Graves came out swinging. "I saw some people outside selling tomatoes," he said. "I have no idea what that meant."
He complained about his treatment in the local news media: "350 buildings, and I don't have this treatment anywhere else. . . Usually when I revisit buildings, it's to get the keys to the city. Here, there are tomatoes for sale."
— oregonlive.com
61 Comments
The loggias are "hard to access" from street level? If you use a wheelchair, yes this is likely true; as I recall there are steps as the site slopes. Otherwise, it's not. And the loggias provide protection from the rain - my recollection of living in Portland is that it rains pretty often, is that still true?
It's an important building, and replacing it would be very expensive. Spend the money to upgrade it - hell, hire Graves to do it! - but keep the essence of it intact. It's a pivotal building by a legendary architect, despite its flaws (flaws largely attributed to the exceptionally low budget - you get what you pay for).
Graves has an awfully big ego, especially considering how crappy his architecture is.
Milles,
Why are you so obsessed with architects' egos?
For the reasons Donna points out (and others), the Portland Building is a useful case for prompting discussion among students on things such as style (or "style"), plan-making, value engineering/ budget, formal abstraction, publicity, politics, success-and-failure, you name it. It's well worth a visit, whether you (think you) love it or hate it.
Then drive down to the town of St. Benedict and visit Aalto's Mt. Angel Abbey Library, to cleanse the palate and make the heart sing.
Obsession? LOL
I find this kind of self-aggrandizing bullshit intolerable. Read what the fathead said in the interview:
"350 buildings, and I don't have this treatment anywhere else. . . Usually when I revisit buildings, it's to get the keys to the city."
From listening to this asshole you'd think he had donated the building to them - and paid for it's construction - out of the goodness of his heart. How dare they tear it down!
It's hard to imagine him blowing his own horn any harder. Probably the result of too much undeserved success.
Its not just this article. I think I've noticed a pattern where you overemphasize the egos and personalities of individual architects.
I think I've noticed a pattern
If you have significant thought please share. The topic is Graves ego.
I read once where the buildings tiny little windows and lack of light induced thoughts of suicide in the occupants. Hard to design a blind high-rise, but some manage.
Excluding the position of this building in architectural history, it seems to be an ordinary office tower with a mildly dressed-up facade. And the windows are too small.
I wonder if there would be so much passion (from the public) about this if some no-name local firm had designed the building. When the public hears "famous architect" some automatically assume extravagance, waste and bloat -- others more generously expect something extraordinary and beautiful. In both cases, this building disappoints: it's cheap and ordinary. I imagine if there were no famous name to associate with the building, the city would go on with making some costly late adjustments to meet new seismic codes, and maybe throw in some modern low-e glass to brighten things up - no discussion about it. Having a famous architect associated with a project brings prejudice and unrealistic expectations.
In principle though, should we really hold the public responsible for preserving artifacts of architectural history? When buildings unloved by the public and unimportant outside the accepted version of arch history go obsolete, is it fair to compel the owners to pay up and maintain them?
In this specific case, I doubt Portland has a better alternative. Public bureaucracy doesn't inspire a lot of support from citizens - no one's going to accept new taxes to build a really fine building. And there's no reason to think the city would do a better job managing the process the second time around. Incremental improvements and managed expectations will keep this PoMo block standing long past the relevance of its architectural statement.
midlander, if some local no-name firm *had* designed the Portland Building, they would no longer be a local no-name firm (unless they were a one-hit wonder).
Graves' career was in part built on this building. The Humana Tower is the far better building, but the importance of this one can't be overstated.
I wonder if there would be so much passion (from the public) about this if some no-name local firm had designed the building.
Graves was a no-name when he designed the Portland Building.
My God, if the building doesn't work, it doesn't work. If the occupants and users hate the damn thing to the point of its impacting their mental health it should be replaced. Estimates are up to 100 million to "fix" it, and then what do you have? We are not talking the Paris City Hall here.
