The Architect’s Questionnaire: Daniel Toole

Daniel Toole (Daniel Toole Architect)

BY BRIAN LIBBY

The latest installment in our longtime discussion series with local architects about their inspirations, careers and collaborators takes us to Daniel Toole, who founded Daniel Toole Architecture in 2020 after stints with acclaimed Portland firm Allied Works, Tuscon's Rick Joy Architects, the Seattle office of Perkins + Will, and Berlin's Barkow Leibinger. While at Allied, Daniel worked on celebrated projects like the Corvallis Museum. A number of former Allied Works and Rick Joy staffers now comprise Toole's small staff.

Born in Vienna, Austria and raised in the Portland area (first Southeast, then Milwaukie), Toole has traveled and worked extensively throughout North America, Europe, and Asia. A recent Seattle house was featured in a New York Times article called "A Modern Home That Looks Toward the Sky and the Water." He has also received a series of commissions in the Miami Design District in 2018 (in collaboration with SB Architects), years after publishing a book on his alleyway explorations, Tight Urbanism, in 2010.

Toole received his bachelor’s of architecture degree from the University of Oregon in 2008, and his master’s in urban design from the Harvard Graduate School of Design in 2016, with a year-long research grant at the Technical University of Berlin in between. He has additionally taught as an adjunct instructor at the University of Oregon School of Architecture.

I recently sat down with Daniel Toole over coffee at Albina Press, bonding as two ginger-bearded architecture lovers with similar tastes (which also, judging by his last answer here, apparently extends to movies). I came into the conversation impressed with his past work for other firms, and curious to see where his own shop goes after an impressive first two years.

Portland Architecture: When did you first become interested in architecture as a possible career? 

Daniel Toole: I became interested in architecture in junior high by receiving a book on Frank Lloyd Wright given to me by my aunt, an art teacher in Vancouver, Washington. My grandfather was an engineer as well, who taught me how to sketch and draft with a t square in his workshop, and when I saw what was possible with the Wright book, I was hooked. I was really into skateboarding and trying to become a rock star playing guitar around that time, so my mom was incredibly relieved when I expressed a different career interest, and quickly began to cultivate, stoke, and push that interest throughout high school.  On family road trips to California and Washington, my parents would go with me to visit every Frank Lloyd Wright building I could find, and this became a good foundation prior to college, though I might have been a little obsessed.  Actually, my first architecture-related job was being a docent at Wright’s Gordon House in Silverton my senior year in high school.

The future architect in 2003, as a Gordon House docent (Daniel Toole)

Where did you study architecture and how would you rate the experience? 

I studied architecture at the University of Oregon, Columbia University, and eventually Harvard’s GSD.  At U of O, I had a great mix of core professors and classmates, but I grew tired of what felt like a singular focus on sustainability at the time and wanted to get out into the world and learn about other aspects of design and cities. There was a slight ghost of the Kahn crew that had migrated west to U of O previously, and I feel that though it had to be sought out, that legacy set the tone for me, from cold-calling people like Rick Potestio, Jeff Lamb, John Cava, and going to watch Hacker present projects on campus, etc. there was still a slight connection to that era. My most pivotal year in undergrad was my fourth year, where I left Eugene for Columbia University’s New York/Paris program before finishing my thesis in Portland. Spending most of my life up to this point in southeast Portland suburbs, this year at Columbia in Manhattan and Paris opened my eyes to an immense set of experiences, ideas, writings, buildings, and places that continue to inspire me deeply to this day. Spring break that year, a few students and I traveled on a shoestring budget around France by train and bus to all the major projects of Corbusier with many adventures in between that I will always remember. After graduating at the beginning of the great recession, I moved to Seattle and found work for five plus years, and eventually pursued a Master’s of Architecture in Urban Design at the GSD with a year spent abroad on a research fellowship at the TU Berlin, which was amazing and allowed further exploration of western and eastern European building cultures and multiple visits to my grandmother and mom’s side of the family in Budapest. I was fortunate enough to split the research with working in a German American firm I’ve long admired, Barkow Leibinger before going back and taking final GSD studios in Boston from Scott Cohen, and Rick Joy, whom I would then work for in Tucson before moving home to Portland to take a job with Allied Works managing construction of the Corvallis Museum.  All these experiences, along with backpacking on travel fellowships, and combing used bookstores for art and architecture books have made me who I am today.

