Houston Dam Explanation

The Rice Design Alliance and Gray Matters teamed up to produce this digital article with simple yet powerful diagrams to illustrate and explain how the dams work while the city was still underwater:

https://www.houstonchronicle.com/local/gray-matters/article/How-the-Barker-and-Addicks-dams-work-12171719.php

As Hurricane Harvey filled the Barker and Addicks reservoirs to capacity, tv and radio media outlets provided riveting coverage of the disaster with live press conferences from Mayor’s Office, County Judge and Harris County Flood Control District.

However, the explanations did not translate into lay language.

This is the story of how architects and journalists with the Rice Design Alliance’s OffCite/Cite magazine and the Houston Chronicle’s Gray Matters recognized the need to report and provide clear and understandable information to the public.

The resulting article was one of the most read pieces of journalism during the crisis. One of the team members who wrote the article was under mandatory evacuation when she got the assignment and managed to secure one of the last exclusive interviews with the Army Corps of Engineers before the ensuing lawsuits after the storm. Asking hard questions such as, “Are we facing a situation of imminent failure?” and “What are the elevations of the dams?” while using hand sketches that turned into informative diagrams, the team understood spatial relationships, flooding infrastructure, engineering language and worked to quickly translate complex matters for the public to understand and evacuate.

Suggested Speaker(s)

  • Florence Tang
    Architectural designer/manager, journalist and executive board member of the Rice Design Alliance, Rice Design Alliance
  • Allyn West (@allynwest)
    Editor and Writer for Gray Matters, Houston Chronicle