Here is an interesting counterpoint from 2008 to an event celebrating the Lawrence Halperin designed fountains the centerpieces of the South Auditorium Urban Renewal Project.  Explaining the significance of the architecture to us is former Oregonian writer Randy Gragg who devoted a book on the Halperin contributions called; Where the Revolution Began "... the story of how these plazas came to be. Born of the creative experimentation and collaboration between Halprin and his wife, pioneering choreographer/dancer Anna Halprin, the Portland Open Space Sequence came to life in the unlikely setting of the city’s first scrape-and-rebuild urban renewal project. But Halprin defied the conventions of both American urban renewal and midcentury modernism, designing the kind of inviting, exuberant public space that hadn’t been seen since Renaissance Rome’s Trevi Fountain and Piazza Navonna" Yeah right.  Let us now compare and contrast.

Lovejoy Fountain

Trevi Fountain 

Pettygrove park sculpture.

Piazza Navona Sculpture

Again this is Rome.

This is Portland.