HRDD’s Eric Hughes and Heather Rowell will be presenting their lecture “Pivot in Process” October 6th. Part of the College of Architecture, Planning and Public Affairs (CAPPA) at The University of Texas at Arlington - this semester’s series is entitled “NEXT”.
At 2,500 square feet, the home fills its long, narrow lot without overpowering the space. And the chic yet understated exterior gives little indication of the bright, open, family-friendly space that lies within — in particular the courtyard. - Laura Lambert for Houzz
Houzz contributor Laura Lambert caught up with HRDD’s Eric Hughes recently to discuss the design behind the Crestview Residence - a home Eric designed for his longtime friend Anthony Orona and his family. You can read the full Houzz story here!
The latest issue of Rice Design Alliance's Cite magazine is now available!
Cite 102 includes major contributions from guest editors Ajay Manthripragada and Piergianna Mazzocca. Their investigation centers on the question "What does it mean to be of one's own time?" They gather a community of like-minded thinkers who help establish a critical distance with which we can understand our time. Additional content extends this question to events and people in Houston, both historically and in the intense past year - including HRDD’s Heather Rowell who speaks with Wonne Ickx of PRODUCTORA about the upcoming headquarters for the Houston Endowment.
The printed version of Cite has a new look: the publication has been redesigned by MG&Co., led by Reto Geiser, associate professor and director of undergraduate studies at Rice Architecture.
Cite is available for purchase here, and the magazine is free to members of Rice Design Alliance.
Learn more about Cite 102 here.
Cite’s editorial apparatus—nearly forty years young—continues its work in Houston in part through its steady presence on the RDA website. Articles about current events, reviews, interviews, histories and photo essays are all regular features that will coexist with Cite’s annual print issue moving forward. The power of the written word remains important in a city with so much construction and demolition, and so few outlets for critical engagement. Criticism absorbed through the immediacy of the screen is just as valid as when it is consumed through the permanence of paper.
— Jack Murphy, Cite editor
This year marks five years since the Delz Residence was completed! A renovation of an auto mechanic's shop, this award-winning residence and studio was completed in 2016 while we were at Content. The owners, Karin Broker and Mark Witte, asked HRDD to design an outdoor fireplace and canopy extension to the existing structure. Recently, we visited the project with photographer Pete Molick to celebrate the anniversary and enjoy the new addition.
In the 2016 adaptive reuse, two renovated metal buildings were stitched together by a simple shed canopy. After settling into the home, the owners decided to add an outdoor fireplace and expand the outdoor covered space by extending the existing canopy. HRDD designed a fireplace “wall” that serves to help protect the outdoor space from wind-driven rain and offers an additional privacy layer from the neighboring property. The fireplace is clad in large format porcelain (Neolith through our friends at La Nova Tile here in Houston) and rests on a concrete plinth. Designed to be a multi-tasker, the back of the fireplace notches for an entertaining buffet counter or weekend re-potting tasks.
The Delz Residence was awarded a 2016 AIA Houston Design Award. It has been published by Houstonia, Dwell, and Houzz.
Working collaboratively with other creative minds always leads to better architecture. Louise Fili's new book on her own inspiration and process released last week and highlights one of our favorite experiences. Goodnight Hospitality hired Louise to design the Goodnight Charlie's logo while we were developing the building concept at Content. Early architectural renderings were shared with her team as they worked to define the branding -- and we quickly set aside spaces within the project to highlight the neon signage concept. Louise's logo captures the spirit of the modern honky tonk we all envisioned for Montrose!
Purchase “Louise Fili: Inspiration and Process in Design” here!
HRDD is proud to support the AIA Houston Michael G. Meyers Design Competition. Each year the competition is open to Houston area high school students and hosted by Architecture Center Houston in partnership with the Houston Chapter of the American Institute of Architects.
This year, the Competition awarded $11,700 in scholarships to 12 Houston-area high school students earlier this month. This year's competition was held entirely online to include as many students as possible. The jury included Carole Brady, Krystyn Haecker, and HRDD’s Heather Rowell.
The MGMC design competition emphasizes creative problem solving and graphic presentation. This year students were challenged to design a mixed-use living community in the heart of Houston's Montrose neighborhood, adjacent to the Menil campus. The design had to include housing units and community spaces. In previous years students have been asked to design an education center with a focus on sustainability, a community center, animal shelter, a soccer stadium, and a high-speed rail station. The MGMC Committee hosted a competition workshop and a project site tour to help the students learn basic architectural skills and understand the competition requirements.
HR Design Dept is a proud sponsor of this year’s Women In Architecture Houston Equity Series! Work / Life - Balance by Design explores the need for broader implementation of systems that combat and prevent burnout and support the goals of our peers at work and at home.
The WiA Equity Series was started in 2017 through an AIA College of Fellows grant and was one of WiA Houston’s first initiatives as HRDD’s Heather Rowell served as Chair. The Series aims to take on bold, often uncomfortable, topics to create awareness, discussion, and cultural change within the profession. Previous topics have included unconscious bias, workplace collaboration and recognition, and the hidden costs of workplace inequities.
Register for the panel discussion here.
