Ep. 151: Architect Chandra Robinson

Chandra Robinson is a Principal at LEVER and Portland Design Commissioner. A Portland native, she grew up with a great love for outdoor education, inspiring her to spend years as a sea kayaking guide and to study geography and physics. From an early age though, she was always fascinated by buildings and developed a deep love for spaces that felt safe, welcoming, and comfortable. She eventually found her way to Boston Architectural Center where she earned her MArch and found exceptional opportunities to work at firms of all sizes. Returning to Portland, she found her professional home at LEVER. First as an architect and now as a Principal, she’s led groundbreaking projects such as the Meyer Memorial Trust in Lower Albina. She is resourceful, brilliant, and dedicated to making her hometown feel welcoming, beautiful, and accessible to all. 

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TRANSCRIPT

Chandra Robinson: Why should you have to sort of compromise or make yourself small all the time for half of your life when you’re at work, you should feel comfortable, you should feel like it was designed for you. It’s important. 

Amy Devers: Hi everyone, I’m Amy Devers and this is Clever. Today I’m talking to Architect Chandra Robinson. Chandra was interested in design growing up, but took a detour to study Chandra was interested in design growing up, but took a detour to study geology and physics. After spending several years as a Sea kayaking guide, she made the  decision to go back to school and become an architect. A graduate of Boston Architectural Center, she is now a Principal at Portland, Oregon-based LEVER Architecture, where she focuses on the intersection of community engagement and design projects, while challenging conventional methods of fabrication by using local and commonplace materials in exciting and unexpected ways. Also, since 2019 She has been a Portland Design Commissioner, and is an advocate for quality design and committed to celebrating Portland’s history and being part of its future. She is currently part of a team reimagining affordable housing and a community theater in Portland’s Black community, and has led the design of some fascinating and meaningful built projects, which you’re about to hear all about… Here’s Chandra.

Chandra Robinson: My name is Chandra Robinson, I live and work here in Portland, Oregon and I’m an architect and I’m really focused on community engagement and projects that serve the community that they’re in because I feel like it’s a really important way to give back and to make places better and to bring people together and it’s what I can do through architecture. 

AD: I love that so much, I want to hear all about that, but I also want to hear all about you, Chandra. So to use an architecture metaphor, I like to start with the foundation. Can you take us back to your childhood and tell me all about your youth, your family dynamic, growing up in Portland, and what kinds of things captured your imagination. 

CR: Sure. Yeah, I did grow up here in Portland and I grew up on the East Side. Once I graduated from high school my mom actually moved to North Portland in the St. Johns area and has been there ever since, so I have an experience of Portland in many different parts of town.

Growing up on the East Side, the Light Rail wasn't in for a long time and it was really if you wanted to go somewhere you had to take the bus. I remember my brother and sister and I taking the bus for literally two hours to get downtown to do fun stuff, and the fun stuff that there was to do downtown Portland then was go to Powell's, go to a coffee shop like Patisserie, and for a long time honestly the city was really similar and those were still the only things that I knew to do downtown.

Since then it's grown a lot, but as a kid I remember it as a place where that's where all the fun stuff happens, that's where you want to be. You don't want to be out here in the suburbs where you live, so we were always kind of on the move looking for something fun to do.

I grew up with a brother and sister; I'm the middle child, and my mom. We lived in a few different places out in the East Side of Portland before moving to North Portland and I had a lot of great memories out there. 

We lived in a couple of different affordable housing developments out there and so I think that's partly why I'm interested in doing affordable housing now, it's just to kind of be a part of the design process and really make sure that people end up with something that is great for them and their community. As a kid I always wanted to be an architect, since I was little. I don't remember why because I didn't actually know any architects, my mom didn't know any architects, but I always wanted to be an architect - (laughs)

AD: That's interesting to me. Did you know of architects? Was it pointed out to you that those were the ones who built the buildings, or?

CR: No, I didn't know any famous architects or anything. I just knew that I thought it would be cool to design buildings of any kind really. I think as a child I first was thinking about houses because that's the thing you know so well, is where you live and your space for your family. Since you know it intimately I think it's where a lot of kids start, is thinking about how to design a place to live. I always wanted to, but I didn't have examples of what other women or people of colour there were in architecture or really anyone. I wanted to be an architect and I wanted to be a ballerina. Those were the only two career paths that I remember (laughter) being interested in when I was a kid and I think ballerina is pretty common, but maybe architecture not so much. I don't know, it is kind of funny. (Laughs)

AD: I mean I'll make my assumptions about you after I get to know you better. But I'm already starting to think that you look at the world in a way that deconstructs it and wants to make it better.

CR: My mom was basically a social worker. She had a lot of different positions where she would get people into job trainings and things like that. My mom is from Mexico and so I'm half Mexican and half Black. Because my mom was such a good person in all of her work and all of her career was about helping other people, those are my values, too. I want to help people.

But I didn't want to do it as a social worker, I remember my mom getting a lot of calls throughout the day from people asking for different kinds of help, not through a program, but because they had heard that this woman, Maria Solano, she spoke Spanish, she was Mexican, and she could help you. So, her name was passed around I think through communities and a lot of people would just call her and say I need help with this thing, can you help me. And she would find someone to help them.

AD: That's really wonderful. (Laughter).

CR: She is. She's a really great lady. I feel very much like I try and help people now in all the ways that I can. Doing it through architecture is really important, to be able to use the skills that I've learned to do that similar work.

AD: I totally agree, and not only is it cool to build buildings, that was a correct assumption by you as a child (laughter).

CR: Yeah.

AD: It's also really important that that kind of mindset is informing our built environment, I think.

CR: Yeah.

AD: We will get into that, but it sounds like you had a really great mom. Being the middle child, did that yield any sort of angst or invisibility or growing pains in your teenage years? How were you expressing your creativity and curiosity then?

CR: As a family we did a lot of stuff. My dad actually is an artist, he's a painter. My brother and sister and I all have good hand drawing skills, good color coordination skills, good composition skills I think, naturally. As kids, yes, we did a lot of art projects. 

Also I think a lot of my inspiration comes from nature and the outdoors because we also camped a lot. I think a lot of kids in Oregon, that's just something you always did, right? We drove around. We would drive all the way down to San Francisco and camp the whole way there and back. That's what we would do for our summer vacations. I feel like the places that I'm most inspired are not necessarily architectural spaces, they're usually outdoor spaces. 

I am thinking of... Folks have asked me before what is an early architectural memory that you think actually had an impact on you, and I didn't know architects, but my grandparents lived in Mount Angel which is just south of Portland and in Mount Angel is the Mount Angel Abbey which is a monastery. That's where the Alvar Aalto Library is, it's the only project by Aalto here in Oregon. It's a beautiful library.

As a kid I actually would go up to the monastery all the time and we would swim. They had a building that was just an auditorium. It's gone now, it's been demolished and there's a lot of new buildings out there. 

In the summers we would stay with my grandparents in Mount Angel and we would go and we'd pick strawberries in the morning because my grandparents wanted us to make sure that we knew what kind of work they had always done that got them where they were. We'd pick berries with my grandpa until maybe 1 o'clock in the afternoon or something, we'd eat lunch out there, and then he'd bring us back home and we'd head up the abbey and go swim for the rest of the afternoon. 

It was really, really fun and I remember being in that space and I remember how beautiful it was. It was sort of like a church even though it was just a swimming pool building. It was masonry and had these really beautiful, tall windows. I remember that space very much and thinking this is a cool building.

That's really the one memory as a kid that I hold onto and I can imagine maybe my being an architect did come from having these experiences in these spaces and I just don't remember the exact day when I decided or when I put two and two together, like oh yeah buildings. That is why I want to do that, because these buildings are cool.

AD: How did you find the path to studying architecture then? What route did you take?

CR: I wanted to be an architect and when I went to college I thought that's what I was going to do. I audited a class because I went to the UDUB and you had to have a portfolio and apply to the school. So, before I applied to the school I sat in on some classes to see what is the program like that I'm going to be applying to.

