Gensler continues to be an outsized force in commercial design
As the firm celebrates over 50 years in Houston, it has had a big impact on the area’s most iconic structures
Stroll through Houston’s CityCentre on any weekend, and you’ll likely find Gen Z-ers snapping Instagram photos by colorful murals or millennial moms chatting over grain bowls on patios overlooking a green plaza where kids kick around a soccer ball.
The nearly 50-acre mixed-use district has become a mainstay in West Houston since Houstonbased developer Midway repositioned the property more than 13 years ago in collaboration with a team that included master-planning architects firm Gensler. But not everyone thought CityCentre would become popular.
“It was one of the first of kinds of outdoor mixed-use developments in Houston. At first, you had a bunch of naysayers, saying ‘It’s too hot in Houston. People are never going to walk from their car to the store,’” said Stephanie Burritt, co-managing director at Gensler’s Houston office.
It turned out that though Houston was much hotter than the corners of California that inspired CityCentre, Houstonians flocked to the development all the same — drawn by the pedestrian-friendly walkways, events and greenery. Now, after the pandemic shifted how people interact with physical space, this same emphasis on outdoor spaces along with a blurring of retail with office, residential and hospitality space is getting even more attention.
Gensler, which recently celebrated its 50th year in Houston, is among the major architecture firms helping usher in a new era in Houston’s commercial architecture design. Gensler — along with other architecture firms such as Page, Kirksey, PDR, Ziegler Cooper, HOK and Michael Hsu, to name a few — are working to help real estate developers convert parts of the city’s concrete jungle into a more humane, pedestrian-oriented place.
“Houston is an automobile city and the challenge is, how do you humanize that development and make it more walkable? How do we go about humanizing everything we do?” said Kristopher Stuart, principal at Gensler. “We’re really focusing on people. We’ve got a lot of stuff, but how do you make it compelling? How do you make places (where) people want to work, shop and dine?”
Gensler is taking that humanizing approach into reimagining many of Houston’s vintage buildings, including revamping retail spaces at Brookfield Properties’ The Highlight at Houston Center downtown, converting Cameron Management’s historic downtown Esperson buildings into a residential space and helping plan Concept Neighborhood’s mixed-use district in the East End, to name a few. But the firm’s forward-thinking, humancentric approach has touched most corners of the Houston metro — from City Place in Spring to The Ion in Midtown Houston.
The San Francisco-based Gensler landed in Houston in October 1972, when real estate developer Hines hired Tony Harbour to lead the interior design work for Pennzoil Place downtown. Today the firm’s Houston office has more than 200 employees and logged about $44 million worth of local architecture bookings in 2021, placing it among the top-three architecture firms in the city, according to Houston Business Journal.
“It is astonishing to see how the firm started out with a very exclusive focus on interiors and then has mushroomed now,” said Stephen Fox, an architectural historian at Rice University.
The Houston practice isn’t just working on regional projects, but those around the globe, as well.
“What is remarkable about Gensler is its transformation during the past 50 years into a global architectural practice, prepared to design anything, anywhere from offices distributed around the world.”
Here’s a look at some of the firm’s most influential projects from across the Houston area.
Downtown 1000 Main
After three decades of focusing on interior design, Gensler launched its first foray into big building architecture in Houston with design of Century Development’s 1000 Main in 2003. The 36-story tower was completed shortly before the city opened Main Street Square and a new light rail station — with all three helping to revive downtown Houston. Gensler designed 1000 Main with a large cutout in the lobby so natural light spilled from the street into the tunnel system below, bringing the street-level pedestrian experience underground.
“It was the first time that there was this big, open expression from the tunnel up into the street,” said Alexander of Gen
sler. “This was an expression to how do we make it feel as though you’re not in a tunnel?”
Bank of America Tower
Almost 20 years after 1000 Main, Gensler revisited the idea of bringing natural light to the tunnel system with the design of Skanska’s Bank of America Tower in 2019. This design further stretched the possibilities for the tunnel system with the Understory food hall that brought local restaurants together in a space that doubled as a tenant amenity and visitor attraction. On weekdays, space is filled with office workers lounging, meeting or working.
The Woodlands/Spring Anadarko Headquarters
When Anadarko Petroleum was searching for a new global headquarters in the early 2000s, it chose an unusual location at the time for a high-rise-corporate headquarters — The Woodlands, an upscale, wooded enclave north of Houston that hadn’t yet seen high-rises.
“The Woodlands had an office market, but they were typically hidden behind the trees … if you had a commercial building or an office building, it wasn’t meant to be seen,” recalled Stuart of Gensler. That changed with Anadarko’s campus. “The (Andarko) office buildings were meant to really catalyze the public environment, to make it a destination,” he said.
Gensler worked with developer Patrinely Group to design first the 32-story Anadarko/ Allison Tower in 2002, then about a decade later the 31-story Hackett Tower nearby. The towers, now multitenant office buildings owned by Howard Hughes, still serve as a landmark in The Woodlands and anchor a bustling commercial district along the manmade Waterway.
Exxon Mobil campus and City Place (Springwoods Village) Exxon Mobil’s sprawling 385acre corporate campus, one of the largest construction projects in North America at the time, was built in 2014 to accommodate some 10,000 employees across 20 buildings. Gensler was the architect of record for the campus, working with architecture firms Pickard Chilton and PDR. It was considered a gamechanger for real estate in the area, luring thousands of workers to live nearby and fomenting the rise of more commercial activity within the 2,000-acre Springwoods Village development by CDC Houston.
Elsewhere in the Springwoods Village development, Gensler was involved in the development of the Marriott hotel, the Southwestern Energy headquarters, several office buildings and a 60-acre urban core of the development with a Star Cinema Grill that was dubbed CityPlace. The urban core, a partnership with CDC, Patrinley Group and USAA Real Estate, ultimately inspired a renaming of the entire Springwoods Village development in 2021 as City Place.
The Galleria Post Oak Hotel
Gensler’s expansion into the hospitality and residential spaces in Houston is on full display in the Galleria/Uptown area, where it was the architect for two skyline-defining projects – first, billionaire Tillman Fertitta’s $350 million project Post Oak Hotel in 2018. With its lavish hotel rooms alongside Class A offices, retail boutiques, restaurants and event space, the 36-story tower was one of the first truly vertical mixed-use developments in the area, Burritt said.
Aspire Post Oak
Three years later, Gensler designed Dinerstein Co.’s 40story Aspire Post Oak luxury apartment, too, which brought 383 apartments to a busy intersection of San Felipe and Post Oak. Aspire offers hospitalitylike living with valet parking, concierge service, a glass-edge pool and spa, and a 1,540 squarefoot sky lounge on the 40th floor. Aspire is helping to infuse even more energy into the bustling corridor, noted Brooks Howell, principal at Gensler.