It’s an oldie but goodie, a December 2005 interview with Pringle Creek masterplanner James Meyer that was originally in the Journal of Daily Commerce. Now it is on the allbusiness dot com website. To read the entire article you’ll need to register.
Pringle Creek comes up a few times. The interview focuses on James and his partners getting Opsis Architecture off the ground and thriving in the fast-paced Portland market.
DJC: Is there an overarching philosophy behind the firm's work?James Meyer: I think it's fairly soft, or loose. It's not a philosophy so much as a foundation of values. The environmental values are imbibed very strongly. All the partners are (University of Oregon) graduates who graduated together, did studio together, so we've got this history. And I think that the U of O during those times really reinforced that part of making buildings with sensitivity to the environment that would manifest itself in ways of daylighting, energy efficiency, site orientation.
These are all components that (University of Oregon professors and sustainability advocates) Charlie Brown and John Reynolds were talking about a long time ago, before there was a U.S. Green Building Council, before there was LEED (the USGBC's rating system for green and sustainable buildings), before all this stuff.
I did my first solar house in '73 or '74. I think with us, and especially the partners here, that's been this foundation that a lot of the other components built upon.
And then from that, it's design excellence, it's spaces that are humanistic, it's a listening philosophy. We just listen, to the clients and the process focus and development, those kinds of things.
Below is a photo of James (center, leaning) and his partners from a 2006 Portland Tribune article about the green renovation of their building.
