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ARTPLANT #2800

ARTPLANT #2800 situated on the site of the former Coca-Cola bottling plant in Houston, considered a suburban site back in 1950, is now part of an enviable neighborhood and employment center. Houston is not densely populated, and its built environments are often spread-out due to a lack of zoning, urban planning, and building rules. However, there are a few pockets of density in Houston that complicate the conception of the region as the capital of sprawl and Houston is experiencing rapid urbanization. Through a grid organization, we aim to densify the block. We organized street fronts and boundaries in well-packed sequences in a way that helps maximize land use. Moreover, the original building footprint is laid out in a sort of randomized manner with a lot of open space, through the grid, we aim to add clarity and order to the layout, facilitate navigation on the site and increase efficiency. We organized the streets as extensions of preexisting ones to facilitate access. Moreover, we introduced courtyards within the existing long and dark factory buildings, to allow more natural light in the gallery, artist workshops, and office spaces. The factory is an industrial landmark. When implementing our arts and design incubator, following the concept of a circular building economy, we intend to repurpose the existing facilities and intervene in a complementary manner. We created contrast, however, between the old and the new through materiality: the lightness of the existing metal cladding contrasts with the new adobe brick. To emphasize the boundaries between the inner blocks and internal streets, the blocks are demarcated either by a change in the flooring materiality or by adding brick walls of varying heights that can in some cases become brick benches. These variations create unique spatial moments between one block and another, and between the block and the street. We envision the site as a permeable city block, one of walking urbanism where after defining a grid system the spaces left open provide many programmatic opportunities.