Archive for November 2010

Spectators watch as the rotation of a house in Sharpstown is completed.

  • Steven Thomson
  • Nov. 19, 2010
  • 11:06 AM

Sharpstown Back to the Future

It is 11 a.m. on a Thursday in Sharpstown, Houston. Roughly forty spectators sit obediently on metal benches provided by Cherry House Moving Company — a mix of Rice University students, architects, “just in for the day” New York art scenesters and garden-variety devotees of conceptual artist Mary Ellen Carroll. Today, Carroll will rotate the ranch home at 6513 Sharpview as the climactic moment in her decade-in-the-making work, “Prototype 180.”

Arguably the most pivotal moment in the artist’s career, “Prototype 180” proposes a myriad of questions on art, architecture, and urbanism. Most obvious is that Carroll is intervening in the makeup of this neighborhood, thereby underscoring the historic significance of Sharpstown as the nation’s largest community of single-family homes when it was conceived in 1954, and its transformation after the 1982 economic downturn from white suburb to immigrant-rich density. The rotational rupture also questions issues of land art and real estate, policy and public space, urban sprawl and first-ring suburbs.

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Jeff Kaplan and Monte Large of New Living - Green Building + Home Store.

  • Raj Mankad
  • Nov. 1, 2010
  • 4:51 PM

Cite 83 Party at New Living

The Cite 83 launch party was held October 26 at New Living. It was a scene of writers, photographers, architects, readers, and entrepreneurs. When not in conversation, participants fingered samples of locally made recycled glass aggregate countertops.

Click here for the Cite 83 letter from the guest editor and table of contents. You can read about the history of New Living in the Cite archives at citemag.org (“The Greening of Wagner Hardware“). Read on for pictures from the party:

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