Architect: Perkins+Will
Project Location: Houston, TX
Project Completion Date: 201
Short Description: Emancipation Park in Houston’s historic Third Ward neighborhood was built on a 10-acre parcel purchased by four former slaves in 1872. It originally served as a location to celebrate Juneteenth, the June 19, 1865 emancipation of African Americans in Texas. Until the 1950s, it was the only public park and swimming pool in Houston open to African Americans. The new Emancipation Park features a renovated Community Center and Aquatic Center along with a new Recreation Center, playground, picnic shelters, landscaping, signage and plazas. Also included are new monuments honoring the four founders and ceremonial gateway sculpture.
Architect’s Statement: The newly redesigned and rebuilt Emancipation Park is an interwoven tapestry of buildings and landscape encompassing ten acres in Houston’s Third Ward. The project includes refurbished landscapes and play grounds, renovation of the two historic buildings and the addition of a new building and plaza. Site design began with aggregating similar program elements to create various activity zones within the park. Consistent with the 1938 Hare & Hare plan for the park, major commemorative elements are placed along a central plaza of the park. The old recreation center is now a Community Center and the Aquatic Center is renovated and expanded. A new Recreation Center completes the quad to create a formal Entry Plaza. The new Entry Plaza landscape stitches together the entrances of new and old buildings. Fronting the Community Center and flanked by the Pool House and Recreation Center, the plaza texture flows around the Community Center and establishes a central promenade that in turn branches out to activate and connect perimeter zones of the park that include new playground and picnic shelters. The ‘stitched’ paving pattern of the Founder’s Promenade and its loosely defined edges reflect contemporary ambiguities in how we understand ourselves and define the conventions of public space. Altogether, the new Emancipation Park reflects the pride, resilience, and hope its founders expressed when they established the park 145 years ago. The Pool House renovation includes a large steel frame canopy in-filled with perforated metal decking to cover the main entrance and the pool deck. The perforated decking delivers diffused daylight to visitors and encourages breezes. The canopy transforms to serve as a sound and view buffer from the street and becomes signage for Emancipation Park. The Community Center renovation is more restorative and looks to undo a 1974 renovation by re-opening bricked up windows to daylight. The re-opened, bi-directional indoor/outdoor stage is for intimate performing arts events and the interior is refurbished for community meeting spaces. The new Recreation Center design creates opportunities for personal and community expression. The program includes a gymnasium, fitness center, and multi-purpose room. The exterior program includes a band shell and grand Front Porch for community events. A large steel frame canopy gives form to the Front Porch to shelter the main entrance and then folds to engage the mass of the building along its north and south elevations. On the north side it transforms to a band shell and opens to a major event lawn.
Type of Construction: The new Recreation Center has a steel structure and is clad with a phenolic resin and metal panel rainscreen system with glass and aluminum curtainwall. The canopy is galvanized steel with perforated metal panels as infill to create diffuse light. The existing buildings are 3-wythe brick load bearing walls. New windows will be aluminum frame with high performance insulated glazing. The entire park will use a ground source heat pump HVAC system in order to reduce energy consumption and to meet the parks sustainability goals (LEED Silver). Solar hot water panels will also be atop the canopies to meet the hot water requirements for the park.