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Texas: Central, South, and Gulf Coast » Gulf Coast » Anahuac to Texas City » Clear Lake City (Harris County) » Bayou Building, University of Houston Clear Lake

Bayou Building, University of Houston Clear Lake

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1976, S. I. Morris Associates, Golemon and Rolfe, and Pitts, Phelps and White. 2700 Bay Area Blvd.

Like the Manned Spacecraft Center buildings ( AT27), the University of Houston Clear Lake's three-story Bayou Building embodies a fascination with technological “cool.” This version is the more compelling because of the Bayou Building's landscape setting, where the architects exploited the contrast between the smoothly machined bronze solar glass and bronze anodized-aluminum curtain wall and the building's location in a dense riparian forest along Horsepen and Armand bayous. The building's full extent is concealed with closely planted trees. By not treating the Bayou Building as an isolated pavilion, as was done with the Manned Spacecraft Center buildings, the architects displayed a much more imaginative approach to designing public institutions in a suburban setting than did the architects of NASA.

Writing Credits

Author: 
Gerald Moorhead et al.

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