Portland architects try to save folk art relics from gentrification.
by Bill Donahue

Every city has its sublime wastelands, its forlorn haunts made sacred by decay. New York has its crumbling piers, rusting and leaning into the Hudson along the West Side of Manhattan; Minneapolis has its abandoned grain mills shrouded in vines. And Portland, Oregon, boasts dimly lit streets where railroad tracks and ancient brick warehouses call to mind the city's brawny, industrial past.

It was on just such a street that a 70-year-old elevated roadway, the Lovejoy Ramp, sat until recently, offering Port-landers a splendidly desolate display of folk art. Ten of the ramp's hundred or so pillars bore bold, crosshatched paintings executed from 1945 to 1952 by one lonely artist, Greek immigrant Tom E. Stefopoulos. A railroad watchman, Stefopoulos rendered his murals illegally during stretches when train traffic was slow. He favored images from Greek myth and history: a songbird sporting fierce, dragon-like wings; a lion attacking a deer amid barren tree branches; and a solitary, cloaked figure bearing a lantern and traipsing beneath the words "Diogenes, the Greek cynic philosopher walking the streets of Athens...looking for an honest man."

Over the past dozen years, as Portland has shed its backwater status to become a hip haven for drinkers of espresso, the pillars have been increasingly venerated as irreplaceable vestiges of the old city. Portlander Gus Van Sant, for instance, included them in his 1989 film Drugstore Cowboy, and last September a band of 150 revelers streamed out of Port-land's annual Dada Ball to parade among Stefopoulos' murals and dance to the ebullient raving of a New Orleans jazz band.

That late-night procession was a last hurrah. The Lovejoy Ramp was torn down this past fall, and its gritty neighborhood is now being given the same sort of makeover that much of Port-land has already received. The new incarnation will be the stylish "River District," home to a mix of affordable and market-value housing, myriad boutiques, and public art by international figures such as Kenny Scharf, the Warhol protégé and sculptor. A collective of visionary architects, however, hopes it will also continue to provide a home to the Stefopoulos murals.

The five architects make up the three-year-old firm Rigga, which does both architectural and public-art proj-ects. They aim to plant the 25-foot-high pillars, which were spared during the demolition, in a River District park by 2001. Their scheme places the columns in a pedestrian mall that will adjoin a grassy park designed by Berkeley-based landscape architect Peter Walker, the creator of Harvard University's Tanner Fountain.

To Walker's delight, Rigga's campaign is about more than nostalgia. "We don't want to pickle the past," stresses firm principal James Har-rison, 33, a devotee of cerebral paper architects such as John Hejduk. "We don't envision a monument." Rather, Harrison foresees a "reformatting," an erudite New Portland interpretation of artifacts embodying the city's machine-age grandeur. He and his colleagues--thirtysomethings Ean Eldred, John Kashiwabara, and Peter Nylen, as well as 57-year-old Richard Garfield--have drafted three proposals based on Greek mythology. The "Achilles" plan would see the pillars lying on their sides like so many fallen warriors. The "Hermaphrodite" plan would give the pillars a feminine lilt by placing each column on a willowy stilt. The "Orpheus" plan would make the pillars look like the Maenads who attacked the lyre-playing Orpheus: All 10 concrete columns would retain their wild, Rasta-like tangle of bent, rusty rebar.

At first blush, Rigga's schemes, each of which would cost $500,000 to execute, seem improbable. Tom Stefopoulos, who died in 1971 at age 79, was a nobody, a lifelong bachelor who drank beer at the same skid-row bar every night for 30 years. Efforts to save naive masterworks like his are typically uphill battles. Luckily, Portland is kinder and gentler toward outsider art than most cities. The Stefopoulos murals are gaining widespread support: Both Portland's mayor, Vera Katz, and the city's Regional Arts and Culture Council have said they're in favor of preserving the murals. The principal developer for the River District, Homer Williams, deems Stefopoulos's work "an important part of the civic fabric," and 25 local seventh graders have meanwhile paid their own form of tribute to the artist: Last October, they donned togas and pilgrimaged to the muddy parking lot where the pillars now reside.

Once again, it seems, Rigga is on its way to making the whimsical real. The firm first came together when the four younger principals, who met at Cooper Union, assembled an art exhibition featuring elegant, quixotic machines. The premise of the show, "Diverted History," was that a character in a Borges short story had created the sculptures, which included a brass-wire mesh horn that pivoted in order to "isolate and invert an echo," and something called a "Catastrophe Tool" that simultaneously drew and erased a line in the sand.

