December 1 – 4, 2005
By Debbi Waters

A good travel journal, I believe, should begin at the height of anticipation, before one's voyage is tainted by airports, delays and disappointments. I had expectations of doing so, but I found myself well occupied instead with the challenge of packing for a four-day architecture tour through Texas. Typically I am a conscientious packer: organized, efficient and seemingly decisive.

But in this case, the context and conditions for travel loomed large in my approach to get everything into an overnight bag. I would be spending four days with twenty-five of my office mates, and their significant others, at Holzman Moss Architecture. We would be joined by eleven architecture students from Texas Tech University, which suggested casual dress. However, the remaining seats of our bus would be occupied by handful of colleagues and clients: current, past and prospective, so a modicum of respectability was required. We would be traveling to eight cities, whose temperature I learned might range, and did in fact range, from the tropical to the blustery. A single day of events might include a cocktail party, a visit to a quarry, a concert, and hours on a bus, all without an opportunity to change in between.


12.01.05 | NEW YORK / AMARILLO | 1709 Miles

5:00 am
Bleary-eyed we arrive at La Guardia airport. Some seem energized and enthusiastic, others have not warmed up to the idea of conversation, and those like myself, at this hour, are just plain crabby.

West Texas from 10,000 Feet

9:30 am
We connect at the Dallas airport for a flight to Amarillo, the cell phones have started and I have my first moment of doubt that this pilgrimage is a good idea. It is worse for the videographer we commissioned to document our exploits; he is bumped at the gate due to the weight load on our small aircraft. At the last moment he boards. I assume in frustration he has dropped a few pounds.

Amarillo Airport

11:25 am
Doug Moss has prepared a detailed itinerary for our trip, broken down into what seems like 75 minute intervals over 96 hours of travel time. We will be touring full force with the bus departing each morning promptly at 6:00 am; stragglers, he promises, will be left behind. Therefore arriving in Amarillo fifteen minutes ahead of schedule brings a sigh of relief, and I wonder if I get to sleep in tomorrow.

The first sounds of laughter are heard, we are awake and en route to some legendary Texas BBQ. It's an edifying experience, particularly the vegetarian entrees: onion rings, potato salad and baked beans with ham hocks.

Dyers Bar-B-Que

1:30 pm
Our first, legitimate, tour stop is the Cadillac Ranch. A resting place for ten junk-yard Cadillacs, buried hood down since 1974, when Stanley Marsh 3, a local helium tycoon, invited Ant Farm, a collective of artists, to start digging. Since then, this roadside attraction has become well-known, beaconing motorists with a message to come spray. Finding a can of paint among the litter, we add "HMA" to the cacophony. Eerily, it is a close match to our logo color.

The Office at Cadillac Ranch

Next on our list was a 45-second visitation at Paul Rudolph's 1981 Harrington Cancer Center. To be fair, this excursion to one of his less celebrated buildings was on the way to the Globe-News Center for the Performing Arts, the first Holzman Moss Architecture structure in this tour.

Most of the office had yet to see this building, and many had yet an opportunity to see any of the firm's built work. That in large part prompted Malcolm Holzman's suggestion of a tour. With our office doubling in size since opening in August 2004, Holzman believed first-hand observations would inform newer staff about our building process, while veteran designers, who have worked with Holzman for nearly a decade, would benefit from a critical look and a comparative evaluation. It was hoped that this capsule of seven projects, (the oldest completed in 1999 and some still under construction), when visited in four days time, would be revealing. As an office, we may gain confidence in successes, learn from mistakes and stay motivated to innovate. A close inspection would be possible, where material applications could be witnessed at large scale, and more importantly, considered in their specific contexts and in relation to our other buildings.

Michael Connolly, project architect, and Eddie Kung, construction administrator, hosted our tour of the Globe News Center. There are some familiar Holzman Moss elements, such as cattle panels, used here for a ceiling, or industrial stair treads turned upright to form the promenade railings. There are novelties as well. The structure of the double-height lobby uses concrete architecturally, with three color variations and a corrugated texture. Split Colorado red sandstone, which clads the exterior form of the concert hall, continues into the lobby space - a theme echoed at concert halls at the University of North Texas and Texas Christian University, which we will soon visit.

