Issue link: http://papercitymagazine.uberflip.com/i/162531
A SPLENDID BRICOLAGE of EAST&WEST BY BEN KOUSH. PHOTOGRAPHY JACK THOMPSON. ART DIRECTION MICHELLE AVIÑA. ARCHITECTURE MICHAEL LANDRUM. INTERIOR DESIGN GARRETT HUNTER. LANDSCAPE DESIGN SARAH LAKE. In the early 1970s, architect and Rice professor Peter Papademetriou scandalized the city's architectural establishment by candidly describing Houston's roughand-tumble physical appearance in its first architectural guide, Houston: An Architectural Guide, 1972, and later in articles he wrote as a regional correspondent for the magazines Progressive Architecture and Domus. Ever since, modern Houston has been a compelling case study for the evolution of the contemporary American city. Its architecture, unlike that of neighboring Dallas, San Antonio and Austin (limestone, O'Neil Ford and Lake/Flato), has historically been less regionally focused and more cosmopolitan in outlook. John Staub, Houston's great architect of the 1920s, for example, spent much of that decade pushing what he called "Latin Colonial" architecture, which was all the more wonderfully perverse considering that Houston had almost no citizens of actual Latin descent at the time. Which brings us to this new house designed by Michael Landrum. Like Houston, it is perhaps best described as a splendid amalgam of the traditional and modern. Landrum, a San Antonio native, has worked in a wide-ranging mode since his arrival in Houston some 20 years ago. If his work has any single underlying theme, it is surely "multifarious variety." According to architectural critic Stephen Fox, Landrum's designs "never lack bravado," and this certainly applies to the house he designed for Zuzette and Greg Cullinan in Spring Branch, a few blocks north of the monolithic IKEA. Amid a sea of earth-toned, one-story 1960s-era ranch houses, the street elevation of the two-story, mostly windowless, black-painted Cullinan house — a tense mass of interlocking cubes — makes no effort to fit in. As for that black paint, Landrum explains they initially wanted to use shou-sugi ban, a traditional Japanese method of charring and then oiling cedar clapboards to make them more weather resistant. However, this was a house with a strict budget, so textured, painted Hardie In the living room, gray linen sectional sofas with bespoke white denim pillows trimmed in brass zippers. White-lacquer coffee tables from CB2. Sculpture on coffee table by Faith Gay. Glazed aqua Chinese garden stools used as side tables. Serge Mouille floor lamp, originally designed in 1952. Painting on left is by Franco Mondini-Ruiz; Transfiguration TV/video installation by Matt Pyke; photograph to left of TV is by Brazilian lensman Mario Cravo, from Sicardi Gallery; triptych by Cuban artist Arturo Cuenca. Walls are Pratt & Lambert Seed Pearl, Hunter's favorite white; ceiling is Pratt & Lambert Mithras — a hazy lavender hue. Rug is black suede shag from Safavieh in New York. Hanging salon-style in the breakfast room are works (from top) by Pablo Soria, Julio Grinblatt, Pablo Siquier, Leon Ferrari and Ricardo Lanzarini. Antique Ming table from Balinskas Architectural Imports.