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Michelangelo Sabatino Gerald D. Hines College of Architecture, , 122 College of Architecture Bldg, Houston, , TX 77204-4000, USA

Mid-twentieth-century modern architecture in Houston thematised responsiveness to the natural phenomena of heat and light despite the fact that Houston’s most celebrated modern buildings were designed to be completely reliant on central air-conditioning. An examination of Houston buildings constructed from the late 1940s through the 1960s demonstrates the ways in which modern architects sought to privilege the architectural rec- ognition of regional climatic difference while also employing modern technology to allevi- ate local climatic extremes of heat and . The spectacular modern buildings that represent this era in Houston raise crucial questions: How did architects reconcile the doc- trine of climatic responsiveness to the equally modern desire for maximum transparency? What proved more compelling: responsiveness to local circumstance or the imperatives of modern structural and mechanical engineering? Did modern architects perceive that there might be contradictions between responsiveness to climate and other aspects of modern architectural identity, such as transparency? Because concern about the roles of building design and construction in the responsible use of natural resources is current at the turn of the twenty-first century, it is pertinent to examine the ways modern architects in a particular climatic setting negotiated the issue of climatic responsiveness as modern architecture became the dominant practice.

Introduction States during the post-war period strenuously ques- Twentieth-century modern architecture was ident- tioned the universalising claims of the modern ified with an exploration of innovative building movement by investigating regional building prac- materials and rationalised planning and construc- tices that registered material and climatic differ- tion practices. Walls of floor-to-ceiling plate glass ence.2 facilitated the internal absorption of daylight as Responding to the heat and humidity of Hous- well as the nocturnal diffusion of interior electric ton’s Gulf Coast climate and its abundant natural light while also playing a symbolic role in identifying sunlight affected the design of residential, commer- modern architecture as dramatically transparent, cial and civic buildings in Houston from the post-war poetically transcending the natural limits historically 1940s through the 1960s. Rather than treat sunlight addressed by thermal and structural mass.1 Some in exclusively functional terms as natural illumination architects working within the cultural, political and (or treat transparency in metaphysical terms as economic realities that prevailed in the United poetic revelation), modern architects practising on

# 2011 The Journal of Architecture 1360-2365 DOI: 10.1080/13602365.2011.611646 704

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the subtropical, sun- and heat-prone Gulf coast of that, even for its advocates, regionalism seemed Texas explored such building types as the courtyard tenuous and problematic. Examining the architec- house and incorporated such architectural elements tural evolution of Houston buildings that addressed as sunshades, canopies and solar screens to exploit the amelioration of heat and light thematically puts both the functional and poetic qualities of daylight into perspective the cyclical waxing and waning of while guarding against the thermal disadvantage this trend. of overexposure to sunlight, heat and humidity. Yet these buildings were almost all equipped with central air-conditioning. Combining architectural Houston: climate and cultural landscape elements especially designed for specific climatic During the 1940s Houston surpassed New Orleans conditions with mechanical devices that eliminated to become the most populous US city along the the need for accommodation of and adaptation to Gulf of Mexico and in the American South. By extremes produced a distinctive modern architec- 1960 it ranked as the seventh largest city in the ture in Houston that thematised climatic responsive- US, sixth by 1970, fifth by 1980 and fourth since ness without sacrificing the benefits of modern 1990.5 An expansionary economy grounded in oil, mechanical engineering. natural gas and petrochemical production, refining, Thematising climatic responsiveness was con- and distribution fuelled Houston’s property and con- nected to a broader discourse on the significance struction economy.6 As modern architecture of regionalism in mid-twentieth-century US archi- became the dominant type of architectural practice tecture. Regionalism was understood by architects during the post-war period, Houston presented and critics contributing to this discourse, some ample opportunities for new construction. Spread- writing from Texas, to register difference while still ing relentlessly across the flat plain belting the conforming to mainstream design and construction coast of the Gulf of Mexico, Houston is character- practices.3 For many of these commentators, ised by long, sultry . Because the centre regionalism was interpreted as a representation of of Houston lies only fifty miles from the Gulf coast, ‘individuality’ in conflict with (but not necessarily area are not extreme by US standards rejection of) the dominant economy of capitalist (93 degrees Fahrenheit is the average July daytime production. Negotiating climatic responsiveness in high), but humidity levels that vary daily between fully equipped and serviced buildings was one way 93 percent and 55 percent and a of 72 to assert, as Paul Rudolph wrote in 1957 in an degrees Fahrenheit produce conditions of extreme essay called ‘Regionalism in Architecture’, that humidity that suffuse the air with ambient heat.7 ‘true regionalism comes primarily through form Unlike a desert climate, in which temperatures rather than use of materials.’4 The ambivalence may be much higher but in which the daily vari- with which Rudolph advanced regionalist design as ations between warmest and coolest are more a formal rather than material practice suggests extreme, and humidity levels and the dew point 705

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much lower, Houston’s climate does not cease to be fabric awnings were installed above upper-floor steamy and oppressive once the sun goes down. windows. Proximity to the Gulf also entails intermittent but The construction of tall buildings in Houston in prodigious thunderstorms, contributing to the the first decade of the twentieth century challenged humid subtropical haze in which the Texas coastal accepted practices, as storey upon storey of brick- region typically stews from late May until early faced walls absorbed sunlight and re-radiated its October. heat into offices, hotel rooms and flats, not all of Historically, architecture in Houston accommo- which could be located for advantageous exposure dated climate. In the nineteenth century, standard to the prevailing breeze (which did not always vernacular building types (eg, the one-storey, prevail). As in other US cities, L-, U- and E-shaped centre-passage cottage; the two-storey, three-bay, floor plates sought to facilitate light and air trans- side-passage Southern townhouse; and such later mission.10 types as the shotgun cottage and L- and T-plan cot- John F. Staub, who began his practice in 1923, tages) were organised internally to promote venti- was the first Houston architect to move beyond lation and shade.8 Wood houses were raised the simple accommodation of climate creatively to above grade on brick piers. Bedrooms were distort the historical models he typically deployed located for maximum access to the prevailing, in order to register the effects of climate on southeast Gulf breeze. In Houston, porches, veran- shaping habitable dwelling space in Houston.11 das and galleries provided shaded, roofed, open-air Staub stretched houses out in one- to one-and-a- living spaces such as those found in the oldest half room deep configurations and oriented rooms surviving building in Houston, the Kellum-Noble for the best exposure, even if this meant that House (1847) (Fig. 1a-b).9 Louvered exterior living and dining rooms faced the back yard and shutters and panels of diagonal wood latticework the kitchen faced the street. In 1937, Staub pro- modulated light and air penetration while screening duced his first modern design, the Robert out visual penetration. The introduction of hinged D. Straus House (Fig. 2).12 His client was the distribu- transoms above doors, retractable fabric awnings tor for Carrier air-conditioning equipment in for installation above windows, insect screening Houston. The street front of the house was a for doors, windows, and porches, and eventually nearly windowless fac¸ade; its principal aperture electrical oscillating fans, ceiling fans and attic was a large fixed panel of translucent glass . fans during the first third of the twentieth century In a design approach repeated frequently in the ameliorated some of the worst consequences first generation of Houston buildings to be built of living in a chronically hot, humid climate. Non- with central air-conditioning incorporating humidity residential buildings incorporated some of these control, the exterior of the house was hermetic.13 Its arrangements and devices. Central pavements lack of windows advertised its modern technological were shaded by fixed, shed-roofed canopies while liberation from climatic responsiveness. 706

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Figure 1a. Kellum- Noble House, 1847, Francis Mc Hugh builder (photograph by Michelangelo Sabatino).

