— Written by Linda Besant for News from Soapstone, 2001

Residents who write in the Water Studio, or who climb down from Wind to stretch on the upper deck, or who simply enjoy the comforts of indoor plumbing, have Andrews Architects to thank. Martha Peck Andrews and James E. Andrews designed the addition that integrates Will Martin’s original cube-atop-a-triangle into a fanciful and functional writers’ retreat. Their work was a gift to Soapstone—entirely pro bono.

Martha and Jim are my neighbors. When Soapstone needed an architect, I thought of them because throughout their careers they have used their skills as architects in service to their community. Their projects have ranged from domestic violence shelter housing to apartments for people who are quadriplegic. (They are the recipients of a Maxwell Award for Excellence for Low Income Housing for the Irrigon Farmworkers Family Duplexes, a Community Pride Award of Clark County for Forest Ridge Elderly Housing, and the Oregon Governor’s Livability Award for the Albina Corner Mixed-Use Project.) In their spare time they volunteer to help build Habitat for Humanity homes and recruit donors for REACH Community Development.

“I find it hard to say no to people I know who are doing good things,” Martha explained, “but our biggest attraction to this project was Will Martin. I met him when I was first starting out as an architect. At that time, you just went from office to office asking for a job. Most places, they simply said no. Will said no, too, but he took me into his conference room and looked at my portfolio. He had a weaving from Guatemala on the wall. I had just been to Guatemala, and I commented on it. We talked for an hour about the country. He was very well informed. Apparently that was the way he was, interested in many things. People say he could have been a writer or an artist as well as an architect. His botanical watercolors are stunning. They’re drawn in elevation and plan view and cutaway view like architects do, then colored. I knew it would be interesting to work with Will’s playhouse, and it really was a pleasure.”

The committee who met with Martha for two years, struggling to define all the specific needs of a writing retreat, was more than a little surprised to hear that the Andrews considered us easy clients. We found our decision-making as tangled and thorny as blackberry brambles. “That’s just the way a good design process works,” Martha said. “It starts like a very wide network with strings going in every direction, and gradually you narrow them. It evolves until everything matches. What is frustrating is if people can’t visualize three-dimensional ideas in two dimensions. The committee was good at visualizing. Also, you had consistency to your vision, but nobody came to the table saying, ‘It has to be only one way.’”

“When you’re designing anything,” Jim added, “you need to have reasons for what you’re going to do. In school, you get assignments for design projects. The professors try to come up with something interesting, where you have to work with specifics about how the space will actually be used. When we were in school, the assignment was often a writers’ retreat. Martha is the only person I know who’s actually built one.”

Soapstone residents love Martha’s design. Their glowing evaluations attest to how well it meets our needs. Martha, too, is pleased with the building. “Working in affordable housing, our mind set is one of providing the very best living unit in the least amount of space, using the least amount of dollars. We don’t get much room for whimsy. But out in the woods, whimsy is appropriate. Soapstone is one of the more fun and imaginative things we’ve gotten to do.”

Each year, Martha and Jim host a dinner at Soapstone for the Architectural Foundation of Oregon. Proceeds benefit the foundation’s scholarship fund and outreach programs such as “Architects in the Schools.” One year, Martha Goetsch and I attended the dinner. One of the guests, William Wilson, had worked in Will Martin’s firm after college. He arrived at Soapstone eager to see the structure that he had known only as a balsa wood model in Will’s office, and recalled Will’s stories of building the tower and cube by hand.

We toured the building and hiked around the property, admiring the wild congruity of the structure from the creek trail and the “Avenida de las Angeles.” Later we feasted on salmon and fresh strawberries and talked for hours about how to live in careful and sustainable ways. As we stood in the breezeway at the end of the evening, Bill Wilson offered a final pearl from Will: “When you enter a building, you should feel a sense of delight.”

Martha and Jim’s design for the addition accomplishes the feat of meeting our practical needs and deepening the delight Will created. We will always be grateful to them for their incredibly generous gift.

To learn more about Andrews Architects, go to andrews-architects.com

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