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Originally Posted by maccoinnich
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This report is quite interesting. Looking over pages 10-14, where the design commission highlights some significant upcoming and ongoing projects, I can't help but notice how little variety there seems to be.
I think the most visually interesting overall is the top left rendering on page 11, the Lloyd Cinemas residential redevelopment (?). The new PSU building (?) bottom right on page 10, could end up being very appealing. The new OHSU south waterfront buildings should be fine as well.
But almost all these projects seem to share the rather boring (IMO) rectangular geometry from street to penthouse. The staggered window look, where the vertical lines of window / cladding is broken up like a vertically stretched checkerboard, has never seemed very aesthetic to me. I hope that trend starts to decline. I have much more sympathy for non-uniform window placement if it's done on buildings with a cross-section a little more imaginative than a simple rectangle. See, e.g., the CLSB on the west end of the Tillikum bridge, where the squat, trapezoidal south portion of the building has the non-uniform windows while the large rectangular tower has more traditional window lines.
I suspect that construction orthodoxy and profit-margin obsessed developers are mostly to blame of the lack of variety, but the new courthouse is almost the worst offender of all of these renderings. Perhaps the design commission does not share my tastes, but at least they could attempt to encourage some visual heterogeneity.
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