Where Can I Buy Zithromax, 1904 Decatur house, MC2 Architects, photograph by Hester + Hardaway from Cite 51
Recently Mayor Annise Parker has brought forth the possibility of new development restrictions in Houston's historic districts. On a June 9 kuhf public radio broadcast, Parker
commented on the potential changes to ordinance, saying, "If you're building in a historic district, the expectation is that you will build something that in mass and scale and general appearance fits into the district. If you want to come and put a big metal ultra-modern townhome in the middle of the district you will not receive a certificate of appropriateness."
Architecture is an ever-evolving field, Strep a zithromax resistant pcn allergy, and modern architecture, specifically, represents a step away from building styles of the past, pushing the limits of materials and form. However, a tension exists between preserving the historic integrity of designated districts, and pursuing progressive design in the field of architecture. How do we maintain the historic identity of a neighborhood, zithromax iv infiltration, while simultaneously moving into the future.
"Past Imperfect" an article by David Theis in Cite's 51st issue looks precisely at this issue, referencing the modern house by MC2 Designs in Houston's Sixth Ward, Where Can I Buy Zithromax. To some, this building sums up the image that Parker is painting of the "big metal modern"---the one house on the street that steals the show with its sleek form and shift in materials. Others argue that MC2's design picks up motifs in the neighborhood, playing with traditional forms and materials to produce a modern commentary. This controversial project really represents the issue at large. Zithromax drypak, Is there a place for the contemporary in historic districts, or are these neighborhoods to be left alone as living exhibits commemorating the past. Where Can I Buy Zithromax, As a graduate student pursuing a Masters in historic preservation, I came to Houston to spend the summer working and writing for the Rice Design Alliance. RDA's platform seemed a suitable spot to take in the city's architecture, old and new. Coming in, I knew only the basics---Houston had no zoning (gasp); The city's preservation ordinance had long been criticized as being overly differential to developers; And the general sentiment for old buildings often does not stop the ever present, ever powerful demolition.
Biking to work on my second day at RDA, zithromax depo provera, I noticed a bulldozer and crew parked at a house on the corner of North Boulevard. By my ride home later that afternoon, the house was gone, leaving only piles of broken glass and crumbling brick and mortar. Demolition in a day, Where Can I Buy Zithromax.
And so it is easy to tear things down, and not every building can avoid demolition. Zithromax children, It happens everywhere, buildings are abandoned, neglected, decaying, unhealthy, unusable, or just plain unwanted. Buildings are knocked down, buy zithromax without rx. This is the reality, and too often, preservationists are quickly written off as the overly sentimental or nostalgic that just want to save everything. Where Can I Buy Zithromax, Preservation is not about freezing time and ensuring all buildings never change, and places never evolve. In fact it is just the opposite. Preservation helps people understand the evolution. By maintaining older buildings, Generic for zithromax, a place suddenly has a visible history that you can read by simply walking down the street.
[caption id="attachment_3411" align="alignnone" width="498" caption="9 Shadowlawn Circle, a 1961 unobtrusive modern courtyard house of steel, brick, and glass. Designed by Anderson Todd, Where Can I Buy Zithromax. Next door, 11 Shadowlawn Circle, a 1926 formidably-scaled neo-Georgian house designed by William Ward Watkin, generic zithromax sold in the us. "]
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Perhaps Houston's lack of zoning allows this quality to shine, revealing multiple histories in rather short distances. Where Can I Buy Zithromax, As an outsider looking in on Houston, it is riveting to witness the layers. To cruise down a tree-lined residential street, flanked by houses matching in massing and scale, then turn the corner and come face to face with the shining glass curtain wall of a skyscraper, before the quaint residential street resumes. Old and new, zithromax 5 day, small and large, the shift in materials, scale, light and form--- Houston makes for great possibilities in architecture.
However, these juxtapositions are also telling of Houston's enormous growth. Zithromax prscription austria, Founded in 1836, Houston has grown from a small town of 2,000 to a city of over 2 million. It is at Chicago's heels, vying for the spot as the third largest city in the country, Where Can I Buy Zithromax. Houston welcomes more people, more growth and more development each year, and in 1995, the city adopted Houston’s Historic Preservation Ordinance, in an effort to prevent new growth from usurping examples of the past, zithromax vs biaxin. As the steady growth continues, the protections in place for preservation seek to prevent development from eating away at the historic building fabric entirely. Preservation ensures that the city reads with multiple layers of history, rather than solely new development.
