smart and beautiful

17 Austin projects win sustainable architecture awards

The Campsite at Shield Ranch, one of the award winners, is the epitome of designing with nature.

Photo by Leonid Furmansky

Trees are, of course, a renewable resource. But Texas is long past its days of building with just wood and clay. As our buildings get more complicated, and as we build at a much greater scale, it can take complex innovation to circumnavigate the sustainability issues coming up.

Some local architects are making real advances toward a new blueprint for sustainable building, and the The American Institute of Architects has rounded up 17 of them in its 2024 AIA Austin Design Awards, hosted at Austin PBS on May 15. These innovators were selected by three jurors (Los Angeles' Annie Chu, Berkeley, California's Jule Tsai, and Seattle's Casey Huang), drawing from a pool of 116 submissions.

Awards were given in three categories: excellence, merit, and special commendation. To explain their rulings, the jurors provided voiceovers accompanying short videos of each work — a surprisingly elegant and reverent touch to something that is often relegated to in-person events and summarized in bullet points.

One Award of Excellence-winning project, the Campsite at Shield Ranch by Andersson/Wise, was featured by CultureMap Austin when the team broke ground in 2021. The AIA video commends the project for being 100 percent off-grid and net zero — removing an equal amount of emissions to what it creates — while emphasizing the outdoors in all parts of the design.

A common feature of Campsite at Shield Ranch buildings is large open portals to the outdoors.Photo by Leonid Furmansky

“This gives [campers] an opportunity to really immerse themselves in the natural world,” said architect Arthur Andersson to CultureMap after the groundbreaking. “The programs of the camp have to do with ... looking and experiencing the natural world, and we wanted the structures to be a part of that whole dialogue. It’s a neat way to think about living.”

Some buildings are likely a more familiar part of Austinites' routines. Comedor (McKinney York Architects and Olson Kundig), Uchiko (Michael Hsu Office of Architecture), and the entirety of the Music Lane development on South Congress (Lake|Flato) all won Awards of Merit in the commercial space. Some, like this minimalist house at Barton Hills (Alterstudio Architecture) are residences.

Music Lane Austin Music Lane was one of the most recognizable winning projects.Photo by Peter Molick

Two of the projects won Community Impact Awards, announced by Max Lars, senior policy advisor to Austin Mayor Kirk Watson. These projects benefitted Austinites and were built with public funding. (Some school facilities also won awards, but were not part of the community impact category.)

The first was the Travis County Probate Courts by Lord Aeck Sargent and Limbacher & Godfrey Architects, which was a restoration project recognized for updating a building from 1936. The other was Zilker Studios by Forge Craft Architecture and Design, which worked on a tight budget to provide stylish and efficient affordable housing.

Zilker Studios made affordable housing beautiful.Photo by Casey Dunn

“Austin’s architects are some of the best in the country in creatively adapting to changing climate needs,” said AIA Austin executive director Ingrid Spencer in a release announcing the winners. “The jurors were particularly impressed by the beauty and functionality our winners were able to accomplish within all manner of constraints. We’re awed by the ingenuity of these projects and the teams that created them.”

More information about each winner is available at aiaaustin.org.

architecture sustainability awards

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Historic Austin museum will close for more than a year for restoration

Photo courtesy of the City of Austin

The Elisabet Ney Museum will close at the end of 2024 and reopen in mid-2026.

Every building needs some maintenance here or there, and the historic Elisabet Ney Museum needs some extra-special care. Formerly the art studio and residence of its namesake, it's been standing since 1892. It'll spend 2025 in relative solitude, as it undergoes renovation for a year and a half with no visitors allowed.

The museum will close to the public December 30, 2024, and open again in the summer of 2026 if all goes according to plan, a news release from the City of Austin shares. It'll be a quiet period compared to the 21,000 people visiting from around the world each year.

According to a museum overview on the city's website, Elisabet Ney, a European portrait sculptor, bought the property and called her new studio Formosa. She worked on sculptures depicting important Texans like Stephen F. Austin and Sam Houston, and collected works of European contemporaries.

The building at 304 East 44th St. includes 3,700 square feet of museum space, which was converted by Ney's friends after her death in 1907. It retains its unique look that juxtaposes a Neo-Classical main studio from 1892 with a later addition from 1902 including a tower for her husband, Edmund, to write in. It is also on 2.5 acres of land, which has largely been restored to its natural state with native species.

A press release lists these tasks (verbatim) within the scope of the new work, referred to as the Capital Improvement Project (CIP):

Restoration of original exterior wood doors and windows
Upgrades and replacement of the heating, ventilation, and air conditioning system
Replacement of the exhibit and general lighting systems
Repairs to the roof, masonry, plumbing, and interior finishes.

There will also be work to do outside of the building. Workers will replace the pedestrian bridge across Waller Creek, stabilize a 20,000-square-foot portion of the bank, and make the grounds more accessible by adding new pathways.

Funding comes from several sources, according to a release: "the 2012 Bond, Proposition 14, the Parkland Dedication Fund, the Historic Preservation Fund, Partners in Preservation through the National Trust, and contributions from the Friends of the Elisabet Ney Museum."

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