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Alumni Profile

The Weave Building

The Weave Building sits on a relatively small 5,000 square foot site. This 1/8 block site created some economic challenges of maintaining enough leasable square footage to ensure the building's long term success. The solution was to work within the city's allowed projections in the right-of-way guidelines to produce an undulating facade that both creates more leasable space per floor, while creating dynamic interior spaces and iconic building identity. This sophisticated facade can be achieved through the use of an off-the-shelf curtain-wall system, requiring only straight runs of glazing attached to the face of an undulating floor slab, with only minimal custom extrusions required. Rainwater from the building's facade is directed behind the solid stucco rain screen panels.

The Weave Building's street level facade creates great opportunity for its retail tenants with an over 20' tall storefront. The storefront is made active with a system of reclaimed wood beams from the site's existing building within an operable track. This gives the building's tenants the opportunity to easily re-organize their shop fronts. A planted green strip fills the zone front of the operable screen used to deal with the rainwater runoff from the buildings facade and canopies while adding to the pedestrian's sidewalk experience.


View Work Detail
Jeff Kovel

B.Arch. 1995

Principal, Skylab Architecture

 

From hip restaurant and music venue on one side of the Willamette River to the house of a cinematic vampire high in the hills on the other side of town, the city of Portland, OR is home to several iconic works by architect Jeff Kovel. In a city perhaps best known for flying under the radar, Kovel is challenging the status quo. “I think we probably push the boundaries more than other firms in town,” says Kovel of Skylab Architecture, the firm he founded in 1999. One of his latest projects, the Weave Building, will be built on a high-traffic corner, and with its distinct façade of undulating glass panels separated by crenellated precast concrete, it is sure to garner attention. It will be LEED Platinum, and made with reclaimed timbers from the two-story building that previously stood at the site.


Kovel founded Skylab as a “laboratory to explore a departure from an industry of mounting standardization.” Skylab has built several private homes and commercial spaces around Portland using techniques and materials that blur the distinction between architecture and design, natural and synthetic, and past and future. All eye-catching works, they have helped move Portland toward becoming an epicenter of emerging architecture and design.

Skylab has won many awards over the years for design and sustainability, including Built Citation awards from the American Institute of Architects Portland Chapter for two projects — Doug Fir, a restaurant, bar, and, music venue; and apparel firm Nau.


Skylab is currently working with a prefab home builder to design a line of high quality, and high style, modular houses meant for urban locales. Kovel even envisions operating his own assembly plant for prefab modular homes, enabling him to bring “creatively designed homes to the masses.”

In addition to Skylab, Kovel is co-owner of Doug Fir Restaurant and Lounge in Portland, and KBP, a real estate development company. Kovel is also a board member of Oregon College of Art and Craft, and has served as a guest lecturer at the University of Oregon and University of Texas.

 

Awards

  • Interior Design Best of Year, 2008, NORTH
  • Portland Spaces Root Award, 2008, NORTH
  • Sustainability Award, AIA 2007, Nau
  • Built Citation Award, AIA 2007, Nau
  • Built Honor Award, AIA 2006, 12th & Alder
  • Built Citation Award, AIA 2005, Doug Fir
  • Wave of the Future, Interior Design Magazine, 2007
  • Best of Show, Magic 2005, Converse Exhibit Design
  • Best of Show WSA 2005, Converse Exhibit Design
  • First Place Exhibit Design, PDX Design Collaborative 2004, Mattel
  • Residential Design, PDX Design Collaborative 2004, Quinn Residence

 

Appointments

  • Board Member, Oregon College of Art and Craft
  • Visiting Lecturer, University of Texas
  • Visiting Lecturer, University of Oregon
  • Visiting Lecturer, Design within Reach
  • Visiting Lecturer, Adidas
  • Visiting Lecturer, Nike
  • Panelist, AIA Oregon Annual Conference
  • Panelist, PDX Design Collaborative
  • Design Review, Show PDX
  • Design Review, University of Oregon
  • Design Review, Portland State University

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