[caption id="attachment_3426" align="alignnone" width="498" caption="Contemporary house on Bissonnet designed by Allen Bianchi"]
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With the ordinance under review, it is important to consider the goal for new construction in historic districts. Where Can I Buy Zithromax, Perhaps Mayor Parker uses the "big metal modern" as her example to stand for those plans that disregard the surrounding celebrated architecture of historic districts. Zithromax feline, These neighborhoods earn designation because their buildings individually and collectively represent history---of architectural styles, specific architects, time periods, events and growth patterns of Houston. If these buildings were wiped clean, Houston would be a blank canvas. The sense of place that these older buildings establish would be gone.
In his Cite article, buy zithromax no prescription, Theis comments that replicating traditional styles seems to be the path of least resistance for new construction in historic districts. Is the only guideline and goal for new construction to be non-controversial, Where Can I Buy Zithromax. Neatly packaged historic replicas may be in keeping with the district, but style control can be like a straight jacket for architects. At the same time, it can also be argued that replicating historic styles is, in a sense, Zithromax dangers, falsifying history. In fact, false historic facades are a big "no no" in the world of preservation. Attempting to reproduce historic styles in new modern materials and forms is not only confusing, but can also quickly go wrong. Where Can I Buy Zithromax, Simply put, slapping on a set of columns and decorative ornamentation does not magically create history.
Constructing carbon copies of buildings in historic districts, every time the option for new construction arose, would be a huge missed opportunity, zithromax for kidney infection. It all boils down to considerate design. A Neo-Georgian or Neo-Queen Anne may pick up the traditional style of a district, but can be equally alarming or out of place if inconsiderately executed. Any design, regardless of the style, requires a thoughtfulness of scale, Zithromax 500mg tablets, massing, materials, and form, when brought to life in a historic district.
[caption id="attachment_3414" align="alignnone" width="498" caption="5306 & 5310 Institute Lane "]
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Minnette Boesele, the mayor's liaison for cultural affairs, clarifies, "There are guidelines in the ordinance that the commission works with in terms of design, massing and scale of new construction, Where Can I Buy Zithromax. That's not to say a contemporary house or building could not be designed if it were to comply with those guidelines. The mayor's thoughts may have been related to overscale, not taking into consideration the environment. The commission has approved many new buildings that were sensitive in terms of massing, zithromax info, scale, and materials, and setbacks."
The "big metal modern" seems painted as the bad guy, but really, it deserves a little defense. Preservation is not solely focused on charming historic houses. Where Can I Buy Zithromax, Preservation of modern architecture continues to gain strength, as many structures built in the 1950's, '60's and '70's are now over or approaching the fifty year benchmark that carries historic status. Zithromax hearing loss, Such is the case with 9 Shadowlawn Circle, an unobtrusive contemporary home built in 1961 that has held its own among eclectic country houses from the 1920’s and 1930’s. Flanked by a 1933 home by H.A. Salisbury and a 1926 formidably scaled Neo-Georgian house by William Ward Watkin, this contemporary example revealed an obvious shift in design and form. However, 9 Shadowlawn Circle is in no way a blaring example of contemporary architecture that detracts from the history of its venerable neighbors. Instead, the architect, Anderson Todd, thoughtfully situated this house on its site, worked in a palette of familiar building materials, and scaled back the project so as not to disrupt the cohesion of the neighborhood, Where Can I Buy Zithromax. In fact, zithromax floxin levaquin avelox, the street facade almost entirely blends into the landscape, coated with thick Spanish moss.
[caption id="attachment_3438" align="alignnone" width="498" caption="9 Shadowlawn Circle, street facade. "]
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9 Shadowlawn Circle represents true restraint in design. Where Can I Buy Zithromax, But is the goal of strengthening the ordinance to force new construction to keep a low profile. David Theis asks in his article, "How can contemporary architecture be neighborhood friendly?" Can contemporary architecture fuse with a given neighborhood's style. As we move towards greater restrictions in historic districts, it becomes necessary to clarify our goals.
