Every time we come across a new downtown Austin condo, apartment, or office tower project in the planning stages, we like to cobble together a little 3D massing of it in Google Earth to help everyone visualize what it’ll look like in context with the rest of the city — for example, check out our rendering of the potential future of the Rainey Street District’s skyline!
We thought it might be fun to put the five tallest towers planned at the moment in downtown Austin together in one picture, to give you a better idea of what our central skyline will look like in the near future if these announced projects all end up getting built. Only problem is, Google Earth hasn’t updated the 3D model for the Independent yet, since the building only topped out a while back, so we had to stick it in there manually — meaning there are six massings in these photos, which we’ve labeled from two angles to help you out:
Putting this together was pretty simple, but the effect is striking. Even though these massings don’t reflect the actual shapes of the planned buildings for the most part — you didn’t really think the future of downtown was a bunch of green boxes, did you? — their heights are exact based on the data we have for each tower, meaning they give a fairly accurate idea of the new tallness headed for the downtown of tomorrow:
Here’s some data on the towers included in these images, with links to stories about each one — yeah, we’re biased, but they’re highly recommended reading:
6 x Guadalupe
848 ft / 65 floors
The Republic
708 ft / 46 floors
The Independent
690 ft / 58 floors
Block 185
589 ft / 35 floors
Block 71
542 ft / 36 floors
5th & Lavaca
509 ft / 45 floors
