Briefed 8.3

The urban growth boundary is baby-friendly, the Sellwood Bee reports, as are baby slingshots. Er. Slings. Baby slings.

Mahlum Architects is designing a to-be-LEED-certified school in McMinville, the News-Register reports.

Briefed 8.1

The O reports that the Evergreen Airport project may be on its moribund-bed, but a new developer may bring it back from the tippy-slippy edge of total moribundity.

Amanda Fritz hears that the main post office could move from Northwest Portland to 82nd Ave., freeing up prime land for something other than postage.

The top ten green building blogs, as named by sustainablog Jetson Green...the Seattle Post-Intelligencer's green pro-written Building Seattle Green is among 'em.

TVA is having an excellent day

Bob Frasca says TVA's Bob Thompson is the "leading architect of his generation" in a Trib profile; Trib itself calls Thompson's towers "heroic."

Briefed 7.31

Reykjavik, Iceland beats out Portland as the greenest place on earth in Grist's rankings, WWeek reports, but second-ranked PDX tops Curitaba, Brazil and its lawnmowing sheep fleet. In your FACE, Curitaba.

Engineers are in big demand, the O reports, as young math junkies figure out they can make more money in other fields.

I just can't make myself call it SoWa

News flurries from the O:

Ankrom Moisan is to design South Waterfront apartments that are harbinger of a development shift in the city.

Opus Northwest's East Vancouver mixed-use development The Landing at Evergreen has problems, among them no anchor tenant. Mulvanny G2 is the architect.

Oregon State University's Weatherford Hall, designed by Bennes & Herzog in 1928 and renovated by SERA in 2004, gets its LEED certification.

Best Q+A ever

Talking with Anna, the automated online Ikea help-bot:

Q: Will the Portland store be a success?
Anna: Here you can find all the information about our store in Portland.

Q: Did people really camp out overnight?
Anna: There are many different methods of communication, some faster than others. If you need to communicate with IKEA, you can use this form I am opening for you.

Q: Who's your favorite architect?
Anna: Sorry but I'm not clear on how that particular type of employment relates to IKEA products or services. Could you be more specific to an IKEA product or service?

Q: Which is better, herring or meatballs?
Anna: Here you can find Swedish food.

Well. That does it for my questions. But if you're unsatisfied, more Ikeamania:

People unfamiliar with the fact that Ikea sells stuff on the internets were camped outside, the Business Journal and the O report. The first 100 did get free armchairs.

Expect traffic if you're headed to the airport, and a madhouse if you're headed to Ikea.

West implants

Eugene could get its own Pearl District. Central Point could get its own Sunriver. Portland could get its own California(ans).

No regs on the showers for $250 a night

There was a hard-hat media tour of The Nines, the Meier & Frank topping sustainably swanky hotel, yesterday. Stories are here, here and here.

My big question was, what happens when guest expectations -- and at $250 a night, there's expectations to be had -- of luxury don't fit the green mission? Well, one spot the team's conceding is the showers, which won't be getting low-flow fixtures.

"When people stay in a hotel, they want a nice, long, hot shower," says Ken Geist, who's a partner at developer Sage Hospitality.

Too sexy for their swerve

The City of Keizer’s having an ultimate it-looked-different-on-paper problem with traffic bollards that citizens find overly suggestive.

This is obviously an important design issue, and while task forces are forming, I’ll just toss this out: can adding “metal collars and chains” really make something less racy?

An idea, you mean?

Around (yet not in) PDX:

• It's a save (sort of) for a Lake Oswego Belluschi house, the Review reports.
• Bend City Council turns an eye on an affordable condo/apartment proposal that KemperCo's got in the works for downtown Bend, the Bulletin reports.
• In Gresham, consultants unveil a booklet. Really. The Gresham Outlook reports that there's an "aspirational development concept" afoot for the city's first urban renewal district. The "aspirational development concept" is for a mixed-use housing/retail/commercial project on the old Rockwood Fred Meyer site -- but realities could change once a real developer gets involved.

Please, call me Doug

The Doug Fir and the Jupiter Hotel -- and architect Jeff Kovel -- get a nod in Toronto's Globe and Mail. The story says the lower Burnside hotspot is a place Paul Bunyan and Andy Warhol could have teamed on. It also calls the drinkin' and eatin' side of the space the Douglas Fir Lounge.