I don't know what classes I sat in on, but I somehow got a sense of everyone here is working on a mall or something. They're working on something that I have no interest in, and I kind of got the idea that as an architect you don't actually get to do what you want to do, it's just something that you've been paid to do. I was like that doesn't sound like that I want to do any more, so I didn't apply to the architecture school.

Instead I started studying geology. I studied physics as well just because the prerequisites were all the same, you had to take all the same classes, and physics is so interesting that I wanted to keep studying it, but I never imagined that I would go into it because it's the kind of field where I don't feel like you can make a contribution unless you're like the top 1% of minds who are actually contributing something in the sciences.

I studied that and honestly I studied geology because I really liked being in the outdoors and I had started doing some sea kayak guiding. I was taking people out on trips, on multi-day trips sea kayaking like in the San Juan Islands. People always had a lot of questions about how did this come to be, and somehow geology was a cool way for me to understand and then also be able to share all of that with people that I was working with in the outdoors. 

It was a great life, I enjoyed it a lot. Over time, after having done that for many years and also working as an outdoor ed program director and so working with kids. I don't know if they do this in a lot of places, but in Oregon in the sixth grade kids go to outdoor school. When I was a kid it was for a week. You go to outdoor school and it's basically like science camp.

AD: I did not have this as a child, so I'm fascinated.

CR: No.

AD: No, tell me all about it. (Laughs)

CR: Oh my god, it's the most fun you've ever had. You're out there. There's camps everywhere. They have different typography and different natural features, but the one that I went to when I was in sixth grade is Camp Adams and it had a river and fields and forests. You would take water samples in the river, and you would dig trenches in the soil and look at the different layers of the soil and identify them. You would all this kind of stuff.

Then you would also, oh now it's time for recreation so you get to do archery, or you get to make a necklace made of a wood cookie or do wood burning kind of things. A lot of really cool stuff and I thought it was the most fun thing I had ever done in my whole life. 

When I was in high school I went back as I so wanted to be part of it. I would stay with the sixth graders in their cabin and take them to each of their classes and that's what eventually led me into working in outdoors and then being a program director for an outdoor school up in the San Juan Islands. Those things were all connected for me, the outdoor ed and the sea kayaking stuff.

AD: Before we get to architecture. I can see how you got to sea kayaking and outdoor ed, but can you tell me what you took from it? What real lessons or experiences are still impacting you today from that time in your life?

CR: It's very much about giving someone an experience that lasts, that really sticks in your memory. Things that I think about in sea kayaking are just all of those moments of sitting on the water and not going anywhere or hearing water drip off your paddle as you're going forward. Having a space where it's just you and you're by yourself, even if there's a whole group of people around you. Those experiences are yours and I think I always bring those into spaces as well.

I'm sitting in my office right now and it's an open office like most people have now where you're just sort of sitting next one another. People don't have private offices, right? It can be loud. 

There's a few places in the building that I can go to, and it's not like sitting in a kayak by yourself, but it's like standing at the top of a stairwell where you have a view that looks out to the city in the distance. It's just a quiet place and no one else in that space, imagining what are the reasons why we want to be in these buildings. This isn't my home so I don't have this view all the time, so I really appreciate the special things about this building and how I get to use it when I'm here.

I think those are some of the things. It's just imagining how special some very small thing can be and how you can create nice moments in buildings where people can just be whoever they are [0.15.00] and really enjoy the space.

AD: I just had a really nice feeling being at the top of the stairwell looking out over the city with you, so. (Laughter)

CR: Yeah, it's a great spot!

AD: I can appreciate that. It sounds like the spots that you appreciate in nature; you somehow found a way to translate that poetry into the built landscape as well.

CR: I think that's really important.

AD: I think so, too. I think we have enough scientific evidence now to prove the point that grey structures that don't appeal to human senses, actually are damaging to humanity (laughs).

CR: Right. They break your spirit down a little bit, right?

AD: They do, and demoralize you.

CR: Yeah.

AD: So how did you go from sea kayaking and outdoor ed to architecture?

CR: I had been doing sea kayaking for a long time and I'd actually gone on a trip with Outward Bound because my dream at the time was winters in Mexico and summers in Alaska, just being on the water most of the days of the year. 

I had gone on training trip and I think I hadn't been with a really big group in a while, but just this big group of people all putting their stuff together on the beach. Just sleeping bags rolling around and just stuff everywhere and the chaos of starting a trip. 

I thought to myself, this is the time, right? Because I was 30 when I decided to go back to architecture school, but I thought this is the time where you have to make this decision. Are you going to do this because it's going to be too late to go back to school? You're not going to want to do it. You either go back to school and study architecture or you dive deep again into the outdoor guiding world. I had been thinking about architecture the whole time. Thinking I still am interested, I still want to do it. 

After that trip I decided okay, well let's see where we can go to school without reworking your entire life. See what programs are out there. So, I decided to take a job on the East Coast, sea kayak guiding, and I did it intentionally because I was like when the season is over I'm going to go down to Boston and I'm going to check out a bunch of schools.

So, I did. I checked out a bunch of schools and I looked around and I found a school that was like, okay this is based on an apprenticeship model so you're supposed to work in architecture the whole time you're in school. I was like, that sounds like what I want to be doing. I'm 30, I don't want to start over and just be in school with a lot of folks who are way younger than me. I want something that feels a little more comfortable.

After that season of guiding was over I just moved to Boston and started school and found an apartment. I just decided to do it. I went to the East Coast on purpose and I just decided now is the time. I'm not going to do that garage sale on the beach again with a million kayakers (laughter). I've done that too many times. Now I'll just go back to enjoying kayaking and I'm going to take another path. Really that's how I decided. 

AD: You sound adventurous.

CR: I do like adventure. I do.

AD: I also think it's really, astute at 30 to know yourself well enough to know that an apprentice program was going to be way better than getting into the hypothetical shopping mall building of a different program.

CR: Yeah, and I was really excited about that. I was excited about studio culture and being really creative, but at 30 I also wanted to say is this really for me because I looked into it before and I thought maybe it wasn't. 

Now it's going to be important for me to actually see what working in an office is like. What do people really do outside of the studio? The idealized and theoretical while you're in school. What do people really do. 

AD: Apparently that worked out for you, because here you are [0.20.00]. (Laughs)

CR: Yeah, I loved it. (Laughter) I thought it was awesome.

AD: Talk to me about what your early experiences were that really clicked for you, and also when you started to feel your creative agency kick in in terms of really thinking you could have an impact on the built world.

CR: The first jobs that I had were very much like everyone's, they were production. My first job was at a firm that was four people; I was one of the four people. It was two people who were in school. My friend and I were going to the same school and then a principal and then another senior architect. 

I think starting off at a firm like that where there was only four people, meant that we could do everything. We got the opportunity to do everything because there wasn't anyone else who was going to do it. It was a lot of production, but there was also design and there was everything that you do in this whole process. 

It was even we stayed up all night before deadlines and worked through the night to get a set out, and it was just the four of us. I think I just learned so much in that first job that right away I was really excited about it. I think folks who maybe start their first position in a bigger firm very quickly get put on the same kind of work over and over again, or have the same task on different projects over and over again because that's really easy to do.

But in a small firm you do so many things that you actually are able to find what you like doing and what you don't like doing much quicker I think. From even my first position I was really excited to be in the office every day. I would walk to the office across the bridge, it was in Fort Point Channel and I was just so excited every day going there. I had so much energy for it and it was really fun.

It's a really hard program because you're working, but then you're also in studio and taking classes the whole time also. You really have really long days where you've already stayed up all night working on something for studio and then you're still coming in to work the next day and working through. 

That program actually has a 95% attrition rate. There's very few people who will put up with that amount of work because there are plenty of programs where you don't have to work, you're just in studio, that's what you're focusing on.

But I really liked doing both. It was good for me at the age that I was coming into grad school. I could still make money and pay for school because I was working; I wasn't just going to school. I think that was also a really big draw. 

AD: It sounds to me like the energy that you brought to it because it was exciting to you, it sounds to me like having that macro overview of the architectural process and not getting stuck into a repetitive task was really important to also... 

I always tell my students it's so important not only to know what you're good at, but to know what you're not good at or what you don't like because you need to have all of that information in order to design the career that works for you.