Figure 1b. Kellum- Noble House, 1847, Francis Mc Hugh builder (measured and drawn, F. Brown, Historic American Building Survey). 707

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Texan architects who built their practices on Figure 2. Robert school design in the 1940s and 1950s, D. Straus House, Houston, 1937, John Barthelme sought ingenious ways to facilitate F. Staub (photograph by natural illumination and passive cooling in build- Elwood M. Payne, River ings that had to be built quickly and for extre- Oaks Magazine,4 mely low budgets.15 Climatic responsiveness in [March, 1940], p. 14.) the late 1940s and early 1950s was as much a matter of material as of form; Texan architects asserted the performative superiority of modern design because they were prepared to work with the climate rather than merely accommodate it. In contrast, Foley’s continued the trend visible in Staub’s Straus House. Kenneth Franzheim made the elimination of all but ground-floor Modern conundrum: nature versus display windows at Foley’s a triumphant symbol of mechanisation its modern reliance on electrical illumination and In 1949 the American Institute of Architects all-year air-conditioning (Fig. 4).16 The modernist launched a national design awards programme. doctrine of climatic responsiveness as a legitimate Houston buildings were selected for recognition in generator of form confronted the modernist doc- 1949 and 1950. St Rose of Lima Catholic School trine of application of state-of-the-art industrial (1948; Award of Merit, 1949) by Donald Barthelme technologies with no clear direction for spatially & Associates and Foley’s department store (1947; resolving differences between the two positions. Award of Merit, 1950) by Kenneth Franzheim exem- The Austin and architect Harwell Hamilton plified the diametrically opposed ways Houston Harris, director of the school of architecture at the architects of the early post-war period dealt archi- University of Texas at Austin from 1951 to 1955, tecturally with climatic exigency. Barthelme, one of called for a ‘regionalism of liberation’ in an Houston’s first modern architects, ingeniously address delivered in 1954 that had considerable shaped the classroom wing at St Rose of Lima influence on later twentieth-century regionalist (which was not air-conditioned) to maximise debates.17 Yet rather than clarifying what the archi- natural illumination with a long east wall of oper- tectural implications for a regionalism of liberation able glass windows sheltered against the morning might be, Harris concluded his talk by asserting sun by a broad canopy (Fig. 3).14 The school’s long that ‘The development of the American continent, west wall was fitted with louvered vent panels the most important occurrence of its kind in the instead of glass windows. As was true of other nineteenth century, was accomplished by means of 708

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Figure 3. St Rose of Lima Catholic Church and School, Houston, 1948, Donald Barthelme & Associates (photograph by Photo Associates, Architectural Forum,92 [June, 1950], p. 104.

technology....’18 Without a compelling theory of advocating a dual doctrine and failing to recognize regionalism that could synthesise the thesis of the its duality.’19 imperative of industrialisation with the antithesis A pair of modern Houston houses from the early of the imperative of climatic responsiveness, 1950s explored ways to circumvent this conundrum. modern architects faced a conundrum. The English The architect Lars Bang designed the Bendit House critic Colin Rowe, who taught at the University of of 1952 by appropriating Southern Californian prac- Texas from 1954 to 1956 and at the University of tices (Fig. 5).20 The three-bedroom, three-bath- Houston from 1956 to 1957, observed in an essay room, flat-roofed house is compact but seems written in 1956–1957 that the contradictory pos- quite spacious because Bang used floor-to-ceiling itions he discerned in current US architecture sliding glass panels to open bedrooms and the com- stemmed from the ‘dilemma which can result from bined living-dining-kitchen space to east-facing 709

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Figure 4. Foley’s Department Store, Houston, 1947, Kenneth Franzheim (photograph by Jim Parsons).

walled courtyards and a south-facing rear terrace. Houston is not Santa Monica. Sliding screen doors Skylights and garden courts bring light and greenery indicate that the seductive erasure of distinction into the house. The flat roof plate has overhangs to between indoors and outdoors was not practicable shade glass walls on the east and south. The interior in Houston, where mosquitoes and cockroaches of the house feels like a sheltered enclosure that is complement the steamy climate to deflate such continuous with, rather than closed off from, the romantic modernist notions. house’s flat, suburban plot. Instead of air condition- In contrast, a much larger modern house that the ing, Bang inserted an even more luxurious Southern New York architect designed for the Californian feature: an architecturally integrated French e´ migre´ s and collectors, Dominique and swimming pool. In its interior openness, informality (1948–51), appropriated climatically and Neutra-like spatial extension along brick wall ameliorative elements to code the house as climati- planes, the Bendit House embraced its subtropical cally responsive, although it was built with central setting. Yet, Bang’s optimism notwithstanding, air-conditioning (Fig. 6a-b).21 Johnson incorporated 710

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Figure 5. Bendit House, deliver. Photographs that the New Orleans photo- Houston, 1952, Lars grapher Clarence John Laughlin made of the Bang (photograph by house in 1957 exploit the perceptual sensation of Ben Hill). immediacy/distance visitors are apt to experience in the living room, suspended in air-conditioned comfort between the tropical courtyard and a lush rear lawn, with art from the Menil’s collection and their eclectic furniture enhancing the dream-like reverie this sensation can induce.23 In Houston, this mildly hallucinatory experience came to be associated with the flat-roofed, glass- walled, Miesian courtyard houses produced by a walled garden courtyard in the house as a Cowell & Neuhaus, Bolton & Barnstone, Burdette memento of the patio of a house in Caracas that Keeland, Neuhaus & Taylor, Kenneth E. Bentsen his clients had previously occupied.22 Transoms or and Anderson Todd in the 1950s and 1960s.24 louvered panels above doors gave the house, Night views by the photographers Ulric Meisel, which was designed according to Miesian practices, Frank Lotz Miller and Fred Winchell, with the a distinct Southern accent. To enhance the house’s interiors of the houses brilliantly lit, became an crisp linearity, the flat roof did not overhang the icon of Houston modernity in the 1950s because planar walls, even though the south-facing rear they performed the theme of modern transparency wall was all glass. Since central air-conditioning so spectacularly.25 Central air-conditioning facili- could not prevent the fading and cracking that pro- tated modernist transparency in Houston even as it longed exposure to intense sunlight can cause, the altered both time-honoured methods of climatic clients had to have the Houston architect Howard accommodation and the modernist enthusiasm for Barnstone install retractable canopies above south- inventing new spaces and techniques of climatic facing window walls and a tall canopy above the amelioration.26 walled courtyard. In Houston, universal air-conditioning was associ- Yet despite its problematic confrontation with ated with the 1960s rather than the 1950s, although climate, the Menil House forecast the trend archi- during the course of the 1950s decade air-condition- tects would pursue in accommodating Houston ing became standard equipment in more and more modern buildings to the city’s hot, humid, sunny Houston building types.27 Two university building (and rainy) climate. Climatic responsiveness could groups demonstrate that passive climatic responsive- be treated as a design theme without compromising ness was still understood to be relevant to modern the superior level of comfort that only central air architecture in producing experiences of place iden- conditioning, with its humidity control, could tity. Philip Johnson’s campus master plan (1956–57) 711

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Figure 6a. Dominique and John de Menil House, Philip Johnson, Houston, 1948–51 (photograph by Michelangelo Sabatino).

