Innovative, sustainable architecture to be installed in Houston

energizing art

The City of Houston is aiming to have Arco del Tiempo installed in 2024. Photo courtesy of The City of Houston

The City of Houston has unveiled the first look at the latest permanent public artwork that will be installed in the Second Ward in 2024. The sculpture is the first-ever environmentally sustainable art piece that will generate electricity for the nearby City-owned Latino multicultural performing arts theater.

Arco del Tiempo (Arch of Time) is a 100-foot tall arch designed by Berlin-based artist and architect Riccardo Mariano. Several years have been put into the making of this project, dating as far back as 2019. Mariano had entered the idea into a Land Art Generator Initiative (LAGI) design competition in the Houston sister-city of Abu Dhabi. From there, it was chosen to be developed full-scale and installed at Guadalupe Plaza Park.

According to a press release, the sculpture can measure time and cast beams of sunlight onto the ground, creating a connection between "the celestial and the terrestrial" through the geometry of the design.

The light beams are different based on the four seasons and the time of day, constantly shifting and responding to the latitude and longitude of the city from space. Mariano said that his sculpture is a "practical example" of how physical art can interact with the abstract, such as the Earth's movement around the sun.

"The apparent movement of the sun in the sky activates the space with light and colors and engages viewers who participate in the creation of the work by their presence," said Mariano. "Arco del Tiempo merges renewable energy generation with public space and into the everyday life of the Second Ward. Inspired by science and powered by renewable energy, the artwork is a bridge between art and technology and encourages educational purposes while improving public space. At night the space within the arch will be used as a stage for outdoor public events.”

"At night the space within the arch will be used as a stage for outdoor public events,” Riccardo Mariano said.Photo courtesy of The City of Houston

Arco del Tiempo will do more than just be an aesthetically pleasing sight for the community. Its meaningful, functional purpose will be to generate about 400,000 kilowatt-hours of electricity per year, and power the Talento Bilingüe de Houston. LAGI founding co-director Elizabeth Monoian said in the release the sculpture will generate over 12 million kilowatt-hours of power throughout its lifetime, which equals the removal of 8,500 metric tons of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.

"Through the clean energy it produces, Arco del Tiempo will pay back its embodied carbon footprint," Monoian said. "In other words, all the energy that went into its making—from the smelting of the steel to the drilling that puts the final cladding into place—will be offset through the energy it generates. Beyond its break-even point, which we will track and celebrate with the community, the artwork will be a net-positive contributor to a healthy climate and the planet will be better off for its existence.”

In a statement, Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner praised the unique art piece as more than just a sculpture, but as a "monument to a new era of energy."

"The City of Houston has always stood at the vanguard of energy innovation and the Arco del Tiempo artwork stands in that tradition, highlighting Houston’s role as an art city and as global leader in the energy transition," Mayor Turner said. "We are inspired by the vision and creative thinking. Marrying clean energy, the built environment, and truly World Class art is Houston.”

------

This article originally ran on CultureMap.

From Your Site Articles
The 130,000-square-foot Resilience Manufacturing Hub is coming to the Second Ward. Photo houston.org

$32M resilience-focused hub to rise in Houston's East End

coming soon

A first-of-its-kind manufacturing hub designed to “future proof” residential, commercial, industrial, and public sector infrastructure is coming to Houston.

The 130,000-square-foot Resilience Manufacturing Hub will house functions such as R&D, manufacturing, and assembly for products aimed at improving the resilience of homes, office buildings, warehouses, and other components of the “built environment.”

“We are looking for any product or technology solution that can reduce the impact from the next generation of disasters … by helping people thrive, not just survive, in their own community,” says Richard Seline, co-founder and managing director of the Houston-based Resilience Innovation Hub. The innovation hub is a partner in the manufacturing hub.

Seline says the manufacturing hub, with an estimated price tag of $32 million, will directly employ about 60 people. He expects the facility to either generate or “upskill” about 240 off-site jobs.

The manufacturing hub will be built adjacent to the 300,000-square-foot East End Maker Hub, which is opened in Houston’s Second Ward neighborhood two years ago. Seline says five companies already have expressed interest in being tenants at the manufacturing hub, which is set to open by next summer.

The East End Maker Hub, a public-private endeavor, opened in the summer of 2021. Photo by Natalie Harms/InnovationMap

“We know that the supply chains keep failing over and over again in regard to responding to and rebuilding after disasters. This is a way to address that,” Seline says of the manufacturing hub.

Aside from the innovation hub and East End Maker Hub, partners in the manufacturing venture are the nonprofit Urban Partnerships Community Development Corp. (UPC) and modular construction company VEMAS. UPC is based in Houston, and VEMAS has a Houston office.

