Rubix House [Jones, Partners]
Some great events today and tomorrow. This evening, Wednesday, 7:00 pm at the MFAH, is the first of the Rice Design Alliance’s “Post Hurricane Ike Planning” civic forums. Click here for more information.
If you attended the Rice Design Alliance Small House tour in March, or if you generally drool over small modern homes, this event might interest you. Hometta is a collective that includes several Houston-based designers including Interloop—Architecture, Collaborative Designworks, HouMinn Practice, and Brett Zamore Design. The group offers home plans and an array of educational resources meant to make high-quality, modern design accessible and affordable to prospective homeowners. Their opening reception is tomorrow, Thursday, July 16, 2009, at The New World Museum (5230 Center Street) at 8 p.m. Catering by Armandos. Admission is free.
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Townhouse being clad with Tyvek and EIFS [Houston Independent Media Center]
The Houston Chronicle published an editorial warning readers of the consequences of a possible Chapter 42 expansion to Beltway 8—namely the construction of townhouses. Meanwhile, a writer for the Houston Independent Media Center posted a satirical take on the relentless tearing down and building within the Loop, and the dramatic variability in quality.
Friday July 10
Click to Build [Architect's Newspaper] “The McMansion has worn out its welcome, hope for prefab is fading, and anyone with a sense of contemporary design taste shudders at what homebuilders are producing these days. But for most people who want to build a modern, “architectural” house, the price is out of their reach. That’s where Hometta, a new Houston-based company, comes in.
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International Coffee Building design by Lake/Flato Architects and BNIM [Renderings and historic photos courtesy Buffalo Bayou Partnership, current photos by Jesse Hager]
At the time of the completion of the International Coffee Building in 1910, Commerce and Main Street were bustling with the activities that the street names imply. The International Coffee Building served as a roasting and distribution point for one of the key industries of the era. Since then, rail supplanted shipping and Houston, with the aid of the automobile, moved rapidly out from its historic center at Allen’s Landing. The downtown has shifted its energies away from the water. Buildings now are designed for firms that track materials digitally or sell digital commodities. What was once a vibrant center of city life has been literally overshadowed and left for appropriation by vagrants or artists.
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Sims Bayou, Design by Kevin Shanley, SWA Group [Image from ASLA website]
NOZONE flier [Design by Mary Ellen Carroll]
Peter Brown, TJ Huntley, Gene Locke, Roy Morales, and Annise Parker will be giving their thoughts about legislation policy, education, transportation, and quality of life issues in a in a discussion on land use this Thursday, July 9, 2009, at the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston, 5216 Montrose Boulevard, Houston, TX 77006.
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Everything Must Move [Cover design Thumb]
The May issue of Cite (78) included a reflection by Ben Koush on the fifteen-year tenure of Rice School of Architecture Dean Lars Lerup. You can download a pdf of the article by clicking on the title, “Lars Lerup Goes to Rome: Former Student Reflects on Transition at Rice School of Architecture.” Below Koush extends his reflection.
Everything Must Move was published on the occasion of the fifth Kennon Symposium honoring Rice School of Architecture (RSA) Dean Lars Lerup as he steps down this year. According to the subtitle printed on its bright red cover, the book documents “a decade-and-a-half of propositions about the suburban city in general, and Houston in particular.” (Author’s note: I was a graduate student who matriculated roughly in the middle of Lerup’s tenure.)
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Monk parakeet sitings in Harris County [Map generated by ebird.org]
Houston appears to be churning along and growing in its seemingly unplanned, inevitable way. Besides the 99K house ribbon cutting, which we will get an OffCite post of its own, the story that stood out to me was Lisa Gray’s column on monk parakeet colonies in the Houston area. These birds have established wild colonies in cities all across America. What I love about the story is that the birds build their “condo” homes in transmission line towers. The ornithologist Gray interviews notes that the settlement patterns marks the northeast to southwest boundary between what used to be prarie and forest. The phenomenon seems paradoxical: both invasive and restorative, infrastructural and ecological, immigrant and in the native wild.
Thursday June 18
CYCLING NOTEBOOK A call for cleaner streets Road debris hurts city’s effort to be bike-friendly [Houston Chronicle]
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Cite issues 75 through 78
The Architecture Center Houston and the Houston Public Library hold a monthly program called Authors in Architecture. The series highlights one book or publication. It is held every 3rd Thursday of each month with a presentation and discussion at the Downtown Library and a following reception and book signing at the Architecture Center.
The Thursday June 18th event will feature Raj Mankad, editor of Cite: The Architecture + Design Review of Houston.
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When the Texas legislature ended its session, a bill that would have created a $500 million subsidy program for the installation of solar panels died. The Chronicle reported that despite broad bipartisan support for the bill Sylvester Turner killed the solar subsidy using a procedural tactic on the grounds that the twenty-cent fee per month would burden poor people. A few days later Turner flirted with another run for Houston mayor.
Sunday June 7
A Mod gets modernized: Business and pleasure [Houston Chronicle, Lisa Gray] “The Houston Architectural Guide calls them “The Macham Building,” and notes they were designed in 1959 by architects Thompson McCleary and Hamilton Brown, who used the larger of the brick boxes as their office.”
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A bronze chariot from the necropolis of Qin Shi Huang, first emperor of the Qin dynasty, on display at the Houston Museum of Natural Science [Photo S. J. Alexander]
