The Office of Metropolitan Architecture (OMA) and developers Lovett Commercial have unveiled plans to transform the 55,000-square-foot Barbara Jordan Post Office in Houston into a mixed-use cultural center and park for the city. 

The adaptive reuse project, called POST Houston, will bring a rooftop park, urban agriculture, retail establishments, a market hall, co-working spaces, and other uses to the former post office building with the goal of "balancing preservation with strategic, almost surgical interventions" in order to reposition the post office into a dynamic cultural node. 

The complex will be topped with a five-acre rooftop park designed by Chicago landscape architects Hoerr Schaudt containing an organic farm and other recreational areas. Hoerr Schaudt is also behind the 2015 design of Houston's McGovern Centennial Park. 

Located at the edge of the city's theater district and bounded on one side by the SWA Group-designed Buffalo Bayou Park, POST Houston is designed to host performances and art installations while also amplifying the city's growing relationship to its natural surroundings. 

OMA Partner Jason Long, the lead designer on the project, said in a press release, “In a city that is constantly reinventing itself, it is incredible to have an opportunity to transform a building of such solidity and sheer scale. Lovett’s vision to preserve this structure from Houston’s past allowed us to design a multi-layered, interconnected platform for the city’s cultural and commercial future."

Work on phase one of POST Houston is already underway, with work slated to wrap up in 2020.