Forest Grove City Hall

How do we design a workplace to maximize views and access to natural light while respecting the architectural character of the city?


For the City of Forest Grove, our design team focused on remodeling and merging their City Hall and the engineering building next door to develop a new 2-story facility as the Development Service Annex (DSA). The renovation and addition allowed us to combine the two structures to create a single cohesive facility with better connectivity between the two services which had been disjointed when the buildings were separate.

Through strategic use of skylights, window systems, and sunshades, FFA designed a façade that reflects the cadence, proportions, and depth of nearby historic structures and allows for deep daylight penetration for the workplace and maximized views for the building’s users. The glazing simultaneously activates and engages the street by providing visibility of the activity inside the building. The new glazed entry to city hall is designed to be more welcoming to the public, create a better sense of arrival, while visually and physically uniting the existing building with the new. The composition of transparency, blending of new and old materiality, and contextual scale complements the surrounding architecture while still providing a contemporary design.

The design provided opportunities to enhance the City Hall lobby allowing for the city’s staff members to interface with the community while introducing centralized collaboration and amenity spaces in the DSA building for the entire staff.