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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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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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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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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Model of Cave of New Being and meditation pond
With the growing genre of architecture generated by biomorphic design and biomimetic processes, a reevaluation of Frederick J. Kiesler’s work is ever more timely. During the mid-20th century he became increasingly occupied with the relationship of structure and natural form in architecture. The Cave of the New Being (also known as the Grotto for Meditation), proposed in the 1960s for New Harmony and contracted by Mrs. Blaffer Owen, represented the designer’s pièce de résistance, embodying all of the intellectual currents of his era, from surrealism to biotechnics, yet it was never realized.
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A model of a taco truck by Donna Kacmar's design studio at the Initiatives for Houston exhibition.
The conversion of the Architecture Center Houston (ArCH) into a think tank of what Houston is, could be, and should be is worth the visit. The curated exhibition of Rice Design Alliance’s Initiatives for Houston Grant Program captures ten years of thinkers, dreamers, and designers putting their heads together to better understand our city and steer its future.
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The coming of the new year brought year-end and decade-end posts including the Swamplot awards. “Lakes of” won favorite Houston design cliché of the year. Christof Spieler looked back on a decade of transit megaprojects. Also of note, the Chronicle published two pieces on philanthropist Cynthia Woods Mitchell, who passed away (1, 2). A good story I missed in the last headline post was the Rice News piece on Chris Hight’s and Michael Robinson’s studio on Brays Bayou and their website hydraulicity.org.
Monday January 4
Black medical museum to honor pioneers Facility will be located in historic Freedmen’s Town and focus on the struggles of black doctors to provide care [Houston Chronicle] “Historians hope to restore the home at 1319 Andrews owned by the Rev. Ned P. Pullum, a minister and entrepreneur, and transform it into the Pullum Health and Business Museum. The Pullum Museum would become part of an educational and cultural park corridor in Freedmen’s Town that includes the Rutherford B.H. Yates Museum – another reclaimed historic home. Freedmen’s Town, just west of downtown, is the only remaining post-Civil War, freed-slave historic district of its kind.”
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Mayor-Elect Parker is flanked by TxDOT's Delvin Dennis, Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee, Councilmember Gonzalez, Public Works Director Mike Marcotte, and members of the local Boy Scout Troop. [Photo from Houston Bikeways]
After a long wait, the MKT rail-to-trail that connects the Heights with Downtown was officially opened. Annise Parker was there not long after winning the Mayoral election. The University light rail line passed a major federal hurdle and has entered the engineering phase. The Metro president called it “a great holiday present” for Houston. Read on to catch up on what’s going with Houston architecture, engineering, construction, and urban planning.
December 22
Museum idea could save threatened Heights church: One man’s plan could provide a way to keep a historic structure from demolition [Houston Chronicle] “On-again, off-again plans to raze Houston Heights’ historic but long unused Immanuel Lutheran Church may be in limbo again today as preservationists float a plan to convert the striking Gothic Revival sanctuary into a museum for Texas art. Ken Bakenhus, president of the church’s governing body, which overwhelmingly favors demolition, said the 1932-vintage building at 1448 Cortlandt St. likely will be torn down this summer unless feasible plans to save it are proposed.”
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