landscape architecture and public art
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Falon Land Studio is working with the Menil and architecture firm KinneyMorrow on the design of an expanded gathering area and shaded seating for the Menil Bookstore’s “backyard”.
Architecture Center Houston is proud to announce their upcoming exhibition Verdant Laboratory by Falon Mihalic opening Thursday, June 12, 5:30-7:30pm, and continuing through August 22, 2025.
Verdant Laboratory transforms the gallery into a speculative ecology—part science lab, part art installation—that tells the story of Houston’s wild and often overlooked landscapes.
Through large-scale mixed media drawings, sculptures, and a video projection, Mihalic explores the living systems that form Houston’s foundation. Houston is not just a city built on bayous—it is a bayou. Situated at the intersection of the Galveston Bay estuary and coastal prairie, Houston exists within a dynamic and powerful web of water, soil, and biodiversity.
Windbloom featured in the groundbreaking CODAWorx publication, “The Economic Power of Public Art”. CODAworx, the hub of the public art economy, has released comprehensive data estimating the size of this creative industry, along with revelations about the economic impact of the public art sector. This first annual groundbreaking study reveals that in 2023, the public art sector made a substantial economic contribution surpassing $4.4 billion.
Join us on Thursday, April 25th, for an alumni talk and gathering event with Falon Mihalic '12 in 159 Weybosset from 5:30-8:30PM. The event is hosted by the Landscape Architecture department and Landscape Forms to create opportunities for alumni and current students to mingle together.
“Since 2008, Meow Wolf has collaborated with hundreds of local and international artists to transport millions of visitors—of all ages—into breathtaking realms of alternate realities. This go-round, we have tapped into Houston’s already vibrant cultural landscape to wrangle a diverse palette of 40+ Texas-based artists for Meow Wolf’s newest macrocosmic mosaic. “
Inside Poppi Massey’s Swinging New River Oaks Dream Home…
The XO House by LO/JO Architects is the winner of a Texas Architects Design Award….
Windbloom, a permanent public art commission for the City of Houston’s Civic Art Collection officially opens to the public on January 14, 2023. The new Alief Community Center has three permanent public artworks that will be unveiled at the grand opening of the new facility.
Sea Grass is a supersized sculpture cluster of Johnson’s Seagrass, a federally listed threatened marine plant endemic to Miami’s Biscayne Bay. The sculptures are cast into molds using a proprietary mix of colored concrete and recycled glass then polished to a glossy terrazzo finish. Each grass blade is formed as a curvy leaf to create an organic flow of shapes as if being moved by water. Seagrass is nestled within the landscape design plantings at the new park’s swimming facility entry and sited to be visible among the other community buildings and park gathering spaces. Seagrass is a $100,000 budget project and is made possible by the City of Miami’s Art in Public Places’ percent-for-art program. The work is being fabricated in the artist’s Houston studio and will be installed on site in early 2023.
Falon Land Studio is working in partnership with the Kaboom Foundation and community groups in Huntsville, Texas to design seven new green playgrounds. We are delighted to work alongside Kaboom and community stakeholders to design seven new playspaces in the City of Huntsville.
Meet the Artist for Windbloom, the outdoor permanent public artwork coming to the new Alief Neighborhood Center.
7979 S Kirkwood Rd, Houston, TX 77072
March 17, 2022 | 4-6pm
Windbloom is a supersized flower that maps Alief's prevailing windspeed and direction. A permanent public artwork for the City of Houston’s Civic Art Collection at the new landmark Alief Neighborhood Center……
The Prague City Data Congress is a conference focused on data, urban planning, and municipal coordination.
In the 2021 edition, defined by the times of altered balance and changing perceptions, PCDC will focus on accessible design, data visualizations, and data-based storytelling.
Falon Mihalic will speak about Art as a Tool for Data Expression. Using the Bayou Beacon as a case study, this talk explores how to create immersive public art using freely available environmental data. The Bayou Beacon is an immersive light art projection that activates a former industrial space to express historic bayou flood data as a pulsing swarm of water drops. Installed in Houston, Texas, USA, the project activates an underutilized urban space and is funded through a city hotel occupancy and tourism tax.
