Tom Stacy in the Running to Develop AMA Musuem/Condo
Hotel/condos are so 2005. Tom Stacy is in negotiations with the Austin Museum of Art to build a museum/condo project on the block between Third, Fourth, Guadalupe and San Antonio streets. The museum already owns the block.
Stacy has signed up Pelli Clarke Pelli as the architects on the project, the same architects working on his previously blogged condo tower at Fifth and Congress. Pelli Clarke Pelli also did the Museum of Modern Art Tower in New York (pictured). Before you say, "generic box!" take a moment and reflect in the subtle glory of this design. Yes, it is a box, but it is an exceptionally clean box with pleasantly repeated geometry and lovely minimal details. Plus, this isn't a design for what they might put here, this is what they did in New York. The architect's website shows a wide variety of interesting and beautiful designs.
Word on the interweb is that several developers have been jockeying for this project. Understandably so. It is an awesome location and "I live above the museum" has a cachet that "I live above a hotel" can't touch. Tom Stacy has done some nice stuff in Austin lately, and Pelli Clarke Pelli is a fine architecture firm.
This project has a lot of potential. Please, please, please do something nice here. Anything not involving EIFS would be awesome. Build it out of Legos, whatever, just not Styrofoam.
*Photo from Qureishi*
