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Except for a single year, Portland, Oregon–based architect Daniel Toole has spent his life living in market-rate apartments. He has long studied the small-apartment typology, from midcentury London's Barbican Estate and British council housing to the 800-square-foot 1942 townhouse designed by Pietro Belluschi, where he now lives with his wife and two young children.

Toole has worked on award-winning projects for other firms—including a museum with Allied Works and a factory with Barkow Leibinger—and designed custom homes through his own practice. Yet he takes particular pride in his five-year-old, three-person firm's first larger project: a 16-unit apartment building in North Portland.

Photos © Jeremy Bittermann

“Housing is what makes up the majority of the city,” Toole says. “I want to put in the same effort that you would into a library or a public building. I wanted to contribute to something that I've had a close relationship with.”

At first glance, 7480 North Delaware possesses an almost Platonic clarity. Rising from a 50-by-65-foot lot, the three-story building is wrapped in corrugated aluminum-zinc alloy cladding punctuated only by windows and recessed balconies. The 16 units comprise 12 one-bedroom apartments and four ADA-accessible ground-floor studios, each measuring roughly 350 square feet plus a 50-square-foot deck.

The project is also a study in adaptation. Toole developed it with Ryan Zygar, a build-and-hold developer and contractor who has sprinkled architecturally distinctive infill projects throughout Portland. This is the third apartment building the pair has designed together, though financing has indefinitely stalled the first two.

The original scheme called for a mass-timber structure wrapped in an innovative masonry skin that referenced the neighborhood's churches. Bricks would have been laid as a translucent screen, filtering light across the facade. But after permitting was complete, soaring timber and labor costs pushed the project $1 million beyond budget.

“Dan got on the phone with my metal guy and inside of an hour and a half solved the budget,” Zygar recalls. “Then he drew it. We had a brand-new building inside the same week, renderings and all.”

Photos © Jeremy Bittermann

Toole acknowledges that the brick concept would have been more novel. Yet his primary ambition lay elsewhere.

“I wanted to create a strong, taut mass—a sculptural whole,” he says. "I wanted to reinforce the street wall and set a precedent in this neighborhood."

That goal drove an unusually rigorous approach to detailing. Toole eliminated through-wall flashing wherever possible, creating seamless transitions across the metal envelope. Mock-ups built on site with the metal subcontractor allowed the team to refine every connection before construction.

Photos © Jeremy Bittermann

The balconies, carved from the building's volume rather than appended to it, preserve the integrity of the street wall while extending the living space outdoors. Cedar lining within the recesses provides a warm counterpoint to the metallic exterior.

The building's organization emerged from another constraint. On such a small site, a conventional double-loaded corridor would have increased unit sizes. Zygar, however, insisted that every resident enter directly from the open air. Toole responded by separating the apartment block from two detached stair towers and enclosing the gap between them with a mesh version of the facade system. The resulting circulation space functions as a semi-outdoor anteroom—part courtyard, part breezeway—bringing filtered light and landscaping into the heart of the project while reducing the building's apparent mass.

Photos © Jeremy Bittermann

Inside, Toole pursued what he calls “Swiss Army knife efficiency.” Operable clerestory windows above entry doors work with sliding balcony doors to capture prevailing breezes. Skylights bring daylight into interior bathrooms. Stainless-steel appliances, countertops, and backsplashes echo the building's exterior skin, reflecting changing light and lending visual depth to the compact living spaces.

One construction error yielded an unexpected flourish. A shower curb was dimensioned too wide for a standard course of tile, requiring custom marble threshold slabs. The result, Toole says with characteristic understatement, became “a little moment of grandeur.”

Photo © Jeremy Bittermann

Final challenges arrived late in the process: thieves took all the clerestory windows one night, and, as construction was about to commence, a utility company determined that the building's upper floor encroached on the clearance envelope of a nearby high-voltage power line. Lowering or setting back the third floor would have compromised both the project's economics and its carefully composed massing. (“They suggested a mansard roof,” Toole dryly notes.) Instead, through a complex permit appeal, he secured approval to shift the entire building two feet closer to its neighbor.

Obstacles cleared. First major project at last complete.

Images courtesy Daniel Toole Architects, click to enlarge