Above Portland

(2010)
Bruce Forster
Chet Orloff

Finished Reading: 03.2010

PORTLAND - AS YOU'VE NEVER SEEN IT BEFORE! From the clear blue sky! A view straight down from the heavens! Bask in the glorious sunlight reflecting gallantly from boxy glass towers and shimmering gray rivers! Question the absence of clouds! Embrace the urbanity! Look for your house!

To be elevated above the concrete, brick and storefront at grade to the lofty arms of thinning stratosphere, is pretty exciting. Aerial views are the mix of map and elevation. We look down again at the small blocks from where we hover, and are left breathless to learn of historical and contemporary urbanity, nature, and a desperate search for our own apartment building in the huddled masses below.

This is mostly a picture book containing descriptions, history and commentary. The focus revolves around downtown Portland (since that's where there are things to see), but snapshots of the outlying areas are pleasant as well. The images are clear and beautiful.

There are a number of historical aerial photos, mostly from mid-century, that display the change that has occurred between then and now. One in particular struck me. As we know, Portland and Vancouver are two large cities divided by the great Columbia River. Many stunning views from both are laid out in this book. But I learned here that there was once a city in between (gasp!) No, this city was not in the river itself (not originally anyway), nor is it the lost city of Atlantis. What is now a swampy golf course and race track was once the city of Vanport - epically destroyed in a 1948 flood. I had never heard of Vanport, so I looked it up to learn more. It was a military town constructed during the second world war. The city grew quickly and became the second largest in the state (after adjacent Portland). Five years later it was gone; a small number were killed in the flood and the rest displaced to the surrounding neighborhoods (racial tensions included).

Portland boasts a few instances of pioneering public policy - decisions that shape the city of today. A few decades ago an Urban Growth Boundary was established to help stop the spread of sprawl around the periphery of the city and to protect natural areas and farm lands. While this helped shape the edge of the city, another decision to redirect federal highway funds from a automotive freeway expansion instead to the building of the first line of the MAX light rail train, has shaped the center of the city and the diversity of our transportation modes. The sprawl has an end, and old neighborhoods are intact.

The city marches slowly forward - though it seems like a slow crawl from the air.

The Passive Solar House

The Complete Guild to Heating and Cooling Your Home

(2006)
James Kachadorian

Finished Reading: 03.2010

The Passive Slab system, developed by Kachadorian in the 1970's, includes a poured concrete slab over standard concrete masonry units. The voids in the CMU's (which are placed side by side, on their sides) are used for air circulation and the movement of heat into the home. With the help of a small fan for air movement, the resident of a passive solar house can enjoy a moderate temperature year round without the use of a active heat source! The light from the sun comes in through the windows, and the heat is trapped because the home is constructed tightly with minimal leakage. Window coverings can help keep the heat from escaping through the glazing at night.

Kachadorian is writing from his experience building homes in the Northeast, in places like Vermont and Connecticut, and based on most of the examples given, assumes we are going to build our solar house in a very cold climate. His houses seem to be built out in the middle of nowhere, but this doesn't affect the design at all, and a solar house can be built in the city or anywhere - in a cold or mild climate. In areas with fewer days of sunshine, it is still beneficial to collect the solar rays that do fall on the site, though it may not be enough to eliminate back-up power.

He includes very detailed instructions on how to calculate the sizes of windows, slabs, and to see how much energy will be gained and lost throughout the day. This method varies some from other Passive House designs, which concentrate rigorously but simply on maintaining a tight envelope with proper air exchange, rather than a fancy slab and operable window coverings. Importantly, whatever type of house is being designed, the architect should consider the location of the sun, and use that ball of gas burning billions of miles away for as much free heat as he can get from it. Keep that electric heater off!

Green Building Fundamentals

A Practical Guide to Understanding and Applying Fundamental Sustainable Construction Practices and the LEED Green Building Rating System

(2010)
Michael Montoya

Finished Reading: 03.2010

LEED sounds really cool, but I have been unfortunate in my lack of involvement and influence by this green building standard. Though I have been in the architectural field for a number of years, I have not had the opportunity to work directly with anyone who is really interested in building a LEED building, nor have I worked with a LEED building in anyway. So I picked up this book to do a little research and hopefully learn something.

