Museum Place and Safeway

Located in the heart of Portland’s West End Cultural District, Museum Place Lofts & Townhouses established an innovative mix of residential and retail to become the fast-growing downtown district’s heart.

Ambitious in its size, its sustainability and its unique residential/retail mix, Museum Place Lofts quickly became the standard bearer for quality apartments in the West End Cultural District, and served as a catalyst for this unique area anchored by the Portland Art Museum and Oregon Historical Society.

Perched above a 47,000-square-foot Safeway store, the 140 loft-style apartments provide an essential resource for downtown grocery customers. Knot’s placemaking/wayfinding program features one-of-a-kind graphics for the Museum Place Lofts & Townhouses. Elizabeth Anderson hand-lettered the Museum Place logo applied to metal canopies above the housing entries. The custom logo was also used on the Knot-designed sconces at the housing entries, and on the unit signs in the building’s interior.  Knot designers worked closely with Safeway representatives to apply the signature red letters to a curved wire mesh marquee bisected by a vertical fin capturing the “S” logo mark. The mesh surfaces provide visual form by day, transparency by night and extend the building surface to street corners. By inventing a signature logo style, Knot helped brand the innovative development with an artful solution befitting the city’s Cultural District.