Inside Corner House is a one-story, single-family residence that occupies a corner lot in one of Houston’s more pedestrian, urban neighborhoods. The domestic spaces are organized around a central courtyard – an outdoor room surrounded by glass with minimal steel frames.
Photography: Jack Mussett, Susan George
Erin Ruhl holds a Master of Architecture from Rice University School of Architecture in Houston, Texas and a B.A. in Architecture from the University of Kentucky. She has extensive professional experience, as well as academic teaching for the summer architecture program, “Launch” at Rice University.
Interloop-Architecture’s award winning 9° House is highlighted in the 2013 Rice Design Alliance Home Tour, April 6 & 7, 2013. The tour showcases ten residences in Houston designed by Rice School of Architecture faculty throughout the school’s 100 year history.
Interloop-Architecture was commissioned by the Menil Foundation to develop a concept design for a new full-service cafe to accommodate visitors to the museum as well as a broader public within the city. The cafe proposal was to adapt and re-use an existing 1923 wood-framed bungalow on the campus, directly across from the Menil Collection museum entrance.
The Menil Collection building externalizes structure as an aesthetic means to mediate the scale of the museum building relative to the surrounding bungalows. The new Menil Cafe internalizes structure as an aesthetic means to expand the scale of the bungalow volume.
Interloop—Architecture was one of five nationally recognized architecture firms invited to submit a design proposal for a new landmark in Downtown Houston: Central Station – Main. Houston’s light rail infrastructure currently consists of just one line, but construction has begun on two additional transit lines that serve diverse neighborhoods in the city. These lines will all intersect at the new Central Station transfer zone in downtown Houston. This transfer zone literally occupies the right of way, allowing riders use the city sidewalks to change trains and make connections between the three light rail lines and city buses. Central Station is made up of three light rail platforms: one at Main Street – the focus of this competition proposal – and two more at Rusk and Capitol Streets. These platforms and the common spaces between them combine to form Open Transfer.
Varia was on the design team for Interloop’s Menil Cafe concept commission. She holds a Master of Architecture from Rice University and a B.S. in Architecture from the University of Texas at Arlington.
Welch Street House is a compact yet spatially expansive addition to a pristine single family residence originally constructed in 1945. The slender addition includes a family leisure space, laundry and garage at the ground level, with one kids’ bedroom, connecting bathroom, and a master suite above.
Exterior view from the backyard with new exterior terrace
Three of Interloop-Architecture’s projects are each awarded a 2012 Design Award through the American Institute of Architects, Houston Chapter. The jurors were: Craig Scott, IwamotoScott, San Francisco; Susan S. Szenasy, Editor in Chief, Metropolis magazine, New York; and Jon Pickard, Pickard Chilton, New Haven, Connecticut.
10 Decades constructs the one-hundred year history of Rice School of Architecture (RSA) in Houston, Texas. RSA’s curriculum and culture has transitioned and transformed from the Beaux-Arts traditions of early twentieth century architectural education, through the influences of Modernism, and advances in material and information technologies, to the now contemporary, fast-paced, global moment.
This exhibition was made possible by the generous financial contribution of: Rice School of Architecture, Rice Design Alliance, Architecture Center Houston Foundation, Barbara Amelio, HOK, John Hawkins, Lonnie Hoogeboom and Betsy Strauch JD Miner Systems, LLC, Christina and Mark Mitchell, Louis H. Skidmore, Jr.
Among other (interesting) things, Kyle Henricks is a steel fabricator in Houston. He also manages and operates the fabrication shop at Rice School of Architecture. Kyle has fabricated architectural steel pieces for many Interloop projects, including the Yoga Studio, 9° House, and 10 Decades. He has been known to collect early Americana (and motorcycles).
Jack Mussett has worked with Interloop on several design projects. He is currently a consultant for web design, graphics, and programming.
Peter Muessig received an M.Arch from Rice School of Architecture in 2012. His thesis, “Velocity: Mapping Houston the Diagonal,” recently received an AIA Houston Design award and has been published in Texas Architect and PLAT Journal.
Mary earned a Bachelor of Arts with honors from Vassar College in 2006, where she studied sociology, with an emphasis on labor and craft and holds a Master of Architecture from Rice School of Architecture in Houston, Texas.
