KS: Let’s shift a bit and talk about projects and clients. You’ve been working several years now on the new terminal core replacement project at Portland International Airport (PDX). ZGF has been working there for decades. What’s new and different about the new terminal and what are you bringing forward?
SVDM: There will be a lot that is new, but I hope that the community, the people that live in this region, the visitors from outside, all look at this building and the interior environment and feel like it represents the Pacific Northwest. We’ve been involved in new concourses, the canopy design, and many updates over the last 40 years, but this project unifies the whole terminal. The scope of the project includes the ticket lobby, security lanes, and pre- and post-security concessions and amenities.
Passengers will notice right away the new mass timber roof overhead that spans the extent of the terminal. It is something of a design and construction feat to be able to fabricate and install, while keeping the airport operational. The wood is all locally sourced from the Pacific Northwest, with an emphasis on using small and sustainable tree farmers in our area.
We’ve also worked hard to keep PDX at a more intimate scale. We worked on understanding what was important to the passengers – what they love and identify with the most about PDX. One of the areas we heard about was the ease to self-navigate throughout the airport. So our approach was to design a series of large flexible rooms that will help guide the passengers and create a journey of experiences.
The flow of the airport will remain familiar, but the overall appearance will be updated with an emphasis on regional materials, and NW design expression. There will be more natural light and expanded views to the airfield. We’ve paid attention to biophilia and how to create an exceptional passenger experience through landscape and light. Our hope is that passengers feel more delight in their journey and less stress.
The feeling of wonderment is something that our team has focused on, bringing back the romance of flight again, to elevate the experience and make people want to go to the airport early. We’re thinking about every step of that journey and how to make it something special and unique for the passenger, but also tied inexplicitly to the Pacific Northwest.
From a logistical view, there are six buildings that make up the terminal right now, all connected with different structural systems, built to different codes, over a 65-year span, with the baggage handling system directly below. I’m stating the obvious but building all of this new program over existing spaces is a very sensitive and fully choreographed endeavor.
KS: I have seen beautiful renderings of an organic, light-filled wood ceiling in the new terminal, but the structure is timber as well, right?
SVDM: Yes, it is a mass timber structure and it will cover 400,000 square feet, the entire terminal level.
KS: An important question: are you keeping the carpet?
SVDM: What carpet, Ken? What are you talking about? (laughing) Yes, there is going to be carpet, lots of carpet. I think that we would be run out of Portland if the carpet wasn’t there, honestly.
I don’t know if you remember this, but they changed the carpet about eight years ago. There is now a history of two patterns at PDX. When they changed the pattern, people lined up to buy the old carpet. They took it for their homes and offices; we had to purchase some of that carpet for a client because they wanted it for their office. No lie. It has a cult following. There are coasters, socks, coffee cups, and people who have the carpet pattern tattooed on themselves.
KS: Get out!
SVDM: Oh yes. Oh yes.
KS: You said the pattern was changed. I remember the green background with little purple and red squares, like runway lights.
SVDM: Yes, there’s a new pattern now, but we have found locations within the terminal to have both patterns, so passengers can relive the history of the PDX carpet.
Randall Children’s Hospital
| Client: | Legacy Health |
| Architects: | ZGF Architects |
| Location: | Portland, Oregon, USA |
| Size: | 334,000 square feet | 31,000 square meters |
| Completion Date: | 2012 |
Photo Credit: Nick Merrick © Hedrich Blessing
The nine-story Randall Children’s Hospital consolidates pediatric services at the Legacy Emanuel Medical Center campus and provides 165 inpatient beds in single rooms for acute care, neonatal intensive care, and pediatric intensive care. The hospital features generous amenity spaces for patients, families, and staff, including two-story family lounges, a dedicated art studio, movie theater, teen center, workout facility, staff break rooms, and lounges.
Interiors are highlighted with bright color palettes and animal motifs representing the four geographic regions served by the hospital: the Willamette Valley, the Cascade Mountain Range, the Oregon Coast, and the desert. Art and environmental graphics enliven spaces throughout, creating a sense of unexpected discovery and contributing to a healing environment.
A special design emphasis provides respite from noise. Wireless devices worn by hospital staff eliminate the need for overhead paging. The wood finishes, carpeting, artwork, and floor-to-ceiling windows in common areas are intended to make the spaces feel less like a hospital and more like a home.
KS: Very nice! The airport is obviously a major project for you. Going back ten years, is there another one or two that is special?
SVDM: This is a hard one because when you work on many different types of projects over the years, they’re all near and dear for certain reasons. I think Randall Children’s Hospital would have to be right up there at the top. It’s special to me because I had just completed the design of a large children’s hospital in Colorado. It was a replacement hospital and where I first explored the concept of what it meant to design meaningful and healing environments for a pediatric population. When that project finished, there was an opportunity to design a new children’s hospital on an urban campus for Legacy Health.
They had extensive pediatric programs embedded in their existing hospital, but they wanted to design and build a new standalone children’s hospital with its own identity. That was just a great opportunity, and I led the design of that project. What was so interesting is we were able to, with the client, imagine and develop the brand of a new children’s hospital and how the design would respond to their values. The result was a more sophisticated approach to design that dealt with the entire psyche of the patient and focused on family centered care.
I think it turned the corner in a lot of ways for health care as it explored how design can provide a positive impact to health and healing. That was one of the major drivers for this project: how can we elevate the environment? How can we innovate to make it better for patients, families, staff, doctors, nurses? That was an amazing client and project for me personally.
I think the other project is a quintessential ZGF interiors project: The new offices for Stoel Rives, a law firm with NW roots. They moved into the top nine floors of a new building in downtown Portland. It’s a beautifully executed interior space, a strongly conceived concept and well detailed. The design really expresses the classic Pacific Northwest style and our client’s goals around being timeless, restrained, and sustainable.
Stoel Rives has historically represented some of the wood industry leaders as clients, so the space has a very beautiful expression of wood and is supported by the execution in detailing. They also have a notable Pacific Northwest art collection, and the space works as a backdrop to highlight the collection.