Conceptual Design

The Willamette Falls Culinary Arts Center (WFCAC) at the Oregon City Food District is the conceptual design of a century old industrial mill site revitalization situated at the confluence of Oregon’s richest agricultural production lands and a regional metropolitan marketplace. The Pacific Coast railroad and the Willamette River pass from the Willamette Valley through Oregon City, as do three major highways, all linking Oregon City to markets in Portland, the nation, and the world. The WFCAC continues the tradition of trade and good eating that have always defined Oregon’s oldest settlement.

The Culinary Arts Center will prepare students coming from all over the world for careers as professional cooks, pastry chefs, and restaurateurs. The food-centric activities will draw more tourism and expand the local food economy, offering more affordable access to local food and healthy choices. Together, the development and other buildings comprising the Food District rely on each other for resources.

Programmatically, the WFCAC includes a student-run restaurant, bar, cafe and bakery; greenhouses for production, teaching, and research; food innovation lab; teaching kitchen; and mushroom cave.

The experimental graffiti concept was born out of a desire to explore how graffiti art could be used to augment a space in a temporary way. To achieve this goal, we pointed lasers on a surface, captured the movement through a fixed camera, and translated it using a computer coding program into a graffiti style.

The evolving artwork was projected onto surrounding walls and mirrors to artistically engage with our environment. This resulted in a series of captured moments that blur what it means to create on a canvas and open one's eyes to another way to alter an inhabitable space.