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

Our 2009 tour of Marfa was such a success, we are excited to offer it again in 2010!

Marfa, Texas, is not in the middle of nowhere. It’s at the far edge of nowhere. And that is its magic.

Marfa was founded in 1883 as a water stop on the Galveston, Harrisburg & San Antonio Railway, the Texas segment of the Southern Pacific’s transcontinental railway. Historically, Marfa was a market town for cattle ranchers on the arid Marfa Plateau, midway between the Davis Mountains to the north and the Río Grande and Chihuahua to the south. It is also the county seat of Presidio County.

The dramatic basin-and-range landscape and the extraordinary crystalline atmosphere, which makes you feel as though you can see for hundreds of miles, drew director George Stevens to Marfa in 1955 to film Giant. Most recently scenes from No Country for Old Men and There Will be Blood were filmed in Marfa.

The epic quality of the Trans-Pecos drew the artist Donald Judd from New York to Marfa in 1973. Until his death in 1994, Judd used Marfa and the landscape of the Trans Pecos as the setting for a remarkable series of installations for his own art works as well as works by contemporary artists whom he admired. Judd became an architect to shape buildings and places that, as he saw it, worked with the landscape to define space and frame works of art.

The Chinati Foundation, which Judd founded, maintains his architectural settings. After Judd’s death, other philanthropists, collectors, and creative people were drawn to Marfa, where they have restored some of the town’s historic buildings as well as building exciting new works of architecture to engage this magic landscape. Carlos Jiménez and Victor Lundy of Houston and Lake/Flato and Ford, Powell & Carson of San Antonio are among the well-known architects who are expanding Marfa’s architectural heritage.

The Rice Design Alliance will visit Marfa and the Chinati Foundation, as well as astonishing sites in Presidio on the Río Grande, and an amazing guided tour of Big Bend. Prior to our departure on Sunday, we will enjoy a brief tour of El Paso.

Madrid and Barcelona
June 12-19, 2010
$3,400 pp/dbl not including airfare

Madrid, capital of the kingdom of Spain, and Barcelona, capital of the autonomous community of Catalunya and the second largest city in the Spanish kingdom, represent two poles of Iberian architecture.

Madrid lies in Castilla la Nueva at the center of the Iberian penninsula; Barcelona is a port city on the Mediterranean Sea open to the world. Both have profited from the renaissance of Spanish architecture that occurred in the last quarter of the twentieth century.

Led by Houston’s most illustrious figure in the world of international architecture, Carlos Jiménez, the Rice Design Alliance will visit both Madrid and Barcelona to experience a new, architectural Edad de Oro and see how Spanish (and international) architects have reinvented these two extraordinary cities with architecture that is daring, often austere, yet also fits into the urban places and landscapes where it has been built.

Madrid was founded in the ninth century as an Islamic citadel on the río Manzanares. In 1561 Felipe II made Madrid the seat of the royal court. Although Madrid has monumental urban spaces dating from the 17th century, it was not until the 18th century, with the ascent of the Bourbon dynasty to the Spanish crown, that it was reshaped into a modern European capital. As in other European capitals, the 20th century was a period of explosive population growth and urban expansion, despite the Spanish Civil War of 1936-39.

Barcelona existed as early as the beginning of the Christian era. It was a Roman, then a Visigothic, and then a Muslim city before becoming in the 12th century part of the kingdom of Aragón. Barcelona fell out of favor with the Bourbon kings but in the 19th century it revived to become Spain’s first industrial center engaged in the making of textiles. In the 1870s, modernism affected Barcelona’s architecture, most notably through the work of Catalunya’s greatest architect Antoni Gaudí i Cornet. Barcelona’s militant anti-Fascism caused the city to again fall into official disfavor from the 1940s until the 1970s. As host to the 1992 Summer Olympics, Barcelona was dramatically re-shaped by its Socialist mayor, Pasquall Maragall i Mira, who commissioned Spain’s leading architects to transform Barcelona into a world city.

Carlos Jiménez has arranged for us to be welcomed by the brilliant young Madrid architect, Antón García Abril, winner of the RDA’s Spotlight Award for 2009. Luis Fernández Galiano, Spain’s most important architectural critic and Cullinan Visiting Professor of Architecture at Rice in 1996, will show us his Madrid. In Barcelona, we will meet Carlos Ferrater, one of Barcelona’s most outstanding architects, and explore the Barri Gòtic and, of course, the masterworks of Gaudí. In Madrid and Barcelona we will see works by Rafael Moneo, architect of the Beck Building of the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston.

And in both cities we will be introduced to the most characterful and delicious restaurants.
We invite you to sign up for one or both of these exciting tours!

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RDA Associate Director, Programs Kathryn Fosdick recalled the group’s recent four-day tour of New York City in June.

NEW YORK- I was struck by a sense of homecoming when we arrived. I was born and spent my first five years in New York and have since felt a special connection to the place. For me, the city is like an eccentric aunt who is best taken in limited doses but, nonetheless, leaves you with vivid, brightly-colored memories.

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Marfa and the Trans-Pecos “My requirements were that the building be useful for living and working and more importantly, more definitely, be a space in which to install work of mine and others. I spent a great deal of time placing the art and a great deal designing the renovation in accordance.”  - Donald Judd 

Marfa is not in the middle of nowhere. It’s at the far edge of nowhere. And that is its magic.

