A mix of arts facilities and high-density housing has comprised the majority of Holst’s work, from early projects for clients like Oregon Ballet Theater, the Pacific Northwest College of Art and Ecotrust in the late 1990s and early 2000s to their two celebrated mixed-use projects with developer Randy Rapaport in 2004 and 2008: the Belmont Street Lofts and the Clinton Condominiums. Today the scale of Holst’s projects has also expanded to include half-block sized towers like the recently opened 937 condominiums And the newly completed Ziba headquarters. Yet the firm still happily embraces smaller scale residential projects as well. Stuhr, for example, has recently been overseeing design and construction of a beach house for his own family near Arch Cape, Oregon.
“I think they’re complimentary,” Stuhr says of working on differently sized projects like his beach cabin and a 16-story condo building like 937. “It’s all basically a design problem. If anything sometimes the smaller ones are harder because you have less to work with. But every project has what I liken to setting up a language. Once you set that syntax up, you try to go back to it. You want the language to be coherent. With the bigger projects you’ve got to think in terms of the scale. A decision that wouldn’t have much impact on a small project can be multiplied by hundreds.”
Firm Culture
While Stuhr has taken the lead as a designer with this more personal project, he has been described in the past (by both himself and others) as having a working relationship with Holmes resembling that of a student and a critiquing professor. It’s not to say Stuhr has more knowledge than Holmes, or that only Holmes is the active creative voice; they’re also roughly the same age (Holmes is 50, Stuhr 46). Yet, as Homes recalled in a 2008 interview (originally conducted for an Oregonian profile), “I think through drawing. I’ll draw something, almost like a scribbled mistake, and it helps me get an idea. I don’t think that’s necessarily the way Jeff approaches it. But I would say the best work that we do, there’s a real exchange between Jeff and I. He can make a comment and it’ll make something click in my head. I just really respect that level of feedback.”“I also think what has changed in the last few years,” Holmes added, “is we’ve built up this strong group of people we work with. It’s 18 people now. We’re both in position of directing people more now. Jeff or I might draw something, but three other people might be too. In a weird way it’s becoming more collaborative.” The partners also believe technology has fundamentally changed how they work. “Our upstairs is full of models. That’s how you used to work, literally building it. But with the 3D programs that we have now, it's evolved from this physically hard to build thing to a computer model that we can experiment with, flip it around and be inside of it,” Holmes says. “I know for myself early on in my career I would draw a perspective sketch before I would draw a floor plan. That’s kind of opposite of how people were taught, especially in my day. Now I think when people come out of school they’re doing it more like I did it years ago. They’re more spatially oriented than the computer. It’s a more 3-D exercise than it used to be. It’s an exciting time to be an architect in that regard. It’s a very rich time. I think modernism is finally in a way finding its kind of true place.” "There are so many facets to the creative process in business,” Stuhr adds. “The romantic idea is someone is out in the monastery driving out their vision. That’s the myth. The world’s so much more dynamic now. Especially with computers, it just moves so fast the things you can do. You come to this point where you can render these things so completely that we feel like we’ve seen the building before it’s come to fruition.”
937
The 16-story 937 building done for developers Geoff Winkler and Patrick Kessi of W&K Development, is the firm's largest. This slender, striking half-block condominium is clad in light-toned brick, evoking historic early 20th Century downtown Portland buildings like the Jackson Tower and A.E. Doyle’s Meier & Frank department store (now Macy’s). Yet 937 is unapologetically crisp, glassy and contemporary as well, with a compelling random pattern of windows. The building, both because of its slender form and the abundance of windows, achieves a robust sense of interior lightness.
“From a distance it feels organic,” Holmes says. “There are lots of buildings in the world that use that language. It’s been developed very successfully. I like the notion that it’s this brick building that has a delicate quality to it. It’s light even though it’s made out of this traditional heavy material.”
“With 937, what I like is the patterning, Stuhr agrees. “It’s fairly normal throughout the district. And ours sort of breaks that pattern. And I think that’s a good thing. We didn’t want a heavy 19th century building, but to actually use brick in a modern way. Certainly there’s a tendency we already had toward a more kind of focused modernism. That’s always been our natural tendency. But if there’ some thing a lot of buildings in Portland do, it’s having too many things going on, especially on the façade.” Mainting simplicity, richness and clarity, he says, is what the firm strives for.
Ziba Design
A 70,000-square-foot new headquarters for the industrial design firm Ziba, completed in the summer of 2009, saw Holst designing for fellow award-winning designers, to successful effect. The project had a rocky beginning; The commission was originally awarded to another local firm, Mahlum Architects, which at the time included talented Portland architect Rick Potestio. For a time the project was put on hold, and ultimately Ziba switched to Holst.
Besides offices for its staff of young creatives working for business clients, the Ziba building will, like the W+K headquarters, act as a community magnet with an auditorium for public gatherings. But unlike that building's exterior (a renovated historic warehouse), Holst's design features a glass curtain wall and zinc panels that will boldly announce the company’s presence.
