11/15/13 10:00am

The uncommon 62 (and a half!)-ft. width of this West University lot near the city’s park on Sunset Blvd. gives a 1992 contemporary home by the late Preston Bolton room to change up the typical front, flow, and footprint found in the plethora of Georgians built around that time in the neighborhood. Bolton’s custom design for the current owner stacks living space back from the street, on a 20-ft.-setback block, and features a well-established lattice espalier as well as distinct geometric gates and grill work a spider would be happy to call its handiwork, despite slightly shaggy landscaping creeping onto the front walkway:

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11/12/13 11:45am

How about a public park that also serves as a multi-story entrance to Downtown’s extensive underground tunnel system? One that might even provide a little natural light or outdoor seating for below-the-deck diners? This pie-in-the-basement concept for the block-size surface parking lot between One and Two Shell Plaza made an appearance in the Chronicle‘s real estate blog last week — though the architecture firm Gensler had first posted it online this past spring. For the company’s own “Town Square Initiative,” designers were charged with envisioning a new type of town square for various cities around the globe. Tunnel Loop Square, for the block surrounded by Walker, McKinney, Louisiana, and Milam, was one of several proposals stemming from the firm’s Houston office.

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11/05/13 11:00am

Here’s a view, from high above the auto-repair shop to its northeast, of that 7-story apartment block Trammell Crow Residential plans to build on the block-sized vacant lot at the corner of Main St. and Hadley it purchased last month from the Houston Fire Museum. The 215-unit building designed by Houston’s EDI International will be called the Alexan Midtown. The 1.44-acre property was given to the fire museum in the mid-1990s by anonymous donors, writes the HBJ‘s Shaina Zucker. The institution accepted the buyout offer after a lackluster 9-year fundraising campaign to build a new exhibit hall on the property on the rail line 3 blocks south of the Pierce Elevated flamed out. Construction is scheduled to begin in January.

Rendering: Trammell Crow Residential/EDI International

10/10/13 10:35am

Architecture firm Stern and Bucek has come up with this rendering of the Menil Collection’s new cafe, part of the free museum’s long-planned expansion of its Montrose campus. The design for the cafe — which is yet to be named but will be run by Greg Martin (of Cafés Annie and Express and Taco Milagro) — appears to adapt and elaborate upon the gray bungalow at 1512 Sul Ross St., on the other side of that path from the Menil Bookstore; this is the same site, says a press release from the Menil Collection, that architect Renzo Piano originally had in mind for a similar amenity. So there’s that. Whatever it’ll be called, the cafe, it appears, will split the difference between the museum’s main entrance and the parking lot off W. Alabama.

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10/01/13 2:00pm

We don’t have all that many to spare, but it appears that there will soon be one fewer thin-shell paraboloid roof in Houston: HISD says it plans to demolish the 1958 James M. Delmar Fieldhouse (known now as the Delmar-Tusa Fieldhouse) and build a new facility in its place. According to a press release, the old stadium is “currently in poor condition with major roof leaks, flooding problems in the locker rooms and a sports medicine area that falls short of athletic league standards.”

The 5,000-seat swayback fieldhouse is located at 2020 Mangum Rd., just outside the Loop in Lazybrook and Timbergrove. Designed by Milton McGinty, who also had a hand in the Rice Stadium, the gym served as the home court in the ’60s for UH and the Elvin Hayes-powered Coogs. But it would seem that HISD wants to make haste and move on from that history: “The goal is to have the site ready for construction as soon as possible and complete the replacement facility by late 2016.”

Photo: Houston Daily Photo

09/27/13 2:30pm

Architect Kenneth Bentsen designed quite a few institutional buildings in Houston, including Phillip Guthrie Hoffman Hall and Agnes Arnold Hall, shown here, at the University of Houston campus. Other buildings to Bentsen’s name include the Texas Children’s Hospital Complex and the Houston Summit (which is now, of course, Lakewood Church). As an architecture student at UH, Bentsen worked with Donald Barthelme and Howard Barnstone and began his career in the ’50s at MacKie and Kamrath. He ran his own practice here from 1958 until 1991. Bentsen passed away this week on Tuesday, September 24.