“The Resilience Manufacturing Hub is one of four pillars in UPC’s vision for an Invest Houston strategy to grow our economy from within by directly impacting middle-income employment — vital for the 1 million jobs projected as a gap in greater Houston’s long-term competitiveness,” says Patrick Ezzell, president and chairman of UPC and founder of the East End Maker Hub.

The manufacturing hub will work hand in hand with the innovation hub. The innovation hub assesses and addresses risks triggered by climate-produced, manmade, pandemic-related and cybersecurity threats. Hub participants work on innovations aimed at alleviating these risks.

In 2012, the National Academy of Sciences defined resilience as “the ability to prepare and plan for, absorb, recover from, and more successfully adapt to adverse events.” Those events include hurricanes and floods.

The resilience movement got a substantial boost last year thanks to passage of the federal Community Disaster Resilience Zones Act. The law allows for designation of resilience zones in communities that are at high risk of natural disasters and have limited resources. These zones will qualify for federal funding earmarked for resilience efforts.

Harris County scores nearly 98 out of 100 on the National Risk Index, generated by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), putting it into the “very high” risk category for natural hazards.

Yet Harris County ekes out a score of 12.73 out of 100 for community resilience, landing it in the “very low” category. This means the county has a poor ability to prepare for natural hazards, adapt to changing conditions, and withstand and recover from disruptions.

Richard Seline is the co-founder and managing director of the Houston-based Resilience Innovation Hub. Photo courtesy

Erik Ibarra's latest venture is to give agency to residents in the neighborhood he grew up in. Photo courtesy

Serial entrepreneur launches new fund to support Houston's East End community development

HOUSTON INNOVATORS PODCAST EPISODE 193

Innovation isn't always tinkering with tech or programming software, although serial entrepreneur Erik Ibarra knows that world well. Sometimes it's about rethinking how a community improves and develops without doing the residents a disservice.

That's why Ibarra started Magnolia Fund, a mission-driven investment fund dedicated to enriching the East End community and preserving the neighborhood's culture and history. Ibarra, who has lived in the area the majority of his life, says on the Houston Innovators Podcast, that he's looking to turn residents into investors.

"Our investors from the neighborhood, today they walk around and look at their house and say, 'I own that,' and that's great," Ibarra says. "In the future, our investors should be able to say that, and then point to a building and say, 'I own a portion of that building too. And I helped that small business over there.'"

Ibarra explains that he's seen the East End area evolve a lot, and he wants to create a way to make sure residents are a part of that evolution and aren't being left behind in that process.

"Over the years, I've felt like there's so much development going on. But, the people from the neighborhood are very often just passive — they don't get a chance to benefit from or think about how they could participate in these new developments," Ibarra says. "The neighborhood is very close to my heart, and, about a year ago, I realized I wanted to do something about this."

The limited partners of the Magnolia Fund will contribute as investors, and then Ibarra and his team will identify a worthy development to take control of. As he explains, the vision for the property is "La Sala," a living room for the community, with an open area for communing, a kitchen incubator for food entrepreneurs, and an outdoor patio and stage for music and events.

While this is his first foray into the investor side of the equation, Ibarra has been an entrepreneur in Houston since the early 2000s. He's been an active mentor to startup founders, and has seen the ecosystem develop as he's started and grown his businesses.

He's currently the founder and CEO of ORDRS, a digital health platform for optimized lab testing founded in 2018. The company's B2B platform enables health care providers to better manage lab testing, and Ibarra says ORDRS saw a lot of growth during the pandemic. Something he's passionate about with this venture is the ability to provide better access and information about lab testing to patients.

"As a company we strive for transparency in health care," Ibarra says. "If we could provide instant access to a menu of tests for our customers, ... then hopefully our customers can pass those savings on to those customers. Access to testing is important. Access to the transparency in pricing is equally important."

Ibarra shares more about ORDRS, his role as a mentor, and his vision for the fund on the podcast. Listen to the interview below — or wherever you stream your podcasts — and subscribe for weekly episodes.


Volumetric Biotechnologies has announced its moving its HQ to the East End Maker Hub. Image courtesy of East End Maker Hub

3D-printing startup to move into rising Houston innovation and maker hub

moving around Hou

The East End Maker Hub has landed perhaps its most intriguing tenant thus far — a Houston startup that makes 3D-printed human organs.

Volumetric Biotechnologies Inc. has leased 11,200 square feet at the East End Maker Hub to serve as its headquarters and manufacturing center. Jordan Miller, co-founder of Volumetric, says one of the benefits of being located at the hub will be access to a cleanroom operated by Alchemy Industrial, a 3D manufacturer of medical devices. Earlier this year, Houston-based Alchemy leased more than 5,400 square feet at the East End hub.

Volumetric will occupy space in the first phase of the 307,000-square-foot project East End Maker Hub. That phase of the $37 million project is set to open soon. The startup's current 5,000-square-foot headquarters is at 7505 Fannin St., near the Woman's Hospital of Texas and south of the Texas Medical Center.