In order to read the visible history that these houses provide, we must not muddle their story. Blaring examples of modernism, buy without a prescription zithromax azithromycin, over-scaled replicas of historic styles, and any sort of inconsiderate design threatens to confuse this visible history. There is no formula for doing it right, but strengthening the ordinance provides the opportunity to clarify the rules and ensure that new design plans work within their district, Where Can I Buy Zithromax. Theis poses the question, "is there a third way to build in a Houston historic district. Is there a type of design that is simultaneously, and paradoxically, Zithromax antibiotics, contemporary, humble, and exciting?"
[caption id="attachment_3418" align="alignnone" width="498" caption="1203 Mt. Vernon, built in 1979. "]
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I believe that there is. In reality, zithromax 500 mg tri-pack, the small window for new construction in historic districts is really exciting. It is often a huge challenge for architects to work within guidelines that reign in historic districts. The materials, design, form, color, Zithromax organic throat coat, and even landscaping are all considered. In most cases, designs come before a review board that ultimately decides whether the plans fit the district, Where Can I Buy Zithromax. It is by no means an easy task, but it is a tremendous opportunity. To work with form and mass and scale to produce a building that smartly fits in the landscape is a huge feat.
Such a feat was accomplished in 1951, ten years before Anderson built at 9 Shadowlawn Circle. Philip Johnson was designing a home for the de Menil family in Houston's architecturally conservative River Oaks neighborhood, and his long, low-slung brick design was far different than the opulent, multi-story mansions that lined the streets. Where Can I Buy Zithromax, The de Menil house revealed a minimalist, post-war architecture, new to the River Oaks neighborhood. Johnson himself showed subtle restraint, stepping away from the purity of his all glass houses, in order to considerately and artfully insert this building into the landscape.
[caption id="attachment_3416" align="alignnone" width="498" caption="The de Menil House by Philip Johnson, Photo by GHPA. "]
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The effect of the de Menil house was not to reproduce an entire block of look-alikes, but rather, it represented a shift in form, a change in style, and inspiring new design. An anomoly at the time of its construction, today it has reached the 50 year historic benchmark, with all of its associated status, Where Can I Buy Zithromax. It represents the need for architecture, and preservation, to continually evolve.
Every year, Houston gets a little older, and its buildings add a bit more to the story. Preservation seeks to sustain this story, rendering it readable in the building fabric---it celebrates the neighborhood that represents early 20th century architecture, while simultaneously, switching gears and considering modern skyscrapers that dot the downtown. Houston has reminded me of this, with its tangled, criss-crossed layers of history.
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Sylvan Beach Pavilion, designed by Greacen & Brogniez, 1953. Photo by Hank Hancock.
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The building was erected in 1953 (there had been two previous pavilions at that location since 1896, each destroyed by storms), designed by the firm Greacen & Brogniez. Raymond Brogniez graduated from Harvard’s Graduate School of Design under Walter Gropius and Marcel Breuer. Thomas Greacen’s best-known work in Houston is the First Unitarian Church (1952). The architects gave the pavilion its modernist sensibility. New materials like folded plate reinforced concrete allowed for unprecedented adaptation of space to reflect function. At the pavilion, this is reflected in the way separate parts of the building suit their separate roles: its tiered and multi-storied entranceway; its indoor/outdoor concessions that join together the lobby and deck areas; and its iconic 10,000 square-foot glass-walled ballroom overlooking Galveston Bay. The octagonal ballroom, a prize-winning example of mid-century modernist aesthetic, nevertheless recalls the 150-year tradition in Texas of polygonal dance hall spaces that consolidated and strengthened their communities.
