AIA Portland Citation Award
Portland Design Festival Gold Award

The Humberston House was commissioned by a young couple with 4 children. It is located on a triangular acre lot in a suburban neighborhood. The site is shaded by tall trees. It has views across a golf course that impart a sense of being in a pastoral landscape.

The house occupies the shaded portion of the site. Its two wings form a garden courtyard where the most sunlight falls. The living spaces are arranged on the garden level and connect to the courtyard and the lawn surrounding the house with large sliding planes of glass. This level of transparency allows vistas through the house between the garden and the landscape. The house is articulated as rectilinear stucco volumes that have been cut away to reveal panels of wood and glass.

AIA Portland Merit Award
Urban Land Institute Award

Potestio Studio was commissioned to design 13 residential units for a steep 10,000 square foot lot located between an historic neighborhood and downtown Portland, Oregon. A courtyard scheme enabled 10 town houses to be arranged on the site. The descending slope allowed for three additional flats to be located on the lowest level of the building.

The courtyard serves as the resident’s shared space thus reinforcing a sense of community. The courtyard is set at the middle level in the building, with stairs connecting to the three unit entry levels. It provides auto access to six garages. The stairways create a pathway through the building connecting the building to the neighborhood and downtown.

The building’s composition balances a reading of the overall building form and the individual units, identified with bay windows. The singular slope of the roofline ties the building to the site. The alternating pattern of bay windows and panels of wood siding is a modern interpretation of the Victorian houses in the neighborhood.

AIA Portland Honor Award
AIA NW and Pacific Honor Award
Portland Design Festival Bronze Award

A Singapore based businessman commissioned this house as a retreat from the business world. The 3500 square foot house occupies a gently sloping lot on the north shore of the Columbia River in Vancouver, Washington. It has expansive views of the river and to the east, Mt. Hood.

The house is conceived as a sequence of accentuated spaces that guide one from the street to the river. The entry sequence begins with a narrow garden pathway that leads to the front door. It culminates in a two-story living space with a window wall that captures the river beyond. The interiors are punctuated with wood lattice screens that provide layering and definition to the spaces. Inverted bay windows focus views to the river, the trees and the sky.

The Masonry and Ceramic Tile Institute Best in NW Award

The Ganz House is designed for a family of four. It is situated on the upper most portion of a twenty acre wooded bluff overlooking the Columbia River and the four highest mountains of the Cascade Range. The house has an elongated, angular form that follows the contour of the site.

The house’s multiple levels and angles are meant to simultaneously orient one to the distant mountains and to the river valley, which lies 1000 feet below. Rooms have different window types, offering landscape panoramas or framed vignettes of the individual mountains.

The principal materials of concrete block and rough sawn timber are balanced by slate floors and refined cabinetry.

The Gragg building is a three-unit apartment building set on a 2500 square foot former parking lot in an evolving Portland neighborhood. The design solution has two story loft units flanking a stair that ascends to the owner’s third floor penthouse. The loft units are flexible live/work spaces. The penthouse is entered from a covered balcony on the north at the top of the stairs. The covered terrace on the south provides year round outdoor living space.

The building respects its context of concrete industrial buildings and wood houses. Its simple form is rendered in painted concrete block and alternating panels of reclaimed wood and aluminum framed windows. The overall composition emphasizes symmetry and proportion while the fenestration continues the rhythm and pattern of the neighboring buildings. The intention is to achieve an architectural vocabulary suited to a maturing urban environment.

The building’s energy conservation measures include concrete block walls and concrete slab floors providing thermal mass, increased insulation, extensive use of reclaimed wood, a green roof with solar array, and windows positioned to provide ample daylight and passive natural ventilation. Structural separation between units virtually eliminates sound transmission. Storage is provided for bicycles rather than autos.