Landscape Architect Articles

Uptown Houston: ''Pockmarked Booby Trap'' to Vibrant, Safe, Public Realm04-01-11 | News

Uptown Houston:
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SWA Group / Scott Slaney, ASLA - Lead Designer

The Houston Uptown district sidewalks used to have widely spaced high-pressure sodium streetlights that left sidewalks too dark and uninviting. Now there are 1,200 Faro 720 pole-mounted luminaries with 150-watt metal halide lamps. The luminaire housing transitions into an inverted tapered pole. The angular steel bracket extends up and suspends an aluminum roof that houses the secondary reflector, which redirects the light to the ground. The poles are 10 ft. tall. The faceted square reflectors, 31.2 sq. inches square, stand 14 feet above the sidewalks.

A lot has changed for Uptown Houston since the 1940s, when a local reporter described the area as a ?EUR??,,????'?????<

Uptown Houston, on the city?EUR??,,????'?????<

One-hundred watt metal halides (8106 from Bega) effectively uplight the oaks in Uptown Houston.

A popular Uptown landmark is the 64-foot curved, black obsidian Water Wall, 78,500 gallons of recycled water every three hours and 20 minutes. This recreational area has more than 180 live oaks.

Uptown Houston has virtually every amenity a resident or visitor could want or need. Well, almost everything. Until recently, it lacked a kind of unifying element that would pull the whole together. Major street improvements for traffic were made, but the district had narrow, uninviting sidewalks with insufficient lighting, making it largely inaccessible for pedestrians. To create a truly vibrant urban center, the district had to attract pedestrian traffic. Simply put, the streets had to more walkable.

The Uptown Houston Development Authority turned to long-time partner landscape architecture firm SWA Group for this pedestrian-friendly transformation.

The goal was to create a vibrant, connected public realm that was inviting, safe, convenient and comfortable to the thousands of pedestrians living, working and shopping in Uptown, and to make it fully accessible via new signaled street crossings and corner plazas.

The fully-accessible corner plazas comprise herringbone pattern pavers (Whitacre Greer) bordered by a staggered stacked bond pattern (detectable warning pavers). Leading from the sidewalk to the plaza are inline ramps of ?EUR??,,????'?????<

Challenges
The main challenge was to design and build 7,200 linear feet of new streets and 40,900 l.f. of sidewalks. These improvements had to be built in phases to allow streets and businesses to remain open and fully accessible during the 18 ?EUR??,,????'?????<

Innovative solutions were necessary to deal with myriad existing conditions: preserve the mature live oaks in the right-of-way; make appropriate topographic adjustments between private and public property that are completely accessible and achieve a highly legible, consistent streetscape; work within a constrained right-of-way to accommodate all the design elements; create an uncrowded pedestrian experience; and adapt existing irrigation systems on private property to water landscape improvements in the public right-of-way.

Two Accessible Pedestrian Signals (APS) (Polara Engineering) at the corner plazas audibly signal blind pedestrians when precisely to cross the street. Sections of the stainless steel elliptical pipe posts have 3/16?EUR??,,????'?????<

Walk the Walk
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Given our climate, you must have shade. You have to have a basic accessibility for people who want to cross streets, and if you want people to walk at night, you must have light.?EUR??,,????'?????<

The improvements initiative accomplished all four objectives. The authority widened the standard 4-ft.-wide sidewalks to six feet or more, planted additional trees for shade, altered grade for improved pedestrian access and installed approximately 1,200 new pedestrian streetlights along 14 miles of roadway.

The custom bus shelters were designed in collaboration with Communication Arts. Clay pavers (Whitacre Greer) at the bus stops integrate red tones (32 Antique / 34 Mulberry) in a running bond pattern, and white tones (50 Ivory) in a stacked bond pattern. The trash receptacles are from Forms+Surfaces.

Lighting Choices
The streets of Uptown Houston may be a far cry from the ?EUR??,,????'?????<

Moreover, SWA needed fixtures robust enough to with-stand Houston?EUR??,,????'?????<

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SWA tested three potential luminaries, including an LED option. The LED luminaire, however, created too much glare at the pedestrian level. An indirect metal halide (Faro fixture) was selected instead. Its winning attributes were bright, even illumination, minimal glare and ?EUR??,,????'?????<

After conducting onsite mock-ups with three potential luminaires, SWA selected an indirect metal halide (Faro fixture) for its light quality and elegant architectural design. The lighting is dynamic and contemporary.

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The luminaire design matches the clean, contemporary styling of the district architecture. The sleek pole and reflector combination produces bright, even illumination with minimal glare. SWA had hoped to find an LED solution, but the LED luminaire in mock up produced too much glare at the pedestrian level.

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The Faro luminaire, which uses a 150-VV T6 metal halide lamp and a 14-ft-high faceted square reflector, emits an even, beautiful distribution of light with a fairly large pattern. ?EUR??,,????'?????<

Under the West Loop Freeway, the cylinder lights and down lights, 150-watt metal halides, were provided by the Texas Department of Transportation. The concrete pavers (Paverstone) comprise 4?EUR??,,????'?????<

The square shape of the reflector produces a square illumination pattern that lights the sidewalks, but also the streets and property behind the sidewalks. ?EUR??,,????'?????<

Houston has a vitality and huge growth potential, given its strength in the fields of energy, manufacturing, aeronautics (NASA?EUR??,,????'?????<

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Project Team
Uptown Houston District: comprises the Uptown Houston Association, the Uptown Houston District, the Uptown Houston Tax Increment Reinvestment Zone, and the Uptown Development Authority.

SWA, Landscape Architects / Lead Designer. SWA is an international landscape architecture and urban design company of 160 professionals working from seven offices on award-winning projects on six continents. Lead designer: Scott Slaney, ASLA, managing partner, SWA Shanghai, China office. His planning and design work in defining and refining the public realm in Houston?EUR??,,????'?????<

SWA Group: Construction Oversight, Field Directives, Construction Admin.
Hunt & Hunt Engineering Corp.: Electrical Engineering Design
Cobb Fendley & Associates: Construction Management, Construction Admin. & Field Inspection
Gunda Corp.: Electrical & Traffic Construction Inspection
KenMor Electric: Electrical & General Contractor
Landscape Art: Landscape Contractor
Texas Sterling Construction: Civil Utility & Hardscape Contractor
Teamwork Construction Services: Hardscape Contractor

Vendors
Bollards, custom granite spheres
Fabricator: Xiadongxin Trade Co., Xiamen, China

Bollards, audible, stainless steel, pedestrian
Fabricator: Neon Electric Corp., Houston

Bus shelters, custom
Designed in collaboration with Communication Arts, Boulder, Colo.
Fabricator: Neon Electric Corp., Houston

Columns, pre-cast freeway structures: Williams Brothers Construction

Guardrail, aluminum, custom elliptical
Fabricator: Neon Electric Corp., Houston

Luminaire lamps/light poles
HessAmerica, Gaffney, S.C.

Pavers, concrete: Pavestone

Trash receptacles
Vendor: Forms+Surfaces

Tree grates: custom fiberglass pavers (image 728, McCue St.)
Fabricator: Neon Electric Corp., Houston

Signal poles, custom stainless steel
Pole Fabricator: Union Metal, Canton, Ohio
Signal Shield Fabricator: Neon Electric Corp., Houston