Red swing at the Menil Collection [Photo by Raj Mankad]
Galveston Bay [United States Geological Survey, Wikimedia Commons]
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. Ronald Reagan – the source of many of our problems today - was president. I was practicing environmental law and was watching the dismantling of the environmental protections that my country had passed during the 1970s. I had lived long enough that I had encountered realities about myself, about others and about the system and it would be an understatement to say that my experiences were not in sinc with my expectations.
One day in 1986 I found myself sitting in a meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous. I have never been in such a low place before or since. My lance was shattered, my armor in pieces, my horse without a rider. I had a problem but was denying it existed. At AA, they told me that that I had to admit that I was powerless over alcohol. They also told me that I needed to acknowledge a “higher power” which was described as a power greater than myself that would provide me with spiritual strength sufficient to give me the ability to change.
Well – I fought both concepts, particularly that of a higher power. It seemed like capitulation, that I had to return to the religion within which I was raised and from which I had fled. And then at a meeting one day, a young man said that his higher power was a METRO bus. The METRO bus as a higher power made me smile and it allowed me to loosen up and think more creatively. At this time, I was doing work on Galveston Bay and had a good feeling about the bay, so I chose Galveston Bay as my higher power, a truly life-changing event.
Sometime later, I found myself in the marsh on the West End of Galveston Island in a remote cove in my kayak. As I paddled in late September, the tide was high, flooding the Spartina marsh that was green-gold against the clear blue sky. As I turned down a marsh channel, a white shrimp jumped out of the water beside me and a school of finger mullet bolted into the stalks, causing a blue crab to shuffle aside, orange claws pointed like jagged daggers, warning all to stay away. A white ibis raised its head from the edge of the marsh pond, made eye contact with me, determined I was no threat, and went back to ramming its scythe-like beak into the soft mud deposited by rainwater runoff of storms long past. I heard the whoosh from their wings and then saw a flight of blue-wing teal flaring up as they saw my lime green boat, then darting back down to set their wings and settle and feed.
At that moment, I was struck by the fact that I was a part of a living system - that I was experiencing other living things. I was struck by the fact that life was not just about being alive - it was about being alive and amongst other living things in a living system.
The energy flowed through me like a pulse – a pulse of connectedness with those with whom we share the planet. This was life and I was not just living it – I was perceiving it – feeling it in every cell of my body. Primal. Forceful. Clear.
We coastal residents live in a place that is full of wondrous “other living things” and we do not see them and do not feel them and do not relate to them. For me, the realization of connectedness with other living things redefined who and what I was and am. And it gives me both the will and the patience to try to alter the status quo.
This connection with the natural system helped me survive the eighties and beyond. I learned to be grateful and thankful with a bit of humility. My connection with other living things helped me set drinking aside. And it also was my first insight into the concept of enough. Over a period from about age 18 to 38, I had enough drink to last a lifetime Through a connection with something larger than myself, I was able to impose limits on my addictive behavior. That was spiritual and it saved my life.
The full speech is available at http://www.blackburncarter.com/news/RothkoChapelSpeech.htm.
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Broadway Urban Corridor [Rendering by Allison Parrott]
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?
Under the direction of Professor Susan Rogers, as part of a fourth year urban design studio, I developed a proposal by mapping the voids within the site that created the obvious discontinuity along the street. These voids stretch from the blocks west of Broadway and across the street to Buffalo Bayou. Finding a way to address these voids that would stimulate renewal and growth in the area while also stimulating and strengthening the distinct community living there was the primary concern.
In order to take active steps towards strengthening the existing community, housing became the central anchoring element. Looking to innovative affordable housing projects such as the work done by Elemental in South America, I sought to develop a housing strategy that would allow for constant adaptation to the community’s changing needs and would provide an invaluable opportunity for people to take on a new role of ownership in and responsibility to their community.
The module system gradually evolved as I worked with Susan and began analyzing the existing conditions of the area. I studied both the dimensional patterns of the existing built structures and the existing spatial patterns of the site, finally developing a 20’ by 20’ field grid to infill the voids of the site. This conceptual grid became the framework for a building infrastructure that would allow the community to build as needed.
