Building An Action Center from the Ground Floor

Portland, Oregon — The Mercy Corps Action Center will be an innovative, state-of-the-art learning facility that will bring in information from around the globe about the fight against poverty and hunger. Much of this material will be created by Mercy Corps staff and will come directly from the new global headquarters building in downtown Portland.

This new location for Mercy Corps and the Action Center – the Skidmore Fountain Building – was chosen after months of work with the Portland Development Commission, The Walsh Group, Green Building Services and the designers of the new building, Thomas Hacker Architects.

The existing building will remain, but will be doubled in size and added to with various features that not only encourage communications between the various departments within, but also, according to principal architect of the project William Dann, helps reflect Mercy Corps' values of sustainability and entrepreneurship.

"We wanted to approach the building," says Dann, "the way you approach your work in developing countries: do as much as you can with what's there. I think it's very creative in the way it expresses the entrepreneurial spirit and the combination of the old and new."

Dann says that the majority of the construction work that will be done on the Skidmore Fountain Building will be to bring the structure back to "its original character by removing floors and penthouses and other aspects that had been added over the years." The building will also be seismically upgraded to meet the specifications of Oregon state law.

Hacker Architects have also been working closely with ESI Design, the firm that has been putting together the features and displays in the Mercy Corps Action Center and the Action Center To End World Hunger, which opens in New York this fall. "We've added more elements to their program," says Dann, "including a large community room that will be used for meetings and exhibitions and a gallery space that will expand the concept of the learning center into the main building."

With all the work that Dann and Hacker Architects are putting into the design of the new building, there is much to be enthusiastic about, what Dann is most looking forward to is "to see the life of the building take hold and to have the people who work there take possession of it and make it their own."