CR: That's so important.

AD: And to collaborate with people that are going to play to their strengths which might be your weaknesses which is ideal. (Laughs)

CR: Absolutely. It's so important. I think change is good, I think it's exciting and fun. After that first position that I had in architecture, Boston is a big town and they actually had sort of an architecture temp agency. I decided I know the kind of work that we do here. We'd done some higher ed work, we'd done some master planning for the New England Aquarium, a lot of really diverse projects that I thought were great. But I also wanted to understand what it was like to work in a bigger firm or a firm that did much different kinds of work.

I then worked at three other firms while I was in Boston just to see what they were like. I did it because I wanted the change and I wanted the experience and I wanted to know what am I looking for in a position, what kind of office culture works for me. Working at some other firms was really great because the office culture was very different, especially from four people to like 120 people at another firm that I worked at.

Things were really different, but I could understand how people really fit into the culture of the office and made a place for themselves. I think that really helped me because I was then going into my career. That was my first few jobs in the first few years of architecture school. I was really going [0.25.00] into it knowing what I did and didn't like, just like you said. Like what are the things that are going to work for me.

I decided four people was too small. People have big personalities (laughs) and working with the same three people every single day, that's too hard. Architecture can be stressful and I think that's hard on a really small team. Then 120 people was too big. I don't even recognize half the faces, I only recognize the people who are on my floor so that's too big. What's the right number? What do I feel good at? 

I feel good in sort of the mid-size now. There's enough people so that there's a lot of variety, you get to work with lots of different kinds of people on different projects, and to me that's really important because I do really like change and I like having an experience in lots of different things.

AD: In multiple perspectives, also it's just so enriching.

CR: Yeah, absolutely. You learn so much from everyone that you work with, right?

AD: Yes.

CR: Even now it's like we reach out all the time and ask each other have you done this kind of detail before, or have you used this product before, and we all share knowledge. That's how it goes.

AD: That's why I started a podcast where I get to talk to people like you and ask all the questions I want to ask. (Laughter)

CR: Yeah, it's fun! 

AD: That was a really important step for you to understand what culture and what work environment was going to suit you, but are you also at this point in your career deciding what your values and goals are in terms of what you'll do with your career?

CR: I definitely looked at what were the types of projects other firms were doing. The ones that I worked for in Boston were doing a lot of higher education, so a lot of university work. Then some cultural institutions which I felt those were really exciting because what I was starting to find was that I wasn't as excited as I was about designing a house, like a really beautiful house as I imagined when I was kid. I was like who gets to see that house? It's just these family members, maybe it's 10 people who are regularly in that space.

I really want to design spaces where there's going to be a lot of people in there, so they really work for a lot of different kinds of people. I really started thinking about that. What are the projects that get the most people in the door? And those are libraries and museums and schools and all kind of cultural institutions. So, I always was thinking about that as what I wanted to do.

When I came to Portland I started doing some commercial stuff that was developer-driven and again, that's because it was new to me, I hadn't done that when I was in Boston. It was really interesting, projects would go really fast and you can make much more modern things than you were allowed to make at some of the universities, especially on the East Coast because they're very old and everything is supposed to meld with the historic buildings all around it.

Sometimes you couldn't break out too far from it, but with commercial developer-driven projects then you could. I thought that was really exciting. I think I did that for a while as I came back into Portland and eventually ended up at all of the firms I was here, Hennebery Eddy, and Hacker, and Works Partnership, and started to be able to work a little bit more on those spaces again that lots of people get to be in. 

I think that's the most exciting, something where I can take my mom and my family on a tour of and say, look this is my new project that just finished and it's not someone's private house that I have to arrange a tour of, but it's a space that we can all go and enjoy. Those are the things that I really like, still. I developed that, I figured that out for myself pretty early on that that's what I wanted to do.

AD: It sounds like that's also kind of connected to your kayaking experience in that you wanted all of your guests to have a memorable experience.

CR: Yes.

AD: Same thing with these buildings. You can design a home where the family will have a very memorable life there, which is great, not in any way denigrating that. But these public buildings or these cultural institutions for sure have the ability to impact the nature of the city, the personality of the city, and all of the inhabitants [0.30.00] of the city in a much broader way.

CR: Absolutely. That's really important.

AD: That sounds like that was your jam. (Laughs).

CR: That's what's really exciting is because as a kid I would take the bus down town and I was doing all the free stuff, right. I wasn't paying to go in anywhere. When my mom would bring us down we would go to the museum, the Portland Art Museum. But for the most part we would come down and we would just be at Keller Fountain and at Powell's and at a place where we could buy a drink and sit there for a while.

I think that I always really like spaces that anyone can go into that are really open, because that's what I did as a kid and that's how I learned a lot. That was really exciting to me, to have a city life where as a young person you could feel safe and have lots of places to go. It wasn't just that you had to pay to go into anything. It was different back then. It was the '80s when it was fine for kids to be down town and hang out by themselves.

AD: I mean I guess (laughter) either we didn't get kidnapped, or people didn't worry that we were going to get kidnapped as much. (Laughter)

CR: Exactly. I don't know which one it was, but we're all still here. We all survived it.

AD: But I do think it's an important baseline value to have a city that everyone can participate in, that everyone can have access to, including children of all ages. It should feel like theirs.

CR: Absolutely, and it does because I spend all that time as a kid. Portland definitely still feels like my home town even though it has grown a lot. It still is very comfortable and I love it and I compare all other places to it. 

When I was in Boston I was like this city is awesome, there's so much to do, there's so many cultural institutions, so many museums, I've seen so much art and heard so many great lectures here, but the weather is terrible and (laughter) the people are not nice and it's really dirty, it's so dirty. (Laughter) It's always like do people not know that there are places where it doesn't get to 0 degrees and 100 degrees all the time? Things are changing everywhere, but... 

I don't know, it was how strange it was that people would live in such extreme places when there's a perfectly nice, very temperate place like Portland. So, I knew I wanted to come back at some point. That's also why I went to school on the East Coast because I was like well, I'm eventually just going to move back to Portland and stay because that's where my family is, and because it's a great city.

AD: I read it somewhere in your career, maybe in the early part of your career you led the construction of the largest massed timber building in the U.S.?

CR: Yeah. That was a really great project. Just before coming to LEVER I was at Hacker Architects and I came in and worked on a new office building for First Tech Credit Union out in Hillsboro and it's 156,000 square feet and it's glulam and CLT. It's not the tallest, but it's the largest building by area in the country that's those mass timber products. It's really cool.

AD: So, glulam and CLT is very exciting I feel like, in the world of building without steel and concrete. Can you just tell our listeners super basic what glulam and CLT is?

CR: Yeah, it's what we call mass timber, it means that it's wood, but it's not just a 2x4. That's small, it's narrow, it's flat. Mass timber has some depth to it. When we're talking about glulam that means we're talking about glue laminated beams and columns. Individual pieces of wood are laminated together and create a structural member that's really strong.

Glu-lams have been used for a very long time and what you'll see in historic buildings is a beam or a column, it's actually just made from a tree. We're not doing that any more, we're not cutting down an old growth tree to get one giant timber out of it. Instead we're using smaller diameter wood to make these, using technology right, because you're laminating them. 

Then CLT, that's cross laminated timber. That's a flat panel that again, is made from smaller pieces that are laminated together in different directions. That you can use as floors and walls.

AD: What that gives you also, I know a little bit about it, is dimensional stability as well because when you cross laminate the grain, you don't get expansion and contraction.

CR: Exactly, the dimensions are more stable and stiffer because the CLT is like there's one layer going one direction, the next layer changes and it goes back and forth. 

AD: Historically you could only build of a certain size with solid wood timber framing.

CR: That's right.

AD: But with this CLT and mass timber, you can apply it to really large skyscraper-like buildings?

CR: Yes, exactly. There was, in the Oregon code before, there was a heavy timber category where there were certain fire ratings that were assigned to it and certain things you could do with it in terms of number of stories and height of building etc. because the size of the timber, if you imagine a fire, it sort of burns the outer layer, but it gets stable at some point, right? And everything that's left in there is still supporting the structure, so it's allowed to have a layer of char on it.

