Flower Market Square

Project description

The ambition of this project is to explore the vertical potential of the jarring juxtapositions created by Houston’s lack of zoning. It also has an agenda to illustrate our lack of faith in master planning, vision planning and urban design as they have become manifest. We propose urban architecture as the most viable vehicle for cities like Houston, which develop without the benefit of any agency charged or empowered with the stewardship of urbanism. Without such an entity, large coagulations of adjacent property and the ability to enforce unifying principals, much of what constitutes urban theory and practice can not actually be achieved. Each program (Housing, Office and Retail) is woven both vertically and horizontally sharing zones in the building and organized to create new emergent single building adjacencies and juxtapositions. These conditions have precedents in the un-zoned (and un-planned) neighborhoods of Houston, but are rarely if ever used in a single building.