Rigga's partners have since landed a $130,000 commission to build a sculpture in a Portland park and have designed two houses, a theater marquee, and a private gazebo ensconced in a grove of bamboo. They began focusing on the Lovejoy Ramp two years ago. "We didn't like the city's idea that you create a new neighborhood by just erasing the past from the landscape," explains Garfield. The ramp wasn't beautiful, Harrison adds, but neither was Portland's past. "This is a city where all the drag queens used to be lumberjacks," he says. "The question became, eHow do you carry that spirit forward?'"

Initially, the architects proposed retaining a large chunk of the ramp as an arch-like gateway to the neighborhood and placing a "garden" of Stefopoulos's pillars atop it. The idea didn't fly with the budget-minded city, which wanted to saw the columns off a foot or two above the six-foot-high murals, thereby destroying their industrial context.

Rigga rallied underground denizens to the pillars' defense by hosting a goofy performance-art "eulogy" that memorialized the decrepit ramp as a "friend to the wino." The architects also donned ties to win over Williams and various city officials. They formed an ad hoc group, Friends of the Columns, to unite the rogues and the suits, and, miraculously, they talked the City of Portland into preserving the pillars in toto. The city spent $120,000 modifying its demolition plans and then hauled the columns away to their temporary resting place.

Williams and the city now seem poised to ensure Rigga a site in the River District's pedestrian mall. But no one has yet offered to finance the columns' new life; Rigga is obliged to raise the whole half-million dollars. So far they have not raised a cent, but Harrison is optimistic, whimsically hopeful even. "There's so much momentum behind this project now that it can't die," he says. "The city could come forth with part of the money, or we could get support from a private foundation. I don't know what Greek god you pray to for money, but I'll find out soon, and then I'll get down on my knees."

A new L.A. boutique is fully color coordinated.
By Pilar Guzman

The exterior of kbond, a new men's clothing store in Hollywood, takes into account the fact that the average L.A. window-shopper is typically traveling at 45 miles per hour. Unavoidable at any speed are the store's enormous interior light boxes, which give off a particularly striking incandescent glow at night.

Previously based in Manhattan, 32-year-old installation artist Karen Kimmel and her fiancé, James Bond, 31, a commercial art director, hired New York architects Jansen and Gold-stein to help them create an alluring environment that pays homage to some of the most important aspects of their lives: art, fashion, and outdoor adventure. After fleeing New York for a yearlong surf odyssey in the South Pacific, the couple decided to set up shop in L.A. so that they could continue to work while communing with nature.

The Beverly Boulevard space, which functions as both boutique and gal-lery, reflects the couple's sense that their lives (and modern life in general) are becoming ever more interdisci-plinary and holistic. As Kimmel says, "kbond speaks to how people shop when they aspire to a quality lifestyle. Because we climb mountains and go to gallery openings, we wanted our store to have that cross-sectioning." Their clothing collection ranges from the very practical and iconic, including items from Fred Perry and Lacoste, to the artistic, including such items as Mishiko Koshino's "fashion as art edition," for which the London-based clothing designer created just 100 resin-printed paper ponchos (kbond received 15 of them).

The store flows between three life-style/clothing zones--Sport, Classic, and New Methods--that are separated by the scrim-covered light boxes, which reflect out onto the street. Kim-mel came up with a color key for the boxes that communicates store happenings to shoppers: green corresponds to upcoming events; red to new inventory; blue to a sale; and orange to a Web site update (www.kbondla.com). "Karen's key coincided with our decision to make the light boxes," says Goldstein, "so she not only made the store glow but also made it into a kind of cultural experience."

For Kimmel, who is known for site-specific installations that explore the roles of men and women in situations of exchange and service, the store represented a logical next step. "In my art I do what I call activated sculpture," she says. "I'm into having people come together socially and seeing what transpires." One of Kimmel's performance pieces, "Quench" (1997), featured six women wearing padded comfort suits with built-in cup-dispensers. The women then wandered around a hotel in New York City, "hydrating" the public with lemon-infused water.

The kbond project, which flirts with the sometimes elusive boundary be-tween art and retail, isn't such a departure from this kind of "social sculpture." To poke fun at the conventions of brand identity and art valuation, Kimmel and Bond put an elaborate kbond graphic that changes seasonally on the store's center wall--with limited-edition T-shirts to match. "The store functions like a gallery," explains Hal Goldstein, "but unlike stores that just look like galleries, we knew we were going to create a 3-D canvas for Karen to occupy."

