Photo by Jim Caldwell, Courtesy Buffalo Bayou Partnership & Minetta Brook. (On-screen image from James Bennings' Ten Skies, 2004, 16mm, color, 109 min.”)
Retention ponds masquerading as water features, custom bobble-heads and PEZ dispensers, chopper bikes, drunk mellow mice and junkyard drive-ins—where could you have found these things together? At Houston’s second Pecha Kucha, which took place last Thursday.
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Scott Cartwright and Jenny Lynn Weitz-Amare Cartwright showcase their first furniture line. [Photo courtesy wacdesignstudio]
In January, the New York Times reported that employment at US architecture firms had dropped from its July 2009 peak at 224,500 to 184,600 by November. Commercial development has ground to a halt, the big car manufacturers have pulled the plug on many dealerships, and a number of big box stores have closed. As an article by Susan Rogers in the next issue of Cite will discuss, vast amounts of land in the city are withering, wasting, wild, and waiting. It is in this context that two young designers have announced a “guerilla retail event,” the “Furniture Sale on North Freeway.”
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On Wednesday evening, the lobby of Williams Tower held court to an exclusive book launch event for The Green Workplace: Sustainable Strategies that Benefit Employees, the Environment and the Bottom Line, authored by HOK Vice President, Leigh Stringer. The event was in every way HOK-centric — a book written by an HOK board member, presented at HOK’s Houston headquarters, and co-hosted by the company — risking the impression that the book is primarily a method of branding a corporation as a leader in green design.
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Model of Cave of New Being and meditation pond
With the growing genre of architecture generated by biomorphic design and biomimetic processes, a reevaluation of Frederick J. Kiesler’s work is ever more timely. During the mid-20th century he became increasingly occupied with the relationship of structure and natural form in architecture. The Cave of the New Being (also known as the Grotto for Meditation), proposed in the 1960s for New Harmony and contracted by Mrs. Blaffer Owen, represented the designer’s pièce de résistance, embodying all of the intellectual currents of his era, from surrealism to biotechnics, yet it was never realized.
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A model of a taco truck by Donna Kacmar's design studio at the Initiatives for Houston exhibition.
The conversion of the Architecture Center Houston (ArCH) into a think tank of what Houston is, could be, and should be is worth the visit. The curated exhibition of Rice Design Alliance’s Initiatives for Houston Grant Program captures ten years of thinkers, dreamers, and designers putting their heads together to better understand our city and steer its future.
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The coming of the new year brought year-end and decade-end posts including the Swamplot awards. “Lakes of” won favorite Houston design cliché of the year. Christof Spieler looked back on a decade of transit megaprojects. Also of note, the Chronicle published two pieces on philanthropist Cynthia Woods Mitchell, who passed away (1, 2). A good story I missed in the last headline post was the Rice News piece on Chris Hight’s and Michael Robinson’s studio on Brays Bayou and their website hydraulicity.org.
Monday January 4
Black medical museum to honor pioneers Facility will be located in historic Freedmen’s Town and focus on the struggles of black doctors to provide care [Houston Chronicle] “Historians hope to restore the home at 1319 Andrews owned by the Rev. Ned P. Pullum, a minister and entrepreneur, and transform it into the Pullum Health and Business Museum. The Pullum Museum would become part of an educational and cultural park corridor in Freedmen’s Town that includes the Rutherford B.H. Yates Museum – another reclaimed historic home. Freedmen’s Town, just west of downtown, is the only remaining post-Civil War, freed-slave historic district of its kind.”
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Rather than plainly document a bounty of recreational attractions, the recently-released Wallpaper City Guide: Houston (published jointly by the Wallpaper magazine and Phaidon) postures itself as the “fast-track” guide for the discerning traveler, offering a “tightly edited,” “ruthlessly researched,” “rigorously selected,” and “discreetly packaged” list of the city’s design-conscious locales. Instead of the design-minded denizen, the target audience is the weekend tourist or business traveler — so it’s tempting for a local to scrutinize the 100-page volume.
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Mayor-Elect Parker is flanked by TxDOT's Delvin Dennis, Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee, Councilmember Gonzalez, Public Works Director Mike Marcotte, and members of the local Boy Scout Troop. [Photo from Houston Bikeways]
After a long wait, the MKT rail-to-trail that connects the Heights with Downtown was officially opened. Annise Parker was there not long after winning the Mayoral election. The University light rail line passed a major federal hurdle and has entered the engineering phase. The Metro president called it “a great holiday present” for Houston. Read on to catch up on what’s going with Houston architecture, engineering, construction, and urban planning.
December 22
Museum idea could save threatened Heights church: One man’s plan could provide a way to keep a historic structure from demolition [Houston Chronicle] “On-again, off-again plans to raze Houston Heights’ historic but long unused Immanuel Lutheran Church may be in limbo again today as preservationists float a plan to convert the striking Gothic Revival sanctuary into a museum for Texas art. Ken Bakenhus, president of the church’s governing body, which overwhelmingly favors demolition, said the 1932-vintage building at 1448 Cortlandt St. likely will be torn down this summer unless feasible plans to save it are proposed.”
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Graphic Design by Michael Rock
Looking for a crash course about typography, identity, branding, print design, interaction/experience, information, and sustainability by four of the world’s leading graphic designers? Sorry. You missed it. In January and February of 2009, the Rice Design Alliance (RDA) held a sold-out lecture series featuring Steven Heller, Andy Altman, Ellen Lupton, and Michael Rock. However, in an effort to reach those who could not attend, the RDA is making videos of the lectures available in the post below. We hoped to make this information available sooner but experienced a long learning curve on handling large video files. Now we know and will be presenting more from past lectures on OffCite.org and ricedesignalliance.org.
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Map of HCC/Ensember area [Courtesy Morris Architects]
Cite Editor, Raj Mankad, and Editorial Chair, Christof Speiler, spoke on KPFT 90.1 FM radio’s Connect The Dots with host Robert Muhammad on Wednesday, December 9, 2009. They were on during the final fifteen minutes of the show to discuss the new issue of Cite (number 80) and an article about the future of Midtown and Houston’s other “inner loop neighborhoods”.
The full audio of the Cite magazine segment can be downloaded and listened to below in mp3 format:
Click to Listen to Cite on Connect the Dots
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