What is your favorite building project that you’ve worked on? 

I would say that I am always most excited about the ones that I’m currently designing. At the moment this includes a handful of houses in different urban and natural sites around the Puget Sound region, and a pair of mixed-use buildings here in Portland with visionary developer and friend Ryan Zygar. However, my favorite completed project to date would be my Miami Design District alley revitalization project.

Jade Alley, Miami (top: RA-HAUS, bottom: Heywood Chan)

The rehabilitation of totally desolate alley spaces in a new district in the opposite part of the country came to me after a long love affair with alleyways, and other hidden urban spaces that began with my semester in Paris mentioned previously. I received the commission about a week before my first studio final review at GSD when a team of international developers found a small self-published book on an alleyway research grant funded by the AIA Seattle.  I worked on the project simultaneously with coursework at GSD which was stressful, but rewarding as I had never had my own commission, and I had plenty of talented classmates and professors as critics anytime they walked by my desk!  This project has now been completed for a few years, and it’s incredible to see a small piece of the city grow up around what had previously been dumpsters and cigarette butts.  These spaces are now full of people, shops, restaurants, vegetation, and even a family of parakeets.  Art installations by international icons of the design world including the late Virgil Abloh have been installed in the space, and it just continues to amaze me. Whenever I get the privilege of visiting, I like to just sit in the middle of the arches and watch how people use the space and delight in it, reflecting on what it once was.  This has given me confidence in the power of good architecture to change communities and the city and inspire further change.

Who has been an important mentor among your colleagues? 

Mentorship has been incredibly important to me and my development.  Here in Portland, John Cava taught me about things further afoot (he wrote my letter of recommendation to Columbia and secured a personal meeting with Kenneth Frampton while there), while also teaching me about local modern architectural history, I think I was technically his first research assistant on his John Yeon book. Richard Brown was also my first employer during summers at U of O, and I learned what the culture of being an architect about town was from watching him. I have fond memories of him wearing a bow tie and cranking up the music before an important client meeting and the office sort of taking on a special energy.

After moving to Seattle after graduating at the beginning of the recession, a long list of mentors includes Larry Rouch, Carsten Stinn, Doug Streeter, Susan Jones, Rob Hutchinson, Prentis Hale, and more. I spent almost six years in Seattle working for Perkins + Will and collaborating on small projects with some of those listed above and continue to receive mentorship from these people.

Getting to watch the way offices were run by some heroes of mine has been important too.  Rick Joy, Frank Barkow, and Brad Cloepfil have all been architects I’ve looked up to and getting to watch the way they navigate the design process and running an office were no doubt very important things for me to see before trying it myself.

What part of the job do you like best, and as an architect what do you think you most excel at? 

I love the patient search of the initial concept (which in fact is often more anxious than patient).  And then, when a concept crystallizes, watching it inspire and almost design itself once the fundamentals are established is a deeply satisfying feeling, especially in construction.  A major part of this is bringing positive enthusiasm to the architectural process which can be incredibly stressful, and I think I excel at keeping everyone motivated and encouraged that we are pursuing something great and we should not let up.

Madrona House (Kevin Scott)

What are some Portland buildings (either new or historic) that you most admire? 

I love the houses and churches of Pietro Belluschi.  I learned a lot about him while studying at U of O and working with Cava and other local architects. I also was fortunate enough to take a very small elective seminar taught by Bob Frasca, where so few students signed up that it was basically only me in the class, riding along with him in his little red sports car and going to places like Cottage Grove Presbyterian, and Central Lutheran in Eugene and hearing all the anecdotes about working and learning from Belluschi.  No matter how far I have traveled and worked from Oregon, I am still a sucker for the core of northwest modernism here and its lore.

Pietro Belluschi's Sutor residence, 1938 (Brian Flaherty)

As far as newer buildings, I love the early libraries and buildings of Thomas Hacker, and grew up learning in them – from the Midland branch, to Woodstock, to taking summer classes at the PSU Urban Center, his work brought a sophistication to the city and no doubt influenced the current generation of leading designers.  It was exciting to recently see my parents’ local branch in Milwaukie added to that list with involvement from my close friend from U of O, Tyler Nishitani, a talented friend and colleague who recently moved to Lever and is heavily involved in their library projects.

