Subdude

congrats and thanks, ed.

just curious and nostalgic, what happened to the old forum? i recall it crashing but did the posts survive?

As I recall few if any of the posts from the original HAIF survived. The second HAIF started as a clean slate.

Jeez, I can't believe I've been hanging around here 7 years!

There are some really pretty, dense buildings along Bissonnet (right near where this high rise is supposed to go). In particular I like the collection of white townhome-style buildings. I can understand the fear, given other high rise disasters, but there's no reason density in and of itself is unable to fit in with a particular neighborhood.

No, but the point is that whether or not density could "fit in", the local residents did fear that the proposal would damage the quality of the neighborhood and hurt resale values.

If Southampton residents want to push a zoning law citywide, I could understand that (I actually think Houston could use more planning). I don't however feel that Southampton should have special privileges just because they have more money and less tall buildings.

They don't have special privileges. Anyone has the right to petition the government to fix what they think are wrongs. It just happened that these residents were more successful at it. Again, given that there is no city-wide zoning law it seems like they chose the most effective strategy. I fail to see what is so bad about this. You can't just expect everyone to roll over and play dead in situations like this.

Note Sam Malone topics merged.

What I don't like is that this hasn't caused the folks in Southampton, Cresmere Place, Boulevard Oaks and the like to organize for a zoning ordinance to protect ALL neighborhoods. They just don't want this in their back yard. NIMBYism at its absolute worst. They could care less if this were built in the Heights, Tanglewood, or Clear Lake but we'll all be damned if it casts shadows on their lawns.

I don't think NIMBYism is such a bad thing. It's only natural that people want to protect their neighborhoods. In the event, at least it appears to be a more successful strategy than pushing for a zoning ordinance would have been. Lacking a realistic shot at zoning, NIMBYism is the only way to go.

Great article, thanks for posting. There was a time when Houston was considered one of the leading cities for architecture in America.

Trans-Texas Corridor is dead, TxDOT chief says

In response to public outcry, the ambitious proposal to create the Trans-Texas Corridor network has been dropped and will be replaced with a plan to carry out road projects at an incremental, modest pace, a state transportation official announced today.

"The Trans-Texas Corridor, as it is known, no longer exists," said Amadeo Saenz, Jr., executive director of the Texas Department of Transportation a forum in Austin.

The state, he said, will carry forward with modifications to proposed projects and will rely heavily upon input from Texans through more town hall meetings and an updated Web site.

He also made clear that, should toll lanes be added to various roads, tolls will be assessed only on those, and not existing lanes.

The renewed effort now will operate under the name "Innovative Connectivity Plan."

full article

Good news that this boondoggle is dead.

Oop, my mistake then. Thanks for checking that.

Hey now, what exactly qualifies the Beck building as "Second Rate"?

Are you saying it is only third rate?

So, I guess your criteria for judging reviews of Houston buildings is not based on the qualifications of those making the judgments, but rather whether their judgments agree with your opinion.

I guess that's fair to say. I'm sure the editors are very well qualified, but notwithstanding, I still think this is a bad call.

Is your argument that the Hobby center is actually a great example of this century's architecture, or that we oughtn't disagree with the experts who write these books?

And in new areas will they go ahead and do underground power-lines and not allow the huge outrages signs and billboards everywhere?

Fat chance I'm afraid.

You would think that after the experience with Ike this year there would be a huge program to start burying the lines. You would think, but you'd be wrong.

Just how did Houston expect to get the Olympics with the city in the condition its in? Was it planning to clean all of that up and speed up plans for mass-transit? Does it take an Olympics for Houston to clean up?

They obviously knew that the ugliness factor would hurt Houston's chances. True story: when the Olympic selection committee reps were visiting Houston, their drivers were instructed not to drive them downtown via Hardy Toll Road, 59 or 45 so they wouldn't be bowled over by the miles of sprawl. They had to detour on the North Belt to 290 (I think), and make the approach from that direction.

Sorry to hear it.

