Inside the Astrodome: The Senses of Environmental Management

Abstract

The dissertation—a history of the Houston Astrodome, the world’s first fully-enclosed sports stadium—makes contributions to film and media studies, architectural history and theory, visual studies, and environmental humanities through its exploration of the Dome’s articulations of spectatorship, public culture, and the senses. Its central concept of “environmental management” attempts to both periodize the concept of environment, drawn equally from architecture, ecology, and art, during the Cold War era as well generate a media theory of management as “making-do”—both highlighting its use for administrative control as well as adaptive response. The thesis draws on the interrelation of architecture, media, and technology to critically examine the building’s design, production, and maintenance of its spectacular atmosphere and ideals of comfort. In addition to covering the multi-purpose stadium’s wide range of programming—from sporting and music events, religious and political conventions, expos and rodeos, and many others—the chapters argue for an expanded consideration of unconventional media objects and processes themselves in need of constant technical and ideological maintenance. Emblematic of postwar urban planning, the Dome emerges as a complex technical and cultural assemblage through questions of who and what constitute and sustain public space in the oil and energy capital’s precarious position on the Gulf Coast.