And follow future WiA events on their webpage, facebook, and instagram.
“At 2500 square feet, the house is not exactly small, but its size feels considered. There’s plenty of room, all in the right places.”
— Jessie Temple for Dwell
The newest issue of Dwell shares the journey that led to the creation of the Crestview Residence — one that began with a friendship between HRDD’s Eric Hughes and owner Anthony Orona. The March/April issue should hit the newstands mid March. Thank you to photographer Leonid Furmansky whose images capture the life and light of the home; and Jessie Temple for so articulately describing how the home was designed to reflect and embrace the spirit of the Birk-Orona family!
Read the article on Dwell.com!
PDF of “An Open Invitation” can be viewed here.
Did you miss this year’s Rice Design Alliance virtual gala? You can view the entire event focused around “Who Builds Our City?” online!
RDA’s annual Gala celebrates leaders in the architecture, engineering, design, and construction communities. This year—due to the pandemic—RDA reimagined the event into an online celebration of Houston’s built environment. Who Builds Our City? brings together practitioners and industry leaders to celebrate the collective effort of those who build our cities. Paying tribute to the diverse range of people and professions that shape Houston, RDA shares stories of those who often are out of the spotlight, but who are integral to the making of our built environment. Click here to learn more.
This event was live-streamed on Thursday, January 28, 2021. View or download the event program here.
Last week, the Rice Design Alliance Young Professionals paid a virtual studio visit to HRDD! We shared some of our current and past projects during an informal conversation and happy hour. Rice Design Alliance’s Young Professionals is a dynamic group of practitioners in the design, architecture, construction, and engineering fields who have an interest in improving and pushing the limits of design culture in Houston.
RebelArchitette, founded by Italian Architect Francesca Perani, has developed an online tool that aims to detox architecture from inequalities. The interactive public world map of women-led architecture practices can be used as a guide to women architects and their practices around the world. Following the RebelArchitette e-book, Architette=Women Architects, that profiled 365 female architects, the map propels forward their mission to make female architects around the world more visible – and their exclusion less defensible.
We need to give a better future to younger generations of students and discourage male-dominated literature and conferences resulting in a single-gender role model reference. We are pushing to have a social and cultural impact through a powerful, collaborative approach, which we are already experiencing with incredible international associations.
— Elena Fabrizi RebelArchitette Co-curator
HR Design Department’s Heather Rowell is honored to be included on the map and named a RebelArchitette! The ever expanding resource is made possible through an international network of partners and advisors. Houston architect, author, and professor, Donna Kacmar, FAIA, is one of three RebelAdvisors from the United States. In addition to the map, the RebelArchitette Resource page lists communities around the world working towards equality in the building and design fields (including Houston’s dynamic Women in Architecture committee).
This week, AIA Houston held the 2020 Virtual Awards Gala. The event celebrated the work of Architecture Center Houston, AIA Houston members, and awarded some of the best architectural work by local architects. The Design Awards program recognizes design excellence in architecture, residential architecture, interior architecture, restoration/renovation, and urban design. Criteria to be used by the jury include quality of design, resolution of the program idea, sustainable responsibility, innovation, thoughtfulness, and technique. This year’s jurors were Annie Chu, FAIA, IIDA; Ned Cramer, Assoc. AIA; and Elaine Molinar, AIA.
HR Design Department was honored with a Residential Design Award for the Crestview Residence and an On the Boards Design Award for the Montrose Hotel! You can view a complete listing of the Design Award winners here. AND - view the entire Awards gala on YouTube here!
In addition to the Design Award announcements, Luis Ayala was awarded the Ben Brewer Young Architect Award and Stantec received Firm of the Year.
This week, the Rice Design Alliance announced their 2020-2021 Officers. HRDD’s Heather Rowell is honored to serve. The RDA was founded in 1972 and has developed into a strong community dedicated to the critical exploration of the urban condition in Houston and beyond. Through their lecture series, design competitions, exhibitions, publications, and curated trips, the RDA raises awareness and inspires solutions to the challenges that citizens and cities worldwide are facing today. This year’s officers include:
Doug Childers, President; Andrew Albers, President-Elect; Sheryl Kolasinski, Vice-President; Mark Lund, Treasurer; Heather Rowell, Secretary; and Steve Mechler, Past President. New to the Board of Directors this year are Rice Architecture student representatives Elina Chen (B.A. ’22) and Alec Burran (M.Arch. ’23).
For more information on the Rice Design Alliance and to become a member - visit: https://www.ricedesignalliance.org/
“Pyramid Schemes” graduate studio models. Top: Emilia Cavallaro, Tian Liu, John Rudd, Dani Latif. Bottom: Shikun Tang, Rachel Kim, Alfred Xuanyu Wei, Kayla Bien.
