In this series, Christof Spieler gives regular reports on his trip to China for a special issue of Cite. Read more about RDA’s China initiative here, which includes a knockout lecture series in the Fall.
This is the Chinese version of a planned community: 30 highrise residential towers, each 30 stories tall, all behind gates and security guards. There are enough people here to support an entire shopping complex, including a full-sized supermarket accessible from within the gates. There’s a whole private riverfront, too, on the banks of the newly cleaned up Suzhou Creek, for residents only. This is housing at a density that we can’t imagine in Houston, but it still seems familiar: a city designed as a series of self-contained gated enclaves, marketed for their private amenities and perceived safety.
In this Hear Our Houston audio tour and contribution to Unexpected City, artist, musicologist, and historian Tierney L. Malone walks along Almeda from Southmore to Wheeler, in Houston’s historic Third Ward that has served as a major hub for some of Houston’s most talented artists and musicians
Almeda (mp3, 14 minutes, 11.7 MB)
by Tierney L. Malone
Magic Island site at Southwest Freeway and Greenbriar Street. All photographs Paul Hester.
Paul Hester’s retrospective Doing Time in Houston at Architecture Center Houston—culled from his extensive archive documenting Houston’s architecture through all its transitions over the past 45 years–invites the viewer to contemplate all that has ever stood on this viscid alluvium we call home. Row houses razed to make room for rows of gated townhomes; first ring suburbs mowed down to clear space for skyscrapers. Here, a saddlery turned ballet parking lot; there, a sea food market turned newspaper headquarters. Even the buildings left standing have been stripped and fused and cloaked in marble panels or kitschy Egyptian temples (see my “Ancient Curse of Freeway Frontage Excavated from Archives,” Cite 81, Spring 2010).
In this series, Christof Spieler gives regular reports on his trip to China for a special issue of Cite. Read more about RDA’s China initiative here, which includes a knockout lecture series in the Fall.
You walk down a busy street in Beijing: busses, cabs, mopeds, bikes, crowds. But then you turn into an alley—a hutong—maybe 25-feet wide, between two buildings. You pass a store selling groceries, a four-table restaurant grilling meat over a charcoal burner, a small workshop. But then the alley turns residential. The homes themselves are hidden behind lines of walls; occasionally, a portal opens into a courtyard, crammed with small buildings. There is life everywhere: laundry hanging out to dry, old men playing mahjong, kids running around, men loading a truck. The alley twists and turns; the busy city is lost somewhere behind you. As it gets narrower, you’re sure you’ve hit a dead end, but there’s a narrow way through, a path only six feet wide between buildings. After a few more twists, you suddenly emerge onto a major street again, back in modern Beijing.
Deng Xiaoping billboard in Shenzhen. Photos by Christof Spieler.
In this series, Christof Spieler gives regular reports on his trip to China for a special issue of Cite. Read more about RDA’s China initiative here, which includes a knockout lecture series in the Fall.
History is always shaped by the present, and Shenzhen’s economic boom gives it a different view of the past. In Beijing, Mao’s portrait overlooks the city; in Shenzhen it’s a billboard of Deng Xiaoping, who led China from 1978 to 1992. It was Deng who designated Shenzhen as a special economic zone in 1980, and his triumphant 1992 tour of Shenzhen cemented the economic reforms after the Tiananmen Square massacre.
Beijing Planning Exhibition, photo by Christof Spieler
In this series, Christof Spieler gives regular reports on his trip to China for a special issue of Cite. Read more about RDA’s China initiative here, which includes a knockout lecture series in the Fall.
In Beijing, like in most Chinese cities, there’s a planning exhibition. The centerpiece is a huge scale model of the urban core. Families stand around and see what their city will look like — the activity centers, the neighborhoods, the expressways, the transport hubs, the monuments, the parks. And in the surrounding galleries they learn what their city planners think is important to present: the Olympics, transport networks, sustainability, historic preservation.
In this series, Christof Spieler gives regular reports on his trip to China for a special issue of Cite. Read more about RDA’s China initiative here, which includes a knockout lecture series in the Fall.
Shenzhen is China’s prototypical boomtown. In 1980, when it was only a small fishing village, it was designated one of China’s first Special Economic Zones open for Western business. Just across the border from Hong Kong, it was perfect for companies looking to establish new factories. Today, the city has 10 million people (the equivalent of the Chicago metro area), with an average age under 30.
All photographs by Christof Spieler
In this series, Christof Spieler gives regular reports on his trip to China for a special issue of Cite. Read more about RDA’s China initiative here, which includes a knockout lecture series in the Fall.
Shanghai is unique among mainland Chinese cities: at its core is a large 1920s European city. In 1932, three international concessions—French, American-British, and Japanese—were home to 70,000 foreigners. Despite numerous demolitions, much of that remains today. The Bund on the Huangpo river is still lined with old office buildings and hotels, Nanjing Road has old highrises and department stores, the French Concession has tree-lined streets of old mansions, and north along the river there are still blocks and blocks of old two- to four-story apartment buildings with ground floor shops that could stand in for Paris.
19th Street, photos by Heather Korb
In this Hear Our Houston audio tour and contribution to Unexpected City, documentary filmmaker Heather Korb acquaints us with some of the Heights’ charm. This one way, looped route is as packed as 19th Street itself with recommendations, introductions to the locals, and interesting tidbits of both historic interest and everyday fabulousness.
The SoHo of Houston: 19th Street (mp3, 9.6 MB)
by Heather Korb
In this Hear Our Houston audio tour and contribution to Unexpected City, Artist Ayanna Jolivet McCloud takes a walk through the Third Ward where she grew up taking art classes and now runs her own experimental art space, labotanica, at 2316 Elgin, just beneath the historic El Dorado Ballroom. In Jolivet’s words “labotanica responds to the need to have super diverse, flexible, forward-thinking and community-driven platforms for the arts,” a relevant thought in the Third Ward as you pass by Project Row Houses, an internationally recognized model of art in community development. McCloud appreciates the Southern pace and tradition of porch sitting while making her way to S.H.A.P.E. Community Center where she grew up as a Summer program attendee and student in West African dance classes. Be sure to stop in for a delicious healthy meal or fresh smoothie at The Vegan Cafe inside S.H.A.P.E. Center. Listen by clicking on the link below:
Third Ward El Dorado to SHAPE Centerby Ayanna Jolivet McCloud
Cite magazine, the architecture and design review of Houston, has been published quarterly
by the Rice Design Alliance
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