On the Effect of Houston's Loose Land Use Regulations

The Rice Design Alliance recently awarded its Spotlight Prize, recognizing up-and-coming architects, to the firm Oualalou + Choi, located in Paris and Casablanca. To commemorate the award, the Houston Chronicle excerpted an interview between Raj Mankad, of the Rice Design Alliance, interviewed Tarik Oualalou. The interview was originally published by the Houston-based architecture and design magazine Cite.

A few of the key excerpts from the interview, in which Mankad and Oualalou examine the city's land use regimes for insight into the city's built form. The interview, especially the portion excerpted in the Houston Chronicle, offers interesting opinions on the effects of planning and land use in this uniquely governed city, all from an architect's perspective:

• "You see spurts of building in short periods of time. So it's very dated. You see a lot of things in the late '70s, and then not in the '80s, a lot of things in the early '90s, and then not. These spurts of construction in short periods of time give it a very dated figure, almost like it's frozen in time….. It's not a city that builds over time. It just builds in moments. It creates a weird "stroboscopic" feel."
• "If there's no counter power, if there's no state, if there's no city, if there's no municipal system, if there's no public desire, organized public desire of sorts — whether it's community or elected or whatever it is — then the developer has no counter power."