2008 People’s Choice Award (Commercial)

1st place, commercial category
Featuring: La Perla Pizzeria Napoletana

In this competition which takes place annually during the Eugene Celebration weekend, local architects and landscape architects present their featured projects in various categories, and the citizens of Eugene cast their vote for the best project in each category.

SERVING A SLICE OF OLD ITALY ON A BOLD NEW PLATTER

Project:

La Perla Pizzeria Napoletana
1313 Pearl Street, Eugene 97401
(formerly Farrell’s Ice Cream Parlor)

Architect:

Nir Pearlson Architect, Inc.

Structural Engineer:

K & A Engineering

Electrical Engineer:

Jim Krumsick & Synergy Engineering

Lighting Design:

Balzheiser & Hubbard Engineers

Food Service Design / Equipment:

Curtis Restaurant Equipment

General Contractor:

The Industrial Company

Solar Panels Design / Build:

Energy Design & Solar Assist

 

Challenge:

Transform a familiar ice-cream parlor into a modern, enduring landmark

Concepts:

  • Tall windows wrap the building corner, opening onto the celebratory energy within
  • A modern-day steel colonnade announces the entrance and shelters outdoor seating
  • An entry atrium leads to expansive seating, a wine & espresso bar, and the main event: the pizza prep area fronting a massive wood-fired oven
  • Old Italy is infused into this contemporary Northwest building via subtle interpretive gestures: an ordered indoor-outdoor grid of columns, a sky-lit atrium, decorative steel arches, and a rich palette of textures and earthy colors
  • Construction materials are revealed in a modern composition of concrete, stone, wood, steel, plaster, and the sparkle of colored glass

Sustainable Strategies:

  • Daylighing: Oversized windows & sky-lit atrium
  • Shading: Awnings, blinds & specialty glazing
  • Solar energy: Photovoltaic panels mounted on roof & awning
  • Sustainably-harvested wood:
  • Glue-laminated timbers & ceiling finish boards
  • Manufactured ‘off-the-shelf’ components:
  • Structural members: steel & glue-lam; Wainscoting panels: corrugated steel & fiber-cement
  • R-40 insulated roof:
  • Encloses ceiling cavity with updated heating/cooling ducts
  • Upgraded electrical equipment:
  • Heating/cooling units; programmable lighting controls with zoning, dimming & sensors

The Nature of Design

Joy Watson and her husband, Doug, probably are every architect’s dream clients: When it came time to design their new home overlooking the McKenzie River east of Springfield, she said, “We just got out of the way and let Nir (Pearlson) do it.”

The result was something the couple never would have come up with themselves, “and we’re more than happy with it,” Watson said. “If I had been there putting my two cents in, we wouldn’t have gotten this.”

A lot of other people also appreciated the effort, because during the voting held last month during the Eugene Celebration, the Watson home won the single-family residential prize in the People’s Choice Awards, an annual competition sponsored by the Southwestern Oregon chapter of the American Institute of Architects.

Pearlson also won the top spot in the commercial category for another of his projects, La Perla Pizzeria Napoletana, a complete redo of the building at 13th and Pearl streets in downtown Eugene that formerly housed the iconic red-and-white striped Farrell’s ice cream parlor and served as the birthday party capital for generations of local children.

You’d never recognize it now. Gone are the dark wood (and vaguely sticky) tabletops, the red-hot walls and the clamoring decor that gave the place a nonstop fever pitch. By contrast, La Perla is spare, sophisticated and subtle, a combination of Pacific Northwest sensibilities and overtones of traditional Italian shapes and colors. It’s just what Pearlson was aiming for when he and the building’s owners, Beppe Macchi and John “Gianni” Barofsky — who first made their culinary mark with Beppe & Gianni’s Trattoria at 19th and Agate streets — first sat down to come up with a design for La Perla, which opened at the end of June.

“The basic idea is a feeling of Italy moved to Eugene, but it’s a totally Northwest product with mostly local materials and lots of light,” Pearlson said. “We took some ideas from traditional Italian architecture, like arches and columns, and stripped them down to their essence, like a shadow of the original.”

After removing the old checkerboard floor tiles, the beat-up slab floor got a coat of stain and clear finish reminiscent of “a floor with a history and a story,” he said. The skylit atrium in the entry recalls shafts of light between tall Italian buildings, and the masonry and stone in the oven area recalls the earthen colors and textures of Mediterranean culture.

To Pearlson’s surprise, La Perla’s new vibrant green exterior and metal-clad base raised more eyebrows than any other aspect of its design.

“Someone called and said they didn’t like the color and that other people didn’t either,” he said. “What we did here, which we really didn’t think was radical at all, apparently was a little bit of a push for some people.”