A prototypical housing “bar” was then developed that could accommodate several different configurations of housing units and commercial spaces. As an analysis exercise, I looked at the various possible organizations of the 200’ x 40’ bars and what types of spaces were created by these organizations. This study led to the idea of a “kit-of-spaces” that could be variously arranged throughout the site to achieve the desired urban spatial quality. The kit-of-spaces approach allows for multiple solutions defined by the needs of the community. The various configurations of the bars could also be arranged in any number of ways across the site, allowing for a nearly infinite number of possibilities.
While refining the basic structure of the proposal, I tried to understand what materials the various units would be constructed with. Susan and I discussed the possibilities of a pre-fabricated kit-of-parts system. A pre-fab system, though, seemed out of character with the do-it-yourself nature of the rest of the project. So, after a trip to the Gulfgate Home Depot, I organized a system of building materials based on the common items found at the store: basic doors, windows, plywood sheathing, and various other materials. Ultimately then, the basic structure of the standard bar would be provided with some small 400 square foot units built out. Leaving empty space allows the families in each unit to build more over time, as money and need dictates.
By designing the framework for growth then, this proposal seeks to develop an urban prototype that allows for community-initiated growth over time and strengthens the site’s overall connectivity both within itself and to the city. The infrastructure of the buildings would be built, but the total amount of enclosed space and the actual use would be left for the community to decide and change. This approach allows for constant adaptability to the community’s needs and asks the residents to take direct responsibility for shaping their community.
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A parking lot to the southwest of Market Square [Photo by Christof Spieler]
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?
Market Square park was rebuilt only 15 years ago. Despite its comfortable benches, shading trees, and interesting public art, that design was clearly a failure. Market Square is populated only for an occasional special event; the rest of the time people (except the homeless) avoid it or hurry through. This new attempt benefits from what we've learned since then: successful parks need more than green space; they need attractions to draw people in. The local poster child for that approach is the popular Discovery Green (also built with the assistance of PPS), which is drawing crowds all through the week year round thanks to varied activities (including the current
skating rink.)
But rebuilding the park won't solve Market Square's biggest problem: a broken urban fabric. Here, in the heart of Houston's original townsite, half the buildings have been replaced by parking lots. These are the black holes of the Downtown landscape: not only do they not contribute any activity, they deaden the activity around them by creating a feeling of emptiness and insecurity. What Downtown needs most is not better parks but fewer empty lots. The best thing that could happen to Market Square would be new retail and residential buildings (with structured parking) around the park.
It's too much to ask for a park to fix this. Discovery Green has drawn new development. But it's the exception, not the rule, among parks. Its success is due not just to good design and programming but to its size -- 5 times as large as Market Square -- its location close to office towers, hotels, and the convention center, its large construction budget, and its permanent onsite management. The parks that PPS hold out as
models are in neighborhoods that generate a lot of activity. Parks can focus and draw from the city around them. But parks rarely create activity where there was none before.
The master plan we really need is a master plan for the Historic District around Market Square. It's been through multiple revitalizations. The most recent one, from the 1990s, seems to have run out of steam. "Urban" developments like Woodlands Market Street are the new trend in retail. But truly urban places like Market Square have a hard time competing. There are some successful restaurants (Treebeard's, Mia Bella, Kim Son) that remain and a few new ones opening up. But the area lacks an identity. Retail and restaurant owners don't know what's going to happen next door, and customers don't see Market Square as a destination. In Houston, though, master planning is done only by landowners, and an area with fractured ownership has no plan.
A dog run in Market Square would be a neighborhood ammenity for several hundred households nearby. A farmers market would be nice, though we seem to have more markets (Rice, Midtown, and Greenway Plaza, to name a few) than farmers at this point. A cafe is nice, but will it draw customers that the shuttered restaurants across the street haven't? Rebuilding a park is a good thing. But it's not enough.