Photo: University of Houston

08/23/13 3:45pm

To see the Mods of the Month this time, you’ll have to head out to Lake Jackson. One of the 3 featured homes has already gone Option Pending, but this one, a few miles off the Nolan Ryan Expressway at 530 Circle Way St., is still available at $179,900. Designed by Houston architect Allen R. Williams, who began his career working with John Staub, the 1954 3-bedroom, 2-bath mod sits on a creek-edged property near the Lake Jackson Intermediate School.

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07/19/13 4:00pm

Some of the green that goes with this early player in energy-conscious home building in Bellaire could be the $200,000 price increase over its sale last July, when it went for $1.35 million. The ca. 2002 limestone-and-stucco property with Texas Hill Country stylin’ — designed back then for her own family by architect Kathleen Reardon — popped back up on the market earlier this week with a $1.55 million asking price. Some of the enviro-sensitive elements are visible from the get-go, such as the deep overhangs on the eaves. Others are buried deep in the lot — where a network of caverns 250-ft. deep use underground temperatures to regulate the air conditioning and heating. Solar panels and low-water landscaping also play the green card.

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07/18/13 4:30pm

Boosted optics amp up the color wattage in the listing photos for this pool-centric, book-loving Southampton home by Rice architecture professor William Cannady. The revamped 1971 property just east of Greenbriar is still lookin’ all gussied up after its April appearance on a recent Rice Design Alliance home tour. In June, it popped up on the market, increasing its price by $100K to $1,485,000 the day after its listing.

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06/10/13 12:00pm

A source at Hilcorp says that the company has revealed what it’s planning to build in place of the soon-to-be-demolished Downtown Macy’s, vacant since closing in early March: And will the new HQ look anything like that mostly glass box from Munoz + Albin that appeared online a few months ago?

“Nope, nothing like it,” says the source. It’ll be “a regular looking office building tower over 20 stories high.” Though it doesn’t appear to take up the whole block: “I’m assuming there are going to be purdy trees and green stuff around it.” Employees were shown a rendering of the tower at a recent meeting, says the source, but it was quickly removed from the company’s online newsletter: “I guess because they didn’t want it out there.”

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05/31/13 10:00am

When last we visited this home at the western edge of Memorial Bend, built in 1958 from a design by noted Houston architect Lars Bang, the trees were a smidge shorter and the open-plan interior perhaps a bit less tweaked. That was 5 years ago, for a listing that never found a buyer. Last fall, the midcentury-mod-gone-whatever property returned to the market at $565,000 — though within a couple of months the price had fallen to $499,000. (Price histories posted for the property indicate a couple contracts didn’t go through.) Earlier this month, however, the flat-topped specimen overlooking Rummel Creek and the Edith L. Moore Bird Sanctuary popped back up with a big bang of a price increase, to $679,000.

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05/30/13 2:30pm

Overlooking Hogg Park and White Oak Bayou, the old Robert E. Lee Elementary school is being renovated into a community center for the Near Northside. The school was designed by Alfred C. Finn and dates to 1919 and 1920, though it’s been vacant in this historic district since 2002. Architecture firm PGAL is preserving 3 of the building’s walls and decorative geegaws as well as the arched entryway that faces South St.; new space for what’s been named the Leonel J. Castillo Community Center is being built out the back, as this photo shows.

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05/21/13 3:15pm

That steel frame on Centenary St. that roused some West U residents to name-calling and concern-raising 2 years ago now has a steel house built around it — and a single father and his two sons inside. Still, says architect Cameron Armstrong, the build wasn’t as smooth as it might have been: “[C]ertain neighbors were actually quite hostile — they heckled the subcontractors (and not always from across the street!), and made numerous frivolous complaints to the police about things like (non-existent) parking violations by workers. . . . They thought they were living on a street with a predictable visual future, which turned out not to be the case.” Adds Armstrong: “[I]t’s hard to identify substantive objections. . . . The good news is that most of the neighbors are just fine with how the design turned out.”

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