Downtown Riverfront Plaza Update

Downtown Riverfront Plaza rendering by Walker Macy (stripes and stones concept) 
 

Now that the new Downtown Riverfront Park is open, the City of Eugene (COE) is asking the community for its assistance in designing the central plaza, which will be the park’s next phase of development. Presently, the design team—led by landscape architecture/urban design/planning firm Walker Macy—is refining its concept for the 1-acre open space. Because it is still early in the design process, an opportunity remains for citizen input to inform the project’s character and amenities. Time is short though: If you haven’t already done so, take the time to respond to the City’s online survey and offer your thoughts about the plaza’s playground options, water features, hardscape and lawn layout, and interpretive elements. The deadline for input is this Tuesday, August 30.
 
The COE did host two open house events—one in June and one earlier this month—to engage the public and provide updates on the project’s process. The current survey will be everyone’s last opportunity to provide input before the key features of the plaza’s design are set, so don’t wait if you have strong feelings about the project’s design.
 
The survey presents two concepts developed by Walker Macy:

Headwaters (Stripes and Stones)
The Headwaters design concept focuses on bold linear elements to define spaces, draw your eye towards the river, and create clear sightlines from Ferry Street and 5th Avenue. Planters in the tree grove are rectangular bands with integrated seating elements for lounging in the shade. The water feature uses stone elements to define channels and waterflows towards the river, ending in a flat, interactive splash-play area near the plaza. The lawn area has seating along the edge facing the river, and is next to a larger open, paved plaza intended for large gatherings and events. The play area extends to the south edge with seating and connections to the bike trail and pathways in the Downtown Riverfront Park.
 

River Flow (Arcs and Groves)
The River Flow design concept is the more curved, open, and sinuous option, with distributed planters and groves of trees. It provides a welcome entry for people arriving from Ferry Street and 5th Avenue to meander through trees or linger in the planted seating area. A shallow flowing water feature extends in an arc to a more active children’s splash play area located next to the playground. Paths connect to existing arcs extending from the Downtown Riverfront Park and warp around a long seat wall with river views. A low-mounded lawn area offers lounging or seating spaces for events in the larger paved plaza zone.
 
The survey asks several questions, which include:

• Which plaza concept option do you prefer? 
• What configuration of grove area trees, planters and seating do you prefer?
• What type of design for water feature do you prefer?
• What configuration of plaza and lawn layout do you prefer?
• Which active children's play area option do you prefer (nature inspired, “topography,” or a custom theme)?

The plaza will include a feature art piece presenting an interpretive story, in the same vein as some already installed elements do elsewhere in the park. These features will focus on the rich 165-year history of the Millrace. The COE hopes the interpretive art piece will reflect a variety of different perspectives, relying upon words in the form of engraved or embedded bronze text, expressively typeset into patterns or ripples in or around the plaza water features. So, in addition to publicizing the plaza survey, the COE is encouraging everyone to submit their memories or experiences from the Millrace or other waterways in Eugene. The words you share may become part of the collective history expressed in the plaza’s integrated art.
 

Which of Walker Macy’s two initial design concept do I prefer? I think the River Flow (arcs and groves) approach is the better of the two. Precise adjectives fail me, but it simply appears to be less forced, and a more genuine response to its setting within the overall Downtown Riverfront development. I also think the curved elements would work well in complementing the angular geometry of the proposed new buildings that will bound the open space. Ideally, the groves will receive trees that are as mature as practicable so the concept is fully legible when the plaza first opens.
 
Walker Macy expects to complete the conceptual design next month. If all goes to plan, construction work on the plaza will begin in March of 2024. I’m looking forward to seeing and enjoying the Downtown Riverfront Plaza upon its completion in 2025!

Mother’s House

Robert Venturi (1925-2018) was one of the architects who greatly influenced my understanding of architecture. As I wrote back in 2018, he was most noteworthy for challenging the orthodoxy of Modernism and reawaking our perception of what architecture was, is, and can be. His impact upon architectural theory and the profession was undeniable, though perhaps now taken for granted. I for one have not forgotten the lessons I gleaned many years ago from his books and work, and I continue to learn from them today.

