Fifteen minutes into a 105-minute job interview for the $195-million overhaul of the long-troubled Portland Public Service Building in Oregon’s largest city, owner’s rep Mike Day threw a curve ball to the unwitting design-build team of Howard S. Wright Construction Co. and architect DLR Group. Already hard at work solving Day’s first faux crisis scenario—a budget buster that threatened the viability of the makeover of the notoriously dysfunctional landmark—they had to regroup.
Designed by the late Michael Graves and considered the building that solidified the postmodern movement in architecture, the leaking 15-story icon—colorfully whimsical on the outside but dubbed the tallest basement in the world because of its dark and dreary interiors—had persistent envelope failure problems that started five years after it opened in 1982. It also had antiquated structural and mechanical systems.