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Brochstein Pavilion [Photo by Stephen Fox]
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? It’s the feeling of elation that it stirs in those who visit or simply walk past. The Brochstein Pavilion makes you feel happy. It’s rare for any building to exert such power. Analyzing just why the slender steel columns, concrete paving, glass walls, and layered interior ceiling and exterior pergola produce this effect is intriguing. Is it the gleaming whiteness, the transparency, the proportions, the subtle way the roof structure filters skylight, the long-distance views to the west, the outdoor room beneath the ranks of elm trees between the pavilion and the back of Fondren Library? Transparency and spatial intimacy—the contrasting sensations of sweeping openness and protection—contribute. The deft, unpretentious character of the architecture—which calls so little attention to itself yet is so meticulous—is another factor. Even normally prosaic details—the way that exterior lights are suspended from the building’s frame and the choice of the aggregate for sidewalks and terraces—enhance the sensations of lightness and effervescence. The result is magical: the pavilion feels both vivid and serene, alert and relaxed.
What cannot be overlooked is the landscape architecture. At the Brochstein Pavilion, the design of the building’s setting is as important as the building. Elevating the pavilion on an artificial rise, so that one walks up to it from the north, south, and west, overcomes the depressing flatness that previously tyrannized this section of the campus. The decomposed granite surfaces, black concrete fountains, and rows of slender trees construct strongly formed, room-like spaces that finally make sense of the back wall of the Fondren Library, which has waited forty years for this, its spatial complement, to be built. The big beds of mulch that replaced lawn beneath existing tree canopies provide spatial counterpoints in what Lars Lerup, dean of architecture at Rice, calls the “flat planet” of Houston, re-proportioning the ground plane at the scale of the landscape. Here too details are critical. The spiky rough horsetail, planted in clumps around the perimeter of the terrace, animates the terrace with a staccato beat and architectonic verticality that play off the linear horizontality of the cantilevered roof plate. The flat, black river rocks in the splash troughs around the fountains are just the right shape, size, color, and texture to make the transition from the fine scale of the ruddy ground plane to the dark, shimmering slab fountains as they slide through the landscape.
Thomas Phifer + Partners, the architects, and The Office of James Burnett, the landscape architects (along with consultants Altieri Sebor Wieber, Haynes Whaley Associates, Walter P. Moore, the general contractor Linbeck, and Barbara White Bryson, Rice’s associate vice president of administration, facilities engineering, and planning), have achieved a masterpiece with the Brochstein Pavilion and its setting. Instead of trying to design something that “looks like” Rice, they designed and built superlative spaces that, thanks to the generosity of Susan and Raymond Brochstein, are an integral part of Rice. If you doubt this assertion, just come by on a university holiday when the pavilion coffee shop is closed. People will be there anyway, sitting on the terrace or in the elm glade. The Brochstein Pavilion is the place to be.
If you are interested in learning more about the Brochstein Pavilion, see Ronnie Self's review in Cite
76.
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3916 Woodhead on a foggy morn [Photo by Raj Mankad]
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.
Houstonian completes $7.1M guest room makeover [Business Journal]
Wednesday December 17
Home sales, prices drop sharply in Houston: Realtors say national uncertainty starting to weigh heavier on area [Houston Chronicle]
At Houston Surgeon’s Home, an Ode to His Wife and to God [New York Times]
Home sales, prices remain stable in Beaumont [Beaumont Enterprise]
Thursday December 18
Hot, happening Houston [The Advocate]
Reconstructing history: Harris County has big plans to restore 1910 courthouse [Houston Chronicle]
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Man throwing debris into pile in Galveston. [Photo by Eric Hester]
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. "Our job will become more important as time goes on. The General Land Office (GLO) has drawn a new line in the sand four-and-half feet above sea level. People can stabilize their properties on the beach but we cannot issue new construction certificates in that zone. The line is normally based on vegetation but the storm wiped that out and the new line is based on mean sea levels. Drawing that line, many houses have ended up on public property."
