infinite_jim

I think I confused some terms, of which I am ashamed. I have loved architecture all my life and own several books on the subject, especially pretty much any skyscraper book in existence. I meant Art Deco styles like The Chrysler Building and then their new incarnations like Philly's One and Two Liberty Place or it's virtual twin in Chicago. Would the newer ones be considered Post-Modern?

Interestingly Helmut Jahn's design for the Southwest Bank Tower closely resembles his built works of the One Liberty Place and subsquently Two Liberty Place. These are all examples of the Post-Modern period of skyscraper design from roughly ~1978 to about ~1994. Although you still see this type of work in high end architecture every now and again like Grave's Fed Reserve Branch bldg off Allen Parkway (2003?) or Philip Johnson's "split obelisk" as the auto entry for UH @ I-45 on Cullen.

 

Would H-town's and NO's Shell towers be considered in that style?

 

These are both the International Style or otherwise known as High Modernism (~1948 through ~1978)

 

definitely a close second favorite style. I like the Turning Torso and especially Frank Gehry's tower in NY. FG is actually one of my favorite current architects.

His work is sort of a bridge between Post-Modern (which includes Pop styled work like the binoculars bldg) and Deconstructionism. The Disney Concert Hall in LA is considered one of his best stateside works in terms of use and sheer visual delight. That disgusts some critics but I think his bldgs metal skins will age quite nicely into a patina. I've only seen a handful of his small scaled stuff in southern California. Funny how in another thread someone mentioned that the flowing curtain look of J. Gang's Aqua was too busy; F. Gehry's 8 Spruce St. was designed exactly by this metaphoric description. 

3 Allen Center has grown on me, especially when heading north on I-45. It could be teleported into the Shinjuku District in Tokyo and no one would bat an eye (The average Joe/Jane).

That's my office.

My favorite style of skyscraper would be the Deconstructivist works like the new 1WTC.

NEO renditions of classics.

It's called Post-Modernism.

Regarding Georgia's Fresh Market: Is this place still open for breakfast or is it only lunch now?

View from Andrews St. looking east.

1000 Main (Reliant Plaza) has been raving since the NFL pre-season started. If you get a chance to watch the whole pattern it's got a cool liquid-like, back and forth fade with the reds/oranges and blues/greens.

Is Chevron moving employees into the Allen Center II?

There was a temporary Chevron security office on the ground level and quite a few Chevron polo's about during lunch today.

 

 

 

 

POV from the Mosaic north tower.

 

That's new glass they're installing.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Around the base

 

 

 

 

Before

If the Nashville comparison is not worth getting into, why did you proceed to get into it?  In any event, thanks for reinforcing my argument that they paid almost three times the price for roughly the same amount of exhibit space (without anything close to the flexibility).  And ours is in an already world-renowned architectural marvel.  Theirs is in a new building that will be dated in 20 years.  Not in the dome's league?  You are out of your mind.

 

Likewise with your statement about the Raleigh convention center.   Thanks for clarifying that despite paying more 5 years ago than we project to pay now, they ended up with a span "nothing like that of the Dome's existing" and got themselves a basic warehouse structure.

 

Your statement that we are not getting much for our money could not be more wrong.

The Nashville comparison is just too apples vs oranges; I thought you'd get to the point that they may have a dated building in 20 years but it will still be a unique, "run-of-the-mill" work of architecture (i.e. expensive engineering on an expensive piece of dirt). None of your examples were of an existing, modular design that was renovated to today's standards. The Dome is from 1965 and has a high-modern internationalist exterior if not an outright brutalist one these days. I live in building also built in 1965, spalling is a deadly serious remediation issue from a structural as well as liability point of view. Restorative concrete work is not cheap in any sense, especially if it's structural. This all before we even consider the varying costs of high performance coatings (interior as well) which you know means that the amount of surface amount to be covered is quite a vast number yielding either an inferior specification or a massive budgetary item.

 

Just as building the Astrodome was a historic engineering feat, restoring it will be just as complicated a feat, but in that sense I hope I'm wrong too. I do hope we're getting the insanely good deal you say we're getting. Is this too good a deal to be true? 

