For seven weeks this summer, GBD has had the pleasure of hosting a Washington State University graduate architecture studio in our office. 15 students moved to Portland for the summer, relocating their homebase to GBD’s office while working to design eight blocks of a massive mixed-use project.

The studio, led by Ashley Koger, Paul Soper and a team of mentors, focused on the site of the former Zidell shipyards, located along the Willamette River in Portland’s South Waterfront. Once home the largest shipbreaking (dismantling) operation in the United States, the shipyard has, in recent years, yielded much of its former industrial land to development. Glass condo towers, medical and institutional buildings now rise from land that for many years severed the city from the river. Today, 33 acres of land remain in the hands of the Zidell family, whose business interests have shifted from shipbuilding to real estate development. 

The graduate design studio used the Zidell Master Plan created by Sasaki and Associates as its armature for typology-based design investigations. The primary goals of the studio were threefold: to examine typology as a generative force in design, to better understand the process and players involved with large-scale commercial development, and to collectively create a sense of place by way of a common framework. The result was an astonishing body of work that created an urban statement through the amalgamation of informed individual building designs.

We were thrilled to have these students’ creative energy in our office for the past seven weeks. Check out more info about about the studio here.