Volunteer, even if it's not a famous, important building in the history of architecture, it could still be made to work for 1/4 the cost of tearing it down and building a new one (according to the article). Which is the more fiscally responsible solution?
^ Apparently Graves hasn't been offered the commission.
What defines an "important" building - a Paul Goldberger lavishing praise on it? What if other critics disagree?
“Post-Modernism proposed architecture so impoverished and flat that it had no possibility for evolution. Michael Graves’s Portland Building, while certainly a monument to the zeitgeist of the 1980s, has little to offer the contemporary world.”
Tom Wiscombe, Emergent
@miles, then those critics are dicks of course.
its an important building historically speaking and its fixable.
Graves didnt seem to be a huge ego in my reading. Im hearing a marc maron sorta voice, intelligent, tired, still alive after a lot of shit, possibly obsessive about cats (ok, this last one maybe not). cynical and ironic, yes. ego? not so much. he seems on the other hand to be pretty honest about how things went and how he feels about it all.
that quote by wiscombe is demonstrably untrue, btw. Unless the definition of pomo stops with dalmation painted firestations, which it should not. Pomo saved us from the flatness of a defeated modernism, and became pretty much everything we talk about and study in architecture today.
PoMo didn't save us from anything. It is simply another in a string of failed stylistic experiments that ignore the function of architecture justified by pseudophilospohical bullshit.
Applied decoration has been around forever, but rarely has it been so cheaply and thoughtlessly applied, or as symbolic of nothing. This building looks like a bad college studio project.
I am so tired of Miles Jaffe's ignorant comments on this site.
The building is a very important piece of architecture history.
Well, davvid, I guess you have a couple of choices then. You could make an argument supporting the importance of the building, or you could talk about PoMo as a style in the evolution of architecture, or Graves influence, or you could just ignore my comments. Or you could see how much farther you can jam your head up your own ass.
miles, it's ok if you don't like pomo. everyone can't like everything.
however, i think the significance of the building should be obvious, simply by virtue of the fact that you felt the need to come here an condemn it, while other feel the need to protect it. if it wasn't a worthwhile building, it would have just been repaired (or bulldozed) without the media blitz and power point slideshow and tomato vendors.
i don't think an architect should complain about things like a 30 year roof leaking after 30 years. it says in the article the building cost about $51/sf. sometimes if you choose to build a building that requires maintenance, maintenance will be required. also, if there really are mental health issues associated with spending all day sitting in an interior cubicle (which was not designed by graves), then i would assume those issues are not unique to this building? maybe those spaces got dim when the building code required 0.9watts per square foot?
If it's virtue is as a demonstration of bad architecture I agree. In a way that would make it like Villa Savoye. At least Villa Savoye was a reflection of industrialization and the social context of the times. The Portland Building is just the cheap application of decoration to a poorly designed building and isn't worth saving.
Please someone explain why this building is important if there is indeed another reason.
Miles if you look at any history of architecture of the last century it is there. The building is important, by any accepted measure, but no matter how well or thoroughly anyone explains it to you you won't agree, so why waste our breath?
Look, I hate Memphis design, IMO it's all awful and uncomfortable. But I understand why we have examples of it in our Contemporary Design Arts Gallery here at the Museum of Art.
On a personal note, in my experience and understanding of Portland, Oregon the Portland Building basically gave architects in the city license and inspiration to make more colorful, less severe buildings, and the fact that the City was seen as rebellious or leading edge in their commissioning of the building definitely affected the sense of civic pride and ability to take risks there.
I'd credit the Portland Building with having a significant role in PDX being what it is today, both good and bad.
Every building has "it's place in history". Beyond that nobody has explained why this one is so special. The obvious reason is the first application of pomo styling. Duh. Nothing else? That's like saying the Pet Rock should be in the Smithsonian.
