Midtown catalyst

Lake|Flato and Studio Red Architects selected to design Midtown arts center

Dominic Walsh Dance Co. will be just one of many performance groups to use the facility.

Photo by Tony Spielberg

The Independent Arts Collaborative has announced that architectural firms Lake|Flato and Studio Red have been selected to design the organization's new art complex planned at Main and Holman in Midtown.

The multi-tenant performance and exhibition space will be designed with the input of nearly 40 Houston arts groups. Organizations like DiverseWorks, Barnevelder Movement/Arts Complex, and Aurora Picture Show have been involved in recent discussions, although participating groups have yet to be finalized.

"This is an amazing opportunity to work with such a wide range of disparate arts groups," Ted Flato, principal architect at San Antonio’s Lake|Flato, told CultureMap. "We look forward to getting everyone's input. In the end, the architecture clearly will reflect that spirit."

“I love the idea of looking at this not as a building, but as a place,” said Ted Flato, principal architect at San Antonio’s Lake|Flato.

With an estimated cost of $25 million, the 85,000-square-foot complex is planned to feature a 400-seat theater, a large exhibition space, and five black box performance spaces as well as workshop areas, classrooms, and office space.

Slated for completion in 2015, the IAC center is poised to become catalyst for Midtown commercial, residential and cultural development.

“I love the idea of looking at this not as a building, but as a place,” Flato said. “We imagine a central street-level area, something like a plaza, with many types of facilities opening onto it. It’ll be a building with many front doors.”

Flato said the architectural design team plans to work with Bob Schultz, the developer behind the nearby blocks containing the Continental Club and Natachee’s, as his company plans building projects next to the new art complex.

IAC board chair Emily Todd envisions the new site, located steps from the Ensemble/HCC METRO stop, as an arts destination, “a place people might visit without a particular exhibit or performance in mind.”

“This is the first major Midtown project designed with specific consideration for the light rail,” said architect Bill Neuhaus of the Houston firm Studio Red. “One of our primary concerns is making the building work with the surrounding streetscape.”

The IAC was founded in 2005 by a collection of smaller arts organizations — including DiverseWorks, Main Street Theater, and Suchu Dance — looking to create an affordable, permanent home to stage performances and exhibitions. After years of searching for a location, the IAC purchased the property at 3400 Main from the City of Houston in July 2011.

Lake|Flato's work is best known in Houston for its designs for the H-E-B Montrose Market and H-E-B Buffalo Market. Studio Red is designing the new performance hall at the University of St. Thomas.

The new Independent Arts Collective building plans to be the hub for smaller arts groups now located nearby.

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on the trail

Celebrate spring's arrival at these 2 Houston garden tours

Courtesy of Bayou Bend

The tour includes Bayou Bend's impressive gardens.

The Azalea Trail, one of Houston’s most enduring seasonal traditions, returns this weekend. Once an annual event, the now biennial tour is a do-not-miss affair offering the opportunity for Houstonians to experience some of the best gardens and architecture the city has to offer — all before the Bayou City gets too balmy. Additionally, the newly opened Ismaili Center will offer complimentary tours of their nine acres of gardens in conjunction with the Azalea Trail.

Now in its 88th year, the River Oaks Garden Club’s Azalea Trail has long served as something of Houston’s unofficial kickoff to spring — that moment when azaleas, camellias, dogwoods, and early bulbs begin peaking across the city and residents head outdoors again. The event blends horticulture, history, architecture, and philanthropy into a weekend experience that consistently draws both dedicated gardeners and design-minded visitors from around the city and the region.

“Throughout the 88-year history of the Azalea Trail, select homeowners have generously offered an intimate look at their beautifully-curated private home gardens. In 2026, Azalea Trail goers will be able to tour four private home gardens featuring unique, breathtaking designs,” Emily Bolin and Hilary Purcel, chairs of this year’s River Oaks Garden Club Azalea Trail, tell CultureMap.

“Each location, which also includes Bayou Bend, Rienzi and the River Oaks Garden Club’s Forum, will offer an abundance of inspiration, including enticing planting combinations, creative concepts, emerging trends, and stunning floral displays. We hope to see everyone this weekend as we kick off the spring season in Houston.”

This year’s Trail runs March 6-8 and includes access to seven gardens for $35, spanning four private residential landscapes in the Tanglewood and close-in Memorial areas plus the aforementioned established cultural sites including Bayou Bend, Rienzi and the River Oaks Garden Club’s own Forum of Civics garden.

The private gardens — always a highlight — offer rare behind-the-gates access to curated residential landscapes showcasing planting combinations, emerging design ideas and seasonal floral displays that often influence Houston gardening trends. Meanwhile, the institutional stops provide historical context:

Bayou Bend Collection and Gardens: a 1926 River Oaks estate, now stewarded by the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston and surrounded by formal gardens and natural woodland landscapes, including azaleas, camellias, redbuds, and seasonal bulb displays planted by Garden Club members. Also, it is their 60th anniversary this year (opened to the public on March 5, 1966).

Rienzi: a former River Oaks residence turned MFAH house museum, where formal European-inspired gardens meet native Texas plantings.

Forum of Civics: the Garden Club’s historic River Oaks area headquarters, listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

Importantly, Trail proceeds directly fund local beautification, conservation, and horticultural education efforts, including historic garden preservation and environmental programming across Houston.

Tour the Ismaili Center

Just minutes away, the newly opened Ismaili Center, Houston — already earning international architectural attention — will offer complimentary public tours on March 7 and 8 from 8 am to 4 pm. The Center’s landscape makes it a compelling add-on to an Azalea Trail itinerary.

Designed by Thomas Woltz of Nelson Byrd Woltz Landscape Architects — also responsible for recent projects at Rice University, Rothko Chapel, and Memorial Park — the more than nine acres of gardens reinterpret historic Islamic garden traditions through a contemporary Texas lens.

The design incorporates terraced lawns, shaded promenades, water features, and resilient plantings arranged as a symbolic ecological “transect of Texas,” moving from desert species to prairie and Gulf Coast plant communities. The landscape also doubles as environmental infrastructure, engineered to withstand major storm events while creating a calm, civic sanctuary overlooking Buffalo Bayou Park. Visitors that weekend can choose:

Full architectural/property tours
Focused garden introductions
Self-guided QR-enabled exploration

Together, the Azalea Trail and the Ismaili Center present a compelling narrative about Houston’s garden culture — where historic private landscapes and philanthropic garden traditions intersect with a globally-influenced new civic landscape designed for reflection, dialogue and public access.

The Azalea Trail will offer a free shuttle service between Rienzi and Bayou Bend. The locations of the four private homes on the tour will be sent via email with ticket purchase confirmations — street parking is available at all private home locations. The event will take place rain or shine, so keep an umbrella handy this weekend.

Courtesy of Bayou Bend

The tour includes Bayou Bend's impressive gardens.