Scott Cartwright and Jenny Lynn Weitz-Amare Cartwright showcase their first furniture line. [Photo courtesy wacdesignstudio]
In January, the New York Times reported that employment at US architecture firms had dropped from its July 2009 peak at 224,500 to 184,600 by November. Commercial development has ground to a halt, the big car manufacturers have pulled the plug on many dealerships, and a number of big box stores have closed. As an article by Susan Rogers in the next issue of Cite will discuss, vast amounts of land in the city are withering, wasting, wild, and waiting. It is in this context that two young designers have announced a “guerilla retail event,” the “Furniture Sale on North Freeway.”
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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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Cite 74, published in the Spring of 2008, looked at some of Houston’s sacred architecture and sites including the Seminarian and Student Chapels at the University of St. Thomas, Lakewood Church, and the Co-Cathedral of the Sacred Heart.
Table of Contents
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This issue, published in the winter of 2008, could not sit still. It looked forward, it looked back, and then forward again. It considered the reshaping of Houston institutions including the University of St. Thomas and Texas Southern University. The Rurban Horseshoe examined the historically black neighborhoods on the periphery of the city. Rafael Longoria and Susan Rogers wrote, “Houston is still a place of opportunity and constraint, where endless possibilities and extreme limitations co-exist, and its landscape, which reflects both [Mexamerican and Dixie] traditions, is distinctive in that rural farming, ranching, and agriculture survive in the shadow of a bustling metropolis.” Finally, Joel Warren Barna provided a level-headed and still relevant analysis of the debate over the Ashby Highrise.
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Karachi headquarters office of Emaar, a Dubai-based real estate company [Photos Sehba Sarwar]
At a March 2009 ceremony in Houston, Mayor Bill White and Syed Mustafa Kamal, the mayor of Karachi, Pakistan, declared the two cities sisters. The connection between the two cities was not new to me. Back in 1992, when I followed my then-boyfriend-now-husband René to Houston, I remember absorbing concrete sprawls of apartment complexes, and thinking of Karachi, my home city. Since then, over the years, I’ve been writing and exploring the multiple parallels between Karachi, where I return often, and Houston, where I’ve been based for some time.
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If you are intrigued by David Cobb’s art and reflections on rail, industry, and culture, check out the Cite Infrastructure Issue.
I began painting the railcars or “rolling stock” back in my college years at the University of Houston as a project for my undergraduate studies. I was helping my father, Tom Cobb, digitize his extensive collection of slides he’d taken of the Southern Pacific railroad, mainly from the 1970′s and 80′s. As we scanned and doctored images I became enthralled with the photos of boxcars. Simple, utilitarian, industrial, vital, yet so commonplace they seem to go unnoticed. I was hooked. It was time to honor the boxcar. The idea of using the rolling stock as my reference for the modern day railway instead of the typical grandiose depiction of a steam engine or diesel locomotive muscling its way through an open landscape seemed to been more honest.
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Photos courtesy of Dean Liscum
A sign blocks the steps to the porch—plywood with orange spray paint bearing a three-digit address. You step around it and onto the screened porch. Two bright orange stickers from the city’s Code Enforcement Group pasted to the window announce the obvious—you should not be here. This building is condemned and slated for demolition. You hold your hands to the glass and look through your reflection into a house with no roof, no floor, no inside. Beyond your reflection, open to the elements, lies an ovoid hole.
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David Chipperfield speaks at the Menil [Photo by Raj Mankad]
During his presentation to a packed audience at the Menil yesterday, David Chipperfield referred to the Richmont Square apartments as “the great big thing,” “this thing getting in our way,” and a “nonconforming” space. Charged with developing a master plan for an expansion of the facilities for the Menil Collection, he quickly identified the redevelopment of that site as the key to expanding while also maintaining the positive qualities of the current campus.
Before the internationally renowned architect spoke, the director of the Menil, Josef Helfenstein, announced the plan had been unanimously approved by the board.
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Henrique Oliveira's "Tapumes" installation at the Rice Gallery [All photos by Jesse Hager]
Five days before the opening of “Tapumes,” stacks of thin wood lay parallel across the Rice Gallery floor, arranged in varying widths of similar colors. Ladders and lifts outnumbered the installers. Behind the screened entry, shapes jump and dive into view giving passers-by a notion of what is to come, the first solo exhibition in the United States from Brazilian artist Henrique Oliveira, now open at the Rice Gallery until May 9, 2009.
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Peter Wang and Colin Tangeman [Photo by Raj Mankad]
Peter Wang is a Geophysicist, a League of American Bicyclists cycling instructor, and an advocate for cyclists in the Houston-Galveston region. On March 5th, sitting outside the Brochstein Pavilion, he discussed the state of bicycling with Colin Tangeman, a writer and teacher at the University of Houston, and Raj Mankad, editor of Cite.
Raj Mankad and Colin Tangeman: What is your vision for cycling in this area? What are the problems? What needs to happen?
Peter Wang: Do we mean Harris County or City of Houston, that’s an important distinction?
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