Falon Mihalic is a panelist on the Deep Dive Session titled, Supporting Health Equity and Environmental Resilience Through Green Playgrounds - A Texas Case Study. Falon will share how she has leveraged community engagement and fundraising to design environmentally resilient playgrounds in underutilized spaces. She will present alongside the Kaboom Foundation and the El Paso County Parks and Recreation Department.
From the Mayor’s Office of Cultural Affairs: “Embedded in the urban parkscape, Windbloom will give form to the site’s ephemeral ecological qualities and fortify the new neighborhood center as a place for reflection, connection, and discovery.”
The Bayou Beacon is an environmental light sculpture designed by Falon Land Studio, a Houston-based interdisciplinary practice in public art and landscape architecture. The Beacon expresses the water fluctuations of White Oak Bayou as it monitors historic water quality data then projects a dynamic, parametrically-designed light animation onto suspended semi-transparent fabric panels. On view at night on Friday, April 23rd and Saturday April 24th, inside the Train Shed at Sawyer Yards’ Art Alley…..
“Making the Meander: Falon Land Studio’s Prototype Practice” features the hands-on innovative work of building a recently completed public art commission in downtown Houston.
Permanent public art commission in downtown Houston is featured in Culture Map, “Immersive New Artwork..” The project has been covered extensively by local media including the Houston Chronicle and Houston Press.
Spring invited lectures:
April 4 2020: Portland Oregon, Oregon ASLA Design Symposium
April 14 2020: Rhode Island School of Design, Spring Lecture Series
April 29 2020: Lone Star College, Department of Fine Art
Falon Land Studio is hiring two intern positions in Houston, Texas to work with our diverse team. Our work is a hybrid of landscape architecture at a variety of scales and public art commissions for municipalities and non-profits. We are looking for ambitious emerging designers with an interest in crafting construction drawing sets for permanent public art commissions, landscapes, and urban plazas…….READ MORE
TOPO is a constructed landform of artificial and living plants, commissioned for the new Outdoor Voices retail shop in the Heights Mercantile. Opening is December 13th at 6pm.
Details and RSVP here: https://events.outdoorvoices.com/ovhoustongrandopening
Falon Mihalic is speaking at the Texas Society of Architects Conference and the National Conference on Landscape Architecture this Autumn. Details about the talks and how to register are included here……
Falon Land Studio is working in partnership with the Kaboom Foundation and the Rebuild Texas Fund to design a new resilient playground for Atkinson Elementary School in Pasadena, Texas. For the first time, this playground will….
Field Elementary School in the Houston Heights now has a new and improved soccer field. It is open for use by the community after school hours and on the weekends. Thank you to the Friends of Field and the Field Elementary PTO for all of their hard work bringing this vision to life.
Falon Mihalic was commissioned for a permanent public art installation for Understory at Capitol Tower in downtown Houston. The work, Rain, is an installation of a large scale painted water body with glistening rain drops. It’s created from layers of paint and pure pigment on a 20’ x 12’ wall. Acrylic sculptures welded from mirrored acrylic sheet create three dimensional prismatic water beads. Additionally, Falon was invited to be an inaugural artist for the Milam Art Wall with a 10’x8’ dyed paper work for the public entry of Understory.
The Arts Foundation for Tucson and Southern Arizona has accepted Falon Mihalic as a pre-qualified public artist. We look forward to pursuing environmental art projects in the desert southwest in the near future.
Phase one of the Field Elementary school playground is set to open Sunday, April 7th. Please join the Friends of Field, the kids, and the Houston Dynamo street team for a fundraising auction and soccer event from 2-4pm. The first phase of the playground design includes a new soccer field and walking track. Phase two includes natural areas, a frogland with rainwater harvesting, native plantings, and a stump jump…..
Falon Land studio is shortlisted for new public art projects at the Maury Elementary and Addison-Hyde schools in Washington DC. In April, we will present a full concept design for each location to the schools and the commissioning agency, the Department of General Services, and the stakeholders who oversee the percent for art in DC schools program…..
Falon Mihalic has been invited to create a site-specific work of land art for the Spring 2019 performance of John Luther Adams’ Inuksuit at Rice University in Houston, Texas. Produced in partnership with the Humanities Research Center Spatial Studies initiative, the work is funded by the Mellon Foundation with collaboration from the Moody Center for the Arts and Rice Public Art. The performance will take place Saturday, February 16, 2019 at 4pm in the live oak grove near Entrance one on the Rice University campus.