VIRTUAL New Schools of Thought
Abstract
Traditional architectural design studio project often starts up with a given design problem, building program and project site. Students are required to respond to these design parameters by assuming the validity of given tasks. This approach not only limits the space for critical thinking, it reduces the important role of a designer to question and to examine design parameter. Our contemporary build environment is experiencing unprecedented shifts in environment, economy, culture and politic fueled by climate change and advancement of technology. This fluid environment requires new building type as known building programs are becoming less effective to counter these new challenges. Urban Chameleon Studio is a graduate design studio tasked to find new building programs for downtown Houston. By seeking the disjunctions where diverse urban condition changes have not yet been addressed by current built environment, students are challenged to propose new building program for the city. Using downtown Houston as the lab, students re-examined their perceptions about downtown through a series of field trips. Through discovering the inconsistency of current urban development with the common believes or projected future promised by city officials, students created new building programs for their design studio project. Like a chameleon, these new building programs aim to bridge the inconsistency and to improve downtown Houston’s built environment to be more congruent with its contemporary context.
Zui Ng is a Professor at Prairie View A&M University School of Architecture. He is also the Design Principal at ZDES Design Build. He received a Bachelor of Architecture from the University of Houston and an Master of Architecture from Cornell University. Ng’s design projects were published worldwide on magazine and books such as Architecture Record, Architecture CREE, Dezeen, Archdaily, and Texas Architect. In addition, his design works had been exhibited internationally at Venice Biennale, US National Building Museum, and Sweden Virserum Art Museum.