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How Portland-Born Architect John Yeon Gave the Northwest Its Signature Style

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A major new exhibit at the Portland Art Museum explores Yeon’s legacy.

By Zach Dundas 4/27/2017 at 9:31am Published in the May 2017 issue of Portland Monthly

Is there such a thing as “Northwest architecture”? John Yeon was never sure—ironic, given that many figured the son of a Portland timber baron helped invent the very thing.

“The subject remains interesting,” he once conceded. “It has long been of interest to me.”

Pomo 0517 john yeon ckfsf7

You could say so. Yeon died in Portland in 1994, at the age of 83. He left behind a tiny architectural portfolio of about a dozen houses (notably the world-famous Watzek House in the West Hills) and just one public building. But his larger vision of place, craft, and aesthetic ambition still resonates. Imagine a high-design, distinctively Northwest house that might be built today—modernist in line and geometry, woodsy in aura, and, above all,

Photo: Yeon in 1941

attuned to what’s outside—and the vision probably owes much to the designer, collector, and conservationist.

“He was a pretty unusual character,” says Randy Gragg, the longtime local journalist who directs the University of Oregon’s John Yeon Center for Architecture and the Landscape. “He could look at a vista on the coast and see its essential aspects, but he also understood residential and European garden design. He was remarkable for breadth, depth, and especially range of scale.”

This month, Portland Art Museum opens Quest for Beauty, an exhibit encompassing Yeon’s architecture, conservation work, and eclectic collections of art and craft from around the world. The project will be the museum’s largest show ever dedicated to a single architect. At the same time, it will offer a portrait of a broader sensibility. Selections from Yeon’s own art collections, in particular, dig into the sources of his aesthetic. “You’ll see an intermingling of art work that’s unusual for an architectural exhibit,” says Gragg, a former editor and frequent contributor for Portland Monthly.

Gragg met Yeon in 1992 and adopted his work and legacy as a 20-plus-year “subproject,” as he puts it. The PAM exhibit unites the UO Yeon Center, which owns the Watzek House and two other Yeon properties; the museum’s European and Asian curators; Yeon’s longtime partner, Richard Louis Brown; and a other collaborators  including acclaimed local firm Lever Architecture. Two books, location tours, lectures, and other events accompany the museum installation. Quest may not be the final word on Yeon, but it will define his work, life, and enthusiasms for a broad audience.

“Yeon put together one of the most diverse and interesting private collections in Oregon,” says Maribeth Graybill, PAM’s curator of Asian arts, of the exhibit’s assembly of objets. “And through it, you see him thinking like a decorator—the designer of domestic interiors drawn to things that complemented and contrasted with the severe linearity of his architecture.”

“John could appreciate the curvature found on a Rococo barometer,” Gragg says. “His aesthetic eye could find beauty in these different things, and translate that into his design vision.”

Pomo 0517 yeon grouped copy hjlyu3

Clockwise from top left: Two views of the 1948 Portland Visitors Information Center, Yeon’s only public building; The Vietor House; The Shaw House

April 1953 found the editors of House Beautiful in a truculent mood. Elizabeth Gordon expounded on nothing less than “The Threat to the Next America”: as Gordon’s fervent eight-page essay revealed, that menace was modern architecture. Or, at least, certain modern architecture. Gordon railed against a “Cult of Austerity” led by Europeans like Mies van der Rohe and Walter Gropius, “the mystical idea that ‘less is more,’” and “a self-chosen elite ... trying to tell us what we should like and how we should live.”

If the magazine knew what it was against, it also knew what it was for. That issue’s cover featured the Shaw House, a Yeon design in Lake Oswego. Luminous, decorous, set on eight acres of suburban meadow, this was modernism House Beautiful could believe in: nothing less (Joseph Barry wrote) than “the architectural way to an age of humanism.” An ecstatic article praised Yeon’s use of modular paneling, a ventilation system tuned to the Northwest’s mild climate, and a compact layout amenable to “servantless operation.”

“A free man’s home of the future will be his palace,” Barry wrote, “and here is the style for it.”

Observers—and not just quasi-McCarthyite shelter-mag editors—did like to put their own stamp on Yeon. The Watzek House, completed in 1937, was hailed as a regionalist, all-American riposte to the placeless International Style; a later history of Portland architecture praised Yeon as an “exemplary representative of the rare breed of Renaissance men.” These aren’t necessarily bad descriptions, but the man himself seems to have chased a much simpler and more universal—if elusive—ideal.

“He came from a tradition that was about beauty,” Gragg says. In Yeon’s small but near-perfect architectural portfolio, Gragg notes a fanatical attention to detail and a thrifty economy. Yeon frequently used plywood, for example. Then again, he also spent 25 years sculpting a stretch of the Columbia Gorge into a landscape he called the Shire, using both bulldozer and exacting grass-varietal selections.