Sylvan Beach and La Porte share their history and their origins in the last decade of the nineteenth century. Before the ship channel, before the incursion of the petroleum industries, La Porte was established as Houston’s beachside resort community, a classy Victorian retreat for harried urban recreationists. For 100 years, generations attended company picnics, live radio extravaganzas, big band dances, and traveling performances by national acts, as well as banquets, fund-raisers, and family celebrations of graduation, anniversary, and retirement. In some ways, the pavilion today is a victim of its past, ever recalling the golden years of the 1930s when a previous pavilion structure hosted the great bandleaders Rudee Vallee, Phil Harris, and Benny Goodman in a circuit that included Galveston’s Hollywood Club and the Rice Hotel. Desegregation in 1962 opened significant new opportunities for black performers and audiences in contemporary soul and R&B. In 1974 the headlining event was a nostalgic big band revue “Return to Sylvan Beach” hosted by the 70-year-old Phil Harris, remembering as always the old days at Sylvan Beach.
Finally in September 2008, Hurricane Ike inflicted some significant damage on the structure, so it was boarded up and left to rot. Citizens of La Porte and architectural scholars and enthusiasts had organized six months earlier to block a County Commissioner’s proposal to replace the pavilion with a hotel and convention center. (Again the curse of nostalgia: it would have a “retro theme dating to the 1920s.”) Now it looked as if Ike would provide them indisputable justification for a teardown.
Ted Powell, a chemical engineer and the most vocal organizer of efforts to preserve the Sylvan Beach Pavilion (he runs the site savethepavilion.com), disagrees with the grim assessments of city and county assessors, including that the building is “uninsurable.” He and his many allies in La Porte insist that the building is structurally sound, easily salvaged, and could be feasibly operated as it was originally designed. They have been assisted by the economic collapse over the last few months in 2008, which did much to the cool the heels of eager developers.
Ever since Ike, the city, the county, and preservationists have forwarded competing claims of insurance liability; costs for repair, restoration, or replacement; and eligibility for federal and state grants. One year after Ike, Powell submitted forms to nominate the Sylvan Beach Pavilion in the National Historic Register, effectively preventing federal money from being used to destroy it. Stephen Fox, a fellow of the Anchorage Foundation of Texas, assisted Powell with the registration effort.
The city and county aren’t saying much now about what’s in store, though the pavilion’s historic register and its popular preservation campaign now make it politically risky to suggest knocking it down. The city of La Porte broke its lease with the county in October 2009, getting out of the dance hall business for good. County Commissioner Sylvia Garcia’s office still insists that it never made plans to demolish the pavilion, despite language in a November 2009 proposal to the state of Texas outlining plans for “clearance and reconstruction.” According to spokesman Mark Seegers, that language was only so much boilerplate to satisfy eligibility requirements, and no one should have taken it seriously.
Whatever the record may indicate about the County Commissioner’s practices and priorities, Sylvia Garcia apparently has no clear vision now for the Sylvan Beach Pavilion, insisting definite plans must wait to see how much funding can be secured. Garcia’s recent election to co-chair the H-GAC Ike Recovery Committee (responsible for distributing FEMA funding in the area) makes no difference at all. Just this week, Sylvia Garcia authorized the county to sue the insurer to recover money to make repairs and reopen the building.
For his part, Ted Powell sees the past two years of delay as part bureaucratic incompetence and part willful obstruction. He hopes to raise funds outside of the tax, grant, and insurance systems to keep the Sylvan Beach Pavilion alive and well and planning for its future. He wants the pavilion to be secure, and operating a viable business, by the time the economy regains its footing and developers in Texas again set their eyes on La Porte’s Sylvan Beach.
Selected Images from Romance of Old Sylvan Beach by Erna B. Foxworth
Related Links:
NPR report on Texas dance halls
KUHF Report on Lawsuit to Recover Funds
Oscar 102/Brasilia 50 is the work of Farès el-Dahdah, a longtime professor at Rice who changed his specialty about ten or fifteen years ago from literary tropes in architecture to what seems to me to be the much more appealing study of Brazil’s tropical modern architecture. Brasilia has a special place in el-Dahdah’s heart since, as he told us when I took his Brasilia seminar in 2001, it was where he attended high school and a place of much youthful pleasure. The title refers to the ages in 2010 of celebrated Brazilian architect Oscar Niemeyer (1907-) and that of its purpose-built capital city, Brasilia. He justifies the book in his typical light-hearted way: “The mere intersection of Niemeyer’s centenary (plus two) and Brasilia’s fiftieth anniversary was sufficient pretext to conduct a studio in the fall 2007 at Rice University’s School of Architecture.” The content includes eight essays by el-Dahdah examining various aspects of Brasilia and “causes célèbres in the history of Brazil’s contribution to modern architecture,” each supplemented by a student-produced “dossier” of computer models, diagrams, and occasional essays. The book begins and ends with spreads of splendid photos depicting several of Niemeyer’s best known buildings that the students visited during the course of the studio. I particularly liked these photos, which were taken by Luisina Wilfong and Lylse Oliveros, because of the manner in which they indicated effects of the passage of time on the modern buildings. There were smudges of black mold on the curving fascia of Niemeyer’s house in Rio de Janeiro. A slightly crooked chartreuse fire hydrant stands sentry with two costumed guards in front of the Planalto Palace. Some of the marble revetment looked about to pop from the awesomely long pedestrian ramp leading up to the roof of the Congress (which, by the way, has no handrails to speak of).