How so?  For an investment of approximately $195 Million (in fairness, less than that, because if we don't do this project we still have to either continue to spend a couple million per year to maintain it or spend tens of millions to demolish it, but let's just go with the $195 Million figure), we get a 355,000 square foot multi-purpose convention/trade show/sports/gathering space facility unlike any other in the world.

 

For comparison:

 

--Nashville recently spent $623 Million to build the 350,000 square foot Music City Center, which is a relatively run-of-the mill convention center.

 

--Oklahoma City is working on a new convention center (again, a relatively run-of-the-mill facility, on which they plan to spend $250 Million for around 250,000 square feet of exhibit  and meeting space.

 

-- 5 years ago, Raleigh NC spent $221 Million on a run-of-the-mill convention center with approximately 190,000 square feet of exhibit and meeting space.

The Nashville comparison is not worth getting into, but I trust you do a lot of conventions, but to me that's a really nice convention center in terms of design. It's obviously 3x the value and it looks like the land acquisition was pretty long process; together that puts it out of this half-pasteurized Dome proposal's league. Also this article says it's was $585 million and goes into some detail about it's unconventional take on the convention center job. 

 

For OKC I can't really talk about something that's not completed yet nor do we know the form/site/etc.

 

The Raleigh convention center was new site acquistion as well and it's largest span is nothing like that of the Dome's existing, not to mention it's a your basic warehouse structurally so all the money went towards finishes. Nice exterior and street face, but nothing like Po Boyin' the Dome. 

 

The Dome proposal looks like a "just do what we need to do to get paid and eventually we'll get a CO." job job. This looks like a hot mess they're gonna buzz saw headfirst into at that cost estimate; it should be 3x as much and include people movers, exterior escalators, etc. Good luck but I sincerely hope no one gets hurt on this project but it looks dangerous and I really am on your side in that I care about what happens to the Dome but a Home Cheapo re-muddle is not something anyone had in mind. Are we looking at the same renderings? The demo of the exterior stair wells could very well in up in extensive repair work on the facade. In fact the whole facade exercise is the worst sort of gloss over the big interior issues. I just don't understand how it can only be $150 million when it looks like in order to do a good job it will go way over that amount. A new convention space can be developed on site at some future time and not be locked into designing around the Dome's master plan configuration.

 

I'm sure they are hoping it will rain during/after the implosion.

Are you drunk?

Is it necessary for you to demonstrate your impotence in convincing anyone on this matter and therefore must resort to accusations against my judgement? Not a good look and it creates more divisiveness against the issue you support (politics 101).

This election is on 11/05/2013 and who votes in off year elections? Old people. Maybe former Judge Echols can actually rally the old-timers to vote for it but from everyone I know that lives out in the county, they are against it. In my experience it easier to convince old people to be against something than to be for something (just the times we live in). Rodeo people and Texans fans seem to against it from my informal polling. Who's for it? people who love architecture, people who don't see or don't mind the increase in property taxes, people who love the idea of Houston's modern past, young people (who notoriously don't show up to vote), etc. I'd optimistically guess the dome's odds of survival are roughly 1 in 10. Even if it does survive, this plan is pretty expensive for what we're getting, and very hard to determine whether it will be a success or just another example of a decades long pattern of local gov't boondoggles. Even people who love architecture on this very forum have gotten the "give-a-crap" beaten out of them over the last decade by the shifting quicksands that is our elected reps decision making process.

It's too bad that even if the Dome gets demo'd the taxpayers still have to cover that cost and the bundled debt of the 1986 renovations. Personally, I'd prefer door number#3, do nothing and just maintain. It was obvious that with hostile existing tenants that no private redevelopment was going to occur. If we wait we can force them to renegotiate their contracts, perhaps even punitively against their former actions. The People would then have the opportunity to be able to force the Texans and the Rodeo to accommodate their desire towards redeveloping the dome through a private developer or if that fails then to hold an open and public international design competition with at least one year's time frame to hold the contest. The issue has always been about accountability and transparency in the process, which we do not have on a county level of governance here in Texas.