Both of Pearlson’s prizewinning designs, and many others in the competition, share what appears to be a value among architects in the area to introduce interesting — if sometimes unexpected — building materials in designs that build on rather than dominate their landscape.

A major exception, of course, is Eugene’s two-year-old Wayne Morse Federal Courthouse that makes no pretense of anything but garnering attention. But Pearlson acknowledges that architect Thom Mayne’s controversial glass and stainless steel edifice with its swoops and angles “probably has helped to release something in local architecture.”

“Many people here are so hooked on gabled, traditional forms of design that it can be difficult to introduce new things,” he said. “I think a lot of architects in town wish they could move things a little faster, but the public is often quite conservative (about design). But I think the courthouse probably did help with that, that people who didn’t like it at first are getting used to it and feeling more relaxed about it.”

………………………….

“We were originally thinking of building in traditional farmhouse style — old, old,” Joy Watson said. “We originally were trying to buy 100 acres near Creswell, and that went on for a long time and then the whole thing fell through. So we started looking at river property instead.”

After losing out on two other riverfront properties, they jumped at the chance to buy their five acres on Deerhorn Road, only to find afterward that most of it is zoned for exclusive forestry use, leaving just a small homesite area with a steep hill immediately behind it available for building.

“At that point, I was so upset about losing my original idea of farmhouse, acreage and chickens, I decided to do the total opposite and go completely modern,” Watson said. “We told Nir that we wanted a simple, very modern, minimalist house, and this is what he gave us.”

Essentially, the Watson house is two sections facing opposite directions, joined by a central corridor. The roof of the “public” area — open kitchen, dining and living rooms — slants upward from back to front to capture the view of the trees and the river. On the private side, the roof slants upward front to back, giving the master bedroom the opened-up view of the rocky hillside just beyond.

“Before I did the design, I came out and sat here for hours, getting the feel of the land,” Pearlson said. “This house is definitely designed for this site — it was not brought in, it ‘became’ here.”

A huge “sentinel” rock outcropping dominates the building site, and the house was pushed as close as legally allowed to the property line “to keep the building away from the rock’s line of energy,” he said. “But it’s an important part of the site — it looms there, definitely part of the design, and we wanted to incorporate it.”

Other large basalt boulders removed during excavation for the house’s underpinnings also have been incorporated in its landscaping, “merging the human creation with the natural,” Pearlson said. The house is mostly wood and glass, with exposed concrete floors and plastered walls whose colors blend into the hues on the adjoining outside surfaces. The roof sections, beam ends and trim are zinc-treated steel.

At 1,500 square feet with an additional 500 square feet of unfinished space below the main floor, the house is small by recent standards. Because of the challenging building site, the cost came in at about $220 per square foot, Watson said. Its size and clean, open spaces has encouraged the couple to declutter their lives. She’s delighted at the impetus to keep and acquire only what is essential.

“I’m addicted to modern now,” Watson said. “Design is something I just never thought much about, but this is just gorgeous.”

Simple, Tasteful: La Perla takes pizza back to basics

What can you do in 90 seconds?

Make a phone call? Do 20 push-ups? Take an elevator to the 10th floor?

You will be amazed what the people at La Perla Pizzeria can do in 90 seconds.

The authentic Italian pizzeria can cook a delicious pizza in just a minute and a half.

La Perla makes its own mozzarella and hand-tossed dough.

The restaurant also uses imported ingredients and cooks in a wood-burning oven.

La Perla offers a variety of traditional pizzas, including margherita, Napolitan and marinara.

Toppings include sausage, marinated mushrooms, artichokes and ham, among others.

Located at 1313 Pearl St., La Perla replaced the Pearl Street Ice Cream Parlour.

Gianni Barofsky, owner of La Perla and Beppe & Gianni’s Trattoria, said the restaurant aspires to become Verace Pizza Napoletana certified soon.

Verace Pizza Napoletana is a movement to protect the Napoletana style of pizza that is a tradition in Naples.

A representative from Naples will come to the pizzeria to declare it official, and if the restaurant passes, it will be one of only 25 VPN pizzerias in the U.S.

Barofsky said he wanted his business to have an open, airy atmosphere with lots of space, windows and a new awning.

La Perla definitely feels open and airy with its huge windows and skylight.

Barofsky said the history of the location played a large part in the design of the business.

For Barofsky, it was important to send the message that La Perla was an entirely new and unique establishment.

“We didn’t want to put a pizza oven in (Pearl Street Ice Cream Parlour),” he said.

Barofsky said the pizza is the best thing on the menu.

“No one’s had a pizza like this,” he said. “The pizza is the star here.”

He said that the folks at La Perla are “excited to bring a new concept and taste to the West Eugene area.”

La Perla Pizzeria is open seven days a week, from 5 p.m. to 11 p.m., although Barofsky said differently.

“We’re open for dinner from 5 p.m. until … just five ’til,” he said. “Maybe until we run out of dough.”

