OF DOORS, OF AIR

Houston, TX

Fall 2020

The door’s phenomenological and formal qualities draw air at both the human and building scale. The building designed from such qualities both creates a distinct contrast between an open and closed space condition, but is also capable of serving as a commentary on its surroundings, namely air, through the program spaces, and through the program spaces between the program spaces; it can blur the lines between open and closed. This formal logic and experiential effort results in a building that is capable of drawing air according to the program’s parameters, and the user’s experience of the air conditions generated by the building, all of which stem from the arc of the door swing.

The Cultural Center itself is a grouping of 3 structures, the main building, the admin building, and the wind pavilion. Each is situated according to its needs of separation from other structures through the logic of the air on site. The Center performs at different scales of porosity: the spatial organization on site, purposeful spacing between the pieces of program within the building to elaborate upon the air and its characteristics, & the ever changing state of the doors.

The wind on site is incredibly unpredictable. To combat this unpredictability, it was natural to put doors everywhere.

2 _ CLIMATE PERFORMANCE / RESPONSE

The building’s porosity serves to maintain the ability to utilize the existing weather conditions, with the aid of the meteorological lab that is situated within the building on the fourth floor. The doors are mechanically controlled according to a series of acceptable climates per programmatic element. For example, if it is 72 degrees and sunny, the gallery can accommodate this and fully opens its doors to eliminate the separation of air on site from air in the gallery. The orchestration of the doors is fully flexible and able to change as needed per the atmospheric conditions and the fairly flexible ‘ideal’ climate of each space.