Figure 6b. Dominique and John de Menil House, Philip Johnson, Houston, 1948–51 (plan). 712

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Figure 7. University of terrace decks in place of interior hallways on the St Thomas, Houston, laboratory buildings and the provision of canopied Philip Johnson, 1956– walkways and porticoes in all three buildings para- 59 (phototograph by Frank White). phrased the arcaded passageways of Cram, Goodhue & Ferguson’s buildings, although Pierce- Pierce’s buildings were resolutely modern in their design, construction and servicing. Exposure to heat, humidity and occasional tropical thunder- storms in open-air passageways was tolerable as long as classrooms, laboratories, offices and assem- bly spaces were air-conditioned.

and first three buildings (1957–59) for the University Tall buildings and regionalisation of St Thomas, a Roman Catholic institution, organ- Tall buildings in mid-century Houston presented ised two-storey buildings designed according to some of the most dramatic examples of climatic the- Miesian practices along two-storey, canopied steel matisation. The first modern high-rise office building walkways that framed garden courts and, as the in Houston, the twenty-one-storey Melrose Building system was expanded in the 1960s, the university’s (1949–52) by Lloyd & Morgan of Houston, featured central lawn (Fig. 7).28 Although university buildings horizontal bands of windows recessed beneath tiers were air-conditioned, Johnson used the shade- and of projecting concrete trays (Fig. 9).30 Yet sun- breeze-enhancing walkways to evoke associations shading as a modernist theme was challenged by with monastic cloisters and the columned walkways the allure of technologically fabricated curtain of Thomas Jefferson’s Academical Village of the walls. Skidmore, Owings & Merrill’s first Houston University of . building, the eighteen-storey Medical Towers (1956, At , the Houston architects George with Golemon & Rolfe), featured a curtain wall that Pierce-Abel B. Pierce designed the Earth Sciences in-filled a grid of closely spaced aluminium mullions Group (Biological Geological Laboratories, Space with turquoise porcelain enamel spandrel panels Science Technology Building), and a companion, and punched square windows, reserving the sunsc- the Hamman Hall auditorium (1956–58), as ana- reen grill for the parking garage occupying the logues of the university’s original buildings, podium above which the office slab rose (Fig. 10).31 designed in the 1910s by the Boston architects Even more dramatic in its rejection of the architec- Cram, Goodhue & Ferguson (Fig. 8).29 As at St tural theme of climatic amelioration was the six- Thomas, Pierce-Pierce’s three-storey laboratory storey Gibraltar Building (1959, Greacen & Brogniez buildings and Hamman Hall were centrally air-con- with J. V. Neuhaus III).32 Its street elevations were ditioned. But the use of south-facing open-air the first in Houston to be faced entirely in grey, 713

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Figure 8. Keith-Wiess Geological Laboratory (far left), Rice University, Houston, 1958, George Pierce-Abel B. Pierce; M. D. Anderson Biological Laboratories (right) (photograph by Stephen Fox).

insulated solar glass (Fig. 11). When lit at night, the making it feasible to deal with excessive daylight Gibraltar Building externalised interiors designed by transmission and glare through the ephemeral the Knoll Design Group. media of interior blinds and draperies. As one of adhered to this Houston’s foremost modern architects, Howard approach when he designed the first phase of a Barnstone, explained to the critic and historian two-stage expansion of the Museum of Fine Arts, Esther McCoy in 1963: Houston (1954–58: Fig. 12).33 Mies’s Cullinan Hall The regionalism or vernacular buildings in Texas addition to the 1920s’ museum building was were all designed to catch the breeze in the essentially a giant, north-facing window that, as with wide-open porches and for small, photographed by Hedrich-Blessing at the time of easy-to-heat interiors during the short its dedication, externalised the performances of months. Today with the climate-controlled modernity that prevailed when the curators interiors and our continued desire to wear suit Jermayne MacAgy and James Johnson Sweeney jackets no matter what the weather, none of installed breathtaking exhibitions in Mies’s awesome this makes much sense. I find nothing immoral space.34 Modern climate control technology in a complete change of architecture once you complemented modern curtain wall technology, control the interior efficiently.35 714

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Figure 9. Melrose rendition of the glass tower shaded by its structural Building, Houston, steel exo-skeleton, the thirty three-storey Tenneco Lloyd & Morgan, 1949– Building (1958–63) (Fig. 13a-b).38 Here the myth 52 (photographer unknown). of heat and light as an hallucinatory experience that could be savoured (rather than being oppres- sive and annihilating) was performed in a high-rise office building that adhered rigorously to the universal imperatives of modern engineering while deferring architecturally to the particularities of climate. An Architectural Forum article on the Tenneco Building was quick to point out that: ‘For architects Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, the American southwest has long been a proving ground for their favourite solution to sun control: a structural cage behind which glass walls are recessed so the overhanging floor slabs become sunshades—and provide continuous galleries for window washers’.39 During the day, the steel frame (which, as Colin Rowe observed in an essay published in 1956, ‘has...become the architecture’)40 was highlighted while the glass curtain wall receded in dark shadow, a perception reversed at night when the It was under the architectural regime of Mies that internally illuminated floors of office space glowed the thematisation of climatic accommodation between the backlit external grid. The forty four- achieved its most expressive form in Houston storey Humble Building (1958–63) by Welton during the 1960s.36 Gordon Bunshaft of the Becket & Associates of , the tallest build- New York office of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill ing constructed in Houston during the 1960s, was designed the thirty two-storey First City National also a glass tower ‘regionalised’ with continuous Bank Building (1958–61) as a glass tower shaded tiers of horizontal sunshade canopies banding the by what SOM called an ‘exo-skeleton’, achieved by tower and cantilevered a distance of 7 feet from deeply insetting the glass curtain wall within the forty one of the building’s forty four floors, not marble-clad steel structural frame.37 Three blocks unlike the broad-brimmed Stetson hats that Texan to the west, Edward Charles Bassett of the ranchers and businessmen wore to shield them San Francisco office of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill from ambient heat and light (figs. 14a–b, 15).41 produced an even more authoritative and refined Like the First City National Bank Building and 715

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Figure 10. Medical Towers Building, Houston, 1956, Golemon & Rolfe with Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (photograph by Paul Dorsey, Progressive Architecture, 38 [June, 1957], p. 192).