El-Dahdah has completely immersed himself in minutiae of his subject as the numerous references to letters in archives, emails to descendents of key players, and the inclusion of many sketches and drawings by Niemeyer and other architects of the period demonstrates. The most intriguing essays to me were those that explored the back and forth dialogue between Le Corbusier and his Brazilian colleagues. Le Corbusier visited Rio de Janeiro in 1936 at the invitation of the éminence grise of modernity in Brazil, Lucio Costa (1902-1998). A wily figure, Costa promoted modernism while at the same time serving as the decades-long director of the Serviço do Patrimônio Histórico e Artístico Nacional (the Brazilian national heritage service). Costa had been entrusted to the design of a new building for the Ministry of Education and Health and wished to consult with Le Corbusier, in his mind a visionary of an ability that only appears at “intervals of centuries.” The resulting building, completed in 1944, has been heralded as one of the canons of modern architecture. As the protracted design process stretched out over several sites and innumerable schemes, ego played its role and both the Brazilian design team lead by Costa and Niemeyer and Le Corbusier ended up claiming credit for what was clearly a solution that neither would have arrived at alone. In other essays el-Dahdah charts the nuances of similar situations with regards to such other famous buildings as Brazil’s pavilion at the New York World’s Fair (1939) and the United Nations Headquarters Building (1952).
The last three essays address Brasilia. The genesis of this city, its inaugural sectors built in short three years on an arid, treeless plain, more than 600 km from the nearest paved road, is almost legendary. Costa’s winning proposal for its design consisted of fifteen little sketches and accompanied by an essay that began: Não pretendia competir e, na verdade, não concorro—apenas me desvencilho de uma solução possível, que não foi procurada mas surgiu, por assim dizer, já pronta (“It was not my intention to enter the competition—nor indeed am I really so doing. I am merely liberating my mind from a possible solution which sprang to it as a complete picture, but which I had not sought.”), thus casting a wonderfully subversive, existential doubt on the entire project. The plan of Brasilia is composed of 120 large superquadras, or residential blocks, intended to house about 2,500 people ranged symmetrically in four parallel, curving rows about a shorter, perpendicular “monumental axis” containing the buildings of the government. Roadways on the scale of freeways connect the various parts of the city. Almost from the start, Brasilia has been criticized for its anti-urban qualities when compared to traditional, densely built cities. However, as el-Dahdah points out, “to live in a superquadra means access to ‘financial stability, home ownership, individual cars, schools, cinemas, theaters, clubs, green spaces, viable roads without traffic and where physical safety is guaranteed to go to work and back, in sum, access to the city in all it signifies as a way of life.’” It reminds me of living in Houston, another city criticized for the many of the same reasons. Although, el-Dahdah continues, “a city without the traditional street or street corner can very well have other viable public spaces and that social ecologies can easily adapt to unprecedented urban forms,” the sections on Brasilia do not seem to explore this in a significant way. It would have been fascinating if some of the student dossiers, which in general I found to be vague or burdened with jargon-loaded sentences, focused on what it is like to spend your days in such a place. Perhaps it would have uncovered some of the common ground between Brasilia, Houston, and other contemporary, suburban cities that make them desirable places to live for so many people despite the critics’ protests.
Oscar 102/Brasilia 50
Architecture at Rice 46, Houston: Rice School of Architecture, 2010
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