Inner City, New Town | Fifth Ward, Houston, TX | Fall 2013
Professor: Albert Pope, Partner: Adelina Kovela
The premise of Inner City, New Town suggests that intelligent urbanism can address the immediate pressures of global climate change in addition to current socioeconomic and housing issues within the city. Situated in one of Houston’s most prominent historical areas, this urban proposition seeks to operate at multiple scales – superblock, district, sector, and ward – by deploying a network of open space. Realized as a series of bands, this network could saturate the Fifth Ward with natural greenery and typify the city fabric with distinct grain at the sector level. This strategy creates opportunity for both systematic densification and the construction of a broader vocabulary for unbuilt land. Embedded within this banding is a series of nuclei, large centers of programmatic interruption which pull together surrounding activity. During initial phasing, these nuclei also catalyze the formation of community at the district level. Sector Bands, Local Nuclei is an urban scheme that allows for freedom of variation which creates a range of outcomes to accommodate for changing practice, community sentiment, and environmental challenges.
Design Projects 