Portland, Oregon
A leftover berm space was created when the City of Portland constructed a new one-way Couch Street couplet, reconnecting the roadway to the Burnside Bridge.
Skylab saw the leftover space as an opportunity and was inspired by the adjacent world-renowned Burnside Skatepark that was built on leftover city land under the Burnside Bridge, now leased forever to the skate community.
Along with Shapiro Didway Landscape Architects they created Sideyard.
Sideyard was recently awarded with a 2020 American Architecture Award from The Chicago Athenaeum and The European Centre for Architecture Art Design and Urban Studies.
Skylab and Key Development reimagined this small 20,000 sqft lot as a new development and proposed a new building concept exclusively focused on pedestrian, bicycle, and public transit access called Sideyard.
The site is located at the geographic center of Portland in the Central Eastside industrial zone where a new eastside community was envisioned by the Burnside Bridgehead Framework plan.
The design approach for Sideyard was to create a working-class building with restaurants, shops, bars, and creative office space above.
The ground floor features space on the southside for a plaza activated by bike access to a new restaurant concept with an outdoor bar bike counter.
The site was also developed to reconnect the Burnside Bridge pedestrian experience directly down to Third Street and the Burnside Skatepark below.
This new reconnection of the historic pedestrian stair access creates a 360-degree experience for people around the building on foot, additionally connecting to the Couch Street pedestrian and bikeway on the north side of the site.
The unusual wedge-shaped site was structured utilizing a prefabricated CLT framework with a cast in place concrete cores. The CLT was used to feature a beautiful, sustainable local system that also included the benefit of reducing cost by accelerating the construction schedule for installation.
The site had limited access for installation, so the CLT being prefabricated allowed for a high level of craft and finish in the base core and shell building approach.
Within the concrete cores, new mass timber stairways were assembled as both fire escape and floor to floor access paths.
The building mass was conceived like a quoin with the exterior envelope formed as a heavy mass.
The exterior facade made with a brick facade performs as a filter with the large window openings, allowing access to maximum amounts of daylight and views up and down the river.
This new pedestrian and bicycle development strengthens the connection between the new working class eastside community and the westside traditional Portland downtown urban core.
Skylab, Key Development, and Andersen Construction worked together to build Sideyard as an uncommon place that fits into the current surroundings while also standing out for the everyday commuter and worker for the future.
Project: Sideyard
Architects: Skylab
Design Team: Jeff Kovel, Brent Grubb, Jill Asselineau, Nathan Cox, Jennifer Martin, Tony Tranquilli, and Andrew Borelll
Client: Key Development
General Contractor: Andersen Construction, Co Inc.
Landscape Architects: Shapiro Didway Landscape Architects
Photographer: Stephen Miller
