CITE MAGAZINE FALL 2010

By Catherine Essinger

"Carol Isaak garden believes that much Houston housing is unsold because the lots have been stripped bare and the houses need shade and proportion to be desirable. Barden's personal aesthetic, influenced by her upbringing in the Pacific Northwest, is strongly associated with her properties though she commissions different architects. Barden's brand recognition is one of the most distinctive in Houston. All Barden's projects are elegant and carefully finished."

 

Houston Business Journal
June 27, 2004

"One of Houston's newest developers has come into the profession as sort of an outsider looking in. Carol Isaak Barden, a journalist by trade, has established a new firm to create unique homes that are designed by an architect, not a developer. 'When I started this business, my vision was to build homes with really great finishes and to save all the trees,' says Barden, who has covered design, architecture and luxury hotels for major publications like Travel + Leisure, Southern Accents, Town & Country, Met Home and Conde' Nast Traveler. For their projects, Barden and Binachi chose to build homes in a style Barden defines as 'luxe minimalism with refined architectural details."

 

Houston Architecture: The Best of the New

by Clifford Pugh

Houston Chronicle, August 12, 2004

"Some jewels are popping up around Houston, architecture that has the power to inspire and lead the way. Writer Carol Isaak Barden knowns design. Instead of wedging as many units as possible on sites, she leaves open space and trees."

Stephen Fox

Architectural Critic and Historian, Rice University

PaperCity, January 2007

"Carol Isaak Barden embarked bravely upon a new endeavor after 20 years as a style and travel journalist, a real estate developer with the courage to take a chance and the heart to make a difference. Her instinctual understanding that great architecture purports to bolster entrepreneurial ventures makes Barden's houses a contribution to the city, as well as successful real estate ventures."

 

Stephen Fox

Architectural Critic and Historian, Rice University

"Carol Isaak Barden takes responsibility for the way she is changing the city. To her, Houston is not merely a blank slate to be exploited, then swept clean, then exploited again. Her collaboration with architects of vision results in houses that partake of, and contribute to, the qualities and charms of the places where they are built. They demonstrate that bottom-feeding isn't the only way that markets in Houston operate and that the market will reward design excellence. At a time when Houston's real estate development community seems to have turned its back on the architectural achievements that rough fame and success to Gerald D. Hines twenty-five years ago, Carol isaak Barden is, one project at a time, re-asserting the value of outstanding architecture in building the good city."

 

Re: Barden and her cadre of cool, design-minded...

Laurann Claridge, Papercity, July 2007

"If there's one woman who has made stylish Houston homeowners take note of the residential architecture around them, it's Carol Isaak Barden."