January Art Must-See
A one-foot house in the Museum District: Unique design highlighted in secludedgallery
Designed by Josef Hoffmann, Austrian; m"ade by Jacob & Josef Kohn, Austrian,"Sitzmaschine, Model 670," designed c. 1905, made c. 1908
Gerrit Rietveld, Dutch, “Zig-Zag” Chair, designed 1932, made c. 1940© Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
Aldo Rossi, Italian, "Tea and Coffee Piazza," designed 1979-83, made 1985
A small, albeit opulent, piazza designed by the Neo-Rationalist Italian architectural master Aldo Rossi has risen in the Houston Museum District. Sleek glass walls, a serene, sky blue pediment and whimsical flag make for an inarguably eye-catching building. Sadly, entrance to the edifice isn't permitted — you simply wouldn't fit in the door.
This isn't a taunt toward your post-holiday fitness level. This home is already the humble abode of a tea and coffee service, designed by Rossi in 1979, and stands at no more than one foot tall.
More than any other work, the "Rossi Tea and Coffee Piazza" embodies the framework of a current exhibition, Form Follows Function: Celebrating 10 Years of the American Institute of Architects, Houston Design Collection in a secluded gallery beside the Hirsch Library at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston.
Like Rossi's "Piazza," all of the objects in the exhibition are designed by architects, which shines through in the attention to their product designs' structural detailing. For Rossi's coffee and tea service, an architectural setting and industrial design are unified into one artwork.
"I think something people will see as they come into this exhibition is not only architects' important role in design history and behind physical buildings but also the variety of aesthetics with which they were associated," says Cindi Strauss, the MFAH's curator of modern and contemporary decorative arts and design. Diversity in artistic movements and media defines the exhibition, from a Louis Sullivan Chicago department store ornamented balustrade fragment to a kinetic chair commissioned by Knoll for Frank Gehry that evokes the architect's design scheme for the now-iconic Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain.
These objects mostly derive from their original date of production, meaning that the wood edges of Gerrit Rietveld's Zigzag Chair have acquired a dark patina, and the leather upholstery in a Marcel Breuer tubular steel chair now evidences use by original owner — aspects that lend a humanism to what some may have originally misread as sterile, hyper-intellectual designs.
However, the method of collecting that this exhibition celebrates is what makes it unique in curating the genre of design. For 10 years, the Houston chapter of the American Institute of Architects has collaborated with the MFAH to acquire significant works of modern and contemporary design, frequently the product of architect-trained designers. The acquisition process isn't composed of exclusive, secretive dealings made behind closed doors, but reflect an unusually democratic mindset for museum collecting.
The initiative was spawned 12 years ago by Carrie Glassman Shoemake and architectural partner Ernesto Maldonado.
"Architects don't only design buildings. They often design complete interiors and objects," Strauss says, "and these two people wanted to bring that to bear via a partnership with the museum."
AIA provides the funds for the collecting program, which has evolved from an all-inclusive voting format to a highly anticipated yearly event in which a lifetime achievement award is designated to a local architect, who in turn works with Strauss to select a personally meaningful addition to the collection. Honorees over the past six years have included such local architecture icons as S.I. Morris, Anderson Todd, John Chase (the first African-American to be licensed in Texas) and Arthur Jones, the designer of the Astrodome.
The designer/curator collaboration is unique in the United States, and has brought such prized objects as the Breuer chair (the legacy of Morris) and Martha Murphree's choice, a Josef Hoffmann Sitzmaschine chair from 1905.
"It's a remarkably rare example because it's two-toned," Strauss says of the chair. "That is the kind of functionalist design that turn-of-the-century architects in Vienna were famous for: the double squares; the fact that all of the cutouts are geometric; the balls at the base that not function only as ornament, but as stabilization elements. Hoffmann is certainly one of the most important 20th-century architects and designers."
Like Rossi's postmodern piazza, Hoffmann's reclining armchair is iconic of the exhibition because it illustrates the bounty of the AIA and museum's thoughtful collaboration. The pioneering designs currently on view are perfectly matched to the pioneering collecting developed by the Houston AIA and MFAH.
"Form Follows Function: Celebrating 10 Years of the American Institute of Architects, Houston Design Collection" is on view through Jan. 30.
