Cave of New Being, made using digital modeling and fabrication technologies, and recently installed near the Gerald D. Hines College of Architecture
A new Texas-based design research alliance called TEX-FAB, co-founded by Houstonian Andrew Vrana, is holding an international competition called REPEAT. Here’s the description:
REPEAT is a competition established to foster the creative spirit in the burgeoning field of digital fabrication. We encourage the generation of cutting edge design proposals for an outdoor structure of your design with the only caveats being it must serve a purpose, be generated and conceived digitally, incorporate repetitive elements, and be produced through fabrication technologies available within Houston, Texas.
Why call a design competition REPEAT? Isn’t design about originality?
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Sylvan Beach Pavilion, designed by Greacen & Brogniez, 1953. Photo by Hank Hancock.
The citizens of La Porte may be forgiven if they just can’t figure out what their elected officials have in store for the Sylvan Beach Pavilion, a significant work of civic architecture located at Harris County’s only public beach. For twenty years, the city of La Porte rented the structure for cheap from Harris County and operated the venue—a dancehall, a performance space, a banquet room, a conference hall—in just the way that a municipal government will do when it finds itself in the hospitality business, which is to say, reluctantly, negligently, and sporadically. Interested renters were turned away without explanation. The space often sat empty on weekend evenings, when one might expect it to turn some business. Once recognized across the region as one of the foremost entertainment venues, the pride of La Porte, the Sylvan Beach Pavilion withdrew into obscurity, a generational bookmark. The city put off making regular repairs, as required by its lease, so the place just got shabby.
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Book design and photographs by Thumb
Encased in thick yellow boards and with a title reminiscent of a lopsided basketball game score, Oscar 102/Brasilia 50, immediately appealed to me. According to its graphic designers, Thumb (Luke Bulman and Jessica Young), “The book’s hybrid binding uses book boards laminated with yellow paper, trimmed flush to expose the edge of the boards. Over time, these edges will soften and ‘weather’ with handling.” Like the woman in Napoleon Dynamite, I whispered to myself, “I want that!”
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