Portland Building

Comments

• 1234

  January 2014

  TEAR IT DOWN!
• 000

  January 2014

  The tile is so ugly and weird. It makes it look like a giant, decrepit bathhouse, but otherwise I kind of like the building! BUT 95MM? That's like $150 a person. I don't know if I love it that much.
• 1 Like

  MirandaJuly

  January 2014

  I say we make Michael Graves pay the 95MM.
• swamp_knobbler_mahan

  January 2014

  Tight call Zuck.
• 1 Like

  Dr_William_Hayward

  January 2014

  I like it. Not so wild about the statue though. Story is when it was built, many architects at the AIA meeting sported "I don't dig Graves" buttons.
• 1234

  January 2014

  Michael Graves made a building that doesn't work.
  
  He also made a teakettle for Target that my brother bought and it spilled liquid out all ver the sides when you tried to use it.
  
  HEY ASSHOLE*: DESIGN IS ABOUT FUNCTION TOO!
  
  *asshole = michael graves
  
  Also, when he dies and someone builds a nice looking building we can talk about him rolling over in his graves.
• flossy_log_lady

  January 2014

  "Also, when he dies and someone builds a nice looking building we can talk about him rolling over in his graves."
  
  so good
• YoursTruly

  January 2014

  ditto
• Dr_William_Hayward

  January 2014

  Here is why I think the Portland Building should be preserved largely unchanged.
  
  Go down there. Take a look at the building especially facing East North East. Squint.
  
  The building had a ridiculously cheap original budget. The architect was responsible for a certain square feet under the budget. Imagine as a modernist box at those proportions. Observe the proportions of the building, it is squat, would never have worked without the distracting ornamentation: lower blue band, ribbon, window pattern like ermine spots, pillar pattern, ribbon festoons, keystone.
  
  Yes, the windows are small. Only way the budget would work. Big windows are expensive in an architectural budget. To fix put in more lighting. The energy cost is minimal and LEED daylighting is not motherhood.
  
  There are very few architecturally significant public buildings in Portland. Equitable Building, Ad Agency. Nearby Mt Angel Abbey. Name another besides the Portland Building. Portland Building is one of less than one handful.
  
  A new office building will be expensive and a new courthouse will be astronomically expensive. Keep the Portland Building, weatherproof it and forget the courthouse.
  
  But I have to agree that Mr Graves fell into a profitable rut rather than innovating/functional and that includes teapots. I have a crappy Target hand landscape shear where the thumb lock does not work. Cost to make it good would have been minimal.
  
  Yes excesses and sins of postmodernism are egregious, but it was a necessary stage, like adolescence.
• Leland

  January 2014

  Billy Joel museum.
• 1234

  January 2014

  Is significance alone worth preservation?
  
  It was (and always will be) a mistake to hire Michael Graves. I would rather our city ("the city that works") be known for demolishing this work and building something more fitting (that is to say, progress) than be known as the city with the clown nose of a building that no one likes except for the fact that it's ugly.
  
  How about we demolish it the same day he dies? Get all the demo equipment ready and as soon as his own death is confirmed we drop it to a pile of rubble. Then we encase the rubble in a thick coat of clear plastic and it becomes a monument to the mistake of hiring him. A memorial to remind us not to hire charlatans. We'll call it "The Graves Mistake".
• ManInTheIvoryTower

  January 2014

  When I moved here my friends and I called it the Target toaster. Didn't even know it was a Graves joint until a few years ago.
  
  One of the worst designs from a street level perspective on a large building I've ever seen-- it looks like an alien bathhouse from Dune when you approach it on the sidewalk.