Sam earned his Bachelor of Environmental Design (B.E.D) at Texas A&M University and holds a Master of Architecture from Rice University in Houston, Texas. Ask him about Lucy and Lola.
Matt earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Painting from Rhode Island School of Design and holds a Master of Architecture from Rice University in Houston, Texas. He is an expert with (pink) resin casting and is currently practicing architecture in Los Angeles.
9° House was highlighted in the 2011 AIA Houston Home Tour on the weekend of October 22, 2011. The project received critical attention, including a feature article in The Houston Chronicle’s Gloss Magazine.
Exterior view at dusk. (Benjamin Hill Photography)
Yoga Studio and Garden is sited behind an existing 1920’s “Airplane” style bungalow in Houston, Texas. The ground floor below the studio is a naturally ventilated space with sliding glass doors that open onto a garden with a pool. It serves as both a garage and at times a space for entertaining. The second level contains an open yoga studio that doubles as a guest room. A single piece of cabinetry divides the room into two zones. Incorporated into the cabinet panels are a Murphy bed, desk, closets, sliding glass doors and compact bathroom fixtures. Privacy and sunlight are filtered through an exterior hardwood screen. The screen produces different densities and “noise” patterns as it wraps the building and exterior stair. A series of computed, randomized scripts were written to develop the screen’s varied pattern.
Photographer: Paul Hester, Hester+Hardaway
An essay on Interloop-Architecture’s “Klip House” was recently published in Fast Forward >> Rethinking Architecture’s Engagement with the City.
The 9° House combines the renovation of an existing, historically significant modern residence with a new 3,000 sf addition. Where the addition begins the base geometry of the house skews 9° to the west to fill the vacant southwest corner of the lot and expand the rear garden for outdoor activity. Every detail of the addition conforms to the 9° shift. The skew produces a profound optical illusion. After spending time in the addition the natural tendency for the eye is to compensate and correct the disorienting effects of the skew. Upon returning to the original wing of the house the visitor then perceives the original portion of the house to be skewed 9° in the opposite direction. Photos: Benjamin Hill Photography
Interloop-Architecture principals Dawn Finley and Mark Wamble were interviewed by Curator Jed Morse. The newsletter features Interloop’s experimental housing delivery project – Klip House – as well as major residential and cultural commissions – 9° House and The Hempstead Garden Conservation Foundation Research Center.
Hempstead Garden is a private garden and residence on a 19 acre site in Hempstead, Texas, owned and developed for the past 25 years by John Fairey. The Peckerwood Garden Conservation Foundation recently acquired an adjacent 20.1 acre property. Interloop Architecture was commissioned to research the operational aspects of the original garden and new piece of land to develop a site concept for one integrated garden and the addition of a significant research and cultural center.
Will Garris received a B.Arch. at Rice School of Architecture in Houston, Texas. He is collaborating on an interactive online catalog project; exploring computer and information technologies in relation to design culture. Ask him about tetrapods . . .
48′ House was featured on the Rice Design Alliance 2009 Architecture Tour, featuring “Small Houses.” The tour was held Saturday and Sunday, March 28-29, 2009 from 1:00 p.m. to 6:00 p.m., highlighting innovative examples of small houses, under 2,000 square feet. The tour broke all previous records – nearly 1,900 tour guests.
Finca Nogales is a new residence and series of gardens on a 22,000 acre private cattle ranch in northern Argentina, near Salta. The design incorporates: (1) Daytime Parking and Entry, (2) Formal Entry Court with Parking, (3) a Service Quadrant, (4) an Orchard Quadrant, (5) a Garden Quadrant, (6) a Service Structure with Staff Quarters, Drying Court, and Laundry Room, (7) a Mate Bar and Dining Hall, (8) existing Seed House, (9) existing Barn, (10) Water Tower, (11) Covered Parking, (12) existing House, (13) a Guest House, (14) a Residence for the Ranch Foreman (15) the Owner’s Summer House, (16) an additional Owner’s House with adjoined Stables and Horse Riding Pen, (17) an observation Deck to be located above the Mate bar, and (18) a water feature and site irrigation strategy.
Interloop—Architecture was commissioned to design three different organizational models for new interactive, multi-media classrooms. One final design model was selected and built in multiple to form a Houston–based Learning Center. Classrooms of this type are an increasingly common requirement for research & technology based corporations. They not only enhance communication and collaboration between the diverse expertise of their employees and clients, but also serve as a recruiting tool for highly competitive prospective candidates for employment.
