Houston Center makes its redesigned debut
When pedestrians return, they’ll find an environment transformed
When Brookfield Properties purchased Houston Center in 2017, it held a design contest to reimagine downtown’s largest office complex. Travis Overall, head of Brookfield’s Texas region, wanted the 4.2-million-square-foot complex, which he likened to a fortress, to feel pedestrian friendly and connected with the outdoors.
The winning design — by Gensler, an architectural firm that has now moved its offices to the campus, and Clark Condon, a landscape architecture firm — featured three levels of greenspaces connected by a grand spiral staircase.
And now, Houston Center’s makeover is complete.
More than 160 new trees wave from the sidewalks, courtyard and terraces of roughly 24,000 square feet of added pedestrian and greenspace, just as the
renderings had planned. The market the project is entering, on the other hand, is far from what anyone could have predicted. Roughly 84 percent of downtown office workers were working remotely on any given day, according to a survey by the redevelopment nonprofit Central Houston, as the novel coronavirus ravages the globe. Houston Center is currently leased at 60 percent occupancy. But Overall believes Houston Center’s new amenities will be in even more demand in a world reshaped by COVID.
“We probably have more outdoor space than anyone downtown,” he said, looking out across the building’s street-level park. At the far end of the grass, a metal bar released droplets of water in a digitally programmed pattern; they briefly spelled “HOUSTON CENTER” in letters that glistened with sun before they disappeared into the ground. But no passersby were on the sidewalks to see them.
When pedestrians return, they’ll find sidewalks transformed to cedar elmlined promenades; McKinney Street had one car lane removed to make the area more walkable and provide a space for rideshares to drop passengers off without disrupting traffic.
Benches and a standing table surround a stretch of lawn dotted with chairs, and on the other side of the digital waterfall is a spiral staircase leading up to the mezzanine, where a patch of turf lined with hanging chairs leads tenants to a new fitness facility.
On the upper terrace, umbrellas shade bistrostyle seating outside of the main lobby.
Such outdoor spaces were a trend in office buildings and mixed-used developments before the pandemic, but Lisa Schaumann Stryker, vice president of communications for the National Association of Landscape Professionals, said commercial landscapers have seen interest in such spaces increase because of COVID.
“Building managers and owners need to be more creative about giving employees the ability to meet and gather outdoors,” she said. “In a post-COVID world, all indications are that workspaces will need to be more flexible and enticing to get people away from their home office and back to workspaces.”
Dean Strombom, strategy leader at Gensler, hopes the redesigned office complex will be so enticing that it will be a destination.
“We hope it’s a place where people will want to come after business hours — evenings and weekends, as a place to go,” Strombom said. He conceived of the outdoors area as an extension of Discovery Green, two blocks away, a place convention goers and the public could enjoy. “(Houston Center) will have a lot of programs developed for the outdoor area.”
On the inside, gone — at least from view — are the Texas pink granite and bronze-colored wall treatments the ’70s-era complex was once known for. White terrazzo covers the granite floors, and white paint covers the bronze.
Other renovations include the addition of conference rooms that can be made bigger or smaller through walls that retract into the ceiling and huddle rooms that can control the amount of ambient noise through shutter-like roofs that open and close.
Next to the huddle rooms hung a giant portrait of Houston crafted out of petrified moss. The concentric rings of the city’s highways circled Houston Center, located at the heart of a dense metropolis at a time when people have been forced to socially distance.
“We can’t wait to welcome people back to downtown Houston,” Strombom said.
“We’re ready for them,” Overall agreed.