4 ms·

The rain runoff can flow into the bioswales the city is already building all over; it won't just run into the city sewers. As for needing to build wider drivew

by Frondo 7y ago

The rain runoff can flow into the bioswales the city is already building all over; it won't just run into the city sewers. As for needing to build wider driveways, and that making it boring, I realize there's a certain kind of subjectivity here but I don't think that what we're going to end up with is literally "duplexes with double-wide driveways replacing single-family dwellings on the same-sized lots." The front-runner for the 2020 mayoral race has an architectural background and has been talking about ideas like introducing an LA-style design review board to Portland, to ensure that new development has to pass aesthetic review in addition to environmental review. I guarantee you that six months after something like that were enacted, every architect in the city would know exactly what they needed to do to keep the city interesting as well as weird.

clairity 7y ago
i heartily support raising density limits, but i’d caution against adding a design review board like we have here in LA. imho, it doesn’t add any more harmony or interestingness, while adding cost and delay to projects. we have whole classes of buildings that can no longer be built here because they’re not in style any longer.
- Frondo 7y ago
  That's fair, I've never lived in LA so I don't know what problems it caused; only that the architect I know who's running for mayor liked it and felt it improved the city. He said that one of the problems he sees with development in Portland now is that the developers are under no constraint to make their buildings visually interesting at all; as an example he's cited, lots of the new apartment/condo buildings go up with a nearly uniform front structure for the entire length of a city block, when varying materials or architectural features would add little cost but make the structures more pleasant to walk by, drive by, etc., a facet of city living that is hard to pin down quantitatively but makes a subjective difference. I haven't lived in Portland in a while so I can't speak first-hand to this alleged blandness of new construction but I do remember the last time I was there seeing a lot of new stuff that was essentially undecorated, and of course it's cheaper that way but compared to lots of the development that is designed with more variety, I know which I'd choose. Maybe there's a middle ground, I don't know, I just know this is a situation where the market will converge on construction that probably isn't ideal for very-long-term city construction, but there isn't really an adequate feedback mechanism to force people to make prettier buildings. The city's under such housing pressure that people would live in unpainted cement blocks if someone built those. (Okay, I love brutalist architecture, especially some of the Soviet monstrosities, and I'd live in one in a heartbeat, but that's definitely me and even those had some style.) Seems like a place where a regulatory authority could do well, but maybe not a cookie-cutter of what LA has. It's just, these buildings are going to be around for a long time; now's the time to make them look good.
  - bluGill 7y ago
    Beauty is in the eye or the beholder. If people want a beautiful place to live enough they will pay for it. Thus the concern means that you are wrong: people do not agree with your ideas of beauty (remember, this is competing concerns: they may like it, but not enough to pay for it)
  - clairity 7y ago
    > "Maybe there's a middle ground, I don't know, [...] The city's under such housing pressure that people would live in unpainted cement blocks if someone built those." you point to one answer already: if the housing market were truly competitive, developers would have to compete on housing features beyond the basic box. that's why i'd generally advocate for a lighter touch on the regulatory side, because housing seems to be already overburdened to the point of making it unaffordable for most urbanites. yes, let's make sure a house meets basic safety requirements, and that builders and engineers document how they meet them, but beyond that, allow people a little creative freedom and you'll get interestingness. and i'm no fan of brutalism, but having some brutalist structures around serves to remind me how much i like other styles better. =)
    - Frondo 7y ago
      I think the thing my architect friend was getting at is, these structures are here for a long, long time, and they take up a finite (and heavily constrained resource), so it's not like there's an opportunity for people to realistically decide in 5 or 10 years that fifteen new buildings that have been built should be replaced or adjudicated. I think the problem is that this already falls so far out of the realm of "let the market address it" because of the constraints on building and housing, especially in such a tightly-housed city as Portland; if builders build it wrong (and will make money regardless because of the constraints on this market that mean people can't reasonably take their dollar elsewhere), the city suffers in non-dollar-measurable ways for decades. Again, this is mostly coming from my friend who likes the design review board, and sees that a lot of the new development in Portland is boring from an architectural point of view (and will remain so for at least the remainder of his life) but there's absolutely nothing in a market sense that would compel anyone to build more interesting buildings. And, the more we talk about this, the more I like the idea of the design review board; I'm all in favor of sensible regulation, and your original complaint, that some styles are no longer permitted in LA, seems like even less of an issue if it means that new construction does remain aesthetically interesting. An extremely small price to pay for putting pressure on architects to build interesting new things as these buildings go up all over down. But, of course, it's all just talk and speculation, since neither of us is mayor (and at least one of us doesn't live there.)
sokoloff 7y ago
So basically: Architect advocates for works program for architects...?
- Frondo 7y ago
  No. The architects are all already employed. You don't build a big building (or even a small one) without hiring them for the design process to begin with. In fact, for a lot of small-enough construction work, architects can follow a predefined set of specifications and mostly bypass the civil engineering process. The architects are not the expendable part of construction in any way.

by Frondo 7y ago

clairity 7y ago

i heartily support raising density limits, but i’d caution against adding a design review board like we have here in LA. imho, it doesn’t add any more harmony or interestingness, while adding cost and delay to projects. we have whole classes of buildings that can no longer be built here because they’re not in style any longer.

