Isles of Shade

January—April 2021

Text. Houston maps. Ground plan (details, exposure analysis, daylight animation). Roof Plan. Axonometric. Renderings (boarding, passing, playing, gathering, waiting). Elevations. Former site plan. Typology animation. Section animation. Other massings (Fifth Ward TC, Bellaire TC).

A new transit center typology at Burnett TC, Houston, TX, USA. Taught by Amelyn Ng for ARCH 402.

Daylight elevation animation.

At the center of Houston’s interiorized urban condition is an abdication of public shade. This is exemplified in the city’s transit centers, which exist as isolated objects disconnected from their contexts, resolving as a single shed or vault form—providing a base level of flimsy shade at the bus lanes, but otherwise detached from the streets and buildings nearby. There is immense potential in adjacent spaces to formally integrate these centers into the city fabric. A reimagined transit center would embody a cool rock, opening up its envelope and becoming a porous yet dense provider of shade. Houston’s transit infrastructure would expand to become a social infrastructure too, open all hours, forming a new archipelago of mobility and public-oriented shade.

Transit centers rest in the urban fabric as islands that demand further attention that in their current state discourage transit use and fosters hierarchies of social inequity in terms of who can access shade. With a surplus of transit passing through downtown, centers that are scattered further away are intended to address transit gaps, yet more often than not exist as isolated objects, disconnected from their contexts. The effect of this on the user is tangible, and detrimental to their journey on and off a transit vehicle. Looking at three transit centers as case studies—Fifth Ward TC, Bellaire TC, and Burnett TC—one notices how the transit center typology typically resolves as a single shed or vault form, providing a base level of shade at the bus lanes, but otherwise detached from the streets and buildings nearby.

Hand in hand with designing for transit is a need to evaluate shade and the experience of waiting for travel. Shelters and coverings are rarely considered a truly public infrastructure, and their presence often fosters hierarchies of social inequity in terms of who can access shade. There are inequalities in where people can find public shade in Houston; only 24% of METRO’s bus stops are shaded. Furthermore, the city treats shade as limited to the enclosure of a building, bound to structure footprints. In focusing on reinventing the Burnett TC, the production of deliberate and varied expressions of shade by playing with systems of building shells and vaults close to the ground draws attention to the binary of being exposed to the sun or not; in the name of understanding coverings as a necessity, one reframe a new relationship with the exterior, where not everything has to be inside, and the outside can be habitable.