Reconfiguring a Metropolitan Region: Corporate Architectural Typologies in Portland, Oregon

This presentation focuses on the tensions between different architectural traditions in Portland, a metropolitan region contained within an urban boundary. I examine two types in the production of recent residential and corporate architecture. Through the study of specific examples, I explore the intersection between urban planning premises and architectural physicality in the context of Portland‘s planning culture. I investigate how these two architectural types have originated as products of, or reactions to, several of the main planning discourses in the city. The result is a spatial environment where conflicting planning views are reflected in contrasting architectural typologies, resulting in reconfigurations of both the region and its building traditions, and where the political and/or theoretical disputes over planning concepts are localized, i.e., are assigned specific, often contrasting, spatial meanings and forms