GWA was selected through a competitive RFQ process to guide the Port of Newport in envisioning the future of its recreational campus at South Beach. Located in a coastal Oregon town shaped by fishing, marine science, tourism and recreation, the project site lies adjacent to a cluster of civic and research institutions.
The conceptual design establishes a new identity for the site through integration of circulation, landscape, infrastructure, and low-maintenance architectural systems. At the urban scale, the project situates itself as a transitional zone—linking public research institutions and tourist destinations with regional infrastructure and ecological features. Site planning emphasizes resilience and legibility: pedestrian paths connect shared amenities like the sauna and bath house; buffers mitigate noise and delineate edges; and programming is arranged to support both privacy and sociability.
Building forms are derived from pragmatic concerns—salt air, long-term maintenance, seasonal use patterns—but organized to shape experience as well as function. Public and semi-public spaces are arranged to encourage informal gathering and movement, using scale, openness, and alignment to draw people toward shared views and resources. In this way, the project reflects a larger design intention: to construct a retreat that operates not only as infrastructure, but as a social and environmental interface within Newport’s evolving waterfront.