Perspective diagram: Skylights allow diffuse natural light when window shades are drawn for proprietary curriculum and content.
Marissa Hebert received an M.Arch from Rice School of Architecture in 2009. Originally from Albuquerque, New Mexico, she attended Texas Tech University in Lubbock, Texas and received an M.Arch from Rice University.
Mark Watabe is a designer and programmer who is currently in the SMArchS program at MIT. Watabe uses a wide range of scripting/programming languages in his interface/form/animation studies including: JAVA, MEL, VBscript, applescript, actionscript, PHP, and MySQL. His main interest is in researching how multi-scale computational frameworks can be applied to interface and architectural design.
Hometta is an innovative web-based house design delivery company, launched in June 2009. It is an entirely web-based set of tools that allows prospective homeowners to engage architecture as a product, while improving the design quality of single family houses built today. Rather than trying to reconceive how single family residences are produced and delivered (pre-fab model), Hometta modifies current modes of architecture practice to align with market driven building production. A client purchases modern home plans online and contracts a local builder to construct the design. Hometta will be the first subscription based open-source house design system that allows architects and designers to participate directly in the housing industry. Interloop-Architecture Principal Dawn Finley is a founding partner of Hometta.
Janelia Farm Research Campus is a scientific research center, located on a 689 acre property in Loudoun County, Virginia, on the bank of the Potomac River. Existing facilities opened in 2006 and include a research laboratory building (by architect Raphael Viñoly), conference housing, and visitor housing. The campus leads Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s neuroscience research labs, competing globally for the top post-docs, fellows, and scientific staff. At Janelia, emphasis is placed upon collaboration and team-based research.
“Houston, Texas: With their 1,200-square-foot live/work home, Dawn Finley and Mark Wamble show Houston that bigger isn’t always better. Story by Georgina Gustin / Photos by Daniel Hennessy”
http://www.dwell.com/articles/greetings-from-houston-tx.html
Jennifer Chen worked with Interloop for three years. She completed her thesis at Rice School of Architecture and received an M.Arch in May 2008. She received a B.A. in Economics in 2002 from Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire. Her professional experience includes a position as a capital markets legal assistant in New York City with Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft (2002-2004), as well as an internship at the U.S. State Department – Bureau of European Affairs in London (2000).
Eric Hughes received an M.Arch at Rice School of Architecture, Houston, Texas. His academic research and thesis, “Any Given Sunday,” investigated megachurch developments and their potential effect on urban spaces. Hughes received a Bachelor of Science in Architecture from the University of Nebraska. Hughes worked with Interloop for over 4 years, contributing to numerous projects in the office.
Callie Bailey is currently living in Austin, Texas and is working with Rhode Partners Architects.
“There are inroads to sponsored research. To practice architecture is to engage spatial and material operations with something that has not yet formed itself legibly. This idea of engagement includes the organization of work that precedes and parallels design; i.e. the discovery circuit, as well as the resulting organizations that execute and inhabit it. How and what architecture becomes within the context of a given project evolve together. One could argue that the means for producing architecture and the object of the deployed production are equally architectural. Both are formal and aesthetic. Maintaining this formal and aesthetic component will be critical in formulating a role for funded research in architecture.” – Excerpt from “Relationships Supercede Dimensions,” by Dawn Finley & Mark Wamble
The Reiss Residence is located in Houston, Texas on a corner lot near Rice University, in a neighborhood originally developed in the 1910’s. The property is surrounded on three sides by public streets. To the north is Sunset Boulevard a prominent residential street with a planted median. To the west is Greenbriar Avenue, a major north-south thruway. To the south is a neighborhood service alley used by local residents for access. The interior spaces of the house are designed around a private garden with a small pool. The kitchen is a double-height room with tall, glass walls facing in to the private garden.
