Rice remembers former dean of architecture

Rice remembers former dean of architecture

BY B.J. ALMOND
Rice News staff

David Crane, a former dean of the Rice School of Architecture, died May 20 at the age of 78.

“David made an important, lasting impact at the School of Architecture,” said William Cannady, professor of architecture. “He came on board in 1972 with a long list of initiatives, and he accomplished them.”

One of those objectives was to organize the Rice Design Alliance (RDA) as a community forum for urban environmental problems. The original board of directors for RDA consisted of Crane, Cannady and Jack Mitchell, who was also on the architecture faculty. “The first thing we did was recruit community leaders for the board and expand the membership,” Cannady said. Today, the nonprofit alliance has more than 1,700 members and is dedicated to the advancement of architecture, urban design and the built environment in the Houston region through educational programs, active programs to initiate physical improvements, and publication of Cite: The Architecture and Design Review of Houston.

Crane also formed the Rice Center for Community Design and Research to deal with public policy issues. Though the center no longer exists, it became nationally respected for the urban research conducted by Rice faculty and graduate students. In conjunction with the center, Crane established a new degree program in urban research.

The size of Rice’s architecture faculty doubled under Crane’s leadership, and the schools’ vigorous academic standards and reputation for innovation helped rank Rice’s architectural school seventh in the U.S. in a poll of deans of architecture.

“David Crane made Rice look very good because he led the architecture faculty to focus on researching problems that were relevant to businesses and public agencies and officials, as well as to society in general,” Cannady said.

While dean, Crane was also chairman and CEO of the Crane Design Group, a multifirm urban planning and architectural joint-venture consortium based in Houston. He resigned at the end of 1977 to devote more time to his practice, which was engaged by the Egyptian government to head planning for a new city in the desert as part of the effort to preserve agricultural land in the Nile Delta.

A graduate of Georgia Tech School of Architecture and the Harvard Graduate School of Design, Crane also headed up research resulting in publication of “Developing New Communities: Application of Technological Innovations” involving environmental and energy-saving technology and management recommendations. His firm won numerous national design awards for its innovative approaches to large-scale real estate development for public and private clients.