This Thursday artist Mary Ellen Carroll lifted and turned an unoccupied house in the Houston subdivision of Sharpstown 180 degrees.  The artist explained that the work, “Protoype 180,” was a commentary on the lack of a land use policy in the city, and on the fading glamor of this community.

Like many suburban communities Sharpstown was laid out in a way that’s purely picturesque, without regard for the land’s native landscape and orientation, so that turning the building 180 degrees doesn’t do much but replace the front street facade with another, less formal one.  At a time when so many single family houses are being foreclosed on the effort seems especially hollow.  Taking the building to somewhere where it was needed would have been a more radical gesture.

Last night at a SoHo showroom Kansas-based architect Dan Rockhill spoke about his work.  He has two professional lives, one at an eponymous firm and another with the non-profit Studio 804.  His role at Studio 804 is a lot like the late Samuel Mockbee’s at Rural Studio.  Each semester he leads University of Kansas architecture students to design and construct a local building.

Rockhill’s projects, which are driven by green issues and a concern for craft, have an understated sensibility.  He called it a “chicken coop mentality” because they follow the most basic assumptions about building orientation, layout and construction.  Yet each of Rockhill’s structures is elegant and modern-feeling, like a box for living.  That might be the hardest thing about green architecture, making it beautiful too.

At a time when our culture seems to have become largely secular, how can a religious building still be regarded with talismanic powers?

(Chapel, Valleaceron, Spain, 2001. By Sancho Madridejos Architecture Office, from Closer to God, Copyright Gestalten 2010.)

Last month at the Guggenheim Peter Eisenman, our most celebrated architectural theorist, said, “Architecture changes nothing.”

Then last night, at the Center for Architecture, Paul Goldberger, our most well-known architectural writer, said “Architecture makes life better.”

I believe both of them.