Visions of the Future Houston

Lisa Gray shares insights from an ongoing exhibition at the new Architecture Center Houston headquarters titled "Houston 2020 Visions."

The exhibition showcases the fruits of a competition inspired by Hurricane Harvey that asked architects to envision the city’s future. The exhibit was delayed due to the COVID-19 pandemic—a still lingering reality that ads additional urgency to the exhibition, according to Gray: "Strangely, the questions at the show’s heart — What’s next? How do we build a better, more resilient city? — have never felt more urgent."

Given that context and the offerings on display in the show, Gray suggest that is the city is about to enter a new phase of its history: "a chance to make this place safer, cleaner, greener, tougher and more fun."

The article, is behind a paywall, features renderings from the show to illustrate the themes identified by Gray. Themes include reconsidering freeways, new kinds of housing, the long-term influence of the pandemic, and repositioning the city relative to the flooding that occurs in the region, among others.  

Speaking of resilience and Houston, the Resilient Houston plan recently turned a year old, and the Rice University Kinder Institute for Urban Research surveyed the progress on the landmark plan.