Join Modern Tulsa Wednesday, August 26th at 7:30 as we celebrate the El Rancho Grande neon sign restoration. Come meet and mingle with other Modern-Junkies as we enjoy 1/2 price margaritas and appetizers. El Rancho Grande is Tulsa’s only remaining authentic Route 66 eatery. In the same location since 1953, its iconic neon sign has faithfully advertised “Tulsa’s Grandest Tex-Mex Tradition”.

Come find out about upcoming Modern Tulsa events and how you can get involved. Hope to see you there!

Auspicious Vision

Edward Wales Root and American Modernism
August 23 – November 29, 2009, Philbrook

From 1902 and 1953, Edward Wales Root amassed a spectacular collection of contemporary American art which became the cornerstone of the Munson-Williams-Proctor Art Institute collection with his bequest of 227 works in 1957. This exhibition surveys Root’s wide ranging interests in such artists as Maurice Prendergast, Edward Hopper, Charles Burchfield, Robert Motherwell, Jackson Pollock and more.

This traveling exhibition was organized by the Munson-Williams-Proctor Arts Institute Museum of Art, Utica, New York. The national tour sponsor for the exhibition is the MetLife Foundation. The Henry Luce Foundation provided funding for the conservation of artworks in the exhibition.

Think Architecture | Think Beyond Lecture with Coleman Coker

5:30 pm – Reception / 6:00 pm – Lecture,

OSU-Tulsa Auditorium, 700 North Greenwood Avenue, Tulsa, OK

To register, click here or visit the AIA Eastern Oklahoma home page at www.AIAeok.org

Coleman Coker, RA is the Ruth Carter Stevenson Chair at the University of Texas, School of Architecture in Austin and Professor of Practice at Tulane University in New Orleans. He is a fellow of the American Academy in Rome and a Loeb Fellow in Advanced Environmental Studies at Harvard University Graduate School of Design. He holds a Master of Fine Arts and an honorary Doctor of Fine Arts from the Memphis College of Art. Coker is former director of the Memphis Center of Architecture, a collaborative program of design open to advanced architecture students in the region and sponsored by the University of Tennessee and the University of Arkansas. He’s been the visiting Favrot Chair at Tulane and has held the E. Fay Jones Chair in Architecture at the University of Arkansas.
Coker founded buildingstudio in 1999 after a 13-year partnership with Samuel Mockbee as Mockbee/Coker Architects. buildingstudio is a collaborative firm focusing on inventive and imaginative work, regularly acknowledged for its design excellence. They’ve received numerous honors including a P/A Design Award for low-cost housing “Breaking the Cycle of Poverty,” Emerging Voices from the Architectural League of New York, numerous Architectural Record, “Record House” awards and National AIA Honor awards. buildingstudio’s work has been highlighted at MoMA, SF MoMA, Wexner Center for the Arts, the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum and the National Building Museum in Washington, D.C. Coleman Coker will present buildingstudio’s recent work with a focus on the responsibility of the architect as an integral member of their community.

His presentation will address the following topics:
* Environmental issues
* Materials and systems
* Sustainable design intent and innovation
* Collective wisdom and feedback loops

Mr. Coker’s presentation is pending approval for one (1) Learning Unit-HSW.

Register NOW for what promises to be an entertaining and educational presentation that concludes the 2009 Think ArchiTecture | Think Beyond series organized by the Chapter’s Young Architects Forum.

Beryl Ford Collection

By Rex Brown www.oklahomamodernblog.com

Love it or hate it, the architecture of Oral Roberts University is nothing if not unique.

For years I’ve heard that ORU is the most visited tourist site in Tulsa. I have no idea if that factoid is true. But I do know from my own personal experience that out-of-state visitors often ask me to drive them past the futuristic campus on South Lewis.

What happens when Tomorrowland runs headlong into cold, hard reality?