New Chapter for Bookmark

Hugh Duvall is a Eugene attorney, but now he can be called something else: a downtown developer. Duvall is renovating the former Bookmark building at 856 Olive St. to create a new office for himself and other lawyers. His building is a few steps from the two-block stretch of Broadway that has been considered for redevelopment during the past two years.

Duvall, a 46-year old criminal defense attorney, bought the building from Broadway landlords Tom Connor and Don Woolley in December for $350,000. Connor, Woolley and Opus Northwest, a Portland-based developer, once thought of using the property as part of a large retail, housing and entertainment project on Broadway. Those plans fizzled, but the city has acquired options to buy many of the same properties that were sought by Connor-Woolley-Opus, keeping the redevelopment idea alive. Duvall rents an office in the Citizens Building on Oak Street. He had looked for a year for a building to buy near the Lane County courthouse.

“I did have some reservations about buying the building because I did not want to stand in the way of a downtown redevelopment,” Duvall said. “But it’s not very often that a building within walking distance of the courthouse is available.” Duvall expects to pour $450,000 or more into a massive renovation of the 100-year-old building, originally called the Eugene Farmers Creamery. The building’s interior has been gutted to accommodate six law offices, one for Duvall and five for tenants. The buildings’ original window openings on the north wall, facing an alley and measuring about 4 feet wide by 7 feet tall, have been uncovered. They will be refitted with glass and glass blocks to let in light. A mezzanine will be constructed for storage space. Other interior treatments will include a vaulted ceiling above the lobby, Douglas fir beams, and steel and cable staircase railings.

“It’s going to be a dramatic renovation,” Duvall said. The building’s purchase and redevelopment shows there is demand for small, reasonably priced downtown office buildings, said Sue Prichard, the commercial real estate broker who handled the sale for Connor and Woolley. Such buyers typically remodel the buildings and occupy them, she said. Recent examples of that trend include the owners of the Oveissi & Co. building at Broadway and Willamette Street, the Ulum Group building on Oak Street, and the KLCC building on West Eighth Avenue.

2006 People’s Choice Award (Commercial)

2nd Place – Commercial

Featuring: Imagine Graphics

In this competition which takes place annually during the Eugene Celebration weekend, local architects and landscape architects present their featured projects in various categories, and the citizens of Eugene cast their vote for the best project in each category.

CELEBRATING OPENNESS AND TRANSPARENCY IN THE WORKPLACE

Project:

Imagine Graphics Headquarters Remodel
990 Garfield, Eugene Oregon 97402
(Formerly the Miller Paint Building)

Architect:

Nir Pearlson Architect, Inc.

Landscape Architect:

Kate McGee Landscape Architect

Structural Engineer:

Hohbach-Lewin, Inc.

Marketing, Displays, Finishes:

Funk/Levis & Associates

Contractor:

Schar Construction

 

Client’s Vision

A new home for Imagine Graphics: a building that reflects and supports the company’s commitment to vibrant creativity and open communication

Architect’s Charge

To transform a non-descript warehouse into an inspiring work environment: an attractive domain of creativity and commerce

Design Concept

To reveal and enhance the original modernist structure of the 1960’s building through a series of de-construction moves:
Removal of a section of the low ceiling so the volume reaches upwards to the tall roof
Replacement of the 2nd floor corridor wall with a transparent railing, spatially joining the two floors via the new double-height volume

Removal and replacement of a massive 1980’s canopy with a slender structural steel colonnade

Opening of new clerestories and windows to fill the interiors with abundant daylight

Minimalist Design Strategy

  • Fabricate canopies, stairs, railings and partitions with off-the-shelf components: structural steel, dimensional lumber, particle board, and stainless-steel cable
  • Expose and treat architectural materials such as wood, steel, concrete block, and aluminum to reflect their distinct nature in form, texture, and color
  • Landscape planting areas with a select inventory of elegant plants set amongst rough stones in a range of sizes

Sustainability Measures

  • Re-claimed boards, sustainably-harvested lumber and straw-board sheets compose the casework, trim, trellises, railings and paneling
  • Natural linoleum and replaceable carpet tiles cover floor surfaces
  • Low-VOC paints used throughout
  • Increased insulation and double-glazed windows substantially reduce heating and cooling needs
  • Added windows minimize the need for artificial lighting
  • High-efficiency HVAC and electrical systems replace aging equipment

Imagine Graphics’ Philosophy of Openness and Transparency Expressed in the Work Place

  • All departments – management, sales, graphic design and production – are directly linked, supporting interactions and a creative flow of ideas
  • The exterior and interior realms communicate, reflect, and inform each other
  • The porous boundaries between the showroom and the production area offer clients and employees the opportunity to witness, and participate, in the transformation of imagination into graphics