Let's be honest with ourselves here.. The dome is getting demo'd.

 

I used to care about what would happen to the Astrodome but over the course of the last decade I've just lost faith in the Harris County public at large as represented by our elected officials and it's handling since the Astros left. I think nothing more of the engineering feat of the Astrodome now as I would the high art-deco interior detailing of the Houston Club bldg or the (about to be former) street window casements of the old Foley's.

 

The Astrodome reduced to a memory may be Houston's chance to reflect later on architecturally (like the downtown dome idea) as a much older city but for now let the nihilists have the day.

The name is confusing.  Isn't University Place the name of the super-neighborhood east of West U?

The name sounds pretty logical to me regardless of the existing.

No. Rice University does not own the Sears land.  Sears owns the Sears land.

You're correct. I'm not sure where I heard about the Rice endowment thing but it looks like Sears has owned it for many decades now according to HCAD.

That Sears... OMG. 

 

I'm so conflicted.  Glad to have a Sears in Midtown, but it's in such bad condition.  They need to either take care of it or tear it down!

Rice University owns that land. I'm pretty sure they're waiting on the University Line before moving ahead.

Nice to see these renderings after hearing about them forever from my barber.

The main concern should be how he integrates the sculpture garden into the complex. Everything else will be tunnel connected.

To take a look into what Gensler is trying to do with this existing plaza from across Capital St. The lobby executes a couple of public design initiatives, first by opening up the streetscape into the tunnel system and by using the sunken lobby to frame a view of the Miro sculpture. It reinforces the bldg line set by the Houston Club bldg which in turn helps frame out the void carved out by plaza. This is one of main reasons folks have to excited about this project going up, it's solid interstitial design that pays complement to some very monumental yet standoffish bldgs by being their pedestrian hub. 

It's a good thing that people get involved in the development of their neighborhood instead of just remaining passive.

The thing is though, it's not IN their neighborhood it's adjacent to their hood. What's funny about NIMBY's is they never talk about the air rights of the developer or what they would compensate for those air rights. If they did then they would have to acknowledge that they are attempting to get something for nothing. As they say in NYC, "not a good look."

I heard last night that this site is cursed by Warren of "Warren's" fame. 

 

http://downtownhouston.org/news/article/back-future/

 

But the demolition that causes the most pain today is probably that of Warren’s Inn (316 Milam) in 1988. Warren was Warren Trousdale, whose first downtown bar was called Ali Baba (823 Congress). According to his sister, Carolyn Wenglar, who now owns and manages both La Carafe and the current Warren’s Inn, Trousdale managed to buy the Bethje-Lang building (where Warren’s was located), after the Ali Baba building was demolished.  

As the owner, Trousdale was probably feeling safe operating the old building he loved so much. But as early as 1982, the Chronicle reported that a development company that wanted to build an office building and parking garage was attempting to buy the property. Trousdale is quoted as saying, “I told them they’d have to build over me because I won’t sell. We need some old buildings left, something for future generations to see besides steel and glass – something old and dear, like these buildings.”  

With its large statues representing the four seasons (left over from the previous occupant, Les Quatre Saisons) and its beautifully aged atmosphere, Warren’s Inn was a building that many Houstonians held close to their hearts. 

That’s why the news that Trousdale had finally sold the property to Guardian Savings came as an unwelcome surprise. Why had he sold? Those closest to him said that he had been the subject of a campaign of harassment.  

“Somebody – we don’t know who – was putting t-shirts in his toilets (to clog them). They even put cement in his sewer,” says his sister. She’s kept the current Warren’s Inn alive “in a little bit of tribute” to her brother, who was “quite a guy.”  

Ultimately deprived of a sewer connection, Trousdale sold the property and moved across Market Square. He died in 1988, not long after Guardian Savings demolished the building – without taking out the proper permits.  

Not long after, the oil bust caught up to Guardian Savings and it went bankrupt. “Maybe there was a little bit of karma there,” Wenglar says with a tiny note of triumph in her voice.