Frondo 7y ago
That's fair, I've never lived in LA so I don't know what problems it caused; only that the architect I know who's running for mayor liked it and felt it improved the city. He said that one of the problems he sees with development in Portland now is that the developers are under no constraint to make their buildings visually interesting at all; as an example he's cited, lots of the new apartment/condo buildings go up with a nearly uniform front structure for the entire length of a city block, when varying materials or architectural features would add little cost but make the structures more pleasant to walk by, drive by, etc., a facet of city living that is hard to pin down quantitatively but makes a subjective difference. I haven't lived in Portland in a while so I can't speak first-hand to this alleged blandness of new construction but I do remember the last time I was there seeing a lot of new stuff that was essentially undecorated, and of course it's cheaper that way but compared to lots of the development that is designed with more variety, I know which I'd choose. Maybe there's a middle ground, I don't know, I just know this is a situation where the market will converge on construction that probably isn't ideal for very-long-term city construction, but there isn't really an adequate feedback mechanism to force people to make prettier buildings. The city's under such housing pressure that people would live in unpainted cement blocks if someone built those. (Okay, I love brutalist architecture, especially some of the Soviet monstrosities, and I'd live in one in a heartbeat, but that's definitely me and even those had some style.) Seems like a place where a regulatory authority could do well, but maybe not a cookie-cutter of what LA has. It's just, these buildings are going to be around for a long time; now's the time to make them look good.
- bluGill 7y ago
  Beauty is in the eye or the beholder. If people want a beautiful place to live enough they will pay for it. Thus the concern means that you are wrong: people do not agree with your ideas of beauty (remember, this is competing concerns: they may like it, but not enough to pay for it)
- clairity 7y ago
  > "Maybe there's a middle ground, I don't know, [...] The city's under such housing pressure that people would live in unpainted cement blocks if someone built those." you point to one answer already: if the housing market were truly competitive, developers would have to compete on housing features beyond the basic box. that's why i'd generally advocate for a lighter touch on the regulatory side, because housing seems to be already overburdened to the point of making it unaffordable for most urbanites. yes, let's make sure a house meets basic safety requirements, and that builders and engineers document how they meet them, but beyond that, allow people a little creative freedom and you'll get interestingness. and i'm no fan of brutalism, but having some brutalist structures around serves to remind me how much i like other styles better. =)
  - Frondo 7y ago
    I think the thing my architect friend was getting at is, these structures are here for a long, long time, and they take up a finite (and heavily constrained resource), so it's not like there's an opportunity for people to realistically decide in 5 or 10 years that fifteen new buildings that have been built should be replaced or adjudicated. I think the problem is that this already falls so far out of the realm of "let the market address it" because of the constraints on building and housing, especially in such a tightly-housed city as Portland; if builders build it wrong (and will make money regardless because of the constraints on this market that mean people can't reasonably take their dollar elsewhere), the city suffers in non-dollar-measurable ways for decades. Again, this is mostly coming from my friend who likes the design review board, and sees that a lot of the new development in Portland is boring from an architectural point of view (and will remain so for at least the remainder of his life) but there's absolutely nothing in a market sense that would compel anyone to build more interesting buildings. And, the more we talk about this, the more I like the idea of the design review board; I'm all in favor of sensible regulation, and your original complaint, that some styles are no longer permitted in LA, seems like even less of an issue if it means that new construction does remain aesthetically interesting. An extremely small price to pay for putting pressure on architects to build interesting new things as these buildings go up all over down. But, of course, it's all just talk and speculation, since neither of us is mayor (and at least one of us doesn't live there.)

sokoloff 7y ago

So basically: Architect advocates for works program for architects...?

Frondo 7y ago
No. The architects are all already employed. You don't build a big building (or even a small one) without hiring them for the design process to begin with. In fact, for a lot of small-enough construction work, architects can follow a predefined set of specifications and mostly bypass the civil engineering process. The architects are not the expendable part of construction in any way.