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

Hot Mama's Cafe

It's my understanding that the Pedernales Lofts were one of the first upscale condo projects in East Austin where now you can't throw a stick without hitting one.  The upside is that this trend has really increased the density of the housing close to downtown which has a lot of sustainability positives in terms of amount of greenfield land disturbed for housing per capita, reduced car usage, etc.  Of course this gentrification has its downsides as well, especially with a lack of affordable units in the new developments.  The increased costs end up displacing the original residents of the neighborhoods, many of whom are minorities.  So you end up with less economic and cultural diversity.

Anyhow, the site I wanted to write about is a coffee shop (or espresso bar if you want to get fancy) right next to the Pedernales Lofts called Hot Mama's Cafe.  Both the landscape for the lofts and the coffee shop were created by D Crain back when they were still part of Big Red Sun.

View Into the Courtyard from the Street Sidewalk

The star of this outdoor courtyard landscape is weathered steel.  Sure there's some basalt and permeable concrete paving as well as some bamboo, but it's the steel where all the creative detailing went into.  Working from the outside in, the fence between the Pedernales Lofts and the courtyard take two forms.  This first are solid steel panels that are staggered on the horizontal plane so there are gaps where light can slip between them.  On the courtyard side there are cast concrete and steel benches with a couple of planters, and on the outside facing the lofts are planters with various succulents. The overlapping steel panels are cantilevered out from the middle core of planters/benches with a gap at the bottom that helps more light get through under the fence wall and make them feel a little less visually heavy.

Cast Concrete and Steel Benches at Steel Panel Fence

Another View of the Coffee Side of the Steel Panels

Outside Face of the Steel Panels

The second type of fence is corrugated, perforated steel.  This is taller at about 8 feet, and it occurs at one corner and then at a gate that connects into the courtyard for the lofts.  The waviness of the corrugated metal gives some interesting texture to the perforation.  It almost makes it seem more 3-D.  The gate door knob and lock area is framed out in weathered steel and then standard hardware has been used.

Corrugated, Perforated Steel Fence with Gate

Gate

Hardware

Other steel details on the site include edging around the permeable concrete paving pads and then flat steel fill panels between the street sidewalk and the interior concrete pads.  A large concave steel light fixture hangs down from the main tree in the courtyard.  Flip  this upside down and you have something very similar to the steel planters that Big Red Sun used as one of their signature landscape elements on other projects.

Steel Edging and Flat Panel Filler

Light Fixture

Pearl Brewery Plaza & Cellars

I was down in  San Antonio for a short anniversary getaway and was able to work in a quick stop by the new Pearl Brewery Plaza that I believe opened around April of this year.  At least, that's when the abutting restaurant Southerleigh opened up.  Behind them is also a new boutique hotel called Emma that is in the refurbished historic brewery building.  All this development is a continuation of the vision outlined in Lake|Flato's award winning Pearl Brewery Master Plan.  The first phase of that development included landscape by San Antonio based Rialto Studio, and I'll have to revisit that part at a later date.   This new plaza was designed by my former employer Ten Eyck Landscape Architects.

The plaza landscape appears to be divided into two main spaces.  At the center of one of these is a large three tier fountain fed by an elevated aqueduct.  From the distance, the fountain component seemed to be very conventional in its form, but when you get closer you notice that the steel tiers are recycled steel components presumably from the brewery.  You can also see the detail of the rain chain feeding water from the aqueduct that limits the splashing of the water.

Tiered Water Feature

Rain Chain from Aqueduct Feeding Water to Fountain

Upcycled Steel Fountain Tiers

Surrounding the fountain are a series of board formed concrete planters with concrete seat blocks.  The seat blocks introduce another recycled material component, this time what looks like reinforced concrete beams that have been laid horizontal.  You can see a circle of rebar points in the section cut of the seat blocks. The ground plane is composed of large cut stone paver rectangles with a jogged edge that bleeds into a crushed aggregate paving.  Large trees emerge directly from the aggregate, so there's a blurring of compacted pedestrian paving and permeable tree planting areas.  Modern bistro tables and chairs (they look like the Parc Centre series by Landscape Forms) provide a lot of seating in the plaza and freestanding umbrellas give additional shade.  Once the trees get bigger in the future these may not be as necessary as they will shade the plaza nicely.

Board Formed Concrete Planter

Reused Concrete Beam as Seat Block

Tables on Pavers and Crushed Aggregate

Another feature of this first plaza space is a large mesh steel wall that abuts what looks to be a former grain silo.  There's a sandwich of woven wire mesh panels with Bougainvillea starting to grow up them.  When the vine matures and fills in the trellis it will give a huge splash of color to the space.

Weathered Steel Trellis with Bougainvillea

The second space of the plaza landscape is defined by a large weathered steel pergola.  I didn't think to roughly measure the size of the posts or estimate the height, but it looks at least 15' tall to me in the photos.  It looks kind of like the big sister to the similar steel trellis I wrote about at Texas French Bread in Austin.  This trellis has two Big Ass Fans (it's the brand name) for summer cooling and then a series of hanging pendant lights for the evening.  At the end of the long axis is a 7' or 8' tall weathered steel sculpture wall that looks like it might also be composed of some components salvaged from the former brewery.  Steel rings at the base of each round post have soil with Crossvine (Bigonia capreolata) growing up vertical rebar.  Although, from my photo it looks like Bougainvillea might have been planted on one of the posts possibly by accident.

Weathered Steel Pergola

Big Ass Fan

Steel Ring with Vine

The paving under the pergola is the same crushed aggregate as in the other part of the plaza.  It is edged with reddish pavers that have an antique finish.  I think these tie in with the type of pavers you find in the earlier phase of the Pearl Brewery landscape.

