UNIVERSITY OF HOUSTON

CULTURE FACTORY

RE-SCALING FOR BIG CHANGE

PROGRAM BY MARCUS MARTINEZ

PHYSICAL ENVIRONMENTS AND
CULTURAL RESPONSES ARE BEING
SHAPED BY NETWORKED METHODS
OF PAYMENT FOR PRODUCTS AND
SERVICES.

Today, buildings are less subject to traditional problems less obvious in nature. A problem of economics has presented a provocation on how architects consider type, duration, obsolescence, energy and human behavior.

A critical narrative today is the shift from the industrial age to the distributed, shared, intelligent and networked ecosystems of the information age. Change is beyond digital, and has become increasingly visible and form-giving. Services like apple pay offer low-friction payment environments that are reshaping the retail experience from packaging to checkout. How might these evolutions challenge, or provide new beneficial threads in the making of our cities?

This studio is focused on generating bold, build-able outcomes (synthesis) and actionable urban strategies (context setting) from this networked culture--a culture factory for the twenty-first century- a combination AmazonGo grocery store, and WeWork coshare space.

This studio sets out to develop the architect as orchestrator of elements,
steward of resources and maker of cities that produce explicit detailed results paired with projective convictions.