The prototype features 60 micro-apartments per floor, or 1,140 residential units per building. Photo courtesy of Gensler

Downtown Houston has been fortunate to benefit from a transformation over the last couple of decades. Beautiful green spaces, luxury high-rises and hotels, restaurants, and updated arts and entertainment facilities are home to impressive art installations, farmers markets, major professional sporting events, and more. On the flip side of this, Houston’s central business district has seen a steep decline in commercial occupancy, struggling to bounce back to pre-COVID levels.

Houston is not alone in experiencing this situation. Nationwide, commercial vacancies are becoming increasingly noteworthy as the gap between residential rental rates and stagnant wages widens. Low-income earners, folks making between $20,000 and $30,000 annually (typically minimum wage employees, students and seniors living on Social Security), have been joining the ranks of the unhoused at an alarming rate due to the scarcity of affordable housing. Armchair economists and the like have been arguing for years that cities should repurpose these untapped resources into an opportunity to create dignified affordable housing that would keep those at risk off the streets and close to public transit options.

Pew Charitable Trust, along with international architectural firm Gensler, recently released their findings from a study on the subject — with Houston being one of two markets studied. The “Flexible Co-Living Housing Feasibility Study” found that converting Houston’s empty office buildings to communities of micro-apartments is, well, feasible.

“In the current climate of high construction costs, interest rates, building expenses, and rising rents, this project looks at the conventional office-to-residential conversion in a different way by leveraging the existing building infrastructure to reduce costs on a per unit basis,” Brooks Howell, principal architect at Gensler, tells CultureMap. “The result is a new housing typology, a co-living concept, that can provide affordable housing to the large and growing number of lower income single-person households in an urban context.”

The numbers
HUD reported that in 2024 homelessness was at an all-time high of 770,000 persons, up a staggering 18 percent from the prior year. Houston is on the low end of the national average, with a reported 3,270 homeless persons (4/10,000 Houstonians). CoStar data shows that Houston’s central business district contains 88 office buildings of over 50,000 square feet, 19 of which show reported vacancy rates of over 30 percent. As of November 2024, the median rent in Houston for an apartment was $1,297. The proposed rental rate for a furnished micro-apartment in a converted office building in downtown Houston is $700 — all inclusive, with zero move-in costs, as the units are fully furnished.

“The U.S. has a housing shortage of 4-7 million homes, which has driven rents to an all-time high and made it hard to save to buy a home,” Alex Horowitz, a project director for Pew Charitable Trust and a co-author of the study, adds. “Houston has one of the highest office vacancy rates in the U.S., but office layouts often don't work well for apartment conversions and carry high costs. This study finds that converting offices to dorm-style housing is cost-effective and can enable low rents — about $700 per month to live downtown. That could make a real difference for people struggling with high housing costs while revitalizing downtown.”

Co-living explained
Co-living is hardly a new concept. “Single room occupancy” dwellings, or SROs, were extremely common until about 1950. It’s worth noting that during the height of its popularity, homelessness was rare. The co-living model allows for a private furnished space, while bathrooms, kitchens, and laundry are shared facilities — much like a college dormitory. With 40 percent of renters being single occupants, this model promotes socialization and community, something that has been trending downward since the pandemic.

Wesley LeBlanc, principal analytics director for Gensler Chicago, adds that this elevated dorm situation is a “jumping off point for a number of models,” noting that there are six variations from the one in the study. LeBlanc encourages people to “Think beyond the conventional. A whole world of housing solutions come out of this.”

Office building apartment converstion floorplan rendering gensler Individual rooms share amenities such as larger living rooms, bathrooms, and kitchens.Courtesy of Gensler


What to expect in a typical converted building
The Pew/Gensler report proposes a prototypical building standard of 24 floors, 19 of which are residential, with 60 micro-apartments per floor, or 1,140 residential units per building. Each floor would offer six shared kitchen areas, five larger shared living spaces, two smaller shared living spaces tucked into interior hallways, two central shower areas with five private shower rooms each. Two shower rooms would include toilets and sinks, plus two additional toilet rooms with four toilets and two sinks. The total comes to 10 showers, 12 toilets, and 14 sinks per floor. Two laundry rooms, each with three washers and dryers, would also be available per floor.

