RDA Celebrates 30 Years of Advancing Architecture and
Urban Design in Houston
When David Crane became the dean of architecture at Rice
University in 1972, he saw a problem. Houston was fixated on
expansion, but hardly anyone discussed publicly what was being
built, what ought to be built, or what the city as a whole should
be. There should be a way, he thought, to encourage that discussion.
Crane’s idea turned into the Rice Design Alliance (RDA),
one of Rice’s first community outreach organizations. RDA,
which turned 30 this past fall, began as a group of academics and
architects that sponsored public forums and lectures and addressed
significant yet under-discussed issues: land use, mass transit,
preservation, modern architecture, zoning, flood control, air quality,
housing, and public art. Today, RDA is 1,650 members strong, and
some of those discussions have led to obvious results. At a 1998
RDA symposium on mass transit, for example, Mayor Lee Brown announced
his willingness to consider a rail system—a milestone for
transit-leery Houston.
In 1977, RDA launched lecture programs featuring some of the world’s brightest—and
often most controversial—architects and critics. The lectures, often presented
to overflow crowds, gave Houston its first opportunity to hear architects such
as Frank Gehry, Cesar Pelli, Helmut Jahn, Steven Holl, and Rem Koolhaas before
they became international superstars and Richard Meier, Aldo Rossi, Robert Venturi,
Rafael Moneo, Renzo Piano, and Glenn Murcutt before any of them had won the Pritzker
Prize, architecture’s most prestigious award.
The following year, RDA began offering architectural tours of interesting houses
in historic neighborhoods as well as themed tours that included “Tin Houses,” “Rancheros
Deluxe,” “Lofts,” and “Modern Landmarks.” In 2000,
RDA tours began taking off for architectural visits to other cities and even
other countries.
RDA also began to directly promote high-quality public spaces by sponsoring design
competitions. The first, in 1985, attracted 119 entries from across the country
and resulted in a design for Houston’s Sesquicentennial Park, north of
downtown along Buffalo Bayou. In 1992, Houston’s Parks and Recreation Department
and the Friends of Hermann Park joined RDA to sponsor “Heart of the Park,” held
in memory of longtime Rice architecture dean O. Jack Mitchell. Designers were
asked to consider improvements for the scruffy stretch between Hermann Park’s
Sam Houston Monument and its Grand Basin. Because of the competition, noted landscape
architect Laurie Olin was commissioned to create a new master plan, and the Heart
of the Park improvements will be realized next summer.
RDA created Cite: The Architecture and Design Review of Houston in 1982. In the
first issue, the magazine—printed on tabloid-sized newsprint—announced
its intention to be “a forum for the presentation and criticism of issues
unique to the developing city.” Fifty-five issues later, Cite still presents
articles on planning, architecture, the urban environment, and the city’s
past and preservation, now under the direction of editorial chair Danny Marc
Samuels ’71 and managing editor Lisa Gray ’88.
William F. Stern, one of Cite’s founding board members, recalls that the
board settled on the title Cite because the word “reverberated with homonyms: ‘site,’ ‘sight,’ and ‘cite,’ not
to mention how it works with an accented final ‘e’ as a continental
version of ‘city.’”
The photographer whose work has most defined Cite since the magazine’s
beginning is Paul Hester ’71. In 1999, RDA and the Menil Collection exhibited
Hester’s photographs of Houston. A catalog essay by Doug Milburn ’56
gave the show its haunting name: “Elusive City.”
Houston, of course, remains elusive. The Rice Design Alliance has pursued it
for 30 years, but the chase is far from over. The city still defies description,
much less planning. The discussions that David Crane imagined 30 years ago have
only just begun.
For membership and program information, visit the RDA website at http://www.rda.rice.edu.
—Linda Sylvan
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