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Energy Tower II

ricco67

By ricco67
in Katy and Points West

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strickn

strickn

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Thanks Pumapayam, I was aware that we have edge cities, and I understand why we have them and their practical value. But a building out on the Katy Freeway does not do synergistically for the city what a building downtown does. That's all.

Lost to the urban core. Yes (to Niche), I realize that having all the buildings clustered poses transportation problems (although it makes mass transit more viable). I'm just an urbanist.

H-Town,

If you imagine the last time that you drove past a row of distribution centers, you won't recall thinking that they were lost to the urban core. That's because they are the physical scale and the timescale of an supernational economy whose processes would never have fit in 1970s' let alone Nineteenth Century's cities. Because office work takes place at a human scale that doesn't preclude mixed uses, we might very well be tempted to think that it would patch back in naturally to the premiere areas. But if you look at where everybody but the top and bottom sliver of the population goes, it goes where the built environment has flexibility. That's the kind of synergy (whose opposite is to try to perfect the quality of life in a place and have it substantially stable afterwards) whose lack is strangling Boston and the other centralized-institutions cities that have emulated it. I know it rankles, since trying to make quality of life more perfect and have it substantially stable afterwards is appealing, but the stakes are high enough in America already. And this agglomeration economy that only works smoothly under lower physical and municipal constraints (and lower financial stakes and faster timelines than use can develop under in the core) is one thing. But density is its own worst enemy, not just because property values calcify districts but because in a (still continuing) age when all of the population can afford more space and more tiny freedoms from toes being stepped on than it would have been able to find in the past, density pushes the horizons in enough that people will always feel the major threat of new real estate development, problems and blocked views more keenly than they feel their or anyone's share of... what we could call... additional residents' incremental greater-than-sum-of-parts bonus to civic life. *That* (whiplash, followed by calcification, that comes with pedestrian neighborhood), and not merely the knowledge economy, is the part of the present that remains human in scale.

Otherwise, economic development 'distributes' on the terms of the much larger set of processes.

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houston growth

houston growth

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More on this in the Hosuton Buisness Journal:

http://houston.bizjournals.com/houston/sto...02/daily52.html

They are building a 14 story Hotel there as well (driving on I-10 east you can see the foundation is in place next to where the building is going up.) The article also hints at the possibility of a second 17 story tower. That would make that area quite a site indeed.

The I-10 corridor is really getting a boost out by Beltway 8 in anticipation of I-10's constuction completion. With 3 mid rise condos going up, several new buildings, and high end retail explansion it makes me wonder if in 10 years it will feel like the stretch of 610 in the galleria.

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TheNiche

TheNiche

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The I-10 corridor is really getting a boost out by Beltway 8 in anticipation of I-10's constuction completion. With 3 mid rise condos going up, several new buildings, and high end retail explansion it makes me wonder if in 10 years it will feel like the stretch of 610 in the galleria.

Yes and no. The Galleria area has a much tighter network of major and secondary thoroughfares that approximate a grid reasonably well. The Energy Corridor area is more challenged because their grid is so much more spread out and broken, because it gets broken up by existing residential subdivisions and even a large cemetery, and because it would be exceptionally difficult to serve with effectively with transit or to otherwise promote walkability.

Besides this, most people really consider everything going on from Memorial City all the way out to about Dairy-Ashord as the Energy Corridor. Technically and politically, these are divided into different spheres of influence: Memorial City, Energy Corridor, and Park Row, each with their own character.

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treblelino

treblelino

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Found this rendering. Hopefully not a dupe

MOD-491198_ESHOUSTONBIGFLAGLGLOGO.jpg

http://www.marketwatch.com/news/story/Aimb...49EB8E2B3744%7D

Link to a bigger file of same rendering: link

Yukk! Two more ugly boring boxes to add to the skyline. Why are architects so afraid of daring designs for Houston's several skylines? I really hope these are not accurate renderings. I hope this is a huge mistake.

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swtsig

swtsig

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Yukk! Two more ugly boring boxes to add to the skyline. Why are architects so afraid of daring designs for Houston's several skylines? I really hope these are not accurate renderings. I hope this is a huge mistake.

yeah, they just made this rendering to throw everyone off... nevermind the fact the one of the buildings is currently under construction and the other one has been up and occupied for a couple of years now

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ChannelTwoNews

ChannelTwoNews

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Yukk! Two more ugly boring boxes to add to the skyline. Why are architects so afraid of daring designs for Houston's several skylines? I really hope these are not accurate renderings. I hope this is a huge mistake.

Yawn. Not at the buildings or whatever, but this post looks like pretty much all of your others.