I think that’s exactly what’s happening at Oral Roberts University lately. Recent work on the space-age complex has mostly involved improvements to infrastructure- widening a creek, improving drainage, building a bridge. But some of the so-called improvements are more destructive.

oklahomamodernblog.com

Until earlier this week the area around the base of ORU’s famous Prayer Tower was a geometric plot of gardens and bubbling water fountains surrounded by tall trees. The garden was an integral feature of the futuristic complex, strategically situated below Tulsa’s most unmistakable spire. As one passer-by reminisced, “I always thought this is what heaven would be like.”

But earthly finances appear to have disrupted Oral’s vision of heaven on Earth. The recessed garden oasis is currently being mowed under and filled with dirt. Crews are moving in ornamental rock to hide the angular concrete, lava rock and that ubiquitous anodized aluminum. Presumably the maintenance of a complicated system of ornamental fountains require people and money that ORU has deemed unnecessary. It’s apparent that maintaining the unique look and feel is not a high priority.

ORU’s space-age structures, designed by Tulsa architect Frank Wallace, have survived relatively intact for nearly 50 years. Today the campus maintains a kitsch appeal lost on most of the students who attend classes there. Hopefully it’s not lost on the people who pay the bills.

“Living in HiFi” will be an annual modern home tour hosted by the Modern Tulsa committee of the Tulsa Foundation for Architecture. Focused on mid-century modern residential architecture, the tour will seek to promote an awareness and the preservation of this oft-overlooked and dismissed style of architecture.

“Living in HiFi” will premiere June 13th in the historic Lortondale Neighborhood. See photos of Lortondale.
Designed and built in 1954 by Tulsa duo Donald Honn (architect) and Howard Grubb (builder), the Lortondale Neighborhood was the recipient of a multitude of national design awards. The neighborhood was featured in an array of magazines including House and Home and Better Homes and Gardens.

In recent years Lortondale has experienced something of a rebirth. A new generation of homeowners, interested in modern design, are snapping up the houses just as fast as they come on the market. After decades of neglect, many of the houses in the neighborhood are being restored to their former modern glory. Most importantly, the Lortondale Community is experiencing the same restoration.

This year’s tour seeks to convey the energy that is the Lortondale Neighborhood today. Featured are 6 houses in various stages of completion. From the beginning stages of a restovation to a virtually complete example of HiFi-modern bliss, this tour of Lortondale will show you what all the buzz is about.

Tickets are $10 in advance and $15 day-of. The tour will take place from 5:30 – 8:30 with an after party lasting from 8:30 -?

Tickets are available for purchase at the following locations:

Dwelling Spaces
119 South Detroit

Urban Furnishings
3636 South Peoria

Ida Red Boutique
3346 South Peoria

Tulsa Foundation for Architecture
2210 South Main

hope to see you there!

Shane

I am pleased with these drafts for the new downtown baseball field, myself. What do you guys think? It appears to be pretty stylish and in keeping with the BOK arena. Can’t wait to head downtown for some baseball!

By P.J. LASSEK World Staff Writer – from Tulsa World

The exterior design of Tulsa’s downtown ballpark will incorporate brick, zinc and art deco details that reflect the history of the Greenwood District, where it will be built.

The design, created by HOK Sport Venue Event’s office in Kansas City, Mo., was approved by the Tulsa Stadium Trust during a special meeting Wednesday.

The ballpark, to be named ONEOK Field, will be home to the city’s Double-A baseball team, the Tulsa Drillers. During the team’s off-season, the stadium will have a variety of other events.

The $60 million project includes construction of a $39.2 million multipurpose stadium and acquisition of surrounding land for mixed-use redevelopment. The stadium construction is scheduled to be complete in time for the Drillers’ 2010 baseball season.

The Drillers’ owner, Chuck Lamson, is excited about the exterior design, which he said was the product of a “good, thoughtful process.”

Even though the appearance strays from the tradition of all-brick ballparks, “it’s unique with a warm and inviting feel,” he said.

The use of brick in the design “gives homage to the architect of the Greenwood and Brady districts, and having the zinc panels creates the uniqueness of a new structure,” he said.

An initial design concept released last year was discarded. It resembled Frank Lloyd Wright’s architecture style with flat roofs, horizontal lines and stone, steel and glass construction material.

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