The high cost of converting office buildings into fully plumbed, individual studio apartments can be cost prohibitive, leading a pragmatic Howell to ask: “What if we didn’t demo everything?” The utilization of existing centralized plumbing on each floor saves an average of 25-35 percent in construction costs that would arise from running new plumbing to each unit.

The ground floor would consist of a main lobby, management office, and 10,000 square feet of retail space. Floors two through four would be reserved for parking, while the fifth floor would offer 10,000 square feet of Class B office space as well as amenities like the gym.

While subsidies will be required for the conversion, the same will not be true once the development is out of the construction phase. The co-living model is projected to cost around one-third of the cost of converting an office building to individual studio apartments or constructing new affordable housing.

Office building apartment converstion unit rendering gensler An illustration of what a bedroom would look like.Courtesy of Gensler

Micro-apartments details
Each individual unit is designed to be 151 square feet, approximately the size of a modest hotel room. Furnishings include one extra-long twin bed (bedding included), a desk, chair, nightstand, standard-depth half-sized fridge, storage shelf, and cabinet. Units would have solid-core wooden doors and appropriate sound insulation — all for a tidy $700 per month.

Pricing has been a key factor in determining this configuration for affordable, urban housing. “Lowering the cost of housing to manageable levels enables residents to spend more on the other financial needs of their lives, which has broad implications for quality of life and well being,” LeBlanc explains.

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This story originally appeared on our sister site, CultureMap.com.

BiVACOR and The Texas Heart Institute have celebrated a major milestone in the future of heart health. Photo courtesy of BiVACOR

Houston medical device startup implants artificial heart in first human patient

big win

Heart health tech company BiVACOR and The Texas Heart Institute announced that they successfully implanted the company's first Total Artificial Heart in a human at Baylor St. Luke’s Medical Center in the TMC.

The milestone is part of an FDA-approved early feasibility study that will test the safety and performance of the TAH device, which is based on a magnetically levitated rotor that takes over functions of a failing heart while a patient is awaiting a heart transplant, according to a statement from the organizations.

The "bridge-to-transplant" device could support an active adult male, as well as many women and children suffering from severe biventricular heart failure or univentricular heart failure.

"With heart failure remaining a leading cause of mortality globally, the BiVACOR TAH offers a beacon of hope for countless patients awaiting a heart transplant,” Dr. Joseph Rogers, president and CEO of THI and national principal investigator on the research, says in a statement. “We are proud to be at the forefront of this medical breakthrough, working alongside the dedicated teams at BiVACOR, Baylor College of Medicine, and Baylor St. Luke’s Medical Center to transform the future of heart failure therapy for this vulnerable population.”

BiVACOR received approval from the FDA for the early feasibility study in late 2023 and has four other patients enrolled in the study. At the time the study was approved, 10 hospitals were enrolled as possible sites.

“I’m incredibly proud to witness the successful first-in-human implant of our TAH. This achievement would not have been possible without the courage of our first patient and their family, the dedication of our team, and our expert collaborators at The Texas Heart Institute ... our TAH brings us one step closer to providing a desperately needed option for people with end-stage heart failure who require support while waiting for a heart transplant. I look forward to continuing the next phase of our clinical trial,” Daniel Timms, PhD, founder and CTO of BiVACOR, adds.

About 100,000 patients suffering from severe heart failure could benefit from BiVACOR’s artificial heart, the company says. Globally, only about 6,000 heart transplants are performed each year, while 26 million people worldwide are affected by heart failure.

BiVACOR was founded in 2008 and maintains its headquarters in Houston, along with offices in Huntington Beach, California, and Brisbane, Australia.