Globe News Center Lobby

If Oriented Strand Board (OSB) has become a hallmark material at Holzman Moss, the Globe News Center is its poster child. Once sanded, stained and sealed, we have discovered this relatively inexpensive material can take on the most exotic and rich qualities. It tends to find its way into almost every project, but here it is used to create a 1300-seat performance environment unlike any in the world. OSB forms a three-dimensional, reflective enclosure capable of transforming the auditorium from a pure concert hall into a dramatic theater with the aid of a moveable orchestra shell and a 50-ton crane. Suspended from an overhead traveling bridge, one person equipped with a remote can move the shell from storage to play position in under two minutes. A demonstration by Russ Cooper, of Jaffe Holden Acoustics, during the tuning concert, brought cheers. For the members of this community, who privately raised the $36 million it cost to build the Center, it is gratifying to have the only such room in the world, and one entirely built in Texas no less.

Globe News Center for the Performing Arts

For a bunch of out-of-towners, we were warmly welcomed in Amarillo. First with a party hosted at one of four Frank Lloyd Wright houses in Texas, this one recently acquired by Robin Hall from its original owner and restored. Later in the evening, her parents, Sandra and Bill Gilliland, invited us to their home for a second celebration in the famed Russian Salon, a room they imported from a St. Petersburg exhibition in New Orleans, and the scene, apparently, for much of the Globe-News fundraising.


12.02.05 | LUBBOCK / SAN ANGELO | 337 Miles

6:00 am
It is still dark out and very, very quiet on the bus. Soon we'll see the sun creep up along the flat, west Texas horizon. It is extraordinary.

Sunrise from the Bus

8:00 am
We enter the campus of Texas Tech University in Lubbock. Minutes later at the food court of the Student Union Building, I consume my first breakfast burrito. On campuses across the country we hear a lot about the student center being a foremost tool in recruitment. If I could go back to school, I might be swayed by the burrito itself. Almost as remarkable, is that for a formerly unfrequented union, this place has students, lots of them, at this hour. The union's managing director, Tom Shubert, proudly tells us that they have clocked more than 16,000 visitors a day, a figure unprecedented for a campus with 21,000 FTEs.

Texas Tech University, Student Union Building Arcade

The union's renovation and expansion was entirely funded by student fees. Shubert, throughout the design process, championed the idea that it be "by and for students" which is why it has been such a success. Holzman credits him for "sweeping away the academic and political underbrush." Priding ourselves on adventuresome architecture, we question whether excellence can prevail at institutions with dogmatic approaches to design, without advocates like Shubert.

Our tour is led by field architect, Darwin Harrison and project manager, Brad Lukanic. I am surprised to learn that our design premise was inspired by the concept of a mall - something we urban dwellers tend to disdain. In small cities, such as Lubbock, the mall is homeland to its teens, a place where they feel comfortable. Designers utilized the idea of catwalks, providing places for students to see and be seen from below, above and across the way. The rooms within rooms, bridges, and central gathering places reveal constant activity, where chairs are continually added and still sought.

Texas Tech University, Student Union Lobby

Holzman poses the question of whether the central gathering pavilion in which we now stand is a "glass room" or a "stone room." Octagonal in plan, the pavilion's exterior surfaces of fossilized limestone penetrate the glazed curtainwall, forming interior walls. This, he says, is for him the most interesting part of the building, and yet no answer is forthcoming.

Texas Tech University, Student Union Dining Pavilion

Harrison, who also teaches architecture at Tech, knows of its popularity as well as what doesn't work, which he is quick to note while pointing at Lukanic. For example, the client quickly found the only method of replacing two of the overhead ceiling fixtures in the circulation spine, which are directly over the lower basement, 55 feet below, higher than most typical lifts can reach, is to assemble scaffolding. They also discovered the expense of cleaning the interior curtain wall, which zig-zags four stories through the union, and is difficult to reach, even with a pole extension.

