The Vanport Building - Portland, Oregon

With a collective commitment to enhance the city of Portland through sustainable and responsible development, four significant Portland institutions join together here to share workplace resources. To house this diverse group of building occupants—the PSU Graduate School of Education, the OHSU|PSU School of Public Health, the PCC Dental Programs, and the City of Portland Bureau of Planning and Sustainability—the Vanport Building is a seven-story, 175,000 GSF structure on a dense urban site in downtown Portland. Located at 4th Ave. and Montgomery St. and bound by public transit on all four sides, the project strategically presents outdoor spaces, landscape, and building form and expression to anticipate future potential development.

The Vanport Building’s site is unique to the city of Portland, with the curved streetcar path, the building massing curves with the streetcar line, expressing the movement of the site and recessing the first floor to create a wide and protected pedestrian-friendly path. All sidewalks and access to the high-traffic building are generous and open, fostering public walkways on all transit frontages that are safe for those on foot. The Vanport Building design was completed while Steve was a principal at SRG Partnership.