Away from the beach, the picture is at least as troubling, especially for lower-income people. "All of our housing projects have been closed," she said. "They are gated and closed. All of those inhabitants have had to look somewhere else." In the current issue of
Cite magazine (no. 76), Susan Rogers writes about the national strategy to provide affordable housing, which is to promote home ownership. She argues that a large proportion of the population cannot afford ownership, even with subsidies. One in five Houston families cannot afford fair market rent for a two-bedroom apartment (according to the Low Income Housing Coalition). Understood in that context, the closing of public housing in Galveston is an effect of the hurricane, but the failure to work towards reopening them is consistent with national trends and the example of New Orleans after Katrina.
"The flooding issue happened all over town. Poor people, rich people," Sanchez said, but she quickly pointed out that the part of town east of English Bayou, called the Denver re-survey area, where many low-income and minority people live, was very badly affected. "I go week to week to these neighborhoods. Every week there are five houses wiped off. People are collecting their insurance if they are lucky enough to have it and selling their property for a song. That could be a good thing if developers build something that is affordable. But where are those people going now?"
The Texas Observer covered the problem well in a recent article,
The Castaways: Can Galveston's black community survive the island's comeback?
The north and south sides are roughly divided by Broadway Street, the island’s main east-west thoroughfare. During the Jim Crow era, Galveston’s white leadership made a push to uproot blacks from historically integrated neighborhoods and concentrate them in a ghetto north of Broadway. The result was the poorest and most crime-plagued part of the island. But also one of the proudest and stubbornest.
Hurricane Ike damaged about 75 percent of Galveston’s homes. But the storm wreaked extra havoc on North Side neighborhoods. Water surged from Galveston Bay into the low-lying area, flooding homes that were built decades ago under lax building codes. Meanwhile, luxury houses, many sitting practically on the beach, weathered the storm virtually unscathed...
On the North Side, four of six housing projects are filled with mud and mold, fenced in and condemned by the Galveston Housing Authority. Many of their residents are now stranded in a diaspora that includes San Antonio, Austin, Houston and Texas City. Others sleep in cars, on the beach or, until recently, in two tent cities that sprang up before FEMA brought in trailers.
This is all bleak news, but Sanchez told me that she had made a pledge to herself "to be positive." She said, "I know I can do one house. I can help one family get one house to code." That family is the Garcias. This Christian Science Monitor piece covers the effort to help the family, which is currently living inside a garage,
Hit by hurricane Ike and unexpected layoffs, Galveston ponders its recovery:
"This is an opportunity to build smart and plan smart," says Sanchez, a local design professional and member of the Galveston Planning Commission.
She'd like to see houses like the Garcias' rebuilt according to new codes, possibly elevated to help avoid future flooding, or even completely razed and replaced with sustainable and green housing.
Sanchez notes that she has good support from other architects including
Cite editorial committee members, Susan Rogers and Rafael Longoria. Barrie Scardino and the AIA Disaster Recovery Action Director, Antoine Bryant, have coordinated an effort to provide volunteer assessments.
Sometimes, though, it is difficult to connect people with the necessary help. "I called a woman I know," Sanchez told me. "She doesn't speak English. She's a ghost figure. She's sixty-years-old. Born in the US at home but her parents did not do the paperwork. She's watching her contractors put in the walls without any insulation. Is there someone who can help this person? The Salvation Army can't take people in. The hotels are full of adjusters, FEMA people, and contractors. This woman wants to stay under the radar. She was born here but doesn't have any papers. Her son was recently deported though he went to Ball High."
Again, focusing on the positive, Sanchez attended the long-term recovery meeting two night ago. "We had our first public meeting," she said. "It was open to the public to formulate a plan for the council to vote on in 90 days and was facilitated by FEMA. It is a good beginning. We have had a lot of hot-button issues in the last two years. Ike brings them all to the front-burner. Housing, jobs, the environment. There are those who don't want any development and those who want unbridled development. I am in the middle, for sustainable development. I think high-speed rail from Galveston to Houston would be the boon of all times."
