The Rice Design Alliance is a non-profit organization dedicated to the advancement of architecture, urban design, and the built environment in the Houston region.
Don’t miss the upcoming exhibition of ten years of winning projects from the Initiatives for Houston grant program. The exhibition will run January 14 – February 26, 2010 at the Architecture Center Houston (ArCH). The public is invited to attend the opening reception on Thursday, January 14, 2010 from 6 – 8 p.m. at ArCH.
The “City of Palaces” is what radio announcers used to call Mexico City in their daily broadcasts—an apt nickname since its architectural treasures are unmatched in the Western Hemisphere. As Richard Neutra pointed out in a 1952 essay, only Peru can rival its Pre-Colombian and Colonial riches, but no other city in the Americas can boast of monuments from both of these eras, as well as an extraordinary body of modern architecture that keeps growing. During 2010 Mexico will be celebrating the Bicentennial of Mexican Independence (la Independencia de México) and the Centennial of The Mexican Revolution (la Revolucíon Mexicana). The Rice Design Alliance joins the celebrations with a lecture series, “Mexico City Surging: DF Architecture,” featuring a remarkable group of young architects who are making an impact on Mexico City with their built projects.
The Small House Tour may have been held in spring 2009, but our friends at Hometta have been working on something special. They just published a short three minute video about the Tour and the Civic Forum. Take a look (and watch it full screen for optimal viewing):
Small Houses from Hometta, Inc. on Vimeo.
“A people without vision shall perish…a vision without people will perish…a vision without a plan is a hallucination.”
Minister Robert Muhammad of NTE (Neighborhood Training Experts) Planning Consultants, Muhammad Mosque No.45 Housing and Community Development Taskforce invites you to a holiday reception featuring architectural artwork displaying neighborhood oriented development, pedestrian oriented development, transit oriented development and green oriented development. Live entertainment and refreshments will be available. This event is open and free to the public.
When: Thursday, December 17
Time: 6 pm – 9 pm
Where: Shrine of the Black Madonna Cultural Center, 5309 Martin Luther King Blvd, Houston, TX
Cost: Free
Letter from the Guest Editor
In the 1990′s, a new wave of architecture professors at Rice University took on Houston as an experiment in urbanism. Whereas American cities like Boston and New York offered infill and contextual strategies by which to analyze and investigate, the seemingly blank canvas of the “Space City” offered up the idea of a new breed of city, or anti-city. As students we were rolled out to all corners of the region to investigate the hidden city — how the industrial warehouse, the bayou, the suburban tract, the mega-mall, the parking lot, and all the spaces in between created the tapestry that is Houston.
Geri Hooks and Hooks-Epstein Galleries are proud to present, in celebration of their 40th year of operation, the first solo exhibition for Kathryn Dunlevie’s Syncopated Spaces, an exhibition of handmade photo collages on panel.
In the featured exhibition, Syncopated Spaces, Kathryn Dunlevie (who is a graduate of Rice University, and has lived in Houston for several years) “constructs” everyday images that are transformed into compositions that hint at invisible, underlying structures and imperceptible extra dimensions. Familiar scenes have been re-imagined, with rolled back surfaces and jumps in space and time. Dunlevie states, “I have always been intrigued by apparent inconsistencies in time and space and our fluid sense of reality. In recent years, my work has been inspired by contemporary physics. I have fractured and reassembled individual photographs to symbolize the building blocks of matter and to suggest the intrusion of alternate worlds.”
The Archaeology of Faith, Kathryn Dunlevie, 2009. Handmade photo collage on panel.
A full preview of Dunlevie’s exhibition can be found here.
When: December 5, 2009 – January 9, 2010
Where: Hooks-Epstein Gallery, 2631 Colquitt, Houston, TX
Time: 11 am – 5 pm, Tuesday-Saturday
Get into the holiday spirit and join the Woodland Heights Civic Association for the 22nd annual “Light the Heights” community holiday festival and tour!