Figure 11. Gibraltar Building, 1959, Greacen & Brogniez and J. V. Neuhaus, III, Houston (photographer unknown).

3616 Richmond Building (1966) by Caudill Rowlett Scott and the seven-storey Harris County Family Mies’s Cullinan Hall, the Humble Building was white Law Center (1969) by Wilson, Morris, Crain & in colouration, figuring dramatically against the Anderson were among the most architecturally dis- intense blue of Houston’s heat-saturated summer tinguished multi-storey buildings to materialise the skies in a way that conveyed an impression of heat and light theme with glass curtain walls serene coolness, a perceptual trope for its state of shaded by projecting floor plates or exo-skeletons, total air-conditioning. In contrast to the flat, identifying them with the Houston form of regiona- machined curtain walls of the Medical Towers Build- lised modernism.42 ing and the Gibraltar Building, sun-shading devices Yet the production of impressive works of archi- imbued these towers with a sense of external volu- tecture was no guarantee of consensus on what metric amplitude. constituted a regionally responsive modern architec- The impact of these three towers can be seen in ture in Houston. The slab-shaped, ten-storey Great the work of Houston architects. The fifteen-storey Southern Life Insurance Company Building (1965) Willowick Apartments (1963) by Neuhaus & Taylor, by the New York office of Skidmore, Owings & the twenty five-storey American General Building Merrill had windows only in its short dimension, (1965) by Lloyd, Morgan & Jones, the twelve- denying access to daylight to most of those who storey Southwestern Bell Telephone Company Build- worked in the building.43 That the long walls of ing (1965) by George Pierce-Abel B. Pierce and the building (which faced east-west) were used as Wilson, Morris, Crain & Anderson, the nine-storey plenums for the air-conditioning system was no 716

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Figure 12. Cullinan ency while also ensuring thermal comfort. or Hall, The Museum of shine, hot or hotter, inside was always perfect Fine Arts, Houston, thanks to modern technology. 1958, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe and Staub, Once coping with heat and humidity was no Rather & Howze longer a critical concern, architects in Houston (photograph by could still address the modern doctrine of climatic Hedrich-Blessing). responsiveness symbolically. Air-conditioned build- ings with sealed glazing systems performed regional responsiveness through the application of shading devices that did cut down on heat gain and interior glare, even if the buildings they protected no longer depended on such devices to be made habitable. In the mid-1960s US architectural practice began to shift toward buildings with thick, solidly walled compensation for the conditions under which all but masonry exteriors rather than thin glass mem- the top executives had to work. Houston’s most branes. In these buildings too, modern mechanical celebrated building of the 1960s, the engineering rather than ingenious climatically sports arena of 1965, although designed by Lloyd, responsive design was what made them comforta- Morgan & Jones and Wilson, Morris, Crain & Ander- bly habitable. son, revelled in the magnitude of its consumption of After the mid-1960s, developers aggressively energy resources. It was the first professional foot- entered Houston’s office building market. In con- ball and baseball stadium to be totally enclosed trast to the architectural patterns associated with and air-conditioned.44 the First City, Tenneco, Humble, American In modern Houston architecture of the 1950s and General or even the nearly windowless Great 1960s, architects—and their clients—welcomed Southern buildings, all designed and built for the central air-conditioning as an unmitigated blessing. corporations that occupied them, developers intro- Central air-conditioning not only cooled Houston’s duced new formulae for assigning value and calcu- interminable summers, it also evaporated humidity lating profits in buildings in which they leased and greatly diminished such chronic nuisances as space to corporate tenants. To sacrifice income- dust accumulation, mildew infestation and the producing space by recessing curtain walls behind encroachment of pesky insects. Air-conditioning the exterior face of a building was unthinkable, made it feasible to construct buildings featuring however desirable the environmental conse- extensive glazing rather than force architects quences or architectural imagery might be. When designing buildings in Houston to work through Gerald D. Hines Interests constructed its first such contradictions as achieving maximum transpar- central Houston building, the fifty-storey One 717

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Figure 13a. Tenneco Building, Houston, Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, 1958–63 (photograph by Ezra Stoller).

Figure 13b. Tenneco Building, Houston, Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, 1958–63 (detail drawing).

Shell Plaza of 1971 by the office of Skid- as Caudill Rowlett Scott’s Shell Woodcreek Explora- more, Owings & Merrill, the designer Bruce tion and Production Buildings of 1980 and Kevin Graham’s expressive treatment of his partner Roche, John Dinkeloo & Associates’ Conoco Build- Fazlur Khan’s framed tube structural system ing of 1985 that the issues of heat and light were meant that the structural carapace of the building addressed architecturally in Houston, not in central was thick and solid rather than thin and tenuous, office towers, the best-known of which was Philip and that vertical window slots replaced horizontal Johnson and John Burgee’s all-glass Pennzoil Place bands of curtain wall.45 Even after the Arab Oil of 1976 built by Hines Interests.46 Embargo and energy crisis of 1973–1974 precipi- In examining Houston as a case study of proble- tated a new wave of concern with energy-saving matic issues in mid-twentieth-century modern practices, it was in such corporate-built complexes design, it is clear that patterns that prevailed in 718

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Figure 14a. Humble Building, Welton Becket & Associates, Houston, 1958–63 (photograph by Michelangelo Sabatino).

Figure 14b. Humble Building, Welton Becket & Associates, Houston, 1958–63 (elevation and section drawing).

other Southern cities experiencing the construction Harris’s ‘means of technology’, exerted far greater of striking modern buildings in the 1950s and impact on Houston architects’ practices than did 1960s—Dallas, , Fort Worth, New the impulse to register regional difference architec- Orleans, Memphis, Sarasota and Miami to name turally. If architects working in Houston perceived the most obvious—were operative there as well.47 that there were contradictions between responding What Houston’s experience demonstrates is that as to climate and responding to other aspects of air-conditioning became pervasive, architects modern doctrine—what Rowe described as failure moved from addressing problems of climatic to acknowledge the duality of modern architecture’s responsiveness in material terms—to use Paul dual doctrine—they did so with the confidence, Rudolph’s distinction—to addressing them in voiced by Barnstone, that once interior temperature formal terms. The imperatives of modern structural could be controlled mechanically, architects were at and mechanical engineering, Harwell Hamilton liberty to change architecture. 719

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Figure 15. Stetson Hats: San An and Lone Star models.

