PNCA's New Digs

First Thursday's must-see destination for March was the brand-flippin'-new campus of Pacific Northwest College of Art, which crowns the North Park Blocks at 511 NW Broadway. Although the building's name is an unwieldy 15 syllables—the Arlene and Harold Schnitzer Center for Art and Design—the structure itself is anything but.

Portland architecture star Brad Cloepfil of Allied Works has invigorated a century-old building with an ingenious redesign. Originally a post office, then a federal building, the structure had been tackily retrofitted over passing decades with cumbersome low ceilings and floor coverings, a labyrinthine layout and the kind of fluorescent-bulbed, government-meets-corporate aesthetic that calcifies souls. Renovated and revivified by Allied Works, the building centers on a 2.5-story atrium ringed by thick metal cables, which drape diagonally like ropes tying a tall ship's sails. In fact, the space as a whole feels like a cross between a schooner and a circus tent. Fitting given that anything as impractical as a fine-arts education may as well be a floating theater of the absurd sailing toward Atlantis.

Beneath the atrium and surrounding the expansive commons, artworks stand, hang and hold forth, including a handsome debut exhibition, Gathering Autonomy: Justseeds Artists' Cooperative, in the newly inaugurated 511 Gallery. On opening night, visitors' chatter echoed into the skylights, mingling with ambient soundscapes from video installations. Those skylights are one of Cloepfil's most bracing touches; by day they flood the newly unearthed hardwoods and marble tiles in a luminous honey bath. The overall gestalt is quite grand, if a touch drab, with a color palette tending toward Calvin Klein ecru and eggshell. Chromatically, the space would benefit from, say, a juicy stripe painting by Tim Bavington or a sculpture of Jeff Koons shiny-metal variety, although such acquisitions would have shot the project's already-spendy $34 million budget through those fortunate skylights.

Lastly, let's face it, PNCA's new home needs a catchy nickname for its cumbersome formal moniker, something more imaginative than its address. Some are calling it the "511 Building." Hmm…nautical meets circus. How about the Commodore Ringling?

GO: The Arlene and Harold Schnitzer Center for Art and Design is at 511 NW Broadway, pnca.edu.

WWeek 2015