Cultural Inflations

Architecture;Urban;planning

Gottsch, Marti ; Whiting, Sarah ; Whiting, Sarah

Rice University

Others  :  https://scholarship.rice.edu/bitstream/1911/64441/1/GottschM.pdf

美国|英语

来源: Rice University digital scholarship archive

【 摘 要 】

If the 19th century urban center was a city of manufacturing, and the early 20thcentury city was one of corporate capitalism, today's downtown can best becharacterized as a site of culture and consumption, from the Guggenheim Bilbao toTimes Square in Manhattan.Downtown Houston is at a disadvantage in this contemporary context, for it lacksany density of cultural institutions. Sites of entertainment and culture are insteadspread throughout the greater Houston metropolitan area. This dispersal createsislands of culture, but leaves downtown Houston without a cohesive cultural identity.By tweaking municipal policy and exploiting untapped sites, this thesis seeks toinflate cultural space in downtown Houston (and by cultural space, I mean everythingfrom the symphony to contemporary art to Karaoke).Inflations promote a new way to transform the city. Rather than make big changethrough big cultural projects, Inflations are small iterative structures wheretransformations occur through a set of connections: infrastructural and visual.Already in place in downtown Houston is a seven mile system of tunnels andskywalks that has led to an evacuation of the street and a fragmented downtownpublic. By slowly infusing forms into this downtown infrastructure a new culture mapis made. Through an accumulation of Inflations these small structures become sitesof consistent visible exchange: point moments of cultural activity placed in a oncebanal infrastructural system.