Ziba has offered Holst something its condo jobs have not: the chance to design a building both inside and out, without the prescribed program of squeezing residences together. Working with Ziba, an award winning industrial design firm, has also put Holst to the test with exacting attention to detail. Yet the company also enabled Holst to do some of its best work.“They really listened to us,” Sohrab Vossoughi says. “And we pushed them a lot. We’d say, ‘Why? Why are we doing this?’ But they wouldn’t get defensive.”
The challenging part, Stuhr says, was that the client often wanted to see and explore numerous options for each design decision, a positive contribution to the project no doubt but one that could threaten a tight schedule. “We had to push to get things satisfied in a reasonable amount of time,” Stuhr explains. “Sohrab was ultimately making the decisions, but they wanted to include feedback from others as well, so that was a matter of negotiating.”
Hotel Modera
The firm’s first project in downtown Portland transformed a decrepit old Days Inn motel into a swanky new boutique hotel. The intent was to embrace the original mid-century modern original architecture while adding openness and natural materials. The five-story hotel has 174 rooms and features an outdoor courtyard that includes a “living wall” of vegetation as well as fire pits and plenty of seating. The plaza courtyard also helps integrate the indoors with the outdoors. Holst also created a new motor entrance and lobby off Clay Street to accommodate for the condemnation of the SW 6th Street motor entrance due to the new TriMet MAX light rail line runing adjacent to the hotel. Led by project manager Kevin Valk, the architects chose to extend the lobby out of the SW Clay Street entrance and design a courtyard with the extra space.
Specific green features of Hotel Modera include a stormwater filtration system in the courtyard, upgraded windows and HVAC, occupancy sensors, added insulation to exterior building shell, and a new reflective roofing to reduce heating island effect.
Arch Cape House
A house in Arch Cape is a departure for the firm, which has not produced much of any single-family homes. Stuhr and his wife initially bought a tiny 50x95-square-foot site on the Oregon Coast intending to restore the circa-1958 cabin there. “We thought we could just salvage a little surf shack,” he recalls. “Then one weekend I kind of had a breakdown and said, ‘I can’t do this.” It was just beyond repair.” That, however, created the opportunity to envision, design and build a compellingly unique structure.The Arch Cape House is configured around an aged spruce tree, which Stuhr decided to keep despite how it compromised the lot’s usable space. The design thus as an L-shaped configuration that set forth a metaphor for the building’s form: an old spruce log that might have fallen down in a storm.
“It’s just one great big wooden tube that cantilevers out toward the ocean with this little sidecar of a space next to it,” the architect explains. The whole idea was to create a space sympathetic to the tree and site, took advantage of the views, and got the living spaces up high over the road. It’s the idea of an escape from the city.”
Belmont Street Lofts
One of the firm’s biggest breakthroughs came in 2004 with the firm’s first major new building, the Belmont Street Lofts, developed by Randy Rapaport, Nels Gabbert and Lindley Morton. With 27 units on the upper three floors and glass-fronted retail on the ground level of this popular shopping street, the façade features a striking interwoven pattern of Brazilian ipé hardwood and Spanish resin panels, all on a relatively small budget. The building’s look has since been imitated by numerous Portland condos, but most lack the Belmont Lofts’ inherent sense of elegance and lightness. Wood clad buildings have become a distinctive 2000s architectural style that’s common throughout the city. Yet this embrace of simple natural materials in Holst’s work puts them in a lineage with renowned mid-20th century modernist Portland architects like Pietro Belluschi and John Yeon.
“They make great moves in so few steps,” says Jim Staicoff, an interior designer with Portland firm Corso Staicoff, a collaborator worked with Holst on the recently completed Hotel Modera project downtown. “They have a look that’s specific to the Northwest, but uniquely their own.”
The project won both a people’s choice award and a jury citation award from the 2005 AIA/Portland Design Awards as well as a Wood Design Merit Award. It also featured in Dwell magazine and numerous other media.
7th & Knott Townhomes
A smaller-scale but nonetheless among Holst’s most distinctive projects is the 7th & Knott Townhomes in Northeast Portland near Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard. “It’s a transitional district between historic and commercial, right between MLK and that residential world,” Stuhr explains “Also you get into beautiful old estate type housing there.” Yet Holst deliberately chose to do an urban project, not only in its clean-lined boxy form but the placement of garages and parking in the back on an alley that allows the units to front the street more closely.“We anted to up the level of development there compared to other housing projects in the area, where you paint every gable a different color on your two-story townhouse, quasi-Victorian detailing with different paint colors on it.” The building features a simple palette of plaster and Forest Stewardship Council-certified Meranti wood, the latter of which seems to wrap the masonry base. Bioswales absorb excess groundwater to prevent runoff, as does the parking area’s permeable pavement.
Clinton Condominiums
In 2008 Holst saw completion of its second collaboration with Randy Rapaport, an oft-publicized developer whose unconventional style (he prefers skateboards to SUVs, quotes pop philosopher Eckert Tolle and rhapsodizes about psychedelic indie-rock band The Flaming Lips) sometimes overshadows a passion for creating first-rate architecture. And indeed, the Clinton is a neighborhood gem.