I have to say that laying someone off via a phone call on Christmas Eve is about as low as possible. Who was your boss, Snidely Whiplash?

Good recap from the Chronicle.

Here

First of all l must admit I dwell in the higher realms of geekdom and watch old car commercials on youtube. But look at the beginning of this ad for the exciting 1979 Datsun 200SX. Is that Houston ca 1978 in the background when the Datsun is on the roller coaster? Could this have been shot at Astroworld? It looks Houston-ish.

"Bozo St Clair"? Naked boxing girls? Interesting find there. The mind boggles...

Well, it was probably considered "great" since the Starchitect Robert AM Stern designed it. In fact, it's not even original; a structure designed by him in California or something beforehand bears a striking resemblance to the Hobby. It seems that most Starchitects can get away with that these days (ie Gehry and his multiple clones of crumpled-tinfoil buildings).

You probably hit the nail on the head there. It's got to be easier just to pick out projects by the starchitects, regardless of merit. It bothers me sometimes when big commissions go to big names that go on to produce second rate work (Cf Moneo's Beck Building at MFAH).

I went riding around to check it out once, and there doesn't seem to be evidence of the Milam Street extension to White Oak.

I agree. The frontage roads might do well for traffic, but they really fugly up the freeways. I doubt there's any alternative to it now. As for excessive signage, I can't imagine an ordinance like that ever passing. I can see a start-up community trying to pull that from day 0, but the cost and amount of trash it would create to de-sign all the junkiness is astounding.

Litter, however, is something that I think can be addressed. I believe that half, if not more, of it comes out of the back of pick up trucks as they drive. I know some people chuck stuff out the window, but I doubt it's enough to account for all of the trash out there. The city should start a massive volunteer/prisoner (maybe not on the same day!) campaign to clean up what's out there now, and then start fining the dickens out of all offenders. 2nd offense warrants jail time. And this includes the pick up truck litterers. Most purposeful litterers are either kids or poor (just an assumption based on observations of where I've seen the most trash), so a nice $1000 minimum fine is really going to hit home.

As for old buildings, I bet we have a lot fewer run-down areas than, say, Detroit. And I would say most decent sized southern cities are as bad or worse than Houston. The only cities that maybe don't have those areas have geographical limitations, so their space is at a premium and not worth wasting.

Good points, although I would guess that the frontage roads make both the visual blight and traffic worse. The latter because they have the effect of steering local trips onto freeways. That is why every other city in the country has avoided them.

like the idea of $1000 fines for littering. Unless we send a strong message that it won't be tolerated it will continue to be a problem.

It's come up before in other topics, but one thing that I really think contributes to fugliness in Houston is the overhead power lines everywhere. IMO nothing does more to give that special cheap third world ambiance. Even my former colleague from Turkey was appalled that a city the size of Houston doesn't bury the lines.

Welcome to Houston!

Today I had an interesting experience.

I was sitting in a Starbucks eavesdropping on everyone else's conversations the way I usually do when I heard a couple of guys at one table talking architecture. Unlike most of the drivel I hear, this was intelligent conversation and went into a lot of interesting style and design aspects of the trade. Eventually one of them started talking about his resume and I learned that he is an architect for a VERY big name architecture firm.

I don't normally blankly introduce myself to people, but I thought this might be an opportunity to learn something. Many of you know that the other half of HAIF is an architectural photography business. I usually work for developers and building owners and investors. But I've always been curious about working directly with architects. So I introduced myself and told him the same thing and started asking questions.

At the end of the conversation as I was excusing myself he said a curious thing. He asked if I'd recommend him to any of my "developer friends." I thought it was a joke and gave a nervous laugh as I made my way back to my squishy chair a few feet away.

Then tonight I read this: Nothing on the Drawing Board

It turns out the measure of architectural activity is at an all-time low. The current number is 34.7. Anything below 50 means a decline.

Maybe that guy from the very big name firm wasn't kidding after all. Things are tough all over.

A blog I read regularly lists the architectural billings index as an economic indicator. It has been running at an all-time low, although to be fair the index has only been computed since 1995. It seems that right now everything possible is being put on hold as people wait to see how bad things get.