The closure of the Rice University campus mid-semester forced educators to creatively adapt their planned curriculum to a challenging virtual classroom setting. This semester, HRDD’s Heather Rowell assisted Wonne Ickx with a graduate architecture studio - “Pyramid Schemes”. The class drastically pivoted after an early semester field trip to Mexico City and intensive physical model investigations. In an attempt to save the original goals of the studio, Wonne asked the students to create simulated physical models of their final projects. ArchDaily recently published the students’ hard work:
"Students were asked to simulate, to feign a physical model: to create an image that would look as much as possible as if a physical model had been produced, but the whole image had to be engineered in virtual space. A playful exercise in simulation. Students invented specific backgrounds, accidental spots of shade, disregarded tools, studio-lighting or leftover masking tapes... to make their images look as realistic as possible. Lots of effort was spent in avoiding the pristine quality of the digital assembly: walls were places slightly off-grid, handrails were bent or received a minor fold, glue remnants were digitally applied and uneven joints were carefully crafted into the virtual realm.”
The Rice Architecture students were resilient and results were fantastic!
HRDD’s Heather Rowell, AIA was selected as one of the Rice School of Architecture Alumna to be included in the The Center for the Study of Women, Gender, and Sexuality’s newest exhibition: The Women of Rice: Alumnae, Here and Beyond.
“Just as Rice faculty and staff have demonstrated, our alumnae also seek to “be the change.” Since 1912 these enterprising Women of Rice have continually made their own way: occupying high-profile positions of leadership; developing patents; becoming Poets Laureate; trailblazing a path for women to the highest education possible; winning prestigious prizes in their fields, including Pulitzers, Emmys, Grammys and Peabodys; founding groundbreaking companies; playing in the WNBA; contending in the Olympics; and even venturing into space.
Organized by school, this third Women of Rice exhibit celebrates a handful of alumnae whose talents, courage, savvy, and determination ratcheted the standards of Rice yet higher – and these women maintained or surpassed those standards “beyond the hedges.”
We recognize that many women and men, inside and outside of Rice, laid a path for these outstanding alumnae to follow, shaping conditions decade by decade to ease access to varied career opportunities.”
The exhibit is on view through Friday, February 14th in Rice University’s Fondren Library. An online catalog of the exhibit is available here.
Designers Andrew and Gretchen McFarland collaborated with HR Design Dept architect Eric Hughes to create a modern, respectful addition to their River Oaks Home. Together they created a solution that aimed to adapt the older home to the growing family while preserving the landscape and scale of the original home - which was completed in 1926 and renovated by William F Stern and Associates in 1986.
Check out the Rice Design Alliance interview with Andrew and Eric.
Last week, hundreds of architects gathered in Galveston for the Texas Society of Architect’s Annual Conference + Design Expo - the 80th of its kind. This year’s theme, “IMMERSION: Knowledge. Resilience. Inclusion” included discussions aimed at acknowledging and tackling the issues facing architects and our built environment today.
HRDD was honored to participate by leading two roundtable discussions we’re passionate about. On Friday, Heather - with Dianne Kett AIA - led a discussion on how bias impacts the professional development of women as part of the Women in Architecture Roundtable. During Saturday’s Emerging Leader Roundtable - Eric, Heather, and kinneymorrow’s Michael Morrow led a candid discussion on owning a small practice called “Small. Firm. Round Table.”
We’re already looking forward to next year’s conversations in Dallas!
AND - we encourage fellow architects and designers to consider attending the 2020 TxA Design Conference in February. “PASSAGE” will take place in El Paso:
Looking north, two mountain ranges loom with a chasm between them. El Paso’s literal translation is “The Pass.” Applied to people, time, literature, and geography “passage” is an open word that prompts questions. It can be used to apportion meaning, to define limits, or present a way through. El Paso/Juarez, as the world’s largest borderplex, is an excellent place to investigate how overlapping, interchanging, complex social and geographic factors can impact design.
Eric has been working with a great team on the TxA Design Conference Committee to help make the event a success!
R_House by Alex Warr
If you’re in Austin tomorrow for the AIA Austin Summer Conference, we encourage you to check out ”Digital, Analog, and Hybrid - Contemporary Means of Architectural Representation” at 3p. HRDD collaborator, Alex Warr will be part of a panel of architects who were featured in Texas Architect magazine’s Digital/Analog Drawing feature (May/June issue). Together, they will discuss their rendering processes and the relative values of contemporary drawing media. Joining Alex are Dustin Wheat, Erin Augustine, John Redington, and Murray Legge.
HRDD just turned ONE! Please celebrate with us by stopping by our new office Thursday, June 20th. Pop in anytime Thursday, June 20th from 4p-8p to see our new office, have a drink and snack, find out what we're up to.
Thursday is also World Refugee Day, so we’ll be using our celebration as a time to raise awareness of the great work done by our new office mates, Every Shelter.
Our new office is located at 1429 Oleander Street, Ste A (behind Kaboom Books on Houston Ave) . Parking is limited, so please carpool if you can and park on adjoining streets (not in front of Kaboom books, please).
Last week the City of Houston Planning Commission granted a variance allowing Goodnight Hospitality to move forward with its plans to open a new luxury, boutique hotel, The Montrose Hotel, near the intersection of Westheimer and Dunlavy. The hotel, designed by HRDD, is slated to open late next year!
Read more about Goodnight Hospitality and The Montrose Hotel: CultureMap, Houston Business Journal, Houston Chronicle
