Cite 81 cover [Photograph by Iwan Baan].
The Spring issue of Cite (81) is now in the mail and will soon be in stores. Below Danny Marc Samuels, guest editor and Director of the Rice Building Workshop, shares the Table of Contents and his thoughts on putting the issue together.
Cite has been part of my life since it was launched 28 years and 81 issues ago; I have served on the editorial committee for half of that time. There our primary job is to sift through ideas for articles, whether originating within the committee or thrown over the transom, and encourage the promising ones along. From the time that we first discuss the ideas until they show up as articles in Cite can be months, or even years. As a member of the Cite editorial committee, I, as do all committee members, occasionally serve as “guest editor” for an issue. It’s like being inside the black box, watching the sausage being made (to mix metaphors).
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Los Angeles Farmers Market at 3rd and Fairfax [Photos David Bucek]
For the past two years, the Ashby Highrise has dominated debates over Houston’s lack of zoning and land-use planning. The well-to-do residents of Southhamptom and Boulevard Oaks sought to delay and ultimately stop the 23-story building proposed by Buckhead Investments.
There is a new group of sign wielding residents, in Montrose. The Chronicle has reported over the past month on the sale of a 7.68-acre site, until recently the home of Wilshire Village, to the H-E-B grocery store chain. The blog Swamplot covered a Saturday March 13 protest led by the Montrose Land Use Coalition. The graphics stood in contrast to the comic terror of the “Tower of Traffic” signs at the Ashby Highrise protests. At least one sign showed a rainbow. One poster detailed a plan for a farmer’s market.
That plan came from a group that includes David Bucek, Daniel Hall, and Chisun Rees of Stern & Bucek Architects. They worked with several Montrose residents and Dana Harper, with whom Stern & Bucek has teamed up on the rehabilitation of the Frame/Harper House and the Schulenberg Dance Hall.
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Joe Ross, designer with PH Design, holds up covers from Cite 81.
A new issue of Cite is currently at the press. Subscribe or join now to get your copy. For the last few days, I have been conducting press checks with graphic designers. I find the process so fascinating I would like to share some pictures and basic explanations of how offset printing works. As the sole full-time staff person with Cite, my understanding of production has become more intimate, though I don’t know all the terms and am more lay than expert.
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2145 Southgage, Charles B. Thomsen (architect, 1965) / Kellie Mayfield (architect, 2008) [Photograph by Eric Hester]
Rice Design Alliance presents its 2010 Architecture Tour, “Southgate: An Urban Oasis,” this coming Saturday and Sunday, March 20-21, 2010, 1:00 to 6:00 p.m. The tour is open only to RDA members and guests. You can join and buy tickets there. For more information visit ricedesignalliance.org and call 713 348 4976. And enjoy Stephen Fox’s write-up below of houses on the tour.
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Rosemont bridge will cross Memorial drive and join the two sides of Buffalo Bayou Park east of Studemont [Images from City of Houston]
The Houston Parks and Recreation Department broke ground on Saturday, March 13, 2010, for the construction of a bridge across Memorial Drive and the two sides of Buffalo Bayou just east of Studemont. The project was originally called “Tolerance Bridge” and featured a sculptural piece on the top designed by Elmgreen + Dragset that gave the illusion of impassibility.
After negative reactions from City Council about the name, the Houston Arts Alliance held a contest to find a new one. But not enough money was raised through private donations to pay for an art piece to accompany the name game. The city, instead, went ahead with a design by SWA Group defined by topography, an existing old railroad bridge, and cost.
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“I came home with a high fever; my ears still hurt. Just from the noise — a ringing in my ears. It is very toxic. But it’s Houston.”
Jenny Lynn Weitz-Amaré Cartwright is describing the after effects of Sunday’s Furniture Sale on North Freeway (announced last week on OffCite), a daylong event at the abandoned Landmark Chevrolet dealership on Interstate 45. Presented by wacdesignstudio, which consists of husband-wife team Scott Cartwright and Jenny Lynn, the guerilla retail event launched the studio’s first furniture line, designed and fabricated with an attention to the modesty of scale, materials, and production.
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Photo by Jim Caldwell, Courtesy Buffalo Bayou Partnership & Minetta Brook. (On-screen image from James Bennings' Ten Skies, 2004, 16mm, color, 109 min.”)
Retention ponds masquerading as water features, custom bobble-heads and PEZ dispensers, chopper bikes, drunk mellow mice and junkyard drive-ins—where could you have found these things together? At Houston’s second Pecha Kucha, which took place last Thursday.
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Scott Cartwright and Jenny Lynn Weitz-Amare Cartwright showcase their first furniture line. [Photo courtesy wacdesignstudio]
In January, the New York Times reported that employment at US architecture firms had dropped from its July 2009 peak at 224,500 to 184,600 by November. Commercial development has ground to a halt, the big car manufacturers have pulled the plug on many dealerships, and a number of big box stores have closed. As an article by Susan Rogers in the next issue of Cite will discuss, vast amounts of land in the city are withering, wasting, wild, and waiting. It is in this context that two young designers have announced a “guerilla retail event,” the “Furniture Sale on North Freeway.”
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