Landscape-O-Rama: 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.