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A Dangerous Activity
Nicholas Auger’s “Bicycle Freedom,” 2008.This post is another in a series that examines bicycling and walking in Houston. Read Raj Mankad’s analysis of the Houston Bike Plan here. I participate in a...
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Permaculture by a Different Name: On Diana Balmori’s Arc Wildlife Crossing
Arc Wildlife Crossing. Source: balmori.comThis is a response to the third lecture in the RSA/RDA Spring 2016 Lecture Series, Projective Infrastructures. To view excerpts from the lectures, click to...
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Particularities of Place: A Response to the Landscape Architecture of...
Image of landscape made with "point cloud" technology. Courtest: Atelier Girot.This is the second in a series of response to the Spring 2016 RSA/RDA Lecture Series, Projective Infrastructures. To read...
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A Planner’s Paradise: Postcard from Mexico City
Mexico City’s built environment overwhelmingly embraces the human scale, so you rarely feel like you’re out of place. Think about being in the Financial District of Manhattan or Center City in...
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The Delight of Houston’s Neighborhood Bikeways
Mihalic bikes on Hawthorne Street in Montrose. Photo: Allyn West.I am cruising on my vintage bike, my silver and purple handlebar streamers making a subtle whish as I pick up speed. My ride is shaded...
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The Houston Transformation and The City Beautiful: A Discussion with Andrew...
Brochstein Pavilion at Rice University. Courtesy: The Office of James Burnett.The Cultural Landscape Foundation will hold a conference in Houston, March 11-13, called Leading with Landscape II: The...
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The Houston Transformation and the Hubris of I-10: A Discussion with Andrew...
Katy Freeway. Photo: Alex MacLean.The Cultural Landscape Foundation will hold a conference in Houston, March 11-13, called Leading with Landscape II: The Houston Transformation. The expert-led panels...
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Why Bus Shelters Matter More Than You Think
Bus stop near Lidstone on the 28 OST/Wayside. Photo: Allyn West.Last year, Streetsblog held a contest for its readers to send photos of the “sorriest bus stop” in the country. (The winner — or loser? —...
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The Houston Transformation and “Nature”: Part III of a Discussion with Andrew...
Buffalo Bayou Park. Courtesy: SWA Group.This is the final part in a three-part interview Cite Editor Raj Mankad conducted with Andrew Albers and Ernesto Alfaro, who co-teach a survey of landscape...
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Letting the City In: Icehouses in Houston
View of Uptown Houston from Bubba's Burger Shack. Photos: David Richmond.Seven months ago I started a yearlong project photographing an icehouse in Houston every week. Each location is studied both...
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The Oil Series: Housing in Houston
Building in a landscape being converted from mid-income housing to high-end luxury condos; construction currently stalled due to financial hardship. Photos: Daisy Ames.Houston is caught in the...
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WaterBorne: Finding the Next Houston in Bayou Greenways 2020
Aerial photo of bayou greenway on White Oak Bayou: Alex MacLean.This essay, written by Rice School of Architecture Gus Sessions Wortham Professor of Architecture Albert Pope, first appeared in print in...
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WaterBorne Continued: Finding the Next Houston in Bayou Greenways 2020
In contrast to the concentric organization of Houston's freeways, the bayou system is configured in a series of lines or bands that run east-west, from prairie to the coast.This essay, written by Rice...
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“I’m a repurposer”: Preserving East Downtown’s Cheek-Neal Coffee Company...
Machinery inside under-renovation Cheek-Neal Coffee Company Building. Photo: Jim Parsons.Even though he’s developing the former Cheek-Neal Coffee Company Building on Preston Avenue, David Denenburg...
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What Era of Design is Houston in?
Buffalo Bayou in Downtown Houston. Photo: Alex MacLean.The Cultural Landscape Foundation held its Leading with Landscape conference in Houston March 11-13. Charles Birnbaum, the founder and executive...
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“The main thing is efficiency”: A Discussion about The Mechanical Horse
The draisine, named for its inventor, Baron Karl von Drais of Mannheim, Germany, was propelled by the feet pushing off the ground. This copper etching, which appeared in the June 1819 issue of the...
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H20uston: In Houston, Water Has Been as Much Obstacle as Opportunity
The Preston Avenue Bridge under water during the flood of 1929. Courtesy Houston Public Library, Houston Metropolitan Research Center.This history of Houston and its water was printed in the Fall 1999...
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Where Are the Women Architects?
Architect Fay Kellogg in 1912. Courtesy photo.In Houston, you could be forgiven for thinking that the status of women architects is just fine. The architecture deans at Rice, University of Houston, and...
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Downtown Houston’s New Clinic for the Homeless
Healthcare for the Homeless clinic. Photo: Slyworks Photography.Six years after President Obama announced a federal initiative to end chronic homelessness among society’s most vulnerable groups,...
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Big Living in Small Houses in the Fifth Ward
The Garden House designed by Sam Cuentas, Jose Martinez, and Claudia Tax for Fifth Ward. Courtesy.Donna Kacmar is the author of BIG Little House (Routledge, 190 pages, 2015), a study of small houses...
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