I found this to be a very significant guide to green building, and not intimidating at all. In addition to general, practical information, this book includes a section on preparing for the LEED accreditation exam. Various green building practices and methods are described in clear, concise detail, serving as a good introduction to the uninitiated and as a valuable brush-up for those who are familiar with this sort of environmental stewardship (me), but have not committed it fully to heart. The overtly LEED portion of the publication appears only at the end, so someone wanting to gain knowledge in general sustainable building practices who isn't preparing to take the test will find this text accessible.

Major green building fundamentals addressed include site development, managing water runoff, energy efficiency, renewable resources, and indoor air quality to name a few. Each building fundamental is presented clearly and the possibilities are explained with examples of project implementation.

Upon completion of this book, my interest in becoming a LEED accredited professional has increased, more than my skeptical inclinations previously allowed. The process is now clearer. I feel the greatest benefit of LEED is in the accreditation of individuals responsible for the designing and building of structures, providing structured access to knowledge, technology and common sense that can be used in every project - whether the project achieves LEED certification or not. I am still skeptical of the value in actually assigning these points to particular projects by adhering to a checklist of green accomplishments, but I have yet to experience that first-hand.

There is nothing worse than trying to learn something by pasting bits of knowledge together from many sources, only hoping that you have found the relevant pieces and have them in place before the glue drys. This publication, while not containing all knowledge on the subject, brings together much of what we need to know.

Green Metropolis

Why Living Smaller, Living Closer, and Driving Less Are Keys to Sustainability

(2009)
David Owen

Finished Reading: 01.2010

Most people consider large cities to be the very opposite of an environmentally friendly living situation. When we look at a large city, such as New York City, we see a point source for heavy power and fuel usage and no real concentration of nature for miles. The city is not seen as an environmental goal, but this author argues otherwise, claiming that we are looking at environmentalism all wrong.

Sure, New York City uses more energy than any other city in the country, but it also has a much larger population than anywhere else, and per person actually consumes less energy as each resident of the city has a smaller footprint and uses much less energy than their friends who live in the suburbs. In New York City the population is densely stacked on top of one another, and side by side, and the neighborhoods are set up so that everything one needs for work, entertainment, consumption and living is nearby. Cities are made for people.

The suburbs however, while giving the illusion of a peaceful replication of nature, are doing more harm than good. To live in the suburbs is to live in your car. Where there is more land to spread out homes are generally larger, which means more large appliances and more energy consumption, and a higher use of fertilizers and non-natural cleaners to keep things going. To escape the suburbs and get closer to nature is to perpetuate the suburbs, moving further and further away from the cities but really just bringing a strained out version of the city with you. If suddenly you found yourself without your car, way out there away from things, you would be out of options. Owen says that more nature is destroyed by the low-density development around New York City than by the city center itself. We just don't usually think of it that way.

Of course, the reason the suburbs are so popular is that they give us what we want. More room more independence, and more privacy. This can be achieved by the use of an automobile. The primary stated and unstated goal of drivers and municipalities in every region of the country is to increase traffic flow and get commuters to their destination as quickly as possible, that is, make driving more comfortable and quicker. The author's opinion on this, with the environment in mind, is that we should make driving as difficult, expensive and inconvenient as possible in order to encourage drivers to switch to public transportation, which will probably require people to reconsider some larger aspect of their lives than gas mileage, such as where they live and where they work. Most people would rather make their current living situation as environmentally friendly as possible rather than changing the basic premise of how they live their lives. Who can blame them?

There is a fascinating concept explored in this book about the difference between making cars more efficient and smaller, and getting them off the road all together (not an option for most people). The reasoning goes that we should not be interested in getting people out of cars for the benefit of public transportation, but rather that we need to get people out of cars period - and whatever you do to get around is up to you, whether walking, bicycling, or by public transportation. It is not the car itself that is the greatest concern, but rather the lifestyle it allows and perpetuates. With the automobile we can spread ourselves far and wide, thinly coating civilization over large expanses of land, and the further we go the more we rely on the automobile for the simplest tasks. The author, and he is not alone in this, points out that this way of life may get increasingly difficult in coming years if the cost of cheap, personal transportation increases to more than we are willing to pay. It is not sustainable, so while not change while you have the choice?

