Issue link: http://papercitymagazine.uberflip.com/i/1255943
Thomas Woltz's massive redesign of Houston's Memorial Park includes a land bridge over Memorial Drive to provide safe crossing for people and wildlife. A restored network of native prairie and savanna will act as a green sponge, helping to absorb storm water and mitigate flooding. AN EPIC DOWNTOWN HOUSTON DEVELOPMENT RISES FROM THE FORMER BARBARA JORDAN POST OFFICE, WITH STARCHITECTS, AN ART CURATOR, AND A FIVE-ACRE SKYLAWN. HUDSON YARDS, SMUDSON YARDS. BY CATHERINE D. ANSPON POST 88 A year ago, a transformative downtown development was announced: Post Houston — a project that promises to be as touted as New York's Hudson Yards when it's unveiled next year. While not quite on the scale of that NYC landmark, Post Houston's preservation and reclamation began in 2015 when the downtown Barbara Jordan Post Office, a modernist 550,000-square-foot gem built in 1962 and designed by Wilson, Morris, Crain & Anderson (builders of the Astrodome as well as One Allen Center and the Houston Post building) was acquired by Lovett Commercial. The development of the prime 16-acre property at the northern edge of downtown is being overseen by Kirby Liu, a principal at Lovett Commercial, the company founded by his dad, Frank Liu. The younger Liu is a Dartmouth grad and Fulbright Research Scholar who studied architecture at Harvard Graduate School of Design. Post Houston has tapped OMA, the firm founded by Rem Koolhaas (which has designed notable icons from the Prada Epicenter in Manhattan to the CCTV Headquarters in Beijing), for the reimagining of the former post office space; the project is led by OMA's New York partner, architect Jason Long. Construction is expected to be completed in late 2020, with tenant fit-out in early 2021. An anchor tenant, yet to be revealed, has been signed. One of the signature green elements of Post Houston's new urbanism is Skylawn, a five-acre rooftop park and sustainable organic farm plus event space designed by Chicago-head-quartered Hoerr Schaudt, landscape architects of Hermann Park's McGovern Centennial Gardens. A boutique hotel is planned during a subsequent phase. Other unique design details carve out three bays of the former mail-sorting facility, which is punctuated by dramatic skylights and soaring stairs, and divided into functions for retail, co-working, makers' spaces, a concert venue, and a market hall/ restaurant/bar area that bows to the city's food culture. What makes our heart beat faster though, is that artists will be placed front and center. To this end, Liu has tapped Christine Starkman as curator; Starkman, former curator of the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston's Asian Art department, is known to art-world insiders for commissioning international artist Cai Guo-Qiang to craft a heroic gunpowder drawing for the MFAH's Arts of China Gallery (a 2010 performance that was the highlight of the Texas museum world that year). Stay tuned for updates at papercitymag.com and in these pages. posthtx.com. A rendering of Skylawn's event space, part of a five-acre rooftop park and sustainable organic farm atop the upcoming Post Houston COURTESY LUXIGON, OMA, AND HOERR SCHAUDT LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE