Open Air Park

Houston, USA

Architects: META-Project

Year: 2005

Open Air Park, a small urban installation in Houston, seeks to enhance, reveal, and animate the changing nature of the air, through a series of architectural operations related to enclosure and volume. A matrix of tensile structure, interlaced with a variable membrane system, is deployed across the site to create a field condition. These assemblies of structure and skin alternatively expand to create increased volumes of enclosure, or contract to create increased outdoor, exposed space, in reaction to the movement and pressure of the air across the site. The fluctuation between these two extreme positions generates dynamic tension along the threshold between interior and exterior space, as states of enclosure and exposure overlap. Programs constantly redefine themselves in response to the ever-changing environment.