An ongoing exhibition in Houston imagines a city on the cusp of a new, more prosperous future.
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.
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