Miller says Volumetric's new home will help it "maintain and accelerate our already breakneck progress." Volumetric's 12 biological, chemical, mechanical, and electrical engineers focus on producing human organs and tissues like the liver, kidney, pancreas, lung, and heart using a mix of medical-grade plastics and human cells.

"We're straining to scale our company as fast as our team is inventing and progressing our technologies. It's an absolutely wonderful problem to have," Miller says.

Volumetric hopes to commercialize its 3D-printed organs in 2021. Founded in 2018, Volumetric is a privately held spin-out of Rice University's Department of Bioengineering. It has received $1.8 million in funding, according to Crunchbase. Investors include Silicon Valley-based Sand Hill Angels, and the Springfield, Virginia-based Methuselah Foundation and Methuselah Fund.

Local Realtor Mike Pittman, a development associate with Pearland-based project partner Urban Partnerships Community Development Corp., recruited Volumetric to the hub. He says he's also working with a distillery, a coffee roaster, and a medical gown manufacturer on leasing space there.

The first phase of the East End Maker Hub is set to open soon. Image courtesy of East End Maker Hub

Once the East End Maker Hub opens, Houston's East End District will be home to the largest maker hub in Texas and one of the largest such facilities in the U.S. Being built in three phases on a 21-acre site at 6501 Navigation Blvd., the East End Maker Hub aims to create an environment that gives members of the community access to trade skills and career opportunities, and to provide businesses a place for innovation and manufacturing. The hub's second and third phases are on track to be finished in 2021.

The soon-to-open first phase will feature "white box" suites, ranging in size from 420 square feet to 20,000 square feet, that cater to three sectors:

  • Innovation (robotics, 3D printing, and R&D)
  • Crafting (ceramics, fine woodworking, and screen printing)
  • Light fabrication (food production).

Aside from Alchemy, tenants recently lined up for the hub include Houston-based Waste Management Inc., whose R&D team will occupy more than 3,500 square feet, and Houston-based construction technology company Rugged Robotics Inc., which is renting 1,700 square feet.

"We're not the place for software companies, but our innovation area is the place for hardware companies — those that are into drones, robotics, 3D printing," Pittman says.

The project's hardware innovation element could boost Houston's manufacturing economy, he says. A recent analysis by the Smartest Dollar website found that 7.5 percent of the Houston metro area's workforce is employed in manufacturing. From 1999 to 2019, the number of manufacturing jobs in Houston grew by just 1.9 percent.

So far, the nonprofit TXRX Labs makerspace is the hub's largest tenant, having signed a lease for 65,000 square feet in the first phase. TXRX Labs and Urban Partnerships Community Development teamed up to develop the hub. TXRX contributed $1.25 million in equity, and Urban Partnerships Community Development raised $35.75 million in capital.

Houston-based Stewart Builders is the general contractor for the East End Maker Hub, and Houston-based Method Architecture is the architect of record.

Aside from supplying room for businesses and nonprofits to grow, the hub seeks to provide training and jobs for local residents. Pittman says the hub — located within a tax-advantaged Opportunity Zone — encourages its tenants to hire people who live within a three-mile radius.

"You don't have to go and get a Ph.D. in nuclear science for these jobs to be able to attain really good wages for your family," he says.

Phases two and three of the hub are expected in 2021. Image courtesy of East End Maker Hub

Ad Placement 300x100
Ad Placement 300x600

CultureMap Emails are Awesome

Property Showcase

California company to launch Walmart drone delivery in Houston

taking off

California-based Wing will soon touch down in Houston.

The drone delivery company has partnered with Walmart Supercenters in Houston, Atlanta, Charlotte, Orlando and Tampa. According to a news release, Wing’s drone delivery services will be available at 100 Walmart stores across the selected markets by this time next year.

Wing also plans to expand to additional Walmart stores in Dallas-Fort Worth, where Wing and Walmart already serve customers from 18 Walmart Supercenters. Wing reports that it has completed thousands of deliveries from DFW-area Walmarts with an average fulfillment time of under 19 minutes. Wing and Walmart launched their first location in the Dallas area in the fall of 2023.

"The popularity of drone delivery in DFW is a testament not just to its convenience, but to the way this technology quickly becomes a part of everyday life,” Wing CEO Adam Woodworth said in the news release. “Walmart has been a strong partner that shares our commitment to innovation and is equally eager to bring this new type of service to many more households.”

Customers in Houston and the other markets in the latest expansion can visit wing.com/walmart to be notified when drone delivery becomes available in their area.

The service works similarly to any other online shopping platform, and users can select the exact location for the drone to drop off their package. Items are packaged in a specialized box that a Wing drone retrieves from Walmart. The drones cruise up to 65 mph and drop off the package outside a shopper's home.

