Land speculation, sprawl and the needs of industry drive the growth of Houston. It’s changing urban typologies present new challenges to the soon to be third most populous city in the United States. In ‘Houston: Genetic City’, students from the University of Houston Gerald D. Hines College of Architecture and Design along with professors–Peter Zweig, Matt Johnson and Jason Logan–consulted with Pritzker Prize laureate Thom Mayne, of Morphosis, to develop urban scenarios that respond to different phenomena.
No city in Texas is as diverse as the urban industrial city of Houston. A patchwork of suburbs connected by highways, Houston is
increasingly confronted with complex environmental and social
challenges. Due to the lack of a land use plan, settlements grew
unplanned on the many land reserves in the greater Houston area.
Drossscapes and junkspaces are flexibly transformed by informal
appropriation processes. With little regulation, opportunities for
innovative urban development are negotiable.
The exhibition ´Houston: Genetic City´ by the University of Houston,
Gerald D. Hines College of Architecture and Design features ideas about
the future of the city. Contrary to top down or formal planning models,
´Genetic City´ is based on the culture of ad-hoc planning. At the urban
or even regional scale, the students produced speculative proposals that
respond to large-scale phenomena. The urban scenarios have been broken
into three primary themes:
Vacancies
The vacancy
scenario has explored how to rebuild and rethink the development of the
central business district in five distinct phases over the next thirty
years, as Houston transitions from an industrial to a post-industrial
economy. The challenge was to demonstrate the viability of downtown
projects from an economical, cultural, social and ecological point of
view in a city simply driven by the demands of the market place. This
scenario envisions a blueprint, an alternative path that will bring
density, transportation alternatives, infrastructural balance, and
positive urban solutions for living in downtown Houston, as the large
vacancy in the central business district is filled. This vision proposes
a dynamic, optimistic future that is actually occurring faster than
anyone has anticipated.
Energy City
This scenario
relies on two premises: that energy systems fundamentally configure the
way we live, and that energy changes our built landscape and environment
in specific ways through infrastructure. The use of fossil fuels for
transport, manufacturing, heating, cooling, and so on has had specific
effects on Houston’s patterns of development, creating our sprawling
infrastructure. Most of this infrastructure is monofunctional and single
use. As energy systems evolve toward more sustainable models, however,
there is the potential to rethink infrastructure along hybrid,
multivalent lines. That is, architecture, infrastructure, and landscape
can merge. Architectural proposals in recent years have approached the
scale of the infrastructural, a type that is often referred to as a
Megaform.
The Unzoned City
In this scenario, it was
decided to work within a condition of Houston that has been defined as
the ´Unzoned City´. Houston is the largest city in the United States
without formal zoning. By mapping the loose network of city municipal
codes and deed restrictions, the studio was left with a theoretical
residual territory within the city that is unregulated. Presented as a
series of maps and diagrams that illustrate strategies for operating
within this territory, students explored new potentialities for
architecture’s relationship to infrastructure, land-use, and Houston’s
hot, humid and flood-prone environment. A selection of section models
zooms into the moments when architecture frames, connects, and
integrates these elements. Ultimately, the work demonstrates what the
´Unzoned City´ promises: how a lack of zoning can generate exceptional
forms of urbanism and architecture.
The exhibition includes
maps, diagrams, drawings, models and virtual reality walkthroughs,
including master plans, building designs and spatial strategies.
Many thanks for the support:
