Houston's Highways Get Some Temporary Beauty

HOUSTON, TX — You know the drill: Get in your car, enter any of the highways that intersect the city, and try not to get too depressed about the ugly expanses of concrete littered with broken bumpers, paper cups, and other refuse. Save for a few stretches, such as the illuminated bridges over I-59, the highways in the area are not much to look at. But they've lately gotten a little better with the addition of "Houston Bridges."

You may have seen them already, but if not, next time you are traveling on 69/228, slow down a bit to look at the bridges spanning the roadway and soak in the colors and design. Your commute will be immediately improved.

The installation pieces are made of Coroplast — think political signs — and were designed by the SWA Group, a landscape architecture firm, in a project led by Natalia Beard. The team won a competition organized by Houston First Corporation whose challenge, according to Houston First's Roksan Okan-Vick, was "to come up with a relatively inexpensive and temporary way to add some panache to Houston's notoriously unbeautiful freeways, littered as they can be with shreds of tire and mattress and streaked with grime."

The project was, as reported by the Houston Chronicle, designed for eight bridges spanning 69/288 from Tuam to Leeland and Bell.

"It's the gateway to downtown," Beard tells the Chronicle. "But it's so bad. The freeway aesthetic is so bad, you learn to tune it out. But you start thinking. What is critical to make visible? What is critical to make invisible?"

Think of Beard, as the Chronicle's Allyn West writes, as a poet of infrastructure, and allow the fruits of her labor — "Houston Bridges" — to ease your driving frustrations.

"But what's interesting about the cathedral space is that it's kind of chaotic. But what's structurally nice is the rhythm of the street grid that intersects at a 90-degree angle," Beard posits. "Every six seconds you see a straight line. It almost creates a 'score' that overlays the cathedral space with structure. If you drew attention to that structure, away from the abutment walls, the unsightliness of the grime that's accumulated on the concrete, you take advantage of what's there and what's good about it, in terms of scale, drama and rhythm."

Here's the special thing about Houston Bridges: What they represent is the city itself. Those bands of color are in reality pixelated photographs of Houston taken by local elementary school students that were Photoshopped and printed in 1-inch-wide sections of the Coroplast. The bands were then threaded through the chain-link fences that line the bridges.

A decision hasn't been made about how long the colored bands will be around, but until they are taken down, Okan-Vicks thinks the crowded nature of the roadways they grace could be seen as a blessing:

" ... if you're stuck in traffic or going slowly," she says, "you'll be able to enjoy them a little more."

You can read the entire story here.

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— Image: flickr/Ken Lund