GENSLER LAYOFFS A source who may have spent a little too much time with a chainsaw after Hurricane Ike reports on industry conditions: “It is super bad out there right now. Lending has absolutely ground to a halt. Most of my peers have almost zero pipeline beyond existing signed contracts or institutional work (esp. schools). [The Houston office of architecture firm] Gensler had layoffs this past week, though I would call laying off 16 people ‘trimming the dead limbs off the tree.’” [Swamplot inbox]
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Houston Architects
Houston architect Lars W. Bang passed away on Friday. He was 87. His firm, Lars Bang Associates, designed many now-classic Midcentury Modern homes in the Houston area, including several in Memorial Bend.
Bang also designed this home at 4815 Braesvalley Dr. in Meyerland. Bang’s poignant 2007 return visit to that address was featured in Swamplot earlier this year.
Memorial services are scheduled for 10 this morning at Forest Park Westheimer, 12800 Westheimer.
- Lars W. Bang [Houston Chronicle, via Swamplot inbox]
- The House That Time and Architect Forgot [Swamplot]
Photo of 4815 Braesvalley Dr.: Meg Zoller
The Houston Business Journal‘s Jennifer Dawson is reporting that the Novati Group’s plan to dust off a 15-year-old Ziegler Cooper design for a 20-story office tower and build it on the West Loop
appears to be in limbo. The deal isn’t dead, but it’s not moving forward.
The problems: finding debt financing . . . and that pre-leasing thing.
Meanwhile, Dawson expects Transwestern to announce details soon on a large new addition to Uptown’s Four Oaks Place — to replace the 24-Hour Fitness on Post Oak Blvd. owned by TIAA-CREF:
The proposed building being called Tower Five at Four Oaks Place is now set to be 30 stories tall, with 525,000 square feet of office space on 22 floors atop a parking garage with roughly 1,500 spaces, says Carleton Riser, head of Transwestern’s development group.
He says the building designed by architectural firm Pickard Chilton could break ground in the first quarter of 2009.
The fact that no tenants have committed to the new building won’t delay construction, Riser says.
- Office buildings on and off [Houston Business Journal]
- That Nineties Retro Tower Coming to the West Loop [Swamplot]
- New West Loop Tower: Keeping the Uptown Office Market Up to Date [Swamplot]
Rendering: Ziegler Cooper
A tipster informs us that the lovely 1.35-acre lot at 6040 Glen Cove in Memorial — which had been languishing on the market for about a year and a half — has finally been bought! The purchaser: County Judge candidate David Mincberg.
And apparently, Mincberg isn’t too interested in that free Talbott Wilson Midcentury Modern home that comes with it.
Photo of 6040 Glen Cove St.: HAR
For those of you still fascinated by that Tin House in Rice Military designed by Natalye Appel featured here Wednesday: Photos of the house dating from the . . . uh, Golden Age of Tin Houses in the West End, circa 1992.
Remember when it looked like the entire West End was going to go . . . metal? It was going to be the Tin House District: Hot young architects inserting daring steel-sided homes between ramshackle bungalows . . . with great sensitivity to the sleepy little neighborhood.
Here’s a Rice Military home Natalye Appel designed for Sarah Balinskas in 1992. And it’s for lease! Have a peek inside . . .
And here it is: Weingarten’s two-story replacement for the northwesternmost River Oaks Shopping Center building at West Gray and Shepherd the company tore down last year.
One goal of this design seems pretty clear: Build a wedge building that helps forge a split between the two tiny groups that might otherwise join together to raise a stink about Weingarten’s larger redevelopment plans for that shopping center, the River Oaks Theater across the street, and the Alabama Theater Shopping Center further south on Shepherd. Preservation-preferring sentimentalists, ready to grumble that this isn’t the curve you expected or the black-and-white Art Deco-ish look you wanted, say hello to your design-elite friends, who are already breathing a sigh of relief that the new building at least isn’t going to be fakey retro. No, it’s not the cleanest Modern thing they’ve seen, but they know it’s the closest they’re likely to get from Heights Venture Architects. Look, Ma! No cornice!
There’s no sense catering to that second group too much though, because Weingarten will need them to be somewhat dispirited so the rest of the strategy can work. No, this wasn’t the wedge we expected, but hey, it’ll do! And it’s sure to draw attention away from the parking garage. Now remind us why we wanted to save that theater again?
After the jump: Close-ups! Site plans! Come back, Jamba Juice — all is forgiven!
A reader sends photos of the new Memorial Hills Apartments under construction just north of Memorial Drive and west of Jackson Hill at 3200 Scotland St., on the site of the old . . . Memorial Hills Apartments! The new apartments are being developed by Gables Residential, and were designed by Ziegler Cooper Architects.
The apartments will be 8 stories tall and face Cleveland Park directly to the south. The parking garage will be on the north side of the site.
Below: more reader photos of the construction site, plus pretty words and pictures from Ziegler Cooper!
From Ziegler Cooper Architects’ website: Renderings of a 20-story office tower the firm designed back in the early 1990s.
