KTGY a design firm focused nationally on architecture, interior design, branded environments and urban design, celebrated the grand opening of The Waylon alongside developer Riverside. The brick and wood-clad podium meanders along a gently sloping site, bringing 300 apartments to North Austin, Texas. The new urban enclave takes the place of surface parking for an existing office building; the design respects and responds to this adjacent commercial presence.
Openings through the building connect office workers, cyclists and pedestrians to Burnet Road, while residents are drawn inward to courtyards and amenity spaces carved from the building’s mass. Live/work units line the Burnet frontage, engaging the building with the busy corridor and aligning it with nearby commercial sites. Any parking space lost during construction has been replaced and augmented by a new five-story parking garage that takes cars off the street.
The building’s meandering shape is a response to the orientation of the site relative to the commercial real estate around it. KTGY’s design team carves character into the shape, cutting courtyards and green areas out of the mass. The amenities program is purposefully broken up into smaller units that take advantage of these open spaces to create micro communities within the building.
Smaller masonry elements create a residential pedestrian scale for this linear building, and splashes of wood tone material make it more approachable. Surface treatment and balconies break up the facade, bringing the scale down to that of a neighborhood where work, play and rest mingle.
Landscaping preserves heritage oak trees and makes what was once a parking lot into a lush place to live. Nudge Design, Austin-based landscape architecture firm, enriches the carve-outs in the building envelope with gardens that become gathering places for the residents. Units are clustered in organic neighborhoods around these shared spaces. Dispersed amenities give each part of the building an identity, while creating the opportunity for residents to meet people exploring the building.