I have to admit I feel pretty good about a doom and gloom book like this because it reflects my own thoughts on cities and agrees with the choices I am making every day. But we can always improve. David Owen doesn't have a lot to say about Portland (a few quick statistical mentions) because we are not really the Green Metropolis that Portlanders think they are. Most of the east side of the Willamette river is low density suburbs, and you don't have to go very far in the other directions before you find yourself in a place dependant on automobiles. There are some areas with higher density, but very few people can really get by without a car. Even if they could, they chose not to mostly because of which part of the city they choose to live in.

I would like to see Portland grow to be more dense. In 2010 we have almost 600,000 people within the city limits and that is sure to increase rapidly if the last decade is any indication. Of course there are probably a couple of million people in the "Portland Metropolitan Area," but really, most of those people are not close enough to the dense parts of the city to go without a car. We have the Urban Growth Boundary that disallows most unabated sprawl, and we have transit corridors in the form of light rail and streetcars which are ripe for new denser development. Downtown needs to seep over to the east side, trickling down the already growing mixed-used corridors of Hawthorne, Belmont, Alberta, Etc. Downtown itself is home to far too many empty lots, parking lots and single story dry cleaners. As more people move to the region, we need to make places for them closer to the center of the city, not build more homes out on the frontier fringe.

Owen notices that Americans love little cute things, like the Smart car or the Mini Cooper, but we can't seem to just leave them alone in their smallness - we want to make them just a little bit bigger or add on a little more power. I recently read that Mini Cooper is now developing an SUV of all things, just inches longer than their previous model which was just inches longer than the original Mini. As if a smaller SUV is really what we need.

I also recently read about the new Apple store which opened in New York City. It is basically a one-story pristine glass box, where the computers are on display. There is a basement for the clutter of things that are actually for sale. Architecturally, it is gorgeous. Though it is modern, clean, and seems pretty green, Owen would deride it for excessive glass (which means excessive heating, as no glass is as insulating as any standard insulated wall), ultra low density (one story, one use), and unnecessary disposable materials (the glass stair treads on the breath-taking spiral stair, which leads down to the basement, have to be replaced often from scuffs and wear). Kind of makes you think about things differently. On the other hand, we do need parks and open space, so the Apple store is like a new park to browse through, in between the towers. There are some nice trees across the street which can be clearly seen through the glass.

Can we change the world? Should we try? We are usually content to change the little things in our lives (like recycling and driving more fuel-efficient cars - which are important) but the author argues that these little things just maintain our life as it is, making us feel good about ourselves and masks the true costs to the environment. Can I change the world by social engineering, in my practice of architecture? Probably not. I cannot change the way people live or change what they want. We cannot build a bunch of towers which contain smaller apartments if no one wants to live in them. What we can do is to make the city a better place to live, and start actually caring about the environment and thinking about how our actions affect the Earth and the other bazillion people who live on it. I need to do my best and not give up on the big ideas, and hopefully you will do that same.

Exquisite Corpse

Writings On Buildings

(1991)
Michael Sorkin

Finished Reading 12.2009

Unlike the previously reviewed collection of Sorkin ponderings entitled Some Assembly Required, which is rooted in the 1990's (a time which I remember), this volume spans from the late 1970's to the late 1980's and seems very unlike today. Presented chronologically, the book opens a few years before the days of Reagan, the content being the various published writings of the author. My first observation is not on the author Michael Sorkin, who writes most captivatingly, but on the Styles of the day which are emphatically postmodern and neo-classical; ideas which are now historical anomalies, short lived. This is a book about buildings and the people who design them. Many architects are described in their professional infancy who have since gone on to fame, and some are mentioned whom I haven't heard of. They are seen designing their sweet hearts away but never seen again. Many who were rising stars are now no more in this snapshot of architecture history.

