Is it any wonder that this custom studio-home of a fine arts photography gallery owner is camera ready? From curbside, it comes with a limelight finish. Rice architecture prof Carlos Jiménez, who’s designed art museums, homes, and warehouses alike, incorporated ingredients of each in this 2011 project. A week ago, the Riverside Terrace property went up for sale with a $650,000 asking price.
The sloping roof accommodates a partial second story, as well as lofty living and a large, column-free exhibition space at ground level:
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Glimpses of that main space, a whopping 47 ft. by 22 ft., develop from shades of gray (above) to color in the listing, though the latter is mostly in the artwork popping and propping against white walls:
Cable fixtures and display lighting ring several rooms. Interior walls rise to various heights but stop short of the ceiling.
Among the basic shapes of the structure, a pop-up dormer with south-bound sky view caps sliding double doors.
They access a backyard patio formed by concrete pads atop a pebbled beach:
Here’s a view of the structure as it was framed in red iron:
Inside, those supports have all been painted to blend into the clean canvas environment, but they remain exposed:
Behind the flats of storage (above), floating walls screen the shelf-lined room currently used as a library:
In the island kitchen, a chef-height window looks across a stub of gated driveway.
Listing photos show only 1 of the 2 bedrooms (above), both located upstairs, and none of the bathrooms. (There is a full bathroom and a half-bath.) The listing says there’s no garage, but a small outbuilding sits at the end of the driveway. A portion of front yard has been paved for a double-wide parking area:
The north-facing lot, which measures 8,470 sq. ft., is located 9 houses east of SH 288’s service road. The street is a straight-shot continuation of Binz but grabs the name of a parallel street on this side of the highway. (Binz re-appears a block south of it.) Prior to this custom project near Live Oak St., the property sold in 2010, for $77,500. Most of the street retains its 1930’s vintage residential housing. Across the street, however, there’s a contemporary 3-unit, 3-story townhome grouping built in 2003.
- 2507 Calumet St. [HAR]
A perfect example of the effects of no-zoning in Houston.
This is the second “Architect’s house” posted today that’s hideous beyond belief and with no rhyme or reason in it’s design. Remember, architects are just like retards, just because you’re different, doesn’t mean you’re useful.
I must say, I loath this mans “Art”. Everything he does looks like some Kitchy junk you’d by at some cheap thrift shop. Everytime I see his crap grace some pedestal I’m reminded of some flee market in Old Mexico. It’s annoying that someone so talentless is on the staff at Rice, teaching others, it’s absurd. Teacher teach thyself before teaching others. He’s like an Hispanic Cy Twombly on Acid. I have never understood his appeal (he or Twombly)–oh abs this house: hideous.
I love it when people who generally say that money trumps your or my special feelings about aesthetics suddenly start having special feelings about aesthetics. Obviously someone was willing to pay for Jimenez’s work, so why the complaints?
The abandoned house that was there before it was barely visible from the street due to all the trees and brush that had overgrown it. This was a welcome addition to the neighborhood when it was built… +1 functioning, interesting building and -1 crack house.
@Shannon- Are you drunk? Usually you are just snotty and a little racist, but your post today is almost unreadable.
*man’s
*loathe
*flea
*and
…and how exactly does this house, or any of this man’s work, remind you of Cy Twombly? I am genuinely curious.
Anyway, like Superdave said, “… +1 functioning, interesting building and -1 crack house.”
Hmmmmm—better than a crack house–High Praise, Indeed~
All time low for commonsense. Totally unacceptable remark.
I promise that if you elect me dictator of Swamplot, first order of business will be banning Commonsense and Shannon, and second order of business is instituting Free Pizza Friday.
Just consider it, I’m saying.
And this house is awesome, deal with it.
i don;t think superdave is being racist. i drive around there every school day to pick my kid up from BCMA. there are a number of crackheads and discharged patients from HCPC wandering around that area. there are also home that appear to be used a drug dens.
the area is in transition, i know it upsets the black folks who live there as they see it as gentrification and don’t like it but too bad, they moved in when the jews left, now they are being displaced by hispanics and DINKs and it will eventually become upper class as the hispanics are priced out. i read how the community wants to save 3rd ward and its history but lets face it before whites and hispanics started moving back in, the place was a ghetto’s ghetto and if that was the best they could do, it needed gentrification.
circle of life and all that stuff…
@Ian. Why ban them? Shannon’s vitriolic tantrums and hyperbole and narcissism are merely cries for attention. Common sense pretends to be obtuse just to provoke a response. Somebody has to be the bad boy or these comments would be pretty dull with rant after rant about crappy town homes, the cutting down of trees at parks they never use, or some banal anecdote about a grocery store.