In his foreword to Barnstone’s book on the archi- rather than transformed compliance with the tecture of nineteenth-century Galveston, The Gal- imperatives of industrialisation. veston That Was of 1966, James Johnson Sweeney Regionalism might be sustained as a formal prac- linked the individualism-conformity binary to tice but its relevance as a material practice was regionalism: ‘Regionalism in art is one means restricted not by the historical eclecticism that toward the protection of individualism against the Harris and Pickens decried but by such technological total encroachment of conformity.... Regionalism advances as central air-conditioning. As escalating can no longer be expected to dominate any social crises in the US during the second half of expression of contemporary art. But where it sur- the 1960s made the individualism-conformity vives, dominated by the broader international disci- dilemma of the 1950s seem irrelevant, the synthesis pline, it can give vitality to our art, as individualism achieved in Houston’s architecture of heat and can to our lives.’48 Rowe, nearly ten years earlier, light dissolved also. The energy crisis of the 1970s had recognised that in the discourses of modern renewed the relevance of climatic responsiveness architecture in the US regionalism functioned as in American architectural discourse. But in the the dialectical antithesis of the Miesian thesis.49 1970s cycle responsiveness tended to be addressed What modern architects achieved in Houston by in technological terms. It was with the advent of 1960 was a locally resonant synthesis of these Postmodernism, which began to affect architecture tendencies. In historical perspective, what these in Houston in 1980, that the individualist critique compelling buildings suggest is how regionalism of conformity resurfaced, not in the form of consistently surfaced in twentieth-century architec- regionalism but of ‘contextualism’, the author of tural discourses to challenge dominant tendencies, this discourse being Colin Rowe. Problematising especially those associated with conformity to the the architecture of heat and light in Houston imperatives of modernisation and industrialisation reveals the existence of discursive cycles in twenti- as materialised in structural and mechanical eth-century architecture in which the antitheses engineering. Addressing the modernist doctrine of remain constant but the forms of argument and climatic responsiveness symbolically deferred to strategies of persuasion differ. 720

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Acknowledgement Buford L. Pickens, head of the department of archi- This essay is dedicated to my dear friend and col- tecture at Tulane University, made the case for ‘Con- league Stephen Fox. Together we have endured temporary Regional Architecture’ in the September, challenges of excess heat and light in Houston. 1947, issue of the Journal of the American Institute of Architects, volume 8, pp. 114–120. Pickens sought to dissociate regionalism from historical eclec- Notes and references ticism, holding up the Chicago School-Prairie School 1. From this period, the architectural historian William as a legitimate historical example and identifying H. Jordy assessed what he understood to be the the architects of the San Francisco Bay area and the contemporary, and by no means unproblematic, Pacific Northwest as exemplars of ‘contemporary legacy of the Modern Movement in his essay ‘The regional unity’. Vincent B. Canizaro has published Symbolic Essence of Modern European Architecture many of the key documents on the topic of regional- of the Twenties and Its Continuing Influence’, ism in Architectural Regionalism: Collected Writings Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, on Place, Identity, Modernity and Tradition, ed., 22 (October, 1963), pp. 177–182. Jordy noted on Vincent B. Canizaro (New York, Princeton Architec- p. 178: ‘Nor is there anything especially functio- tural Press, 2007). On regionalism in Texan architec- nal...about extensive glazing, where only American ture see Peter C. Papademetriou, ‘Texas prodigality with appliances since World War II has Regionalism, 1925–1950: An Elusive Sensibility’, made such interiors completely livable, and this by Texas Architect, 31 (July-August, 1981), pp. 36–41. concealed equipment outside the realm of architec- Texas’ foremost regionalist proponent was the ture.’ Dallas, subsequently San Antonio, architect O’Neil 2. Henry-Russell Hitchcock articulated the mid-century Ford: see Mary Carolyn Hollers George, O’Neil Ford, line on cultural standardisation in his introduction to Architect (College Station, Texas A&M University the catalogue of the exhibition Ten Years of Press, 1992) and David Dillon, The Architecture of Houston Architecture, organised by Howard Barn- O’Neil Ford: Celebrating Place (Austin, University of stone and Burdette Keeland at the Contemporary Texas Press, 1999). Arts Museum in 1959: ‘But the post-war years, 3. Jackson Lears acutely analyses the anxieties he dis- since building production revived internationally cerned in surveying critical commentaries of the post- about 1948, have seen on this continent an almost war period in his essay ‘A Matter of Taste: Corporate universal acceptance of certain common architectural Cultural Hegemony in a Mass-Consumption Society’, standards; while those same standards, partly Euro- in Recasting America: Culture and Politics in the Age pean in origin, have also been widely accepted— of Cold War, ed., Larry May (Chicago, University of under increasing American influence—on other conti- Chicago Press, 1989), pp. 38–57. nents. From coast to coast, from Dallas to Toronto, in 4. Paul Rudolph, ‘Regionalism in Modern Architecture’, most fields of building similar standards now rule.’ Perspecta, 4 (1957), p. 15. Hitchcock, ‘Introduction’, Ten Years of Houston 5. Campbell Gibson, ‘Population of the 100 Largest Cities Architecture (Houston, Contemporary Arts Museum, and Other Urban Places in the : 1790 to 1959), unpaginated. 1990’, Population Division Working Paper No. 27, 721

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Population Division, US Bureau of the Census, Bedrooms: House Fronts on Garden’, Architectural Washington, DC, June, 1998, http://www.census. Record, 87 (May, 1940), pp. 60–61. gov/population/www/documentation/twps0027/ 13. From the mid-1930s through to the early 1950s, twps0027.html (accessed 16.07.10.) buildings in Houston advertised their air-conditioned 6. Joseph A. Pratt, The Growth of a Refining Region status with either fixed glazing (such as panels of (Greenwich, JAI Press, 1980). glass block) or no windows at all. See the Pittsburgh 7. ‘Climate of Houston’, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ Plate Glass Company advertisement ‘Design for Climate_of_Houston (accessed 16.07.10.) Light and Beauty with PC Glass Blocks’, Pencil 8. Ellen Beasley identifies an array of ninetenth-century Points, 19 (December, 1938), p. 27, illustrating the vernacular house types characteristic of the Gulf centrally air-conditioned Medical Center Building in coast of Texas in her Galveston Architecture Guide- Houston. The history of air-conditioning in Houston book (Houston, Rice University Press, 1996), has yet to be researched. As early as 1924, Houston’s pp. 250–252. largest central hotel, the Rice Hotel, installed an air- 9. On the Kellum-Noble House, see Dorothy Kendall cooling system that involved passing air over frozen Bracken and Maureen Whorton Redway, Early Texas coils then through ice water; ‘Patrons Praise Cooling Homes (Dallas, Southern Methodist University Press, System at Rice Hotel’, Houston Post (1st June, 1956), pp. 162–163. Houston’s Forgotten Heritage: 1924). The booklet, ‘Houston National Bank’, pub- Landscape, Houses, Interiors, 1824–1914 (Houston, lished to mark the opening of the bank’s imposing Rice University Press, 1991), by Dorothy Knox Howe new neoclassical headquarters in central Houston in Houghton, Barrie M. Scardino, Sadie Gwin Blackburn 1928, noted: ‘The building is provided with a and Katherine S. Howe, discusses the spatial accom- heating and cooling system.’ The Humble Building, modations Houstonians made in the late-nineteenth headquarters of the Humble Oil & Refining and early-twentieth centuries to ameliorate the city’s Company, seems to have been the first Houston trying climate. See Howe, ‘Interiors’, pp. 273 and building to be equipped with a modern central 281, and Houghton, ‘Domestic Life’, pp. 307 and 316. air-conditioning system incorporating humidity 10. On the history of the skyscraper in Houston see ‘Scrap- control in the early 1930s. See the Freon advertise- ing the Houston Sky, 1894–1976’ in, Barrie Scardino, ment, ‘ “Freon” Air-Conditioning Was Installed in William F. Stern and Bruce Webb, eds, Ephemeral City: This Building After It Was Built’, Architectural ‘Cite’ Looks at Houston (Austin, University of Texas Record, 77 (May, 1935), p. 1. From the mid-1930s Press, 2003), pp.193–210. until the mid-1950s, the Houston Chamber of 11. Howard Barnstone, The Architecture of John F. Staub: Commerce’s monthly magazine, Houston,published Houston and the South (Austin, University of Texas an annual air-conditioning number. Press, 1979), pp. 52–53. 14. In the 1950s and 1960s Houston and other Texan cities 12. Barnstone, op. cit., pp. 216–219; see also Stephen were featured in illustrated articles in nationally circu- Fox, The Country Houses of John F. Staub (College lated magazines that focused, directly or indirectly, Station, Texas A & M University Press, 2007), pp. on modern architecture. Examples include: ‘The Cool 290–295; ‘Contemporary Classic’, River Oaks Maga- Contents of Summer’, House and Garden, 118 (July, zine, 5 (March, 1940), pp. 12–15; ‘Houses with Two 1960), pp. 48–53; Russell Lynes, ‘Everything’s Up to 722