It's the same thing with this new mass timber that's laminated instead. There's a certain amount of char that's allowed on those. People have been working very hard to get all of the testing done so that there are new rules in place that allow you to build much taller. 

But if you aren't doing the tallest-tallest, you can expose a little bit more of the wood, which is always what we want to do. If we're using this wood that's really beautiful, we want to see it. So,like here in our office actually this building, Albina Yard, is the first building in the country that was made with domestically produced CLT. That means that it was made here in the country and in fact it was made here in Oregon.

Lever is all about innovation and working with what great things people are doing locally and that was one of them. Knowing that DR Johnson was making CLT, they just weren't making a lot of it, and working with them to figure out how they can ramp up their operations to make enough for an entire building was really the key to getting this project realized.

If you look in our space, what you see when you look up, is all of the exposed glulams and the exposed CLT. It's very woody and warm in here and it's really beautiful. The windows are really tall, they're all wrapped in wood, and it just makes a really nice space where you're not just looking at a white ceiling with florescent lights or something. Instead, things are wood and you can touch them and they're nice and soft. It really does make a nicer space to spend time in.

AD: Leading the construction of that building must have been incredibly educational for you, but also I'm sure you had led other projects before, but I guess I'm interested in how you found and got your leadership skills dialled in.

CR: Leading the construction on that project, I came in when it was probably at the end of DD or something, so we're going into construction documents. I was on that project all the way through documentation and all the way through construction. I was the one who was on the job site four days a week or something, talking to people and making sure that we were getting our design intent right, solving any problems and things like that. 

CA or construction administration is really an important part of what we do and technically it's construction observation. We just are on site and we're seeing what's happening on site and making sure that things are being built as we expect them to be, or fixing anything that's going to make something look different and feel once the project is done.

I think that when you have good CA experiences, that is where you get leadership skills because people are looking to you for a solution. They're like this thing and this thing don't quite line up any more because of some existing condition that we didn't know about, so how are we going to change that, what is the solution. It's drawing through some detail that is new that wasn't in the set because you're solving a different kind of problem, but it's also working with the general contractor who is in charge of everyone, all the way down to working individually with the electricians who are running all the conduit under the floor. 

It's about relationships honestly, because going onto a job site and having people know who you are and know your name, and in a good way. Not that you're the mean person who yells at them, but instead you just chat with them and then they tell you what's going on. Then they just ask you a question about something that you can answer right away. 

I think that gives you a lot of confidence and it allows you to grow as a leader, when you know that you can create a relationship with someone and then together sort of find the solutions to things. It really takes a lot of the stress out of the job and is really important for just moving forward, every next project.

It was really different in Boston. In Boston, contractors and architects have a really contentious relationship and it's really a lot of finger pointing whose fault is this and who did this. Oh, it's your fault because you didn't show it in the drawings, or the architect says it's your fault because this is what I showed in the drawings and you actually did something different, or something like that.

It was very stressful. I don't think I learned how to be a leader there. I learned how to maybe look really mean and mad (laughter). Like just put a really stoic face on, knowing that as you walk through the job site it's just going to be very stressful. 

That was very different in Portland. I was able to just be myself on those jobs and say tell me more about this because mechanical is really not my forte and I don't understand what you're saying. So, tell me again, what's the problem with this thing? And really making people slow down. 

I think when people know that you listen to them, then it allows you to lead things a lot smoother, they don't think they're being ignored or railroaded or whatever.

AD: Or accused.

CR: Yeah.

AD: Also when you indicate to them that you're joining in on the problem solving, you understand that this happened because things happen, so let's put our heads together, let me understand it from your perspective. I can share my perspective so we can figure out what the mutual solution is. It works so well!

CR: It does. (Laughs)

AD: People, when they don't put up their defensive walls you get a lot of shit done. (Laughter)

CR: You really do. You just move right to the solution.

AD: Yes!

CR: Let's just figure this out. Okay, I get what happened. There's no point in us talking about whose fault it is. We know who ordered the piece of steel or whatever (laughs). Let's just figure out how to solve the problem and try not to have to replace the thing entirely. (Laughter)

It is. If you don't have that skill then I think your life is just more stressful. We're at work so much of the day, I don't want that whole 10 hour period or whatever it is, to be full of stress. I'd rather just be like, okay yep, that's a big problem, let's figure out how to solve it because that's literally our whole job.

AD: (Laughs) Right.

CR: We're done trying. (Laughs)

AD: I don't want to waste any of my energy on the other shit.

CR: Nope!

AD: Okay, so now you're a big deal. (Laughter)

CR: I love it!

AD: Yes! You're Principal at LEVER.

CR: Yes.

AD: Lever Architecture in Portland, and you're the Design Commissioner of the City of Portland.

CR: Yes.

AD: I want to talk about each of those things. What is your current role and mission as a Principal at LEVER?

CR: Having Principal at LEVER is really new and it's very exciting for me. I'm thrilled, I'm so happy. I'm really excited because I think LEVER has been such a great fit for me, so to get to be a Principal here really means a lot. I have come a long way in my career to get to this point where I can lead a lot and I have a lot to bring to the firm that maybe we weren't focusing on as much before. I feel really proud of all of that.

AD: What is that? What are you bringing?

CR: Well, I'm really focused on community. Yes, before I got here we had done affordable housing and I think folks were really interested. But I think because I have connections with a lot of people in the city and I already know the whole social work thing.

My mom being a social worker and me being involved in a lot of community organizations [0.45.00] helping people was a way for me to come into LEVER and say okay, how about we volunteer with this group that I have been volunteering with before and get people involved in that. Then how about we chase these kinds of projects because they're really exciting. 

When I started out, there's an interesting thing that happens in Portland that doesn't happen in other cities where people are loaned out from firm to firm. Sometimes a project might go on hold or something and you don't want to hire and fire people, you want to keep those same folks. But you might call someone else at another firm and say are you really busy, do you need someone for two months or something like that to get through a project.

People are kind of loaned back and forth. I think it's really fun because I really like change and I was like oh yes, this project isn't starting right now. I was at Hacker at the time and I came to LEVER for a few months to work on a project.

When I first got here I was a temporary employee and I was doing production and design on one of the big projects in the office and really helping out the team. I really liked it and I wanted to stay and I thought it was a great firm. I loved Hacker so much and it really was a hard decision to make, but I think that LEVER was such a good fit for me and I could tell that there was room to grow because it was a smaller firm. 

When I first started I was part of a big team and then I immediately was given the Meyer Memorial Trust project to work on and I feel like that really opened up my world a lot because the folks at Meyer are connected to everything. I made a lot of friends and a lot of connections that eventually have been helping me do business development where I'm able to connect with people because I know someone that they know.

That has been a huge help in my growth and being able to do more things, because after being an architect and yes design, yes construction, my next thing was really oh I want to get jobs now. I want to go after the kind of work that I want to do, so how do I do that. Talking to Thomas, he was like oh yeah, you want to do business development, that is great, let's-

AD: Thomas is the Founder of LEVER?

CR: Thomas is the founder, yeah. He's the founding Principal and now we have myself, Jon Heppner, Doug Sheets, and Sara Martin are all new Principals and Thomas is the Founder. He started the company 11 years ago.

AD: He was into you doing business development?

CR: Yes, because there weren't any other Principals or there wasn't really a hierarchy. There wasn't really titles. It was really just Thomas is the Principal and then here's the whole design team and everyone works really collaboratively. Having that kind of structure also meant that the only person who was doing business development was Thomas; everyone else was on projects all the time.

He was really supportive and said yeah, if you want to do business development, let's. I'll tell you all the things I know, Sara will help you. Sara is our Director of Development and our Marketing Co-ordinator. She really helped me kind of get into it and understand how she looks for leads and how she reaches out to people.

Here, for the first time, I was really able to do that. Those other firms were really well-established, older, already had six Principals at the top, plus Associate Principals, plus Associates. When places have so many people who are already in leadership positions, it's really hard for someone younger to get in there.

AD: Yeah, makes sense. 

CR: I knew that wasn't going to happen for me at other firms. At LEVER I was like, oh everyone here is really open, wants to grow, and this really is an opportunity for me. Also running projects, but do business development and especially work on this Meyer Memorial Trust project which was really important.

