Tower
7 December 2007
I was downtown shopping tonight (REI, of course), and I stopped to snap a picture of the Union Bank of California Tower, one of the better buildings in Portland, architecturally speaking, and also one of my personal favorites. It has a companion tower of sorts in San Francisco, and I always liked that one. So when I moved here, I noticed ours right away.
Like all distinctive things in Portland, the building is controversial, or in any case people like to complain about it. Their main beef seems to be the tower’s air of superiority, the prideful refusal to fit in with its neighbors, but I think the real issue is something else entirely. As much as the folks here congratulate themselves on being liberal, open-minded and progressive, the reality is less noble. Fact is, they’re insecure comfort whores. They want pretty; they want cosy; they want nice. And they want traditional, unchallenging architecture, which this building quite plainly is not. There is no evidence of humility, no attempt to pander to the local yokels and help them feel okay about themselves. So a friendly building it ain’t, and that’s the ultimate taboo in a town obsessed with huggy affirmation.
Critics of the Union Bank tower complain that it is rigid, austere and self-important, and it is. But then, it’s a bank, and not just a bank, but a bank tower. A display of power and pride is exactly what you’d expect, and I think that that is appropriate for an important edifice. In fact, I think it’s a civic responsibility to make just such a display. It’s like wearing a suit to the office: That may be overdressed for blue-collar Portland, but sometimes it’s the right thing to do.
Besides, as arrogant and aspirational as the building is, it is also intellectual, sensual and sculptural, with high quality materials and attention to detail that suggest, if not overt friendliness, then at least a certain respect for Portland’s people. It’s relatively sophisticated for a generic office tower in a second tier city. I don’t mean to say it’s a masterpiece. For one thing, it’s painfully dated, and for another, it’s entirely formulaic. (… but then so is the classical architecture everyone loves so much. Formula is the result of trial and error, after all. It’s what you get when you’ve perfected a style, and it helps to avoid past mistakes, of which there are many in Modern architecture.) But the Union Bank tower is something in a town where there’s not a lot of anything. In fact, that may be it’s main disctinction.
Last year, Andy made a lovely little short film about this very building, and his friend Brian Libby, an architecture journalist, provided commentary. It’s an interesting acknowledgment of a minor gem that might have gone unrecognized in a larger, more glittering metropolis. At under three minutes, there’s no reason not to watch it. So go to shoeintheroad.com and click on “Union Tower.” Then you can judge for yourself.
Well, sadly, I could not see the film (some software problem — damn Mac users), but I got to listen to the commentary.
The good news is, I’m brilliant. While reading this post and thinking about the building, I thought, “I should Google “Le Corbusier” — and sure enough, that’s who the architecture journalist mentioned.
More good news: you know how Google tries to guess what you’re typing? I’d only typed “le co” and it was already guessing Le Corbusier as the top guess, ranked higher than Le Cordon Bleu and Le Coq Sportif. Maybe the Internet isn’t killing Culture.
As interesting as the commentary is, it the images in the film that are the really lovely parts. If you ever happen to find yourself in a local library, take the time to view the film on a computer there.
As for the internet killing culture, I think the very opposite is true. It’s unleashing it from its former masters.
Ah, you’re such an idealist. Unleashing is all well and good in theory, but when you let a dog off-leash, sometimes it fetches and sometimes it rolls around in its own feces.
But on the leash it doesn’t do anything. It’s a matter of opinion which way is better, I guess.