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.
Tag Archives: Research
Fast-Forward Urbanism
An essay on Interloop-Architecture’s “Klip House” was recently published in Fast Forward >> Rethinking Architecture’s Engagement with the City.
Everything Must Move
Publication features conversations between Dawn Finley and Clover Lee and between Mark Wamble and Robert E. Somol.
Perspecta 38
“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
Reiss Residence
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
Wiess College Courtyard
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.
White Oak Bayou Studio
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
16 Houses
Interloop-Architecture’s “Klip House” is featured in this highly acclaimed publication.
Plug-On
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
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
Architecture
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.
1ab: First Architecture Biennale
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.
Aluminum in Contemporary Architecture
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.
Houston Products Lab
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.
Symonds Teaching Labs
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.