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Date in Texas...But Me’, Harper’s Magazine, 222 (May, ‘The Incredible Shrinking Store: Foley’s Downtown’, 1961), pp. 38–42; ‘Building: The New Face of Texas’, Cite 23: The Architecture and Design Review of Fortune, 64 (October, 1961), pp. 128–135. Houston (, 1989), pp. 10–11; Steven On St Rose of Lima School, see ‘Parochial School R. Strom, ‘Modernism for the Masses: Foley’s Depart- Attains a Fine Warmth and Scale Through Careful ment Store Gave Average Houstonians a Window on Adjustments’, Architectural Forum, 92 (June, 1950), the Wider Postwar World’, Cite 62: The Architecture pp. 102–105; ‘St Rose of Lima’, Liturgical Arts,20 and Design Review of Houston (Autumn, 2004), (November, 1951), pp. 14–15; Hitchcock, op. cit., pp. 30–33. ‘Introduction’, Ten Years of Houston Architecture, 17. Lisa Germany, Harwell Hamilton Harris (Austin, Univer- unpaginated. sity of Texas Press, 1991), pp. 119–120. Kenneth 15. Stephen James, ‘Donald Barthelme: Architecture and Frampton notes the importance of this speech in his the Road to La Mancha’, Arris: Journal of the South- foreword to Germany’s book, p. xii. east Chapter of the Society of Architectural Historians, 18. Harwell Hamilton Harris, ‘Regionalism and Nationalism 16 (2005), pp. 56–68 and Ben Koush, Donald in Architecture’, in Architectural Regionalism, op. cit., Barthelme: A Modernism Suitable for Everyday Use, p. 64. 1939–1945 (Houston, Houston Mod, 2005). Gordon 19. Colin Rowe, ‘Neo-“Classicism” and Modern Architec- Wittenberg addressed post-war architectural research ture I’, in Rowe, The Mathematics of the Ideal Villa and into passive natural ventilation and illumination at the Other Essays (Cambridge, Mass., The MIT Press, 1976), Texas Engineering Experiment Station under the direc- p. 131. tion of the architect William W. Caudill: Wittenberg, 20. Mary Kraft, ‘Good Housekeeping’s 10 Best Small ‘Design for Climate: Adaptations to Meet the Texas Houses for 1954’, Good Housekeeping (January, Extremes’, Texas Architect, 31 (September-October, 1954), pp. 63–66; Ben Koush, ‘Houston Lives the 1981), p. 43. Caudill’s firm, Caudill Rowlett Scott, Life: Modern Houses in the Suburbs, 1952–1962’ along with Barthelme, Cocke, Bowman & York of Har- (MArch thesis, Rice University, 2002), pp. 141–143; lingen, Texas, and the ad-hoc partnership of O’Neil Gwendolyn Wright, USA: Modern Architectures in Ford of San Antonio and Richard S. Colley of Corpus History (London, Reaktion Books, 2008), p. 174. Christi, were the Texan architectural firms most ident- 21. ‘Art Collection and Home of the John de Menils in ified in the early 1950s with producing modern edu- Houston’s River Oaks’, Interiors, 123 (November, cational buildings that responded imaginatively to 1963), pp. 84–91; James Johnson Sweeney, ‘Collec- climatic extremes. See ‘Three Approaches for Three tors’ House’, Vogue, 147 (1st April, 1966), pp. 184– Texas Towns’, Architectural Record, 116 (November, 193; Frank D. Welch, Philip Johnson and Texas 1954), pp. 195–201; ‘The Architect and His Commu- (Austin, University of Texas Press, 2000), pp. 45–51; nity—Cocke, Bowman & York: Harlingen, Texas’, Pro- Bruce C. Webb, ‘Living Modern in Mid-Century gressive Architecture, 36 (June, 1955), pp. 102–115; Houston: Conserving the Menil House’, Journal of ‘Design Techniques 1953: Educational Buildings’, Pro- Architectural Education, 62 (September, 2008), gressive Architecture, 34 (January, 1953), p. 82. pp. 11–19; Martin Filler, ‘The Real Menil’, Antiques, 16. ‘Department Store, Houston, Texas’, Progressive Archi- 174 (September, 2008), pp. 78–85. tecture, 29 (July, 1948), pp.49–59; Bruce C. Webb, 22. Sweeney, ‘Collectors’ House’, op. cit., pp. 190, 199. 723

