Minus Andy Warhol

Eyes on the street: It's one of the most useful phrases a developer has. Instead of saying, "this project will add 100 people to your neighborhood, all of whom have a car, a silence-shattering stereo system, and a dog that will definitely shit on your lawn," developers point out that each of those 100 people has two eyes, and those two eyes will detect wrongdoing with laserlike efficiency.

This is good spin. I wonder if it's true. I hope it is, especially in the case of the Couch Park Apartments, which Opus Northwest is planning (and SERA's designing) for NW 19th Ave. directly across from the eastern edge of Couch Park.

I'm completely selfish with this. (I live in Northwest.) Couch Park has always seemed like a decent place to booze, score drugs, or get called a foxy mama, but I like a little less Studio 54 in my green spaces. Basically, I'm a drag.

It'd be cool, though, if the eyes on the street thing really works. Optometrists, unite. And rent from Opus.

Briefed 8.9

Bloggers doing the work for me:

Jetson Green calls Holst's 12.5 "extremely good looking"; 12.5 blushes, drops the lashes, and murmers, "you're not so bad yourself." As a side note, I recently noticed an ad for 12.5 in the back of Dwell.

Port's Jeff Jahn suggests an incentive program for developers who make space for cultural institutions in their projects, which seems like an idea that deserves a task force.

TVA and Wieden + Kennedy teamed up on sand building.

The street outside SERA's Old Town offices is, apparently, an attractive place to do drugs. SERA's offices, meanwhile, remain an attractive place to do architecture.

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.

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.

Handsome is as handsome does, Marriott

SERA's design for a downtown Courtyard by Marriott sailed through Portland Design Commission yesterday, winning unanimous approval. Jeff Stuhr called it "very handsome."

The commission also handed out some effusive love for the Mirabella (Ankrom Moisan's retirement tower on South Waterfront) but complained -- with feeling -- about the fact that PDOT hasn't produced a traffic study and and Parks hasn't done anything on the planned two-block park. More on this in Monday's DJC...

Marathon meetings

Skanska's the build half of the design-build team for PSU's new rec center (Yost Grube Hall got the design nod this fall), the O and the Biz Journal reported Tuesday.

The project's back before the design commission for review on July 19. Last appearance, YGH designers weren't sure if the building would be six stories or four (the OUS capital building budget approved by the legislature will let it be six). And commissioners weren't all that sure about the building design, which they said lacked panache on three of the four sides.

Should be an interesting review. Also coming up before the commission for review are the new downtown Courtyard by Marriot (SERA), Mirabella (Ankrom Moisan) and East of Pearl (EDA Architecture and Planning, I think), all next Thursday. Sharing the agenda with YGH on the 19th is review of a senior living facility in Gateway (MCM) and advice for condos on Broadway and the office tower at 100 NE Multnomah (AMAA in its second advice appearance for this project).

Flumeoxed

Interesting things on the internets:

• Entries in Living Future 07 are now downloadable in PDF form, Ethan Timm of Worldchanging Portland points out. Entries include North Portland projects by SERA and Sienna.
• Nancy Keates is chronicling the teardown-rebuild of her Portland home, which is being designed by Dave Giulietti of Giulietti/Schouten, for the Wall Street Journal. And she has been for months and months...I'm just ultra slow on the uptake.
• And in the real, reading-leads-to-paper cuts world, the Spring 2007 issue of Oregon Land showed up on my desk last week. I'm pleased to report that it contains the phrase "turd flume," as well as an neat mix of essays on Laurie Olin, the downtown waterfront, and water in the city (all of this goodness is available for download).

Sketched out

Delayed reaction: Brian Libby had a review in the O of Brad Clopefil's show at PDX Contemporary Art, which will be up until June 27 if you want to see the real deal.

Reviewing a review sounds like something only a journalist would even think of doing. So I'm not going to.

But I will say -- I think the incubation and ultimate execution of architecture is artistically compelling. Especially the idea of chronicling different manifestations of a project as it goes along. SERA today presented its design for the new downtown Courtyard by Mariott, which will be back before the design commission on July 12 (there'll be a story in Monday's DJC). Part of the presentation was a series of considered-and-rejected designs, as well as sketches from a very, very basic design point for the building patterning to a fully grown (and almost approved) design.

And seeing it was like...like seeing what would have happened had Van Gogh said "The hell with sunflowers. I'm a begonia man." Awesome. People are naturally curious about the maybes and the mights and the could-haves, and architecture is one of the few fields where the almosts can really be part of the end art.