"We Re Not Interested in Doing the Typical Kind of Work."

22 Cite Fall 19S7 •i n n n m nce upon a time, there was a Oboomtown called Houston* There was more than enough n money to go around. People remodeling o r building a new home called up a contractor and let him loose with their money. How times have changed. In La Belle Dallas: The Crescent, 1986, Shepard + Boyd (USA and John Burgee Architects with Philip Now, no matter who you are, any Johnson, architects change that costs money has to be Citesurvey worth i t It has to be right the first time and have true value. Dallas Through the Finally, people in Houston are demanding the same quality, Looking Glass dependability, and workmanship Malcolm Quantrill The latest acquisition on view at the picture frame of the Museum of Art that have satisfied our customers Dallas Museum of Art is a townscape, a window or close up, then perhaps as you prospect of a piece of the city as it was or sweep into the complex between the for over 13 years. might he. in the French manner. There is 18-story office tower and the luxurious something strange in the composition, Crescent Court hotel. For amid the flurry something not quite surreal, yet still of high-styled women and European cars, decidedly reminiscent of Magrittc. But we might indeed be somewhere else, in the confusion of effect is not that of a another urban fragment across the moonlit building beneath a sunlit sky. Atlantic, and not in Dallas at all. Rather it is the change of effect that results from the grouping of images of The limestone is as yet loo fresh to give o N O N familiar objects of varying scales, so that us more than a hint of history, as yet SW2 LA BRANCH. HOUSTON, TEXAS 77004, (71)) 52<Mm the assembly is familiar in bits, but not as unloved by the hand of nature, and still WEST UNIVERSITY • SOUTHAMPTON • RIVER OAKS • TANOI-EWOOD a whole. Thus, the townscape has as its unchafed by man and machine. Like the focus an urban fragment, a piece of the lady in the hotel's Beau Nash Restaurant, city, that is itself fragmented. Indeed, we stiffly attempting to avoid body contact might say ' 'Ceci n 'est pas I 'architecture" with her plate of linguine. the stonework's not because what wc sec is only a margins and chamfers present the pictorial representation of that appearance of laundered virginity: the architecture, but because the body of architecture is somehow veiled in representation is of bits that do not add this appearance rather than revealed. "We re not up to a whole. Indeed, further study of the composition reveals thai what is being The "cast iron" that is aluminum (and represented is not the Parisian hotel, seems fully conscious of its role as interested in although hotel is certainly implied, but Sullivan's "makeweight") weaves a the modern high-rise in that guise. When curious web across specially created gaps we note that the artist is none other than in the 18th-century illusion. Amid the doing the typical Philip Johnson (in associalion with John grandeur of the major stage props, this Burgee Architects), wc recognize this would appear to be a play for the taste of artifice as readily as those of the Belgian the masses, a touch of vulgarity, perhaps. surrealist. But it is too fine on the office tower, too kind of work." gray and loo calculated in its whimsy lo And neither are our customers. Looking north across the city from the amuse the "common man," although in the three-tiered marketplace it achieves Architects like Frank Gebry and CRS.. Dallas Museum of Art, we can, of course, see several piles less picturesque the comic relief of Copenhagen's Tivoli. Companies like Sunar Hauserman than The Crescent hotel and office In the palm-decked greenhouse of the and InierjirstBanks-. - complex. And aside from the fact that Beau Nash, however, we sense its true They all come to us because this three-part development incorporates purpose in the scheme of things. The they want the very best architectural more of the Bedford limestone than was inlcriors, like the spaces between the buildings, have a focus in their spatial millwork and custom used on the Empire State Building, an atmosphere is evoked, if not in the ordering and their use of materials, interior finishing they can get. You can call us right here in Houston at 69i-i446. 