Progress Report: Hall Draws on International Principles

PORTLAND, Ore. — There are many similarities between building designs overseas and building in the United States, according to Nels Hall, a design principal at Yost Grube Hall Architecture, with 38 years of experience in the U.S. and abroad.

 

Designing in response to climatic factors and working cross-culturally are two of the biggest factors Hall sees as universal to any project he designs.

 

“You go in assuming you may know a place in terms of technical things, but you really have to prepare to absorb different value systems, different priorities and work with people in a productive way, rather than just shipping overseas what we would do in Portland,” he says.

 

The same applies to any project in the Northwest region where Yost Grube Hall focuses, Hall said.

 

A third of the firm’s work — about 35 percent on any given year — comes from overseas, ranging from work with organizations like the United States Agency for International Development to state projects in the developing world, he said.

 

The international work is what has kept Hall at Yost Grube Hall for 35 years.

 

Whether it’s working in Oregon or abroad, Hall said the design process includes factors like employing local materials and knowing the limited capabilities of technology, using and controlling day lighting, natural ventilation and the use of mechanical systems for cooling.

 

Hall received his Bachelor of Arts degree in architecture from U.C. Berkeley, where he spent his last two years studying the concept of systems building under his mentor, Richard Bender.

 

It was under Bender that Hall developed a deep interest in the integration of technology with design – a very important consideration for him, he said.

 

Another area of architecture Hall studied at Berkeley was Pattern Language — a concept pioneered by the university’s graduate professor and emeritus professor of architecture Christopher Alexander. Pattern language is a way of planning structures by looking at the requirements for similar buildings in the past, Hall said. 

 

It was this technique that Hall and his team employed in designing the University of Oregon’s journalism and communication school, Allen Hall.

 

Though not designated in the national registrar of historic places, Allen Hall is an older building, like many of the buildings on the school’s campus.

 

Hall and his team have been working with the campus planning department to tie in the original 1925 building to a bigger, more modern addition built in 1948 and a smaller addition built in 1990.

 

“(We thought), ‘How can we tie this whole project together, to respect the two significant buildings that are there and create a unified interior with a central space?,’” Hall said of the planning process. “It’s interesting working with the school of journalism because they’re on the cutting edge of technology with communications publications,” he said.

 

Tim Gleason, Dean of the School of Journalism and Communications, said that due to the building being from different generations, the addition had to be carefully placed in a very constrained area.

 

“That took a great deal of creativity and pretty innovative thinking,” he said.

 

The school also wanted to create a collaborative and interactive space, including spaces for technology.

 

“Journalism and communications is a very digital environment, so they’re having to design spaces that will be full of computers, or whatever the computing devices that will be used going forward,” Gleason said. 

 

To integrate the digital environment, Allen Hall will feature a digital commons.

 

“We’re taking one floor of one wing of the building and opening it up so it’s very collaborative, flexible, open space,” he said. “Whether it’s a newsroom or ad agency or public relations firm, that it really replicates the working environment,” he said.

 

Yost Grube Hall landed the Allen Hall contract through a competitive process, the dean said.

 

“We were looking for firms that were going to be innovative, but at the same time, build space that would respect the two older buildings,” Gleason said. “We were taken with their work.”

 

The firm worked to tie the buildings together by creating a family of entrances, that would also encourage interaction, he said.

 

A similar project at Boise State University involved tying the Norco Student Health Wellness and Counseling Center and School of Nursing into the central walking student core, next to the school’s recreation center and across from the student union.

 

“How we tie them together to a high activity student service focus is a major challenge,” he said.

 

Often, Halls works in what he calls a workshop process — highly interactive work sessions with user groups.

 

“That’s something in planning — it’s an educational process, working with educators and learning at the same time,” he said. “The best way to learn is to look at the best examples of similar facilities, so we looked at the good and bad things with the school of journalism. We looked at, what are the newest best schools nationally, what from those schools can we learn about incorporating technology?”

 

The school’s design also needed to encourage informal interaction to create a sense of community.

 

“That sort of discovery phase is actually very productive and one of the things that makes working in higher education the most fun — working with bright committed people.”

 

Though the firm can boast of many awards in terms of green building, Halls said it is now a basic foundation of building rather than something that totally distinguishes a firm from others.

 

“It’s almost impossible to find a request for a proposal that doesn’t want to know your background, your approach and your success in other projects creating sustainability,” he said.

 

The firm achieved the first LEED Gold building for the State of Oregon, the first for the Oregon University system and the first for the California University System, among others.

 

“The biggest (challenge) was coming up with a way to do a very analytic process where we defined (sustainable) alternatives,” he said. “We rigorously analyzed life cycles, long term replacements, functionality and the aesthetics — it’s a pretty thorough process.”

 

Their analysis resulted in a set of sustainability criteria, with different standards for different types of projects that followed LEED guidelines as well.

 

Halls also said that in terms of energy reduction, it is possible to achieve LEED Silver or Gold without a building excelling in energy conservation.

 

When working on the first LEED Gold graduate lab at Oregon State University’s Kelley Engineering Center, the firm got down to 42 percent below the state code energy level.

 

Abroad, Hall has worked in Spain, where he lived as a child, Switzerland, England and Zurich.

 

“The work has been pretty interesting, kind of a nice mix of working overseas. That’s what’s kept me here forever,” Halls said. “We’re still, knock on wood, keeping that blend of overseas and the Northwest.”