Designed by SITE; completed 1975 Houston, Texas The Best Products building located in Houston, Texas, also known as the “indeterminate facade,” was built in 1975 as a showroom by the architectural firm SITE for the Best Products retail chain. The building is known mainly for its idiosyncratic facade, which wraps a 65,000-square-foot, commercial-formula building with a high brick wall that appears to be in the act of collapsing. The extended cornice is given an irregular profile as though it were coming apart, and atop the entrance a massive pile of bricks tumbles through a gap, resting precariously on a thin metal canopy. The building presents a startling image when viewed within its suburban context, a strip center located between Almeda Mall Shopping Center and a residential neighborhood along the Gulf Freeway. Visitors’ reactions to the building have ranged from amusement to concerns for the safety of the occupants; a common conjecture soon after the building opened was that it was ...