Other potential challenges were resolved early on, such as how to illuminate the cattle panels (the same used for the ceiling at Globe-News), which are grouped diagonally along an elliptical wall that curves through all floors. At the Plano Courtyard Theater, the ancestral home of the cattle panel, backlighting proved its own inadequacy. To do it better this time around, the problem, to design a reflector with little depth to illuminate the whole panel from the front, was solved with the aid of mock-ups. Mock-ups are as indispensable as coffee in our office. While the lighting on the panels achieved the desired affect, the repeat placed panels in unlikely locations, such as a closet-sized copy room. There was also issue with the ship lap installation of the panels and the inability to apply good glue across all areas, particularly at corners and on small pieces. Visible fasteners were added to insure panels did not detach from the wall; the selection of this small detail took considerable time and effort to get right.

Texas Tech University, Student Union Student Government Offices

After all, our tour is not a time for congratulations (only), but one of self-examination. Despite the evident pride of those who agonized over the drawings, and still do as we complete phase 3 of the union; I am impressed by their impartiality and ability to judge, for better or worse.

10:30 am
From the confines of the bus we orbit the Lubbock Regional Arts Center. This many phased project, part of which is still in construction, converts an existing 1968 fire station into a 150-seat black box theater, a gallery, and a multi-purpose art and education space. It is one of the smaller projects in the office and despite the unusual adaptive reuse, many of us are learning about it for the first time.

Passing through the vastness of Lubbock's cotton fields, and catching my first sighting of a prairie dog amid the bales, we approach a residential development. Looking out the window, the interchangeability of the American suburban landscape, this endless repetition of architecture without roots, saddens me. But then, there in the distance, is Robert Bruno's Steel House. Since 1974, Bruno, an architectural sculptor/artist, has been single-handedly toiling away on the construction of his home perched on the rim of Ransom Canyon. Rumor has it the 3,000 square feet of steel sculptured living quarters prompted neighbors to flee to architecturally safer communities. Fortunately he has at least one nearby ally, a Gaudi-esque home he designed on commission across the street, replete with spiraling mosaic. In this neighborhood I can't help wonder which appears stranger, these two structures, or my office ambling around here.

Steel House

One on-bus screening of Blazing Saddles later, we arrive at TexaStone Quarries in Garden City. Our hosts, Brenda and Connie Edwards, have the quintessential BBQ spread waiting, complete with cobbler and sliced white bread. We dine quickly al fresco, and then split into groups to tour their operations. On view are the humongous splitters and saws, not to mention the abundant blocks of limestone quarried within a 12 mile radius of where we stand. I am amazed to learn that operations within this 55,000-square-foot plant run twenty-four hours, mostly unsupervised.

Holzman regularly encourages visits to quarries; it is here, he explains, his discovery of quarry block "skins," the deformed and discolored layer of stone which is typically discarded, occurred. In the spirit of "one person's trash is another's treasure," he immediately conceived of the San Angelo Museum of Fine Arts in roughback skins.

TexaStone Quarries

During our tour of the Museum that evening in nearby San Angelo, it is revealed that the original design called for an entire building clad in roughbacks, but only enough for two stripes could be supplied. The remainder of the building is sheathed in sawn panels of varied size, the smallest of which are similar in dimension to concrete block. On their own, it is possible Holzman says, for someone to mistake them for concrete, so the decision to use a more expensive material like stone must be weighed in relation to the desired effect. This Museum, composed of one material and one shape, is a rarity for us. The singular use of limestone, with a standing seam copper roof, achieves dramatic intent. Yet despite the irregularity of the stone, mold stains on the lower blocks are noticeable. To maintain a pristine quality, one can clean it or attempt a more complicated approach with sealant; or, as Holzman prefers, accept it as part of the aging process, "like a scratch in a piece of old wood."

San Angelo Museum of Fine Arts

Howard Taylor, the museum's director, gives us the official tour, beginning at the beginning, with the architectural selection process. A lesson for the architects: do like Holzman. After seven presentations by teams of renowned architects, Holzman, as legend has it, shows up alone with a mere booklet, and tells the committee "together we will make a building." It is one thing in an interview to state you have no preconceived assumptions, but Taylor affirms the entire building process was a dialogue. Something resonates with our visit to Texas Tech earlier that same day: the indispensable role of a visionary client.

Charged with building a museum for an institution with a small, nearly non-existent, collection, Taylor envisioned a place that expanded the definition of museum to include community, along with art. He was instrumental in the design process, and is credited for the verticality of the building - a notion foreign to San Angelo, where room to spread is manifest destiny. Rather than create larger galleries, he again broke with convention, instead calling for public spaces. The 250-seat meeting room, he says, is used almost 300 times a year. It also serves as studio for a televised cooking program.

