February exhibit showcases the diversity of buildings and projects designed by Architecture Professor William Cannady

February exhibit showcases the diversity of buildings and
projects designed by Architecture Professor William Cannady
…………………………………………………………………

BY B.J. ALMOND
Rice News Staff

Prison, hospital,
school, library, bank, church, house, office building —
you name it, and Rice Professor of Architecture William
Cannady has probably designed and built one during the past
four and a half decades.

“The only
type of building I haven’t done is a funeral home,”
he joked.

Sketches, blueprints,
models and photographs from some of the 200 projects that
Cannady has worked on as a college student, faculty member
or private architect will be on display Feb. 7-28 as the
School of Architecture presents “45 Years: William
T. Cannady, FAIA, Architect.”

Cannady’s
repertoire includes work in the private and public sectors.
The City of Houston, for example, hired him to design a
training center for employees. His firm designed Jones Plaza
— the focal point of Houston’s cultural district
— across from Jones Hall and the Alley Theatre.

During the ’70s
Cannady designed Lovett Square, a 36-unit project of town
houses that occupies the entire block surrounded by Brazos,
Tuam, Bagby and Anita just south of downtown.

“This set
an international standard for how to redevelop inner-city
urban housing,” Cannady said. “It used land to
create a lot of open space and includes garages to hide
cars so that they don’t dominate the setting.”

Cannady said
he still gets requests from visitors from Germany and Japan
to look at Lovett Square when they’re in Houston.

Cannady used
to live in the house he built on the corner of Montrose
and Bissonnet. Because it’s located across from two
museums, the house had to be sympathetic to the architecture
of the museum district, but Cannady also gave it urban qualities
for a single-family household.

Other houses
he has designed include the “palace-like” home
of basketball star Hakeem Olajuwon in Sugar Land and the
private residence currently under construction on Rice Boulevard
across from the Owls’ football practice field.

Cannady also
has lent his architectural expertise to the Rice campus.
He served as the design architect for the major renovation
of Keith-Wiess Geological Laboratories and M.D. Anderson
Biological Laboratories, as well as for renovation of the
third floor of the Space Science Building, which now houses
the Center for Nanoscale Science and Technology.

He was the architect
for the most recent addition to Cohen House as well as for
the 1975 addition. And along with being chair of the University
Parking Committee, Cannady served as architect for the Rice
University Parking Study 2000-2010, which provided the basis
for the system of gates recently installed around the parking
lots.

One of Cannady’s
most recent projects, the design of the newly relocated
Houston Area Women’s Center, can’t be included
in the current exhibit. The center is a shelter for battered
women and their children, and its location is confidential.

To prevent men
from following their children home from school to find out
where the shelter is, Cannady designed the new facility
with its own schooling complex. “The new center is
completely hidden,” he said. “It’s the first
of its kind in the nation.” He noted that the only
way to enter the center is by ambulance, police escort or
taxi.

Cannady has a
bachelor of architecture degree from the University of California–Berkeley
and a master’s from Harvard University. He did postgraduate
study at University College London.

He’s been
teaching at Rice since 1964 while also maintaining a general
practice of his own. His former students are now “all
over the place,” he said. A survey of 100 schools of
architecture conducted a few years ago revealed that 10
of them –- including Harvard’s – were headed
by architects that Cannady taught.

That makes Cannady
proud. So does his election by peers to the College of Fellows
of the American Institute of Architects — one of the
AIA’s highest honors.

Whether he’s
designing a 5,000-acre prison near Huntsville or the Northern
Trust Bank near the intersection of Kirby and Westheimer,
Cannady views the most challenging aspect of a job as helping
the client define the problem of what to build.

“A lot of
times they have preconceived something they want to do,”
he said. “You have to question what they want to do
and why before you start the drawing. You need to make sure
you define the problem before you go out and solve it.”

Cannady has intended
his buildings to be easy to construct, use, maintain and
enjoy. His teaching and architectural work are rooted in
the philosophy of pragmatism, which aspires to preserve
tradition while pioneering change.

The exhibit showcasing
selected works by Cannady can be viewed weekdays from 9
a.m. until 5 p.m. in Anderson Hall’s Farish Gallery,
starting Feb. 7.