The winner of AIA Portland's STITCH competition offers ideas for future city development

It's always refreshing to hear about architectural creativity from Portland, Oregon. chadbourne + doss architects shared with us the details to their winning proposal, "Five Bridges" from AIA Portland's STITCH ideas competition.

As Portland continues to grow, the competition was set up to find inventive solutions that will create new public urban spaces and "re-stitch" two neighborhoods back together.

The jury went through over 40 submissions and looked for concepts that were the most progressive, had strong aesthetics, and went beyond the boundaries of the main competition site. From there, the jury shortlisted around 10 entries and then selected the three prize winners from that group.

In hopes to inspire ideas of future city development, AIA Portland will compile the winning and shortlisted entries into a book to send to the City of Portland and other local agencies.

Have a look at the winning proposal below.

Project description:

FIVE BRIDGES: Imagining a Portland Civic Gymnasia  

"'The freeways could be the real monuments of the future, the places set aside for special celebration by people able to experience space and light and motion and relationships to other people and things at a speed that only this century has allowed. Here the structures are big enough and strong enough, once they are regarded as part of the city, to re-excite the public imagination about the city… It is the marker for a place set in motion transforming itself to another place.'" -- Charles Moore and Gerald Allen, Dimensions

"In 1969 the incursion of Interstate 405 formed the western edge of downtown Portland, Oregon and separated the downtown from the Goose Hollow neighborhood and the Stadium District. Overpasses continue the existing street grid and allow pedestrian and vehicular movement across the interstate, but the vibrant blocks of the City were eliminated and replaced by high guardrails. As the city grows against the highway’s edges, there is an opportunity to continue the city across."

"Throughout history designers have envisioned the integration of transportation infrastructure and architecture in the form of inhabited bridges. Such bridges allow for a continuation of the fabric of the city and its movement - they act as a stitch.  The inhabited bridge provides a pause on our journey, suspended between heaven and earth, slowing our velocity to that which we can sensually perceive our place."

"FIVE BRIDGES imagines the appropriation of highway infrastructure for active inhabitation as a civic place, while exploring our visceral connection to the city and highway.  Five overpasses connect downtown Portland to Goose Hollow and the Stadium District.  Rather than lidding the highway, each crossing is developed as a distinct public recreation venue while maintaining its multi-modal functionality. 

This allows for needed light and air between them, a variety of uses and architectural expression, opportunity for phased development, and the potential for creative public-private partnership at each venue.  The five bridges include: Salmon Street Skatepark, Taylor Street Natatorium, Yamhill Street Running Track, Morrison Street Velodrome, and Alder & 14th Street Climbing Walls. Together they form a Portland Civic Gymnasia."

"FIVE BRIDGES is experienced from multiple scales and viewpoints.  From the highway, the driver experiences and engages with the urban scale at higher velocities. The Bridges form landmark spatial events, orienting us to our place in the city as we move below it, and provide glimpses of human movement and urban activity above. " 

"From each of the bridges, we experience the transition from the City to the neighborhood.  We can occupy the middle and look down the cleft of the highway to perceive the City’s form and its movement.  From here we can see other crossings and the activity within them.  Entering into a gymnasium we inhabit a new place “above and in between”, and in the rhythm of movement, we gain a new perspective of our City and ourselves."

Project credits:

PROJECT:  FIVE BRIDGES 
COMPETITION:  STITCH: an AIA Portland Ideas Competition, 2014 
LOCATION:   Portland, Oregon 
AWARD:  First Place 
TEAM:  chadbourne + doss architects - Lisa Chadbourne, Daren Doss, & Stacey McClure

Images courtesy of chadbourne + doss architects.