked after 6 p.m. Visitors will still have access, however, after checking in with security.

Block 76 will be a five-story (four above grade, one partially below grade), 23,202-square-foot mixed-use building featuring retail and office space. Cross-laminated timber will be used over a post-tensioned concrete foundation. Andersen Construction is the general contractor.

The Canyons, meanwhile, will be a six-story, 110,000-square-foot mixed-use building with 70 apartments. Cross-laminated timber will be used on the top five stories over a post-tensioned concrete podium. R&H Construction is the general contractor.

To RSVP or find out more, visit .

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Andersen Construction has long been busy at the Burnside Bridge‘s east end. It built Key Development‘s Yard and then Guerrilla Development‘s Fair-Haired Dumbbell. Now the contractor is tackling Block 76 West – formerly known as SideYard – at 365 N.E. Couch St.

The five-story mixed-use building, designed by Skylab Architecture, will have 23,569 square feet. It will feature cross-laminated timber flooring, glulam structural beams and wooden columns. Two concrete cores holding staircases will be built with mass-plywood panels.

“It’s all exposed beams and columns,” said Ådne Tonning, senior project manager with general contractor Andersen Construction.

The project is Key Development’s first to feature CLT, according to the firm’s chief operating officer, Claudia Munk-von Flotow. Riddle-based D.R. Johnson is supplying the CLT.

Ground was broken on Block 76 West in May 2018 after several delays. Use of wood has made a significant difference in construction, Tonning said.

“It was faster,” he said. “We started with the footings and then the retaining wall. And then for the installation was basically they shipped up the wood and we just popped them in.”

Columns and beams are connected with Knapp hardware, while the glulam beams and columns are bolted together.

“It was just like Legos filling it up,” Tonning said.

The time savings amounts to several months, he added.

The roof is in place and almost all the brick cladding has been installed. Glaziers are busy installing a complex curtain wall system designed to flood the interior of the building with natural light. Mechanical, electrical and plumbing contractors are working their way through the building.

“Right now the roof is done and the brickies just finished except for those two little spring walls,” Tonning said. “Culver Glass is installing frames, glazing and punched openings, and we had to wait until the brickies were done until we could do the canopy work; it’s a very tight site.”

The project team is shooting for a temporary certificate of occupancy by May.

Office users are being sought for the top floors, with Key Development in talks with the owners of Hood River’s Ferment Brewing Co. and Camp 1805 Distillery to open tasting rooms on the lower floors.

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Key Development‘s follow-up to Yard will have little in common with the controversial Burnside bridgehead tower.

Instead of an imposing building envelope and black exterior panels, Yard‘s sibling will be much smaller and feature warm, reddish-brown bricks.

“We’re trying to make it more of a classic Central Eastside building than a striking, contemporary project, which we’ve kind of already done with Yard,” said Claudia Munk-von Flotow, chief operating officer of Key Development, the developer of Yard and the new project on Block 76 West. “It’s really not the little sister to Yard as we once concepted it to be.”

The mixed-use project was known in planning as SideYard – a play on it being a smaller neighbor to the 21-story project built first. Now that Yard has sold to an institutional buyer – the largely residential building was snapped up by a Thailand-based investor for $126.68 million in December 2016 – the SideYard name no longer made sense, Flotow said.

The Block 76 West building will rise to five stories and include 23,569 square feet. It’s being designed by Skylab Architecture, which also designed Yard. Andersen Construction, which previously built Yard and Guerrilla Development‘s Fair-Haired Dumbbell nearby, recently broke ground on the new project.

The program for Key’s building at 365 N.E. Couch St. hasn’t been finalized, but it’s likely to be two floors of retail space and three floors of office space, Flotow said. The retail spaces will likely face Northeast Couch Street and Third Avenue.

No vehicle parking will be provided. However, the development will include bicycle-friendly features such as “rolling curbs.”

Key Development, based in Hood River, has a lead on a potential ground-floor tenant: Ferment, a brewery that is opening a production facility and small taproom in Hood River. The company may be interested in a Portland location, Flotow said. Ferment is led by Dan Peterson, a former head brewer at Hood River brewery pFriem.

