Added on 06/16/08
When creative director Ben Watson and his partner, painter Claudio Tschopp, relocated from Basel, Switzerland, to Portland, Oregon, three years ago, they had been told about Portland’s Pearl District, a popular former industrial enclave now brimming...
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When creative director Ben Watson and his partner, painter Claudio Tschopp, relocated from Basel, Switzerland, to Portland, Oregon, three years ago, they had been told about Portland’s Pearl District, a popular former industrial enclave now brimming with galleries, restaurants, and residential lofts. But the outskirts beckoned: “I decided that if I’m in Portland,” Watson recalls, “why not enjoy the essence of what the city is?” That essence, he contends, is Portland’s concurrence of urban and natural environments. Besides the abundant natural wonders a short drive away, Portland also has the largest wilderness within a major American city: 5,000-acre Forest Park. On the edge of this wooded sanctuary, yet just minutes from downtown, Watson and Tschopp found their ideal spot. Designed in 1972 by local architect Edgar Waehrer, the house is a later example of Northwest modernism, which combined the clean lines and open plans of mid-century modernism with an emphasis on natural local... See less 
