E:NI )ID BRIC0lAGE - Ben Koush Associates

A SPI ~E:N I )ID BRIC0lAGE
BY BEN KOUSH. PHOTOGRAPHY JACK THOMPSON. ART DIRECTION MICHELLE AVINA. ARCHITECTURE MICHAEL LANDRUM.
INTERIOR DESIGN GARREn HUNTER. LANDSCAPE DESIGN SARAH LAKE.
the early 1970s. architect and Rice
professor Peter Papademetriou scandalized
the city's architectural establishment by
candidly describing Houston's rough·
and· 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 con temporary 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 Cu llinan 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 Man Pyke; photograph to left
of TV is by Brazilian lensman Mario Cravo, from Sicardi Gallery; triptych by Cuban
artist Arturo Cuenca. Walls are Pran & Lambert Seed Pearl, Hunter's favorite white;
ceiling is Pran & 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
Grinblan, Pablo Siquier, Leon Ferrari and Ricardo Lanzarini. Antique Ming table
from Balinskas Architectural Imports.
siding would have to do. And while that traditional and
labor-intensive method is now most associated with Japanese
archited Terunobu Fugimori (whose twisted and crooked
buildings look like homes for the strange creatures in Hayao
Miyazaki's animated films), Landrum opted instead for the
austere and loity profile of the 1920s-era Bauhaus box.
According to Zuzette, the desire for a design that looks
recognizably modern was the result of her husband's
fond chi ldhood memories of visiting his great-aunt, the
philanthropist Nina Cullinan, whose modern house was
designed by the great Houston architect Hugo V. Neuhaus Jr.
in 1953. At the time, Miss Nina's exquisite house was unusual
for Houston because it was designed around a central
courtyard; it, along with Neuhaus' own internally focused
house (built on a deluxe property sandwiched between
Bayou Bend and Rienzi) and Dominique and John de Menil's
courtyard house designed by New York architect Philip
Johnson, provided a new planning strategy for suburban
architedure where mostly solid walls face the street instead
of curtained-off picture windows.
At the Cullinan house, the complementary minimal
landscaping was designed in collaboration w ith Sarah Lake
in San Antonio. Curved fingers branch off from the darkcolored gravel driveway to provide extra guest parking
spaces. The drive continues past an external, freestanding
... the two-story,
mostly
windowless,
black -painted
()ulb.na
lOllse
a t~I1se
interl
I11aSb of
C '"j 0" Cl )es
makes no
effort to fit in ...
Master bed in Missoni bedding from Internum with patchwork-hide cover.
Chinese end tables from Balinskas Architectural Imports. Bauhaus lamps
by Robert Dudley Best. Photographs Misha Hollenbach, from New Image Art
Gallery, Los Angeles.
Vintage settee in the master bedroom sitting area was passed down from
Greg's mother, Claire Alexander Cullinan. Missoni pillow from Internum.
Large-scale work in the round by Houston artist Shane Tolbert. Walls and
ceiling are Pratt & Lambert Rubidoux. Floor is whitewashed pine decking.
SEPTEMBE R I PAGE 67 I 2013
wall of geometrical Hardie-panel cutouts that
surrounds a large courtyard, planted sparsely with
Mexican sycamore shade trees. A pivoting gate opens
to a covered loggia that runs along one side of this
courtyard and leads to the main entrance of the
house. Vertical fluorescent light fixtures with pastelcolored plastic covers affixed to the loggia's columns
seem purposefully lifted, in an egalitarian gesture,
from the budget Dan Flavin-esque instal lation at the
Goode Company Taqueria on Kirby. In the rear of the
house, a set of sliding glass doors centered on the
dining-room table opens out to a cruciform-shaped
plunge pool.