“This is real drone delivery at scale,” Woodworth said in the release. “People all around the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex have made drone delivery part of their normal shopping habits over the past year. Now we’re excited to share this ultra-fast delivery experience with millions more people across many more U.S. cities.”

Houston team develops innovative soft skeleton for kids with cerebral palsy

health tech

A team from the NSF University of Houston Building Reliable Advances and Innovation in Neurotechnology (UH BRAIN) Center and TIRR Memorial Hermann has introduced the MyoStep soft exoskeleton for children with cerebral palsy, according to a news release from UH.

The soft skeleton aims to address motor impairments caused by cerebral palsy that impact children’s ability to participate in physical activities, self-care and academics.

“The MyoStep project represents a significant advancement in the field of pediatric mobility aids, particularly for children with cerebral palsy,” Jose Luis Contreras-Vidal, director of UH BRAIN and the Hugh Roy and Lillie Cranz Cullen Distinguished Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering, said in a news release.

The next-generation lightweight, soft exoskeleton was funded by the IEEE Electron Devices Society (EDS) Award.

The MyoStep is made to be lightweight and discreetly fit under clothes. It includes a wireless sensor network embedded inside the smart and flexible fabrics that is the backbone of the suit and collects and sends real-time data about the user’s movements It also includes safety features with temperature monitoring and emergency shut-off mechanisms.

“By integrating cutting-edge technologies such as artificial muscles, smart fabrics, and a comprehensive sensor network, MyoStep offers a promising solution to the challenges faced by existing exoskeletons,” Contreras-Vidal said in a news release.

Cerebral palsy is a neurological disorder that impacts motor skills. It occurs in one to four out of every 1,000 births worldwide.

“What makes the MyoStep project so compelling is that it’s not just about the technology: it’s about restoring confidence, function, and hope,” Dr. Gerard Francisco, a clinical partner on the technology, The Wulfe Family Chair of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation at UTHealth Houston and medical officer at TIRR Memorial Hermann, said in a news release. “This kind of innovation has the potential to dramatically improve quality of life, helping children move through the world with greater ease and dignity.”

Houston's 11 best places to work and more innovation news to know

Trending Topics

Editor's note: It's time to look back at the top business and innovation news for the first half of June 2025. Get the details on InnovationMap's most-read stories from June 1-13 below.

1. 11 Houston companies named best places to work by U.S. News

Chevron is one of the best places to work. Courtesy photo

Nearly a dozen public and private Houston-based companies have been hailed among the best places to work in 2025 by U.S. News and World Report.

The annual report examines thousands of companies around the world to determine the best employers based on six metrics including work-life balance and flexibility; quality of pay and benefits; job and company stability; career opportunities and professional development; and more. U.S. News included seven publicly-traded companies and four privately owned companies in Houston on the lists. Continue reading.

2. 2 Houston suburbs named among 10 best places to live by U.S. News & World Report

Pearland is the No. 2 best place to live in the U.S. Photo via pearlandedc.com

The Houston suburbs of Pearland and League City have landed among the top 10 best places to live in 2025, according to U.S. News & World Report.

Pearland ranked No. 3 nationwide, earning a 7.0 score alongside No. 1-winning Johns Creek, Georgia and No. 2 winner Carmel, Indiana. Pearland also landed on top of U.S. News separate rankings of the best places to live in Texas for 2025-2026. Continue reading.

3. Texas Space Commission doles out $5.8 million to Houston companies

Axiom Space and FluxWorks are the latest Houston-area companies to receive funding from the Texas Space Commission. Photo via Getty Images.

Two Houston-area companies have landed more than $5.8 million in funding from the Texas Space Commission. The commission granted up to $5.5 million to Houston-based Axiom Space and up to $347,196 to Conroe-based FluxWorks.

Axiom Space, a commercial spaceflight company, said the new funding will go toward the development of its orbital data center capabilities. Continue reading.

4. 3 Houston startups named most innovative in Texas by LexisNexis

Sage Geosystems is the No. 3 most innovative startup in Texas. Photo via sagegeosystems.com

Three Houston companies claimed spots on LexisNexis's 10 Most Innovative Startups in Texas report, with two working in the geothermal energy space.

Sage Geosystems claimed the No. 3 spot on the list, and Fervo Energy followed closely behind at No. 5. Fintech unicorn HighRadius rounded out the list of Houston companies at No. 8. Continue reading.

5. 9 can't-miss Houston business and innovation events for June

Don't miss these June events—from lightning pitches to a female-focused AI summit. Photo by Scott Halleran/Getty Images

From lightning pitches to a female-focused AI summit and energy conferences, there's still plenty to do as Houston settles into the summer. Here are the Houston business and innovation events you can't miss in June and how to register. Continue reading.

View All Listings