ByDesign

Local architects design projects to impact Houston's future

Gensler's ByDesign group dreams up innovative real estate projects that solve Houston problems — like a tower that can absorb and filter water from a flood. Courtesy of Gensler's ByDesign

When the working day is done, there's a group of young architects who, rather than closing out their design programs and hitting happy hour, continue to design and innovate projects. Only, they aren't doing it for clients or money.

Gensler's ByDesign organization, which was created about four years ago, is an extracurricular of sorts for Houston's young architects. The projects are created and presented by the architects and are impact-focused, seeking to provide a solution to a problem in Houston.

"As architects and designers we are so caught up in our work, that we forget to step back to evaluate the current conditions of our own backyard," says Jong Kim, technical designer at Gensler. "It is important to illustrate our thoughts and share them with the public to better inform others, and grow ourselves as future thinker and leaders of tomorrow."

The design studies range from buildings to smaller range projects — but all are focused on thinking critically and creatively.

"Although the ideas range from bold city redevelopments to transformations of underutilized but highly visible areas, the site selections and design solutions are a direct reflection of the personalities and passions of the design team members," says Kim.

The architects presented four projects at a ByDesign social on Tuesday, March 26.

1520

Courtesy of Gensler's ByDesign

As cities expand and populations grow, having access to locally grown produce is becoming a challenge. Currently, 15 to 20 percent of produce is grown in an urban setting. To make sure Houston maintains its access to fresh foods, Gensler architectural designers Shawn Conte and Mark Talma have designed 1520, an urban farming tower of sorts.

The modular tower would have community gardens and low-income housing on the higher levels of the tower and a farmers market on the bottom floor. The space could even host events, with the goal of connecting the community. The project also suggests using hydroponic farms, which is a method of farming produce indoors without the need for soil.

The Brutus

Courtesy of Gensler's ByDesign

Allen's Landing is the designated birthplace of Houston, but currently the space is occupied by an abandoned building right off Buffalo Bayou. A ByDesign team — with members Sasha Levine of LEVCOR; Nathan Thomas, Jason Ficht, and Alex Hill of DesignWorkshop; and Jong Kim and Ryan Marchesi of Gensler — thinks it could foster a more engaging project.

Named The Brutus — after one of the first vessels to pass through Houston's early port — the project would also be the first of its kind. The Brutus would be a multi-purpose project with a food barge, urban beach and pool, kitchen area with food carts, a terrace, and a park. The space would be built to flood, since the area was hit by several feet of flooding.

The team also pitched the project idea at the spring 2018 Rice Design Alliance Charrette.

Fil Trat

Courtesy of Gensler's ByDesign

In the wake of Hurricane Harvey, many Houstonians began to think of solutions for the next time Mother Nature struck with her full-force of flooding. Gensler designers Chelsea Bryant, Jordan Gomez, Luisa Melendez, Barbara Novoa, Benjamin Nanson, Maria Qi, and Melinda Ubera created a solution called Fil Trat. The tower can absorb, filter, and store flood waters until the bayou is ready for the water to be released — cleaner than it was before.

During Harvey, thousands of people were displaced, but Fil Trat has a solution for that too. The tower's floors would alternate between filtration floors and shelters, which could house up to 24 families per floor.

While the suggested Houston locale would be by Buffalo Bayou, the group suggests putting the tower in other coastal cities at risk of devastating flooding.

Pushover

Courtesy of Gensler's ByDesign

While some of ByDesign's projects are grandiose and yet-to-be built, one group's design is already a reality. Gensler's Aaron Bisch, Kevin Perks, Paul Li, and Steven Banovetz created Pushover — a solution to all the issues with normal benches.

The Pushover bench takes the material and aesthetic of normal bench slats and wraps the material completely around the form, which is modeled after the human shape. It's optimized for flexibility and interaction.

The bench — which the team members constructed themselves — currently resides at 8th Wonder Brewery. The team asked to borrow the chair for the ByDesign presentation, and 8th Wonder obliged — as long as the team brought it back.

Check out this video on Gensler's ByDesign group

"ByDesign Grassroots Video" by Gensler Texas on Vimeo.

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A research team housed out of the newly launched Rice Biotech Launch Pad received funding to scale tech that could slash cancer deaths in half. Photo via Rice University

A research funding agency has deployed capital into a team at Rice University that's working to develop a technology that could cut cancer-related deaths in half.

Rice researchers received $45 million from the National Institutes of Health's Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health, or ARPA-H, to scale up development of a sense-and-respond implant technology. Rice bioengineer Omid Veiseh leads the team developing the technology as principal investigator.

“Instead of tethering patients to hospital beds, IV bags and external monitors, we’ll use a minimally invasive procedure to implant a small device that continuously monitors their cancer and adjusts their immunotherapy dose in real time,” he says in a news release. “This kind of ‘closed-loop therapy’ has been used for managing diabetes, where you have a glucose monitor that continuously talks to an insulin pump. But for cancer immunotherapy, it’s revolutionary.”

Joining Veiseh on the 19-person research project named THOR, which stands for “targeted hybrid oncotherapeutic regulation,” is Amir Jazaeri, co-PI and professor of gynecologic oncology at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center. The device they are developing is called HAMMR, or hybrid advanced molecular manufacturing regulator.

“Cancer cells are continually evolving and adapting to therapy. However, currently available diagnostic tools, including radiologic tests, blood assays and biopsies, provide very infrequent and limited snapshots of this dynamic process," Jazaeri adds. "As a result, today’s therapies treat cancer as if it were a static disease. We believe THOR could transform the status quo by providing real-time data from the tumor environment that can in turn guide more effective and tumor-informed novel therapies.”

With a national team of engineers, physicians, and experts across synthetic biology, materials science, immunology, oncology, and more, the team will receive its funding through the Rice Biotech Launch Pad, a newly launched initiative led by Veiseh that exists to help life-saving medical innovation scale quickly.

"Rice is proud to be the recipient of the second major funding award from the ARPA-H, a new funding agency established last year to support research that catalyzes health breakthroughs," Rice President Reginald DesRoches says. "The research Rice bioengineer Omid Veiseh is doing in leading this team is truly groundbreaking and could potentially save hundreds of thousands of lives each year. This is the type of research that makes a significant impact on the world.”

The initial focus of the technology will be on ovarian cancer, and this funding agreement includes a first-phase clinical trial of HAMMR for the treatment of recurrent ovarian cancer that's expected to take place in the fourth year of THOR’s multi-year project.

“The technology is broadly applicable for peritoneal cancers that affect the pancreas, liver, lungs and other organs,” Veiseh says. “The first clinical trial will focus on refractory recurrent ovarian cancer, and the benefit of that is that we have an ongoing trial for ovarian cancer with our encapsulated cytokine ‘drug factory’ technology. We'll be able to build on that experience. We have already demonstrated a unique model to go from concept to clinical trial within five years, and HAMMR is the next iteration of that approach.”

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