AD: Yes, and we are going to get into that because I want to hear all about it. But I also want to touch on the fact that you're Design Commissioner of the City of Portland. What does that mean? It sounds like a really big deal and comes with a special hat or something. (Laugher)

CR: No hat, unfortunately. There's actually seven Design Commissioners, we're a Commission. There are seven folks on there and they need to be folks who are architects, who are developers, who are landscape architects. People play different roles depending on their experience. Between the seven of us, we have this really great breadth of experience and different perspectives.

What we do is we review projects that are in what we call the 'D overlay', the design overlay. The zoning code, there are all these maps that show you what areas are in the design overlay. Those are areas that are important corridors, obviously downtown, main neighborhood connectors where there's a lot of retail, a lot of commercial space. Then also in some smaller neighborhoods.

The intent there is to make sure that the projects that are being built are meeting very specific guidelines. Those guidelines have to do with things that are a little bit subjective like quality and permanence, so you're talking about materials of the building. That also includes design cohesiveness, is there a concept that you can understand or is it chaos or something. 

Also all of these guidelines are related to the public realm and how you're protecting pedestrians, how you're treating the streetscape, how you're treating the ground floor in ways that make the street active and feel safe.

There's really a lot of different things that we are looking at. One of the biggest ones then is context. Those are the three tenets of design are context, quality and permanence, and public realm and several guidelines within each of those. Context then is about how does the building fit into the neighborhood, how is it serving that neighborhood.

A lot of these things are about the community and how impacts the streetscape, does it leave any room for people to have a bench to sit down, or is it a blank wall so that there's no eyes on the street and people don't feel safe walking in front of it. All of these different kinds of things are what we're looking at when we look at projects.

There's already a planner at the City who has gone through the whole project with the design team and it's this last part of the land use process where they come and present the project to us. The really incredible part about it is that it's a public process, so the members of the public are invited to come and speak about any of those three tenets of design. 

If they have anything to say about the project, good or bad, they're all given time, it's on the record, and it's part of this big public hearing so that anyone who is interested gets to share about the project, but they also just get to be informed and hear about it. There's postings that go up all over the neighborhood so that people are able to join. 

We've been doing these virtually for the last year and a half or whatever. That's actually allowed more people to get involved than had been before because otherwise you've got to get downtown to the hearings around a certain time on Thursdays and maybe you have to work, or maybe you're in school or something and you can't join. A lot of other folks have been able to join because they could just pop in virtually and not have to stay for the whole meeting.

That is really important work to do. You're really looking at every building that you get to review in the City, and assessing how it responds to the context and how it treats the public realm. Those things are incredibly important to making a city that feels safe and comfortable and that is still vibrant, and that people can still feel like it's home. It hasn't entirely changed.

AD: You also get first-person input from community members. I'm sure it's important for each project, but it also gives you an ongoing working pulse knowledge of what the community is needing, what they're lacking, what their concerns are. When you're attuned to the [0.55.00] community like that, I'm sure if community engagement is one of your core values for the work that you're doing, it just helps you even serve the community better.

CR: It does. It absolutely does, but I think the problem is that there's still people that have been kept out of that process in the past. I think because they didn't know it was happening maybe in the past those notices were not sent to renters because they used to just be sent to homeowners which doesn't make any sense.

AD: Gotcha.

CR: I'm a renter, why wouldn't I get a notice? Some of those things have changed so that more people are getting access to these, but to be honest every time they've been in person I've seen very few people of color. Often the folks that get involved have a neighborhood association or something that they're involved in that's keeping them up to speed on what's happening in the neighborhood and that's how they're connecting.

Also what I've been doing with the other groups that I work with and that LEVER works with, is I've been making sure that every student in those groups knows all about Design Commission and knows that they can come to the hearings because they're open to the public, and that if it's near their house and they have something to say about it they should come. They should bring their mom. 

Just trying to get other people involved so that the faces that I see talking about a project are actually representing that neighborhood and aren't just people who are interested in all development across the City, so that we're actually getting community members. That's a hurdle that we haven't figured out for Design Commission yet.

It happens when we do individual projects because we know that we have to get out into the community, but this is City-wide, so how do we get more people from each of those neighborhoods actually involved. I think right now it's because they don't know that they can get involved. 

There's people who are nervous. If you come into a big hearings room and there's a bunch of people sitting in big chairs and at a dais and you have to come up and speak out loud at a microphone, that's pretty intimidating.

AD: Absolutely. Especially if you're not aware of what goes on at those meetings, or aware that what you have to say is going to be heard and valued.

CR: Exactly. Right.

AD: Ongoing hurdle, but I'm glad that you're working on it and making progress. I can kind of see how community engagement and doing the work you're doing at LEVER, plus being on the Design Commission, is your way of giving back to the City which you said at the top of the interview.

You're giving back in multiple ways using the skills that you have and the connections and the relationship building that you have been doing. That's all part of your creative process, but I want to get even more granular into your creative process because in doing some reading about your projects I'm just fascinated.

You mentioned the Meyer Memorial Trust HQ in Lower Albina. Can you tell me about that project and about your creative process as you describe that project?

CR: The project is really incredible because it's Meyer Memorial Trust. Their mission is really to help create a flourishing and equitable Oregon, so they really focus just on Oregon and providing grants to different organizations that are doing all kinds of work in education and diversity, equity, and inclusion, in innovation and in sustainability.

They're already doing all of this incredible work and so they wanted a new headquarters that would really embody their mission and their values. Their previous space was up on the fourth floor of a building in the Pearl District. It's downtown, a really nice area, but they had no street presence and the space wasn't great for them.

It was mostly about the fact that they weren't actually connected to the communities that they were serving and so they really wanted to be in Lower Albina, they wanted to be places where they were closer to the grantees.

Then also there's a lot of work going into thinking about ways to revitalize Albina and the black neighborhoods that were displaced, and how to bring people back. One of the things Meyer wanted to do was be part of that homecoming and be in that neighborhood so that they could know what was happening and be able to continue to support.

Part of the design process was really starting there and thinking about how the building could really be a connection to the community and how it could embody all of their values about sustainability and about equity and about connecting people to nature.

Really our process as a whole, is starting off with the client and developing a set of design principles that we use to look back at the design as it progresses and say is it still doing this, is it still meeting these goals, can it do it better, but to never lose sight of what those first thoughts were at the beginning of the project and what the client wants to get out of it.

That's very much what Meyer is about, it really does embody those. The design principles for Meyer were equity and not just about the folks and how they get to use the space inside. But about who was building the project, who was designing the project, who was managing the project. That's really part of why it was such a great fit for me because as a woman of color, The AIA is our professional organization, the American Institute of Architects. Not everyone is an AIA member, it's not required. It's a professional organization, but they do keep stats on everything, salaries, professional development. 

Some of the stats they keep are the diversity or lack of diversity in the industry and in Oregon there are four people who identify as black who are architects in the AIA. Four in all of Oregon. It's crazy.

AD: Not 4%. Four.

CR: No, four individual people and I am one of them. Two are men and two are women. I am one of two women who identify as black who are part of the AIA here in Oregon. It's not to say there are not other black designers, but they're not listed. They're not part of the AIA because either A, they haven't completed their licensure so they haven't gotten to that level, or they just chose not to be counted.

An interesting thing when I was first moving from Associate AIA when you aren't licensed, to actual AIA when you are licensed, I had listed myself as two or more races because like I said I'm half Mexican and that's really who I am. But when I saw that there were two men and one woman who listed themselves as black on the register and there were maybe like eight Latina women. 

I was like for representation I think it's important for me that I decide that I'm black for the AIA because we are out here, but we're not very visible for some reason and I think visibility is really important and it's something I've been working really hard on. 

Making sure that people know that I'm out here, they know who I am, where I came from, and what I'm doing so that if there are young people who are interested in being an architect they can say oh, yes I did see a black woman who is an architect and they can recognize that that's something they can do. It's hard to know you can do something if you don't see yourself out there. 

