An excerpt from David Dillon's article in Texas Architect September 2009
David Dillon, architecture critic of the Dallas Morning News from 1981 to 2006, died suddenly of heart failure at his home in Amherst, Massachusetts, on 3 June 2010. He was sixty-eight years old.
David Dillon came to Dallas in 1969 as an assistant professor of English at Southern Methodist University. After leaving SMU in 1976, he worked as a freelance journalist and then became associate editor of D: The Magazine of Dallas. This was how he found his vocation: he wrote the cover story for the May 1980 issue of D called “Why is Dallas Architecture So Bad?” Dillon’s critique was electrifying. Although he did list the best new buildings in Dallas (and offered Houston as a case study of enlightened architectural patronage to which Dallas should pay attention), Dillon’s story revealed the important social role an architecture critic could play as a public intellectual. The next year the Dallas Morning News hired Dillon as its full-time architecture critic. Until his retirement in 2006, David Dillon was the only newspaper journalist in Texas whose only job was to write about architecture and urban development—and to write critically. Nearly thirty years later, the difference Dillon made is measurable. It’s now Houston that looks enviously at Dallas when it comes to ambitious architecture and imaginative civic spaces (see Cite 78, Spring 2009).
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Close to a year ago, Offcite published a popular blogpost around the controversial and much talked-about fate of Houston’s beloved Astrodome that caught the attention of people like soon-to-be mayor Annise Parker and Houston Chronicle writer Lisa Gray. Today, the conversation continues.
Interested individuals are invited to visit Reliant Park’s website and lend their opinion to one of three potential plans for the dome. Plans include demolishing the dome and replacing it with greenspace; transforming it into a multi-use venue with its shell remaining; and thirdly, in addition to the changes made in the second option, creating a mega-venue complete with a Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics Institute as well as a planetarium. To download the master plan book, click here. Please take some time to go their website to vote and comment on which option you think is best. And feel free to share your opinions here as well.
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Image of Sally Walsh from Cite 9, Spring 1985
“When I walk through Houston buildings today and find good contemporary design, whether or not I had a hand in it, I find myself taking credit… because on this specific turf it flourished with my help.” -Sally Walsh (Cite 28)
Last Wednesday with only the help of a pdf copy of “All Around Downtown: A Personal Tour” from Citemag.org, the late interior designer Sally Walsh took me back in time.
Walsh worked as Hans Knoll’s assistant before moving to Houston and ultimately served as a partner at S. I. Morris Architects. By retracing her steps, I encountered a portion of our city center left relatively unchanged over the past twenty-five years—bold glass towers, predominantly subterranean traffic, and a mix of executives and the unemployed smoking cigarettes and never meeting my eye. It was Downtown Houston: unapologetic and unreformed.
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Pool deck of Morris Architects' proposal to adaptively reuse an oil rig as a resort
Oil rigs normally do not bring to mind images of men and women sunning themselves on a pool deck. These days oiled beaches, dying pelicans, jobless fishermen, and the gushing pipe saturate our screens. But what if, a team at Morris Architects asks, rigs could be adaptively reused as ecological resorts? Rather than extract fossil fuels from below the sea, the rig would harness wind and wave energy. The design won an international competition last year called “Radical Innovation in Hospitality” and received extensive coverage in the blogosphere. The ongoing Deepwater Horizon catastrophe, however, brings new relevance to the concept.
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Copper pinnacle replica lowered on Harris County Courthouse, all photographs Nash Baker
In 1910, the Harris County Courthouse defined Houston’s skyline. As the tallest building in the city by over 100 feet, the courthouse quickly became the crown jewel of the modest downtown. Today, the courthouse remains standing at 210 feet, but it is somewhat dwarfed by the surrounding skyscrapers. With building technology so closely tied to scale, it is no wonder that Houston’s downtown has evolved to great heights. But recently the city’s skyline has taken on a new look, the Harris County Courthouse has grown a little taller, and it is worth craning your neck to notice.
