The Boats of Yaquina Bay

The fishing fleet docked in Yaquina Bay in Newport Oregon, has always intrigued me.  The boats are all designed for function yet at the same time reflect elegant nautical shapes and lines.

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.

Hiking the Pacific Crest Trail

In the vicinity of Mt. Rainier, Washington. Taken with iPhone 7.

Green Trees, Grey Sky

Ocean Front Hotel Renovation

The design challenge renovating a 1970's era beachfront hotel had to do with the long narrow rooms with windows only at one end.  The renovated rooms had to be comfortable and cozy because guests could be confined inside during Pacific Northwest Coast stormy weather.  On wider rooms a day bed was extended onto the deck as a glassed-in alcove as a cozy place to watch dramatic storm driven surf.  The bed uses a common double mattress so it could also be additional sleeping space within the room.

The "Pullman" bed was also used in narrower rooms by offsetting an alcove with the adjacent room.  An additional child's trundle bed could be pulled out from below creating a flexible room for families. This also broke up the long parallel walls giving the room more character than it had before.