To date, the company has raised nearly $50.8 million, according to CB Insights. The company raised $18 million in 2023, and $22 million in 2021.

Earlier this year, BiVACOR named a new CEO in Jim Dillon, a longtime executive in the medical device sector.

Last summer, Rogers joined the Houston Innovators Podcast to share his excitement with THI's innovations.


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Houston scientists earn prestigious geophysics career awards

winner, winner

Two Rice University professors have been recognized by the American Geophysical Union, one of the world’s largest associations for Earth and space science.

Rice climatologist Sylvia Dee was awarded the 2025 Nanne Weber Early Career Award by the AGU’s Paleoceanography and Paleoclimatology Section. Richard Gordon, a Rice professor of geophysics also received the 2025 Walter H. Bucher Medal by the AGU. They will both be recognized at the AGU25 event on Dec.15-19 in New Orleans.

The Nanne Weber Early Career Award recognizes contributions to paleoceanography and paleoclimatology research by scientists within 10 years of receiving their doctorate.

“Paleoclimate research provides essential context for understanding Earth’s climate system and its future under continued greenhouse warming," Dee said in a news release. “By studying how climate has evolved naturally in the past, we can better predict the risks and challenges that lie ahead.”

Dee’s work explores how Earth’s natural modes of variability interact with the changing climate and lead to extreme weather. It shows how these interactions can add to climate risks, like flooding and rainfall patterns all around the world.

The Bucher Medal is awarded to just one scientist for their original contributions to the knowledge of the Earth’s crust and lithosphere.

Gordon’s research has reshaped how scientists understand the movement and interaction of Earth’s tectonic plates. He helped reveal the existence of diffuse plate boundaries—areas where the planet’s crust slowly deforms across broad regions instead of along a single fault line. His work also explored true polar wander, a phenomenon in which Earth gradually shifts its orientation relative to its spin axis.

Gordon introduced the concept of paleomagnetic Euler poles, a method for tracing how tectonic plates have moved over millions of years. He also led the development of major global plate motion models, including NUVEL (Northwestern University Velocity) and MORVEL (Mid-Ocean Ridge Velocity).

“Receiving the Walter Bucher Medal is a profound honor,” Gordon said in a news release. “To be included on a list of past recipients whose work I have long admired makes this recognition especially meaningful. There are still countless mysteries about how our planet works, and I look forward to continuing to explore them alongside the next generation of scientists.”

3 Houston-area companies appear on Fortune’s inaugural AI ranking

eyes on ai

Three companies based in the Houston area appear on Fortune’s inaugural list of the top adopters of AI among Fortune 500 companies.

The three companies are:

  • No. 7 energy company ExxonMobil, based in Spring
  • No. 7 tech company Hewlett Packard Enterprise, based in Spring
  • No. 47 energy company Chevron, based in Houston

All three companies have taken a big dive into the AI pool.

In 2024, ExxonMobil’s executive chairman and CEO, Darren Woods, explained that AI would play a key role in achieving a $15 billion reduction in operating costs by 2027.

“There is a concerted effort to make sure that we're really working hard to apply that new technology to the opportunity set within the company to drive effectiveness and efficiency,” Woods told Wall Street analysts.

Hewlett Packard Enterprise is also employing AI to decrease costs. In March, the company announced a restructuring plan — including the elimination of 3,000 jobs — aimed at cutting about $350 million in annual expenses. The restructuring is scheduled to wrap up by the end of October.

Hewlett Packard Enterprise’s Catalyst cost-cutting program includes a push to use AI across the company to improve efficiency, Marie Myers, the company’s executive vice president and chief financial officer, told Wall Street analysts in June.

“Our ambition is clear: A leaner, faster, and more competitive organization. Nothing is off limits. We are focused on rethinking the business — not just reducing our costs, but transforming the way we operate,” Myers said.