Block 76 West’s structure will set it apart: Key opted to use cross-laminated timber. The structure will be a CLT diaphragm with brick cladding. The CLT materials will be provided by D.R. Johnson, a timber manufacturer based in Riddle.

“We have done lots of conventionally framed, heavy-timber buildings,” Flotow said. “We’ve never done a CLT project. For us it’s both an aesthetic thing and time efficiency, especially with such a heavy building push and a labor market that’s not super available to do heavy-timber construction projects.”

Using CLT materials with precut holes and connections accelerates the building schedule, Flotow said.

“It makes for a really efficient construction process,” Flotow said. “You can just fly your structure a lot quicker.”

Flotow said she is not concerned by the recent delamination of CLT subflooring during construction of a building at Oregon State University in Corvallis. CLT is a proven technology with an established safety record in Europe and Canada, she said.

“There’s piles of literature of test results from both a structural and a fire-protection point of view that is giving us some confidence,” she said. “I don’t think we’re putting ourselves at a huge risk by going for a CLT diaphragm.”

Andersen Construction even sent a manager to Germany to learn about CLT, Flotow said. Andersen’s experience building in the cramped Burnside bridgehead area factored into its selection as general contractor, she said.

“They have efficient ways of staging and scheduling to stay on schedule and on budget,” she said.

The building is on track to open in spring 2019.

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The International Interior Design Association’s Oregon chapter announced its recently. The awards honor designers, architects and industrial designers from Oregon and Southwest Washington for work performed inside an architectural shell.

The projects were evaluated by three guest jurors who judged projects via written and visual materials.

Awards were handed out in several categories:

Corporate: Best in category – ZGF Architects, Stoel Rives Portland headquarters; Honorable mention – GBD Architects, Cushman & Wakefield; Beebe Skidmore, Swift Agency.

Education: Best in category – Mahlum Architects, Roosevelt Middle School; Honorable mention – Opsis Architecture, Allan Price Science Commons and Research Library; SERA Architects, Erb Memorial Union.

Public and civic: Best in category – Mackenzie, ScanlanKemperBard-KOIN Tower repositioning.

Hospitality: Best in category – Skylab Architecture, Knot Springs.

Brand experience: Best in category – SRG Partnership, Marcus Mariota Sports Performance Center.

Residential: Best in category – Skylab Architecture, Owl Creek residence.

Maker: Best in category (installation) – Made Inc., case study home bar. Best in category (product) – Fernweh Woodworking, the sling chair.

People’s choice: Fernweh Woodworking, the sling chair.

Impact award: Mahlum Architects, Roosevelt Middle School.

Jurors’ choice: SRG Partnership, Marcus Mariota Sports Performance Center.

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Several Portland-based firms are for the GRAY Awards – a competition that honors architecture and design excellence in the Pacific Northwest.

The awards are given by GRAY Magazine, which focuses on design in the Pacific Northwest. Finalists were chosen from among 360 submissions in categories including commercial and residential architecture as well as interior and landscape design. Winners will be announced at an event Nov. 29 at the new SLS Seattle hotel.

Hacker‘s Lakeside at Black Butte Ranch, LEVER Architecture‘s L’Angolo Estate and Works Progress Architecture‘s Slate are contending in the commercial architecture category.

Skylab Architecture‘s Owl Creek residence and Yard are both finalists in the residential architecture category. Also in residential, Westlake Development Group of Clackamas (with Kengo Kuma and Associates) is a finalist for Suteki, which was part of the 2017 Street of Dreams.

Skylab also is a finalist in the commercial interior design category, for Knot Springs Spa. Osmose Design‘s A.O. Basement and Finley Grace Design‘s Cliffwood are contending for best residential interior design.

2.ink Studio‘s work on Yard is a finalist in the landscape design (civic, residential) category.

Also, SRG Partnership‘s Treeline Village is a finalist in the design for good category.

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Yard, the darkly clad mixed-use tower completed earlier this year in Portland’s Central Eastside, has sold to a Thailand company for $126.68 million.

Approximately 50 percent of the building’s 284 residential units are occupied, according to the buyer, Land and Houses U.S.A. The company is a wholly owned American subsidiary of Land and Houses Public Company Limited of Bangkok, Thailand.