If the building must be kept I propose that it be re-purposed as museum of bad design (pet rocks, "new" Coke, the snuggie, the iFart app, Tickle Me Elmo, etc.).
Yes, it's a slow day here. Waiting for the novocaine to wear off.
I just explained why it's more important than just as an application of a style, Miles, but you won't listen. Jeez, you're like Quondam about this thing.
Ow! That Quondam slap stings.
Sorry Donna, I was referring to your first post and comments by others. I appreciate your personal take on it. That's exactly what I'm looking for - what nobody else seems able to explain.
pet rock in the smithsonian collection:
http://geogallery.si.edu/index.php/en/rocks/all
I'm not a big fan of PoMo at all, but having experienced a few of Graves' buildings first hand, particularly his earlier work, I will say that his reputation as a great designer was well deserved.
If you ever get the chance, you should definitely go see his Public Library at San Juan Capistrano. It really is very well done, and shows what a modernized classicist approach can accomplish without all the kitsch. The courtyard space in particular is magnificent.
Graves did a building for the UVA law school which is seriously ugly with fat, out of scale columns. This library is obviously influenced by Jefferson's Rotunda and Lawn at UVA. It just lacks the scale, proportion, subtlety, grace, and stunning beauty of the Rotunda and Lawn.
That's one of the things I dislike about PoMo - ill-proportioned cartoon references to classical details. Like the fat columns and narrow lintels at Capistrano: the architecture of DryVit. Graves could take some lessons from Disney and Universal theme parks.
LOL sorry Miles. I know you despise Pomo, and I mostly do too, having been in school when it was hot.
I mean, I despised the Disney hotels by Graves from the first day they were published - way over the top. And his first toilet plunger for Target was unusable as a plunger, so it sucked too. All style, no substance, for sure.
The Capistrano Library is a nice building....
not a fan of pomo, either. Or at least not this strain of it.
The history of pomo has a timeline, and this building is on it. What else needs to be said. Modernism without villa savoye makes about as much sense.
What it lead to, this building in particular and a few others like it, was important. Our education was in the process of being dismantled because of it when I was a student. Before this period in architecture we were all taught to be dogmatic echo-istes of the pantheon, and it was just bad for us all. Modernism in the 70's and 80's was NOT good stuff. We had Frampton trying to rescue it with critical Regionalism, and failing. We had a lot of glass and technology and financial knowledge too, but none of it directed anywhere, and none of it recognizing the processes of cultural transformation going on around us. Pomo put people and society back into the center of things, and saved us from the dead end we had run into. Any building that signifies that step is important, just, you know, as architecture.
Right now it sounds like a shit interior design and an interesting exterior design haunted by problems that had nothing to do with Pomo and nothing to do with graves (or his ego). So why not fix it and move on, and enjoy the fulfilled potential? It seems to be the cheaper way forward, and is not particularly hard because the building's flaws are not that deep.
In the period leading up to this (1975-80) isometric presentation drawings were the fad. At RISD they were doing mural-sized isos in ink on vellum.
I suspect there is some relationship between that drawing style and the rash of bad architecture that followed.
Well, I went to source here ol' Charlie Jencks' The Language of Post Modern Architecture (5th Edition) to see what he had to say about The Portland(ia) and it wasn't much really. Jencks made note of the tight budget of the project as being one of the primary reasons that Graves won the limited competition. Apparently, polychromed keystones, ornamental ribbons and sculpture can "hide faults in construction." According to the author, many of the faults of the the building, the decaptitation of the uppermost crown and the cutting back of the building's interior were the result of demands made by the Portland(ia)'s critics. The importance of the building for Jencks is that even though it is a flawed building, it was the first major monument of the Post-Modern movement.
These comments are from the introduction of Jencks' book The facing page shows the famous photograph of the demolition of Yamasaki's Pruitt-Igoe Housing project which shows that even a project that was blown up over forty years ago can still live on and hold a powerful place in our collective architectural memory. And if the Portland(ia) meets the same fate as Pruitt-Igoe, remember that the spirit of the project will live on in teapots, toasters and egg timers.
