HOUSTON-VARIATIONS

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“This project stood out for its creative use of the drive-in courtyard apartment in the context of housing affordability and shortage in Houston. It presents a realistic solution to housing affordability while providing excellence in design and desirable living options. Revitalizing the ground floor as an open landscape of shared courtyards and gardens is an inventive reuse of otherwise leftover space.” 

—Jenny Sabin

HOUSTON-VARIATIONS reimagines the drive-in courtyard apartment as a hybrid of the Houston garden apartment and what Reyner Banham called the LA “dingbat.” The project proposes 12 variations of the type to increase density without displacement. Each consists of a two-story multifamily building elevated above a single-loaded parking area that can be converted to alternative uses. The ground floor is an open landscape of shared courtyards and gardens, bringing in light and providing external circulation. The second floor alternates kitchen and bathroom cores with double-height living spaces and bedrooms clad in layered, operable panels for passive ventilation. Clusters of courtyard types alternate with empty lots, supporting recreation, water detention, and increased ecological diversity through gardens, micro-forests, and recovered fragments of coastal prairie.