Odd is the normalcy with which postmodern and neo-classical architecture is sewn into almost every project designed in the 80's. It seems like another world, and yet Sorkin was there then to say his choice words as he is now to say a few more. The perception of a newly built project completed in this decade feels strange. Finding ourselves now safely out of the 80's, I conclude, since we have more than survived, that Style is really a passing fancy and Sorkin heroically observed this fact in utero. These projects from thirty years ago seem to be more of Style and not at all of today's popular substance, green and sustainable. Both contemporary aggressors are missing from this now aging dialogue.

Aging is not to say unwanted or not useful, but different. We are simply on to other things. In all aspects of life, thirty years ago is like a blind spot in history. We remember events more recent and revere events long past, but thirty years ago follows us in every age as some kind of horrible dread.

Philip Johnson? Robert Venturi? Robert Stern? Paul Goldberger? Boo.

Michael Sorkin shoots from the hip. No preeminent architect, emerging style of the day or copied atrocity with windows inside of windows escapes the sharp keystroke of the author. These are the times when popular culture had turned its head away from the long heralded modernism, for it seemed so boring after so much time. But Sorkin does not think something so simple and which makes so much sense is boring, so he defends good design as he can. They went and made it worse by adding ornaments to the facades and tinsel to the balustrades, so Sorkin strips the garland off their naked forms, exposing nothing at all and everything. Postmodern architecture is like what the consumer Christmas holiday has become. Not over soon enough.

Though Michael Sorkin has plenty of good things to say about a number of projects, he is not a member of the Phillip Johnson fan club. I hadn't given Johnson much though before, but since he comes up so often in Exquisite Corpse as the essence of evil, I thought I would give him a few lines. Johnson is apparently a stealer of every good idea, who can't draw, was once a Nazi-sympathizer, jumped on every changing bandwagon, ruined as many cities as he could with his so-called architecture, and can't design his way out of a glass house. Just so you know.

Entertaining, funny, anti-Postmodern, anti-Phillip Johnson, culturally relevant, and blissfully engaging; Michael Sorkin's words are as important as the Architecture they chronicle.

Some Assembly Required

(2001)
Michael Sorkin

Finished Reading: 11.2009

Architecture criticism can be boring, usually revealing the facts about a new building with some sort of back-story thrown in. Maybe a few academic concepts are dangled before the reader, but opinions offered are often eye rollers, the critic trying to make what should be largely subjective an objective diatribe. Michael Sorkin, however is witty and entertaining, and straight-up funny. Obviously he gives his opinion like the rest, but I find myself generally in agreement and in the end, entertained and impressed. I read Sorkin not for assembled bricks and steel but for his words, many of which require a dictionary.

Some Assembly Required is an engaging collection of essays and articles previously published throughout the 1990's, touching on various topics such as urban design, over-glorified architects, post-modern design failures, and even a surreal futuristic commentary on the evils of Walt Disney. Sorkin lays blame on the Mouse frequently, for his influence on the total destruction of good and wholesome architecture is evident throughout. The Disneyfication of America has left us in a fake, flat, stage-set cardboard world of no certain meaning, where the next things are made to look like the old things and are cherished because that's just how we roll. There is a strange nostalgia for non contextual styles in places where they don't belong.

Particularly noticeable is Sorkin's rebellious nature, writing as the one on the inside who hates that there even is an inside because it is so predictable. I picture him wearing black leather and riding a motorcycle to an architects party where everyone else shows up in black tie. He brings the beer, they bring the slide rules. He isn't afraid to tell the ugly kid that his face is ugly, and that his house is lame. He understands changing culture, and identifies clearly where architecture fails in each individual, unique, contextual cultural instance, meekly giving way to the many times copied (see xeroxed for older essays) and blindly disseminated global, banal, form letter of a culture that doesn't mean anything.

A good variety of places, buildings and individual architects are described and criticised to give the book a nice sampling of scales. I like good writing that attempts to kick the pilotis off the corner of a Corbusier knockoff now and then.