Table of Contents
Contributors
Joel Warren Barna; Margaret Culbertson; Stephen Fox; J.B. Jackson; Carlos Jimenez; Barbara Koerble; Michael Kuchta; Karal Ann Marling; Gary McKay; Eduardo Robles; Drexel Turner; Bruce C. Webb; and Mary Ellen Whirworth.
Cite 28
Spring 1992
Editor’s Note
Cite 28 was guest edited by Drexel Turner. The following is an excerpt from Turner's obituary for Rice School of Architecture Dean O. Jack Mitchell:
As dean of architecture at Rice, Jack was responsible for strengthening the school's graduate programs. He also expanded its involvement in community affairs, particularly through the agency of the Rice Design Alliance (which with his encouragement and participation launched the publication of Cite in 1982) and through the exhibitions program of the Parish Gallery (the operation of which he inaugurated in 198 1 and sustained thereafter). He was instrumental in bringing geographer ]. B. Jackson, historian of architecture and urban form Spiro Kosiof, and experimental artist Robert Irwin to Rice for successive appointments as Cullinen Professor ol Art, Architecture, and Urban Planning. He assured the engagement of James Stirling and Michael Wilford as architects for the expansion and renovation of the School of Architecture - the firm's first project to be built in the United States and one that, by virtue of its contextual empathy and discretion, was commended by Colin Rowe as an exemplary piece of civic design. This, Rowe noted, "in Houston . . . is particularly crucial and rare and therefore one must salute what has been done at Rice and those persons (not only Stirling and Wilford) who are responsible."
Jack's principal concern as an urbanist focused on cities like Houston, which as a consequence of their newness lack instances of special appeal such as he discerned in Charleston and Savannah, San Antonio and New Orleans, Barcelona and Mexico City, and even Miami and Los Angeles. He was especially appreciative of the town-making strategies of Andres Duany and Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk, whose approach and sensibility he found particularly applicable to Houston in the case of the Founders Park Fourth Ward area adjoining downtown. He was also keenly aware of Hermann Park's potential to become the most pleasurable civic place in Houston, as suggested in plans for its rehabilitation by Charles Moore and the Urban Innovations Group at UCLA, which he helped to bring about.
As chairman of the board of the South Main Center Association in 1987 and as a founding member of the Friends of Hermann Park in 1991, Jack was committed to seeking a more effective institutional framework for the stewardship and advancement of the park. In 1985-86, jack helped to organize, and served on the jury for, the Houston Sesquicentennial Park Competition, the first such competition in the city's history.
Drexel Turner