Hazel Ying Lee Apartments Receives Portland Design Commission’s 2021 Design Excellence Award
We are thrilled to announce that Holst Architecture and the Hazel Ying Lee Apartments have been awarded the Portland Design Commission’s 2021 Design Excellence Award!
This award recognizes a project that best exemplifies the tenets of design: context, public realm, quality, and resilience. This is Holst’s 2nd year winning this award, having been awarded the same honor for Fora Health’s Headquarters in the 2019-2020 State of the City Design Report,
Thoughtful Solutions to Complex Challenges
Hazel Ying Lee Apartments is a 206-unit affordable housing project in Portland’s Creston-Kenilworth neighborhood. The site was previously the location of a strip club, purchased by the City of Portland, and awarded Portland Housing Bond funds in 2018. The site is a sloping parcel with split zoning fronts, a bustling state highway, and two dead-end streets. Holst was challenged to deliver a design solution that enhances the fractured context of Powell Boulevard with an improved public realm while providing an architecture of quality and permanence on a limited budget. To meet these challenges, we collaborated early and often on strategies to meet the design guidelines while thinking creatively about how to shape the building and surrounding open spaces.
Designing for Dignity, Delight, & Respite
The design of Hazel Ying Lee harnesses the concepts of currents and flow—the building shifts, carves, and warps to create courtyards, pathways, and play areas. These design elements complement the building by flowing into entrances, weaving through interior spaces, and settling into eddies of respite in the courtyards. Now under construction, the Hazel Ying Lee Apartments will soon provide 206 dignified and delightful affordable housing units, as well as community rooms, courtyards, playgrounds, services, and spaces focused on families.