In the six years since the building opened, SAMFA has already been given the distinction being one of only 32 museums in the country to receive the National Museum Service Award from the Federal Institute of Museum and Library Services, an honor equivalent to the Nobel Prize. It is clear the museum is well cared for. The galleries are unspoiled, the mesquite floors in near perfect condition, and the education wing, used by Angelo State University faculty and students, chock full of ceramic works. It has been a time of growth. Collections are regularly acquired, and loaned; fine art majors at the University doubled; and more than 50,000 visit each year, excluding outreach efforts, which at SAMFA are prolific.

San Angelo Museum of Fine Arts

8:30 pm
The evening would not be complete without the consumption of large quantities of beef, this time a meal of "scraps," as we are serenaded by a mariachi band Taylor has hired.

The Mariachi Band


12.03.05 | FORT WORTH / DENTON | 325 Miles

7:00 am
A reprieve, we get an extra hour of sleep. The extenuating circumstance is contingent on a duet of the "Battle of New Orleans" being performed on the bus. Suffice to say I think the pace of the tour is taking a toll, or perhaps like too much sugar, we are giddy, riding an absurd architectural high. It gets worse. The Tech students are asked to stand up at the front of the bus and present their assignments for a folding collage. This spur-of-the-moment crit is unnerving for all involved. The work we see is disappointing, and the students are outraged at the demand for an impromptu presentation and subsequent criticism.

The "Battle of New Orleans"

Lessons are learned by us all. In design, whether collage or otherwise, visual interest is primary, and one must make elements count. Sometimes the result may be different from what one expected, Holzman tells the students, but fortuitous discoveries can be just as important as what one intends. The students are part of a studio, taught by Holzman, Moss, Harrison, and Lukanic, investigating a new arts center on their Spanish Renaissance-inspired campus. The question is posed, "what does Spanish Renaissance mean to people?" Styles, along with design guidelines, need not be limiting, he expounds; it is what you do with the ground rules that can make architecture exceptional.

Our first stop of the day is an unusual one. We are eager to tour the Walsh Center for the Performing Arts at Texas Christian University, our first attempt at using particle board to create an entire concert hall enclosure. Except, as our client has informed us, our timing is off and a visit is not recommended. We disperse on campus in ones and twos, and individually arrive at the Center for a quick peek. The "shell within a shell" concept here, unlike the Globe-News Center, is simpler and stronger, though still provides visual intimacy. The openings through which sound travels are more prominent and less judiciously placed. An innovation of its time, it has been refined and enlarged for Amarillo.

Texas Christian University, Walsh Center

The building's exterior is a poignant example of expanding the rules. Located on a formal campus green among some of TCU's oldest (neo-classical) buildings, and attached to a 1949 yellow brick structure, the Walsh Center, as Holzman says, "stretches the palette of acceptable materials." The façade facing the lawn is differentiated from that fronting a residential quadrangle, each responding to context with their own combination of materials such as limestone, clay block, New Mexico travertine and red Texas granite. A direct response to the predominant campus brick was found at the Acme fabrication plant, where the extrusion process made visible 'frogs' on the rear surface. These regularly spaced reveals inspired a new way of using brick, with frogs on the finished face. Such yellow bricks enliven the center, giving texture and shadow, and a respective nod to tradition.

Texas Christian University, Walsh Center

12:30 pm
A pass through downtown Fort Worth highlights so many sites, from Sundance Square and David M. Schwartz's Bass Performance Hall to the other, more notable, Paul Rudolph buildings, my head spins.

For the next two hours we are free to explore the Fort Worth Arts District on our own. Without exception, everyone can be found at Louis Kahn's Kimbell Art Museum, Tadao Ando's Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, Philip Johnson/Alan Ritchie Architects' Amon Carter Museum, and a few at the aforementioned Schwartz's National Cowgirl Museum and Hall of Fame. This for me is a real treat. As a student of architectural criticism I had yet to visit the Kimbell, an admission I could no longer bear.

