Portland Building

The Portland Building is a Postmodernist skyscraper designed in 1979 by Michael Graves, in association with Emery Roth & Sons, and built between 1980 and 1982, for a reported $28.9 million dollars, in Portland, OR.

Portland Building is not the only name you might know this building by though. The building is, or has also been known as Portland Public Service Building.

Its precise street address is 1120 SW 5th Avenue, Portland, OR. You can also find it on the map here.

The Portland Building is a structure of significant importance both for the city of Portland and the United States as a nation. The building embodies the distinctive characteristic features of the time in which it was built and the Postmodernism style. Because of that, the Portland Building was officially included in the National Register of Historic Places on October 25^th 2011.

The Portland Building has received multiple architecture awards for its architectural design since 1982. The following is a list of such prizes and awards:

• National AIA Honor Award in 1983
• Henry Hering Memorial Medal in 1986

The building underwent a major restoration between 2017 and 2020. The architect commissioned to undertake this restoration was DLR Group.

Michael Graves was the architecture firm in charge of the architectural design, in association with Emery Roth & Sons.

But that's not all, there was also a whole team of architects involved, which included: Patrick Burke, and Karen Nichols.

That being said, architecture is a complex discipline involving many professionals from different fields, without whom this building would have not been possible. We will surely be leaving out a lot of names here, but here is a list of the people we do know also played their part in making the Portland Building a reality:

• Desimone Consulting Engineers in charge of Structural Engineering
• Pavarini-Hoffman as the Main Contractor
• Zimmer Gunsul Frasca Partnership in charge of Interior Design
• Ray Kaskey as the collaborating Artist

The Portland Building can be categorized as a Postmodernist building.

The Portland Building was completed in 1982. At that time Postmodernism was the prevailing style. Fresh, bold and daring, architects were exploring the freedom of designing without having to follow the strict, sometimes arbitrary rules of a specific architectural movement (which ironically became a movement itself). The Portland Building was therefore every much in line with what the architecture community, and the people liked and wanted at the time.

The Portland Building uses a frame structure made of steel columns and slabs.

A frame structure uses a combination of beams and columns to sustain the building's weight. The walls in this case are non-load bearing, which allows for more flexibility when distributing the interior spaces.

The facade uses a non-load bearing curtain wall system. This means the curtain wall modules are anchored to the building's structural frame, typically by being attached to the edge of the floor slabs. The curtain wall system connects to the slabs using brackets, anchors, and mullions, which transfer the loads imposed by wind and temperature changes, to the building's primary structural elements.

This setup allows the curtain wall to accommodate differential movement between the facade and the structural frame, such as thermal expansion, floor deflection, or sway from wind forces. This system's integration with the slab edges also allows for continuous insulation and weatherproofing layers.

From an aesthetic point of view, the facade features a two-story stepped pedestal clad in bluish-green tiles. From there on up, the building features a cream-colored stucco coating with small square windows and terracotta pilasters, using fiberglass for some cladding and decorative elements.