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PROJECT Southwest Key, Austin
CLIENT Southwest Key Programs
ARCHITECT Cotera+Reed Architects
DESIGN TEAM Juan Cotera, AIA; Phillip Reed, AIA; Matt Catterall; William Hodge, AIA; Mary Franzosa
CONTRACTOR Gilbane Building Company
CONSULTANTS Datum Engineers (structural); Urban Design Group (civil); ACR Engineering (MEP); Carolyn Kelley (landscape); Parking Planners (parking); BAi (AV/IT)
PHOTOGRAPHER Mike Osborne

Founded in 1987, Southwest Key Programs, a national non-profit group based in Austin, manages a variety of social programs to benefit disadvantaged youth and their families. Intending for its new headquarters to act as a tool for neighborhood revitalization, the organization selected a site in a traditionally underserved area of the city to locate the Southwest Key East Austin Community Development Project.

To convey an architectural image that reflects its interest in Mexican heritage, Southwest Key (SWK) selected Cotera + Reed, a local design firm intimately familiar with East Austin’s social, cultural, and development issues. Cotera + Reed also offered its extensive experience in public projects, knowledge that helped the client obtain a necessary zoning change, guided the process for community involvement, and assisted in developing the public/private financial partnership for the $7.2 million complex.

Although unfamiliar with building design and construction, SWK eagerly participated in “a charged instructional process that enhanced creativity,” says firm principal Phillip Reed, AIA. The intense dialogue between the architect and client focused on “how best to interpret traditional Mexican architecture in modern terms,” according to firm founder Juan Cotera, AIA. From that exchange emerged an organizational concept where urban fabric is “woven through a series of structures that wraps public space,” says Reed. Fundamental to the architecture of ancient Mexico, this same urban design principle was essential to the planning of mid-twentieth century Mexican modern architecture—most notable in the site plan for Mexico City’s Ciudad Universitaria (1952) by Mario Pani and Enrique del Moral. Cotera + Reed used Ciudad Universitaria as precedent, interlacing the SWK complex with the surrounding neighborhood, the site, and its adjacent woodland. Notes design team member Matt Catterall: “The building forms reinforce the logic of weaving,” allowing the program to grow like the urban geometries and patterned friezes of pre-Columbian Mexico.

Similar to the Ciudad Universitaria, Modernist principles stylistically guided Cotera + Reed’s architectural design for the Southwest Key project with an emphasis on transparency, horizontality, and articulation of function. The design thus captures the vibrancy of a period at mid-century when a new Mexican identity advocating social change was being forged, in part, through its architecture. Strongly endorsed by SWK as an image ideally suited to reflect its progressive mission and goals, the project’s composition and style display Mexican culture in a “subtler, abstract way, as opposed to a clichéd, commercialized design,” says Cotera.

A master plan by Cotera + Reed laid out a phased design process calling for future expandability. The plan, completed with the participation of residents and SWK’s culturally diverse staff, identified first-phase programmatic requirements for a 30,000-square-foot multi-use complex to provide space for the organization’s offices, educational programs, and community outreach activities.

The triangular seven-acre site, fronted by a residential street and undeveloped municipal parkland to its rear, allowed the architects to optimally shape and situate two building forms on relatively flat topography. By setting the complex deep into the site, the architects reduced its scale to better fit within the low-rise residential context. Situated diagonally to the street along an east-west axis, the long and narrow three-story administrative wing is configured to maximize daylighting and exterior views for all its users, a notion well suited to SWK’s egalitarian principles. To the rear, the one-story L-shaped educational wing wraps a courtyard.

The expansive site allows for a formal public entrance sequence inspired by the pedestrian spaces of the Ciudad Universitaria. Inviting the neighborhood to partake of the facility, the Heroes Walkway (the initial portion of that sequence) is delineated by cedar elms and irregularly edged concrete paving. The walkway extends from the street to a square plaza lined with redbud trees planted in a rigid grid. The plaza, a forecourt to the administrative wing, opens to a central breezeway that takes up a third of the building’s ground level and enables the ground plane to flow through the structure in a manner reminiscent of Le Corbusier. “The Creek of Life,” an art installation by Rosalinda Toro of blue mosaics embedded in the breezeway’s stained concrete floor, leads to a large, solitary pecan tree placed at the center of the rear courtyard.

At its ground level, the administrative wing is clad with an oversized, hand-formed Mexican brick “to add texture and to warm the building up,” says Reed. The earth-tone brick contrasts with the lightweight transparency of the wing’s two floors above, which are covered by a glazed curtainwall topped by a narrow, continuous band of stucco in a greenish color reminiscent of the agave cactus.

The upper floors are shielded from direct sunlight on the south, east, and west sides by perforated, corrugated, and naturally oxidized zinc screens that filter natural light to the building’s interior spaces. Supported by a steel tube assembly that is cantilevered from the main building frame, the screens enabled Cotera + Reed to maintain a clearer glass in the curtainwall than otherwise would be required by code, thus enhancing the building’s transparency. The flood of natural light into the interior also cuts daytime energy costs.

Recalling the brise-soleil that captivated the Modern movement, the angled screens emphasize horizontality and streamline the structure’s presence in the site. This linear flow is broken by a projecting third-floor conference room and a set of exterior egress stairs that express vertical circulation in Modernist terms. Set perpendicular to the structure, the stair tower, supported by an exposed tubular steel armature, is partially veiled by large panels of the perforated metal screen, thus enhancing the modern, industrial look of the south elevation.

At the north elevation, the glazed curtainwall envelops the structure without interruption, allowing it to be read as a single horizontal volume—a seamless linear canvas animated by reflections of clouds, sky, and greenery.

Expressing a Mexican connection without overt historicism, Cotera + Reed’s design ideally suits its site, client, and community. The refurbishing of nearby residences since the project’s completion evidences its success at revitalization, and SWK’s satisfaction is signaled by the current update of the master plan to expand the complex. Modern yet local, contextual yet contrasting, and welcoming yet challenging, this thoughtful building design will enable Southwest Key to ultimately reach its goal of weaving itself into the community.

--Mario L. Sanchez, PhD, is an architect with the Texas Department of Transportation.