In today’s Portland post, we’ll be looking at some small-scale infill buildings that caught our eye.

Here in Fort Worth, we’ve seen our fair share of large-scall infill, like the developments along West 7th – large buildings on multiple blocks in a very “planned” sort of fashion. What we haven’t seen a lot of yet are the smaller-scaled infill developments that help to add variety and interest to the street.

What we have seen of smaller infill has been primarily on the Near Southside. There’s Joe Frank’s J. D. Moore Building at Henderson & Magnolia, TMA Architects‘ developments like the Dalal Professional Building at Jennings & Rosedale, Pennsylvania Lofts, and Oleander Plaza, the Fairmount Lofts, and similar things of that nature. Small-scale infill has been slowly gathering momentum in Fort Worth, but in Portland it’s a pretty regular thing.

A good example is the building here, the Burnside Rocket.

Designed by Kevin Cavanaugh, the Burnside Rocket is a mixed-use infill project on East Burnside, on the border between Southeast and Northeast Portland. The Burnside Rocket features a cafe on the ground floor, shared office space for creative professionals on the middle floors, and high-end restaurant Noble Rot on the top floor. Built on a 3,800 square foot lot, the building has 16,500 square feet of space and outdoor terraces on each level.

The building features operable window shutters covered with art by local artists from the surrounding neighborhoods. The shutters provide climate control as well as livening up the street with expressions by the local artists that painted them.

Another view of the Rocket’s art shutters.

The Rocket has no parking for cars, but it does provide several secure bike parking areas for tenants, as well as bike parking for visitors.

Tenants enjoy thoroughly modern spaces. Metal ductwork isn’t used for heating and cooling – hollow-core concrete floors are used to distribute heated or cooled air through the building.

Here’s a view inside the ground-floor cafe space.

And here’s the top-floor restaurant’s terrace.

The building features a rooftop garden, growing food for the restaurant.

Similarly interesting infill projects can be seen throughout Portland. This metal & stucco building is home to, among other things, Microcosm Publishing.

This new mixed-use loft/retail building on Hawthorne helps fill out the streetscape.

Most of the new infill in Portland is of a very contemporary style – but even I have to admit, it works. Modern architecture in Portland tends to be more interesting, more urban, and more friendly than the modern stuff we see in this region.

Take this building, the Belmont Street Lofts. It’s a great example of how architects in Portland use interesting materials, like this hardwood, to make their modern designs more warm and inviting. In addition, while being quite contemporary, few of the projects disobey the rules of good urbanism, and tend to fit in quite well with their surroundings.

Just down the street, this development features lofts over a full Zupan’s grocery store.

Here, a series of buildings adds apartments over retail space to the North Mississippi neighborhood.

This building features lofts over retail and a plaza space on North Mississippi.

Back on East Burnside, old meets new as the Burnside 6 building nears completion.

Burnside 6 features condos above ground-floor retail space, and a design that is quite striking to say the least.

Here, the Clinton Street condos make an interesting use of Cor-Ten steel on the facade – that’s the kind of steel that ages, the same material used to make the “Vortex” sculpture in front of the Modern here in Fort Worth.

As Fort Worth’s own neighborhood revelopment momentum builds, we expect to see more small, neighborhood-scaled infill taking place. Already, we’re hearing of more such buildings in the planning in the Near Southside, and from what we’re seeing of renderings and such (which we can’t quite post yet), Fort Worth’s own architects and small developers are starting to open up a bit and try some more interesting small buildings, architecturally speaking. These examples (and more – we didn’t seen nearly all of Portland’s small infill) serve to show what’s possible with developments on just a few, or even a single, building lot.