Jumping Into ADUs: Webster Wilson designs small homes with often soaring presence

Published 4:30 pm Friday, September 22, 2023

Long before he became one of Portland’s best contemporary home designers and a specialist at accessory dwelling units — those little backyard flats now being built across the metro area (better known as ADUs) — architect Webster Wilson was a ski-jumper.

Throughout high school in his native Connecticut and college at the University of Vermont, he trained and competed. An Olympic hopeful, Wilson spent numerous summers training in Norway, which brought added benefit: an introduction to Scandinavian architecture, which has perhaps done more to shape residential modern design than any other region.

If his Olympic dream never materialized, the travels gave Wilson a second-career’s worth of inspiration.

I first encountered Webster Wilson’s architecture nearly 15 years ago, during the 11xDesign tour, which introduced several young Portland architects who went on to noteworthy careers, including Corey Martin (now a longtime Hacker Architects principal), Daniel Kaven (today an accomplished architect, developer, artist and author), and Ben Waechter (whose housing and hotel designs regularly win design awards).

Wilson’s contribution to 11xDesign was his own house, a striking composition of stacked wood boxes, nestled into the slope of Mount Tabor in Southeast Portland; in retrospect, I can imagine a ski-jump tower as inspiration.

Over the past decade and a half Wilson hasn’t so much soared over the Portland architecture scene with big-budget, high-profile projects — there are no courthouses or art museums or airports to his name — as he’s progressed like a cross-country skier, sticking close to the ground yet ultimately venturing many miles further by amassing a portfolio of exceptional single-family homes and, increasingly, ADUs.

Wilson’s latest, known as the 32nd Avenue ADU, actually does soar, or at least its dramatically upward-sloping roof does, extending over the entry to shade its glass-walled great room. Designed for a Montessori school teacher, a nurse and their two kids, it feels as spacious in its way as their larger old house next door, with a design that embraces indoor-outdoor living. Even the back of the ADU is striking, as a strip of floor-to-ceiling bedroom windows angling at the roofline to form a ribbon clerestory windows.

This ADU isn’t just pretty and full of light. It’s a way for the clients to build equity for their existing home while gaining rental income. Eventually, the couple plan to move into the ADU and rent out the main house, an even better financial proposition.

By no means is Wilson an ADU-only architect. Locally he’s designed a Vancouver, Wash., synagogue from an old warehouse, and a Tualatin private school’s 500-seat performance hall, and his two beach houses at Neskowin on the Oregon Coast are little gems.

Even so, I like the duality of someone who once learned to fly hundreds of feet into the air and land safely on his feet again now becoming such a talent at crafting some of our smallest, most modest and discreet architectural spaces, with a poetic touch. Maybe all it takes is a little perspective.