A case in point was my rereading this weekend of Mother’s House: The Evolution of Vanna Venturi’s House in Chestnut Hill, an accounting and critical review by Frederick Schwartz, Vincent Scully, and Robert Venturi himself of the design evolution and construction of the house Venturi designed for his widowed mother, Vanna. The book, which I purchased nearly thirty years ago, is one of several in my library dedicated to describing the genesis, design process, and construction of a famous building. I find such books engrossing and relatable, as they not only detail the conceptual underpinnings of the architects’ intentions, but also the unique challenges each project encountered and overcame.

It is hard to imagine today, almost sixty years since its completion, why you should consider the Vanna Venturi house such an important work of architecture. If you were not aware of its historic significance you might not give it a second glance, given how modest and plain it appears among its Chestnut Hill neighbors in northwest Philadelphia. And yet it is significant, perhaps as much as any other single building of the 20th century. It stands as an embodiment of Postmodern architecture at its most intellectual and influential, and historians widely regard it as the movement’s provocatively seminal shot across the bow of Modern architecture.

Living Room, Vanna Venturi House.

In Robert Venturi’s own words, the house:

. . .recognizes complexities and contradictions: it is both complex and simple, open and closed, big and little; some of its elements are good on one level and bad on another; its order accommodates the generic elements of a house in general, and the circumstantial elements of a house in particular. It achieves the difficult unity of a medium number of diverse parts rather than the easy unity of a few or many motival parts.

Rather than further describing Venturi’s design for his mother’s house at length here, I encourage you to watch a six-minute video produced a few years ago by PBS television station WTTW, one of ten segments about buildings that changed America. Host Geoffrey Baer, accompanied by Robert Venturi and his wife and professional partner Denise Scott Brown, provides an engaging and informative tour of the house. Here’s the web link: Vanna Venturi House | Ten Buildings that Changed America | WTTW Chicago.

Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown (screen shot from WTTW Chicago's Vanna Venturi House | Ten Buildings that Changed America).

As Mother’s House documents through the essays by Schwartz, Scully, and the architect, and by means of now-priceless saved drawings and photographs of study models, Robert Venturi spent five years during the late 1950s and early 1960s designing the domestic masterpiece. In reminiscing about the process, Venturi wrote the following:

The little house for a close friend or relative is usually a first opportunity to test theories and expand them. If [the architect’s] practice is slack, this at least allows him to put his heart and soul and a full work week into developing this one small idea, which is always a deepening experience. The years spent refining can be in the nature of a personal odyssey for the architect. It is an opportunity literally to seclude himself in order to focus his thinking.

Venturi did enjoy the luxury of time to lavish upon the project, unconstrained as he was by the need to present a constructable design within a tight timeframe. His mother was in no rush. He was relatively young at the time. He and Scott Brown were not yet married, and both were teaching at the University of Pennsylvania. Venturi did undertake a few professional projects for other clients during this period—the Guild House apartment building for senior citizens most notable among these—but he still was able to largely focus on the design of his mother’s house and embark on his odyssey.

This really is the point of this blog post. Reading Mother’s House once more revived a long dormant yearning to undertake a similar peregrination. Though I am very fortunate to have been a contributor to the success of many important projects, I cannot yet claim to have authored one in a manner that fully tested my own (still developing) theories about architecture. Program, budget, process, and other essential concerns have always clamored for my attention, as does my duty to be a consummate team member. The downside is this comes at the expense of being able to truly think about what I find meaningful about architecture in the service of a real project. My career is so far absent the “deepening experience” Venturi spoke of.(1)

Certainly, a key is the availability of that most precious of resources: time. There never seem to be enough time (or fees) to achieve what Venturi was able to do when designing his mother’s house.

Top to bottom:  Scheme IIB, Scheme IIIA, and Scheme IVA, three of the six design variations for the Vanna Venturi House.

Construction drawing: Scheme VI

Altogether, Venturi comprehensively developed six distinct designs for the project, all of which are documented chronologically in the book. The evolution of the design over its five-year trajectory is profound. The initial schemes suggest the influence of Louis Kahn, whom Venturi worked for briefly during 1956 and 1957. Whereas those early plans were rigid and symmetrical, the later iterations would increasingly draw upon Venturi’s study of Baroque and Mannerist architecture during his residency at the American Academy in Rome from 1954 to 1956. Ultimately as built, the house proved to be a mature and expansive distillation of Venturi’s architectural theories.

