ARRIVE Austin Texas hotel building, TX accommodation architecture, US property mages
ARRIVE Austin Hotel, USA
25 August 23
Location: Austin, Texas, USA
Design: Baldridge Architects
Photos by Casey Dunn
ARRIVE Austin, Texas hotel
The ARRIVE Austin hotel comprises eighty-three rooms situated within a five-story, L-shaped tower and adjoining two-story podium which houses two restaurants, three bars, a coffee shop, leasable street-side retail space and parking.
The brief from the owners was to question established hotel tropes—the grand entry, the hotel restaurant, and the always-empty lobby. Rather, they asked for a dynamic hotel that eschewed brand and established a subtly powerful focal point that knits into the rapidly developing Plaza Saltillo neighborhood, located just east of downtown Austin.
Grappling with context, history, and appropriateness, the design looked to the building and material typologies of the surrounding 1920s-era warehouses, as well as the masonry and concrete construction found at Huston Tillotson University (a historically Black university that overlooks the property). The resulting design prioritizes a high-quality building that honors its location and serves as a redirection for the cheaper design strategies to the west.
The façade and its scissoring aesthetic is a playful response to a prescriptive ordinance approach to building articulation (buildings longer than 100 feet must have a two-foot-by-twenty-foot relief). The design for ARRIVE turns this idea on its head. Required to have awnings, the design instead employs a series of articulated concrete “ribbons,” that satisfy the requirement while expanding the definition of what’s possible within those requirements.
The concrete cant and slide to form deep protected overhangs and corner balconies for hotel guests, while a sequence of materials in shades of black—a faintly iridescent brick, vertical windows, and smooth plaster—infill between the concrete horizontals.
At street-level, a mix of restaurants claims the pedestrian identity. The adjacent, low-level, sand-colored brick building is part of the project. The legacy building, which now features a bar and restaurant, was held out as having “potential historic significance.” It is attached to the hotel and joined at the kitchens. It’s only as one goes up through the building to the amenities deck which houses “Gin Bar,” that you see the whole thing as a complex.
ARRIVE is a powerful, original response to a street of largely homogeneous multifamily residential buildings. By referencing the architectural language still present in East Austin’s older buildings—its driving concepts and architectural rigor read immediately to passersby. Above all, the 77,000-square-foot ARRIVE achieves its mission without resorting to superfluous architectural tropes and meaningless articulations.
ARRIVE Austin, Texas – Building Information
Baldridge Architects design team
Burton Baldridge, Principal, designer
Michael Hargens, Project Architect
Laura Grenard. Architect
Ryan Flener, Architect
Tyler Frost, Designer
Project Team
Architecture and Select Interiors: Baldridge Architects
Interiors: Chris Pardo (hotel interiors and furnishings, Lefty’s); Chris McCray (Vixen’s Wedding)
Builder: Austin Commercial
Civil Engineer: Big Red Dog (now WJI)
Structural Engineer: Leap! Structures
MEP Engineer: EEA Consulting Engineers
Geotechnical Engineer: Terracon
Landscape: .dwg (Daniel Woodroffe Group)
Acoustical Engineer: JEA Acoustics
Envelope Consultant: BEC (now Terracon)
Client: East Sixth and Chicon Hotel, LLC
Products
Endicott Clay Products – brick
Tremco – waterproofing
Smart CI – continuous insulation
Assa Abloy – door hardware
Clopay – garage doors
Thermal Windows – windows
Masterwall, Inc. – plaster
Kone – elevators
Fresco – lighting controls
Alkusari Stone – handmade brick
Social Media / Websites
Baldridge Architects – https://baldridge-architects.com/, @baldridgearchitects
ARRIVE Hotel – www.arrivehotels.com/austin
Photographer: Casey Dunn – @caseydunn
ARRIVE Austin Texas Hotel accommodation images / information received 250823 from Baldridge Architects
Location: Austin, TX, USA
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