Cite 84 cover photograph by Jack Thompson.
Cite 84: Fabrication
The Winter 2011 issue of Cite (84) was mailed and is at the Brazos Bookstore, CAMH, MFAH, Issues, Domy, River Oaks Bookstore, and other stores. Below is a letter by Raj Mankad about this special issue, followed by the Table of Contents.
The Houston region was named the nation’s number one job creator for the past five years in a ranking by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. According to Manufacturing News, Houston has the largest manufacturing workforce in the nation and is, in another measure, the home to the highest level of entrepreneurial activity out of the 15 largest cities.
Those are great numbers but what exactly do they mean at a granular level. Who are these people making things in a US city? What are they making? Why does industry thrive here at a time when many worry the United States has lost its way economically? Guest editor José Solís and I did not commission experts to find the answers. Instead, we sought out wildly curious people to explore.
We sent Kelly Klaasmeyer, an art critic, to half a dozen sites stretching from Katy to Telephone Road, and from Sugarland to Tomball. We sent fiction writers to Brochsteins and St. Joe Brick Works. We sent a poet to interview a young bicycle designer and fabricator. Jack Thompson, who made his name shooting Houston rappers (with a camera), took on the photography.
The result is—I’m not afraid to say it—inspiring. When you are done with this issue, you will want to jump off your couch and start making
stuff. The vitality of the firms and people profiled here is infectious. Professors from MIT, Rice, and the University of Houston do round out the explorations with their expertise. They challenge us to better take advantage of fabricators all around us, hidden in plain sight, to create a more beautiful, sustainable, and socially responsible future.
We tried to take on that challenge with this issue’s cover. The material was produced by Houston’s own Valéron Strength Films at their facility off Hempstead Road. The process starts with polyethylene resin pellets brought by railcars from a local petrochemical plant. The resin is blown into a tube three stories high by extruders that look like jet engines. The plastic cools into a film and collapses. The real ingenuity comes in the next two steps. The film is stretched to line up the polymer molecules in one direction. Then, using a spiral cut to unravel the tube, Valéron layers the material at 45-degree angles and laminates it all together. The result is an untearable material that can be found in flashing tapes in Singapore, cotton tags in Australia, and explosives packaging in Costa Rica.
We learned about Valéron with the help of New York-based Material ConneXion. How many other innovative fabricators exist right under our noses that could help us push our creativity? Special issues like this only scratch the surface. So please read and pass this especially sturdy issue around until we get a vibrant conversation going.
Cite 84 Table of Contents
Citings
News: New Orleans Five Years Later, Tour Dallas and Helsinki, RDA Gala
Letter
Calendar
Community: Pedro Portillo on the Chopper Shop
Sustainability: John Fernandez on Urban Metabolism
Features
Hidden fabrication: Navigating the Underground World of Houston’s Manufacturing Industry
By José Solís
Still Made in America: Houston is a High-Tech Hotbed for Industry and Fabrication
By Kelly Klaasmeyer
The Business of Craft: The Creative Hurdles and Triumphs of the Independent Fabricator
By Jose Solis
Timelessness is a Veneer: New Technologies and Management Transform Brochsteins
By Allyn West
St. Joe Brick: The Architectural Iconography of Houston Begins in a Louisiana Clay Pit
By Hank Hancock
Roundtable on Fabrication
By Cameron Alexander, Joe Meppelink, Andrew Vrana, Keith Jennings, José Solís, and Raj Mankad
Visualize-Simulate-Fabricate: A Look at Where Building Information Modeling Could Take Us
By Douglas Oliver and Christof Spieler
Readings
Review: TexStone Counters
By Allison Parrott
Hindcite
Boots and the Fabrication of Houston’s Identity
By Jose Solis
Email
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