Greetings Race Fans,
Sorry for the delay.
SO, when we last left off, I was singing the praises of Portland and The Monaco hotel in Portland.
Portland is a cool place with some cool architecture. Of course, we can start with Halprin and his fountains. Of course, when I was there, there was zero water in the fountains. What a shame. This was and is a very powerful civic space. When I lived in Portland in the late '80's and early '90's, the fountain was going quite a bit and it was absolutely stunning.
Then there is the Portland building. Michael Graves' single-handed tour de force in Post Modern Architecture.
It doesn't matter if you are a fan or not... this thing redefined
an entire generation of architects and architecture. Personally, I can appreciate the formal qualities as well as the oh-so-'80's cliche color scheme... even if the base of the building doesn't work. Then there is the Koin Tower.
Truthfully, it has seen better days. I remember talking to another architectural guy in the late '80's who told me that the building was designed for a top lifespan of 50 to 75 years. (Who knows what the intent truly was towards lifespan.) It blew me away. It sounds silly now, but it was the first moment that I realized that architecture (without judgement towards intent or "good" or "bad") is mortal. I had never spent any serious time other than in a cursory sort of way thinking about a building as having a terminal point in a nebulous and undefined future. At best, there was an awareness of a crumbling building or decay -surely not a distinct yet undefined moment of rigor mortis. Thank you Koin Tower.
And then there is Pietro Bulleschi. Pietro did the Central Lutheran Church in Portland and the Equitable Building. Here is some commentary from Great Buildings Online concerning the Equitable building...
Equitable Building Commentary
"An ethereal tower of sea green glass and aluminum, is this building of the Equitable Savings and Loan Association. The skeleton outline is predominant and stresses neither the horizontal nor the vertical. The rigid window pattern allows for more interior flexibility than is apparent as result of arrangement of utilities and modular subdivision..."
— Jo Stubblebine, ed. The Northwest Architecture of Pietro Belluschi. New York: F.W. Dodge Corporation, 1953. p41.
"This trim, compact office building originally 12 stories high and later 13, set styles for hundreds that came after. It was the first to be sheathed in aluminum, the first to employ double-glazed window panels, and the first to be completely sealed and fully air-conditioned."
— from Sylvia Hart Wright. Sourcebook of Contemporary North American Architecture: From Postwar to Postmodern. p11.
Pietro also did a fantastic church in Duluth, MN. If you get the chance, Google, or, better yet, check these buildings out. Sorry no photos this time around.
"An ethereal tower of sea green glass and aluminum, is this building of the Equitable Savings and Loan Association. The skeleton outline is predominant and stresses neither the horizontal nor the vertical. The rigid window pattern allows for more interior flexibility than is apparent as result of arrangement of utilities and modular subdivision..."
— Jo Stubblebine, ed. The Northwest Architecture of Pietro Belluschi. New York: F.W. Dodge Corporation, 1953. p41.
"This trim, compact office building originally 12 stories high and later 13, set styles for hundreds that came after. It was the first to be sheathed in aluminum, the first to employ double-glazed window panels, and the first to be completely sealed and fully air-conditioned."
— from Sylvia Hart Wright. Sourcebook of Contemporary North American Architecture: From Postwar to Postmodern. p11.
Pietro also did a fantastic church in Duluth, MN. If you get the chance, Google, or, better yet, check these buildings out. Sorry no photos this time around.
At any rate, I roamed around PDX looking at some of my favorite things. However, much like the Lakeshore Inn (http://www.thelakeshoreinn.com/) and my refusal to stay there so I will not ruin some perfectly good memories, looking at some of this stuff was slightly bitter-sweet and more than slightly stupid.
You really can not go back. You can revisit and make new memories, but you can't spend too much time thinking of the really good memories from the past ...or the present becomes pale in comparison. I realized recently that we even do that with the crappy memories. "Hey, remember that blizzard and how you lost a glove while trying to go to the bathroom outside of the car in whiteout conditions?" "Yeah, that was wild... that was so great." At the time you were probably hoping that at the most you would get frostbite on non-private parts. Oh well... I went back and received frostbite on the part of my mind that controls memories.
From PDX we flew to San Francisco to see a couple of our reps and then off to LA. Finally, we flew home.
There may have been a trip or two in between the PDX-SF-LA junket, but I do not recall at 12:05 AM in some hotel in yet another town. What I can tell you is that a couple of weeks later found me under the knife in the hospital and a week after that, on my way to Belgium.
Stay tuned race fans, there is more to tell.
-G
