An architectural homecoming is in store for Rice University as one of Houston’s native sons has returned to his alma mater with a new arts facility unveiled this past week by Diller Scofidio + Renfro.
DS+R Partner and Rice alumnus Charles Renfro will be the lead architect on the new Susan and Fayez Sarofim Hall, an updated version of Rice’s now-demolished Art Barn that was originally commissioned by the illustrious de Menil family in 1969.
The Art Barn’s demolition made way for Michael Maltzan’s award-winning Moody Center, which will now be joined by the new prefabricated DS+R structure, which pays homage to the erstwhile metallic barn and Media Center buildings which were themselves mass-produced by the Butler corporation in the years following World War II. Renfro says it will help consolidate interdisciplinary arts education on campus in order to better meet the demands of students and educators in this highly technical age.
“Cross-disciplinary discourse is a hallmark of the arts in the 21st century, but it has been difficult at Rice since its facilities are scattered all over campus,” the 1989 Rice graduate said. “Sarofim Hall will not only bring these programs together for the first time but also facilitate experimentation and collaboration between disciplines through the use of open, transparent, indoor/outdoor, and public-facing space.”
“The building shell is thought of as a piece of infrastructure: simple, durable and timeless, while the insides can transform as needs change,” he added.
The four-story open interior allows for a program of flexible comprehensive arts spaces while serving as a new gateway to Rice’s 300-acre museum district campus. A public promenade called ArtStreet splits the volume in two, allowing wide-open views of its educational activities and inner workings. The building includes both indoor and outdoor film screening areas as well as shops and office spaces for the expanded Visual and Dramatic Arts (VADA) faculty forming the third and final part of an “arts corridor” that includes the adjacent Moody Center and newly-constructed Brockman Hall for Opera.
“I am excited to see Charles Renfro’s extraordinary artistic vision and unique understanding of our campus culture and history shape the design of this important new facility,” Rice’s President David Leebron said in a statement. “The building anchors one of our key departments […] and completes for now the arts district of our campus that we envisioned.”
DS&R needs to study their history more. The demolished Media Center and Art Barn were actually built in the late '60s/early '70s and not Butler buildings from the 1940's.
An accurate history is here: https://offcite.rice.edu/2010/...
Is there a TWBTA building at Rice they can know down too? They love doing that.
DS+R's transformation from artist-architects into SOM-lite is amazing. There is almost nothing left of the avant garde duo left in the current incarnation. The "R" must have played a huge role in making the practice commercially viable, at the expense of what made 90s/early 00s DS+R so great.
I feel like the little boy who has just seen the emperor's new clothes. It's just amazing how much the diagonal cut of the skylight doesn't add anything to the design.
Sarofim Hall will not only bring these programs together for the first time but also facilitate experimentation and collaboration between disciplines through the use of open, transparent, indoor/outdoor, and public-facing space.
This just sounds like Facebook mysticism—and clannishness. Break down walls, open everything up, make everyone visible to the world and to each other, and magic will happen. Artists need support and public exposure, but they also need to get away from the world to see it and themselves more clearly. If I'm a painter on the second floor, I put up a curtain. The architecture itself gives nothing to anchor or inspire them or react against.
Looks good as a parti diagram though. Which is most of what DS+R and their abbreviate competitors' designs boil down to, whether it's BIG, UNS, OMA NY, MVRDV etc.
Their adaptation of the Metropolitan Storage Warehouse for MIT SA+P will get similar treatment:
https://www.cambridgema.gov/-/media/Files/historicalcommission/pdf/chcmeetingfiles/D1585_app.pdf
Dang, those glass boxes are really massive. And the warehouse is a pretty big building too. Looks like the Cambridge authorities are pretty strict about maintaining the historical facade for the most part.
I've seen renderings where those boxes are cantilevered out at the rear and side. I hate what they've done. They've eviscerated and trivialized an odd yet distinctive building.
oh I love that warehouse project. Looks like Eisenmann is back. It's a gimmick, but a fun one that probably makes nice spaces out of what really is just a facade.
I'm so tired of DS+R renders with the crazy thin window mullions and floor slabs. The actual size of these elements, along with the lighting and HVAC systems omitted/ignored in these renders, will make the actual experience of the building very different than what is shown here. Not to mention that Houston's climate nowadays is horrendously hot and humid for most of the year. The design looks more appropriate for southern California than coastal Texas.
someone touched on this, but it is really amazing how consistently "avant-garde" architects, as they becoming commercially successful, rely on the most disappointing gimmicks to wow their clients, but ultimately produce the most uninspired and wasteful architecture.
I guess clients hired them for their distinct "house" style. The weird thing about DS+R is that even their "house" style has nothing at all to do with their early work. At least for other abbreviates, such as the Dutch firms, you can still see crude traces of the work that made their names in their current commercial rehashes. Not so for DS+R.
cutting a big hole through your building may not be the most energy efficient design
Designed by Houston architects Howard Barnstone and Eugene Aubry, it was faced with corrugated galvanized sheet iron, which was used to materialize its identity as a workshop for art, rather than a pristine gallery.
The Art Barn is a building of exceptional cultural value to Rice University and Houston. It should be preserved and used as a studio for art instruction.
The building, 1969-2014, was meant to provide temporary exhibition space, but it endured some 45 years and housed other artistic functions, gathering a following along the way and, with time, with the following, memories. It has character but makes no pretense. And it sets a priority: what happens inside is more important than how it looks. Go ahead, rough it up, spill paint, slap art on it, knock down some walls, put others up. It won't look any better or worse for wear, rather becomes enhanced. It invites creation without distracting or channeling the artist in any way. (I make a similar case for the Metropolitan Storage Warehouse, MIT SA+P, here.)
The name "Art Barn" came later, a popular designation. The DS+R project references it, maybe, but so slightly that the memory will soon vanish. They should have just created another type. They force a superficial vision of collective activity and create a volume so pristine, inside and out, one might be fearful of violating it.
Where will the Tatlin tower go?
Also Rice used local architects for the Art Barn. I'm not sure what they gain by tapping DS+R beyond the prestige of having a DS+R. And here we see the purpose of the diagonal stripe: it is branding, like a designer's name on a shirt.
https://www.houstonchronicle.com/lifestyle/home-design/article/baytown-rice-university-architecture-arts-building-16641529.php
Aha, so it is a Renfro project. You can kind of tell which projects at DS+R he's in charge of. To be fair, DS would never have achieved commercial success if they hadn't joined forces with R in the late 90s - he transformed the practice from an artistic duo into a firm that can compete with the likes of the SuperDutch in terms of prestige and the American abbreviates in terms of project scope.
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