Kimbell Art Museum

Upon entering the museum, I experienced one thing only - a moment of silence. I came to the realization that the architecture of Holzman Moss is much like a holiday dinner with my family: boisterous, animated and flavorful. The Kimbell and the Modern Art Museum are therefore, what I imagine other families to be like: earnest, quiet, and courteous. At this point in the tour, the transcendent purity of Kahn's and Ando's work was a pleasant salve to the provocative nature of our work. And like my family, after sufficient respite, I welcome back the harmonious discord.

Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth

6:00 pm
We leave the Marriott Solana - Westlake, designed by Ricardo Legorreta, (and thus is part of the tour), and head to Denton, to the University of North Texas to attend a concert at the Lucille "Lupe" Murchison Center for the Performing Arts. Unlike the San Angelo Museum of Fine Arts, which opened the same year, the building is composed of several distinct shapes, and every interior volume is part of the exterior.

UNT's College of Music is the largest in the world, as far as enrollment is concerned. The Murchison Center, we are told by Dave Shrader, former Dean of the College, is well used. Built for $175/sq.ft., everything has a function, says Holzman. The only frivolity, he admits, is the custom light fixtures in the lobby designed by artist Jim Harmon. Since the lobby is a regular hot spot for receptions and dinners, the fixtures are valued adornment on the exposed concrete columns.

University of North Texas, Murchison Center Lobby

Jeff Cochran, the Center's Technical Director, starts off our tour with the declaration that the A/C system is "flawless." In a 1,100-seat concert hall, this is no small concern. Winspear Performance Hall is the city's only hall with a relationship to a television network, airing five live concerts each year. Cochran says the conditions which make this possible are threefold: the acoustic quality of the room; the quality of the architecture; and the caliber of the performances. Minutes later these come to life.

Shrader has solicited volunteers among the students to give us what we anticipate to be a short and informal concert during "dead week," when students are not to be asked to perform. The concert will allow us to move about the room, experiencing the acoustics from different seating locations, including the orchestra, balcony, and choral terrace. What we are treated to instead, are a series of student performances - quartet, jazz, piano, vocal - of such power, clarity and perfection, to literally bring tears to ones eyes.

University of North Texas, Murchison Center, Winspear Auditorium

Awed by the experience, we make our way to the Lyric Theater, a flexible, reconfigurable space for opera and drama. The room was not originally to be part of the first phase, but as funding become available it was quickly added. Several elements make this an atypical black box, namely that it is blue, has an orchestra pit, catwalks, and 22 fly lines, though no stage house.

University of North Texas, Murchison Center, Lyric Theater

Our office contends that there is no real need for a black box to be black; in much the same spirit we placed an opaline, glazed curtainwall behind Winspear's stage avowing that concert halls can have natural light and the illusion of a world beyond the room. While the gold-hue glazing is warmly received, the theater's blue walls are a challenge Cochran would prefer to do without. Any set put up in the room, he says, competes with the color. There are other struggles as well, including how to incorporate the structure of the balcony in the set. This bare bone room, it appears, only works for opera because of the ability of the people who use it. Not every school of music is as sophisticated, something to keep in mind for future projects. Incidentally, we learn the theater functions superbly for parties and VIP events, as does the instrumental rehearsal room.

8:00 pm
Our holiday party at El Guapo's brings everyone together for fajitas and speech-making. After everyone has sufficiently expressed gratitude for the staff, the trip, and the clients, we get the tour's first frank and substantive comment about our architecture. James Macaulay, an architectural historian, who joined us from Scotland, stood up and said something he believes obvious; Holzman is influenced by the Arts and Crafts Movement. Huh? There is the craftsmanship and certainly the presence of individual design, but mentally I can't hold the idea of cattle panels and William Morris wallpaper in my mind simultaneously. Still, I am quick to envision next year's tour through Europe, or perhaps Scotland, a grand tour of inspirations.

Holiday Party at El Guapo's


12.04.05 | FRISCO / PLANO / DALLAS | 39 Miles

8:00 am
We are standing huddled like penguins in front of the Frisco City Hall and Public Library, which is sixteen months into construction, with six more to go. It is freezing out and I can no longer be bothered to listen. I am tired and cold, and done with architecture. But this is the only building we will tour while still in construction, so I call on any reserves of enthusiasm.