His legacy embraces precision and rigor, but also play and fancy. (“He loved the baroque and rococo, at a time when those things really weren’t very popular,” notes Dawson Carr, PAM’s curator of European art.) Working big or small, creating or collecting, the intelligence documented by Quest for Beauty gravitated to the exquisite.

“The main link between the different aspects of this exhibit,” Gragg says, “is in Yeon’s mind.”

The full article can be viewed HERE at Portland Monthly’s website.

May 23, 2017/by AltPDX
https://www.altpdx.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/logo-horizontal.png 0 0 AltPDX https://www.altpdx.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/logo-horizontal.png AltPDX2017-05-23 23:58:532017-05-23 23:58:53How Portland-Born Architect John Yeon Gave the Northwest Its Signature Style

5 Things Every Loving Homeowner Should Know About Their Own Home

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By Matt Christensen | Feb 8, 2017
circuit-breaker

Your relationship with your home is one that will hopefully last a long time, so it pays to learn its most intimate details. And not to be weird, but we really do mean intimate: what turns it on (or off), what makes it hot (or cold), and its delicate inner workings.

Because, after all, your home takes care of you—it keeps you warm, safe, well-fed—so it has every right to act a little high-maintenance and demand some TLC in return. Neglect your house, and there could be hell to pay later in the form of floods, electrical outages, and worse.

So as a sort of how-deep-is-your-love kind of test, ask yourself if you know these five things about your home—and if not, maybe you should go find out.

Love is a two-way street!

Q: Where is the main water shut-off valve?

Imagine you’re anywhere in your house where water is a feature: bathroom, kitchen, laundry room. They’re all connected by a network of pipes that come from your main water source. If any of those tangential pipes springs a leak, you’ll need to shut off the water until it can be fixed.

Every home is different, but you can likely find your main valve near the perimeter of your house, at ground level, nearest your water meter. If your water pipes are visible (in the basement, for example), follow them until you reach the main inlet and valve.

It’s possible your shut-off valve could be in a crawl space, closet, or somewhere out of the way, but it should definitely be in plain sight, rather than covered over with drywall. But rather than sit there and wonder, be sure to ask the previous home seller before you move in or check your home’s blueprints for a clue.

Q: Where is your circuit box, and is it properly labeled?

A circuit box is your house’s bodyguard against sudden spikes in electricity that run through the wires. Know your circuit box! It may enable you to avoid hiring a technician for simple electrical issues.

Most circuit boxes are located in a house’s basement, but some are also found in garages or utility closets. The switches inside correspond to rooms and sets of outlets in your home. Hopefully, they’re labeled properly—and if not, you should get on that pronto to avoid a tortuous guessing game every time you need to turn your power on and off.

If power suddenly goes out in a room (usually because you have too much plugged into one outlet), you can identify the tripped circuit by the switch that’s flipped in the opposite direction to the others. That means you may need to plug in your lava lamp elsewhere.

Q: What is a thermocouple, and do you know how to change it?

When your furnace goes out, you’ll be left in the cold—but not if you know how to change its thermocouple.This is the part of the furnace that shuts off the gas if your pilot light goes out, preventing that gas from seeping into your home. (You know, the gas that can kill you if left to run amok.)

If the furnace won’t stay lit, there’s a good chance you have a faulty thermocouple. Learning how to replace or adjust yours can be the difference between a $10 trip to the hardware store, and a $90/hour visit from a technician. Most thermocouples are held in place by brackets, which can be gently unscrewed to insert the replacement thermocouple.

Keeping a spare thermocouple on hand during winter is especially smart, because furnace problems can be more inconvenient—and costly—during the peak times of the year.

Q: Where are all your filters, and when was the last time they were replaced?

Lots of appliances in your home have filters. In fact, any device that conducts air or water should have some sort of filter in place to remove impurities and particulates. Changing these filters routinely can save you money, and keep you safe, which is why it’s helpful to know when they’re due to be replaced. Furnace filters should be replaced every two to three months; HVAC, ice maker, and water dispenser filters must change at least once a year. But that varies based on the manufacturer, so be sure to check your maintenance manual and not let it slide.

Q: Does your home have a sump pump, and do you know how to maintain it?

A sump pump is a pump (duh) installed in certain basements and crawl spaces to keep these areas of your home dry, which it does by collecting water that tries to seep in and moving it far, far away (or at least as far as the drainage ditch in your yard). They’re especially common in regions where basement flooding is an issue. Without a sump pump, the invading water can result in thousands of dollars in damage.

The good news, though, is that sump pumps are relatively easy to maintain. Check both lines, in and out, to make sure they’re not clogged with debris, and make sure the float component (this is the little bob that floats upward when water begins to fill the sump pit, activating the pump) can move smoothly.

The full article can be found HERE at realtor.com
May 2, 2017/by AltPDX
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