Jeffrey Kovel:
Control Freaks, by Design
Even in a known hip town like Portland, Oregon, Doug Fir stands out for its stylish urbanity: the motel, restaurant, bar, and music venue blends iconic Pacific Northwest materials with the traditions of kitschy regional motels of the 1950s and 1960s. Architect and Doug Fir partner Jeffrey Kovel, who heads the small but fast-growing seven-year-old Portland firm Skylab, says his design “merges the whole Wild West lodge and log cabin history with a 1960s futuristic George Jetson coffee shop kind of thing.”
Fortunately, Kovel possesses plenty of imagination; he needed it to envision what Doug Fir could be. “When we first scouted the property, it had been a crack and prostitution motel with an old Chinese restaurant upstairs,” says the architect. “There were buckets of meat rotting on the floor — it was really gross.”
At first, enthusiastically stripping away the dross, Kovel’s team had little notion of what might emerge. Then, concealed beneath the foul leavings and layers of bad interior design, they discovered what he calls “this incredibly beautiful existing structure with the bones of a 1960s diner.” Kovel began to draw — and to formulate a business plan. “There was enough space to do a music venue, a restaurant-bar, and a motel,” he recounts. “So we started digging to figure out where to take that idea.”
Regional Kitsch
Skylab, known for its conscientious research, started looking into U.S. motels of the 50s and 60s. “We found that, in addition to being a place to stay, they were also a vehicle to teach you about an area — like these kitschy regional experiments,” says Kovel. “In South Dakota you might stay at the Apache Inn and learn a bit about Native Americans, in this cheesy way.” Moreover, motels were considered a vacation destination. Kovel decided “it would be a fun and sustainable concept to restore that sensibility to this property.”
Kovel and his partners came up with the Doug Fir name and decided to use classic Northwest materials; as he puts it, “everything flowed from there.” But while the ideas came thick and fast, the actual design process was meticulous.
“One interesting aspect of Doug Fir was the log work,” says Kovel.
As principal architect or lead designer on most Skylab projects, Kovel takes pride in generating his own drawings and schematics before involving his production team. Doug Fir was no exception. “I created a set of construction documents for the log work, and that alone was a phenomenal endeavor,” says Kovel. “There were 45,000 square feet — about 500 sections — of log, and I designed, numbered, and cataloged every single piece.” The end result, featuring glass seamlessly tying into log walls and complex cantilevered log detailing, is not your father’s rough-and-ready cabin.
The Beauty of the Drawing
Kovel depends on his Mac to support his intensely hands-on approach. “The Mac is my design tool,” he says. “It’s not like I go off somewhere to draw, then give my work to someone else to draft. I do both — and my Mac is the enabler. It would be difficult to translate the complexity of these ideas into reality without it.”
The firm heavily integrates Apple tools. Kovel works on a PowerBook with a 23-inch Apple Cinema Display; others use two PowerBooks with Apple Cinema Displays and five Power Mac G5s, all networked via a recently-installed Xserve. “The Mac is integral to our design process,” says Kovel. “It’s a tool that allows us to make drawings that show the hand of their creator — while employing all the convenience that a computer brings to the process.
“The Mac is more like drafting by hand,” he continues. “And for me the act of drawing is a big part of our craft. In the end, the beauty of the drawing equals the beauty of the product. We love everything about the Mac. The availability of graphic design and publishing software — we keep about ten programs running all the time. The intuitive qualities of the operating system. Plus, the aesthetics of the equipment itself.” As Kovel puts it, “There’s a real link between the aesthetics of your process and the aesthetics of your product.”
