Photo by James Rambin
The most striking work of architecture currently demanding your attention on Austin’s downtown skyline is undoubtedly Indeed Tower, the 36-story office structure formerly known by its number Block 71 in the original downtown plan and set to be occupied in part by the job-gettin’ folks at Indeed along with whichever subtenant those flashy rascals at the Teacher Retirement System of Texas can find after being shamed out of occupying the building themselves by some good old-fashioned service journalism.
Looking north at Indeed Tower — a rendering, that is. Image: Trammell Crow Company / Page
A cross section of Indeed Tower from the project’s marketing materials. Image: Trammell Crow Company / Indeed Tower
Though the tower’s block-spanning size from north to south makes it genuinely difficult to capture the whole thing in a single photo without taking to the skies, the marketing illustration above and the promotional video below combine to give you a pretty good overview of its appearance and features:
Developed at 200 West Second Street by Dallas-based real estate giants Trammell Crow Company, the project is expected to deliver by March 2021, assuming the pandemic doesn’t slow anything down — still, even if we’re still months out from genuine completion, the tower is already a formidable new presence in downtown’s urban landscape. We’ve flown our flag as unapologetic fans of this project since its emergence almost exactly three years ago, and as the building starts looking closer and closer to a finished product we feel we’ve only been proven right.
This isn’t just blue glass — when the building reflects back on itself in the right light, it’s downright violet. Photo by James Rambin
We believe its design by the local architects at Page is the best-case scenario for what development can do for a downtown block: artfully integrating the adaptive reuse of the historic Claudia Taylor Johnson Hall into a 33,000-square-foot retail and dining space, transforming what was once a parking garage into a public outdoor plaza, and raising a new tower with retail on the ground floor to enhance its pedestrian environment without compromising the necessary amenities of its office component — namely a lot of parking, which in this case is partially hidden underground and partially contained within the glass curtain walls of the structure’s lower levels, a design that does not negatively impact the integrity of its overall form.
A diagram of the Indeed Tower complex’s layout on the ground level, including the new tower, its public outdoor plaza, and the reconfigured historic hall that will eventually host retail dining space. Image: Trammell Crow Company / Indeed Tower
Looking at the southeast corner of the tower at West Sixth and Colorado Streets. Photo by James Rambin
Whether your pet issue happens to be density, historic preservation, public space, a thriving downtown retail environment, or simply good architecture, you’re most likely getting your needs met by Indeed Tower, and its ability to keep all these plates spinning at once makes us look more critically at surrounding tower projects that seemingly don’t dedicate themselves as fully to this mission — and though not every project can boast Trammell Crow’s deep pockets or the other interesting features of the site that allowed the project to hit these high notes, we’re really hoping what happens here raises the bar for buildings yet to come.
Southwestern (left) and southeastern (right) isometric illustrations of Indeed Tower. Image: Page
The tower’s appearance alone, with its opposing diagonal masses, looks more like something that belongs in a big city than anything else going up in town at the moment except perhaps for Pelli Clarke Pelli’s instantly-iconic design for Google’s new home at Block 185 — also a Trammell Crow Company project, for the record. As much as we love what Block 185’s sail-like appearance will soon do for our skyline, its lack of retail facing Cesar Chavez Street means Indeed Tower currently holds the overall crown for excellence in the built environment of downtown Austin.
Indeed Tower (left) and 600 Congress (right) just hanging out. Photo by James Rambin
One of the most interesting things you’ll notice about the rising Indeed Tower’s full span from north to south across its block is that when you stand in the right spot on East Sixth Street looking west, you’ll see the new tower almost perfectly engulfing 600 Congress — two great works of downtown architecture working together like peanut butter and chocolate. Do you think these two buildings are friends?
The new Indeed Tower looming over 600 Congress — looming in a good way, we mean! Photo by James Rambin
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