I didn't create this topic to rag on Houston, but I created it so that maybe Houston would get its act together. I was twice this past week and noticed trash all along many of the freeways, many run down buildings that still are used for business. How do these businesses distingish them self from one another when there are miles and miles of other junky looking businesses? Its like they don't care how the businesses look or how they make the city look. And why do businesses that go into locations were another business was and just past their sign right over the spot where the old one was? Don't they see that it needs to be fixed to where you can't see the faded spots where the old sign was? And its made worst when they are the large off the building signs that are ment to be seen from the freeway. And then there are the messed up parking lots with the weeds growing through, etc.

Why does i-45 to the Woodlands have a wiggly dividing wall with a extra large shoulder lane that is cluttered with trash?

There are nice areas though, the West loop and its businesses are pretty nice, and much of beltway 8 and its businesses are nice. Also parts of the inner 610 portion of 59 are nice.

Do people just not care how their city looks? The city keeps the above areas looking nice a fresh, but neglect the other areas, why? With all the trash just thrown everywhere and the miles and miles of ugly generic looking businesses seen from the freeways someone should tell the city that it needs to clean up its act and be stricter on codes about littering, and the keepup of properties and the exterior buildings.

I would agree that Houston has large stretches of ugly areas, although it would be impossible to make a meaningful comparison to other cities on that count. A neat visual appearance just has never been a big priority here. Littering has always been a problem. The problem is the "broken windows" theory kicks in. When people see an ugly trashed up environment they are more likely to trash things up themselves.

Easy to pick out the problem, but hard to think of how a solution could be implemented.

Note a long series of off topic replies and personal remarks was cleaned up.

Posts peeled off of another topic.

The fact that they did not poll the members of HAIF for this book does not make the book bogus.

Perhaps not precisely bogus, but if the editors seriously think that the Hobby Center is one of the greatest buildings of the decade then one would really have to question their judgment. This was the building that one newspaper compared to a small town airport.

Maybe they're not saying it is truly great as much as trying to get representative samples of buildings from a bunch of different cities.

Do we have to click to see each post now? I'm not liking this, I'm use to scrolling down and reading everything, even if its old.

It's just a setting. Click on "Options" on the top right, and down the menu there are display modes. Click on standard and life will be good again.

Slowdown of coral growth extremely worrying, say scientists

* James Randerson, science correspondent

* guardian.co.uk, Thursday 1 January 2009 19.18 GMT

Coral growth across the Great Barrier Reef has suffered a "severe and sudden" slowdown since 1990 that is unprecedented in the last four centuries, according to scientists.

The researchers analysed the growth rates of 328 coral colonies on 69 individual reefs that make up the 1,250 mile-long Great Barrier Reef, off north-east Australia. They found that the rate at which the corals were laying down calcium in their skeletons dropped by 14.2% between 1990 and 2005.

"Our data shows that growth and calcification of massive Porites in the GBR [Great Barrier Reef] are already declining and are doing so at a rate unprecedented in coral records reaching back 400 years," wrote Dr Glenn De'ath from the Australian Institute of Marine Science in Townsville, Queensland, and his colleagues in the journal Science.

Link

Least Favorites -

LGW - London Gatwick... seemed old and dated

PVR - Peurta Vallarta, Mexico... not the nicest airport... no air conditioning

DTW - Detroit

I was only through Detroit airport once but it seemed nice. The terminal was very new.

Anyone who has been to London would probably agree that there is a special place in airport hell for both Heathrow and Gatwick. Both are cramped and confusing. Gatwick doesn't have enough restrooms so there are queues even for the men's room.

IAH - Houston... EXCEPT TERMINAL A... I HATE TERMINAL A!!

With the exception of Terminal E, which I believe was funded by Continental, IAH has the worst food selection of any major airport I've been to. Bar none.

Probably a bunch of architecture critics who just got sick of looking at the place.

Too bad they can't declare it a total loss and build something nicer.