design competition / PDX

Last fall our office collaborated in a design competition for Portland (Oregon) Metro that asked students and professionals to envision how the urban environment might develop over time to allow increased human density and increased habitat. My office participated in it, and the process was both cool and difficult. I contributed mainly in the environmental education piece and graphic production but also in the conceptualization and brainstorming in the beginning. Our entry focused on not only the sustainable design of the site, a residential block, through ecological and community-making best practices, would transform the place, but how crucial policy and education would be in instigating and embracing systematic change that nurtured environmental sensitivity within a densifying urban fabric.

The contest was the brainchild of our design director, and the legwork and coordination of another coworker of mine, but when it came down to it, neither of them could make it to the award announcements and ceremony in Portland last week, so they sent me (we had a 24-person team and they sent me, haha).

And we won two significant awards, holy crap. Out of 108 entries in the whole show, we won second in our category by the jurors and best at the event as voted by the attendees- which also meant that we were the only entrants to receive more than one award. It was all very overwhelming, as the train got me down there late, and I entered the art museum to the proceedings already begun and had to nose through the crowd and orient myself as to what was going on. However, it was good I was there to represent our team, in light of the winning. I actually got to meet Susan Szenasy, the editor of the very-cool New York-based Metropolis magazine and juror of the contest. She was very kind, and pretty down-to-earth-seeming, which I found especially interesting given her intellectual/savvy/shrewd image and reputation. I wouldn't mind being her successor in the effort toward functional and beautiful sustainable design through intellectual critique by an opinionated woman. ;)

Annnyway, our little office has Portland Metro calling about our approach to our design, and The Oregonian interviewed us immediately on Friday. Pretty crazy. Here's the entry: http://www.integratinghabitats.org/photos/max/PE3001.jpg
and the competition premise and context:
http://www.metro-region.org/index.cfm/go/by.web/id=21627

And I absolutely must swoon and thank Laurie in our office for hooking me up with a sweet hotel last minute. I must post photos of its kickass design to Flickr soon, but it's too late right this minute, and a link to the Ace hotel will have to suffice for now. There's an Ace in Seattle (the original one) and one in PDX, and the design is so incredibly indie and ReadyMade (a magazine which is provided, along with Spin and The Believer and graphic quarterlies, in the hotel's library loft and your room's bedside table).... From the mod/reused/ironic/carefully-thought-through design elements which are pretty minimalist while being designed in detail and accented with meaning; to the made-in-oregon and organic everything; to its careful but unique and mod conversion of the historic brick building a half-block away from Powell's, Portland's legendary bookstore; the place is so cool.

So very cool. So very, very cool. Almost too cool, with its retiring, polite-enough-but-unimpressed staff, poem stenciled on the wall, and abundance of grey. I love grey, and I really like this hotel, and the fun little elements about it. But, and I'm not sure if it's Portland's in-ness that is making me predisposed to wanting to buck the trend, but the place seems like it's trying too hard.

Like the city itself, the Ace seems as though it's so thoughtfully contrived, to be cool and smart like everything is in that area, that it has turned into this homogenized, over-the-top cool. As though Portland is so lovely, to me, that there isn't enough contrast, it's kind of vanilla. So many lovely little things here and there, as in the park blocks, and in the new cool spots in the Pearl, that you don't have the contrast of the weird or edgy, like I'm used to in Seattle. So yeah, Portland is doing a lot of things better, I hear it all the time and I'll acknowledge, has it's sh!t together more than Seattle (I will give you the way better planning and transportation setups, and dreamy walkability), but there's something I'm used to about Seattle's organic funk and creativity, that kind of crazy mishmash I like...and plus, the Emerald City is way prettier.

But really, Portland and Seattle are siblings that could stand to stop being compared to each other...they really are different beasts. Seattle is the first child, the one that was an unplanned early pregnancy and was a result of passion, and not planning, and whose Alaska Yukon Gold Rush gestational period was the equivalent of a teen mother on coke. With the lovely good looks going for it, Seattle had to learn on its own as it grew, and was sent through the wringer along the way, a result of its bickering, dysfunctional parents. Portland came along later, to founding fathers who knew how they wanted to raise a polite, genteel, livable city. Sure it wasn't as stunningly good-looking, but that would be compensated for in proper thought and planning. Seattle became the temperamental, dysfunctional, chain-smoking starlet with potential but no organization or focus to pull anything off, and Portland the cute, friendly, A-Type little sibling that tried harder. These are children, I think, who could stand to stop being compared to each other ...don't ask about Tacoma, though, it's the unfortunate stepchild, not nearly as cute or smart, had to go into the military to get much a of a future, and is always overlooked.

To conclude, it was a good trip. Nice train ride down, nice stay in a nice place for a very nice reason, albeit too short, and a nice train ride back. I hope, next time, however, to have more time to enjoy my fair-trade Stumptown espresso beverage alongside my complimentary Macbook while scanning for hipsters over my equally-hip periodical literature in the loft.