Growing up in Austin, the bulletin board at our neighborhood park was sort of like the early days of social media — you’d find dog-walking gigs, garage sale flyers, and considerably weirder stuff long before anyone was trying to go viral. Most people love this sort of community-minded design feature in the abstract, but the Terminator-like gaze of…
streetscapes
Huh, Turns Out Removing a Lane on Barton Springs Didn’t Destroy Austin
Have you driven on Barton Springs Road in the last six months since the city kicked off its yearlong road safety pilot project? We sure have, and the grand conclusion for drivers seems to be precisely the outcome predicted by the traffic engineers at the Transportation and Public Works Department — for cars, things are about the same, without the…
Yeah, Austin’s Billion-Dollar Convention Center Expansion Needs a Music Venue
Okay, so convention centers attract economic growth and increase tourism dollars. But as we’re mentioned before, their vibes are typically really bad. The paradox of a convention center as an urban land use is that it must be placed smack dab in the heart of the central city to create a vibrant, accessible presence for attendees, but the very…
Here’s Our First Look at the Centro Project’s Second Act in East Austin
The block-sized Centro office and retail development at 1401 East Sixth Street in East Austin is one of our favorite projects in this forever-growing district — the building by local firm Riverside (née Riverside Resources) features handsome warehouse-inspired good looks with plenty of masonry from the Austin office of mega-architects Gensler, and an above-average helping of pedestrian-friendly landscape…
Here’s How the City Plans To Upgrade East Austin’s Red Line Rails and Trails
An upcoming project by the Austin’s Transportation and Public Works Department aims to improve pedestrian and bike access along East Fifth Street as part of two planned efforts by CapMetro to double-track the Red Line rail transit network along its existing path through East Austin. The project’s pedestrian upgrades will focus on the stretch of East Fifth Street between Navasota and Pedernales Streets, which includes the…
Here’s the Plan for Transforming South Austin’s Twin Oaks Shopping Center
The mixed-use redevelopment planned for the Twin Oaks Shopping Center in South Austin by the Dallas-based real estate developer Trammell Crow Company and its subsidiary High Street Residential on behalf of the 10-acre shopping center’s owners at the H-E-B Grocery Company has the potential to anchor the northeast corner of South Congress Avenue and Oltorf Street with nearly 1,000 homes, offices, a…