Project Details
- Project Name
- Design Office
- Architect
- Alterstudio Architecture
- Client/Owner
- Alterstudio Architecture
- Project Types
- Office
- Project Scope
- Interiors
- Year Completed
- 2017
- Shared by
- Hanley Wood
- Project Status
- Built
From the May 2019 Issue of ARCHITECT:
In the design for its new office, Alterstudio balances a public façade with quiet, open workspaces.
Designers designing for themselves often push the envelope in the direction of formal expression and technical experiment. But for Alterstudio Architecture, creating a new office space in its hometown of Austin, Texas, afforded a different kind of opportunity: a chance to show their capacity for restraint, quietude, and lyricism.
Located inside Cambridge Tower—a mid-1960s landmark—the first-floor studio space does proper homage to its high-modernist setting, boasting a material palette of lightly grained wood fixtures and floors alongside bare concrete columns. Even the drop ceiling, a frequent staple of midcentury interiors, is celebrated here, using fibrous acoustical panels with an unusually thick, woolly tactility. That treatment actually only covers one side of the space; the other side has more exposed concrete, and the change helps establish two distinct zones across the length of the office—one hushed and intimate, the other airy and luminous.
Across the latter stretch are large window bays, spanning the entire length and height of the space and running beside a row of task tables, interrupted only by more concrete piers and with a planted landscape beyond, bringing in still more light and giving the desk workers something to look at. The glass front (like the piers, part of the original structure) enfolds the office at the far end nearest the entrance, becoming a connective tissue between the two interior zones while also allowing the office to address the visitor—creating a public face for this otherwise very private office environment.
More than the sum of its parts, the design creates an effect especially evident from that first entry encounter, in which all of its disparate elements, each articulated in its own materiality, appears to float in space like forms in an abstract collage. It’s a nod to the building’s International Style heritage that also demonstrates Alterstudio’s own special variety of spatial poetics.
Project Credits
Project: Design Office, Austin, Texas
Client: Alterstudio Architecture
Architect/Interior Designer: Alterstudio Architecture, Austin . Kevin Alter, Ernesto Cragnolino, FAIA, Tim Whitehill (partners)
General Contractor: Risinger & Co.
Size: 1,500 square feet
Cost: Withheld
Materials and Sources
Appliances: Miele
Ceilings: Tectum (ceiling panels)
Fabrics/Finishes: Richlite (counters)
Flooring: White Oak European-cut flooring
Furniture: Herman Miller (Aeron and Eames chairs); BluDot (Bank 80-inch sofa)
Lighting Control Systems: Lutron
Lighting: WAC (recessed puck light); Juno (recessed mini-LED downlight, Birchwood 48-inch cove light)
Metal: Risinger & Co.
Millwork: Austin Wood Works (custom cabinets); Risinger & Co. (island top)
The project won a 2019 AIA Institute Honor Award for Interior Architecture
By rehabbing a shabby warren of small rooms filled with lay-in ceiling tiles and permanently closed mini blinds, this architect’s office reinvigorates the ground floor of the historic Cambridge Tower, a 15-story condo building located between the University of Texas at Austin campus and the Texas State Capitol. Ultimately a personal endeavor, this office allows the architect to present its work to the public while demonstrating the collaborative work effort that is key to the firm’s success.
Functioning as both architect and client, the team used this renovation to exemplify the design values espoused by the firm. Through clever manipulation of light and attention to detail, the office reveals the intersection of architecture’s material facts and the social occasions it invites.
The spaces were laid bare, exposing the tower’s concrete frame as well as notations from the original construction and later renovations. Sound-absorbing TECTUM ceiling panels, composed of aspen wood fibers, were used for a drop ceiling to cover an array of valves and mechanical equipment. Forming a lower service zone, the ceiling contributes to an intimate atmosphere throughout the space, ending in the open office to reveal an unadulterated segment of the concrete slab. The original 11-foot windows hug the south and west sides of the open area, enhancing the connection to the street and highlighting the presence of the design profession in Austin. Shades that can be lowered from the ceiling provide a backdrop for dappled shadows cast by sunlight filtering through the on-site oak and mountain laurel trees.
Softening the concrete are a European-cut white oak floor and rift-sawn white oak cabinets and screens. The team turned to burlap-wrapped Homasote and mill-finished steel to round out the palette and demonstrate the beauty found in simple materials. In concert with the shifting natural daylight that fills the space, the materials promote a tranquil but dynamic space conducive to creativity and productivity
Project Description
FROM THE ARCHITECTS:
When Cambridge Tower was completed in 1964, it presented a modern, 15 story residential condominium with offices on the ground floor directly adjacent to The University of Texas at Austin. More than 50 years later, the ground floor offices were a warren of small rooms, lay-in tile ceilings and permanently closed mini-blinds.
The space was stripped back, exposing the building’s robust concrete frame alongside notations from the original construction and markings from subsequent renovations. A sound-absorbing Tectum ceiling covers the myriad existing valves and mechanical equipment. This lower service zone creates a smaller scale, intimate atmosphere in the conference room, kitchen, and storage areas and stops short in the open office to reveal the only unadultered portion of the concrete slab above. The existing windows wrap the west and south sides of the working area and foster a strong connection to the street.
A European-cut White Oak floor and rift sawn White Oak cabinets and screens soften the raw concrete frame. Unfinished cork, burlap-wrapped Homasote and mill-finished steel complete the material palette, highlighting the inherent beauty of simple materials. The material qualities of the space, enhanced by changing natural light throughout the day, establish a tranquil but dynamic environment conducive to collaboration, creativity, and productivity. The ensemble of materials serves as a touchstone to a firm ethos of creativity and interest in the serendipitous and tangible quality of raw materials.
