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The architects of the Petronas Towers in Kuala Lumpur, which were the world's tallest buildings before they got bitch slapped by Taipei 101, are bringing the skyscraper smackdown to Austin with a 675 foot tall tower on the corner of Fifth Street and Congress Avenue. That's right - close enough to Frost Bank to be able to drop a pair of proton torpedoes down the thermal exhaust port that leads directly the reactor core, causing a chain reaction...
Just kidding, Frosty! We love you!
The architects, Pelli Clarke Pelli (or at least Cesar Pelli), also designed the UT master plan and the first building to be completed in that plan, the Seay Building (a/k/a the Psych Building). The developer, Tom Stacy, has done several other projects in Austin.
*Image (c) Matt Wright on flickr*
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i have been watching so much star trek lately
thanks to my jerkweed friend that lent me all
of his dvds that what you say makes PERFECT sense.
it looks like a huge exclamation point.
It's a leaning slab! In an article in the Statesman, the developer said, "The project has to embrace the vision of the community for that location".
I must be really out of touch with my community. When did the vision of our community become so slabby?
It's a leaning slab! In an article in the Statesman, the developer said, "The project has to embrace the vision of the community for that location".
I must be really out of touch with the community. When did the vision of our community become so slabby?
I don't think I like the leaning slab. why can't it be cooler? why can't it be more complicated?
Doing a heck of a job Frosty.
I think that the real contribution to the community's vision is re-establishing significant retail on Congress Avenue. They're planning 45,000+ square feet of retail, and what that can do for the activity and life at the street level is so much more important than a subjective opinion of the skyline.
That building is icky. I doesn't seem very Austin to me.
The lack of esoteric freemasonry in this new building design disturbs me.
Yay!
Oh wait, I mean 'Gay!'
Well, yes -- ok more retail space on Congress. I have no qualm with that. I'm not much of a shopper but I understand people wanting shops. (Watch them put a Starbucks in each corner of each floor. Nobody's laughing right? Because you know they will!) So the vision of Austin's community -- who I swear lives somewhere else -- is busy busy little shoppers buzzing about with their credit cards-a-blazin. Ok. So be it. Personally, I like to vision us out in the park with our children planting trees or some hippy junk like that -- but when you just got to have some khakis and a 10 Billion calorie coffee drink, let's all go down to the Leaning Slab of Congress. Hooray for retail, but can't we do all that busy busy shopping, mingling, coffee slurping, shoplifting or whatever it is we think we want to do in a building that jives a little better in this scene than what they've proposed?
I mean, if we're going to frown upon concern for aesthetics -- our subjective opinions of such trivial matters as the skyline -- then why not free ourselves from more concerns over aesthetics as well? Clothing, for example, is really just something we need for protection from the elements. You wear pants to keep the sun from burning your backside. And if that's all that matters, you don't need those fancy retail shops down on Congress after all. You just need five pairs of Dickies from Wal-Mart up there near Round Rock. And if looks don't matter, you don't need 45,000 square feet of retail space filled with Pottery Barns selling suede celery-green foot stools when an old rusty bucket pulled out of the trash will elevate your feet just as well.
Watch out, that building looks like some sort of vague cubed alien impression of an Easter Island statue . . . . and nobody knows what really happened to the Easter dudes. It could be a universal symbol that says "come eat us".