I thought as a freshman in college, 17 years ago, as a new student to architecture, this building should have been blown up.... 17 years later I probably can't say that without raising red flags...I will just say it's crap.
It's gorgeous crap.
Wasn't he a New York five, hanging with Gwathmy, Eisenman, Meier, and Hejduk? His early stuff was a continuation of the school of Corb, right? The five use to all get drinks at IM Pei's Four Season's in New York.
My guess is Miles is mad because Graves probably got a few of his clients out there in the Hamptons. I visited one of those homes, never published, and its was just bad bad 80's crap, and people paid millions for that. (had all kinds of mechanical and leaking problems).
So Donna is correct - it is important for signifying crap at it peak, the 80's - imagine that.
Portland Building It was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 2011.
Graves house in the Hamptons made such an impression on me that we entered this pavilion and got People's Choice for the Centennial Festival of Riverboats Celebration competition.
Pomo is contagious.
^ Guess again. Graves never did any work here. On top of that you'd have to be a clueless social climber to hire any of the five and those are not my kind of clients.
well it was Wainscott, as far as I'm concerned that's the Hamptons...
the drawings said 1989.
Donna and Miles - the point I meant to make was that Graves is famous now, and that fact influences the public's reception of the architecture. The building was important to his career, but as an example of his work or of mid-postmodernism, it's rough. If he had turned out to be a one-hit wonder, this building wouldn't be enough to keep him memorable.
My feeling is that it's silly to fight to preserve examples of architecture that even architects will admit are sub-standard only because of their chronology in architectural history. Architectural history shouldn't be a race to be "first." Graves and others have done plenty outstanding examples of PoMo, and if we want future generations to appreciate this period it would be better to keep those and lose this.
Though again in this case I don't think replacing the building makes sense from a practical point of view - it's not that badly flawed, nor simple to replace. Given the problems Portland encountered building this on the cheap 30+ years ago I'd expect them to make all the same mistakes doing it again, plus more.
I tend to agree with midlander that this is a run of the mill office building with a shmear of decoration, and could be fixed pretty straight forwardly. It could also be torn down without shattering architectural history. Like the Public Library at San Juan Capistrano, Graves has done better work. Wha
t's fascinating is the hate this building inspires. Its building's crime, according to the keepers of modernist chastity, was to be unabashidly decorated. Not that modernists practice what they preached, but they do with-in their rules of puritanical decorum. So in that case, as garish as this building is, it should probably be saved, if only to signify the end of modernist dominance and the re-birth of that all too human proclivity to decorate for pleasure.
Portland Building It was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 2011.
It probably will end up being saved, given all the drama around it. If it doesn't get saved, then many documentaries will be made about it, further immortalizing it as a symbol of PoMo and Graves career.
Not sure which is worse. Leaving the building or immortalizing it through other media, like film.
(Miles as far as I know the project was never published, I looked for it. Have the drawings in my basement, and my bad if I am generalizing Wainscott into the Hamptons, you know like Prospect Park is in Brooklyn, not everyone surfing here would know where Wainscott is...)
It's interesting to hear criticism of Graves from a modernist point of view. Most modernist architects dislike his work in general, and regard him as an apostate. ("he went from Corbu to this crap? Good lord!"). But some will grudgingly credit him with being one of the postmodernists who shook the profession out of its slumber in the late seventies.
The institute of Classical Architecture and Art recently held a symposium on Postmodernism, which was a kind of reassessment of PoMo as a precursor to the New Traditionalism. It was very controversial in the traditional architecture circles. And shortly afterwards, Graves was awarded the Driehaus Prize, which is the traditional/classical version of the Pritzker. Many of the diehard contemporary classicists were having a heart attack over it. "Really??? Michael Graves??? That's not classical architecture! It ironic kitsch." Etc., etc. So Graves irritated the modernists. And he irritates the classicists.
