UH Architecture Students Give T.H. Rogers Students Some Relief From the Heat

Photo by Bobette Riner

Holes 18 feet deep for support

A school courtyard in Houston can very well be the last place you’d want to spend time, given the heat that can dominate most of the academic year.

But what if you’re a 12-year-old forced to wear a suit, while playing a cello, no less? Or in a wheelchair, just waiting for the next class to begin?

Thanks to architecture students at University of Houston — and a number of sponsors from the business community — students at T.H. Rogers have a little relief from the sun.

And no, they didn’t pass out handmade fans with all the sponsors’ logos
on them. Instead, THR kids have respite in the form of “cloud cover:” a
covered amphitheater.

Students of Patrick Peters, director of the
Gerald D. Hines College of Architecture at UH, spent the entire summer
designing and overseeing construction of the structure, which took 632
cases of Gatorade — and some steel ‘n’ concrete ‘n’ stuff — to erect.

Peters himself was there every day of the three-month project, even
during 105-degree heat.

Peters said his students undertake one design project per year, always
to benefit a non-profit organization. For this particular project,
around 15 businesses contributed time, talent and/or resources for the
structure.

“It’ll be here for a long time,” THR Principal David J. Muzyka told the
student architects during Friday’s dedication ceremony, “because I
saw the holes you guys dug.”

The structure could very well survive a Cat 5 hurricane, and outlive the
campus itself, as each of the holes were 18 feet deep.

Then again,
Rogers, a National Blue Ribbon School (and Best of Houston winner), has never been singled out for
its stellar campus. While other schools surrounding it in Tanglewood,
one of Houston’s priciest neighborhoods, have pushed for fancy new
structures if not out-and-out makeovers, Rogers quietly churns out
stellar students — and on its original, 48-year-old campus — shocking!

In addition to its gifted-and-talented population, the K-9 school serves
deaf students and, up through age 18, multiply-impaired children.

In case you’re wondering, the new amphitheater is not related to a
design icon in Australia, but it could be a younger, albeit tinier
cousin.

“It rivals the Sydney Opera House,” said John Grounds,
co-president of THR’s PTO. He acknowledged the “gallons of (the student
architects’) sweat underneath where I’m standing.”