It's essentially a non-descript development between two car dealerships. Woo-hoo. It's not that the architects the are "afraid" of doing "daring" designs. It's simply a question of money and how much a developer may or may not want to spend on such a "daring" design. If this were downtown, you'd have an arguement. Here? Ha.

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Texas Wahoo

Texas Wahoo

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Besides this, most people really consider everything going on from Memorial City all the way out to about Dairy-Ashord as the Energy Corridor. Technically and politically, these are divided into different spheres of influence: Memorial City, Energy Corridor, and Park Row, each with their own character.

If you think the Energy Corridor only goes out to Dairy Ashford, that would not include Park Row - which only starts after Hwy 6.

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LTAWACS

LTAWACS

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If you think the Energy Corridor only goes out to Dairy Ashford, that would not include Park Row - which only starts after Hwy 6.

I don't even know where the heck that is... sheesh. Might take me half a tank of gas just to get there... ugh.

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strickn

strickn

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Posted
Yukk! Two more ugly boring boxes to add to the skyline. Why are architects so afraid of daring designs for Houston's several skylines? I really hope these are not accurate renderings. I hope this is a huge mistake.

If this really does puzzle you, isn't a piece of protesting rhetoric, I'll help.

I have been doing a project that takes staring closely at all of the major structures in Manhattan, as well as Chicago and Houston and Miami. Anything you get into a constricted and NIMBYish Northeastern market or red-tapey California one, as a builder, is going to cost much more in construction - say, $200M here versus $5-600 there, just to guesstimate for the kind of thing that HAIF citizens get excited about - and take much longer to permit. The combination of high entry floor and inflexible timetable make for protection from competition, so what the citizens think of as sticking it to the evil developers is in fact a perk.

But the kicker is this: in most neighborhoods that would justify that kind o' investment in the first place, a $12M budget item for an architectural feature of the building makes for just a couple per cent additional cost and yet has the upside of setting the building apart from other landlords to the tune of a *hefty* premium for much of the life of the building. It was in Houston that Johnson/Burgee reinvigorated this strategy for the current generation, when demand was outstripping supply here during the 70s-80s. Yet in Houston now, a major design complexity could conceivably mean a markedly higher percentage of a project budget without offering nearly as lasting or as large an advantage of the ridiculous lease premiums to capture as a result. So it doesn't happen unless the circumstances are special or the owner wants to make a statement. But since most building is speculative and they have to be able to market leases appealingly to the widest audience of generic institutional tenants, the statement can't really ever wind up being as personal as it sometimes was in the downtown Houston of yore. Finally, as for the financial incentive I've described above... here's a secret, but even in the superstar cities, the present era of construction has scant few significant high-rise highlights. Every floorplate large enough to sell has already dictated an overall architecture with all the romance of a filing cabinet, man, and that's what skyscraper sculpture junkies let themselves forget. Haste the day when the Sagrada Familia becomes economical, but large-scale architecture (like major league sports) has already abdicated on our need for it to be experiential. We're just playing with our baseball cards of advertised athletes.

Anyway, structures tall enough to appear on a skyline appear from far enough away that the only discernible silhouette differences are between wide-shouldered buildings and gradual tapers; this size of building will be viewed only down corridors, and tends to grow in corridors... and this size is plenty to give Central Expressway in Dallas a thrilling aspect to it. I guess it would be grinchy of me to say, "How intricate does something have to be to look acceptable to you at sixty mph?" Here's a useful idea for you to take with you: all sense of enclosure is lost once the facing streetwalls are less than 1/6 the width of the space. Buildings on opposite sides of the Katy Freeway may be six hundred feet apart in places, which suggests that they have to be about this size just to scale up a feeling of still being in an 'architectural' environment, determined by rooms, instead of a landscape one determined by the room between them. Happy exploring!

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marc

marc

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i like how close they feel to the freeway. almost makes me think of driving here, almost ;)

2829nb4.jpg

w665.png

How funny. i thought the EXACT same thing over the holidays as i was back and driving in my beloved H-Town for 2 1/2 weeks. Just give the EC more time (a decade) and we will see something similar to this. i predict that once the expansion of 290 along with the Hempstead Tollway is completed, the area from GP to 610/I10 is going to be a highrise cornucopia.

m. B)

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LTAWACS

LTAWACS

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Good of you to provide pictures for those people who are unwilling to venture outside the loop. :D

You rang?

These are two recent pics of the building from I10:

S7300218.jpg

S7300219.jpg

Not a good angle but it gives you an idea about the size.

Thanks for the pics. :)

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