Revolutionary Builder

Carol Barden changes Houston one house at a time

Don Glentzer
Carol Barden with Tree House architects Erick Ragni and Scott Strasser

Carol Isaak Barden is a one-woman real estate revolution intent on changing the way development is done in Houston.

After careers as a Houston socialite (the '80s oil downturn turned her coach into a pumpkin) and a Manhattan-based travel writer (until 9/11 temporarily grounded travel journalists), she came back to her adopted hometown with a big idea.

What does Houston lack?

Style.

Which style does Houston most conspicuously lack?

Modern.

And what was Barden going to do about it?

Well, of course: develop townhouses that were works of modern architecture—designed by modern architects—to a market niche that Houston townhouse developers would tell you didn’t exist.

Carol Barden proved them wrong. Launching into partnership with accomplished young architect Allen Bianchi, she built a pair of slender, freestanding houses in the West End, two doors down from a halfway house. Sleek, simple, minimal: they sold for what seemed, by the standards of the neighborhood in 2002, astoundingly high prices—before they were even finished.

Barden and Bianchi built two more houses around the corner, then three across the street from the first two. Each time, eager buyers snapped the houses up while still under construction. Barden had proved her intuition in the hard world of entrepreneurship, where sales are truth: There is a market for modern architecture in Houston.

Success with those early projects made conventional financing feasible and it encouraged Barden to go to stage two of her vision: commission different architects to design single-family houses as well as townhouses.

Super cool Houston architects Scott Strasser and Erick Ragni have now designed three projects for Barden. Olson Sundberg Kundig Allen of Seattle (where Barden is from) designed the laid-back Wabi Sabi House in the Boulevard Oaks neighborhood. And François de Menil of New York was architect for a pair of sculptural houses in Temple Terrace published in Architectural Record, the most widely circulated American architectural journal.

Strasser Ragni designed Barden’s newest house, the Tree House, completed in August. It’s a two-story, 3,500-square foot (plus garage) single-family house, located on a city block in Montrose that seems to have one of every kind of building on it. Yet in this very Houston setting, your overwhelming impression of the Tree House—inside and out—is one of serenity.

The subtlety for which Strasser and Ragni are famous, their expertise in placing windows to frame just the right view, their deft proportions and intriguing spatial offsets imbue this simple house with emotional depth. It’s here that you realize what makes Carol Barden different from other developers. It’s not about style. It’s about how it feels to live in this house, on this lot, on this block, in this neighborhood.

Barden’s career as a developer has not been without its learning curve (yes, she admits, you do learn from your mistakes). Nor is she the only developer in Houston who has demonstrated that there is a market for modern design (the architect-developers Larry S. Davis and the brothers Chung and Choung Nguyen have also built distinctive projects they designed).

But as one sees townhouse developers in the West End doing schlock knock-offs of Barden’s early Bianchi projects, you realize that white stucco wall planes are not ultimately what set her houses apart. Barden is capable of making judgments about how something looks, what a space feels like, how cabinetry is put together, where materials should come from.

She has convictions about what is, and is not, right. She has something to teach her architects about how people want to live and what they look for in a house. But at the same time, she respects the value that architects, other design professionals, and craftspeople bring to her houses. That’s why, in contrast to what most residential developers try to achieve, Barden’s houses and townhouses don’t stand out, their stylistic singularity notwithstanding. They fit in.

Barden and her architects are transforming Houston, one house at a time, from the kind of city where stylistic effusion and material chaos mask dull mediocrity into the kind of city that, as the Tree House shows, is lively, urbane, engaged, and has a soul. It’s the kind of city, and the kind of house, you want to live in.

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gold pony club

Inside the creation of the rodeo cook-off’s most over-the-top tent

Courtesy of Cotton Holdings

The Gold Pony is the ultra-private VIP lounge behind the stage.

The Cotton Q Club is arguably the glitziest and most exclusive tent at the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo’s annual World's Championship Bar-B-Que Contest. Hosting nearly 800 invited guests-per-night, the 5,000-square-foot space includes a 50-foot bar, a new pop-up martini bar by Sophie Cocktail & Terrace Bar called “The Stirrup,” the ultra-exclusive “Gold Pony Club,” and a full stage for private concerts. This season, county music acts include Gabby Barrett, Sammy Kershaw, Josh Turner and Braxton Keith.

Aside from the obvious, what sets the club apart from the rest is the sheer magnitude of its operation. Once inside, guests are encapsulated by velvet-draped ceilings illuminated by crystal chandeliers, three-layer tartan-topped carpeting, richly-colored wooden-paneled walls, plus thousands of red roses swathed acrobatically throughout.

To coincide with the year of the horse, five enormous ponies made entirely of red roses have been suspended from the ceilings. The second additions this year hang on either side of the bar in The Gold Pony, the club’s even more exclusive VIP area. The kinetic artworks were created by Houston artist Sneha Merchant —all for a three day fête. This begs the question: how do they do it?

Cotton Holdings and its subsidiaries are well positioned to carry out the entire project themselves — so they do. Never bothered or besmirched by the possibility of running into issues with rental companies, everything at The Cotton Q Club is procured, purchased, and stored in-house. As one would expect from a company that provides disaster relief around the world.

“There is a lot of love and care put into this because we’re not in a hotel, we’re not in someone’s home,” Cotton Holdings chief marketing officer Zinat Ahmed tells CultureMap. “So for us to be able to create this entire infrastructure under a tent — down to the walls and chandeliers — it is much more than throwing a party. It’s about the details that make people feel that they are at a hotel, they are in an extravagant room, they are at The Polo Bar.”

Ahmed notes that a lot of the company’s culture is mixed into the tent, such as what Cotton does as a disaster relief company (including providing food by Cotton Culinary).

“Cotton Logistics puts up tents during a natural disaster. Seeing the Cotton team, whether it’s cleaning or moving things around, welcoming everyone, that’s part of our Cotton GDS — we restore communities after natural disasters. Our synergies in different parts of our day-to-day are here,” she says.

Ahmed’s team has complete creative control over the interior aesthetics of the club. Always sourcing anything that cannot be made in-house to local vendors is something she feels is important. Nothing is rented, not even the furniture or accessories.

“Every single thing, unless it was done by a local vendor, was done in-house: design, signage, execution — even the embroidery,” she explains

Everything is checked over during the summer months so there won’t be any surprises when the cook-off comes back around. Every item is organized, labeled, and stored either in Cotton’s warehouses, Conex boxes, or in special climate-controlled safes — down to the matchboxes.

“We are always prepared and ready to go,” explains Ahmed. “It’s not chaotic at all because we’re used to it — it’s a normal day at Cotton.”

When asked for her favorite parts of the tent this year, Ahmed readily answered that it has to be the five rose ponies in the main area of the club. Secondly, the two commissioned works by Sneha Merchant. Sprinkled in diamond dust, one is a female mallard wrapped in a boa, champagne flute in hand, while the other is a smartly-suited jackalope complete with cowboy hat and martini.

Both pieces are lit by antique sconces Ahmed sourced from Round Top, while the taxidermy Zebra heads are on loan from the Columbus, Texas ranch of Cotton Holdings’ Chairman Pete Bell.

“Every detail, down to the swatches of velvet has been thought of with a lot of love and care,” says Ahmed. “You use that mindset with something like this. So, if you have a mindset like before you deploy to a hurricane, you can do it for the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo.”

Courtesy of Cotton Holdings

The Gold Pony is the ultra-private VIP lounge behind the stage.

houston livestock show and rodeo home-design cotton holdings