West Elevation
48’ House is a modest single family residence in Houston, Texas designed to accommodate the changing lifestyle needs of a young professional family. The size and proportion of the house are based upon a 4′ x 8′ framing module ideal for wood and steel construction—minimizing material waste during construction. The house is sited at the rear of a standard lot that spans between a residential street (to the north/front) and a masonry sound-wall adjacent to US Interstate 59 (to the south/back), a location where the interstate is depressed approximately 18’ below natural grade. The mass of the house blocks the majority of highway sound from the front lawn making this an ideal space for outdoor activity under two massive live-oak trees. The first level contains work spaces (an outdoor covered shop, an office, storage, and a half bath). The second level contains living spaces (a kitchen, a forty-eight foot long dining and living space, two-bedrooms, and a full bath).
First featured in Dwell Magazine’s October 2007 print issue, 48’House has received national and international attention for its design innovation and economy. In 2010, it was published in a special ten-year anniversary print issue, Dwell: 100 Houses We Love, 2000-2010.
Photographer: Daniel Hennessy
This Schematic Design Document represents proposed improvements to Wiess College Courtyard located on the Rice University campus in Houston, Texas. It serves to advance a flexible, multi-purpose agenda for the college, to enhance the daily routines, intermittent casual gatherings, and periodic formal events associated with student life.
Contents:
Milled acrylic, light emitting diode (LED) circuit boards (cnc custom milled), stainless steel brackets and mounting plate
Applications
Emergency and safety light fixture applications
“Innovation, like other impulses in the design field, is regulated. Professional institutions created to support architecture often undermine the proposal of structures, components and elements that have no common precedent. Most of the language contained in contracts associated with the construction industry deliberately avoids risk – a fundamental characteristic of innovation. There are circumstances that justify crossing the line between designer and fabricator, leaving the safety of the designer’s realm and embarking upon the complexities and liabilities of the fabricator’s world. By doing so we can recapture some of the innovative sensibility apparently written out of our discipline by insurance policies, professional associations, and institutions of higher learning. Architecture is obligated to build with a philosophy of innovation in mind.” Exerpt from “Assuming Risk,” by Dawn Finley
Sited along the edge of one of Houston’s bayous, the White Oak Bayou Studio was commissioned by a prominent painter in Houston to house a studio workspace for production, an exhibit space, and a modest domestic residence with pool.
View of front elevation. Perforated corten steel sliding panels allow the entry and studio to be completely open to the street, or closed down in the evening for privacy
Interloop-Architecture’s “Klip House” is featured in this highly acclaimed publication.
Nasher Sculpture Center is a 60,000 SF structure and a 1.9 acre Garden designed to showcase the sculpture collection of Ray and Patsy Nasher. The Center is located in Downtown Dallas across from the Dallas Museum of Fine Art. Renzo Piano Building Workshop is the lead design consultant, Peter Walker and Partners is the Landscape Architect and Ove Arup & Partners is lead engineers. Interloop Architecture was hired by Renzo Piano’s office to administer the design of the building and garden. Interloop Architecture was also hired to coordinate between the owner and the other consultants all matters relating to the execution of the design, as well as produce Construction Documents for portions of the construction including Finish Millwork, Ornamental Gates, Stone details, a 2,500 SF Auditorium, and various other finish details associated with the project.
Photographer: Tim Hursley ©2003
Interloop Architecture was commissioned by The Nasher Foundation to design a building to house Tending, (blue), an artwork by James Turrell. Tending, (blue) is sited in a planted berm at the west end of the Nasher Sculpture garden, opposite the main museum building. Tending, (blue) contains two artworks – an entry piece and a skyspace.
Photographer: Tim Hursley ©2003
Two-Seater is a folding bench armature that was engineered and fabricated by Interloop Architecture for Tending,(Blue). This bench is a critical element to experiencing the Skyspace artwork by James Turrell. Texas Accessibility Standards (TAS) requires that the bench accommodate wheelchair access for two individuals seated side by side. Instead of creating a void for these seats, we developed a retractable armature that would support the required portion of the bench, (over four-hundred pounds of stone cladding), enabling it to fold into the wall. Actuators allow an individual to operate the bench with very little effort using a concealed handle to slide the bench into position or to fold it back into the wall.
Interloop Architecture was commissioned to design and fabricate seven pieces of stainless steel and wood furniture for a private residence in Richardson, Texas. The Polara (7) pieces are used in a master bedroom that includes an eight foot by eight foot cantelievered glass sunroom (Plug-On). The pieces include two wall-mounted night-stands, a footlocker, a rolling upright credenza, a head-board, a picture rail, and wall-mounted lcd stand with drawer and cabinet.