CR: That was great for me to be on Meyer because there are so few women of color who are architects in Oregon. To get to work on a project where we're working with Meyer Memorial Trust, we're working with Project and the developer from Project was Anya Layhalva and she's a woman of color and then the CEO of Meyer is a woman of color. 

To start off the project as here's the team, here's the architect, here's the developer, here's the client, and we're all women of color, that's very unusual.

AD: Yes.

CR: So, it's really exciting to get to be there. Then as we put the team together, the contractor that was chosen was O'Neill/Walsh Community Builders and the two women who head up that company also were the project managers on this, so that was Afton Walsh and Ali O'Neill. 

We would have meetings here at the LEVER offices in our big conference room and it would be all women, and half of those, women of color. It was like whoa, this is really cool. I've never had this experience before; I've never been on a project where all the leadership were women and women of color.

I was very excited from the beginning to get to work on this project with them and partner with them and imagine how great the whole thing was going to be because it was all of these women! [1.05.00] (Laughter)

AD: Yes! As a female who has done a fair amount of construction myself, I just want to be in that room with you. That's so amazing and maybe I'm idealizing it, but it sounds like it went pretty well. The idea of women supporting each other, but also because you all recognized that it's a rarity, this magical combination is a rarity. Not only are you rare in your field, but to have this collaborative team of this make up is super rare. 

CR: It really was.

AD: Needs to be less rare.

CR: It absolutely does, but I think that we all have that power. You can put your team together however you want. You can hire more women, you can hire more people of color, and that way you will have these kind of teams that really empower people and make people excited about what the future of architecture can be in terms of who is actually in charge of it, who is actually designing, who is running the projects.

This really came because Meyer wanted it. They said that equity is really important, we want to see a lot of people of color and a lot of women in the design team, but also in the field, the builders. The contractor did a lot of work to get as many minority and women-owned emerging small businesses as we could on the project.

We did the same with our consultants. Our civil engineer is a women-owned firm, and our co-consultant is a minority-owned firm. It was harder with some of the other scopes to get that, but we've since figured it out so that now on projects we have more people to choose from who we work with so that we can get more minority and women-owned firms as consultants on our projects.

There is a lot of work that the contractor did in getting the actual builders, all the sub-contractors onboard and making sure that they were reaching out to different places and encouraging people to bid on the project, even if they thought they might not bid on the project. 

One way they did that that I think is incredible is by what we call stretch opportunities. For some scopes of work we hired folks who may not have worked at that scale before. Maybe they'd done much smaller buildings or maybe they had never worked at that level of finish before.

For instance there's a case where it was all this Doug Fir veneer and maybe they hadn't worked with that much wood before, they hadn't done that level of sanding and detailing and all that kind of stuff. But the point was with the stretch opportunities in different scopes was to say that maybe you haven't done this before, but you can do it and if you're given this opportunity, that might mean that in the future you can then bid on other projects that are bigger or a higher level of finish and be successful because you've been given this opportunity. People get boxed out, bigger companies, there's economies of scale, they can do things cheaper than a smaller company can do often times, or they have access to different resources. It means that those smaller firms are not always successful when they bid on something.

Our hope was that we're helping lift people up by saying, no no, you can do this job. I know you haven't done it before, but you can do it. Making sure to give people the support that they needed so that we were helping them succeed and not setting them up to fail on something because they hadn't done it before. 

That's a really incredible thing that anyone can do on a job. You can just pick one small sub and say, I know you haven't done this before, but let's bring you up. You don't have to... Meyer, we did absolutely everything possible. There were minority and women-owned businesses running 80% of the scope on the project.

Not every project is going to be able to do it because not every client is Meyer Memorial Trust who that is one of their values, so they're willing to go on this path with us to say this is what we're doing and these are the highest numbers we can get for participation. You might not be able to do that on all of your projects, but you can absolutely do some of it. 

AD: Yes and something is better than nothing.

CR: You just start small, and then you're like oh great, that was successful. Now let's do it for three sub-contractors instead of one. Let's figure out how to grow it every time.

AD: Not only that, but that one sub that you gave a stretch [1.10.00] opportunity that one time has been able to now start their own firm and train other people and it's just rippling out exponentially.

CR: Part of that is relationships. We've created this relationship with these folks and I need to check back and call them and say did you get any more jobs out of this, did this do what we were hoping it did by giving you this piece in your portfolio that you didn't have before. Now people look at it and they can hire you for other things. That's what the intent is, but we have to get the proof to know if we're doing it right, if that's the thing that is actually working. It sounds very logical, like it would totally work; we just need to hear back from folks. Meyer was just completed in the fall last year, so we haven't quite gotten to that point of in a year I was going to do one-year check ins and be like has anything changed for you. 

It's more effort on our part, we're putting in more time to do this, but it's important to us, it's important to LEVER, it's important to me. I think we're all really excited that we've found a way to do something, and do something that we think is actually going to make a real difference.

AD: I'm sure that you're very interested to hear how things turn out at that one-year check in. I'm also really curious. It's really obvious how the value of equity was addressed in the approach of the design and the construction of the project. What are some of the physical or aesthetic or structural manifestations of the value of equity?

CR: Here's another one that's related back to the contractor. The building itself is part mass timber and part traditional stick frame, and the mass timber in this instance is mass plywood which is a very new product and it's only made here in Oregon by one company. 

Mass plywood has been used mostly in stairs or in projects where it actually gets covered up by finish. In the Meyer Memorial Trust project it's the first time that the plywood is being used in a celebratory way because it's in the premier space, it's in their convening space which is the big event space. We used it as structural emollients on the curtain wall, we used it as the beams and columns and as the roof deck.

We do love mass timber and we love innovation. We love things that are new and making them better, working through details and what's the next evolution of the technology of this. 

We're really excited about mass plywood, but the reason why we didn't do the whole building as mass timber was because we wanted to make sure that we were still going to be able to get smaller subs, minority and women-owned and smaller subs to work on the project even if they hadn't had experience in mass timber and maybe weren't going to bid on it because they were concerned that they hadn't done it.

We decided to keep the mass plywood and mass timber for part of the building, and then use traditional stick framing and then traditional gyp ceilings, the white ceilings that you see in a typical office space in the rest of the building. That was really so that people could still do something familiar and perform well on it, but also be part of a project that had this innovative technology and material in it. 

It's another way to open another door for all of these builders on the project to say yes, now you have worked on a project that is mass timber. 

You get really fussy about where the conduit is and where the lights are and every little piece of equipment that is on the ceiling because you are trying to keep it really clean because there's nothing hidden. We didn't want to go through that process with folks who are new to the technology because it can take more time.

Instead we said, okay here's what we're going to do. We're thinking about it in a different way and we're making this sort of convening space, this beautiful, expressive space. Then the rest of the building is a little bit more traditional, but is still incredibly vibrant because of all of the art and murals and colors and textures that are in it.

Thinking about equity there and then thinking about the interior spaces. There are offices, private offices, and small conference rooms, those are all the same size, but the small conference rooms are on the corners of the building so they have the most windows and the most light. The intent there is to say that those are the spaces that everyone uses so we're not going to put executives in the corner office, they get moved in. Then there are so many amenity spaces that again are for everyone to use. There's a really big, beautiful lunch room and a roof deck and a mission library and these are all spaces that staff can use to work in an alternate location and just have more amenity space. It's not just your desk.

In thinking about how we set up the building, there's a core in the middle that is all the active uses and then there are these quiet zones which are the neighborhood open office pods. Then on either side of those there's often an office or something. 

All of those are pretty shallow spaces, just two people deep and that way all of the light gets in all the way to that second person's desk. You make something too deep and people don't have equal access to daylight actually on their surfaces. 

There are just views everywhere through this building. Part of the equity was giving everyone that equal access to daylight and views, and operable windows. All of these spaces are great.

Another thing that we did was we made all of the restrooms on the upper office floors ADA sized because we wanted them to be equal so that everyone has the same experience of using a bathroom. Just because you use a mobility device, doesn't mean your bathroom has to be different in any way except the grab bars. The size, the proportions are all the same for all of the bathrooms. I think that's really important to give everyone the same experience.

