When the building is finished in 2011, what will wayward pedestrians poking past the new Houston Ballet Center for Dance from the intersection of Congress and Smith streets Downtown be able to glimpse of the action inside?
. . . the architects . . . envisioned the granite like a proscenium stage, framing views from the street through windows on several floors of the north and west facades.
Those windows, [Gensler managing principal James] Furr added, are like a “billboard for dance,” enabling passersby to see classes and rehearsals.
Furr spoke to the Chronicle’s Molly Glentzer, and Gensler provided more-up-to-date images of the 115,000-sq.-ft. facility, which will be clad in black granite on one portion and “a light plaster” on the other:
Comment of the Day: Floating That Houston Dome Idea
“This TeeVee show and Gus both imagine the enclosure extending all the way to the ground, in which case it has to withstand surges or deflect bayous or whatever, but Fuller did not: by WWII it had been discovered that a dome that was very open around the base, and vented at the crown, would actually set up a standing current that sucked cooling air into the top and expelled hot air at the bottom (counterintuitively). I believe this was used to turn Midwestern grain bins into instant comfortable barracks for GIs serving in Asian desert theaters of operation. As for whether it could work “around” here, my own scale model tests have been inconclusive, but I know that after the war Fuller set up something like a 30′ radius dome in Kenya and the visitors complained it was too cold - though probably not to the point of condensing the humidity and dribbling it on you.” [Neil, commenting on We’re All Astrodome Now: The Mile-Wide Dome Over Houston]