Dredge Locked

A new hybrid infrastructure serves as a container for dredged material, a filter for contaminated liquid and housing units or parking structures, becoming the main building block for a new ecology and community.

The project works to reverse the notion that dredging containment will always come at the cost of other natural or recreational experiences.

The process would play out over years, creating a dynamic landscape of dredging, emerging greenery, and housing.

The vision for the project after its final phase is of a new, highly green community which is driven by its adjacency to one of Houston’s major water elements and its radical topography which redefines the city's landscape.

Located just east of the I-610 belt, the site for the proposal finds itself at the confluence of the urban, the suburban, and the industrial. Inhabitants have equal access to the industrial facilities of the shipping channel to the east and downtown Houston and the rest of the city to the west.

Towers of remediation make up the new development. Vegetation hides the earthly material held within the lock, a new approach to containment for an area already very familiar with the mass storage of oil.