At Chevron, AI tools are being used to quickly analyze data and extract insights from it, according to tech news website VentureBeat. Also, Chevron employs advanced AI systems known as large language models (LLMs) to create engineering standards, specifications and safety alerts. AI is even being put to work in Chevron’s exploration initiatives.

Bill Braun, Chevron’s chief information officer, said at a VentureBeat-sponsored event in 2024 that AI-savvy data scientists, or “digital scholars,” are always embedded within workplace teams “to act as a catalyst for working differently.”

The Fortune AIQ 50 ranking is based on ServiceNow’s Enterprise AI Maturity Index, an annual measurement of how prepared organizations are to adopt and scale AI. To evaluate how Fortune 500 companies are rolling out AI and how much they value AI investments, Fortune teamed up with Enterprise Technology Research. The results went into computing an AIQ score for each company.

At the top of the ranking is Alphabet (owner of Google and YouTube), followed by Visa, JPMorgan Chase, Nvidia and Mastercard.

Aside from ExxonMobil, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, and Chevron, two other Texas companies made the list: Arlington-based homebuilder D.R. Horton (No. 29) and Austin-based software company Oracle (No. 37).

“The Fortune AIQ 50 demonstrates how companies across industry sectors are beginning to find real value from the deployment of AI technology,” Jeremy Kahn, Fortune’s AI editor, said in a news release. “Clearly, some sectors, such as tech and finance, are pulling ahead of others, but even in so-called 'old economy' industries like mining and transport, there are a few companies that are pulling away from their peers in the successful use of AI.”

2 UH projects named finalists for $50M fund to shape future of Gulf Coast

Looking to the Future

Two University of Houston science projects have been selected as finalists for the Gulf Futures Challenge, which will award a total of $50 million to develop ideas that help benefit the Gulf Coast.

Sponsored by the National Academies of Science, Engineering and Medicine’s Gulf Coast Research Program and Lever for Change, the competition is designed to spark innovation around problems in the Gulf Coast, such as rising sea levels, pollution, energy security, and community resiliency. The two UH projects beat out 162 entries from organizations based in Alabama, Florida, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Texas.

“Being named a finalist for this highly competitive grant underscores the University of Houston’s role as a leading research institution committed to addressing the most pressing challenges facing our region,” said Claudia Neuhauser, vice president for research at UH.

“This opportunity affirms the strength of our faculty and researchers and highlights UH’s capacity to deliver innovative solutions that will ensure the long-term stability and resilience of the Gulf Coast.”

One project, spearheaded by the UH Repurposing Offshore Infrastructure for Continued Energy (ROICE) program, is studying ways to use decommissioned oil rig platforms in the Gulf of Mexico as both clean energy hydrogen power generators as well a marine habitats. There are currently thousands of such platforms in the Gulf.

The other project involves the innovative recycling of wind turbines into seawall and coastal habitats. Broken and abandoned wind turbine blades have traditionally been thought to be non-recyclable and end up taking up incredible space in landfills. Headed by a partnership between UH, Tulane University, the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston, the city of Galveston and other organizations, this initiative could vastly reduce the waste associated with wind farm technology.

wind turbine recycled for Gulf Coast seawall. Wind turbines would be repurposed into seawalls and more. Courtesy rendering

"Coastal communities face escalating threats from climate change — land erosion, structural corrosion, property damage and negative health impacts,” said Gangbing Song, Moores Professor of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at UH and the lead investigator for both projects.

“Leveraging the durability and anti-corrosive properties of these of decommissioned wind turbine blades, we will build coastal structures, improve green spaces and advance the resilience and health of Gulf Coast communities through integrated research, education and outreach.”

The two projects have received a development grant of $300,000 as a prize for making it to the finals. When the winner are announced in early 2026, two of the projects will net $20 million each to bring their vision to life, with the rest earning a consolation prize of $875,000, in additional project support.

In the event that UH doesn't grab the grand prize, the school's scientific innovation will earn a guaranteed $1.75 million for the betterment of the Gulf Coast.

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This article originally appeared on CultureMap.com.