Red swing at the Menil Collection [Photo by Raj Mankad]
Galveston Bay [United States Geological Survey, Wikimedia Commons]
Below is an excerpt from Jim Blackburn’s September 30, 2008 speech at the Rothko Chapel. Mr. Blackburn is an environmental lawyer and contributor to Cite. He was the recipient of the Bob Eckhardt Lifetime Achievement Award for Coastal Preservation Efforts from the General Land Office of the State of Texas and was granted Honorary Membership in the American Institute of Architects in 2003, in recognition of his legal work associated with urban quality of life issues.
My quest begins in the 1980s, one of the most difficult times of my life.
more >
Broadway Urban Corridor [Rendering by Allison Parrott]
The thin urban fabric along Broadway in the East End is fractured by prominent voids. Used car lots, abandoned buildings, and empty land dominate the strip, which is the main route between Downtown and Hobby Airport. Just to the west of Broadway are a few streets of sparse, dilapidated rental housing units which, in a city with limited natural views, sit just to the south of the turning basin looking onto both Brays Bayou and Buffalo Bayou. This specific urban corridor, already an important transit route within the city, has the potential to become a strong community center within the East End by addressing the fractured nature of its current landscape. What are ways to intervene in these urban gaps?
more >
A parking lot to the southwest of Market Square [Photo by Christof Spieler]
Chronicle columnist (and former Cite editor) Lisa Gray recently reported on the plans to rebuild Market Square Park with a dog run, a food stand, and maybe a farmers’ market. This builds on a report done by the non-profit Project for Public Spaces, which in 2005 named Market Square to its list of the 16 squares worldwide most in need of improvement. Will the new plan succeed?
more >
Brochstein Pavilion [Photo by Stephen Fox]
The Susan and Raymond Brochstein Pavilion is an architectural masterpiece. It is a masterpiece even though it is “only” a coffeehouse and, in terms of its architecture, “beinahe nichts” or “almost nothing,” as the great, twentieth-century, German-American architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe described his modern skin-and-bones buildings.
What makes this simple, one-story building so extraordinary?
more >
3916 Woodhead on a foggy morn [Photo by Raj Mankad]
For a few months this year, the economic story for Houston was that we were an exception. The headlines this week indicate that the national downturn has finally caught up with us. Perhaps the above townhouse, which is being built on a site where the original house was torn down, will be among the last of an era.
Tuesday December 16
The Swampies: Voting Continues [Swamplot] This blog on Houston’s real estate landscape has set up a wickedly clever competition that includes such categories as Most Fattening Real Estate Development, Only in Houston, Best Rebranding Effort, Best Teardown, and Best Project Cancellation or Delay.
more >
Man throwing debris into pile in Galveston. [Photo by Eric Hester]
What happens when you take a failing affordable housing policy and add a direct hit by Hurricane Ike. I talked to Chula Sanchez, a LEED-certified architect and member of the Galveston Planning Commission, about just that.
“The planning commission seems to be more of a permitting commission,” Ms. Sanchez explained.
more >
Rendering of Donald Lipski's "Tubbs," an outdoor sculpture commissioned for the upcoming WaterWorks museum, Arts in Houston
Hanif Kara [Photo courtesy of Adams Kara Taylor]
Hanif Kara was brought to Houston on October 1 by the Rice Design Alliance. Since co-founding Adams Kara Taylor in 1995, an engineering practice based in London, Kara has pushed the envelope for new forms, material uses, prefabrication, and sustainable construction. He has worked on major award-winning projects such as the Peckham Library, which won the Royal Institute of British Architects Stirling Prize. I had the pleasure of sitting down with Kara to record an interview. Click on the links below to listen:
Hanif Kara Interview, Part 1, 5 minutes 20 seconds
Hanif Kara Interview, Part 2, 10 minutes 43 seconds
Hanif Kara Interview, Part 3, 9 minutes 34 seconds
more >
The cover of the Fall 2008 issue of Cite draws together much of the content from the issue, which includes features on affordable housing and Hurricane Ike. The photograph shows “NIMBY,” a structure fashioned by Kevin Curry from fence boards, posts, rails, and other hurricane debris he scavenged from the streets. Built just large enough to hold a single bed, the structure, according to Curry, “addresses the fragility of safety and comfort.” What a timely word – fragility. Not just because a hurricane cast us into darkness for weeks and demolished the coastline, but also because of the financial crisis, the housing market, rising unemployment, the fluctuating price of oil, wars, attacks, and everything else headlining the papers.
more >
