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H-Town Man

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Everything posted by H-Town Man

  1. H-Town Man
    Fifty thousand isn't much. If this was all he could figure out to do with this place, downtown may not be as strong as some of us have thought.
  2. H-Town Man
    I bet the folks in Myrtle Beach were glued to this article. "Hey man, whaddya say we go play some golf, then hit the beach and maybe sip on cocktails while we look at the waves?" "Nah man... I'm into this article on the modernist museums in Houston. You know, it's too bad all we have are these gorgeous beaches with blue water and crisp white surf, when we could be walking in out of the sweltering 95 degree southeast Texas heat to see the Cy Twombly Gallery." "Yeah man, I guess you're right. I mean, who needs dazzling golf courses that go right up to the Atlantic ocean when you could have mile after mile of perfectly flat, unzoned land, the weeds growing beneath dilapidated billboards in vacant lots, all culminating in a gallery dedicated to none other than Cy Twombly?" "Sheesh -- wow, you totally just put that into perspective! You know, it's too bad we can't just sell the beach condo and move to Houston." "Yeah, but at least we can live it vicariously through these articles that pop up in the Herald." "Good point."
  3. H-Town Man
    I think in twenty years the Allen Pkwy/Memorial Drive stretch will be a canyon of large and tall buildings with the bayou in the middle. I think it will make for a very interesting drive.
  4. H-Town Man
    I saw the finished building for the first time driving down Memorial the other day, and I really thought it looked great. I think it makes for a landmark frontispiece for the downtown skyline, and I love the stature that it has. One thing that gets me about this forum, and about architecture forums in general, is the relentless pessimism. It's like we're all trying to sound like dour East Coast architecture critics, lamenting the failures of modern capitalism, longing for some golden age where everything was so well-scaled, so human, so right, and generally acting as if the world is going to end. If something fits in with what has gone before, then it's the same old boring thing, whereas if it breaks from the old, then it destroys the beauty, the charm, the genius of what went before. Either someone is doing the same old bland suburban thing, or someone is trying too hard to be New York, and not being Houston. Witness the crying about the new courthouse building: "cheesy historical," "what's with the silly dome?", "hate the windows," "not daring enough," "not Houston enough." When all that was there before, and all that stretches to infinity beyond, is asphalt surface lots! A nice new shopping center proposed near Washington Ave. apparently doesn't benefit its existing context of graffiti-sprayed warehouses and seven foot weeds. Now this new building is "ruining Allen Parkway." Hello, Allen Parkway is in diapers. Its environment hasn't even been invented yet. In twenty five years it will look nothing like it does now. I would put forth that none of the recognized great buildings in Houston had anything to do with anything that came before them, and that for each one that was built, somewhere there was a pessimistic critic lamenting the passing of the noble era of Houston building that had gone before. I want to point out that no developer in the history of this city ever gave a rat's a$$ about the existing environment, other than to change it, and that if any environment does exist in Houston, it happened purely by accident. Look, I'm not responding to anyone specifically on this page. I used to be this way myself. But really, it does get to be silly sometimes.
  5. H-Town Man
    Oh, you know what I just thought of? In the next decade, we're supposed to be getting a new central library. Why not have it next to this, maybe on the side opposite the Hilton?
  6. H-Town Man
    I'm pretty excited about this. I was driving by there the other day and imagined having a nice park with a lot of destinations inside it - it really could provide a good back porch for downtown. We have this incredible civic complex - our city's largest hotel, one of the nation's largest convention centers - but no place to walk around outside and do anything. I think of the park in Indianapolis between the capitol and the convention center, with two hotels on either side, and that is a great place to go walk around when you are staying there. When we had the Super Bowl there were a lot of events at the George R. Brown - this gives an area where people can just hang out between doing stuff. I remember that ESPN was broadcasting SportsCenter from that greenspace with the skyline in the background. I think this place fills a niche between a smaller park in a downtown setting like Market Square and a really big park which is further away from downtown, like Eleanor Tinsley. I'm optimistic.
  7. H-Town Man
    Looks pretty nice. The kind of design that works well in Houston and builds on what we have.
  8. H-Town Man
    HILARIOUS! Please write more!!!
  9. H-Town Man
    You're... back? Where the heck've you been for two years? There's light rail on main street now.
  10. H-Town Man
    "un, deux, trois, quatre... hugh-hugghh! ...cinq, six, sept, huit..."
  11. H-Town Man
    I like the idea of creating a great new architectural symbol for Houston. Goodness knows, we've had nothing to really captivate the city's imagination in a long time. When you take a building like the Transco tower, I think this made the average person, who has never thought about architecture, say "Wow. That building is incredible." It gave a little tingle to people's spines as they drove down the West loop or the Southwest freeway. But I don't know of any more recent building that you can definitely say has done that. The problem with designing a museum building is that a building that stands out and makes a great symbol for the city isn't necessarily the best building for a museum. The Calatrava museum in Milwaukee looks great from a boat on the lake, but doesn't necessarily enhance the experience of looking at art. His proposed symphony hall for Atlanta is flamboyant, but doesn't really get you in the mood for the symphony. If I were an MFAH board member, I would worry first about how a new design fits into the context of the existing buildings and neighborhood before thinking about how it can add something unique to Houston. That's a real problem though, because the Beck building pretty much ignored any interest in neighborhood context or existing buildings. I mean, you could rotate the thing 90 degrees, turn it upside down, paint it green, or put it on a different block, and it wouldn't fit in any better or worse. It's as if Moneo was sent the dimensions of the site and designed the whole thing on a blank pad in his studio up at Harvard, never knowing or caring how anything around it looked. And now the next architect has this giant morose hulk to contend with. If they put a new building on the parking garage site, as they've been saying they might, the situation is miserable: you have a giant blank wall across the street, with nothing but a couple vents and an emergency exit. They could put it in the Presbyterian church parking lot, but anything postmodern or deconstructionist is going to look pretty tacky next to the graceful church. Then again, tricky constraints often produce the best designs, so it will be interesting to see what one of these guys comes up with.
