



For much of the last decade, the Pearl District has seen a succession of mixed-use condos built within the neighborhood while just across Burnside, the West End has, aside from a small project here or there, remained relatively stagnant. That changed, however, with the construction of the 12 West tower at SW 12th and Washington.

The economy has changed the dynamics of a continuing march of new towers. There may not be a building boom west of Burnside in the coming years to match what happened in the Pearl during the last 10 years. Perhaps that's all the more reason, though, that 12 West will help to anchor this relatively sleepy portion of downtown. With the arrival of the Ace Hotel nearby, as well as retail and restaurants such as the Living Room Theaters and Kenny & Zuke's Delicatessen, the West End is starting to feel more alive.





The 22-story building has ground-floor retail, 17 floors of apartments and a few floors of underground parking. But my focus on the three visits I've made to the building since it opened earlier this fall has been the anchor tenant, ZGF Architects, which occupies the first few floors.

From the street one enters the massive 85,000 square foot ZGF headquarters through a multi-story foyer, in which the stairway leading to the firm's upstairs offices is suspended from the ceiling on steel cables. The stairway appears to almost float within the massive volumed and naturally lit space.









Inside, the lobby is equally striking. Sitting at a sofa near the front desk, one looks through a variety of spaces that can change, expand and contract. To the left is an outdoor deck carved into the interior building. Looking forward through the lobby, there is a glass walled conference room in which the walls have been festooned with thousands of ZGF's old project slides (pictured below) as well as a series of sliding wood doors that can create both large and intimate settings. The front desk is separated from a work area by a long metal-mesh curtain, the kind used for fireplaces only about 20 times bigger.

Because the language of concrete, glass and wood is nice and simple, the designers embraced their opportunities to put their work forward. Besides the project slides occupying one wall, throughout the rest of the office there was also renderings and drawings of in-progress work pinned to the wall. Like the Holst Architecture-designed Ziba headquarters, or BOORA's recent redesign of its offices, the interior of these offices becomes a blank canvass that gives way to a kind of continually changing mass-media scrapbook.









On top of the building there is a spectacular view (pictured below) from a rooftop deck and party area. But the biggest attraction up here may be 12 West's array of wind turbines. These are historic, by the way: the first wind turbines anywhere in America (if not the world) to be used on top of a building in a high-density urban setting. It sounds inherently wrong to say, because so many projects around the world involving building-integrated turbines have been announced. how could this be the first? But ZGF's rooftop turbine array is a pioneer in actually getting mounted on a building. The turbines will ultimately provide only about one percent of the building's power. But one percent of a 22-story building's energy use is not a small amount. What's more, other aspects of the building's integrated design include thermal solar hot water and an ultra efficient building envelope.









The turbines are part of an overall sustainable design and construction effort that will earn 12 West a top-level Platinum LEED designation from the US Green Building Council.

The $137 million building was developed by Gerding Edlen, the company behind all five of the Brewery Blocks, the Gerding Theater and The Wieden + Kennedy building in the Pearl, not to mention numerous towers in the South Waterfront district as well as projects Los Angeles and Bellevue. The land for 12 West, however, belonged to the Goodman family, owners of the City Center Parking garages and numerous surface parking lots throughout the urban core. Thus, the 12 West project represents not only Gerding Edlen taking their Brewery Blocks model west across Burnside, but also - and perhaps more importantly - the Goodmans beginning to develop their surface lots. In a city like Portland aspiring to high density, there is little excuse for surface parking lots scattered throughout the city center. Luckily that is starting to change.





Given how the economy has tumbled, I might worry a little about ZGF living up to this Grand Palais of an architectural office. Can they design enough hospitals, airports and academic buildings to pay the mortgage? I say this not out of any inside knowledge of ZGF. Or if I do have inside knowledge of the firm, it's that ZGF seems to be at a high level when it comes to producing quality design.

The firm has been a very big one in Portland (the biggest, actually) for many years. But in recent times the caliber of design has taken a step forward. There are talented younger-generation architects like Gene Sandoval at ZGF, but also the influence of old-guard architects like Robert Frasca. I just hope that the economic climate and this huge office allow ZGF to continue prospering. With work happening around the world, though, and a track record of several decades, the future seems bright for ZGF. They seem to occupy a rarified air of large firms with international scope and attention, firms like KPF (Kohn Pedersen Fox) , SOM (Skidmore Owings Merrill) and HOK (Hellmuth, Obata + Kassabaum). Apparently you need a three-name acronym to qualify.

Last Friday I happened to visit the 12 West building on a cloudy, rainy day at dusk. Any photographer would tell you it was time to put the camera away and wait for bright afternoon or morning sunshine. But I kept snapping pictures of 12 West as I stood outside, and I think that was because the building had a noticeable glow even in this low light. The ultra high-efficiency glass used on the facade not only brings lots of natural light into the building, but it also gives 12 West a sense of transparency that helps humanize its somewhat monolithic form. It doesn't just reflect light like a mirror, but actually seems to hold that illumination like a jewel box.

At first the facade seemed to me like a lesser version of ZGF's other recent local tower, The Eliot (located at SW 10th and Jefferson behind the Portland Art Museum). The randomness of the facade patterns in the Eliot initially seemed more striking. But ultimately I've come to appreciate 12 West's balance between randomness and clarity. The Eliot, it turns out, has come to feel like a first draft of 12 West's facade. It's true the Elliot has more human-scaled spaces at ground level (such as brownstones and a glass-walled cafe), but that project also benefits in that regard from bordering a pedestrian street. There are also a series of indentations in the 12 West facade where balconies or windows break up the mass of this behemoth, creating the sense that the glass curtain wall is just that - a gentle curtain over the building. Even though 12 West is bigger than the Eliot, to me it feels lighter.

I am not quite ready to say 12 West is a gorgeous composition up there with the best recent local towers, such as 937 or The Metropolitan. Honestly, I need more time to contemplate a building fully. Part of me feels at first glance that it could somehow be a bit more elegant, yet there is an honesty and clarity of expression that I also admire. Besides, there have been times I've written about a building a few weeks or months after it was completed only to see my opinion change over time. I want to keep my mind open about it a little longer.

I can tell you, though, that 12 West makes a very nice addition to the downtown skyline. It represents the continuing tradition of quality that marks both the architect and developer. If 12 West is part of the end of a booming era, it's a nice way for Gerding Edlen, ZGF and Portland itself to go out. Increasingly our city is going to have people living vertically in condos and apartments, and if I were to do so, I can scarcely think of a better location or glass-ensconced setting in which to live.