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23. These were the photographs illustrating the article office to work until it is time to go to dinner in an published in Interiors magazine six years later. In the air-conditioned restaurant before seeing a movie in same issue of Interiors there was also an article on an air-conditioned theater. Of course there is the Bolton & Barnstone’s Owsley House that remarked brief inconvenience of a blast of hot air between the on the hallucinatory experience of living in a glass car and the office.’ house in Houston: ‘Like everything else in Houston, 27. Raymond Arsenault observes that: ‘The so-called “air- the house is totally air-conditioned, and the floor-to- conditioning revolution”, then, was actually an evol- ceiling windows throughout the house provide a ution—a long, slow, uneven process stretching over kind of shimmering, green-gold hazy background.’ seven decades. The air conditioner came to the ‘Steel and Glass House on ’, Interiors, South in a series of waves, and only with the wave 123 (November, 1963), p. 72. of the 1950s was the region truly engulfed.’ 24. Mark A. Hewitt, ‘Neoclassicism and Modern Architec- Arsenault, ‘The End of the Long Hot Summer: The ture, Houston Style, or The Domestication of Mies’, Air Conditioner and Southern Culture’, The Journal Cite: The Architecture and Design Review of of Southern History, 50 (November, 1984), p. 613. Houston (Autumn, 1984), pp. 12–15. On the archi- In Texas, it was the installation of central air-con- tects who pursued Miesian discipline, see Ben ditioning in public elementary schools, which did Koush, Booming Houston and the Modern House: not become universal until the 1970s, that marked Residential Architecture of Neuhaus & Taylor the culmination of what Arsenault calls the ‘air-con- (Houston, Houston Mod, 2006); Ben Koush, Hugo ditioning revolution’. V. Neuhaus, Jr.: Residential Architecture, 1948– 28. On the University of St Thomas see ‘The University of St 1966 (Houston, Houston Mod, 2007; Jason Thomas’, Architectural Record, 122 (August, 1957), A. Smith, High Style in the Suburbs: The Early pp. 138, 142–143; ‘First Units in the Fabric of a Modern Houses of William R. Jenkins, 1951–1958 Closed Campus’, Architectural Record, 126 (September, (Houston, Houston Mod, 2009). 1959), pp. 180–182; Welch, Philip Johnson and Texas, 25. Examples of these night views are Bolton & Barnstone’s op. cit., pp. 61–65; and Michelangelo Sabatino, ‘Crack- Rosenthal House: ‘Houses on Difficult Sites: An Almost ing the Egg: The Transformation of the University of St Triangular Lot with Wide End to Street’, Architectural Thomas Campus’, Cite 73: The Architecture and Design Record, 116 (October, 1954), pp. 170–171; Neuhaus Review of Houston (Winter, 2008), pp. 10–17. & Taylor’s Frame House: ‘Background Lighting— 29. On the Rice complex, see ‘Architecture 1959—First Instant Magic’, House and Garden, 120 (September, Honor Awards: Laboratory Buildings for Rice Institute, 1960), pp. 120-121; Johnson’s Menil House: Houston, Designed by George Pierce-Abel B. Pierce, Sweeney, ‘Collectors’ House’, op. cit., pp. 184–185. Architects, Houston’, Texas Architect, 9 (November, 26. Lisa Heschong in Thermal Delight in Architecture 1959), p. 11. See also Stephen Fox, Houston—Archi- (Cambridge, Mass., The MIT Press, 1979), p. 20, uses tectural Guide (second edition; Houston, the American Houston as a humorous example of what she describes Institute of Architects, Houston chapter and the as an engineered steady-state thermal environment: ‘It Herring Press, 1999), p. 110. is not at all uncommon in Houston or Los Angeles to 30. ‘New Thinking on Sunshading and Floor Planning drive an air-conditioned car to an air-conditioned by Architects of Houston’s Newest Office Building’, 724

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Architectural Forum, 99 (September, 1953), pp. 112– Johnson Sweeney’, Cite 40: The Architecture and 113. In the case of the Melrose Building a limiting Design Review of Houston (Winter, 1997-1998), condition is that it occupies only two corner plots pp. 30–33. rather than an entire city block, as do the 1960s’ 35. Esther McCoy, ‘Young Architects in the United States: office buildings. Thus two of its sides were windowless 1963’, Zodiac, 13 (1964), p. 167. Although Barnstone party walls and were treated architecturally like a adamantly rejected regionalism, he ‘regionalised’some 1920s’ skyscraper, with an inset light court into of the houses Bolton & Barnstone produced. The all- which conventional sash windows faced. glass Owsley House, published in Zodiac, was sur- 31. ‘The Medical Towers’, Progressive Architecture,38 rounded by steel-framed double galleries, which (June, 1957), pp. 192–195; Kevin Alter, ‘SOM in shade the glass walls; Esther McCoy likened it to a Mis- Houston’, Cite 40: The Architecture and Design sissippi River steamboat, p. 186. The firm’s Lindsay Review of Houston (Winter, 1997-1998), pp. 35–36. House, a U-plan courtyard house, possessed both a 32. ‘Financial Institution by Greacen and Brogniez, full-width rear screened porch and a street-facing Architects’, Arts and Architecture, 77 (August, 1960), courtyard shielded by a decorative solar screen fabri- pp. 18–19. cated of cast iron. ‘Record Houses of 1959: Garden 33. ‘Museum Annex, Mies van der Rohe, Architect’, Arts Affords Private Views’, Architectural Record, 125 and Architecture, 76 (August, 1959), pp. 10–11; (Mid-May, 1959), pp. 80–83. ‘Renovation by Devouring: Houston’s Classic 36. Of the regime of Mies in Houston, Henry-Russell Hitch- Museum is Enlarged by a New “Wing” of Considerably cock, in his 1959 Houston exhibition catalogue, wrote: Different Classic Cast’, Architectural Forum, 112 ‘But, long before Mies worked in Houston, his influ- (January, 1960), pp. 128–129; Donnelley Erdman ence was the strongest there and this is symptomatic and Peter C. Papademetriou, The Museums of Fine of the period nationally and even internationally.’ Arts, Houston: Fifty Years of Growth, 1922–1972, Two other critics drew attention to Mies’s impact on Architecture at Rice, 28 (Houston, School of Architec- the modern architecture of Houston. Reyner Banham ture, Rice University, 1972); The Museum of Fine Arts, in his posthumously published review of Renzo Houston: An Architectural History, 1924–1986, Bulle- Piano’s museum asserted: ‘Locally tin of the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, ed., Celeste the echoes are of Mies van der Rohe, which may Marie Adams, 15 (1–2, 1992), pp. 64–97. sound strange, but one should remember that next 34. On the installations of Sweeney and MacAgy, see to Chicago itself, Houston must be the most Miesian James Johnson Sweeney, ‘Le Cullinan Hall de Mies city in North America.’: Banham, ‘In the Neighborhood van der Rohe a` Houston’, L’Oeil, 99 (March, 1963), of Art’, Art in America, 75 (June, 1987), p. 126. In pp. 38–43; Dore Ashton, ‘Sweeney Revisited’, Studio 1988 Colin Rowe observed that during his time at International 845, 166 (September, 1963), pp. 110– the University of Texas in the mid-1950s: ‘The so- 113; ‘Two Ways of Looking at Art in Houston: I. The called International Style was an assault on American Museum of Fine Arts; II. The Gallery of Fine Arts, Uni- values, the cult of Mies van der Rohe, very prevalent versity of St Thomas’, Interiors, 123 (November, 1963), down in Houston, was part of the same insidious pp. 92–98; Lynn M. Herbert, ‘Seeing Was Believing: plot....’: Rowe, ‘Texas and Mrs. Harris’, in As I Was Installations of Jermayne Mac Agy and James Saying: Recollections and Miscellaneous Essays, 725

