2310 South Lamar

Shopping Center Sign

My first job in Austin was near Irie Bean Coffee on South Lamar, so  I would stop in there sometimes in the morning for a very green pistachio muffin and a cup of breakfast tea.  My co-worker would never go there because it used to be an adult video store and they just felt weird about getting coffee there now.  Anyhow, the shopping center is still around even though the taco shop and the hair salon have gone.  East Side King, one of chef Paul Qui's restaurants now anchors one end of the center, and an outdoor patio space has evolved in the back.

Although parking is at a premium in the center, especially at lunch time, one of the spaces has been converted to an entry to the back by adding about a 4 inch tall  raised concrete curb.

Back Patio Entry with Raised Curb

A metal sculpture does double duty as a gateway and as an anchor point for a shade sail and some string lights.  The other ends are held up by galvaznized steel poles sunken into the ground.  The attachement to the poles includes an i-bolt, some caribeners and a cable tensioner.

Metal Sculpture and Gateway

Shade Sail and String Lights

Connection Close-Up

 The ground plane in the back is decomposed granite, and there are steel edging rings around the trees that are filled with river rock.  The edging isn't a very clean circle like you would get if you cut a pipe, and maybe using a thicker gauge steel would have helped preserve a cleaner curve as well.

Steel Edging Ring Around Tree

There are two types of fencing around the back.  The long wall is a combination of corrugated metal sheeting and stained wood.  The metal and wood has some hill profile look going on at one point, which I'm guessing is to screen some specific view, although there could have been some artistic intent behind it too.  The second fencing type uses basic 4x4 treated wood posts and cedar horizontal slats.  The pattern is a mix of 4 by and 2 by material with large gaps to give a more open feel.

Corrugated Metal and Painted Wood Fence

Horizontal Wood Fence with Gaps

Other custom hardscape elements include a long steel bench with steel posts mounted in the ground and then a bar with a wooden cap.  The long bench in particular seems like it probably was pretty expensive compared to the more generic wooden picnic tables.  There are a couple of dog poop stations, so I'm guessing this is a dog friendly patio space, although no canines were there during my visit.

Custom Steel Bench

Wood-topped Bar and Shaded Seating Area

Dog Clean-Up Station

 And don't forget about Buddah handing out under some bamboo that also serves as a screen to a store's back entry. 

Buddah

LCRA Redbud Center

LCRA Redbud Center Entry Sign

The LCRA Redbud Center is home to the Lower Colorado River Authority's (LCRA) emergency response facility as well as The Wilkerson Center.  The Wilkerson Center and its grounds are a hub for education about the water and infrastructure that LCRA manages.  The center sits right on Ladybird Lake (aka the dammed up Colorado River) near downtown Austin.  Completed in 2008, the center's architects were Barnes Gromatzky Kosarek Architects and Overland Partners, with landscape architecture by  J. Robert Anderson.

The most conspicuous sustainability element are the large rain tanks up front.  There's one right up by the street that has an aqueduct from the building that fills the tank.  This front tank holds 11,600 gallons of water, and the three tanks by the building each hold 6,500 gallons.  So you have a combined system capacity of 31,100 gallons.

Rainwater Collection Tanks and Aqueduct

What I didn't notice on my previous visists to the center for seminars was that there's a lot of stormwater management going on in the parking lot and the back.  Curb cuts in the parking lot guide water to a series of bioretention ponds on the side of the building.  These eventually feed into a a large detention pond which eventually releases water into the Colorado River.

Curb Cuts

Steel Plate Pedestrian Bridge

Bioretention Ponds

Detention Pond View from Pergola

When you go into the main entry of The Wilkerson Center you are surrounded by water features.  The entry walk runs parallel to a recirculating, naturalistic limestone boulder water channel.  Just past the main door to the building you get a view of a series of the interpretive water feature that models the six lakes and dams of the lower Colorado River.  The day I was there it seemed like the features were not running at their normal water levels, which I couldn't tell was because of maintenance issues or drought reasons.

Naturalistic Limestone Water Feature

Interpretive Water Feature

To access the entire interpretive feature you navigate a lot of ramps and stairs.  The guardrails for these are all galvanized steel posts with stainless, tension cables.  A lot of the round posts had mortar patching after the post was inserted.  Some of the other posts have a base plate that is bolted to the concrete, and I found that look to be cleaner.

Cable Guardrails

Close-Up of Cable Connection

Close-Up of Post Base

 There are several metal grating footbridges that cross water of the intepretive feature, and this same metal is used in the main walk to the overlook as well.

Metal Grating Footbridge

Close-Up of Grate Connection to Walk

Interpretive signage is mainly in the form of pre-cast panels that were inserted into leave-outs from the flatwork pours.  These panels give some details on how to turn the large faucet heads to affect the water flow.  On my day there these faucets were padlocked shut so I couldn't play around.

