Last night, over a few glasses of wine, PDXplore got architect and agitator Rick Potestio’s take on DOZA. We wrote our top asks for this document, which boiled down to 9 bullet points. Rick’s take was even simpler. We’ll try to paraphrase it here to the best of our recollections:
There’s downtown, and there’s everything else. Our commercial streets are the connective tissue that joins all the diverse parts of Portland and unifies it as a city. We are going to have mostly residential and mixed-use buildings along those streets. Because of the way buildings work internally, you’re going to have a ground floor that’s taller, a bunch of floors on top of that and a penthouse. This gives you a base, a middle and a top. Any material changes should just be to express that. In order to avoid total chaos, buildings should have symmetry and windows should be stacked so they all line up. Material pallet should be a warm organic one. It doesn’t even force you into a specific style. If you want to be modern, be modern within that framework. All the great architects were able to make buildings within those constraints. Mies could do it, Alto could do it, we can do it.
Even if we elaborated on this, it could be done in one page. That’s all you need!