The building faces north, and with the limestone and granite already in place, I can see the strong shadow lines. Placement of the stone was essential for this effect. Field architect, Ching-Wen Lin, points out mock-ups off to the side, evidence of what it takes to get this right.

This building sits in the center of Frisco Square, a new urbanist development planned by the ubiquitous, David M. Schwartz. Without question, the building must and would be symmetrical, a formalist concept bordering on heresy at Holzman Moss. It is interesting to see the familiar characteristics of our work represented in rather traditional forms. There are the stone remnants - the discards of granite countertops - assembled on edge to form modern-day column flutes. A clock tower as well. Determined to keep the building in stone during the hey-days of value engineering, a more economical, smaller block (stone being priced by the number of saw blades which hit it) was utilized on the south side, which, incidentally, is not symmetrical due to the shape of the 330-seat Council Chamber. Civic buildings, such as city halls and public libraries, are supposed to stand the test of time. No other material but stone, Holzman argued, could achieve this permanence. Currently, Moss noted, Frisco has no civic presence, because the same services which will one day find homes in this building, are now scattered across this rapidly growing community. There is no standard by which to measure.

Frisco City Hall and Public Library

For months, fabrics, wall coverings and carpets samples embolden with Frisco iconography have been present in the office. It's a mere leap to envision how these finishes, symbolic of the City's history, will transform the Council Chamber into a special presentation space. A discussion ensues as to the nature of the room, and how it is particularly different to work with a client group, such as elected officials, with limited experience in building projects. Time must be spent to fully engage such clients in the design process, to explain how and why spaces become memorable, and more so, to show and illustrate, rather than describe. We are to remember that making a public, civic building happens in public. At the same time, such clients have much to teach us. Their concerns for security far outweigh ours, for example.

9:30 am
On the bus again and warm, we head south to Plano, a super-fast growing city that foreshadows the population explosion in Frisco. We are here to meet with Frank Turner, Assistant City Manager; Jim Wear, the City's Performing Arts Manager; and Russell Reed, the Technical Director of the Plano Courtyard Theater. Frank gives us an overview of Plano's transformation, from a community of 3,500 people in 1960, to one of 250,000 today. In that same period of time, the downtown remained for most part unchanged and even lagged, as shopping centers rapidly appeared elsewhere.

Our adaptive reuse of an historic WPA, high school gymnasium in 2002, was part of an effort by the city to revitalize downtown. Opening of the Courtyard Theater corresponded with the unveiling of a new, nearby Dallas Area Rapid Transit stop. The idea for a pedestrian friendly, transit-oriented village spurred residential and commercial growth and the renovation of an urban park, directly across from the theater.

Plano Courtyard Theater

The arts have been a strong part of reconnecting the downtown to surrounding neighborhoods, Turner says, and the Courtyard Theater serves versatile community needs, from weddings and business meetings, to performances by existing local arts organizations. Reed tells us that it is booked more than 300 dates a year.

This modest project offers some out of the ordinary things, like the cattle panels, used for the first time here, on the lobby and auditorium walls, which are backlit and painted a bright yellow-orange. An unqualified success is the wash of light through the pre-cut openings, which provides a warm glow and festive air through public spaces and further outdoors. Less successful, Steve Benesh, the project architect, points out, is the inability to change the bulbs without great effort, and the visibility of the mechanical pipes behind.

Plano Courtyard Theater, Cattle Panel

Warmth through color and fabric is a theme of the theater as well, to offset the otherwise industrial feel of painted brick and exposed steel trusses. Stair treads serve as balcony fascia, with lighting accenting the surface irregularity. The theater is unique in other ways. It is fully accessible, making it popular with disabled directors and audience members, and has no proscenium. It is a flexible space that can be arranged to allow frontal, thrust or theater-in-the-round style presentations. Movable acoustical panels help tune the room for each specific function.

Plano Courtyard Theater

12:00 pm
We are offered a two-hour leave in Dallas for self-guided tours of the Dallas Arts District, which encompasses Renzo Piano's Nasher Sculpture Garden, Edward Larabee Barnes's Dallas Museum of Art, Pei Cobb Freed Partners Meyerson Symphony Hall, or other area attractions. I opt for the Nasher, hoping that a garden will go easy on my architecturally, over-stimulated mind. I am correct. The building is a spare yet sumptuous backdrop for an impressive collection, one I am pleased is not too large to spend an hour with.