Books!
Yes, art is in the eye of the beholder. But I am afraid this one skips my eye. Not a fan.
sorry guys, i think mr. zodiacs just came off much ugliers than shannon’s. “the place was a ghetto’s ghetto and if that was the best they could do, it needed gentrification.”
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something tells me you’re completely ignorant as to what happens when you place large amounts of peope in extreme poverty in one location. regardless of intent or effort, destitution will follow. during the redlining period of america when these folks were forced to live in ghettos we were building areas with the highest rates of poverty ever seen in this country. this was something that far surpassed any of the old irish/italian/etc. immigration hoods in NYC and the like as they didn’t have anywhere near the same amounts of poverty.
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circle of life me a##, destitue areas like the 3rd ward was an american project at large done by intent.
I think Shannon may be confusing Carlos Jimenez, the architect, with Luis Jimenez, the sculptor. That, or she has just suffered a minor stroke.
@anon–I think you’re right. I was perplexed at Shannon’s comment. I couldn’t find any images of Carlos Jimenez’s sculpture online, and for a good reason: they don’t exist. Of course, Luis Jimenez, who lived in New Mexico and died in 2006, does not teach at Rice. However, Rice has several art professors whose work would no doubt appall Shannon.
It’s no beauty on its own, but would be perfect for an artist/ art collector who wanted plenty of hanging or floor space where his or her art could be displayed in a way that literally makes the room. For those reasons, I would take it in a minute but… Does a building so stripped down to the basics warrant the price tag? And in that neighborhood?
@zodiac mindwarp- Riverside Terrace is not the 3rd Ward.
@anon- I guess Shannon could have confused Carlos Jimenez with Luis Jimenez, but drawing parallels between Twombly and Luis Jimenez is almost as big of a stretch as Carlos Jimenez. Twombly, painter of lively, harmless scribbles and Luis Jimenez, sculptor of the FIRST HORSE OF THE APOCALYPSE (he, of course, being the demon horse’s first victim). Man that thing is scary.
I have lived the street over from this house in Riverside Terrace (not Third Ward) for the past 15 years, and certainly remember the house that was there previously. It really was a nice home, and unfortunately got caught up in some legal entanglements for some reason or other, then was finally sold. I was really hoping someone would have bought it and restored it, but that wasn’t the case. We don’t have many crackheads or prostitutes in our section of Riverside Terrace, and maintain an excellent relationship with HPD. Just in the 15 years that I have been here, I have seen much of the riff-raff leave the area, and I expect it will continue to do so. The neighborhood, mostly white and black, are becoming more single-family homes again as opposed to the trend in the 60s and 70s of multi-unit apartments. Plus, more homes are actually lived in by the owners as opposed to rentals, so that is also encouraging. Our neighborhood has lots of professional people in it – lawyers, schoolteachers, medical people, etc. Riverside Terrace is really a nice place, and we are actively involved in the neighborhood. We recently were able to get the Prevailing Lot and Building Line ordinances approved through City Council. I have come across one or two homeowners (who happened to be black) who worried about the “gentrification” of the neighborhood, but then there are several white families (non-jewish) who never left the neighborhood, and have been in their homes since they were built in the 1920s.
Yes, I have obviously confused the two –however, I still don’t care for this chartreuse house. As for banning me for having an opinion and living up a usually very dull dead thread, that’s seems very Third Reich or Stalanist. I appreciate Gus allowing differing opinions and some “hyperbole”. Those who live in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones–and we all live in some kind of glass house.
As for the typos –I use an iPhone and text fast and autocorrect is horrid and when I try to go up and correct things the entire comment gets erased and I end up doing to all over–so deal with it, Professor Higgins.
So Shannon, then all you really have to say is “I don’t really like this house”. There’s no need for a bunch of other verbiage that insults the owner, architect, builder, etc.
Very good points about Riverside Terrace. I appreciate that people are still calling it RT and not McGregregor Park, it was annoying that a few loud! people tried their best to change the neighborhoods name. As he/she attests, there was a nice house here before this hot mess was thrown up–nice to have a perspective of someone who actually has lived in the neighborhood for more than a decade, tho I’m sure somebody will call him/her a racist etc–who knows why, but they will–Quannel X, calling.