Inside/Out —
Spring 2015
AIA Houston Design Award
Featured in Cite Magazine
Inside/Out is simultaneously an exhibition about Houston’s Fifth Ward community and a structure-in-waiting. The title describes both the way in which the design research is organized and the way in which the built structure will function once it is re-constructed within an existing building – supporting a dilapidated shotgun storehouse from the “inside-out”. The exhibition is a cross-disciplinary effort between the Interior Architecture program (INAR) and the Community Design Resource Center (CDRC) at the University of Houston, in collaboration with numerous community partners and stakeholders. The exhibition showcases research developed during the Collaborative CommunityDesign Initiative, an effort organized by the University of Houston’s CDRC in 2013-2014.
Working with community partner Olivet Missionary Baptist Church in the Fifth Ward, the INAR 3501 spring studio considered the adaptive re-use of a “shotgun” storehouse into a public reading room and e-resource center. A final design scheme was selected by the client and critics. The design was chosen for its simplicity and legibility as a structural, formal and spatial interior structure that allowed for a variety of programs. Studiomates had differents tasks assigned to them as the studio transitioned to a collective design development effort. In the final four weeks of the semester, students began to fabricate all of the components for the interior structure in the University of Houston’s Keeland Design Center. The resulting structure is the product of parametric design investigations, structural studies, spatial research, digital and analog fabrication methods, and teamwork.
