Randy Gragg

2 weeks ago | architecturalrecord.com | Randy Gragg

Architecture NewsClimate Change & Sustainability For the Living Future Conference’s annual May gathering, the storm of shifting federal policies clouded much of the event’s normally sunny idealism.

Oct 31, 2024 | architecturalrecord.com | Randy Gragg

For 24 years, the California College of the Arts’ 33 academic programs were spread across two campuses: the verdant, Victorian-era former James Treadwell estate in Oakland and a converted Greyhound-bus maintenance shed in San Francisco’s emergent Design District. Two art-learning cultures took shape as different as the sites. In Oakland, faculty and students channeled the school’s Arts & Crafts DNA in buildings, some over a century old, learning and making indoors and out.

Aug 7, 2024 | orartswatch.org | Randy Gragg

From its earliest days, Portland’s airport—PDX International—has grounded its visitors in dynamic experiences of the local. As the first jets began to land in 1959, PDX’s homey architecture began with a new terminal opening like a front porch to a wide, ground-level view of the volcano you just flew by, or soon would. In the ‘70s, the automobile approach—Airport Way—featured a corridor of chevron-shaped plantings of cedars spaced closer and closer as you approached the terminal.

Aug 5, 2024 | architecturalrecord.com | Randy Gragg

For its modest 1,500-square-foot size, Corollary Wine’s new tasting room by Waechter Architecture glows as if an alien ship has landed on the horizon. Perched atop one of the Willamette Valley’s taller hills and wrapped in metal that’s powder-coated a custom red just shy of fluorescent, the building’s sharp origami folds stand out in the rolling landscape. “Rather than hanging a sign somewhere, Corollary wanted the building to be an element of its brand,” says Waechter’s project lead Alexis Coir.

Mar 10, 2024 | orartswatch.org | Randy Gragg

Wander the august rooms of the newly refurbished Multnomah County Central Library and it’s easy to think you’ve landed at some sort of bibliophilic airport lounge. Plush chairs, curving couches, bar-height tables, and phone-charging stations spread over a floor equipped with 100 new electrical outlets. About half of the books, magazines, and other materials that once crowded Central’s tall stacks are now arranged on low-slung shelves, most of them on wheels.