Finally, a snowboard that doesn't look like it was
designed for a 15-year old boy.
By Michael Kessler

"We realized that mature adults didn't want cartoon-like graphics," says Bob Carlson. "So we basically did away with graphics and went for a more classic approach." Carlson, 31, is cofounder and president of Arbor Snowboards, which is appealing to snowboarding's burgeoning adult market by crafting its wares with gimmick-free, stylish wood veneers. Each of the 23 boards featured in Arbor's catalog is finished with a "top sheet" of either Hawaiian Koa or walnut, or a combination of the two materials--a far cry from the women-with-whips imagery found on some of the more common plastic-top boards.

Ironically, Carlson has discovered that in a sport known for ahead-of-the-curve design, one can actually be progressive by reverting to basics. "People initially said the idea wasn't forward-thinking enough," explains Carlson, speaking from Arbor's Los Angeles offices. "But I felt that these designs are totally progressive, a break from the norm." Indeed, Arbors are selling so fast to the 24-and-over set that they are now being produced by the second-largest manufacturer in the business.

Carlson says that the "unmatched beauty of veneer" has inspired him for years. "I grew up admiring those vintage wood-panel wagons and huge surfboards, and I wanted to create something in the same vein." Hence, the Koa wood found in the company's planks is the same kind used long ago by Hawaiians to make the first surfboards. In addition, "the grain pattern suggests the forward motion of snowboarding or surfing." But the veneer isn't just a pretty surface; its resili-ence makes the boards "snappy" and "responsive"--i.e., they're perfect for flying down snowy slopes. (The remain-der of each board consists of the tried-and-true combination of a wood core sandwiched between two layers of fiberglass.) But try conveying that to the masses, who often equate such boards with thin, delicate furniture. Says cofounder Chris Jensen: "I just tell those people to buy one to hang over the fireplace and another to strap to their feet."

Reverand Billy preaches against the Disney religion (below) and gets collared (left).

An activist known as Reverand Billy takes his anit-shopping theology
inside The Lion King's lair
By Colin Moynihan

"Like many New Yorkers, performance artist and activist Bill Talen has been dismayed by the transformation of Times Square from raffish red-light district to glitzy shopping destination. But he is likely the only one who has decided to protest that shift, on more than 20 occasions, by donning a clerical collar and leading a group of noisy demonstrators into Disney's flagship store on 42nd Street.

A couple of hours before one such recent rally was scheduled to begin, about three dozen people, including members of several local radical political groups and students from the NYU Legal Defense Clinic, gathered in front of St. Clement's Episcopal Church on West 46th Street. The forty-something Talen had already assumed the guise of Reverend Billy, the street-preaching persona he adopts whenever he is combating the spread of global capitalism.

Last year, Talen founded the Church of Stop Shopping, which he describes as "an agnostic urban movement that deals with the problems of living in the city." He said that the religious trappings of his protests--the collar, the sermonizing, the inspired, repetitive singing--were particularly useful in taking on the creators of Goofy and The Lion King. "The Disney people consider themselves to be part of something like a religion," he said. "So when I go into their store and start preaching against them, they get really confused."

A few minutes after 11:00, the protesters headed for the Disney Store. (Talen argues that because of the Dis-ney Corporation's relentless commercialism, its sprawling outlet is the most conspicuous symbol of Times Square's shift.) Their goal, according to Talen, was twofold: to "slow down the buying and selling" of Disney merchandise and "to let people know that there is dissent to the new Times Square."

Once inside the store, protesters sang a satirical song about factory conditions to the tune of "Whistle While You Work," from Disney's animated classic Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. Then Talen, warming fully to the role of Reverend Billy, began preaching to the crowd in staccato bursts. He criticized Disney chairman Michael Eisner's immense bonuses and lamented the shuttering of some mom-and-pop businesses in and around Times Square. Tourists paused, bewildered, to watch as the protesters exhorted Talen with shouts of "Amen!" and "Stop Shopping!"

One shopper asked an employee who Talen was. "He's just some crazy nut who has nothing better to do than show up here to hassle us," the em-ployee responded. Others, though, gathered close to Talen to listen. Before long the police arrived and ordered the crowd to disperse. Talen and five other men were arrested when they refused to leave the store and were whisked away in a police van. Reached by telephone the next day, Talen said the group was kept at the Midtown South station house on West 35th Street for two hours, then released with orders to appear in court a month later. "It really wasn't bad," he said. "For a little while in the back of the van we shouted eStop shopping,' and it turned out there was a pretty cool echo effect in there."

