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CULTURE TANIGUCHI’S PLAN Asia House comes to the Museum District. TOP: Asia House, north elevation drawing. ABOVE: View from gallery to sculpture garden. RIGHT: On-site full-scale mockup of Asia House. “IT IS POSSIBLE TO MAKE PLACES ON THE EARTH THAT part) behind a gray cloudy sky, the groundbreaking give a sense of grace to life,” says Nancy Allen, a on May 15, 2008, was attended by dignitaries from board member of Asia Society Texas Center who Houston’s Asian community, including Houston ceremonially broke ground on the newest cultural Rockets center Yao Ming. Dramatically poised addition to Houston’s Museum District: Asia House. behind the speaker’s podium was a wooden mockup True to her conviction, Allen and her fellow board of the northeast corner of the building where the pri- members hired Japanese architect Yoshio Taniguchi mary entrance will sit at the juncture of the struc- to design his first freestanding building in the ture’s two dominant planes. Taniguchi requested the United States. full-scale mockup, uncommon in U.S. design Just north of the Holocaust Museum, on practice, so he could study, refine, and change ele- Southmore between Caroline and Austin, the 38,000- ments as needed prior to construction. Minor on-site square-foot Asia House will serve as the permanent alterations to the mockup conveyed the sense of lines home of the center, offering public spaces, offices, erased from a piece of paper. They included a change flexible meeting rooms, a garden café, a theater, and in the depth of the front wall and the relocation of a an art gallery. Kendall/Heaton Associates is the canopy from the roof to above the paired doors on architect of record, with contractor W. S. the east façade. Bellows Construction Corp. and Geoffrey “I am interested in creating spaces that human Brune, AIA, as design liaison. Scheduled beings can experience. I am not interested in architec- to open in 2010, programming will ture as a container—I find it too confining,” include dance, film, art, and public Taniguchi explained, in a perfect fit with Allen’s E N U discussions with government officials vision. After the ceremony, a rainy walkthrough of R B Y with the mission to strengthen relation- the mockup demonstrated the marriage of Allen’s E R F ships and promote understanding passion and Taniguchi’s talent. The front doors are F O E among the people, leaders, and insti- hidden behind a wall that forces the visitor to experi- G : P tutions of Asia and the United States. ence the building as a place of exploration and U K C Taniguchi, known in the United unfolding. Just past the doors, a space that reaches the O M ; E States for his expansion of The full height of the interior, soaring and uplifting, S U O Museum of Modern Art (MOMA) dramatically appears inside the entry foyer. H A I in Manhattan, has a high-profile The interior areas are arranged so that there is S A Y career in Japan designing access—physical and visual—to adjacent spaces, S E T museums, including the Gallery gardens, and water features. Visual access requires R U O of Horyuji Treasures at the restraint, an attribute not widely associated with C S G Tokyo National Museum, the N Americans, and is reminiscent of walking through I R E Toyota Municipal Museum of the MOMA addition. Asia House is a place to engage D N E Art, and the Marugame notions of both Asian and Western cultures, and it R ; R Genichiro-Inokuma Museum of accordingly provides spaces for contemplation, E T S Contemporary Art, as well as other E exchange, and reflection. The culture, skill, and H L public buildings. Asia House in vision of the architect are integral to the building’s U A P : T Houston is his second U.S. project sublime spaces and rich materials, which capture a I A R after MOMA. sense of grace, harmony, and beauty. T R O Architect Yoshio Taniguchi As the rain held back (for the most -Anna Mod P REINVENTION s ware and which had come for New g GREEN INVADERS Living’s products. But those separate groups have slowly grown less distinct. From nuts and bolts to Soap Nuts at Wagner Hardware. “They have Kilz primer. We have no- n VOC paint,” she continues. “They have i seriously toxic pesticides; we have organic t fertilizers and organic bug killer. You could say we’re moving from nuts and i WHEN NEW LIVING: HEALTHY HOME ESSENTIALS OPENED Living time to figure out what it wants to be when it bolts . to Soap Nuts.” New Living’s for business at the beginning of this year, the store’s grows up. “We’re truly learning from the market,” steady