4200 North Lamar

This office and commercial refurbishment was another collaboration between the architect Michael Hsu and the landscape firm D-Crain.  I wrote previously about their combined work at the restaurant Sway in Austin on South First Street.  This site has another restaurant anchor with Uchiko, a spinoff from Austin's acclaimed sushi establishment, Uchi.  Both Sway and Uchi are stand-alone buildings, but Uchiko is integrated into a retail strip, which reminds me of my time living in Los Angeles when you never knew what fine dining restaurant you might find tucked away in a strip mall.  This isn't quite as an obscure setting as the overall landscape for the entire property has been upgraded to be cohesive and more modern, and the other retail spaces are filled with upscale chains like Taco Deli and Houndstooth Coffee.

The overall landscape palette is strong on  aggregate and accent planting.  This project must have been before the City of Austin started cracking down on the use of aggregate mulch because of heat island concerns.  You can now only get site permit approval with a limited percentage of gravel and aggregate mulch as they favor hardwood mulch.  Most of the planters have gray basalt under the vegetation, although by Uchiko the material switches to a smaller, light colored crushed stone that is both under plants and used as the groundplane for an outdoor seating area.  Plant wise, there's some clumping bamboo that divides parking spaces that is an uncommon choice for a parking lot in Austin.  It has been hedged to about four or five feet tall instead of allowed to grow to full height.  Similarly, there's a low hedge of olive at the side of the building that almost looks like boxwood.  Tucked in this hedge is a hidden steel saucer with a Queen Victoria Agave all by its lonesome.  Yuccas both tall and low fill a large planter by the ADA ramp and they are kept company by some cherry sage.  There are a couple of medium sized Palo Verde trees that both are planted really close to the building and have steel crutches holding them up.

Wide View of Commercial Strip

Basalt Path Where Concrete Sidewalk Ends

Bamboo Hedge with Basalt Mulch

Olive Hedge

Hidden Queen Victoria Agave

Yuccas and Cherry Sage in Planter at Accessbility Ramps

Palo Verde Tree Planted at Foundation Edge

Steel Crutch for PaloVerde

There's really nice thought to the detail of the metal work in many parts of the project.  The standard handrail/guardrail throughout is a gray painted flatbar with square post mounts that are inset to be flush with the concrete.  I'm not quite sure if they just saw cut out to do these insets or had leave-outs when they poured the concrete.  There are no visible bolts or anything for securing the posts, so maybe they are sleeved over some sort of dowel that was cast in the concrete or expoxied there later on?  At Taco Deli they have umbrellas for tables, and the metal sleeves for these are integrated into the guardrail which is a great idea.

Typical Guardrail

Umbrella Holder

Although I've eaten at Uchiko before, I never noticed the outdoor waiting area near the main entry.  It's enclosed by a custom steel pergola with perforated steel sides covered with what looks like crossvine (Bigonia capreolata).  The posts for the pergola don't intersect with the concrete as cleanly here as those of the guardrail elsewhere,  and the circular gap is filled with mortar.  There's an aperture in the top of the pergola for another Palo Verde tree that's reaching for the sun.   The planter area at the base of part of the pergola for the vines and some Candelilla (Euphorbia antisyphilitica) is raised steel that's angled back.  A wood and steel bench runs the length of the waiting area and mirrors the look of the perforated part of the pergola.

Uchiko Entry

Uchiko Waiting Area Pergola

Seating Under Pergola

Pergola Detail

Pergola Posts at Concrete

Opening in Pergola for Palo Verde Tree

Angled Steel Planter

Wood & Steel Bench

Finally, the Taco Deli area is dog friendly with an outdoor watering bowl that also doubles as a grackle pool.

Grackle Pool

laV

This restaurant and wine bar opened in March of 2014 and offers predominately Provencal inspired French cuisine.  It's supposedly more of a posh French interior design than rustic French farmhouse based on reviews I've read, although I only briefly peeked inside so I don't have first-hand thoughts to share on this.  The exterior landscape definitely has a very formal, traditional feel to it with a restrained color palette and a certain amount of ornamentation in the detailing that you don't see in a lot of new east Austin developments. The restaurant’s design was overseen by two firms, McAlpine Tankersley Architecture and McAlpine Booth & Ferrier Interiors, although I couldn't find out any information about the landscape design specifically.  In the City of Austin site plan submittal the landscape sheets are stamped by Bury + Partners who were also the civil engineer on the project.

The first plants that I saw against the gray facade were Italian Cypress and olives, which are basically botanical shorthand for Mediterranean in these parts.  The Bamboo Muhly in between the cypress is a little odd, but the white roses backing the olives in their planter boxes look good.  The planters have decorative finials on the corners and a dark bronze patina.

Italian Cypress, Bamboo Muhly and Olive Trees

Olives in Planters with White Roses in the Background

On the 7th Street frontage there's a wooden deck seating area with some live oaks popping up.  The patio space does a good job of co-opting the public sidewalk in a very urban way to create a hybrid public/private realm reminiscent of a sidewalk cafe.  Some parallel parking spaces provide a buffer from the deck so it's not right on the fairly busy roadway.  The guardrail separating the deck from this area has some weathered steel window box type planters.  They straddle the rail like saddlebags which I liked, although the finish doesn't really match the rest of the detailing of the landscape where all the other metal is bronzed or painted dark gray.