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Volume 1: Texas—Pre-Texas—Cambridge, ed., Alex Family Law Center, see ‘Harris County Family Law Caragonne (Cambridge, Mass., The MIT Press, 1996), Center’, Texas Architect, 21 (June, 1971), pp. 3–6. p. 29. 43. ‘Textured Concrete and Air Ducts Mesh Like a Chinese 37. ‘Tripartite Scheme for Bank, Office Building, and Puzzle’, Engineering News-Record, 173 (22nd October, Garage’, Architectural Record, 129 (April, 1961), 1964), pp. 30–32. pp. 155–164; The Architecture of Skidmore, Owings 44. Peter C. Papademetriou and Peter G. Rowe, ‘The Pope & Merrill, 1950–1962, Introduction by Henry-Russell and the Judge’, Architectural Design, 40 (July, 1980), Hitchcock, text by Ernst Danz, translation by Ernst pp. 345–349. van Haagen and Antje Pehnt (New York, Praeger Pub- 45. On One Shell Plaza, see Jonathan King and William lishers, 1963), pp. 152–157; Carol Herselle Krinsky, T. Cannady, ‘One Shell Plaza, Tallest Building West of Gordon Bunshaft of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill the Mississippi’, Architectural Design, 42 (January, (New York and Cambridge, Architectural History Foun- 1972), pp. 22–23; ‘Supershell’, Architectural Forum, dation and The MIT Press, 1988), pp. 70–72; and Alter, 136 (April, 1972), pp. 26–29; Skidmore, Owings & ‘SOM in Houston’, op. cit., p. 36. Merrill, The Architecture of Skidmore, Owings & 38. ‘In Texas The Glass Box Goes 3-D’, Architectural Merrill, 1963–1973, pp. 174–177; Bruce Graham, Forum, 119 (September, 1963), pp. 124–131; Skid- Bruce Graham of SOM, Introduction by Stanley Tiger- more, Owings & Merrill, The Architecture of Skidmore, man (New York, Rizzoli International Publications, Owings & Merrill, 1963–1973, Introduction by Arthur 1989), pp. 52–55; Kevin Alter, ‘SOM in Houston’, Drexler, text by Axel Menges (New York, Architectural op. cit., p. 36; ‘Thirty-five Years of One Shell Plaza: Book Publishing Company, 1974), pp. 124–127; Alter, Interview with Joseph Colaco by William F. Stern and ‘SOM in Houston’, op. cit., p. 36. Christof Spieler’, Cite 67: The Architecture and 39. ‘In Texas The Glass Box Goes 3-D’, op. cit., p. 125. Design Review of Houston (Summer, 2006), pp. 24– 40. C. Rowe, ‘Chicago Frame’, in Rowe, The Mathematics 27; Nicholas Adams, Skidmore, Owings & Merrill: of the Ideal Villa and Other Essays, op. cit., p. 89. SOM Since 1936 (Milan, Electa, 2007), pp. 248–251. 41. ‘Office Building by Welton Becket & Associates, Archi- 46. On Shell Woodcreek, see ‘Engineered Daylighting for tects’, Arts and Architecture, 76 (November, 1959), an Energy Company in Houston’, Architectural pp. 30–31; ‘Design Against Sun and Glare’, Architec- Record, 166 (Mid-August, 1979), pp. 102–105. On tural Record, 136 (October, 1963), pp. 173–178; the Conoco Building, see: Kevin Roche, Kevin Roche, William Dudley Hunt, Jr, Total Design: Architecture of Introduction by Francesco Dal Co (Milan, Electra Edi- Welton Becket and Associates (New York, McGraw- trice, 1985), pp. 230–231; Nory Miller, ‘Kevin Roche, Hill Book Co., 1972), pp. 164–217. John Dinkeloo & Associates: Conoco Inc., Petroleum 42. On the American General Building, see Ben Koush, Headquarters, Houston, Texas; Designed: 1979; Com- ‘The Modern Mr. Jones: A Legendary Houston Archi- pleted 1985’, GA Documents, 14 (December, 1985), tect Shares His Tall Building Portfolio’, Cite 72: The pp. 48–61; Carleton Knight III, ‘Serene Pavilions Tra- Architecture and Design Review of Houston versing a Lake’, Architecture, 75 (December, 1986), (Autumn, 2007), pp. 30–35 and Gerald Moorhead, pp. 56–61; ‘Conoco, Inc., Petroleum Headquarters, ‘Highrise in the Right Place’, Texas Architect, 48 (July- Houston, Texas, 1979–1984’, A + U Extra Edition,8 August, 1998), pp. 46–47. On the Harris County (August, 1987), pp. 160–167; William F. Stern, 726

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‘Floating City’, Cite: The Architecture and Design 1959); The Prairie’s Yield: Forces Shaping Dallas Archi- Review of Houston (Autumn, 1989), pp. 12–13. tecture From 1840 to 1962, prepared by a Committee On Pennzoil Place, see: Paul Goldberger, ‘Form and of the Dallas Chapter of the American Institute of Procession’, Architectural Forum, 138 (January-Febru- Architects (New York, Reinhold Publishing Corpor- ary 1973), pp. 37–39; Paul Goldberger, ‘High Design ation, 1962); A Guide to the Architecture of Miami, at a Profit’, New York Times Magazine (14th November, prepared by a Committee of the South 1976), pp. 76–79; William Marlin, ‘Pennzoil Place’, Chapter of the American Institute of Architects Architectural Record, 160 (November, 1976), (New York, Reinhold Publishing Corporation, 1963). pp. 101–110; Ada Louise Huxtable, Kicked a Building Although Houston’s first architectural guidebook Lately? (New York, Quadrangle/New York Times Book reflects a very different perspective, the buildings it Co., 1976), pp. 67–71; ‘Pennzoil Place, Houston’, illustrates from the 1960s indicate how strong this Journal of the American Institute of Architects,66 modern regionalist point of view had recently been (May, 1977), pp. 48–49; ‘Project Pennzoil’, Interior in Houston. See Houston: An Architectural Guide, Design, 48 (June, 1977), pp. 134–145; Peter Papade- ed., Peter C. Papademetriou (Houston, Houston metriou, ‘Is “Wow!” Enough?’, Progressive Architec- Chapter, American Institute of Architects, 1972). ture, 58 (August, 1977), pp. 66–72; Philip Johnson, 48. James Johnson Sweeney, ‘Foreword’ to Howard Barn- Johnson/Burgee: Architecture, text by Nory Miller, stone, The Galveston That Was, photographs by Henri photographs by Richard Payne (New York, Random Cartier-Bresson and Ezra Stoller (Houston, Rice Univer- House, 1979), pp. 44–51; Paul Goldberger, The Sky- sity Press and The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, scraper (New York, Alfred A. Knopf, 1982), pp. 124– 1993; first published 1966), unpaginated. 126; Frank D. Welch, Philip Johnson and Texas, op. 49. Rowe, ‘Neo-“Classicism” and Modern Architecture I’, cit., pp. 165–177; Richard Payne, The Architecture op. cit., p. 132: ‘In the United States, regionalism, by of Philip Johnson, essay by Hilary Lewis (Boston, Bul- attempting to set up the spirit of the province as a finch Press, 2002), pp. 174–179. check to the spirit of the age, provided one character- 47. Architectural guidebooks to New Orleans, Dallas and istically American solution. But this form of architec- Miami published between 1959 and 1963 reflect the tural states’ rights could scarcely exist without the regionalist orientation of modern architects in those complement of a central authority; and, as a version three cities during this period. See Samuel Wilson, Jr, of this central authority, the present neo-“Classical” A Guide to Architecture of New Orleans—1699 to [i.e. Miesian] mutations must appear to any dispassio- 1959 (New York, Reinhold Publishing Corporation, nate observer to be no less typically American.’