As we reported in February, the Novati Group plans to build the 500,000-square-foot spec tower, along with an 8-level parking garage, at 1600 West Loop South — next to Post Oak Motor Cars, on land purchased from Landry’s. The only changes from the original design will be adjustments so the building can qualify for LEED Silver certification.
So what if the design is old? Worrying that your brand new building already looks dated is so . . . last decade!
After the jump: the marble in the lobby will be old, too!
This 4-bedroom, 2,800-plus-square-foot 1956 Modern home for sale on Braesvalley was designed by Houston architect Lars Bang.
Or was it? A few days after the home was featured as a Houston Mod “Mod of the Month” last October, Realtor Meg Zoller described her attempts to identify the designer in her blog:
A week or so ago we had Lars Bang come by the Braesvalley home in an attempt to authenticate the fact that he built it. Lars Bang must be in his 80’s or so. He had a friend of his drive him to see the home. He has a very outgoing personality and it was believed that he was excited about the possibility of it being one of his homes. My husband, Jim, helped him out of the car and invited him into the house, but Mr. Bang’s knees aren’t what they used to be . . .and he just wanted to stand out front and look at the house. After some time he decided that he could not confidently say whether the home was one of his designs or not.
The owner was so disappointed when she heard the news. She really wanted it to be one of his designs.
After the jump: the actual architect of this uh, memorable Meyerland home!
A reader directs our attention to this proposed 16-story office building facing the south side of the Katy Freeway, just outside the Loop — on the current site of a Houston’s First Baptist Church parking lot.
Hines plans to build the office building and an 11-level, 1,500-car parking garage on the lot, which the developer would lease from the church. The congregation has already voted to authorize church representatives to finalize and sign a 99-year ground lease for the property.
The garage would help solve the church’s chronic parking problems: According to the HFBC website, 300 cars currently park off-site on weekends. With the Hines development, the church would lose the 480 spaces in the lot now available during the week, but gain 1,500 spaces for church use on weekends and after office hours.
Below the fold, lots more images of the proposed office building and garage on HFBC property.
This landscape plan from the Boymelgreen website is our first glimpse of the two condo towers the company is planning for 5.5 acres on the southwest corner of the intersection of San Felipe and a short segment of Woodway — just west of Voss, on the Right Bank of Buffalo Bayou. And this morning the Houston Business Journal has more to report:
New York City-based Boymelgreen Developers is developing the project for landowner Azorim, a publicly traded company in Israel of which Boymelgreen owns 64 percent. . . . The unnamed project will consist of two buildings with 28 residential floors each and an 18,000-square-foot fitness center and spa. The project will have a total of 237 condos starting at $1 million each. Units will be an average size of 2,500 square feet.
The architect is Ziegler Cooper. Boymelgreen’s website refers to the project as the San Felipe Condominiums. (And it reports a building that’s 14 condos smaller.)
Jennifer Dawson’s report in the HBJ says that sales won’t start until the fall, after a sales center — which will later “be converted into a spa, restaurant or office building” — is built on the site of the former Dolce & Freddo next door.
Below the fold: That 1960s office-and-shopping center on the site won’t go quietly!
This time, the folks selling the home at 3740 Willowick in River Oaks are really going all out.
Maybe last November they hoped that the release of Stephen Fox’s The Country Houses of John F. Staub would unleash a new era of interest in the Houston architect — and result in a recordbreaking price for the 1955 Staub-designed ranch-like mansion backing up to Buffalo Bayou, across from Memorial Park.
The book did fine, but Staubmania never really took off. Now, almost five months later, the sellers can’t harbor any illusions.
This time, the John Staub marketing machine kicks into full gear:
This massive 20,000-sq.-ft. home featured on New York Architect Alexander Gorlin‘s website is under construction at 2950 Lazy Lane in River Oaks. The Museum of Fine Arts’ Bayou Bend Collection is next door.
Gorlin’s client is the youngest member of the Forbes 400 list of the Richest Americans (he’s number 317): 34-year-old former Enron trader John Arnold, who now runs secretive Centaurus Energy, a small but extraordinarily successful hedge fund company that trades energy commodities.
Four years ago, Arnold bought a recently renovated 1926 home in the French Norman manorial style in the Homewoods subdivision of River Oaks. The home, which had sat on the market for close to three years, was designed by Houston architect Birdsall Briscoe in collaboration with John Staub, who also built the Bayou Bend estate for the children of former Texas governor James Hogg next door. Briscoe’s creation was dubbed “Dogwoods” by Hogg’s son Michael, who lived there for many years with his wife.
A year after purchasing Dogwoods — currently valued by HCAD at $4.9 million — Arnold angered River Oaks preservationists by tearing it down.
After the jump, more illustrations of the house John Arnold will be trading into, plus a few photos of the one he didn’t leave behind.
Thanks to an alert poster on HAIF, we now have a more up-to-date and better view of Discovery Tower, Trammel Crow’s 30-story office building — designed by Gensler and planned for a perch on the north side of Discovery Green Downtown.
Other HAIF participants have been speculating whether the shorter white poles at the top of the image are supposed to be . . . wind turbines!
Well, are they? Scrutinize a larger version of the rendering and judge for yourself . . . below the fold.
