The Portland Building, alternatively referenced as the Portland Municipal Services Building, is a 15-story municipal office building located at 1120 SW 5th Avenue in downtown Portland, Oregon. Built at a cost of US$29 million, it opened in 1982 and was considered architecturally groundbreaking at the time.

The building houses offices of the City of Portland and is located adjacent to Portland City Hall. It was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 2011. An extensive reconstruction of the building began in December 2017

Beyond questions of style, many structural flaws came to light shortly after the building's completion. The building's failings are the subject of much humor and contempt by the civil servants who work there, who describe it as cheaply built and a challenging place to work.

In 1990, only eight years after it was built, the lobby and food court were in need of remodeling. Four firms, including Michael Graves, were bidding for the job. Michael Graves fiercely opposed demolition. In 2015, city officials were considering spending $175 million to fully renovate the building.

thumb|Reconstruction under way in October 2018

In July 2016, plans to renovate the building moved ahead, with the city council choosing a contractor and setting a maximum cost of $140 million for the work, not including estimated non-construction expenses of up to $55 million, such as for the leasing of office space for around 1,300 city employees who will be temporarily displaced during the renovation work. The contractors for the project are architecture firm DLR Group and Howard S. Wright Construction.

The renovation retains the building's basic postmodern architectural style while changing some of the building materials to better withstand weather and earthquakes, and improve interiors for employee satisfaction. The teal colored tiles of the lower three floors would be replaced with larger terracotta rainscreen tiles, the existing painted concrete facade would be covered by a new aluminum rainscreen cladding, the existing dark tinted windows would be replaced with clear glass windows, and the stucco garlands on the side of the building will be rebuilt using formed aluminum. The Portland Docomomo International chapter decried the building's renovation, claiming that the replacement of the building's material would threaten the building's landmark status.

Work on the extensive rebuilding, known by the city as the Portland Building Reconstruction Project, began in fall 2017, with interior demolition work, followed by an official groundbreaking in December. The project was expected to take about three years, with completion around the end of 2020. The Portlandia statue was covered by a shroud, to protect it from potential damage during the work; The statue also underwent preservation work during this period. As of September 2018, the ongoing project remained on-schedule.thumb|In 2021, after renovation|leftBy early 2020, the reconstruction work was sufficiently close to completion that around 1,700 city employees began moving back into the building; the move-in was spread over eleven weekends and was completed in March 2020. However, almost immediately afterward, the COVID-19 pandemic effectively reversed the building's return to use, as most staff were instructed to work from home during the pandemic, and a planned March 19, 2020, event to celebrate the building's reopening was canceled. The George Floyd and police brutality protests in Portland in 2020 were centered near the building.

Features

The roof of the Portland Building is covered with a green roof, installed in 2006. The roof was proposed in 2005,

part of an experiment through Oregon State University to test Sedum spathulifolium as a water-absorbing plant for the northwest. The new roof will help the building's heating, cooling, and storm-water runoff systems.

Offices

As of October 2009, the Portland Building housed these municipal bureaus and departments: Office of Cable Communications & Franchise Management, Bureau of Environmental Services, Facilities Services, Bureau of Human Resources, Office of Management and Finance, Mt. Hood Cable Regulatory Commission, Bureau of Parks and Recreation, Bureau of Purchases, Bureau of Risk Management, Bureau of Technology Services, Bureau of Transportation, and the Portland Water Bureau. The Portland Building is located across SW Madison Street from Portland City Hall.

Reception

In May 1983, the building won an American Institute of Architects honor award. Ada Louise Huxtable of The New York Times called the Portland Building a "competition-winning, postmodernist exercise of romantic classical persuasion" that contrasted sharply with the exactly-contemporary State of Illinois Center in Chicago.

The building's style is controversial among Portlanders as well as the entire architecture field. Oregonian columnist David Sarasohn revisited the theme in 2014, noting that the "huge blue tiles, colored glass and odd pastel flourishes meant to evoke early modern French paintings" actually resembled "something designed by a Third World dictator's mistress' art-student brother."

DLR Group's reconstruction work on the building was recognized with an American Architecture Award in 2021.

See also

  • Architecture of Portland, Oregon
  • Public Service Building (Portland, Oregon)

References

Further reading

  • The Portland Building – City of Portland web page, with links to documents and updates on the Reconstruction Project
  • Portland Building at GreatBuildings.com