expansion through the aisles of c entire inventory fit on three shelving units poised just says Kaplan. “It’s given us an opportunity to talk to Wagner Hardware mirrors the growing popularity of inside the front door of a 70-year-old hardware store people and find out what their needs are and how to ecologically friendly products among its customers. in Rice Village. evolve the store. There was no way to predict what And one enables the other. “It started off as an experiment,” says Jeff Kaplan, direction we should go in.” Wong has a more blunt One early New Living customer was Beaver’s, one of New Living’s founders. Less than six months assessment of the store’s character: “It’s like a virus.” Monica Pope’s new ice house and barbecue joint in the later, his experiment in green retailing may not be By April 22, Earth Day, that virus Sixth Ward. The restaurant’s tables have surfaces of ready to emerge from its hardware-store laboratory— was ready to spread further into Kirei—a Japanese panel made from sorghum stalks but it is beginning to take over the lab. Wagner’s recesses. Out went a that New Living sells for more than $300 a sheet. Those three initial shelving units, welded from second aisle: plumbing supplies. In When Beaver’s ended up with an extra table with angle brackets of recycled steel and attached to reused rolled more mobile shelving units, uneven legs, Wong brought it in, placed it by the front casters so they could be rolled into position, took the which Wong over the course of door, and stacked it with copies of William place of what had been a single aisle inside Wagner several weeks slowly populated with McDonough’s Cradle to Cradle, a book that encourages Hardware. “It was an entire aisle of nuts and screws,” still more eco-friendly home products: designers to use “the intelligence of natural systems” says Tiffan C. Wong, New Living’s manager. Once wool and sisal samples from Nature’s to create products that work for both commerce and the hardware items had been moved to the back of the Carpet; IceStone, a Cradle-to-Cradle- the environment. “We’re recycling an old space,” store—and Wagner employee Arthur Buchanan had Certified countertop material made of Kaplan says. “We want to be scrappy. You don’t carted the fixed metal shelving upstairs into storage— recycled glass and cement; and American have to start over; you should be resourceful and Wong wheeled New Living’s mobile displays into Clay plaster. Outside the store, work with what you have.” place. On top of the plywood shelves (“the best we a new window graphic covering The steady progress of New Living’s prod- could find at Home Depot,” Wong says) went New the storefront proclaimed, “It’s ucts—on mobile and fixed shelving units— Living’s newer, greener products: three-packs of easy being green,” but still continues. Among the latest items to find biodegradable European sponge cloths called Twist made no mention of the their way onto the advancing shelves: spray (each of which, both Wong and the package claim, new store growing steadily bottles of Lucky Earth Waterless Car Wash will last as long as 17 rolls of paper towels); Soap Nuts inside of it. and a solar-powered backpack. (“it’s like laundry detergent that grows on trees,” she And so the willful blending Kaplan now says New Living is ready to explains); and Yolo Colorhouse interior house paint of the two stores’ identities take over the whole store. He is in the with zero VOCs (volatile organic compounds, solvents began. Early on, Wong could process of signing a new lease agreement that pollute indoor air). easily figure, as they came with Abernathy, who plans to stay on to help Gene Wagner founded Wagner Hardware in 1938 through the door, which with the transition. But even after New and built the current store on Kirby Drive seven years customers had come for hard- Living has overwhelmed its host, the Wagner later. Today his daughter, Nancy Hardware sign will stay on top of Abernathy, owns and manages the the building— as a marquee, store. She perches behind the register Kaplan says. Inside will be a ven- at the front, ringing up customer ture that’s grown strong enough to purchases of both Wagner and New repopulate the store, filling it with Living items. From the moment last products intended for people who year when Kaplan first described to want a more environmentally con- her his concept of a “green general scious focus to their lives. Kaplan store” planted inside Wagner, and Wong imagine it will serve as a Abernathy knew it would be a good resource center, too, for people match.