Nasher Sculpture Garden, "Walking to the Sky" by Jonathan Borofsky

I make my way to the Dallas Museum of Art but I just don't have it in me. I can look, but no longer see. One cannot live on architecture alone, so I seek physical sustenance instead at the museum's café.

2:00 pm
One last stop is made, a quickie, at Gary Cunningham's Cistercian Abbey. Off the bus I go, addled and exhausted. As it turns out, there is always room for dessert, and here it is. I am revived at the sight of this solitary, sacred space. Light is the only adornment in this rough-hewn limestone structure. It is simple and serene.

Cistercian Abbey

3:00 pm
If only my day ended at the Abbey, but alas I arrived at the Dallas-Fort Worth airport. Once we said farewell to Ed, our bus driver, the group disbanded lickety-split. We were no longer an office, bonded together in the common cause of architecture, but some twenty-five wearied people desperate to return home, and ultimately, back to work.


The photos and sketches included in the journal are by Holzman Moss Architecture staff, and were made during the course of the tour.



Office Tour 2007
By Peggy Chong

One and a half years after the epic Texas Tour, when Malcolm Holzman and Douglas Moss announced that we were going on another office tour to visit projects in New Jersey and New York, we were all geared up and ready to go! Another eight hours on a cramped bus with a group of boisterous colleagues? Sure, who wouldn’t be excited?

Early one Friday morning, all 30-odd Holzman Moss Architecture troopers, future troopers, family and friends showed up at the office, bright as brass buttons, and we were off to a running start. Well, maybe on another occasion. On this day, our start was plagued by mishaps with the bus company, and a missing bus accompanied by a reluctant bus driver with a poor sense of direction. Needless to say, we were delayed. Finally the bus driver rallied around and we were on the road.



First stop - Ramapo College. In 1999, the office completed The Angelica and Russ Berrie Center for the Performing and Visual Arts on that campus. The landscape tips and rolls gently and the building, surrounded by verdant green, seems to cascade from the landscape, nestling comfortably in the surrounding woods.

Scampering up the stairs, we arrived at the lobby where we were greeted by Steve Perry, Dean of the School of Contemporary Arts and Dick Roberts, Associate Vice President of Administration and Finance. This is the part of touring past projects that really interests me. What do clients really think of what we have done after working, studying and living in a building for many years?

The tour, led by Steve, began with a warm welcome that expressed his fondness of the building. Despite the flurry of activities that occur in the building, it has been very well taken care of, with little sign of wear and tear.

Steve led us into Sharp Theater, the main 350-seat proscenium theater, used as both a teaching facility, as well as for professional performances. Among the first questions we asked were if the various theater, rehearsal and back-of-house spaces were working ideally for the students, faculty and administrators. Much to our gratification, the report was positive. Steve also mentioned that the Sharp Theater was an ideal space for theater students to work in, neither too large to be intimidating, nor too small, was well-equipped with professional-level equipment and was generally a good space for novices to learn more about stagecraft.

Next we headed to the Adler Theater, the black box theater, which in reality is dark blue and circular in plan. How curious! Of course we had to ask, does a circular black box theater really work? In response, Steve mentioned that despite its unorthodoxy, the Adler Theater has been a wonderful and successful space, being full for all performances. Members of our office also queried Malcolm about the purpose of the wooden slats covering portions of the interior walls. Serving multiple functions, they operate as acoustical panels, break up the visual monotony of the walls, and also contain light fixtures.

Though both theaters have their own dedicated lobby, they are visually connected. Sharp Theater’s lobby is on the ground floor and Adler Theater’s lobby is on the second floor. On nights when both theaters have performances, audiences fill both lobby floors and the building truly comes alive with the buzz of human activity.

Walking up a slight slope, we headed toward Kameron Pond, the site of the new Spiritual Center, also designed by our firm. When we first heard of this project, it really piqued our interest. A tranquil sanctuary for students to go to in times of stress, grief, celebration and joy; a space they could go to for comfort, to take a break from the hassle of everyday life seemed like an ingenious idea. Too often, academic institutions are so narrowly focused on imparting knowledge that they neglect the human quality-of-life aspect of a student’s career.