The front façade, facing 26th Avenue in the Clinton Street district, features a distinctive array of glass panels that give the building a luminescent quality, particularly at night. The north and south facades contrast the glossy quality of the glass with the use of COR-TEN steel and its deliberately rusty texture. With 27 units on the upper three floors, the Clinton’s ground floor is a combination of expansive storefront glass and rich mahogany.
More than a year before it was completed, the Clinton Condominiums project was featured in The New York Times as part of a story about Portland’s combination of density, affordability and environmental awareness were attracting new residents in large numbers.
“From early-20th-century Craftsman-style houses to converted industrial buildings to environmentally conscious new developments, the diverse mix of housing appeals to both young and old. Two such examples are the Clinton Condominiums and the Belmont Street Lofts, mixed-use projects, developed by Randy Rapaport,” the Times’ Billy Cohen wrote. “Mr. Rapaport said he wanted to create a development that embraced the Portland sensibility of low-impact living, clean design and community focus. ‘It’s about the unwritten philosophy of Portland,’ he said, ‘that this is a do-it-yourself, local, sustainable community. It’s very common that someone will visit a friend and then they’re moving here three months later.”
23 Clinton
Currently in predevelopment, (design complete, builder hired, permits ready, need a presale before construction can begin) the two town-homes known as 23 Clinton mark a new partnership between Holst and first time developer Rob Bennett (Patternworks LLC), who is one of the foremost green building advocates/ leaders in Portland having founded G/Rated, the City’s green building program in 2000 (Patternworks LLC is also a co-developer).
As is Holst’s trademark, the look of 23 Clinton is an interplay of organic and geometric. Sumptuous wood cladding brings warmth and a natural feel to a series of clean-lined boxes that are then deconstructed and broken of their mass by a series of balconies and windows. It was important to Bennett to create a connection to the existing and iconic building on site while creating a strong presence on Clinton.
The project maintains an emphasis on light, sky, and air to help animate the interiors and improve owner comfort, health, and overall environmental performance. A variety of strategies both active and passive work in harmony to improve indoor air quality while maximizing energy and water efficiency. Features include strategically placed windows and skylights to maximize daylight and natural ventilation solar hot water collectors, an energy efficient building envelope with rain screens, high efficiency radiant floor heating, on-site rain water management, FSC-certified flooring and mill work, and low-VOC materials, paints, sealants and finishes.
Say’s Bennett, “Holst is brilliant at making sublime and subtle work within conventional budgets. I was looking at creating something significant for the Clinton neighborhood, something that contributed to the neighborhood’s quirky and iconoclast nature, while living within the constraints of the market. Holst delivered and they’re fun to boot.
Upcoming: Homeless Resource Center
Today Holst is also anticipating groundbreaking for its first public building: a homeless access resource center in Portland’s Old Town district. The project has been temporarily stalled by a lawsuit challenging how the Portland Development Commissions administers funds to different designated urban renewal areas. Once the red tape is overcome, however, the project gives Holst another opportunity to grow.“We had an opportunity to travel to some other cities and look at how they address homeless shelters,” Holmes explains. “I think this will be frankly the finest facility of its kind that I’m aware of. That’s been an interesting experience countered against all the luxury condos we’ve been involved with.”
“Although we’ve done nonprofit work, this is our first public sector work. It truly is a new process for us in that respect, and one we’ve had to adapt to. We’re used to developers saying, ‘Start today, I want to build tomorrow.’ Here there are a lot of public partners you have to bring along.”
Looking Ahead
That Holst has been able to secure increasingly large and noteworthy commissions speaks to the rise of smaller, studio-sized firms over the last decade. In the past, large firms oriented around service more than eye-catching design received the most coveted large-scale commissions. But technology and economics have leveled the playing field.Small design oriented firms have the capacity to do a variety of types of work now,” says Marlon Blackwell, an architecture professor at the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville who served as a judge for October’s AIA/Portland design awards. Many clients aren’t enamored with the bigger service firms. And given the new generation of 3-D modeling software out there, the smaller firms are able to be more agile in how they perform, both in conception of a design but also its realization.”
The challenge now is for Holst to sustain their recent string of commissions without losing the design touch that made people want to hire them. “I think they’re on the cusp of making a leap to larger works,” L. Rudolph Barton, an architecture professor at Portland State University, said of Holst in The Oregonian’s 2009 profile. “But they have an office culture that really values the attention they can give to each project.”
While larger Portland firms like Ankrom Moisan Associated Architects and GBD Architects have received the largest scale and highest volume of commissions, Holst buildings are the ones turning heads. In the first decade of the 21st century in Portland, no other architecture firm can claim a greater impact on the local built environment. Holst doesn’t design the most, or the biggest, but the firm’s signature blend of simple, elegant forms and warm, natural materials has put this Southeast Portland-based shop in rarified air amongst the city’s most admired designers.