Interpretive Signage at Water Feature

There's an amphitheater space down below the water feature with some cast-in-place, curved concrete seating.  Nearby seating takes the form of a stone veneer bench with a cut stone cap.

Cast Concrete Seating

Concrete Steps Intersect with Limestone Boulders

Stone Veneer Seatwall with Cap

 A metal grating walkway takes you over the detention pond and out to an overlook with a view of the Tom Miller Dam.  The same guardrails repeat from the stairs as well as the same metal grating form elsewhere.  Panels of the grating have been spot-welded in the field which has left parts discolored and you can feel the bumpiness of the welds while walking.  It would have been great if they maybe welded underneath the walk or added some other support so the welding wouldn't have been necessary.  Concrete bands between the metal panels provide more interpretive information.

Metal Grating Walk with Interpretive Concrete Bands

Spot-welding Visible on Grating

Tom Miller Dam

Sway

Neon Lotus Sign

Located on South 1st Street at Elizabeth Street in Austin, Sway is an upscale Thai food restaurant that opened at the end of 2012.  The building was remodeled by Michael Hsu Office of Architecture with a landscape by design/build firm D-Crain.  D-Crain is a spin-off of Austin design firm Big Red Sun (not to be confused with Austin civil engineering firm  Big Red Dog).  In my mind, Big Red Sun was one of the first design firms to really popularize weathered steel as a landscape material in Austin.  D-Crain carries on the steel tradition, although at Sway it's not quite as prevelant as some other of their other projects.

One of the first things you notice (or don't notice) at Sway is there there's no big sign with the name on it.  Instead, there's a neon lotus monument sign and then small name plaque on the building wall. When I stopped by it was early in the morning so the restaurant wasn't open yet, which meant that the entry and courtyard were still closed off.  A CMU wall with blocks on their side and then painted black gives you some visibility into the interior, but still offers a lot of privacy.  You can see there are three Palo verde (Parkinsonia aaculeata) trees in the interior courtyard with their green bark popping against the black CMU.  A bright yellow tile wall is opposite the trees also adding to the color.  The groundplane is a more neutral decomposed granite.

Sway Wall Sign with Downlight

Black-Painted, Flipped CMU Block Wall

Wall Up-Lights

Palo Verde Tree

The courtyard forms an "L" shape, with the three trees in one leg of that "L" and a metal pergola over the other leg.  The pergola is welded, unfinished square steel tube topped with wire mesh. Vines grow on top of it and light strings hanging below it.

Steel Pergola with String Lights and Vines

On the Elizabeth Street frontage you have this great sea of native and adapted grasses that the sidewalk cuts through. It's a blend of your  native Muhlys as well as Mexican Feather Grass (Nassella tenuissima) and there are some yuccas and sotols hidden in there too.  The same grasses are used along 1st Street as well, but they are much fuller on the Elizabeth Street side for some reason.   Maybe it's because there's less foot traffic so people aren't stomping on them when they stray off the sidewalk.  Redbuds are the street trees on both frontages, and the Fig Ivy (Ficus pumila) continues creeping up the black CMU on the Elizabeth Street side as well.

Elizabeth Street Sidewalk and Grasses

Fig Ivy on Black CMU Wall

Creative Sidewalk Angling Around Manhole

The most noticable metal work is actually back of house.  There's a perforated steel guardrail on the ramp leading to the kitchen back entry.  The square tube frame is welded, but for some reason they chose to rivet the perf panels to the frame instead of welding.  Maybe it was just faster.  This same perforated metal is also on the roof screening the AC units.

Perforated Steel Panel Guardrail

Panels are Rivoted to the Frame

 The trash enclosure is actually super nice with a lot of custom metal and wood.  Aside from the double swing door for the dumpster there's a small hanging slider door on the side that gives you easier access to the dumpsters and a storage shed that's enclosed in there as well.

Trash & Shed Enclosure

Side Sliding Door

What you don't really get any access to is East Bouldin Creek which butts right up against the property.  Maybe if this hadn't been  a remodel but new construction then the site plan might have had more of an opportunity to embrace the creek.  There's this fantastic old oak tree right on the edge as well.

East Bouldin Creek

Heritage Live Oak

In the driveway it's pretty standard stuff.  You've got some code required bike racks that I saw a couple of staff lock bikes to as I was walking around.  It would be great if there was some DG or something more stable as the surface under the rack.  The wheel stops look like  they were artistically placed at random angles, but it's really that the rebar holding them failed so they've gotten pushed out of place.

Bike Rack

Wheel Stops Bumped out of Place

And last, but not least, some stuffed animal art stapled to the telephone pole giving some local flavor to the site.

Rabbit Snake