The interiors of the house balance delicately on
the narrow divide between art and kitsch. They were
designed in col laboration with the talented Garrett
Hunter, a young Houston interior designer rapidly
making a name for himself . Hunter's predilection for
mixing modern art and furniture with carefully curated
antiques as well as junk-store finds (both Hunter
and Landrum are close to being hoarders) recalls the
late great interior designer Herbert Wells, who came
to Houston in the late 1940s and shocked genteel
society with similar pairings. Hunter also shares Wells'
courageous, some might say slightly frightening, use
of color. The ceilings of the house and undersides
of the exterior soffits are painted various shades of
lavender, as are the kitchen cabinets. The cabinetry in
the laundry room and ground-floor powder room is
painted a glossy tangerine orange . Zuzette points out
a happy accident that occurs when sunlight from an
adjacent window in the laundry room reflects on the
brightly colored paint and fills the room with a James
Turrell-like glow. The backsplash and range hood in the
kitchen are clad with mirrored glass, and the counters
are made of a stone with a pronounced, oversized
tortoiseshell pattern of veining . Lighting is not the
standard recessed cans but rather ultra-cheap, exposed
porcelain sockets with big globe-shaped hanging
bulbs. Discreet track lights are also deployed to light
specific artworks on the walls .
From their former residence, a townhouse in the
Rice Military area, the Cullinans brought only the
heavily carved wood furniture that came from China,
Nepal, India and Mexico. The modern upholstered
In the breakfast room/kitchen, circa-1970s chrome-and-glass table from Reeves Antiques. Zinc wire chairs from CB2. Large-scale painting by New York artist Emily Noel Lambert; salon-style assemblage at right
highlights several Latin artists. Antique Ming table from Balinskas Architectural Imports. Kitchen cabinets lacquered in Pratt & Lambert Moor. Mirrored-glass backs plash and vent range. Countertops are a Brazilian
stone called Blue Turtle. Open shelves showcase Zuzette's collection of rustic porcelain. Floor is concrete sealed in its natural color.
Adividing wall delineates the entrance gallery from the living room. Large-scale 17th-century Spanish painting from family collection. Vintage hook rug depicts an outer-space scene, from Carol Piper Rugs.
The master bath is sheathed in white-glass walls with Turkish marble flooring. The 1960s ceiling installation, originally installed at Neiman Marcus in Oallas, is by Bjprn Wiinblad. Vintage North African rug.
SEPTEMBER I PAGE 68
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pieces were acquired especially for the new
open spaces of this house. The Cullinans have
a formidable modern art collection that makes
the interiors zing. Zuzette, who is CubanAmerican, grew up among Latin American
artists, and her parents were early investors in
Houston's Sicardi Gallery, which is nationally
known for representing modern art of the
Spanish-speaking Americas. She recalls that
when she was a child, these artists often visited
and stayed at her family home. With these
memories as an impetus, the couple has for
some time seriously collected the work of
Latin American artists, including pieces by Pablo
Soria, Julio Grinblatt, Pablo Siquier, Leon Ferrari
and Ricardo Lanzarini.
All in all, t he house is a happy mixture of high
and low style, precious and egalitarian, Eastern
and Western, Anglo and Latin, old and new
Just as Houston's white-hot dining scene is best
characterized as new Creole, so is the design
of this house and ma ny of the other sig nificant
recent buildings in Houston. We can only hope
to see more of these mixes in the future. They
truly seem to represent the complex vitality that
cha racterizes th is city.
CLOCKWISE:
Exterior siding emulates shou sugi ban, a Japanese technique for preserving wood by charring it. The hyper-graphic concrete
board fencing and pivot gate delineate private and public garden spaces.
Spanish Colonial doors leading to the master bedroom from Balinskas Architectural Imports. Mixed-media collage by Kelly
O'Connor, from David Shelton Gallery. Floors are whitewashed pine deckin~
In the dining room, pendant light from Chandelier, Los Angeles. Antique Chinese Ming scholar's table, bench and armchairs,
all from Balinskas Antiques. Vintage 1970s lamp with tie-dye shade from Anthropologie. The Lucite bar cart was originally in
luzette's parents' vacation house in Miami. Painting on right wall is by Franco-Mondini Ruiz. The painting at left is by
Moico Yake,
Michael Landrum, foreground, and Garrett Hunter in the entrance loggia with its hot-pink Flavin-inspired lighting.