Of course classic Allied Works projects like Wieden + Kennedy, and the Ann Sacks building around the corner from my office remain favorites.

What is your favorite building outside of Portland and besides any you’ve worked on? 

This is a tough one, but I would have to say La Tourette is near the top. This rough but sophisticated structure is the Rosetta stone of architectural language of the last sixty years. Its monumental materiality decaying within a beautiful pastoral landscape on the hills outside Lyon gives it an incredible atmosphere.

Le Corbousier's Couvent Sainte Marie de la Tourette, 1961 (Wikimedia Commons)

It almost feels like a habitable scaled up studio model in how consistent it is, like it was cast in one pour. The spatial complexity, sequences, play of light, and sculptural qualities offer so many lessons to be learned, it serves as a constant measure of the immeasurable. The Salk Institute and Pantheon are also up there on the list, with Centre Pompidou, Adolf Loos’ House Muller, and Sir John Soane’s house following.  Steven Holl’s Chapel of St. Ignatius in Seattle was the first building I had to write a paper on at U of O, and upon seeing pictures, hated it, then after reading about it and experiencing it, it forever changed my understanding of what architecture can be and do.

Is there a local architect or firm you think is unheralded or deserves more credit? 

John Cava is a great mind, and I would love to see him design more things around town. I also wish he was still teaching, as he instilled some very good things in me that the next generations deserve to have access to.

What would you like to see change about Portland’s built environment in the long term? 

I would like to see more great architects cultivated at a local level that then go on to head offices and institutions and raise the bar as designers and civic leaders.  I feel we are headed into a great new era in architecture with the mass timber culture that is growing quickly and a shift of focus from the often invisible presence of sustainability in the bult environment to a physical material-based building culture once again that comes with potential for advances in tectonic expression, new spatial and atmospheric potential, and many other things that excite me. I believe this momentum could open the door for a second era of wooden modern architecture that could be the sequel to the legacy of Pacific Northwest modernism and its timeless contribution to the history of the art of construction.  It becomes modern and fresh and inspiring but is something that can also be cherished locally as our own regional expression of architectural culture.

How would you rate the performance of local government like the Portland Development Commission, or the development and planning bureaus? 

I am going through my first significant permitting process with them on our Lombard apartment building, so I have to be careful what I say here!  After primarily being involved in permitting in Seattle and Washington jurisdictions, the process has been difficult, but not unreasonable.  I think that the intentions for planning are good, and have managed to keep the city’s distinct neighborhoods in tact through ups and downs, and emphasized the community-focused human scale of the city that is such an integral part of the identity here.  I would like to see more flexibility for projects seeking to think outside the box, and a more flexible approach to design standards in our zoning code and life safety reviews that are more adaptive and are more focused on allowing great projects to be realized that contribute to the city, rather than treating each item as a box to check.

Who is a famous architect you’d like to see design a building in Portland? 

I really like Steven Holl’s work and would love to see him do an addition to the Portland Art Museum, or a gallery of some kind here.  Given the work going on in Seattle and Vancouver with Herzog de Meuron, maybe they could do something here too and raise the bar.

Viewing Noguchi in London (Daniel Toole)

Name something besides architecture (sneakers, furniture, umbrellas) you love the design of. 

I love the art and design of Isamu Noguchi. After visiting his museum in Queens a number of years ago, there is something so elemental and timeless about much of his work that inspires and frustrates me, as I know architecture can never be that succinct given all the measurable means it must be executed through, and the number of materials that must be used in today’s buildings, yet it sets an incredible example to follow in its poetry.

Last December, my wife and I traveled to London, where we got to see a major retrospective on him at the Barbican.  A great Noguchi quote from the exhibit that stood out was, “What Brancusi does with a bird or the Japanese do with a garden is to take the essence of nature and distill it—just as a poet does. And that’s what I’m interested in—the poetic translation.”

What are three of your all-time favorite movies? 

Jim Jarmusch’s Night on Earth, Wim Wenders’ Wings of Desire, and the kid in me loves Christopher Nolan’s Batman trilogy.

Advertisements