Karl Miller Center at Portland State School of Business

Learning Centers

Architectural Photographers: feinknopf

Year: 2017

Located in downtown Portland, the new Karl Miller Center is uniquely integrated with the city’s rich network of public open spaces and diverse urban uses. Rejecting the full-block archetype that dominates the city blocks, the building design appears as two distinct structures sharing a city block. The 1970's structure retrofitted with a metal panel facade system broken up by an irregular composition of punched windows, and a new dynamic, shifting 45,000 sq.ft. addition, clad in regionally sourced Alaskan Yellow Cedar. This approach, coupled with a series of terracing external green spaces and new circulation pathways linking the urban center, local parks, transportation stops, and nearby campus buildings, enhances the public realm by providing a more diverse streetscape. A one-story grade differential between 6th Avenue and Broadway, populated with public oriented spaces, creates two ground levels, further activating the exterior plazas and the atrium and heightening the activity within and around the building.