Then thinking about all of the seating in the building, Cecily who is our Director of Interiors, she went through a really long process talking with everyone about their work spaces and specifically chairs and brought them maybe like 15 chairs to try out to have people test out what was comfortable. 

Usually you don't bring that many chairs, but the whole point was that we needed to find chairs that fit people with different size bodies. If you have a bigger body maybe you don't want a chair with arms because it's too pinchy. I don't want a chair with arms. I don't like to squeeze into things. But maybe if you have limited mobility you want a chair with arms because it's easier to push yourself up out of the chair.

Deciding on that was specifically so that we could make sure that there was a chair or some kind of seating arrangement in every space that was comfortable for everyone. Not every person got their own chair, but there's a mix of seating in all of those.

We also made the kitchen extra big. There's probably 5.5 ft between one counter and the island and the intent there was that if I'm in a mobility device, someone who is not can still pass behind me and work really comfortably and there's no need for someone to have to wait to use it because there's not room for them to use it. There's lots of spaces that accommodate people, but it means that someone else can't be using while you're in there and that's uncomfortable.

AD: Yeah, it's socially very uncomfortable.

CR: This really levels it all out and says there's room for all of us to be here, altogether, at any time, and all the spaces are the same. Really part of that is universal design, thinking about the same experience for everyone.

We really did think about all of these spaces in the building and how we can make sure that they didn't have to be adapted to be used by everyone, but they were already designed well so that it felt very easy for everyone to be in the space together.

AD: I'm thinking about that big kitchen, too. With that space where somebody in a mobility device can be in there working at the same time as somebody who is not in one. That means that now they can have a shared experience in that space and a conversation. Whereas before, or in an adapted space, those kinds of interactions don't happen because of limited space.

CR: You just have to wait your turn. You're like, oh sorry, I'll be out of here in just a second because you can't all be there at the same time comfortably.

AD: So much work and so much relationship building happens in those moments that you can have shared together doing something that's not specifically work.

CR: And you spend at least eight hours of your day there, right? So, why should you have to compromise or make yourself small all the time for half of your life when you're at work. You should be comfortable. You should feel like it's designed for you. It's really important.

AD: Amen. 

CR: I'm really excited about a lot of things that we have coming up. We're working on an affordable housing project right now and it's in for permit and we're excited. We're going to go into construction next year. We had a big community engagement process around that as well, talking to people who are going to be in the spaces.

Then this Paramount project. It's not a project yet, the clients are applying for funding for it as we speak. It's a project from the Albina Vision Trust. The Albina Vision Trust is an organization that has put together a master plan for the Albina neighborhood and how to repair it and how to grow it and make it this incredible, vibrant node in the City over the next 50 years.

Albina was a neighborhood that was historically a black neighborhood, all black families and they had been pushed into these areas by redlining. Rentals and home ownership were not available to black folks outside of these areas because people simply would not rent to them or would not sell to them and there are covenants in the laws saying that you couldn't own property in other areas. These places were black neighborhoods because that is where they were pushed to. 

So, all of these then black neighborhoods eventually were sort of destroyed by the City or the State putting the free-way through. That broke things up and land was taken through imminent domain saying that this area is blighted. 

It wasn't blighted; it just was full of black people. But it was vibrant and healthy and there were neighborhoods and communities. Those neighborhoods and communities were displaced. Some folks are still in the neighborhood, many have had to move away. The Albina Vision Trust is really an effort to put back the seeds so that neighborhoods can grow again, and to invite people who used to live here, back to have a homecoming. 

They've been working on this for a while and have this really beautiful master plan of what can be and the first project is for us to build a new affordable housing tower. That is their first project in this master plan. 

That's why I'm really excited about it, because it's getting to kick off the not revitalization, but the replacement of a neighborhood where right now there's some event centers, the motor center, Memorial Colosseum, there's warehouses for buses and parking lots and things. It's not a neighborhood any more.

To create a neighborhood again is why that project is so exciting, and the reason that we're involved is because we're involved in Meyer Memorial Trust, and that is an organization that supports so many other things. Folks on that board are involved in Meyer and it's just that connection. It's very much about knowing people who are doing good work and trying to connect with them so that you can be part of that good work also.

That's how we're involved in Paramount and we hope that will start up in the fall because that will be a really exciting project. Again, it will have a really incredibly robust community engagement component because we need to hear from people, what they think about it and how they think it's going to serve the community, and I'll be thinking about all of the things I think about in Design Commission.

What is it doing for the public realm? How does it fit into the context? In this case it's future context because what's there now is not desirable if we're thinking about replacing a neighborhood that was lost, that was destroyed.

We want to get rid of the warehouse buildings and put apartment buildings in there. We want places for people to have. We want it to be a destination. There's a reason to come there even if you don't life there. I think there's a lot of work to be done, but it's really exciting because this is real stuff that impacts the City and impacts the future. Sorry, I'm pretty excited about it. (Laughs)

AD: Yeah. I'm excited for it, too. I'm going to stay tuned. That kind of leads into the next question that I wanted to ask you which is from your position as somebody who is an architect really involved with community engagement and also as Design Commissioner. 

I am wondering, in the spirit of simplifying something to give some tools to regular citizens so that they can maybe go into some of these Planning Commission meetings and have something to say. If you were to boil it down into a recipe that many cities can repeat, what do you think are the key ingredients of undoing a lot of this racist, urban planning that is still operational and still causing harm in our built environments today?

CR: I think the number one thing is I think about the word 'authenticity'. [1.25.00] A lot of people say yes we're doing community engagement, we want to hear from you, we want to know what you think. But in reality they've already made a plan. They already think they know all the things that they're going to put in there and they're going to listen to you, but they're not necessarily going to change their plan.

I think they need to start with listening to the community before they've actually gone down this programming and design road, because that's not being authentic. That's saying that you're doing something, but you're not.

AD: Listen first before design.

CR: Yeah, but I think you need to be a person. You need to make it personal and you need to let it be emotional when it's emotional.

AD: Why is that so hard for people? (Laughs)

CR: It's so hard! (Laughter) No one wants to do it, but it's just like hey, you might be wrong about this and you need to be able to listen and be like, oh my gosh, I can't believe I was so dumb, I was totally wrong. Just let it happen. People are going to trust you so much more, they're going to share more with you, you're actually going to get something that is really responsive and really makes the community excited.

We can design for that. It's going to be something that we're going to love too, but it's really hard for people in leadership, people in positions of power to be authentic with community members. I think that's really important for other cities to understand, is to start there.

AD: Investing in those relationships and building that trust. Then bringing in those voices and listening to them before you get so far down the road that you're going to be resistant to hearing what they have to say because it's going to cost money to make you change what you've already done.

CR: Exactly, and people will be like oh duh, of course you would do that. But they don't actually do it. It sounds like something everyone should understand and yet they're not. I think people are not doing that in practice. That's number one.

Number two, I think is remove the barriers. If there are these public hearings and they're held, ours were always from 1:30 on on Thursdays and often times we'd be there until 8:00 at night. All of the specific projects have a time that they're going to start.

If you know you want to talk about a specific project you know you have to be there at a certain time. I think removing more barriers and making a better effort to reach out to neighborhoods in different languages and really let them know that not only are they welcome to come, but you really want them to come. And talk about it, engaging with communities in different ways that really makes them understand that you would be so happy to have them to come to these public hearings. 

I'm excited to see people even if they're not talking to me about public realm, often people are telling me that they don't like a building for many reasons, but the real reason is probably that it blocks their view of something beautiful. Their view is not protected and their view is not important. 

What's important is if that's housing, getting people into housing and making sure that people who don't have the privilege are the ones who are thought of first instead of the folks who are I have this beautiful view and that's why I am here to talk about protecting it.

Whereas someone else who might live in that housing is not there to talk about how there's no way that that size of apartment could possibly work for a family or something. People just aren't told of the opportunities that they have to actually speak up, and are not empowered to do so.

I think removing as many barriers as you can. Hey, why don't you maybe give them a free bus ticket if they want to come to a hearing if they let you know beforehand to pay for their bus ride downtown so that they can come to the hearing. That's not so hard, right?