EXIT is a custom exit light produced for The Nasher Sculpture Center in Dallas, Texas. Interloop Architecture designed and fabricated the exit lights, working with engineers, fabricators, UL technicians, and the graphic design firm 2×4. In keeping with city, state, and federal safety standards, every emergency light fixture must undergo extensive testing by the Underwriter Laboratories Testing Center to meet a wide range of design criteria. These stringent technical requirements typically thwart innovation by limited new design, requiring the exclusive use of existing UL approved components.
On November 7, 2007, the Museum of Modern Art, New York, inducted E-X-I-T into the permanent collection. A design like E-X-I-T marks a departure in MoMA’s collecting policy, and as such, provides an early precedent in the acquisition of architectural signage.
Plug-On is the first in a series of product prototypes intended for residential structures. It was fabricated and assembled in Houston, then delivered and installed onto an existing modest one-story ranch style house in Richardson, Texas. The client was interested in an addition that would complement the existing language of the house and accommodate a sitting area to redirect the space of the master bedroom to the lush trees in the rear lawn. Our directive was to maximize the qualitative effect of the square footage. Plug-on is an eight-foot cube, fabricated entirely of stainless steel, glass and wood. It is structured as a cantilever using a concrete counterweight and steel beam fulcrum underneath the bedroom floor.
Perspecta 34 “Temporary Architecture,” The Yale Architecture Journal. June 2003. Edited by Noah K. Biklen, Ameet N. Hiremath and Hannah H. Purdy. “The Rest of the World Exists,” by Dawn Finley & Mark Wamble
Julia’s is a twenty-five hundred square-foot new restaurant, bar, and full kitchen located in Midtown, Houston. Two existing commercial spaces were gutted and combined to form the new interior. A large portion of the existing brick facade was removed and replaced with new storefront glass windows. The space takes advantage of it’s prime corner location along the new light rail, connecting downtown Houston to the medical center and stadium. The main dining space projects a vibrant interior onto the street. A palette of six (almost cosmetic) colors are deployed like wallpaper, wrapping the interior space with no regard for physical corners or material edges. The flooring is a custom colored epoxy finish, suitable for industrial applications, that wraps up the face of the bar, the banquette seating, and two columns.
The following proposal is for the design of a new high school – approximately 489,000 square feet, on a 15.3 acre site – for the city of Perth Amboy, New Jersey. The City of Perth Amboy, the Perth Amboy Board of Education and the National Endowment for the Arts, in conjunction with the New Jersey School Construction Corporation and New Jersey Department of Education, held a national design competition in 2003 for a new high school, to be constructed with state funds as part of New Jersey’s $12 billion school construction program. The facility is to contain five semi-autonomous specialized academies, or schools-within-a-school.
Three public sector “urban park” projects in Houston, Texas were featured in the July 2002 issue of Architecture magazine – – designed by Mark Wamble between 1999-2001, while Design Principal with Bricker+Cannady Architects.
Interloop has worked with structural engineer Brad Dougherty (formerly with Structural Consulting Co., Inc.) since 2002. Brad founded InSight Structures in 2011.
Thumb is a design office based in New York City that works on both commissioned and speculative graphic communication projects, usually in the area of architecture and urban design. Thumb designed Interloop-Architecture’s identity and has collaborated on several independent graphic projects.
Emily Kirkland was a project designer with Interloop for two glorious years, working on Julia’s Bistro, The Nasher Sculpture Center, and the Perth Amboy High School Competition. She is currently in New York City. Kirkland is an accomplished seamstress who recently started a line of custom quilts. She lives in Brooklyn with (Luke and) a furry friend named Pek.
First Architecture Biennale Rotterdam (1ab) is an international urban event organizing a series of lectures, competitions, and exhibitions throughout the city. Eight international architects and designers were invited to design a “stim” – a site specific interactive installation, as described by architect and critic Lars Lerup – an object, image, or space that brings together various forms of technology in order to create a moment of connectivity and intense engagement.
Interloop’s three Stim proposals utilize simple technologies to create a spatial dynamic where fixed material elements become balanced with the real-time circumstances of pedestrian intrigue and engagement.
