Folded facades define an origami-inspired residential development in Portland

2019-09-24T14:00:00-04:00

Many residential developments today try to balance the issues of density and materiality with neighborhood scale, and the Origami residences by Waechter Architecture are no exception.

The 12-unit townhome development occupies an entire city block in northeast Portland's Piedmont neighborhood and is designed by the architects to present a sculptural configuration that simultaneously gestures to the surrounding ranch houses while also pointing toward a more urban vision for the city.

Overall view of the backyards for the project. Image courtesy of Jeremy Bittermann.

To achieve this somewhat contradictory design objective, the architects deploy a continuous wall of folded facades that hearkens to old school row house and pitched roof typologies all at once. "We wanted to avoid a strategy of either fragmented individual buildings or a monolithic block," writes Ben Waechter, founder and principal of Waechter Architecture.

Concept model highlighting the project's massing. Image courtesy...

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Folded facades define an origami-inspired residential development in Portland