Today, some may consider devoting so much time to exploring arcane design theories a selfish extravagance, an obtuse and tone-deaf insensitivity to issues that today should stand at the forefront of an architect’s concerns and duty to the public. I get it. Fiddling while Rome burns is not a good look. That said, I want to believe the best works of architecture can be functional, economical, sustainable, and just, as well as attentive to design theory, expression, and meaning. To borrow from Robert Venturi, I do not see this as an “either-or” issue; instead, a valid architecture evokes many levels of meaning and combinations of focus.  

I’m glad I read Mother’s House again. Doing so reminded me why I find architectural theory and the process of design fascinating. As I said, the book also rekindled a resolve to one day work on a project for which the refinement of essential ideas is not sacrificed at the altar of convenience and exigency. Before my time is done, I want to experience my odyssey—my epic journey—a homecoming to what drew me to architecture in the first place.

*    *    *    *    *    *

Mother’s House (1992 – Rizzoli International Publications) appears to be out-of-print, though Amazon has copies for sale.

(1) The project I worked on that perhaps came closest to achieving the "deepening experience" was the VA Roseburg Healthcare System Community Living Center. My series of posts "A Case Study" documents that project's conception, design, and execution. 

Critical Mass

Top: Eugene (photo by the City of Eugene); Bottom: Paris (photo by Yann Caradec from Paris, France - La Tour Eiffel vue de la Tour Saint-Jacques, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=34933538)

  

Sunday’s edition of The Register-Guard features the latest column by Don Kahle. He reflects on whether Eugene left a lasting impression on those who attended and the millions of viewers worldwide who watched last month’s World Athletics Championships. Did Track Town USA make the most of its big moment? Beyond the excellent showing within the confines of a gleaming and telegenic Hayward Field, probably not. In Don’s view, Eugene suffered from a deficit of memorable and iconic sights. We have our buttes, rivers, and waterfalls, but Eugene failed the “branding test for exclusivity.” Eugene need not aspire to be a world-class city (though it hosted the Championships in world-class fashion), but our city can become a better version of itself.

 
Don suggests a couple of ways to remedy the failings he perceives. One is to encourage more distinctive buildings and the other is to capitalize on our already distinctive people. Beyond distinctive architecture and a community full of character(s), I additionally believe an absent ingredient is critical mass.
 
Many American cities lack the critical mass required to achieve the vibrancy, sense of place, and urban fabric we typically consider memorable, attractive, and sustainable. Such critical mass is not a function of a necessarily large population. Many smaller cities and towns possess everything they need to provide their residents and visitors with the meaningful moments and enduring images of the sort Don laments Eugene fails to deliver. In the U.S. alone, many small communities—including Sedona (Arizona), Carmel-by-the-Sea (California), and Santa Fe (New Mexico) to name a few spots I can claim I have visited—are noteworthy for their scenery, history, and culture. They possess critical mass.
 
Is population density essential to critical mass? Interestingly, Don compares the relative areas of land occupied by Eugene and Paris, France. Within its urban growth boundary, Eugene’s 172, 630 citizens occupy 41.14 square miles. Contrast those figures with Paris’ population of 2,214,690 within the city’s 20 arrondissements across 40.7 square miles. The footprint of both cities may be similar, but their populations most certainly are not. Paris is 14 times as densely populated as Eugene.     

Eugene: 3,911 people per square mile (the dark gray zone is the urban land reserve study area)

 
Here are some to-scale comparisons overlaying Eugene’s physical area on top of maps of other cities (the blue outline is Eugene’s urban growth boundary, while the shaded blue zone is the area governed by the Eugene Downtown Plan):
 

Portland: 4,890 people per square mile

Chicago: 12,000 people per square mile
 

Vancouver: 14,892 people per square mile (43,420 people per square mile on the downtown peninsula)
 

New York: 27,000 people per square mile (69,468 people per square mile in Manhattan)
 

Paris: 54,415 people per square mile

 
Livability matters, and many will argue the factors that add up to a community’s quality of life—the built and natural environments, economic prosperity, social stability, and equity—are not a function of density, nor is density a prerequisite. Likewise, density by itself does not confer imageability of the sort Don says Eugene is missing. Nevertheless, I believe it can be a significant factor in determining the critical mass a city needs to secure an enviable and recognizable identity.
 
