Located in West Houston, the Alief Neighborhood Center and Park serves one of the city’s most diverse communities. Over 90 languages are spoken in Alief, which is home to first-generation immigrants from across the world and refugees from as far away as Vietnam and close as Louisiana—especially in the wake up Hurricane Katrina, when many families made a permanent home in Houston.

Reopened to the public in January 2023, the project models a paradigm shift in community services, combining four City departments (Health, Parks, Libraries, and General Services) under one roof—a civic center at the heart of an entirely redeveloped 38-acre urban sports park. The center also features the “biggest front porch in West Texas,” a large, covered porch that serves as a flexible gathering space.

Raised out of the floodplain, the Alief Neighborhood Center and Park also model resilient landscape design after Hurricane Harvey, weaving hardy native planting through a necklace of forested basins that naturally drain the site. Since its reopening, the project has become particularly popular with families, local seniors, and the skating community, who helped design skate park features through multiple workshops with the design team.