Brick Sized Pavers Edge Crushed Aggregate

Those pavers also pop-back up near the entry of Southerleigh back in the first plaza space.  A pathway using them runs parallel to a sereies of rain gardens right at the main entry of the restaurant.  The entry also has some more recycled material, this time in the form of some planters willed with some type of palmetto and almost purple-black Oxalis.

Rain Gardens Flank Restaurant Entrance

Recycled Planters

Vic Mathias Shores Trailhead

 
Apparently Auditorium Shores had its named changed in 2014 by the Austin City Council to Vic Mathias Shores, although I never really noticed or adopted the change.  What I did notice was the landscape facelift the area has recently been given.  The improvements resulted from a partnership between C3 (organizer of the ACL Festival), the Austin Parks Foundation, and Austin's Parks & Recreation Department.  TBG Partners  was hired for the design.

The portion of Vic Mathias Shores I visited is the portion right on Lady Bird Lake (formerly Town Lake since we're talking about name changes) at the First Street bridge.  The City of Austin project sign that's still up on the site declares this part the Auditorium Shores Trailhead (didn't we just change that name?).  You can access the site either driving or walking in off of Riverside Drive where the main entry sign is, or enter it from a ramp connected to the pedestrian walkway portion of the First Street bridge.  The later method gives you a good view of a good sized rain garden at the terminus of the parking lot as well as one off to the side of the lot.  The project increased the parking by 33 spaces, so assuming a 10'x20' parking space you've got 6,600 square feet of additional impervious cover.  With 1 inch of rain you'd get 4,112 gallons of water to potentially collect (using a multiplying factor of 0.623 per square foot).

Construction Sign

View of Rain Garden from Ramp

Entering the site from West Riverside Drive, it's evident that an effort has been made to keep the pedestrian pathway intersections with the vehicular routes flush.  In one area, the vehicular paving ramps up to a pedestrian crosswalk.  At the ADA parking the whole adjacent pedestrian route is flush, projected by wheel stops.  The end of the parking lot has a drop off loop that is flush with the plaza area and separation of vehicular and pedestrian spaces is provided by raised planters and bollards.  

Flush Pedestrian Crossing

Accessible Parking Spaces

Plaza Drop Off with Bollards

As a trailhead, there are the associated amenities that you would expect such as a new restroom and a drinking fountain station.  I read that the drinking fountains have chilled water which is unusual for a public drinking fountain.  The restroom has some benches out front that have a board-formed concrete base that matches the entry monument sign and then some composite wood product with skate stops as the seating surface.  The board-formed concrete has such a visible and somehow regular lookng grain, that I'm guessing they used some sort of textured form liner instead of actual wood.  Or maybe they used the composite wood material that also has an artifical wood grain.  There are custom galvanized steel tube and composite wood seats over on a composite wood deck that overlooks the lagoon at Brent Grulke Plaza.  The welds on the seats' mitered corner are inconsistent and many of them are really conspicuous.  I prefer to have welds where they are ground down flush.  I know that there's some more challenge with that and the galvanization zinc coating, but I've seen cleaner welds done with galvanized metal.  There also appears to be splattered concrete on the sides of some of the seats.

New Restroom

Board Formed Concrete with Composite Wood

Chilled Drinking Fountains

Galvanized Steel Tube & Composite Wood Seats

Brent Gulke Plaza Sign

Lagoon

The largest rain  garden is near the plaza drop off.  Its main inlet is in one corner where just inside there's a rock-filled gabion separator wall presumable to filter out trash.  A large stormdrain at this corner presumably serves as an overflow for the rain garden.  There are some interior limestone blocks with gaps, and I'm not sure if they're just aesthetic or if there's some elevation change that separates water chamber.  A secondary inlet is on the diagonal from the main inlet.  It's cut right at an expansion joint, and while that makes sense in some ways with the tilting planes of the paving, it does make me wonder what might happen if the exapnsion joint fails and water directed  towards it starts infiltrating beneath the paving.  There are also a series of pvc cleanouts along one edge of the rain garden, and I'm not sure what these are for.

Large Rain Garden

Limestone Blocks in Rain Garden

Secondary Inlet

Cleanouts

When the redesign of Auditorium Shores was underway and public feedback was being collected, I recall there being a lot of debate about offleash dog areas.  The park is a popular dog spot, especially a limestone block edge at the water where I've seen dogs swimming off of for years.  Technically this area is now not an off leash area according to the temporary map up at the site.  There is a "Creekside Forest" restoration area adjacent to these limestone blocks.  A wood fence separates this area the people and canines.

Leash Sign

Off-Leash Boundary Map

Limestone Blocks into Water

Creekside Forest

The bulk of the square footage of the Vic Mathias Shores area at the trailhead is a large open lawn.  There's a concrete band that cuts through it, and at first I thought that might be a designation of dog off-leash area, but that doesn't match what the off leash map shows.  Both long edges of this lawn have great allees of Live Oak trees that were existing before the improvements.  Shaded pedestrian pathways run through the trees, and one of them ends at a statue of Austin icon Stevie Ray Vaughan.  And while Stevie was a great music star, a landscape in Texas isn't complete without a large Texas star.  In this case it's part of the Bicentennial Fountain that was existing before the renovation.  This is yet another empty water feature, either a vicitm of the current drought water restrictions or insufficient maintenance budgets.

Open Lawn

Live Oak Allee

Stevie Ray Vaughan Statue

Bicentennial Fountain