On March 14th, a 15-foot copper pinnacle that looks a bit like a chess pawn was mounted on the Courthouse’s dome. Crowning the top of the building, this piece serves as a replacement for the building’s 1910 original, which reportedly has been absent for over 90 years.
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University of Houston Downtown from Allen's Landing, this photo Wikimedia Commons, all others Celeste Williams
Houston is home to a wealth of Art Deco and Streamlined Moderne architecture. Celeste Williams received a grant from the Rice Design Alliance in 2000 to develop a self-guided tour along the METRORail. Williams, an architect with Kendall/Heaton Associates, worked with graphic designer Peter Boyle to produce a brochure (download front and back). Below is an online version of the tour.
University of Houston DOWNTOWN CAMPUS
1 North Main Street
The University of Houston Downtown’s compact campus is composed of several smaller annexed structures to the former Merchants and Manufacturers Building. Originally designed in 1930 by Giesecke & Harris Architects, the building’s classic Art Deco vertical detailing was meant to call out the pinnacle of commerce near Houston’s historic Allen’s Landing. The eleven-story mid-rise height of the building allows it to hold its site amidst the larger scale freeway overpasses and bridges that surround it. On the south side, a roof terrace provides beautiful views of the downtown skyline. A detail of interest is the monel mailbox, part of a chute system that was state-of-the-art for its time.
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The first preservation ordinance in the country came to life in Charleston, South Carolina in 1930. The Vieux Carre in New Orleans and Nantucket Island off the coast of Massachusetts followed shortly after, and historic preservation gained steady strength in the United States. Houston joined late in the game, with the city’s ordinance put into effect in 1995. Fifteen years later, Houston is home to fifteen historic districts, and preservation in the city continues to evolve. Mayor Annise Parker, a known advocate for preservation of Houston’s historic districts, recently organized a task force to investigate strengthening the city’s ordinance to offer increased protections for historic resources.
Increased protections? When developers catch wind that the ordinance may bulk up, it is easy to imagine the rush to demolish before the ordinance gains strength.
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David Brown, photographer, and Chuck Jackson, English professor at UHD. All photographs by Eric Hester.
Rice Design Alliance members and staff, local advertisers, Cite contributors, and friends gathered on April 8th at 13 Celsius wine bar to celebrate the launch of Cite magazine’s 81st issue. The cover article focuses on Brad Pitt’s foundation “Make It Right,” which seeks to rebuild the Lower Ninth Ward in New Orleans. The launch of the issue, however, was not the only reason to celebrate: Citemag.org recently went live with 28 years of searchable issues online.
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Aerial view of Lower 9th Ward, New Orleans showing Make It Right projects.
Flooding that followed Hurricane Katrina destroyed the Lower Ninth Ward of New Orleans and Brad Pitt’s foundation, Make It Right, asked many of the world’s most creative architects to help. The cover story in the current issue of Cite (81), written by Rafael Longoria, takes a critical look at that effort. I spoke with Tim Duggan, a Landscape Architect currently developing the Sustainable Landscapes program for the Make it Right Foundation, to get his responses. He will also be speaking this week at the Gulf Coast Green conference.
RM: Rafael Longoria wrote that the houses built by Make It Right so far “are hardly reproducible models outside the confines of a charismatic charity. In order to be truly sustainable, affordable housing must work within the realities of the market without relying on donated design, materials, or labor.” How can we evaluate sustainability and apply lessons learned to other affordable housing efforts without knowing actual construction costs for the houses?
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This post was originally published May 17, 2009, but we’re bringing it back in revised form for Gulf Coast Green 2010. If you are a member of the Rice Design Alliance, you receive a discounted rate. (You can join RDA now.) Online registration for Gulf Coast Green ends April 7, so hurry.
Sustainability has become a sound byte. While many of us have embraced the principles of living and designing less wastefully, seeing the term “green” applied superficially everywhere from the supermarket to the evening news can become exhausting. The 2010 Gulf Coast Green (GCG) Symposium and Expo, April 15-16, however, is a chance to renew your sense of possibility. For those of you who have not had the pleasure of attending in the past, here are five reasons why you should participate in this conference:
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