Transforming Warehouse Structures Into Creative Workspaces

Tonight at Curiosity Club: we'll hear from Carrie Strickland and Bill Neburka, architects and principals at Portland's Works Partnership Architecture. They'll share their focus on the possibilities of how cellular environments can adapt to a revolving cycle of inhabitants. In other words, we'll hear about pirating old spaces for cooler new uses! At the Hand-Eye Supply store and streaming on the Curiosity Club homepage at 6pm PST.

The attraction to frame buildings (warehouse structures) being adapted to creative workspace in Portland is a fairly recent phenomenon, but the notions behind the frame is quite historic. Frame buildings allow for ultimate flexibility in use, not just for one singular moment in time. Frames are literally architecture's equivalent of a sheet of graph paper, anonymous and universal, but expectant with future particularities. How a structure's architecture is informed and might be inspired by framed, cellular space will be discussed in an engaging conversation at the Curiosity Club.

Carrie Strickland and Bill Neburka founded Works Partnership Architecture in 2005 and have been pushing the opportunities of architectural design ever since. Today, the bulk of their built work is commercial or mixed-use. Their aesthetic is stripped down and industrial; they think of themselves as pragmatists. One of their most elegant buildings, BSide6, is a vastly updated version of the arcaded structures that gave one stretch of Portland's east side its unique character.