Commissioned by the the Houston Arts Alliance for the City of Houston Sabine Water Pump Station.
Public Art? You’re showering in it – Houston Chronicle
The Sabine Water Pump Station is a highly unusual site for an artwork: it’s not a plaza, an entryway, or a public park. The site can seem particularly mundane, especially given its proximity to an ostensibly more glamorous Skatepark. The Pump Station’s vital human necessity is generally taken for granted by the public, most of whom wouldn’t be able to identify it if asked. This all makes it particularly attractive to me as a site for my work, as I’m drawn to overlooked and under-appreciated environments.
While developing my proposal I immediately set out to call attention to the site by subtly integrating it with both the bordering Lee and Joe Jamail Skatepark, Buffalo Bayou Park and its larger environs, reaching as far as downtown Houston. As in previous works I sought to augment and activate existing elements of the site, in this case the aquamarine water pipes that emerge seemingly helter-skelter from the pump station grounds, the mysterious mound that covers the submerged water tank, and of course water. All these elements combine to create a kind of urban earthwork that is playful, absurd and as entertaining as it is functional.
The sixty-foot tall structure of 12- 8- and 4-inch steel pipes with amber and blue beacons on top stands inside the restricted grounds of the Sabine Water Pump Station. It is a much bigger, slightly more elaborate version of other pipe structures located on the Pump Station grounds. One pipe, like the branch of a large tree, leaves the Pump Station property, passes over the Pump Station fence and ends with a showerhead twenty-five feet overhead in Buffalo Bayou Park.
Another pipe, like the branch of a large tree, leaves the Pump Station property, passes over the Pump Station fence and ends with a shower head twenty-five feet overhead in Buffalo Bayou Park.
On the ground below the showerhead is an eight-foot diameter stainless steel drain cover and a contemporary version of an old-fashioned manual well pump. As one pushes down on the pump handle water rains down from the shower head twenty-five feet above. Simultaneously, and as a result of pumping water through the pipes, orange and blue twin beacons on top of the structure flash, signaling people as far away as downtown that another person has doused themselves with a refreshing, albeit brief, shower.
With an economy of means, Open Channel Flow reconciles three disparate environments: the Pump Station, the Skatepark and Buffalo Bayou Park. It further integrates the sites and downtown Houston as it invites park visitors and skateboarders to play an active role in animating the work. While it will be an appealing architectural oddity when not ‘in use’, much as the Skatepark is a beautiful and strange structure even when devoid of skaters, it offers an added draw as a spirited cooling station in the Houston heat, with its beacon functioning as a wry smoke signal, locating the recreation area as a lively destination with real roots in its environs.
Project Management & Digital Fabrication: Metalab, Houston, Texas
Houston’s Real Estate Landscape -Swamplot
Download file that launches Google Earth and shows the site