Traipsing to the site, we walked past a gigantic rock, a glacial erratic, leftover from the last Ice Age. The rock will eventually be moved onto the site for the new Spiritual Center where it will assume a new significance and attention in a central location. Try as hard as we could to move it, it refused to budge.

The site overlooks the man-made pond and beyond the body of water are the residence halls housing Ramapo students. Currently host to wild, overgrown weeds and shrubs of various types and trees, the site has been staked out and was being prepared for construction work. Walking around, we envisioned how the new buildings would look on the site. In about a year, it would be completely transformed. New buildings would sprout up and our office’s labors, especially by Matt Kirschner, Steve Benesh and Bradley Lukanic, would finally come to fruition.

Soon we were back on the bus, and off again. The next stop was Dia: Beacon. Museums are fantastic places to roam around and Dia: Beacon, housed in long, low structures that were used as a Nabisco factory in a different lifetime, has a variety of spaces ranging from wide, open, light-filled spaces, to dark, semi-underground spaces, to somewhat dingy, mysterious, attic-like spaces. At that time, entire walls were devoted to Sol LeWitt’s line drawings. Could there be a more painstaking, time consuming effort? Who formed the army of unsung, unknown, patient soldiers, carefully following the convoluted instructions written by LeWitt?

What about Fred Sandback and those lines of yarn cutting through space? These strings of yarns positioned in space have so much more three-dimensional presence than they ever ought to possess. How about Agnes Martin, and her delicate, intimate and feminine paintings? Or Robert Smithson’s juxtaposition of cold, clear mirrors with gravel, sand and other debris? – A strangely disquieting combination that gives me the chills. Or Richard Serra’s sculptures tightly encased by the four walls surrounding it? – Did you hear the low hum, or was it someone singing? Did you smell the sea, feel the rush of sea breeze? Or Louise Bourgeois’ sculptures? – The organic, tactile forms, hidden and tucked away. Some people think that you can only appreciate art if you stand in front of it forever and really look at it, perhaps it’s true. But I can’t help it, I wish I could run through the galleries, or roller skate through them because I want to see it all and more but am gripped by the fear that there is not enough time.

Happily, I managed to view all the galleries just in time. Soon we were all trundled up into the bus, heading across the river to lunch at Machu Picchu - an authentic Peruvian restaurant adding to the culinary diversity of Newburgh, New York. After a buffet lunch, some Peruvian beer -Cusquena, we were off and running again, this time to the United States Military Academy at West Point to tour the new Jefferson Hall Library and Learning Center that is under construction.

On the bus, Steve Benesh gave a presentation on the architectural history and traditions at West Point. As we meandered down the road towards the heart of campus, Malcolm, Steve and Bradley Lukanic pointed out buildings by Cram Goodhue and Ferguson, Paul Cret, Richard Morris Hunt and many others. Donning our hardhats, we met up with Tim Cain, who was heading the construction effort for the corps of engineers. Scheduled for completion in 2008, the construction team was in the process of setting the stone façade. Having only seen renderings of the completed building, it was thrilling to see the building taking shape.

What was visible consisted only of concrete and steel, and not much else. So one of the first things we saw on site, full-size mock-ups of a stone wall and curtainwall window details, helped give a sense of how the building would eventually look with the various types of materials, details, and wall treatments fitted together.


Tim led us into the lobby and then up the stairs to the upper floors. As everything was in its barest state, Tim and Malcolm pointed out the various spaces to us – the stacks over there, seating areas near the edge of the building with views to the Hudson River, classrooms over there, and so on, allowing us to sketch the spaces in our imaginations. We went higher and higher till we got to the topmost floor, which will be used for gatherings and special occasions. The views were truly fantastic. Plus the exterior walls were not up yet, so you really felt the connection with the outdoors - the river, the green tree-covered hills and beautifully manicured Parade ground seemed to be mere inches away.



Having reached the last stop of our daytrip, it was time for an office photo! Lined up along the curving staircase, it took us a number of attempts before everyone who needed to be in the photo was present, all visible, neatly attired, and smiling. “Say Cheeeeeeeseeeee!”

Now on our return journey, our bus fell quiet as one by one we dropped off to sleep, only waking up when we reached the hustle and bustle of the city. With this long overdue journal, my duties as travel scribe are done. So where to, next?