posted on November 12, 2010 02:08
Who wouldn’t want to design buildings?
An architect’s work is arguably the most functional of any art form. This may explain why the shop talk between building artists and engineers can be engaging and rather lively at times, from what I’ve been told.
I recently had the distinct pleasure of having an iced coffee with humble, but accomplished, Houston architect Art Chavez of PageSoutherlandPage, along with the PSP researcher and a marketing specialist who had once been a stand-up comic. The conversation digressed often, and was perfectly delightful, but I did get to question Chavez about his past work. For one, he led the design team in the restoration of the Rice Hotel (now Rice Lofts) in the late 1990s.
What was it like going into a historic icon that had been neglected for decades?
Tiring, it turns out, since the building had no working elevator when his team surveyed it. But also a bit heartbreaking, if you’re in the restoring business. The hotel, which hosted its last guest in 1977, did not escape some damaging modernization efforts. Chavez said he could make out “very specific hammer blows” where workers “renovated” the hotel’s original ornate ceiling. I thought about Houston’s reputation for “out with the old, in with the new” regarding its older structures, and how few old buildings Houston really has, compared to other, much smaller cities.
This led me to the oft-asked question: What should Houston do with the Astrodome?
It was clear Chavez hadn’t given it much thought, and sitting before a building designer who has done all types of work all over the globe — and with an eye for restoration — I couldn’t help but ask the question. I had read some opinions on the subject, but usually from sports fans or politicians, so I hadn’t paid much attention.
The Astrodome is located the only area accessible by millions of people in a short period of time. The parking is difficult. The traffic more so, our little coffee group agreed. Who would brave the Astro-mess just to go to an event, hotel or restaurant inside the old Astrodome? I wouldn’t.
“You need to have something big, to draw the people inside,” Chavez thought out loud.
Then he said this: Few other structures have the open space inside the Astrodome has. “You’d be able to fit some really large things in there.”
A museum, someone offered. Perhaps a walk-through rocket or space shuttle exhibit, our companions suggested. It’s amazing what problems can be solved with enough caffeine. Shall we contact NASA with our solution to its future funding? Park an outdated rocket in there and just watch the money pile up from ticket sales. We realize there are a mountain of security concerns with our plan — but we were repurposing buildings, not planning space travel.
I asked Chavez about his favorite structures in Houston, and he mentioned the Williams Tower Water Wall — for very simple reasons.
“From children playing to wedding couples taking their first photographs as husband and wife, the water wall has been the backdrop to thousands of memories,” he said. “And it has done so with a very simple but beautiful idea.”
If only more people could think like an architect.
11/5/10, Dallas Business Journal, Nicole Bradford