The Landing , Revisited

Revisiting a project I designed 30 years ago is always interesting.  I believe buildings should be designed to evolve over time.  You see this in homes where successive owners modify or add to a house to reflect their personal needs and lifestyle.  Commercial buildings evolve as tenants or retail patterns change.

The Landing riverfront condominiums in Portland, Oregon, have not changed except in one way.   The mature landscape with full grown trees has softened the buildings and created a park like setting that was hard to imagine when they first opened.  The project combined expensive riverfront units with much lower priced units located behind.  The riverfront units were unusual for the time since they were a 50' wide concrete shell where each unit was designed and custom built for each buyer.

The buildings haven't really changed, the solid horizontal and vertical forms with stepped terraces, reflect 1980's style, yet still look contemporary and substantive today.  The full grown trees now have created a quiet park like setting that comfortably connects the two building types in a way that didn't happen 30 years ago.