Archinect City Guide dives into Portland, Oregon, today, featuring some of the favorite spots for dining, gallery-hopping, and discovery shared by Observation Studio founding principal Chris Brown. (Avid Archinect readers will remember him from our Studio Snapshot of Linden, Brown Architecture, which rebranded as Observation Studio in 2024.) In true Pacific Northwest spirit, Brown has several authentic and rooted spots in and around Portland to recommend for architects and designers visiting the city. Is he keeping it weird? Let’s find out. Are you a Portland local with your own go-to spots? Or have a city you think we should cover next? Share your thoughts, suggestions, and favorite places in the comments.

Favorite restaurant?

It’s hard to do better than Luce on East Burnside. They’ve been a Portland staple for years and have yet to have an off night. The food is simple and beautiful — particularly the Cappelletti in brodo and shaved fennel salad; it’s mind-blowing.

Image courtesy Luce on Instagram

Favorite bar?

Yur’s is a classic dive bar in the neighborhood that we go to as a studio to shoot pool and drink cheap beer. The booths are generous, and the staff is prickly; just what you want.

Image courtesy Yur’s on Instagram

Favorite café?

Division Street Stumptown. This is the very first Stumptown Coffee cafe and the original roastery, which has remained relatively unchanged over the years, even as Stumptown has become an international brand. I love this cafe because it stands as an enduring example of the promise of Portland and its entrepreneurial spirit, and the space has an undeniable intimacy and warmth.

Favorite bookstore?

Powell’s Books for anything and everything, of course. It’s a well-known Portland institution and continues to impress decade after decade. Also, Chess Club, which just opened in Chinatown, does an incredible job with small press magazines and quarterlies. The owners work tirelessly to promote printed media and to really highlight the magical work of writers, photographers, producers, and more. We feel like kindred creative spirits in terms of that artistic emphasis, and have begun to produce books and other printed media internally within our studio. Thinking through the making of books has had a remarkable influence on how we approach materiality and technique with our architectural work.

Image courtesy Powell’s Books on Instagram

Favorite museum?

Portland is more of a gallery than a museum town — we have a number of outstanding galleries that show really remarkable work. A few of my favorites are PDX Contemporary (just around the corner from our studio), Adams and Ollman, Lumber Room, Landdd, Spartan Shop, and Nationale, which shares a building with Luce and shows some of the fiercest work in Portland. We were proud to help May Barruel, the founder of Nationale, realize the current space, and we take great pride in seeing it flourish as an example of rigorous, creative, thoughtful artistic presentation.

Favorite public space?

The Keller Fountain Park in Downtown is a world-class icon. It’s a set of fountains, designed by Lawrence Halprin; they exist as part of larger sequence of open spaces throughout the City as part of Halprin’s vision. That kind of civic-wide approach is an enduring reminder of how powerful good and thoughtful urban planning and landscape design can be.

Image courtesy Wikimedia Commons user Victorcmyk (CC BY-SA 3.0)

Most underrated building?

Maya Lin designed a bird blind that overlooks a wetland along the Sandy River just outside of town, which is an incredible structure — and nobody knows about it!

Image courtesy U.S. Forest Service- Pacific Northwest Region on Flickr (Public Domain)

Favorite new architecture?

The visitor pavilion at the Japanese Garden by Kengo Kuma is a great example of sensitive, place-based public work.

New or upcoming projects by your firm in the city?

Lots of exciting stuff on the horizon. We have a ground-up residence just completing in the Tualatin Mountains — the house sits high on the site and overlooks the Willamette Valley and out to the Coast Range. It’s clad in copper and has been fascinating to watch the metal age and evolve into the color palette of the natural site. We’re also putting finishing touches on a winery (we love doing that typology after finishing Sequitur). Closer to the City Center, we’re currently designing a small pavilion building that will utilize CLT, which has been an exciting introduction for us to that construction typology and will hopefully become an example of how it can be utilized economically at a very small scale. Finally, we’re just beginning an exciting renovation project to give a local presence to an iconic brand.

Archinectors, what are your personal favorite picks for Portland? Let us know in the comments!