San Antonio Express-News (Sunday)
The new way of using space
Pandemic changing the look, function of building amenities, outdoor areas
The pandemic, with its accompanying need for social distancing and amenities that attract workers, has led to an ongoing re-evaluation of how tenants and employees use space.
That’s made the past few years an era of change for building owners, landlords, business owners and executives regarding the physical spaces they occupy.
I spoke to Elaine Kearney — managing principal at TBG Partners San Antonio, a landscape architecture and urban planning firm — about changes spurred by COVID-19 and examples of recent projects the firm has worked on locally.
TBG has about 130 employees across offices in Austin, Houston, Dallas and San Antonio. The following has been edited for brevity and clarity.
Q: How has the coronavirus pandemic affected the way people use outdoor space and what clients want to incorporate in their projects?
A:
With people spending so much time in their immediate environs, I think everyone had an accelerated appreciation of how much that can impact your mood and how you interact with other people.
People were also realizing that a well-designed space can have such an influence on how comfortable you feel in the space. From a functional standpoint, everyone was hyper-aware that the ability to be outside was an opportunity to safely interact with someone else.
The biggest trend we have seen is places that had an underutilized outdoor space, and all of a sudden people looking at it with fresh eyes and wanting to give it the same amount of attention they might have previously put into an indoor space.
For example, most office buildings have a very thoughtfully designed lobby where they’ve put a lot of effort into the artwork and the furnishings and what that’s telling about the organization. We were now seeing people saying, “We want to have that same level of attention on our patio, or our plaza, or our break area.”
That also came with the recognition that it needed to be multifunctional. People were now saying, “I want this to be a place where I can host a wine event on an evening, but I also want people to be able to come out here with their laptops during the day. And we’re going to have our annual company picnic here too.”
That means thinking about seating, lighting, the things that you would need to accomplish that. Could there be tables or flat spaces where someone can have a laptop? You need power. We also study where the sun and the shade are going to be and how we can add additional shade.
That is where the role of a landscape architect can be meaningful. We think a lot about understanding the psychology of how people use spaces. Where do people feel comfortable? Where are the circulation patterns?
A garden at the Texas Organ
Sharing Alliance, above,
is one of TBG Partners’ local
projects.
Q: Tell me about some of the projects you’ve worked on in San Antonio.
A: Before it was renovated, (the area known as Weston Common in front of the Weston Centre downtown) was kind of a dead plaza. The client saw the opportunity. They had an underutilized outdoor space, and there was a lot of demand to activate that and create it as an amenity for the office tenants.
We’re working on a large park renovation for the city of San Antonio, with Dignowity and Lockwood parks on the East Side. In that case, it was about adding
new amenities to the park and listening to the community and what they wanted.
Sometimes we’ll bring an idea to a client that they may have never thought of. A client renovating an office park had an underutilized space they would like to make more attractive as an amenity, and it has some
beautiful existing oak trees. We came up with the idea of a hammock garden and strung hammocks through the trees. How fun would that be, if you knew you could step outside and take a phone call in a hammock?
The Texas Organ Sharing Alliance at the South Texas Medical Center wanted to create
a garden that would both memorialize people but also be a place of celebration for the recipients. We designed a beautiful small garden that has over 6,000 individual medallions with an anonymous version of every individual’s name.
Q: Do you think that greater
awareness of the benefits of outdoor amenities is going to last?
A: I think the jury’s still out. What we’re finding, at least with COVID, it seems like it is probably turning into something that we have to learn to live with, which may mean that we all take precautions. It feels like it’s going around again.
I think the sectors that we’ll see it the most in are those that are competing to attract people and bring them back. Probably the biggest sector is the office environment. I think one of the biggest things that they can offer is to say, “You’re going to have this beautiful rooftop terrace” or “We’re going to have an outdoor patio or courtyard that your workers and your clientele will have access to.”
It is also very strong in the hospitality, food and beverage industries. Another project we’re proud of is the Canopy by Hilton San Antonio River Walk and the Otro bar. The concept for that was it’s like a treehouse, you’re up in the trees and feeling like you have this proximity to the water, even though you’re in a space that’s cantilevered. Embracing that indoor-outdoor experience, I think, is something that’s unique.
Q: Anything you’d like to add?
A: It is important to me, and to TBG, to think about the role of landscape architecture and equity. You may have heard about how the urban heat island effect tends to be hotter in lower socioeconomic neighborhoods, and that’s because there’s been less investment in things like urban canopy. We do a lot of work, some of it pro bono, about how can we provide more equity and access to parks and green spaces in our cities.
We’ve put a lot of work into supporting the Greenways trail network. I am the mayor’s representative on the Linear Creekway Parks Advisory Board. We’ve been able to advocate through the bond process for a brand-new park in the South Texas Medical Center.
These are important places for our democracy. Where else can you go where you run into random people that you would never maybe otherwise talk to?