The Houston Products Laboratory was selected by the Heinz Architectural Center as one of eight projects to be exhibited in Aluminum in Contemporary Architecture, at the Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh. Interloop Architecture designed and fabricated a sixteen foot long table to display drawings, diagrams, models, and renderings. The table is a steel powder-coated frame that supports nine custom milled aluminum plate tops, clear anodized and black anodized. The exhibit ran November 2000 through February 2001 in association with the exhibition Aluminum by Design: Jewelry to Jets.
Todd is currently practicing at Polshek Partnership Architects in New York City. He is also busy with two little ones – James Roy and Ann Elise!
Ken is in Colorado (come back!) practicing architecture with Arch11. He teaches design studios at the University of Colorado College of Architecture. Ken has been known for experiments with fiberglass, foam, and rubber-coating fabrications; and can drive unbelievable distances without falling asleep.
Interloop Architecture was commissioned by the Dutch design group Droog Design to design and fabricate a mailbox to be exhibited in Do Create, an international product design collection at the Milan Furniture Fair 2000. Do is an active brand created by KesselsKramar and the Do Create exhibition is a collaboration with Droog Design. Each product in the collection requires consumer interaction and participation in order to complete or activate the product.
Do Post Prototype, Epoxy Coated Steel
Klip is a consumer based housing platform, a delivery system that provides the physical and operational infrastructure for trade corporations to participate in the production, delivery, and servicing of housing.
This project is a result of our participation in Sixteen Houses – a project organized and curated by Michael Bell in 1998 and funded by the Graham Foundation, the Fifth Ward Redevelopment Corporation, and DiverseWorks in Houston. Sixteen architects and designers were invited nationally to generate innovative concepts and new options for a low-income house – to expand the very limited market. To briefly describe the voucher program – these are Federal and State initiatives that provide financial assistance to qualified families and individuals by awarding, housing “Vouchers” to serve as the down payment on a house. In its current format, the voucher system distributes a mass of capital such that one voucher equals one house.
We were, and are, frustrated with a design system that is constricted by insurance companies, loan officers, municipalities, and contractors, etc. and decided to look at the overall economic impact that these vouchers might have if they were bundled, rather than distributed. Instead of designing a single house that has very little impact to the housing industry, we worked with the idea of consolidating the vouchers to pay for a housing platform, or infrastructure. We needed to work outside of the home mortgage process in order to gain some ground.
“16 Houses was founded in 1995 by architect Michael Bell with funding from the Graham Foundation of Chicago; initiated as a study of the economics and design of the single-family house and its pivotal role in down-payment voucher programs initiated by the federal government.”
Interloop-Architecture was one of sixteen architects invited to design single-family houses for the Fifth Ward Community Redevelopment Corporation in Houston – to examine the architectural implications of the new federal policy of decentralization and dispersal. Interloop’s proposal was Klip House, an experimental housing delivery platform. An exhibition of the projects, “16 Houses: Owning a House in the City,” opened November 6, 1998, at DiverseWorks in Houston. In the spring of 1999, the exhibition moved to the University of Texas at Austin.
(excerpt from Michael Bell)
Pete currently practices in Denver, Colorado – where he enjoys the great outdoor life with Laura and Sprout. If you look closely, you might see him in the Houston Products Laboratory . . .
Dawn Finley is a founding principal of Interloop—Architecture and has over twenty years of experience practicing architecture. She received a B.S. in Architecture from the University of Michigan College of Architecture and Urban Planning where she was selected for the Burton L. Kampner Design Award. She received a Master of Architecture from Rice University School of Architecture.
Prior to establishing Interloop—Architecture, Dawn was a Project Designer with Ogawa/Depardon Architects in New York, NY, where she designed and managed the construction of a range of residential and commercial projects, including Bar 89, an award winning new building in SOHO. Her practice experience also includes consulting design work on research lab buildings for Schlumberger Laboratories in Rosharon, Texas and office buildings in Santiago, Chile and Houston, Texas. Dawn was the first U.S. designer commissioned by the internationally recognized design brand, Droog Design to design and produce a speculative product prototype. The product “Do Post” (an instant message mailbox) was first introduced at the Kunsthal, Rotterdam for the 2000 Milan International Furniture Fair.
