Where does a University’s electric power come from? The South Plant responds to this question; envisioning a power plant as both sculpture and pedagogy. An aperture carved through the central control room reveals the plant’s mechanical heart to passersby – inviting students to witness energy production as they move across campus. Real-time data on traditional and renewal power streams across a display, turning infrastructure into daily education.
Rice University’s campus guidelines mandate the use of St. Joe’s Brick – historic wood molded brick that has been the campus’s standard cladding since its founding – the South Plant reinterprets the guidelines along with campus’s nearby historic power plant with a contemporary lens.
Seven staggered brick monoliths of descending scale link the body of the power plant to a bermed landscape wall enclosing the plant’s service and utility yard. The sweeping, spiraling procession of brick sentinels – a Fibonacci-inflected arc of wall fragments – softens as it passes by adjacent riparian wetlands, parklands, and the surrounding trail network.
Rising up behind the controls room is a flue tower wrapped in dichroic glass, abstracting the storied brick chimney on Rice’s still functioning 1920’s power plant. The flue tower rises up to meet the scale of the medical towers along Main Street. By day the tower casts mercurial veils of color and light that shift and at night, the tower becomes a prismatic beacon.