The sale equates to $446,056 per unit. The seller was Block 67, a limited liability company whose majority owner is Hood River-based Key Development, which developed the property. Marcus & Millichap’s Elizabeth Davis represented the seller.

“It’s a significant transaction for the Eastside,” she said.

The transaction occurred off-market.

“We are seeing that there’s an opportunity now for international and private capital to win some deals where before they were edged out by institutional buyers,” Davis said.

Skylab Architecture designed the 21-story building. Yard has drawn criticism for its dark appearance, which was changed after gaining approval from the Portland Design Commission.

Yard’s retail spaces were 64 percent leased at the time of sale. Tenants include Knot Springs, a social club and spa; and Tilt, a burger-centric restaurant and bar.

Key Development’s Jeff Pickhardt was not available for an interview, but in an email he stated that the project was leasing as expected – and even slightly ahead of schedule.

“We hadn’t planned to sell this soon after completion when we had started the project, but having received a compelling, unsolicited offer from Land and Houses, we reconsidered,” Pickhardt stated.

Yard, at 22 N.E. Second Ave., is part of a development renaissance at the east end of the Burnside Bridge. Other projects include Slate from Beam Development and Urban Development Partners, the Fair-Haired Dumbbell from Guerrilla Development and 5 MLK from Gerding Edlen.

Yard has studio, one-bedroom and two-bedroom apartments. Advertised monthly rents range from $1,524 for a studio to more than $4,000 for some of the luxury units. The apartments average 682 square feet.

Yard also has 57 affordable units available to renters at 60 percent of median family income through the city’s Multiple-Unit Limited Tax Exemption (MULTE) program.

Portland’s apartment market has shown signs of cooling, particularly at luxury price points. The overall multifamily vacancy rate was 3.71 percent, up from 2.9 percent a year earlier, according to Multifamily NW’s fall apartment report. Managers of some properties have begun to offer leasing incentives.

Portland-area rents grew at an average annual rate of 4.1 percent during the third quarter, according to Axiometrics. That was higher than the national average of 3 percent.

Portland had a 95.6 percent occupancy rate – above the 95.1 percent national average.

Key Development is also at work on a commercial project at Northwest Third Avenue and Couch Street, two industrial buildings at the Port of Hood River and a multifamily project in downtown Hood River. The firm is looking at another possible opportunity in Portland as well, Pickhardt stated.

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In six weeks, market-rate apartment tenants will move into the Yard tower – the jutting, angular embodiment of a new Central Eastside.

The 21-story mixed-use tower at the Burnside bridgehead has lived its share of controversy getting out of the ground. A large design change missed by plan examiners has led to questions about the city’s permitting process and the use of photo-realism in design renderings. It’s been assailed as cold and foreboding by critics.

The views from inside, though, are unassailably striking. Located near the geographic center of the city, Yard is currently the only high-rise across from downtown along the Willamette River.

“It’s a pretty important site in Portland,” Skylab Architecture principal Jeff Kovel said on a tour this month. “You can see, it’s really the best position in the city.”

Perhaps the biggest issue with the tower has been its glazing. The change missed by the city was involved a reduced number of vision glass panels – resulting in a darker facade. The city and developer Key Development of Hood River have agreed the city will provide the project an additional 67 panels of glass, though it’s not yet known whether they’ll be vision glass or spandrel glass.

Developing the site long known as Block 67 has been a long time coming. For more than a century, the Central Eastside served as the manufacturing and industrial counterpoint to downtown. The recession put an end to a plan to build a shorter project on Block 67, with a Lowe’s store as an anchor tenant.

The building replaces a parking lot that for years served the Burnside Skatepark, a handmade landmark and a worldwide tourist draw.

Kovel said in ways large and small the project is meant to honor the Eastside’s “maker” spirit, which he said today has more creative offerings than the area across the Willamette.

It chafes Kovel that people have overlooked the good things about his project – the inclusion of affordable workforce units, the fact that it isn’t a cookie cutter with a cramped fitness center and a terrace tossed on top. But he acknowledges it is striking to see a structure so big on that site.

“It’s the kind of thing you get used to over time,” he said. “It gets to be part of the fabric.”

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