RDA celebrates 30 years of advancing architecture and urban design in Houston

RDA celebrates 30 years of advancing architecture and urban
design in Houston
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BY LINDA SYLVAN
Special to the Rice News

In 1972, David
Crane, then the new dean of architecture at Rice University,
saw a problem. Houston was fixated on expansion, but hardly
anyone discussed publicly what was being built, or what
ought to be built, or what the city as a whole should be.
There ought to be a way, he thought, to encourage that discussion.

Crane’s
idea turned into the Rice Design Alliance (RDA), one of
Rice’s first community outreach groups and now 1,650
members strong. This year RDA turns 30, and its magazine,
Cite, turns 20. RDA and Cite supporters will celebrate these
two special occasions at the annual RDA benefit gala Nov.
2 at Reliant Stadium.

RDA began as
a fledgling group of academics and architects that sponsored
public forums and lectures. They addressed significant yet
under-discussed issues: land use, mass transit, preservation,
modern architecture, zoning, flood control, air quality,
housing and public art. (Later, those discussions would
lead to obvious results. A 1995 forum on community values
and freeway design gave birth to a nonprofit organization
that challenged a proposed expansion of the Southwest Freeway.
And at a 1998 RDA symposium on mass transit at the James
A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy, Mayor Lee Brown
announced his willingness to consider a rail system —
a milestone for transit-leery Houston.)

In 1977, RDA
launched lecture programs featuring the brightest (and often
most controversial) architects and critics. Many played
to overflow crowds in the refined atmosphere of the Museum
of Fine Arts’ lecture hall. RDA lecture programs gave
Houston its first opportunity to hear architects such as
Frank Gehry, Cesar Pelli, Helmut Jahn, Steven Holl and Rem
Koolhaas before they became international superstars —
and Richard Meier, Aldo Rossi, Robert Venturi, Rafael Moneo,
Renzo Piano and Glenn Murcutt before any of them had won
the Pritzker Prize, architecture’s most prestigious
award.

In 1978 RDA began
offering architectural tours — opportunities to peer
inside some of the most interesting houses in neighborhoods
such as Shadowlawn, Tiel Way and Broadacres. Themed tours
included “Tin Houses,” “Rancheros Deluxe,”
“Lofts” and “Modern Landmarks.” In 2000,
RDA tours took off to other cities: RDA guides escorted
small groups on architectural visits to Pittsburgh, Los
Angeles and Savannah, Ga. This year’s tours will visit
Tamaulipas, Mexico, in February and Chicago in June.

In 1985, RDA
began directly promoting high-quality public spaces by sponsoring
design competitions. The first, in 1985, attracted 119 entries
from across the country, and resulted in a design for Houston’s
Sesquicentennial Park, north of downtown along Buffalo Bayou
— a project now largely completed. In 1992, Houston’s
parks and recreation department and the fledgling Friends
of Hermann Park joined RDA to sponsor “Heart of the
Park,” held in memory of longtime Rice architecture
dean O. Jack Mitchell. Designers were asked to consider
improvements for the scruffy stretch between
Hermann Park’s Sam Houston Monument to its Grand Basin.
Because of the competition, noted landscape architect Laurie
Olin was commissioned to create a new master plan, and the
Heart of the Park improvements will be realized next summer.

In 1982 RDA spawned
Cite: The Architecture and Design Review of Houston. The
first cover story, “Trading Toilets,” explained
how limited sewer capacity was stifling development inside
the 610 Loop. In the same issue, the magazine — printed
on tabloid-sized newsprint — announced its intention
to be “a forum for the presentation and criticism of
issues unique to the developing city.” Fifty-five issues
later, Cite still is churning out articles on planning,

architecture, the urban environment and the city’s
past and preservation, now under the direction of Editorial
Chairman Danny Marc Samuels ’71 and managing editor
Lisa Gray ’88.

William F. Stern,
one of Cite’s founding board members, recalls how the
magazine got its name: “‘Sprawl’ was suggested
but rejected as at least as applicable to Los Angeles as
Houston.” The board also turned down “RADAR,”
an imperfect acronym for Rice Design Alliance Architecture
Review. Finally, they settled on “Cite” —
a word that, Stern says, “reverberated with homonyms:
‘site,’ ‘sight’ and ‘cite,’
not to mention how it works with an accented final “e”
as a continental version of ‘city.’” Over
the years, the magazine has dripped with puns. Sections
were called “Citelines,” “Citetations,”
“Cite Seeing,” “Big Citè Beat,”
“Cite Survey,” “HindCite,” “ForeCite,”
“Out of Cite” and “OverCite.”

In 2000 Cite
published an issue in color for the first time: 20 pages
of full-color aerial photographs, shot by Alex S. MacLean,
showed Houston from above, its refineries and subdivisions
looking like computer chips. Those photographs were the
subjects of an exhibit co-sponsored by RDA at the Menil
Collection.

But MacLean is
hardly the photographer whose work has most defined Cite.
Since the magazine’s beginning, its stories have benefited
from the intelligent photos of Paul Hester ’71. In
1999, RDA and the Menil Collection exhibited Hester’s
photographs of Houston. Rice alumnus Doug Milburn’s
catalog essay gave the show its haunting name: “Elusive
City.”

Houston, of course,
remains elusive. The Rice Design Alliance has pursued it
for 30 years, but the chase is far from over. The city still
defies description, much less planning. The discussions
that David Crane imagined 30 years ago have only just begun.

For membership
and program information, visit the RDA Web site, <www.rda.rice.edu>.

RDA
gala to celebrate anniversaries
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The 16th annual
Rice Design Alliance Gala will celebrate the 20th year of
the continuous publication of Cite: The Architecture and
Design Review of Houston. RDA also will celebrate its 30th
anniversary, making it one of the oldest community outreach
programs at Rice University. The evening will include dinner,
dancing to music by the Kyle Turner Group and a silent auction.

The gala will
be held on the club level of Reliant Stadium, 8400 Kirby
Drive, at 7 p.m. Saturday, Nov. 2.

Funds raised
at the gala will support the 2003 RDA programs and four
issues of Cite.
For more information, call RDA at (713) 348-4876.

— Linda
Sylvan is executive director of the Rice Design Alliance.