I will say that Michael Graves is one of the influences that began to nudge me toward a more eclectic point of view, and to show how it could be ok to be influenced by more than the latest fashion. Graves helped to show me that history is a gift, not an imposition.
There are a lot of his buildings that I think are horrible, especially the ones that get too kitschy and fanciful, like the Disney buildings in Los Angeles, or the weird resort hotels. But his library in San Juan Capistrano, and his Clos Pegase Winery are really beautiful. I love my Graves designed Monopoly Set, and I have a pair of lovely bedside lamps he designed. And on my stove resides my beautiful Alessi tea kettle. I look at it every morning.
As far as Portland goes, I am sort of ambivalent about it. The realized building is a value-engineered shadow of what Graves had hoped to achieve. Everyone says it's a horrible building functionally. It should probably go. We should remember it as an idea, and look at Graves' hauntingly beautiful drawings of it as we do so.
Chris, I think you're confusing him with Meier. But a lot of the crap is essentially the same.
The lessons to be learned from this building are more of a reason for a teardown or complete reno than they are for preservation. The rabid search for something 'new' and different solely to get attention parrots what happens in much of the art world. For parents this is all too reminiscent of a child's bad behavior. Look at me! The Aussies call it 'tall poppy syndrome'. That this is celebrated and rewarded as much as it is is one of the great failings of our culture.
midlander: Fame is often undeserved, or bestowed for the wrong reasons. If you want to celebrate Graves fame, put up a monument to him built out of toasters shaped like loaves of bread.
In my opinion, characterizing Graves work as motivated by a desire be novel or to gain attention is a profound misunderstanding of what he was trying to do.
I'd add that many modernists make too much of Pomo. Some might have seen it as a peculiar style that poped up to main stream only to get put down by its own childishness and excesses, but this also would be a profound misunderstanding of the times. Like in any dictatorship, there are many who go along to get along, until there's a chance to break free. Grave's work gave many the cover to break out of the modernist monopoly, at least intellectually, and explore their personal passions, whether they be the local vernacular, regional styles, or random historical architects they might have admired. Pomo was simply the style that broke the spell. That's why it had to be so 'ironic', to give the establishment a way to digest such herasy. What a joke!
I believe in what he attempted to do – exploring – reaching, but I’ve said my whole life that this thing we do has to be near the top on the difficulty chart – taking an idea and making it into a reality. Too many things go wrong; too many people involved; failed technology/methods and yes that value engineering thing. I think they should save it, prudent, but hire Graves to fix it – just hate when owners hire someone else to fix my buildings - continuum of care is involved.
Carrera I love that post. The work we do is so hard, so often - even when we're just trying to do something fairly normal but high quality rather than even trying to be groundbreaking!
What's hard about architecture is the seemingly impossibly contradictory restraints of time, budget, client, zoning, building code, construction and (at least for some of us) our own personal design morality and ethics.
Aside from that it's a piece of cake.
The essence of what makes it hard is everything we do is one-off. We never do the same thing twice. Everything is a prototype – like creating the first Chevy Volt and never getting a chance to go into production to drive the bugs out.
Mom broke her ankle so off to the orthopedic hospital – surprised to see the new building – just Midwest crap outside. But the inside was stellar and fun, super well organize and flowed. But then they called mom’s name and off we went to the exam room – in the wheelchair – got to the room and “chunk”, can’t get the wheelchair through the door…”scrape!”, inside, rooms too small to turn around, nurse & I had to manhandle – In a brand new orthopedic hospital? Somebody’s going to jail! So you see, everything can be just perfect then just one mistake – then there, everybody hates “Michael”.
I think this Portland Building story and the story of China's new anti-weird agenda are related. I wonder if we're entering a period where caution, restraint, conformism and lack of expression is rewarded. Its really too bad that challenging work is automatically labeled as self absorbed, arrogant, weird etc.
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