Before ground is broken or bricks are laid on any building, architects get to work on a smaller scale, creating models of what buildings and sometimes whole landscapes could look like.
City of Possibility, an installation that opened Friday, puts dozens of those models on display, showcasing miniature Portland buildings and other structures from the 1940s to the present day. The exhibit includes models of several notable structures like the Hallock-McMillan Building, the oldest structure in Portland designed by a licensed architect and Portland’s tallest building, the Wells Fargo Center, presented as a large light-up miniature.
Also on hand are all three finalist designs for what would become the Portland Building, a mock-up of Pioneer Courthouse Square from before it was built, and a model of the 1948 Equitable Building, a mainstay of Portland’s downtown that made headlines in the midcentury for its curtain wall and use of aluminum.
The most eye-catching item in the exhibition, though, isn’t of a single structure. It’s a massive 18-feet by 20-feet wooden model of Portland’s urban core.
The miniature downtown was used in the early 1970s to help implement the Downtown Plan, a policy initiative that changed the face of Portland’s midcentury urban core, and helped create downtown more or less as we know it.

“This model was used to think about downtown contextually,” says Randy Gragg, the event’s co-director. “If you were going to make a new building, it was a requirement to bring your building model and put it in the larger city model.” Design reviewers would consider the potential building in the context of the other structures around it.
According to Gragg and his co-director William Smith, architectural models play a variety of roles at different points in the process. “In some cases they’re used early on to test ideas about massing and form,” says Smith. “They can also show up later as a distillation of the design.”
Models also vary in terms of detail or what they’re trying to convey. “Some models can be highly conceptual and try to articulate some fundamental idea,” says Smith. “They can look very unexpected, but get to an idea that’s driving the project. Whereas other models can look very literal and show what the building will look like as constructed.”

City of Possibility is not solely focused on architectural history. Attendees can also catch a glimpse of several models for the new Portland International Airport terminal, and get a sense of where the city is going now with its built environment. Smith also notes that several models that feature mass timber (a newer building technique for using wood) are on display. “We have some large-scale mock-ups where you can see how beam and column go together,” says Smith.
As something of a bonus for attendees, City of Possibility takes place in a notable historical building. The exhibition is hosted split between two historic buildings, J.K. Gill Building and the Expensify Bank Building (AKA the First National Bank Building), the later of which is a century-old downtown structure which has been extensively revamped into tech start-up office space within the last decade. After looking down at various models of Portland history, attendees can see even more of it by just looking around the building they’re in.
City of Possibility is on view at Expensify Bank Building, 401 SW 5th & J.K. Gill Building, 408 SW 5th, through Thurs March 27. Several associated live events, at various locations around Portland, will further explore issues like streets, infill, and the changing role of timber in construction.