Herzog & de Meuron
Project
2021–

The Sixth & Blanco project in Austin, Texas encompasses a full city block of mixed-use, infill development in the Sixth & Blanco Street district. Adjacent to downtown and the Colorado river, the project’s location – combined with the existing vernacular store fronts, notable restaurants, stores, galleries, generous tree-lined streets, and the walkable character of the surrounding Clarksville neighborhood – have made it one of Austin’s most desirable districts.

The challenge and potential of the project is to propose an architecture that takes key ingredients from its surrounding context and distributes them throughout a dense yet permeable program: generous greenery, passively-cooled indoor/outdoor spaces, an active neighborhood storefront and the use of a materials palette aligned with the historic fabric.

The project fills the site with a continuous horizontal wooden structure. An urban carpet of shops and restaurants occupy the full ground floor, offices the second floor, a hotel on the third floor and residences on the fourth and fifth floors. From a pedestrian vantage point, the building is perceived as a series of two-story structures organized around planted courtyards. The project steps back from the street and decreases in density as it grows taller, allowing for a network of exterior circulation spaces with gardens, courtyards and porches on all levels. The project brings a human scale and a sense of domestic comfort to all – instead of a singular uniform gesture, the project is a complex sum of its many individual parts.

578_Cl_220728_001_W6thStreet
578_Cl_220728_001_W6thStreet
578_Cl_220728_002_BlancoStreet
578_Cl_220728_002_BlancoStreet
578_Cl_220728_003_BlancoCourtyard
578_Cl_220728_003_BlancoCourtyard

Drawings

578_Cl_220728_004_Ground-Plan
578_Cl_220728_004_Ground-Plan

Team

Facts

Client
Clarks Village LP
Planning
This project was developed in collaboration with an architect licensed in Texas acting as the "Architect of Record". Herzog & de Meuron is not licensed to practice architecture in the state of Texas.
Design Consultant : Herzog & de Meuron, Basel, Switzerland
Executive Architect : Page Southerland Page, Austin, TX, USA
Structural Engineering: Fast & Epp, Vancouver, BC, Canada
MEP Engineering: Bay & Associates, Austin, TX, USA
Landscape Architect: Ten Eyck Landscape Architect, Austin, TX, USA
Specialist / Consulting
Civil Engineering: WGI Austin, Austin, TX, USA
Sustainability Consulting: Atelier Ten USA LLC, New York, NY, USA
Facade Consulting: Front Inc, New York, NY, USA
Facade Consulting: CDC Consulting Inc, Dallas, TX, USA
Geotechnic Consulting: Henley Johnston & Associates Inc., Dallas, TX, USA
Acoustic Consulting: SLR Consulting, Houston, TX, USA
Parking Consulting: HWA Parking, Austin, TX, USA
Fire Protection Consulting: Coffman Engineers, Irving, TX, USA
Vertical Circulation Consulting: Persohn Hahn Associates Inc., Tomball, TX, USA
Building Code Consulting: LCCP LLC, Austin, TX, USA
Accessibility and Fair Housing Consulting: Contour Collective, Austin, TX, USA
Traffic Consulting: BOE Consulting, Austin, TX, USA
Lighting Consultant: Dot Dash, New York, NY, USA
Spa Consultant: Perfect Wellness, New York, NY, USA
Pool Consultant: Aqua Design, New York, NY, USA
Contractors
General Contractor : Flintco LLC, Austin, TX, USA
Building Data
Gross floor area (GFA): 182'986 sqft, 17'000 sqm