intersection: the urban winery

Rice School of Architecture / Arch 201 / Spring 2011 / John Casbarian

Caught between a freeway and an exit ramp, the site for the urban winery witnesses a peculiar moment in the fabric of the city. A shift in the grid divides two different urban landscapes into commercial and residential, with the highway acting as a threshold. The unique geometry of the site is governed by these converging frameworks, giving the lot its intermediary, residual character. This proposal for a Houston winery seeks to take advantage of the site’s relationship to the downtown, midtown, suburban, and undeveloped natural areas in its immediate surroundings as a means of establishing a meaningful connection with the greater Houston, a city characterized by its lack of zoning. The project uses implied internal geometries as a means of organizing program, a process that produces architecture which is inherently sensitive to the city grid and points of interest.

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