A gaggle of College of Houston structure college students spent the autumn semester taking over the distinctive problem of reimagining one in every of Houston’s most iconic and sometimes contentious constructions: The Houston Astrodome.
Opened in 1965 because the world’s first indoor, air-conditioned domed stadium, the Astrodome was as soon as celebrated because the “Eighth Marvel of the World.” Many years later, it stands largely unused, its future the topic of ongoing debate amongst nonprofits and Harris County officers. A brand new Harris County structure evaluation discovered that renovating the Astrodome might value greater than $752 million, whereas demolishing the construction would value roughly $55 million.
Towards this backdrop, 19 college students from the College of Houston Gerald D. Hines School of Structure and Design proposed visions for the way the long-dormant landmark might serve Houston’s future.
The start
The concepts emerged from a one-time studio design course titled DOMEafterDOME, made attainable by means of a $30,000 present from Amazon. The corporate, fascinated by methods for reusing large-scale, ageing infrastructure, partnered with assistant professor Mili Kyropoulou, who led the course and based UH’s Constructing Analytics and Sustainable Environments (BASE) Laboratory.
“This course has grow to be basically a playground for us to collectively check concepts about structure, adaptive reuse, and what it means to have interaction with large constructions which might be left to deteriorate,” Kyropoulou mentioned.
Amazon approached Kyropoulou after her skilled crew received ASHRAE’s 2023 LowDown Showdown design competitors, which centered on reimagining the Astrodome. With the corporate’s assist, she partnered with co-instructor Maria Christofi to launch the studio, difficult college students to develop conceptual but research-driven proposals for the roughly one million-square-foot construction.
What Houstonians need
Public curiosity within the Astrodome’s future stays sturdy. A current Pastime Faculty of Public Affairs ballot discovered that 62% of Harris County voters assist a public-private partnership to transform the constructing, final used for a serious occasion in 2002, into an leisure venue.
“The folks in Houston care in regards to the Astrodome as a result of it has been a really iconic construction; nonetheless, it’s largely additionally generational,” Kyropoulou mentioned. “With time, persons are much less emotionally connected, however those who have seen it open have skilled its glory as a illustration of Houston flourishing.”
All through the semester, college students examined sustainability, life-cycle evaluation, adaptive reuse, and neighborhood engagement as core drivers of redevelopment. Working in groups, they designed proposals based mostly on one in every of 5 potential makes use of: A civic middle with company places of work, a meals ecosystem hub combining grocery, manufacturing, and retail, an information infrastructure hub, a logistics and robotics middle, or a media manufacturing campus.
The initiatives
Past conceptual design, the course emphasised real-world constraints. College students assessed structural limitations, navigated dense city situations close to NRG Stadium, and performed superior environmental simulations not usually required in studio programs. In whole, seven crew initiatives emerged, every providing a definite strategy to preservation and reuse. Many explored opening parts of the roof to create hybrid indoor-outdoor environments.
One crew reimagined the Astrodome as a media manufacturing campus and efficiency venue known as Astrostage, mixing the location’s leisure historical past with modern manufacturing wants. The proposal contains an omni theater and soundstage and positions Houston as a possible movie and media hub, theoretically drawing from the $300 million allotted biennially by means of Senate Invoice 22 to assist Texas’ movie trade.
Seniors Ashley Gonzalez, Taylor Henderson, and Erada Zeyna mentioned the venture pressured them to stability the Astrodome’s monumental scale with the political and public sensitivities surrounding its future.
“Honoring what it was is tremendous vital,” Henderson mentioned. “The various opinions that can come out of any proposal are simply part of it, however I hope that it doesn’t simply sit there devoid of power — it’s the Eighth Marvel of the World.”
One other crew, led by seniors Linzhen Chew and Alfred Rivera, designed AD-002, an automatic logistics and robotics middle that helps the Texas Medical Middle and the Houston Ship Channel. Their proposal preserves a lot of the inside whereas including a fabrication lab, prosthetics middle, and Astrodome legacy museum.
“We needed not only a warehouse however an interplay between the Houstonians and other people outdoors of Houston to see this Astrodome and be capable to work together, be capable to really feel what it as soon as was, as a result of we didn’t change a lot of the inside,” Chew mentioned.
The semester culminated with college students presenting blueprints, simulations, renderings, and quick movies to school leaders and trade alums. All seven initiatives will likely be on public show at UH’s Mashburn Gallery from Dec. 17 by means of Jan. 29, with choose works probably featured in a 2026 exhibit by the American Institute of Architects Houston.
No matter which proposals transfer ahead, Kyropoulou mentioned the studio’s biggest achievement was pupil engagement in an ongoing civic dialog, one which continues to form the way forward for Houston’s most enduring landmark.
“They get pleasure from being a part of this dialog in a manner that offers them loads of publicity,” she mentioned.
