After the Storm

To make informed decisions and control costs, the budget was evaluated in three parts: the disciplines (architecture, mechanical, structural, etc.); construction components (site, concrete, finishes, etc.); and the facility’s program components (research, education, etc.).

When Tropical Storm Allison hit Houston in June 2001, the University of Texas Health Sciences Center suffered more than $200 million in flood damage. The facility was swamped with floodwaters rising up to 22 feet, deluging the basement and first floor with an estimated 10 million gallons of water.

For nine months, the architectural and consulting firm Ratcliff lead a comprehensive programming and planning team, the Llewelyn-Davies Sahni Group, to help the Medical School reconfigure and to develop concepts for protecting UT-Houston’s assets by resisting future floods.

Flooding in the basement research areas and the first floor destroyed high-priced research equipment and records. Lab animals, which researchers regard as biological databanks, also perished. "A doctor with twenty-some years of research had just moved downstairs," says Philip P. Sun, a principal at Ratcliff. "He lost his life’s work."

Although Allison brought flood levels that occur only once every 500 years, planners needed to prepare for the likelihood of another high-water event. "This was a situation where an array of opportunities opened up because of a disaster," Sun says. But where many architectural programmers begin by relocating spaces, Sun’s team saved this step for last.

"We collected facts regarding the activities [the researchers, staff, students] performed to get a thorough understanding of what they do and how they move through their world," says Sun. "We worked with each group to look at the future and then reduced it to the possibilities of the present." Sun calls the process "problem seeking," after the title of the book on architectural programming by William Pe-a.

Programmers first determined how large each program space would be, later deciding where they would be placed.

"Now that they fit, who goes where?" Sun’s team asked. "Often times, unfortunately, locating spaces takes place before you reconcile the space budget. But once the space budget is reconciled, it makes it much easier to deal with the location." A 150,000-square-foot portion of the facility was divided into five service categories, including Research Support, Instructional, Student and Faculty Support, and Administration and Building Infrastructure Support.

The most sensitive research areas and most expensive equipment were relocated to strategic strongholds above the basement, as were some components of the facility’s HVAC system, which also suffered damage in the flood. With those components safely moved to the upper levels of the building, planners needed to decide what program element could be placed in the vulnerable areas below.

Classrooms and other soft spaces were placed in the basement with the rationale that students have the presence of mind to evacuate, while lab animals and equipment do not. Though some computers could potentially be lost in a future flood, the expense would be negligible compared to some of the science facility’s mega-machinery, such as nuclear magnetic resonance equipment.

In the previous layout, the ground floor and the basement were entirely separate areas. One of the planning goals was to interlink them. "By going through this process, we could discover what sorts of spaces could be interlinked and how they could be effectively developed and designed so it would be seamless and you wouldn’t mind going down into the basement."

Open stairwells and high volumes make the two spaces more accessible and visually fluid. At the same time, some critical separation is maintained in routes for transporting lab animals or cadavers. "You don’t want them passing by a bookstore or the student lounge, for example," says Sun.

Planners also needed to embrace UT-Houston’s enthusiasm for sustainable building features, including waterless urinals, which are now standard in all facilities at UT-Houston. University officials also favor "no-fly zones" around windows. "Occupied space is pulled back from the window so the natural light is shared," Sun says. "Offices don’t dominate the walls."

Additional flood protection comes in the form of a wall built around the facility, an example of engineering efforts going on all over the campus and the city of Houston to prevent damage from future high-water events.