Finley combines professional practice with academics. She is a tenured professor and the director of graduate studies at Rice University School of Architecture and has been a visiting critic at numerous institutions, including UIC, Princeton University, U.C. Berkeley, and the Architectural Association. Her academic research includes twentieth century techniques of architectural representation in relation to graphic design as well as future forms of civic space in the United States. Finley was honored by DesignIntelligence as one of 25 Most Admired Educators for 2016. She recently completed System of Novelties (Park Books, Zurich) a book featuring the research, writing, and design work of Interloop—Architecture.
Houston Products Laboratory was designed in 1997 for a custom engineering and fabrication company. The site for the Products Lab is in Houston Heights, a neighborhood to the north of Downtown Houston, Texas. In response to the urban mixture found within Houston Heights, the design for the Products Laboratory builds upon the diversity of the context. Programming needs include a conference and presentation room, a products gallery, a design studio, a dark room, kitchen and bathroom area, a products archive, a fabrication shop and an assembly yard. The distribution of these functions from interior to exterior and from one level to the next is key to the way the building works.
The exterior skin organizes the space from front to back, allowing the interior programs to overlap, and interact laterally. Because the interior business goals for the Houston Products Lab require functions to overlap and interact over the life of the building, the exterior enclosure has to support these internal demands, exerted from inside and contained at the exterior. To formalize this condition, a single continuous surface, or “riboon” was used to define the spatial limits of the interior and to engage the building with the assembly yard and the street. The ribbon, made of 22-gauge galvanized aluminum, operated in one direction, wrapping front to back, top to bottom.
Gardiner Symonds Teaching Labs 1 and 2 are interactive, multi-media learning facilities located on the Rice University campus. Flexibility in the Symonds Labs is built into the spatial dynamic where fixed material elements become balanced with the real-time circumstances of use. The space is poised, where flexibility is embedded into the architecture but latent – induced by the conditions of use, and facilitated by the visual lines of connection between users, computer monitors, large format screens, audience cameras, and the simultaneous electronic and human modes of communication that are consistent with each of these lines of connection. Audible lines of communication remain unobstructed, and at times relied upon significantly, suggesting to us that libraries and workspaces of the future will be both noisy and active places if they are used correctly.
Texas Ice House proposes a new design for architecture in an auto-mobilized city. The approach develops in three ways: in the relationship of architecture to program; in the relationship of architecture to patronage; and in the relationship of architecture to a recognizable space-time continuum historically embodied in the static material and spatial dimensions of the city.
Mark Wamble is a founding principal of Interloop—Architecture and has over twenty–five years of experience in architectural practice. He is a licensed architect in the State of Texas. Wamble received a Bachelor of Environmental Design from Texas A&M University and a Master of Architecture from the Graduate School of Design at Harvard University.
Prior to establishing Interloop—Architecture, Wamble worked as a Project Designer, and later as Project Architect, with Eisenman Architects in New York (1983-1991) where he was on the design team for the Wexner Center for the Visual Arts at Ohio State University in Columbus, Ohio. Wamble was also Project Architect on the Columbus Convention Center in Columbus, Ohio, and on three office buildings in Tokyo, Japan. With his team at Eisenman Architects, Mark designed the winning scheme for the international Rebstockpark Competition in Frankfort, Germany. In the early 1990s, Mark was selected for 40 Under 40, a prestigious award given to emerging young architects in the United States. Later that year, he won the Young Architect Award from the Architecture League of New York.
In 1994, prior to collaborations with Dawn Finley, Wamble formed the research practice Interloop Architects in Houston, Texas, and was commissioned to design the Gardiner Symonds Teaching Labs I & II, a series of technology–based teaching facilities for Rice University. Wamble then became a Design Principal and Partner at Bricker+Cannady Architects in Houston (1997-2001) where he designed the Renovation of Jones Plaza in Downtown Houston, a significant urban project that won an AIA award and a Progressive Architecture (PA) Award both in 1999. Jones Plaza was also published with two other urban park projects designed by Mark Wamble in an Architecture magazine feature “Portfolio” article in 2002.
Wamble combines professional practice with academics. He is a Professor in Practice at Rice University School of Architecture and has served as a visiting professor at the University of Michigan, Harvard University, and Columbia University. His current academic research includes advanced structural models for urban high-rise buildings and New Type Here, a design project funded by a grant from the Kinder Institute for Urban Research examining new building types in response to urban context and adaptive re-use as an alternative to historic preservation.