Why so formal, Globe and Mail?

Walk like a duck

L.A. and Portland don't have a whole lot in common -- if the two cities were people, there'd be a LOT of awkward silence at cocktail parties -- but efforts by a couple local developers could put a Portland feel on downtown Los Angeles streets.

The South Group's (the Williams & Dame and Gerding Edlen collaboration) creation of wider, walker-savvy sidewalks for its projects are exactly what L.A. planners have in mind in their quest for a strollable city, Los Angeles Downtown News is reporting.

Pedestrian-friendly sidewalks aren't just a Portland thing. Lovin' the automobile isn't just a L.A. thing. But every single Portland project I've heard discussed -- in design commission meetings, among architects, in studios -- has put the pedestrian experience far above the auto experience. You can't talk about building in this city without talking about what it'll do for the level at which people live. And it's very cool to see that L.A.'s starting to do the same. And that Portland developers have their mitts in it.

De-energized

Opsis Architecture's 1,400 square-foot model cottage at Pringle Creek Community, an under-construction green development in South Salem, gets spotlighted for its efficiency -- and its small size -- in the Salem Statesman Journal.

Just so you know, Ed Begley Jr. was into the environment waaay before Brad Pitt

Stuff other reporters reported:

• Ed Begley Jr. makes a "real nice" veggie curry, the New York Times Magazine reveals in its green lifestyle issue. (Which also contains the perpetually snippy Deborah Solomon giving William McDonough a hard time about poop. That's right. Poop. Plus, a story on Al Gore, and...slide shows!)
• Portland's Sukita Crimmel -- creator of many of the city's earthen floors -- turns up in a story about...earthen floors. Naturally.
• Supporters of the streetcar Seattle's building point to Portland's streetcar as something that "helped transform an old railroad yard into the trendy Pearl District." Also, buckets of money.
• Come to find out, wireless clouds aren't working all that well for anyone.

It's not?

City in the spotlight:

Los Angeles Times writer Chris Reynolds comes to Portland to ride the streetcar and overuse the words trendy and weird.

AND a cool story in the New York Times about Bert Sperling, the Portlander who researches those best/worst cities lists (Portland's third-runner-up this year, and will be crowned best city should Gainsville or Bellingham need to step down due to nudie photos and/or substance abuse). Best quote from the article: They didn’t seem to get the idea, Mr. Sperling said, that most families’ idea of fun is "not to lose money or take your top off."

"Why can't they just show the movie?"

I'm not in San Antonio. But if I were, I wouldn't be listening to Al Gore speak on Saturday at the AIA National Convention, because members of the media are blocked from attending.

Banning the media from events usually has three effects. One, it makes people who poke into other peoples bidness professionally wonder why a seemingly straightforward speech would be closed. Two, it makes people whose ability to write well is their big ticket talent get all snarky and sharp-witted.

Third -- and most importantly -- it makes us insanely crazy about not knowing what's going on in there.

Ahem. So. If anyone knows what went on in there and wants to tell me about it, that would be swell.

MAY 9 UPDATE: Reporters from several outlets, among them Architectural Record and the San Antonio Express, snuck in. (Basically, Gore said global warming's a big fat problem and architects can play a big part in solving it, and also laid out a plan to tax polluters.) On a side note, the Express defends its choice to defy Gore...oooh...in a ombudsman's column that's taking some heat because it ends on this note: "To me, it was like crashing a Ku Klux Klan rally. Gore didn't want coverage. We think he deserved it. "

Maybe we should have gotten them to do our museum

Assorted media love -- and indifference -- for Allied Works' Seattle Art Museum addition:

Time magazine's Richard Lacayo calls its "handsomely proportioned and detailed," the Los Angeles Times offers a resounding...eh, the Seattle Times calls Brad Cloepfil "freckled, curly-haired and earnestly Oregonian" but also talks about design and other un-hairdo-related things. There's also Randy Gragg's long (but worth it) Q+A with Cloepfil.

This weekend's the big opening, if anyone's headed north...they're doing this thing where the musuem's open for 35 hours straight (starting at 10 a.m. Saturday). 3 a.m. is a good time, I bet, to beat the crowds.

Schooled

Mahlum, Opsis pick up Medford projects as designer of “grandiose” schools gets booted for lack of Oregon licensure.