Houston: The Latest Architecture and News

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The four design teams selected for the Houston Endowment Headquarters International Design Competition were announced today by Houston Endowment and Malcolm Reading Consultants, the organizers of the contest. The teams chosen have to imagine the new head offices of the organization, a private institution that tackles the essential needs of the community of greater Houston.

Steven Holl Architects and McCarthy Building Companies Inc. have celebrated the topping out of the Nancy and Rich Kinder Building for the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Texas’ oldest museum. The 243,600-square foot building will house modern and contemporary art once completed in 2020.

OMA Partner Jason Long has designed a new redevelopment of the historic Barbara Jordan Post Office in downtown Houston. Dubbed POST Houston, the 550,000 sf project will be re-used as a mixed-use cultural and commercial hub. Created for Lovett Commercial, the redevelopment rethinks the post building that was in use by the US government from 1936-2014. The new design aims to reinvigorate the city’s north downtown neighborhoods.

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Farshid Moussavi Architecture has won a competition to design the first Ismaili Center in the United States. To be built in Houston, Texas on an 11-acre site along the Buffalo Bayou, the project will be completed with with AKT II, Nelson Byrd Woltz Landscape Architects and DLR Group. The team beat out a shortlist including David Chipperfield Architects, OMA and Studio Gang. As the seventh center built worldwide, the building will be a cultural and religious space for Houston’s Ismaili Muslim community.

Videos

A new video by AERIAL FUTURES explores commercial space flight through the Houston Spaceport. The video was produced as part of a broader research initiative bringing together leading thinkers, practitioners and operators to imagine the potential opened up by spaceports. The video explores the spaceport as a new kind of architectural typology, and asks what kind of impact a spaceport is likely to have on the city and its population.

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Johnston Marklee has rapidly become one of the US’ most exciting practices. After years of completing sensitive and complex domestic-scaled works in Los Angeles, the office vaulted to prominence after being selected to curate Chicago’s 2017 architecture biennial. Since then they’ve completed and embarked on numerous significant projects - none more so than the Menil Drawing Institute.

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With Thom Mayne and Wolf D. Prix, on the occasion of the exhibition Houston: Genetic City. Envisioning a Future Post-Industry, Post-Oil, Post-Sprawl at Aedes Architecture Forum.

The panel discussion takes a close look at the specific urban condition, typology and development of the City of Houston. Together with Pritzker Prize-winning architect Thom Mayne of Morphosis and Wolf D. Prix of Coop Himmelb(l)au – both visionaries and provocateurs in the field of architecture and urbanism – the panel critically discusses Houston’s unique evolving urban form. In addition to the soon to be third most populous and most sprawling city in the US, Houston also completely lacks zoning regulations and thereby allows for unusual development patterns that can react quickly to changing market conditions. This opens up immense opportunities beyond conventional city planning for the urban revival of Houston, as much as it puts the city at the stake of commercial developers. The panel aims to explore questions raised by the specific regional urban condition of Houston also against the backdrop of a wider global narrative in contemporary urban planning and renewal.

Steven Holl Architects has broken ground on the Nancy and Rich Kinder Building for Modern and Contemporary Art at The Museum of Fine Arts in Houston, Texas. Selected through an international competition in 2012 among finalists Snøhetta and Morphosis Architects, the winning proposal is a 164,000-square-foot museum building that will be one of the campus’s two newest additions. To expand and unite its campus as an integral experience, the Museum is also realizing a new Glassell School of Art also designed by Steven Holl Architects, totaling a 14-acre redesign led by the office.

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A post shared by Lisa Forbus (@blackforestmom67) on Apr 9, 2017 at 6:28am PDT

From the soaring infinity pool on top of Marina Bay Sands to a glass-bottomed pool hovering over a mountainous Italian landscape, it’s safe to say death-defying swimming elements have emerged as the most high-adrenaline trend in luxury accommodation.

Now, a new pool at Houston’s Market Square Tower is upping the ante even further with a transparent plexiglass wading pool that projects out 10 feet past the end of the building – and 500 feet above the busy street below.

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