Design Drill #1

[strickn]

A recent thread asks, "What would your skyscraper designs for Houston look like?"

 

I would like to suggest 1301 Franklin as a design project.  It has several interesting features.

 

Built 1980, it closed in '02 and was studied extensively for various reuses, each time concluding that costs were prohibitive.  It is configured as a high-rise jail and no longer meets fire code for even that.  It would have cost $4.4 million in 2009 to bring it up to code, but county commissioners were tired of studying uses and wanted to tear it down.  Four years later, it's still here, so let's consider all it's good for.

 

1.  Scaffolding

 

It's a very solid chunk of reinforced concrete bones.  You could sheath the outsides and top in new space, transferring loads to the 1980 structure.

 

2.  Access

 

This seems counterintuitive at first, and yet the criminal courts building across the street was designed with inadequate elevator capacity that would itself cost millions to revise.  We could bank the elevators on this block instead, and connect them with skywalks.  All that would be required is a county-staffed security cordon at the bottom.

 

3.  Convenience

 

If you've got expedited access to the courthouse, it becomes a possible oasis spot for Houston's criminal lawyers.  I don't know how big a demographic this may be, but if we can creatively solve the other issues there can be office with residential way up high.

 

4.  Opportunities for creativity:

 

--parking!

--what to do with the podium cube (all 800,000+ square feet of it)

--how to enliven the cityscape at the small scale (former government buildings are notoriously bad)

--how to tie in to a bigger picture at the same time here

 

 

Napkin sketches are encouraged to be posted.

[Montrose1100]

As you can tell, I started on the left side. The blue glass, and the solid concrete walls would be balconies. Then I switched it up on the right side, the solid concrete walls would become panels of glass, and then balconies over the windowed portion. The orange panels are just there for fun.