We are in full production mode on the 17 SPACE units being purchased by the City of Houston for mobile solar power generators.  In the event of widespread power outage as the city experienced after IKE, the SPACE's would be mobilized and micro-community centers providing power for cell phone recharging, information dissemination and staffing by disaster response personnel.  The units are being fabricated at Campo Sheet Metal's new facility on Telephone Rd. near Hobby Airport by our new company Adaptive Container with Ameresco as the prime contractor.  The units will be finished and installed soon.                           

 

Metalab has been recognized with an AIA Houston Honor Award for Artist of the Year.  The award will be received at the AIA Annual Meeting on October 18th and will have a solo exhibition at Architecture Center Houston in May 2012.  Metalab recently created an interactive public art work in the new Houston Central Permitting Center through a commission from Houston Arts Alliance and City of Houston that integrates environmental sensing technology, algorithmic animation and digital fabrication.  Their work with the artists Dennis Oppenheim, Matthew Geller and Jaume Plensa has established them as an nationally recognized architecture and fabrication firm specializing in civic art installations.  Joe Meppelink and Andrew Vrana share this distinction with Sarah Hannah (UH School of Art MFA '08) and Travis McCarra (UHCoA BArch '09).

 

 

 

   

INNOVATION TERRITORIES An invited competition, Innovation Territories (IT) 093 - 066, was curated by AIA Houston andNew Yorkartist Mary Ellen Carroll to explore the potential of the slowly decaying Sharpstown Mall area.  The proposition digs a deep hole into the southeast corner of the lot, scraping the existing shopping mall structure in and encapsulating the debris. The dirt removed from the hole is used to create a structured mound over Interstate 59, thereby extending the useable land. The site is then converted to a green space with some combination of park space, productive landscape, comminty garden, and pasture-land.   A 400,000 SF footprint mixed-use building sits at the center of the site with retail on the bottom floor, and offices, hotel, condo, and event space above. A depression in the site above the debris field becomes a lake and its surrounding marshland become a reservoir and habitat for native plants and animals, while providing ample storm water retention for this site, and others around it, with excess storm water capacity being reserved and sold as credits to future area development in order to promote density.   Competition Winner with Faro Studio Head of Jury:  Charles Renfro, Partner, Diller Scofidio + Renfro

We have moved to 1824 Spring St., Suite 220. Our new conference room is the new home for the Ceiling Cloud

PODA the PLAY A commission for the Houston Arts Alliance Portable Art on Demand project.  Given the presence of both the (grown-up) museum and the children present in the park context of Discovery Green we suggested the overarching narrative of PLAY, as a guiding concept for the development of the repurposed PODS container.  The PLAY narrative capitalizes on the context of the park setting and open space, but perhaps more fittingly, offers an energetic creative outlet for both creators and the participants.  PLAY also makes a subtle reference to the consumer culture of consumption, acquisition, and obsolescence that defines the lifecycle of the playthings that we buy, and that leads to the now ubiquitous demand and market for self-storage solutions like PODS.  Themes developed with students in the DigiFAB seminar included concepts such as unpacking and laying out reconfigurable furniture, laying out maze-like components into pathways, creating a sound piece by replacing POD walls with xylophone bars, creating interior cave-like spaces by removing solid biomorphic forms that function as provocative objects on the surrounding lawn.