  12. H-Town Man
    I like this. Tellin' it like it is... I have to point out though, that we are the 3rd most diverse of the nation's 25 largest cities, and Dallas is not anywhere close. But he's right about Uptown Dallas. They're light years ahead of us as far as building a classy, pedestrian-friendly area of townhomes.
  13. H-Town Man
    You think the Law building is the worse Mies ever designed... but the best building in Houston? Come on. For one thing, Mies designed a dozen buildings for IIT that all look very similar to this one. It could have almost been the IIT Art Museum. For another thing, even if you like modernism that much and don't like postmodernism, isn't the University of St. Thomas Campus still much better? Or how about the Tennessee/El Paso building? What always got me about the Law building was that fan-shaped curve that follows Binz St. What a forgettable entry it creates. With the sidewalk curving away from you on either side, the glass and concrete facade seems to be pushing you into the street. Also the 1/2 glass, 1/2 concrete to me is sickening; didn't he ever hear the 2/3, 1/3 rule? How about concrete 1/3 of the way up, and glass for the remaining 2/3? And then, please, do something to break up the horizontality! Make the middle of the building a little taller for goodness sake - provide some relief!
  14. H-Town Man
    I read we are no. 6 in endowment. Trying to figure out what the top 5 are. I know the Met, the Getty, and the Kimbell are ahead of us. That leaves two others. Not Boston, not Philly, not Chicago, not Cleveland. Who do you think?
  15. H-Town Man
    No. Please read again.
  16. H-Town Man
    I found out about this minutes after a friend had sent me an e-mail describing the scene of the bombing in Lebanon yesterday, down the street from where he attends school. He saw people lying in the street who had been cut apart by the shards of broken glass that fell from windows in luxury hotels. Thus I feel nothing but the ludicrousness of somebody giving $400 million dollars to buy art for a museum. In a couple days though I am sure I will recover to my normal, de-sensitized self.
  17. H-Town Man
    Don't you work for Wulfe?
  18. H-Town Man
    HR, is the Lake/Flato thing off? Subdude, do you just know the complete tenant history of every building in downtown Houston, standing or razed??? Ok, real quick - what was the name of the cafeteria located at the bottom of the San Jacinto Hotel in the 40's and 50's?!
  19. H-Town Man
    Top Ten Changes Made for Downsized Cathedral 10. Pews to be made of particle-board and veneer. 9. Chalices will feature unbreakable "flexi-stem" technology by Rubbermaid. 8. No Brita for Holy Water. 7. Pipe organ plans scrapped in favor of Kawasaki XL9000 "Symphony in One" keyboard. 6. Stained glass designs changed from Gothic to Minimalist. 5. Expensive, closed-in confessionals abandoned for contemporary "open air" booth format. 4. Contract for "fruit of the vine" awarded to Franzia. 3. Multiple dipping bowls for Holy Water scrapped in favor of one central, "mingle and meet" location. 2. Standard portrait of Pope John Paul II not ordered; odds on pontiff's health apparently lose out against 28 month construction period. 1. Air conditioning systems to be turned off on confession nights. The word from the bishop: "Make 'em sweat."
  20. H-Town Man
    It may have something to do with feeling alienated from conventional forms of religion and spiritualism. The arts offer kind of an "alternative" spirituality. People who create things artistically are usually people who feel "different" and want to discover something new. I find that not only gays, but people who feel excluded from society for almost any reason, are more likely to have interest in the arts (this is why artists are more liberal, and liberals are more artistic).
  21. H-Town Man
    His New York Times obituary is the best article you'll find: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/26/arts/des...artner=homepage It calls the Transco Tower "perhaps his finest skyscraper." We knew it all along.
  22. H-Town Man
    It's not a classic piece of modern architecture. It's a good period piece. The El Paso building, the University of St. Thomas, the Brown Pavilion at MFAH may qualify as classics of modern architecture, it depends how stingy you're being with the term 'classic.' The Kimball Museum in Fort Worth might be the only hands-down classic in Texas. I think Jones Hall is a nice building, but here's the problem: it's a mediocre concert hall. It was designed as a multi-purpose auditorium that has since been altered to improve its acoustics for symphony. Comparing it to one of the nation's great, dedicated concert halls is like comparing a Ford to a Mercedes. I hope that in a few years we can get a new concert hall, and then hopefully save Jones and use it for something else (but I doubt it). Also, consider that when Jones was built, none of the tall buildings around it were there. Think of the untapped potential for complementing that section of the skyline.
  23. H-Town Man
    I just don't understand.
  24. H-Town Man
    It's not a great building, but look what's around it. You can't expect the highest standards when there's nothing to work off of. Architects (or architecture enthusiasts) might know how to make it better, but for regular folks to demand more, there has to be an existing environment that people can look at and say, "Whoa, this doesn't work here!" And perhaps as more buildings go up in the area, people will start to be critical and say, "this one adds, this one detracts." It takes time to build public taste, and mistakes have to be made along the way. But when all you have is decayed buildings and parking lots, anything is a step in the right direction. Besides, it really isn't that bad. I think that from the freeways or the air, it adds a new feature to our skyline.
  25. H-Town Man
    Can anyone tell me what is happening on the SW corner of Richmond and Montrose? Two lots have been cleared.
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