721 Wainwrigbi Suite 101 Houston. Texas 77022 - - - - 7rrMElN<in>lMILDXORKS Architectural model. The Crescent (School of Architecture, University of Texas at Austin) Cite Fall 1987 23 Citeations creating the feeling thai in the Crescent Court hotel you can have an elegant good New York 1930 and time. This is nowhere more (rue than in the Beau Nash brasserie, with its assured LA Lost and Found balance of lighting, darkness (mahogony), and color. Once inside the New York, 1930, Architecture and hotel - the entry court with its tempietto Urbanism Between the Two World Wars WBfof has too much parking for the right effect Robert A.M. Stern. Gregory Gilmartin. ! - you are, indeed, in another place. But it and Thomas Mellins with David Ftshman is the interior design and not the and Raymond W. Gastil, New York, architecture that transforms both place Rizzoli, 1987, 847pp., $75 and people. And there arc tough jostlings of intention between these two realms, LA Lost and Found. An Architectural although I fear that much of this vulgar History of Los Angeles struggle is lost on the usual guest. In the Sam Hall Kaplan, New York: Crown Hall great entrance hall, for instance, the Publishers Inc.. 1987. 224 pp., $27.95 circulation across to the second court is rudely interrupted by the intrusion of the Reviewed by Stephen Fox second-floor gallery, like a piece of intimate apparel fallen from its proper place. Bui the marble floor of this space At 847 pages New York 1930, successor to must be seen to be believed and is a Stern, Gilmartin, and Massengale's New material triumph over mere spatial and York 1900, is not a quick read. It is a architectural adversity. voluminous account of architecture built in New York (principally in Manhattan, In the Beau Nash brasserie, the struggle hut also including the outer boroughs), is between the ceiling and the arched between 1917 and 1942. This is organized windows on both sides, in which the by building and institutional types - « windows are defeated and depressed by public buildings, entertainment and retail the sheer weight of the mahogany beams buildings, residential buildings, and tall that might easily have been omitted along office buildings - and concludes with a the wall spans. But this is a space that is short section on urban improvements and already popular with local residents and the World's Fair of 1939. The book is therefore always busy and noisy with the illustrated with a stunning array of period enjoyment of its excellent cuisine. Dinner photographs (some of them a bit muddy and Sunday brunch bring back memories in printing) and fewer architectural of the best smaller European restaurants; drawings than one might wish. Although while breakfast in the greenhouse is ritzy urbanism figures in the subtitle, it is to in the true sense. architecture that the book is dedicated; typological organization virtually ensures The elevators are by far the most efficient that the text becomes a catalogue of to be Ibund anywhere. They deliver you buildings. into a crescent-shaped corridor, of 22 East Fortieth Street, 1931, Kenneth Franzhelm course, where perspective is canceled out The cultural trajectory that Stern, by the illusion of infinite distance. Long Gilmartin, and Mellins trace through stays arc not suggested by the layout and buildings is dramatically inclined. It furnishings of the rooms, however, which spanned from the end of the Progessive body of movie palaces are recognized; the diversity, texture, or patterns of arc nevertheless very comfortable if Era, with its "high" concept of civic Harric T. Lindcbcrg turns up on development that characterize the place undistinguished. One expects each room grandeur, expressed in the nobility of Bcekman Place; and Kenneth or of the multiple architectural cultures, to have its French window hut this, alas, classical architecture, to the raucousness Franzheim's 22 East Fortieth Street, a and their sources of patronage, that often opens onto a shelf rather than a balcony. of the Jazz Age and its delight in the 42-story office tower completed in 193I have occurred simultaniously in Los Putting a hesitant foot out you soon sophisticated novelty of art deco (or what for Jesse H. Jones, is illustrated with a Angeles and the many distinct towns that realize why. The view from the room, Stern, Gilmartin, and Mellins prefer to Berenice Abbott photograph. The surround it. The book is sustained only unlike those down the corridors, is call Modern Classicism), to the crisis of Houston architect William Ward Watkin by Julius Shulman's architectural strictly one-point: you are intended to the Great Depression, which propelled a makes several surprise appearances in his photography. There are no architectural look across the courtyard and not up and renewal of engagement with sociological role as an occasional commentator on the drawings. down the crescent. If you break the rules, problems and lent the Modern Movement course of American architecture in the the illusion is destroyed, because the in architecture a certain moral urgency early 1930s. Architectural histories of American cities crescent is open-ended and the urban upon its American appearance, arc needed.

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