For four days in early February, The Rice Design Alliance visited Marfa and the Chinati Foundation, as well as astonishing sites in Presidio on the Río Grande and at Fort Davis in the Davis Mountains.

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Rolf Achilles of Chicago and Ulf Meyer of Berlin guided The Rice Design Alliance in an exploration of the breadth of Berlin’s architectural and urban culture. The tour touched Berlin’s architectural landmarks, new and the old, the central and the outlying, and was immersed in the rich but often troubling history of a city being designed to be the capital of the twenty-first century.

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San Francisco is not only one of the greatest cities in the United States, it is one of the greatest in the world, with architecture to match. In February 2008, The Rice Design Alliance spent four days exploring the diversity and depth of San Francisco’s architectural and urban culture. The RDA visited neighborhoods, toured the work of the city’s foremost architects, and encountered buildings that break new ground in design.

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Buenos Aires was settled in 1580 on the bluffs of the Río de la Plata and remained a trade center during Spanish colonial rule. The city became the capital of the independent Argentine Republic in 1810. The construction of a network of railroads funneled the wealth of the Argentine pampas region to the docks of the Río de la Plata in the last quarter of the nineteenth and Buenos Aires bloomed.

By the turn of the twentieth century, Buenos Aires ranked among the largest cities in Latin America. Immigrants from Italy, Spain, central and eastern Europe, and the Levant made it one of the most ethnically diverse cities in South America. Architects from Italy, France, Spain, and the United Kingdom built a new Buenos Aires, a vision of Paris of the Belle Époque reconstituted in the southern hemisphere.

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In October, RDA traveled to Paris four four days; its first trip across the Atlantic. RDA tours offer knowledgeable guides, behind-the-scenes tours of public and residential spaces, private receptions, and expert guest speakers. 

Great cities place importance on design at all scales. Only a few cities can claim to have been both the cradle of new design ideas as well as the host of their maturity. With more than two thousand years of history, Paris is one of these rare places.

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Charleston June 8-11, 2006

In June, 30 RDA members journeyed to Charleston for a four-day tour. Led by architectural historian Stephen Fox and tour director Lynn Kelly, the trip offered an in-depth look into Charleston’s rich history, its architectural landmarks, and of course its remarkable cuisine.

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Phoenix February 23-26, 2006

In February 18 RDA members visited the desert Southwest and America’s sixth largest city, Phoenix. Since the 1980s, Phoenix has experienced an outburst of bold, imaginative, regionally inflected architecture by Will Bruder, Wendell Burnett, DeBartolo Architects, Jones Studio, and Marwan Al-Sayed, among others. With significant new public buildings by Tod Williams-Billie Tsien & Associates, Richard Meier & Partners, Antoine Predock, and Mac Scogin-Merrill Elam, Phoenix has emerged as one of the most architecturally exuberant cities in the U.S.

Upon arrival the RDA group met Will Bruder, the godfather of the current Arizona School, at Bruder’s Central Library, which transformed local understanding of how a public building could poetically interpret the natural landscape, even on a strict budget. (Bruder presented the library at a lecture that he gave to the Rice Design Alliance in 1997.) Later that afternoon, Bruder joined the group for a tour of another one of his projects, the Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art, and together they watched the light change at sunset in the museums’ skyspace installation by James Turrell, Knight Rider. Following that experience, Louise and Will Bruder hosted the group in their award-winning townhouse, Loloma 5.

RDA members spent the following day viewing a number of private homes, including several designed by Bruder, as well as the Freeman-Silverman House by Tod Williams-Billie Tsien & Associates, the House of Earth + Light by Marwan Al-Sayed, and the house and studio of architect Wendell Burnette. Jack DeBartolo, Jr., who worked with Caudill Rowlett Scott in Houston but now practices architecture with his son Jack 3, arranged a visit to the Mariposa Residence, a compound for the Jesuit Community. Jack and his wife Pat also hosted the group at a tour and reception in their home in Scottsdale, overlooking the mountains.

Led by architectural historian Stephen Fox, the group toured Taliesen West, Frank Lloyd Wright’s winter home, a highlight of the tour. Wright’s influence can be seen at the Arizona Biltmore, where the group toured and had brunch before seeing new buildings at Arizona State University in Tempe on the way back to the airport and home to Houston.

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Seattle: Soak It Up! June 15-19, 2005

Seattle, founded in 1851, occupies a hilly isthmus between Puget Sound and Lake Washington. The largest city in a metropolitan area with a population of 3.7 million, Seattle is home to such icons of contemporaneity as Microsoft, Amazon.com, and Starbuck’s.

Architecturally Seattle is extraordinarily rich. Our tour included many wonderful historic sites and such stunning new landmarks as the Seattle Public Library by Rem Koolhaas and OMA, Frank Gehry’s Experience Music Project, the Seattle Art Museum by Venturi & Scott Brown (with a new addition by Allied Works of Portland), and Steven Holl’s St. Ignatius Chapel at Seattle University.

As always on RDA Hometown Tours, great attention was given to accommodations and dining. We stayed at the beautiful and quiet boutique hotel, Hotel Alexis, located two blocks from the waterfront, and enjoyed sampling the great variety of cuisines available in the Seattle region.

Of special interest were the visits to private homes to experience the wonderful architecture, art, and hospitality of our friends in the Pacific northwest.

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