The Woodland Heights neighborhood is one of the oldest and most historic in Houston. The neighborhood was one of the earliest in the United States to be linked together via a community email list, and its active civic association sponsors an annual “Lights in the Heights” celebration each December, in which 14 blocks of two parallel streets are lit by luminaria and closed to motor vehicles. Tour festively decorated historic homes and listen to free live music along Byrne and Euclid Streets at this annual Houston tradition.
When: Saturday, December 12, 2009
Time: 6-10 pm. Streets will be blocked off to traffic beginning at 5:30 pm
Where: Byrne and Euclid Streets, Houston, TX.
For an event map, click here
Cost: Free
RDA is pleased to announce the 2010 Hometown Tours: Marfa, Texas in February followed by Madrid and Barcelona, Spain in June. If you are interested in receiving more information, please email us as soon as possible:
MARFA – Mary Swift: mswift@rice.edu
SPAIN – Lynn Kelly: lynn_kelly_tx@yahoo.com
Space is limited and reserved on a first-come, first-served basis. If you would like to participate in one of these exciting travel opportunities, please let us a know as soon as possible. A per-person deposit will be required. Your reservation will be confirmed upon receipt of your deposit and all signed forms.
Marfa Refried: Trans-Pecos x2
February 11-14, 2010
$1,500 pp/dbl including airfare
The Museum of Fine Arts Houston (MFAH) and the Katy Prairie Conservancy (KPC) present an evening of conversation and book signing with Douglas Brinkley, author of The Wilderness Warrior: Theodore Roosevelt and the Crusade for America.
The program begins in the museum’s Brown Auditorium Theater as Dr. Douglas Brinkley, Professor of History at Rice University and a Fellow of the James Baker III Institute of Public Policy, discusses Theodore Roosevelt’s quest to conserve America’s natural heritage and how efforts to save the Katy Prairie continue in the tradition of Roosevelt’s far-seeing advocacy. Dr. Brinkley’s most recent book, The Wilderness Warrior: Theodore Roosevelt and the Crusade for America, was published in July 2009. Dr. Brinkley will be available to sign books at a post-program reception in the museum’s lobby to which all attendees are invited. The event and reception are free but we hope that you will purchase a copy of Dr. Brinkley’s book prior to the event and bring it to the meeting so that Dr. Brinkley can sign it.
Dr. Brinkley won the Benjamin Franklin Award for The American Heritage History of the United States(1998) and the Theodore and Franklin Roosevelt Naval History Prize for Driven Patriot (1993). He was awarded the Business Week Book of the Year Award for Wheels for the World and was also named 2004 Humanist of the Year by the Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities. He is a contributing editor for Vanity Fair, Los Angeles Times Book Review, and American Heritage. A frequent contributor to the New York Times, The New Yorker, and The Atlantic Monthly, he is also a member of the Theodore Roosevelt Association, the Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt Institute, the Council on Foreign Relations, and the Century Club. In a recent profile, the Chicago Tribune called him “America’s new past master.” He lives in Austin and Houston with his wife and three children and is currently at work on a biography of Walter Cronkite.
For more information or to register, please call KPC at 713.523.6135 or email us at info@katyprairie.org.
Date: Thursday, December 3, 2009
Time: 6:30 – 9:30 pm
Location: Brown Auditorium, Museum of Fine Arts Houston (MFAH)
AIA HOUSTON CE PROGRAM
This program will update audience on new green, energy-saving technology that also protects the glass palaces they design from hurricane force winds, bomb blasts and burglars. This technology also generates 1-4 LEED credits. This program will give architects a new tool to make buildings safer, greener and LEED qualified. The program will cover applications on both new and existing buildings including recent case examples from Hurricane IKE.
When: Wednesday, December 2, 2009
Time: 4-6 pm
Location: Architecture Center Houston (ArCH)
315 Capitol, Suite 120
Houston, TX 77002