Other good reading:
A Tale of Two Storms: Galveston’s Seawall Became Its Maginot Line by Tom Curtis, who wrote a similar article but in speculative form for
Cite's hurricane issue.
Galveston council takes stand on housing: Resolution urges feds to speed up the rebuilding of low-income units [Houston Chronicle] by Harvey Rice. This brief report gives you a sense of the political struggle on the island.
Photos by Eric Hester
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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 [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
Par 1 is something of a basic introduction. Part 2 covers the transnational nature of his work and how the cultural diversity of the Adams Kara Taylor office has proven advantageous. In Part 3, he discusses work the firm has done in Africa, the Middle East, and India. The interview was original broadcast on 90.1 KPFT for the
Border Crossings show.
Kara has frequently collaborated with high-profile architects including Iraqi-born, architecture super star Zaha Hadid, who was the first woman to win the Pritzker Prize. Hadid and Kara collaborated on the Phaeno Science Center in Wolfsburg, Germany, which won the RIBA European Award. The astoundingly angular building stands on concrete stilts and the area beneath it is a covered artificial landscape with gently undulating hills and valleys, extending out into the surrounding area. Kara is also the Pierce Anderson Lecturer in Creative Engineering at Harvard School of Design.
Above: Phaeno Science Center Wolfsburg, Designed by Zaha Hadid, Engineering by Adams Kara Taylor, Photograph by Klemens Ortmeyer
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"Nimby" by Kevin Curry. [Photo by Eric Hester]
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.
Cite comes out quarterly and we cannot pop the latest images of destruction on our covers. The
Chronicle and CNN showed so many before-and-after pictures of Ike destruction that by the time our beloved magazine came out, we were jaded to the images of crunched-up houses. What we sought to bring to you by featuring Curry's structure on the cover is the vision of an artist who has rendered something meaningful from what's left of the material debris and what's left of the visual language exhausted by a relentless 24-hour media cycle. That type of consideration is what
Cite does best. Currently located outside the Lawdale Art Center, you can crawl inside NIMBY. The sun shines through the colorful shards of shattered signage used for the roof tiles like light through stained glass in a cathedral. With a measure of humility, I ask that you take some time to crawl inside the latest
Cite. And send your thoughts to me at editor [at] offcite [dot] org. Below are highlights and the full table of contents:
An article by scholar Susan Rogers looks at the roots of the housing crisis. She traces the history of efforts to create affordable housing to the current implosion of the ownership model. The most troubling data she presents is that the best efforts of the city and conscientious designers barely scratch the surface of the problem.
Madeleine Hamm recalls the heady days of the Astrodome's early years and covers efforts to save the structure.
For many in Houston, Ike already seems a strange memory, something that happened in another life or to a different person. This timeline by poet Antonio Jocson puts you right back into the hour-by-hour experience of the storm.
Classic
Cite. A thoughtful and beautifully written review by Ronnie Self of a new building that deserves it - the Brochstein Pavilion.
Take a look at the full table of contents below.
Table of Contents
Guest Editors: Barry Moore and Susan Rogers
Citings
Gala: RDA celebrates Discovery Green
Calendar: Lectures, Tours, Conference
RDA News: Delange Conference, Buffalo Bayou Charrette, 99K Exhibition and Groundbreaking
Art: Made from Ike
Innovation: Solar Decathlon
Community: 99K House Catalog Preface
Features
Building the American Dream: The Politics of Housing by Susan Rogers
The Astrodome: The Glory Days, the Decline, the Future by Madeleine McDermott Hamm
Advisories: An Account of Ike's Path by Antonio Jocson
Soul Searching: Galveston Historical Foundation Challenged by Ike by Sandy Sheehy
Inspirations: A Review of the Brochstein Pavilion by Ronnie Self
Boom Times for Texas School Design by Tom McKittrick
Readings
Catherine Burke and Ian Grosvenor's School by Barry Moore
Hindcite
Buckboard Park: A Mosaic of Interests by Reginald Adams and Troy Gooden
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