Portland's All-Star Architects of Tomorrow
Originally published in Daily Journal of Commerce
November 2002

They are the architects you've probably about heard here and there, but they are not yet household names. They are the Brad Cloepfils of tomorrow, the men and women most likely to see their talent and career management lead to roles designing the best and most important buildings of tomorrow. No one can predict the future, but these architects comprise a generation not so much of young untapped talent, but of veterans ready to take the next step in their careers. If they are the future of Portland architecture, we are in good hands.

STUART EMMONS
Responsible for much of the master planning for the emerging North Macadam neighborhood, Stuart Emmons and his eponymous firm are poised to become a major player there and throughout the city. Emmons Architects has also been hired by the City of Portland to provide a new master plan for the Waterfront Park area, although the architect says his first love is designing buildings.

Born in Philadelphia and educated at Harvard University, Stuart Emmons began his career as a master furniture builder. "The idea of what you make as an expression of how you think, and the care that you put into making things, those were a very important part of my training," Emmons says. "But I always wanted to be an architect. I was building models at six."

Emmons' résumé is impressive. Besides the Harvard pedigree, he worked at top firms like Skidmore Owings Merrill in New York and Koning Eizenberg in Los Angeles. Emmons began in Portland at Sienna Architecture Company, designing the firm's current offices in Pietro Belluschi's Equitable (now Commonwealth) Building, and also worked at Yost Grube Hall. His own firm's first two projects earned interior design awards from the local IIDA chapter. Emmons also co-authored with wife and business partner Susan Emmons a 2000 Oregonian op-ed article credited by some as instigating the AIA-sponsored 'design malaise' panel discussion that has led to the Mayor's Design Initiative and other measures to improve local architecture.

With his significant planning role in North Macadam, Emmons figures to secure commission for a major building there, for his speculative apartment complex designs for that neighborhood are striking. Emmons Architects is also at work on numerous affordable housing projects. And unlike many talented architects, Stuart Emmons is willing to work with developers, which could lead to a role in the Pearl and River Districts and beyond. "We get excited about our work," he says, "and I think that shows in the design."

MICHAEL CZYSZ
Although known much better outside Portland, Michael Czysz and his firm, Architropolis, have gained widespread publicity for designing homes for such celebrities as musician Lenny Kravitz and model Cindy Crawford. "Portland is getting exposed, even if in small ways, to people who would normally never make it here to the city," says Czysz, who studied at the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn. Czysz's imaginative designs add warmth and fun to contemporary architecture. Kravitz's residence, for example, is a postmodern spin on the James Bond-style bachelor pad, its vibrant colors creating the electric feel of a dance club while its clean lines soothe the soul.

Architropolis also designed the W Hotel in Miami, another project that adds color and flair to contemporary architecture, and the firm has numerous retail projects on the boards in Las Vegas. "I love these warm weather environments," Czysz says. "You can really blur the inside and outside."

Although the firm is yet to make much of a mark in Portland, it seems only a matter of time before potential clients will discover a top national designer quietly working away in our own back yard. Czysz says institutional projects don't interest him, but Architropolis' imaginative flair with retail spaces, hotels and private residences makes it a firm to watch.

MARK ENGBERG & LAWRENCE KO
If you've ever gone bar-hopping in downtown Portland, you probably know the coolest-looking watering hole around is Tube, which is constructed in the shape of a long cylinder, creating the effect of being inside a television, or some other space-age contraption.

That project is just the tip of the iceberg for Mark Engberg and Lawrence Ko, the partners behind Colab. The duo met in Boston and both worked later in New York- Engberg for Stan Eckstut, one of the designers of Battery Park City, and Ko for acclaimed architect Michael Sorkin. They firmed Colab in the early 1990s and made their name initially on several high-profile projects for Disney: the ABC Studios on Times Square, a flagship retail store for Disney in Tokyo called Bon Voyage, and the forecourt to a new attraction that's being built at Epcott Center.