7th Street Deck

Parallel Parking Buffer

Weathered Steel Planter Boxes

The east side of the restaurant exterior has another outdoor dining space.  This one has a very symmetrical layout with two pergolas flanking a water feature.  The stone (or maybe cast stone) water feature has  a central pillar with two pipes pouring water a couple of feet down into a basin.  Because of that drop you get some good white noise from the water.

East Patio

Water Feature

The dark gray pergolas are much smaller in scale than those at Texas French Bread and the Pearl Brewery that I wrote about previously.  They just have one or two tables under them.  Fans, lights and speakers are all intergrated into the pergola, and a leave-out in the pavement has been planted with Wisteria vines that are climbing up the structures.

Pergola with Texas State Cemetery View

Wisteria Planting Leave-Out

Tumbled Concrete Pavers

Tumbled concrete pavers at the driveway entry are a nice accent touch that breaks up the concrete of the drive and parking lot so it feels less engineered and more designed.  It also designates a pedestrian route over to the Jardins de LaV outdoor event space and garden.  This space is pretty simple with a wooden fence, some crushed stone paths and large grass areas.  A canopy of Tivoli style lights is held up by wooden post that have a nice steel sleeve footing detail.  The posts have decorative caps that tie in with the restaurant detailing.  The planting beds are mainly edibles that are perhaps used in the restaurant or the Say laV food trailer that's in the garden.  The planters themselves are about 1/4" weathered steel plate.  Again, the steel seems a little out of place with the rest of the details, and I would have more expected some  raised wood planters perhaps painted to match the fence or the gray of the restaurant brick.  The planters have irrigation integrated in them which is a must in Texas during the summer.

Jardins de LaV with Holiday Tree

Raised Steel Planter Beds

Wood Post Footing

Tivoli Light Connection and Post Cap

Dimensional Place

What drew me to this site in Westlake is the rooftop garden on the multi-story parking garage that my co-workers had told me about.  It's a garage that is cut into the hillside about 5 or 6 stories, so when you're in the garage leaning against the tension wire guardrail and looking down on the north side you get a little bit of canyon vertigo.  Aside from the rooftop garden there's landscape associated with the Dimensional building and the St. Jude Medical building.  My attempts to find any information online about who did the landscape design were not successful, although I did find that one of the buildings had been designed by Gensler.

Garage Cut into Hill

Stepping out of the elevator bay on the east side of the garage you get a layered view of the rooftop landscape with foreground native grasses, mid-view yuccas and background shade trees.  Presumably the trees had to be placed on top of column locations to carry the weight load, but I didn't feel like the placement was particularly regularized or grid-based when I was in the space.    So, the design choice was to create a more curated natural landscape vs. a very formal, geometric landscape.  You can see this in individual planting areas such as one that has a river rock dry creek abstraction with flagstone and very structural succulents backed by some Mountain Laurel.  The view out to the surrounding landscape is great from some locations, especially when framed by tall grasses.

View from Elevator

Dry Creek Abstraction

View Out with Grasses

The perimeter of the rooftop has a pretty standard  concrete walkway with extended niches for off-the shelf wood benches.  This style of bench is duplicated in a couple of the middle areas of the rooftop in a rocking chair version which I'd never seen.  The light fixture along this perimeter is pretty contemporary looking, more so than a rocking chair bench in my mind.  In the middle area the paving switches to mortared flagstone pathways with an irregular edge that has a more rustic quality like you'd see in a Hill Country landscape.  At the central pavilion the paving switches to a cut stone, which is back to the more contemporary feel.

Perimeter Concrete Walk

Rocking Bench

Hill Country Flagstone

Irregular Flagstone Edge

Pavilion with Cut Stone Paving

The pavilion and its pergola are definitely more in a contemporary or modern architectural style than the Hill Country flagstone pathways.  The walls match the architecture of the elevator bays on the north-east and south-west corners.  The wood and steel pergola while flat on top, has overlapping, angled wood slats underneath that give it a swooping volume that looks to me like an airplane wing.  Lighting has been integrated into the posts of the pergola which helps to hide the fixtures.  A custom Ipe bench wraps the corner on some walls, and this wood matches the pergola.  The weathered gray of this bench wood is similar to the perimeter benches but the style is a bit different.  In the pavilion there's a very modern looking cantilevered meeting table that I think is polished granite.

Pergola Detail

Pergola Lighting

Custom Bench

Meeting Table

At the Dimensional building there's a pretty traditional looking DG pathway with limestone chop block edging and variegated agaves in pots.  This leads to a terraced turf amphitheater with some tables and chairs.  The terrace walls are split face limestone blocks, and the steps are geometric cut flagstone with lights inserted into the risers.  There was a healthy stand of Dwarf Palmetto on the edge of the space.

DG Path

Terraces

Step Detail

Dwarf Palmetto (Sabal minor)

St. Jude Medical has a larger garden space that you get a birds-eye view of from the parking garage.  A constructed berm at the right side of the garden entry ties into the hillside on the back to give a bowl shape to the entire space.  At the middle is a naturalistic water feature with the water bubbling out of a large boulder.  There are a lot of different stone materials and colors converging here with pink decomposed granite, orange flagstone, and purple river rock.  Plants are in large masses with some Mexican Mint Marigold in bloom when I was there.  Outside of the garden at the vehicle drop off is a grove of three live oaks with prickly pear underneath.  Red annuals were added at the outer edge of this bed, and I think they could have been left out without being missed.  They very well may not have been in the original design.

View from Garage

Berm

Mexican Mint Marigold (Tagetes lucida)

Water Feature

Stone Convergence

Water Edge

Oak & Prickly Pear