AD: Right. Or now it should be fairly easy to hold them in person and stream them at the same time. I've been teaching in person and dealing with remote students at the same time.

CR: Yes.

AD: We stream the content and they can speak. When we have a Zoom meeting going the whole time so they can contribute to the in person class, and the in person class can talk to them on Zoom. Everybody should be able to do this now for these types of meetings.

CR: Absolutely, and get more people in. It's really helpful because I'm sure as you've seen in teaching, some people it's easier for them to talk if it's just their voice, there's no on camera and they're not in person. There's just different ways that people are comfortable communicating and doing that virtually opens up another option for them to make them [1.30.00] more likely to come. Removing barriers is really important.

AD: Thank you for sharing all that. I feel like they're both really common sense, but need to be reiterated and explained and amplified and talked about as often as we can.

CR: Absolutely.

AD: It's been so wonderful and interesting talking to you. I'm curious where you see yourself headed in the future. Does this scale up for you? Does this...? What does it feel like? What are your goals and ambitions?

CR: That's a great question. I had been thinking about that before. I'm really active here in Portland and doing lots of things. Recently Michelle, who is the CO at Meyer was like okay, but what national boards are you on? (Laughter) I was like Michelle, I'm so tired. I can't even think about that right now, I'm so busy with all the things I'm doing here in Portland.

It's because Portland is my home town and it's really important to me and I really love getting to be a part of making it better and helping it grow. But I have been thinking about, what's next and how do I scale up. 

The things that I'm really excited about are new building technologies, thinking about mass timber and where it's going in sustainability, and all of the really big strides that we can make that just need financial investment in order to make it work on a project.

Being able to take that stuff, being able to take all of this great, beautiful mass timber spaces into all of these community focused projects that we do. Getting it into affordable housing and into community centers and into libraries and making it so that all of these new technologies that we're really excited about now, are things that everyone in the public is going to get to enjoy and experience.

That's really important to me because I think that we go through phases in architecture where there's different things that people are using often and that are sort of new. One of those is mass timber, but I want to make sure that everyone gets access to it because it's really exciting.

Then really just pushing on innovation and what are the new things that we can do in mass timber. I'm really interested in making things that are spectacular designs, that people want to be there, but that are also using the latest technologies to build them fast and efficiently and deploy them everywhere.

AD: Well, you're spectacular. Thank you. (Laughter)

CR: Oh, thank you!

AD: Thank you. Thank you so much for sharing your story with me and for also your philosophy and really explaining the way that the work gets done. I think it's been really informative, but just also really hopeful. Really, really hopeful. (Laughs)

CR: Yes, there's a lot of good things coming. It is hopeful because we're able to make changes now. We just have to decide to do it, and we are. It's happening, so I encourage everyone to do that. Do whatever it is that you can because there's a lot of ways to make a difference.

AD: Thank you so much.

CR: Thank you!

AD: Thanks for listening! To see images of Chandra’s work and read the show notes, click the link in the details of this episode on your podcast app, or go to Cleverpodcast.com where you can also sign up for our newsletter. If you haven’t already, please subscribe to Clever on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, or wherever you get your podcasts. And do us a favor and rate and review, it really does help us out. We also love chatting with you on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook, you can find us at Clever Podcast and you can find me at Amy Devers. Clever is produced by 2VDE Media with editing by Rich Stroffolino, production assistance from Ilana Nevins and Anouchka Stephan and music by El Ten Eleven. Clever is part of the Airwave media podcast network, visit airwavemedia.com to discover more great shows. They curate the best of them, so you don’t have to. Clever is proudly distributed by Design Milk.

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What is your earliest memory?

I remember picking strawberries with my grandfather and swimming at the Abbey in Mt. Angel during the summers as a kid. My brother and sister and many cousins would spend summers with my grandparents in Mt Angel. My grandma only spoke spanish so it was fun to be able to learn from her and speak spanish with her. It's probably not my first memory but I have such a terrible memory that I only really remember the really special things.

Family camping trip. From left to right: Chandra, Estela Robinson, Robert Robinson.

How do you feel about democratic design? 

Something can be designed beautifully and made in versions where lower or high end materials are used. That's just good design isn't it?

What’s the best advice that you’ve ever gotten?

Again, sorry but if you have ever given me any advice - I have forgotten it.

Meyer Memorial Trust Headquarters, convening space image which shows how the mass plywood - an industrial material - is used in a refined and special event space. Though the material is industrial, they refined it through sanding and staining to give the space a humble but beautifully refined feel. Photo by Jeremy Bitterman.

Meyer Memorial Trust Headquarters, pre-function space image which highlights the use of mass plywood as the structure for the curtain wall system. Photo by Jeremy Bitterman.

How do you record your ideas?

I take a lot of photos of interesting things with my phone. I sketch in a notebook. I have so many lists in my google drive of things I would like to revisit. Many ideas are timeless and I am excited to be able to open this vault periodically and pluck out some cool idea that I want to investigate.

Meyer Memorial Trust Headquarters. The spaces allow staff to work away from their desks and take advantage of great light and views. This image is from the garden looking into the convening space. Photo by Jeremy Bitterman

Meyer Memorial Trust Headquarters, mission library. Photo by Jeremy Bitterman

What’s your current favorite tool or material to work with?

Actually I have been trying to get comfortable sketching on an ipad. I have tried different types of stylus pens and different apps - but so far I still prefer a scratchy pencil and some graph paper.

What’s the best book you’ve read this past year?

There is quite a stack piled up at the moment. I recently bought “Architecture in Black” by Dr Darell Fields as well as “Black Landscapes Matter” by Walter Hood as research for local projects. I have been reading “Deep Work” and “A World Without Email” by Cal Newport as part of my effort to find a better way to use my time so that I can focus and think and be creative instead of being in meetings and answering emails all day.

Meyer Memorial Trust Headquarters, staff lunch room. Photo by Jeremy Bitterman.

Meyer Memorial Trust Headquarters ground breaking ceremony. From left: Michelle J. De Pass, Meyer CEO; Toya Fick, Meyer Board of Trustees; Anyeley Hallova, developer; Chandra Robinson; maurice Rahming, President of O’Neill Construction. Photo by Fred Joe

Why is authenticity in design important?

Authenticity is everything is important. What is the point of design that isn't about you and me and all the people who will use the space? That is useless to me. There is meaning in what we do when people can feel something special, feel something that elevates their experience.

Favorite restaurant in your city?

There was a restaurant called Revelry which closed during the pandemic. They had the most delicious fried chicken.

What might we find on your desk right now?

A pile of notebooks for each project and a lot of scraps of paper with little notes about things I need to follow up on or ideas I need to test.

Who do you look up to and why?

I look up to people who have obvious passion for their work and their lives. People who fight for their communities, artists who create beautiful work until their dying day and those who innovate in their fields. 

Meyer Memorial Trust Headquarters, exterior of the building is clad in a custom metal panel. The panel depth allows for shadow and light play to be more dramatic and visible change throughout the day. Photo by Jeremy Bitterman

The largest CLT and Glu-lam building in the US. Completed in 2018. View of the double height all-hands space highlighting the CLT and glu-lam structure. Photo by Jeremy Bitterman.

What’s your favorite project that you’ve done and why?

My favorite project is the one I completed most recently. The new office for Meyer Memorial trust reflects a lot of what I want to see in other projects. Commitment to real equity and sustainability and a very high regard for all those who will use the space. Innovations in how we design and build excite me and inspire me.

The largest CLT and Glu-lam building in the US. Completed in 2018. Photo by Jeremy Bitterman.

What are the last five songs you listened to?

“Graceless” - The National
“Paradise Circus” - Massive Attack
“Pretty Girl” - Clairo
“Chinese New Year” - SALES
“Wait a Minute” - WILLOW

Where can our listeners find you on the web and on social media?

leverarchitecture.com
@chandradanette

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Clever is produced by 2VDE Media. Thanks to Rich Stroffolino for editing this episode.
Production assistance from Ilana Nevins and music by El Ten Eleven—hear more on Bandcamp.
Shoutout to Jenny Rask for designing the Clever logo.

Clever is a proud member of the Airwave Media podcast network. Visit airwavemedia.com to discover more great shows.

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