HOUSTON - When Houston’s city leaders gave the green light to begin work on the area’s largest urban revitalization project in decades, the landscape design team of Page Southerland Page, along with artist, Margo Sawyer, rolled up their sleeves and went to work to design and execute plans for a 12-acre park in downtown Houston. When completed, the designated green space would offer residents a myriad of colorful gardens, an amphitheater, recreation fields, playground, restaurants, water features and an underground parking garage.
Sawyer, who has created numerous artistic architectural installations in cities around the world, took on the challenge of designing the interior stairwells and exterior walls of the park’s parking garage. While observing the architectural and natural elements surrounding the parking garage, Sawyer chose red and blue as the sources of inspiration for the color composition of her design, Synchronicity of Color.
Having experienced disappointing results with the rapid fading of coatings on other project installations, Sawyer was in pursuit of coatings for the Discovery Green project that would meet her standards. That is when coatings applicator, Brooks Industrial Coatings of Austin, TX, pointed her to International Paint.
Sawyer explained, “I had been looking into various wet finishes when Brooks Industrial explained that International Paint coatings would be just as good, if not better than my other coatings. My past experiences sent me on a search for the perfect products, and I finally found them!”
With U.S. operations headquartered in Houston, International Paint invested in the revitalization effort by donating the coatings needed for the installation. Working under tight deadlines, Sawyer chose 50 gallons of epoxy primer Intercure 200HS, due to its ease of application and fast-dry characteristics.
One hundred gallons of Interfine 878, an acrylic polysiloxane finish, was also selected in a variety of colors. Unlike traditional urethanes and epoxy polysiloxanes, Interfine 878’s exceptional durability qualities will go a long way in helping the park reduce long-term maintenance costs associated with fading. International Paint provided an additional 25 gallons of thinner, bringing the total to 175 gallons of paint donated to the Discovery Green revitalization project.
