N M Bodecker Foundation

Portland, OR
Unexpected Form and Color Encourages Experimentation

Created within the confines of two abandoned one-story warehouse buildings, the N M Bodecker Foundation redefines traditional notions of occupation, use, and the interface between inside and outside, architecture and landscape.

Existing

Transition

Use

Knot Studio’s role was to help engage the client’s ambitious program and foster a strategy that uses landscape as a unifying thread to weave together a myriad of interior and exterior spaces within the existing warehouse site. The methodology required thinking about “imagined vignettes” or scenes that could be cut and collaged into the existing site to create places for visitors, collaboration, and incidental meetings. The result is a house as a playground: a place that contrasts old against new, carefully layering creative spaces horizontally and vertically.

The N M Bodecker Foundation empowers creative youth to imagine and achieve their artistic, educational, and professional dreams. The foundation provides creative communities with an extraordinary and energetic gathering place for workshops, mentoring, and collaboration. Their immersive program for middle and high school students is designed to empower creative youth to imagine and achieve their artistic, educational, and professional dreams.

The project embraces an ethic of community, collaboration, and engagement within a traditional NW Portland neighborhood block.

Architect
Skylab Architecture
Award
2018 Oregon ASLA Honor Award
The result is an equal parts house, artist’s retreat, skate park, recording studio, and playground for kids and adults engaged in serious play.