Black Heritage Society's Martin Luther King Day Event [Photo by Raj Mankad]
Bicyclist on Braes Bayou path [Photo by Raj Mankad]
A roundup of last week’s news about Greater Houston’s built environment. Good — City bicycle coordinator invites input at January 27th meeting. Bad — Huge piles of trash.
Wednesday January 14
Ike debris towers over Pleasantville “Felton Lee does not remember the exact day when trucks started dumping heaps of tree debris about 20 feet from his backyard…Now, stacks of chipped wooded waste from Hurricane Ike loom like browned mountains high above his Pleasantville home.”
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The city released an implementation report for the urban corridor planning initiative, which aims to “create a high quality urban environment in areas along METRO’s light rail corridors.” It is the product of two and a half years of meetings, consultations, and public input. Many an expert has participated including David Crossley who posted an analysis on the new Houston Tomorrow website. I consider myself a lay person and reading the report was my first exposure to the whole concept, and my initial response was visceral.
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The above video was made by Sara Fernandez. She wrote, “Setting my camera on interval record looking out of my bedroom window (my home is in Montrose, west of downtown Houston) was always on my list of things to do. Hurricane Ike was the motivator to get it done. I wanted to capture the movement of the clouds and to see the storm that I would not have the guts to stand in front of my window to watch. I set the camera up at sunrise, 7:07 a.m.
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Mosaic Condominium Towers [Photo by Raj Mankad]
The Rice Gallery features site-specific, commissioned installations and every one that I have visited there has been extraordinary. Last Fall, an installation by Aurora Robson used cut plastic bottles and rivets to create winding translucent tunnels and domes. When I took my two-year-old daughter to visit she ran through it with arms outstretched pretending to be a dragon. The gallery’s next adventure is a departure from the lyrical, morphogenic pieces I have come to associate with it. In fact, it’s a “FEMA trailer.”
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Canal Street Apartments, Val Glitsch FAIA [Photo by Miro Dvorscak, Courtesy of New Hope Housing]
This New Year week came with some bleak news as several hundred million dollars of cancelled or delayed developments were announced including High Street at Westheimer and the Titan on Post Oak due to problems with sales and financing. Carolyn Feibel’s Chronicle article on New Hope Housing was a bright spot. Pictured above is New Hope’s Canal Street Apartments, which includes 133 single room occupancy units.
Saturday December 27
Hidalgo County nears end for its border fence [Houston Chronicle]
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