1950's-style glamour, as shown here, is once again the order of the day at Lapudus's Eden Roc.

For 95-year-old Morris Lapidus and his Miami Beach hotel,
what's past is prologue.
By Richard Torregrossa

Designed in 1956 by Morris Lapidus, the Eden Roc hotel in Miami Beach recently underwent a $24 million face-lift. Its new owners, the New York- based Blackacre Capitol Group in partnership with Destination Hotels & Resorts of Denver, initiated the resort's rebirth. They've restored the original spirit of the great, mid-century Modern classic while bringing it up to today's standards. Unlike the trendier hotels in congested, boisterous South Beach, the Eden Roc continued in recent years to attract a more mature clientele. With its re-newed elegance, and its up-to-date recreational as well as conference facilities, it is seen by its new owners as a destination for the next generation of sophisticates.

At age 95, the spry Lapidus, working with the local office of Spillis Candela DMJM, was happily involved in restoring his well-known resort and spa to the swanky glamour of its heyday. "It was like watching the past come alive," Lapidus exclaims of following the architects' work on the renovation. "Everything they have done shows a sensitive appreciation, a rediscovery, of my architecture. And they are re-creating the feeling of 40 years ago."

For instance, the original design of the main lobby and arrival area is recaptured with a widened stairway; Brazilian rosewood-trimmed columns in the central rotunda have been stripped of the white paint that was added during an earlier renovation, returning them to their original luster; and the terrazzo finishes of the surrounding surfaces have been pains-takingly recovered.

During the renovation, which required a year of planning and seven months of nonstop construction, some discoveries turned up that surprised even Lapidus. When workers started sandblasting the pool to remove the old paint and grime and decades of suntan lotion, they found the original diamond-shaped, cobalt-blue-and-white tiles, which today glisten once again in the south Florida sunshine.

"Yet," adds Lapidus, "the Eden Roc is now a twenty-first-century hotel. They picked out the best elements to keep and, at the same time, they brought in new forms."

The color scheme, for example, re-flects current preferences for rich plums, autumn golds, dark grays, and silvers. Pillows and accessories will be changed to reflect the mood of each season. The fitness area and spa have been upgraded to conform to world-class standards. The formerly drab lobby is now grand and almond-shaped and has backlit, honey-colored marble panels that rise dramatically to the full length of the golden ceiling.

And it's all "turtle friendly"--not a concern in the 1950s. Showing their environmental awareness, the architects replaced existing windows with what they call "turtle glass," which prevents the hotel's glaring lights from interfering with the nesting habits of the sea turtles on the beach below.

The turtles are happy. Lapidus is happy. The rich and famous are happy: The resort is often abuzz with fashion shoots and celebrity events. But the loyal patrons, the folks who have been visiting the Eden Roc even through its less glamorous days, are also enjoying the coastal comforts and flamboyant Fifties ambiance that were so much part of Lapidus's original vision.

"I finally realized that American taste was being influenced by the movies," writes Lapidus in his autobiography, discussing his early inspiration for the design of the hotel. "So I imagined myself the set designer for a movie producer who wanted to create a hotel that would make a tremendous impression on viewers," he adds. "So I designed a movie set." The Eden Roc Resort & Spa offi-cially reopened in January. Lights! Camera! Action! Lots of action!

Perriand, who is perhaps best known as a collaborator--she worked with Le Corbusier and Jean Prouvé, for example, on iconic Modern furniture pieces like the LC4 Chaise Longue--was much more than that. She was an independent woman when that was rare. Her sense of self, her unwavering adoration of the Modern, and her admiration of work created by multidisciplinary design teams headed by humanist architects like Renzo Piano defined her personally and professionally. As she often liked to say, she found "a life in the twentieth century" and was working to invent the twenty-first.

Perriand would have thought passé the eighteenth-century mechanical chairs that furnished Colin Rowe's living room and were famous among his architecture students at Cornell. But Rowe's fondness for those chairs pointed to an all-embracing intellect that could make sense of Modernism's astringent and functional forms as well as celebrate the merits of traditional cities. Indeed, Rowe's teachings about the natural compactness and density of cities continue to inspire the New Urbanist movement. His work was not without controversy, however; one reviewer called his book Collage City "pompous garbage," while another understood it as "the most important book on urban design today."

The French woman whose early Modern designs increasingly grace American living rooms offices, and the English man who inspired world-renowned American architects like Richard Meier and Peter Eisenman, showed, for those who would follow, that design is more than an occupation; it's a way of life.