Mathematician and former Bogotá mayor Antanas Mockus [Photo by Julián Ortega Martínez / equinoXio]
Time is running out for on-line registration for the March 2-4 Delange Conference at Rice University. The theme is “Transforming the Metropolis: Creating Sustainable and Humane Cities.” The speaker line up mixes local people with international stars. Houston Mayor Bill White will speak on a panel with Mustafa Syed Kamal, mayor of Karachi, Pakistan; Antanas Mockus, former mayor of Bogotá; and Shuki Forer, mayor of Rehovot, Israel. Saski Sassen, a Columbia professor and author of The Global City, is scheduled to give a 30-minute talk Monday afternoon after Rice President David Leebron.
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David Krueger and Greg Donner building a straw bale house in West Texas [Courtesy SKYDIVE]
Located in the same Montrose building as Skybar, SKYDIVE is currently showing “OPEN HOUSE,” a collaborative exhibition by Jon Brumit and Sarah Wagner, through March 11. The space, a new artist studio/exhibition space/anarchist-inspired school, is open to the public Saturdays 1-5 pm. This Saturday, February 28, at 2 pm and the next week, March 7, they are holding a “Free School for the Arts.”
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Buffalo Bayou Montage [Shannon Stoney]
Shortly after I moved to Houston, I had the weird thought that it was actually a city where cars were in charge and ran the city. Humans were just sort of their servants. We provide them places to park; we maintain them and gas them up. The actual environment of Houston looks more like an environment a car would think of than one a human would want: all those miles of concrete ramps, some of them way up in the air! Some parts of Houston look like an amusement park for cars, especially where several freeways come together.
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The Philip Johnson Tapes is a juicy romp through the greater part of twentieth-century American architectural culture narrated by Johnson (1906-2005) to his good friend and acolyte, Robert A.M. Stern, during the course of several months in 1985. Philip Johnson is dead, long live Philip Johnson! The recording of his gossipy utterances has become something of a cottage industry. Some examples focus more on the man and less on the architecture: Philip Johnson: The Architect in His Own Words (1994); Philip Johnson: Life & Work (1996); Philip Johnson & Texas (2000).
For me, when Johnson died in 2005, it was almost as if some part of modern architecture died with him.
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Erin Morrison and Professor Brent Houchens assemble the frame and header for an Apricus evacuated tube collector for a solar water heater. [Photo from Ze-Row Blog]
The Fall issue of Cite included a short piece (pdf) on the Rice University Solar Decathlon Team. David Dewane, the lead architecture student, provides an update and analysis.
Rice students from the departments of architecture and engineering are engaged in a joint venture that seeks to answer one simple question: Can a 100 percent solar-powered house be affordable?
The answer, so far, is yes. There are a few catches, though.
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Rendering of "Doughty Do" by Sharon Engelstein. The installation to open in March 29 at the Animal Service Facility includes 38 cast aluminum horses and two dogs.
In November 2008, the Houston Arts Alliance was the target of an ABC13 Wayne Dolcefino report on the civic art program. The segment—titled “Where’s the Art?”—questions the purpose of Margo Sawyer’s “Synchronicity of Color” installations at Discovery Green. The structures, which cover stairwells, are repeatedly referred to as a “waste” by an interviewee. The report goes on to question the rate at which projects have been completed.
The civic art team at the Houston Arts Alliance has responded with an exhibit and series of discussions at the Space125gallery about upcoming plans for Houston municipal artwork. It includes sketches, design elements, information about the process, and examples of civic artwork. The next event is tomorrow, Thursday, February 19 from 6:00 to 7:30pm. It features artist Sharon Engelstein and Cite editorial committee member José Solis.
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Sunday February 15
25 random things about Houston [Houston Chronicle] Lisa Gray infects Chronicle readers with an incessant Facebook meme.
Tinsley’s legacy – in her words [Houston Chronicle] Eleanor Tinsley, former city council member and great leader in improving Houston’s built environment, died of cancer last week. She is quoted from an oral history project: “I started what we called SPARK school parks. The idea is to use school grounds that we, the public, already own…”
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Bolt on sidewalk on Old Spanish Trail
When I lived in Houston Heights, I could walk to the grocery store, the post office, the drug store, the public library, the hardware store, the bank, and the garden center. And I did. But recently my partner and I moved to University Oaks, a small neighborhood attached to the south end of the UH campus. It’s a nice, pretty, quiet, safe neighborhood, and Tom can walk to work, and my commute to HCC Southeast is much shorter. But…there are very few amenities we can walk to, other than the campus.
I didn’t want to be defeated though or deflected from my habit of walking to do errands, so shortly after we moved, I tried to find a post office within walking distance. Google maps informed me that there was one on Griggs Rd, about 1.8 miles away. That’s do-able. So in early September I set off to find my local neighborhood post office. I walked along Brays Bayou, then over a bridge, then past a park, and then I turned onto Old Spanish Trail. That’s when things got ugly.
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