The Brim

The Brim is a multi-family apartment building perched at the ecotone between the Central Eastside Industrial District and Buckman neighborhood in Portland, OR. Built on a small, sloping site that bridges the gap between historic two and three story Buckman residences and the recent wave of five to seven story mixed-use multifamily apartment buildings, the building’s facades carefully address each adjacent condition, from a more unified, multi-story recessed bay expression along SE 12th, to a more fine-grained, intricately incised composition on SE Ankeny, to grids of articulated punched openings and a setback at the east to address the likely future apartment building that will be built there. The juxtaposition of metal and stucco cladding are exaggerated through the subtly angular forms—playfully emphasizing the dichotomy of the building’s context between industrial and historic residential urban fabric while also remaining forward-looking.
The building integrates authentic mural artwork at a variety of scales—a massive mural on the party wall façade facing SE 12th one-way traffic, a complex story-like mural at the entry lobby and extending out to the exterior and in the stairwells. The interior design of the corridors was inspired by the condition of libations at the brim of a glass: a diagonal line separates two tonal areas, intersecting the corridor volume at a subtle angle to create a kind of ‘water line’, implying the glass is being tilted. This ties to the thematic content in the murals and is a nod to the nearby craft beer and distilling mecca in the Central Eastside.