Now Engberg and Ko are at work on a number of projects in the Middle East. "Strange as it seems in this political climate, eighty percent of our work right now is there," says Engberg. Colab is currently designing a yacht club in Dubai and a master plan for an island in the Persian Gulf.

Here in America, the duo is one of three firms invited to participate a design competition for a visitors' center at the Kennedy Space Center. Colab is also a finalist to design a temporary home for the California Museum of Science and Industry in San Francisco, where it will operate for the next three years while Renzo Piano designs a permanent home.

Unfortunately for Portlanders, Engberg and Ko are, like Czysz, yet to do much work here, aside from Tube and the Sullivan Place apartments. "We would love to do more work in Portland," Engberg says. "We've never really been able to break into the market here. But there's obviously great things about Portland. It's a city with a lot of potential. It's a city with urban ideals. And it's a great place for young companies to start." With a little luck, for us in Oregon and for this talented pair, in the future more of their projects will be built in Colab's home turf.

JEFF LAMB
Known best as the former design director at Sienna Architecture Company, where he was primarily responsible for such award winning buildings as Ashland Middle School, North Park Lofts and Irvington Place, Jeff Lamb now operates his own firm, Lamb Design Studios.

Lamb's first completed project, the Del Castello loft and gallery, is being unveiled this fall. Located inside an historic train depot building along Southwest 11th Avenue in the Pearl District, the Del Castello is a like a polished jewel inside a rough, tactile frame. With virtually every square inch of finishing, furniture and fixtures custom designed by Lamb, the project is sure to elevate this already-respected architect to the next level.

Educated at the University of Oregon, Lamb got his start locally at BOORA Architects, where he helped design a library for Portland Community College's Sylvania campus. After earning a fellowship to travel and study architecture in Europe, where he soaked up the romanticism of Italy and the next generation of modernism in Germany and Switzerland, Lamb designed AIA/Portland's award-winning offices, which helped really launch his career here.

One of Lamb's greatest designs, the Cascadian apartment tower (originally designed while Lamb was at Sienna, now being done in partnership with his old firm), is set to break ground later this year along Martin Luther King Boulevard in the Lloyd District. At twenty-eight stories of sumptuous metal and glass geometry, it will be one of the most impressive residential buildings in the city. Lamb is following that up with an apartment towers in Sacramento and Salem.

"There's a next generation coming through that has a much more energetic approach to housing," Lamb says. "In the past there hasn't always been a willingness to do something innovative. But I think that's changing."

In the future, look for Lamb to move beyond housing to design more cultural and educational projects, for as good as he is at residential work, his talents are too great not to ultimately be geared toward landmark public buildings.

RANDY HIGGINS
Like Lamb, Randy Higgins also recently departed from the firm where he made his name. At Holst Architecture, Higgins was the leading creative force (although part of a design collaborative) behind the Pacific Northwest College of Art and Oregon Ballet Theater, two projects for which a limited budget did not restrain excellent architecture. "In this city the arts are similar to architecture in that they are collectively valued yet continually under-funded," says Higgins, who studied at the University of Washington but credits his sensibility more to a liberal upbringing on the Oregon Coast. "A budget, regardless of the size is just another condition of the project that needs to be responded on its own terms."

Although Higgins is now turning more to the academic front, as a sole practitioner he is also taking the first steps toward what figures to ultimately be the continuation of a great career. "I plan on doing the same thing I've been doing for years," Higgins says, "and that is simultaneously designing, writing, lecturing, teaching and thinking about architecture. I'd like to do for architecture what William Stafford has done for poetry or what Cory Schreiber has done for food: produce an indigenous style."

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To be sure, there are other architects perhaps equally worthy of mention. Marcy McInelly is an important player on the Portland Planning Commission. Small firms like Skylab, Bolihous and Firm 151 show real promise, as do sole practitioners Bill Tripp, Rick Potestio and John Cava. Portland's architectural future is anyone's guest, but there's no denying there's talent here to meet its challenges.

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