Most often, recognizable and vibrant cities have at their center a densely developed downtown that is home to both businesses and a demographically diverse resident population. Ideally, Eugene’s downtown would possess sufficient gravitational pull—the critical mass—to keep the city’s disparate and far-flung neighborhoods within its orbit; this it currently lacks. Done well, a dense downtown would complement and enhance the character of the neighborhoods, minimize environmental impact and energy use, be adaptable over time, and contribute to safe, walkable streets. More effort, not less, should be applied by the City of Eugene to ensure that its historical core reasserts its primacy as the civic, economic, cultural, and governmental center for the metro area.  
 
Density, particularly within a city’s historic downtown, is more productive and yields a greater return on investment than sprawl. Highly valued downtowns generate much more public wealth than low-density subdivisions or strip malls by the highway. Low-density development isn’t just a poor way to generate property tax revenue, it’s also extremely expensive to maintain. By comparison, dense downtowns cost considerably less to maintain in public services and infrastructure.
 
Development patterns that evolved over much of the past century will be difficult to undo. The suburban lifestyle, fostered by decades of pleasant imagery and appeals to independent American sensibilities, remains desirable to many but is also sustained by the current economics of real estate. The fact it is also ultimately unsustainable (in both the environmental and fiscal senses) is what many people fail to understand. 
 
In his column, Don makes the point to say creating a built environment that rewards visitors takes centuries. True enough, wonderful cities do not spring up overnight, lest they appear artificial and inorganic. Does Eugene have sights worth seeing? It will if we work incrementally, piece by piece over generations, to achieve a coherent whole that is uniquely and recognizably “Eugene.” This is a reasonable goal, but one requiring a critical mass that inheres within that ambition.      

  

Text-to-Image, AI-Generated Art

 
Rendering of a mixed-use building in the Eugene Downtown Riverfront development (image generated by Midjourney).

I’m super busy as work deadlines loom, so this weekend’s blog entry will be brief:  I’m slow to recognize and keep up with the latest technology, industry developments, and societal trends. A case in point is my discovery of text-to-image tools, specifically the Midjourney AI-powered art generator. Seemingly out of the blue, fantastical and often dream-like imagery has flooded my social media feeds. Always late to the party, I learned Midjourney and other similar platforms are the latest online rage.
 
Friends started posting their AI-generated images on Facebook a few weeks ago. Twitter too became awash in AI-generated art. The July/August print issue of The Architect’s Newspaper published a report entitled “Midjourney Madness” questioning whether the fact artificial intelligence can now make convincing images of buildings is a good thing.
 
I decided I needed to see for myself what I could do with Midjourney. The only input required is to type in words describing whatever you can imagine.

 

Frank Lloyd Wright's Fallingwater as interpreted by Vincent van Gogh.

A brilliant, successful, award-winning architect as a Marvel Cinematic Universe superhero.

Downtown Eugene, Oregon in 2050.

Sunrise over a Martian settlement designed by Antoni Gaudi.

The University of Oregon Ducks football team winning the 2023 National Championship.

Using Midjourney is fun, but as you can see here, my results were mixed. None of the images came close to what I’d expected to see. The “Downtown Eugene, Oregon in 2050” output was especially disappointing since hardly anything about it is recognizably Eugene. On the other hand, the “Sunrise over a Martian settlement designed by Antoni Gaudi” image is undeniably cool.
 
Midjourney operates as a bot within Discord (a social networking/chat app), so you must have a Discord account to use it. I was a total newbie to Discord; I consequently stumbled about and struggled to keep up with the Midjourney feed and even locate my work (the Discord timeline continually pushes newly generated results to the end).
 
Midjourney currently remains in beta form, and limits free use to the production of 25 images. If you want to do more, there is either a $10/month membership for 200 images per month, or $30/month for unlimited use.
 
If you’re interested in trying Midjourney, I strongly recommend reading PC World’s highly useful primer. I wish I had read the primer before setting up a Discord account and starting my free Midjourney trial. I probably wasted at least half of my 25 free images by inadvertently clicking on the wrong prompts multiple times.
 
Not to be a wet blanket about AI art generators like Midjourney, but I think it will be a while yet before a similar technology becomes a truly useful tool in the work architects do. Yes, computer algorithms can “learn” from past examples of buildings people consider beautiful and practical, but the AI is limited to processes defined by algorithmic parameters set by mere human beings. For now, architecture is too complex an undertaking—too problematical—for us to either worry about or celebrate the imminent arrival of our new computer overlords.