A few months ago, Andrew Garrison saw my post about Project Row House and sent me a copy of the documentary he directed called Third Ward TX. This is a project that is so genius and moving to me; I’ve been following its progress for years. If you’d like to catch up, you really need to screen this film. I’ve dreaded and thus procrastinated writing this review for months because I know that words can’t do it justice. The last time I was moved to tears by a project or an exhibit was Gee’s Bend Quilts. It doesn’t happen often to this old cynic!

In 1993, Rick Lowe founded Project Row House. He was struck by how much the dilapidated shotgun shacks in the city of Houston reminded him of John Biggers’ paintings. He calls the shotgun shack “a humble abode and a temple.” As Lowe and a group of artists renovated the homes, they created a community where artists-in-residence would come stay and exhibit. Thus, the artists engaged the community and brought attention to a place that had been abandoned by many. Once a neighborhood with a small town feel, the area had fallen on hard times.

The first major result of PRH was eight exhibition houses housing two different artist per year, with exhibitions and exhibitions in progress showing for six months a year. The doors are open for people to walk through. Exhibits range from portraits to this 2001 Walter Hood installation:

After reaching this success, Lowe realized it was only the tip of the iceberg in helping the community. Thus, The Young Mothers in Residency Program was born. Single mothers were able to live in housing that is part of the project, and they are aided by mentor moms. They live rent free for two years while completing educations. These families become part of a thriving community. The amount of dignity this effort brings to people seems too powerful to describe. Read the rest of this entry »

It’s a long weekend, and many of you may be getting your first chance to really work in the yard this year. Here are a few of my personal favorites for inspiration. Enjoy!

Fletcher Steele at Naumkeag.   House by McKim, Mead and White.  This property is chock full of amazing garden rooms that are perfectly proportioned.

The Miller Garden, Columbus Indiana, by Dan Kiley. One of the best architect/landscape architect collaborations ever, between Kiley and architect Eero Saarinen.

The Pavilion Gardens at my alma mater, The University of Virginia, Charlottesville, Virginia, originally by Thomas Jefferson.

I have not found a great comprehensive website documenting the Pavilion Gardens with good photographs; my best bet turned out to be flickr (where else? ). This one comes from flickr member abbyworld – Thanks abbyworld!. There seems to be a Thomas Jefferson/University of Virginia/Landscape Architecture hole on the web that needs to be filled. This is, I believe, the garden behind Pavilion VI. The sculpture is the Merton Spire, which according to these folks over at UVa, was “carved for Oxford’s Merton College Chapel in 1451. In 1928 it was given to the University to honor Jefferson’s educational ideals”. I’ve always loved this garden, as it is known as a wilderness garden, and thus is filled with native plants and is not arranged in a tight geometric plan. It stands out from the quincunxes, allees, and carefully pruned boxwood one sees around the rest of the campus, ahem, excuse me, grounds!

It’s interesting; even though the dates of these designs ranges from Jefferson’s era (around 1810) to the Guilded Age to the apex of modernism in late 1950s, I consider each of them modern in their own way, which is why I did not arrange them in chronological order.

•Image from Fletcher Steele, Landscape Architect, by Robin Karsen, published by Abrams/Sagapress 1989. Photograph by the great landscape photographer, Alan Ward

•Image from The Miller Garden: Icon of Modernism, by Gary Hildebrand and David Dillon, published by Spacemaker Press 1989. Photograph, again, by who else? Alan Ward

•Image from flickr member abbyworld

I received this notice from Flavorpill today and first of all I just LOVE Shana’s writing. What an clever paragraph. It’s so much better than the standard event announcement:

Steve Martin famously said that talking about music is like dancing about architecture; tonight at the Hammer, audiences finally get to see that idea (almost) in action, as unpredictable architect Frank Gehry has it out with Bard College president and renowned classical-music scholar/conductor Leon Botstein, who commissioned Gehry to design Bard’s performing-arts center in 1996. Expect an entertaining chat about the progressive relationship between architects and cultural institutions, how to deal with large-room acoustics, and what they really think of the new LACMA down the street. - Shana Nys Dambrot

This will be a free lecture this Sunday at 2:00 p.m. at The Hammer Museum in L.A and it should be fantastic. While in hot demand all over the world now, Frank Gehry has had his longest and most significant design relationship with L.A. over any other city. Furthermore, he has been crafting relationships between music and architecture for many years. He redesigned The Hollywood Bowl shell in 1970 and again in 1980, The Walt Disney Concert Hall in 1989, and The Experience Music Project in 1999. I’d love to know what he was listening to while designing each project. Read the rest of this entry »