Houtopian resources

Just a quick, sloppy post here to convey two related bits of information, given that one of them takes place tomorrow.

(1) If you ever get the chance to visit Houston's Green Building Resource Center, it's well worth a drop-in. 

1002 Washington Avenue, a short distance off IH-45 near the city core.  Public Works and Engineering does a lot of city permit administration out of this location. 

Not only is the building itself an absolute marvel of modern architecture, they have all kinds of cool stuff that's interesting to see whether or not you consider yourself to be concerned with "green" initiatives.  I'm mostly a fan of innovative and efficient living products, designs, and methods rather than "greenery", but it so happens that "innovative" and "green" often go hand in hand. 

There are displays of various building materials and techniques...

...all very artfully arranged, plus there's actual art all over the place as well, and I'm also a fan of art... 

...especially if the art has a local connection and is designed to serve a specific purpose. 

Here's some art of the wall-hanging type, made to look like graffiti, but you recognize it, don't you?  You've seen that configuration before.  Cross-referencing is king.  In this case, king of the highway.

Sometimes I find displays of neat stuff in there that I wouldn't otherwise stumble across...

...such as this device by Gro Pod, which could be made to work well in microscopic back yards such as we have in Centerpointe, where folks might like to do a bit of gardening but don't know how to squeeze it in.  And not only that, I believe this device might be available for less money than you'd pay at a retail big-box home improvement store for an analogous product. 

Anyway, my mention of these exhibits is a prelude to the fact that:

(2) The Houtopia festival is tomorrow from 12 pm to 6 pm.  Booths, live music, all that jazz.  Here's a YouTube embed describing it, with hat tip to Houston Green Scene on Facebook. Blogger, in all of its infinite Google-driven glory, is unable to index this on YouTube, so this might come across as an improperly-sized embed: