AUSTIN | Austin Planetarium & Residential Tower | 655 FT | 47 FLOORS
 

This is crazy. It would be the tallest building north of the Capitol and at 655 feet, would be our 2nd tallest. There has been a planetarium in the works for a while, but this is the first mention of an adjoining tower.

http://www.kvue.com/news/Austin-Plan...154556155.html

http://i206.photobucket.com/albums/b...building_a.png
http://i206.photobucket.com/albums/b.../buildinga.png
http://www.kvue.com/news/Austin-Plan...=y&c=y&c=y&c=y

Giggity.

http://www.statesman.com/business/re...inglePage=true

I wish you guys the best of luck in getting this idea come to fruition, tis a very fancy looking tower =3

This is a fantastic proposal! It's great to see such momentum in Austin, and I think it will be a legitimate contender for best Southern skyline come 2020. Not that it matters, since the vibrancy/urbanism in Austin is already WAY better than anything else in the region. GO AUSTIN! :)

This is sharp! Hopefully we will see this rise.

I love the design of the planetarium and the funky retro-future design of the tower from the rendering we have, but I'd like to see how they plan on treating the sides of the tower before I render full judgement. But it's cool in a kitschy sort of way.

Where would this be in the skyline of Austin?

About half way between the UT Tower and the State Capitol. About 3/4th of a mile north of 6th Street where the next closest highrises are.

Here are some pictures of the Skyline from my house. My house is in the hills West of the city, so this is west looking east at the city.

This one is the whole skyline from UT to Town Lake near the middle and the right side is South Austin. The UT Tower is on the far left with the State Capitol to its right closer to the CBD, and the Planetarium will be between the two. Below it the first picture is zoomed in to show the UT Campus and Tower to the Capitol (it will be half way between the two), and the Capitol to the CBD. So it should give some idea of where it will be.

http://farm7.staticflickr.com/6197/6...1f38ee91_b.jpg
http://farm7.staticflickr.com/6128/5...b801e440_b.jpg
http://farm7.staticflickr.com/6024/5...30c7c8d4_b.jpg

Excellent illustration. Thank you! So, from many angles, this will be pretty far removed from the CBD.

I just tried out my very poor photoshop skills to try to see what it will look like from my house. Here is what I finished with. :D

http://img20.imageshack.us/img20/6761/planetariumk.jpg

I like the design of this tower!

Wow, go Austin! Pretty interesting looking design. Aren't there city dictated sightlines with regard to the Capitol corridor? How does this fit in?

BTW, Bevo, dig the view.

Thank you. =)

Yes the CVC is all over the place in that part of downtown. All of the blocks between this one and I-35 are covered by the CVC to protect the view from the LBJ Presidential Library and Lady Bird's old office. On the other side of Congress there are some blocks with no CVC, but west of those the CVC is in place to protect the view from the UT Tower and the South Mall which is on a large hill. The Tower at the top of the hill and South Mall is the slope down the hill at an angle directly facing the State Capitol. It is a very nice view.

Congress itself only has the CVC as far as setback to prevent the tunnel or valley effect if some big buildings do go up. But where Congress ends at the campus there is nothing to block the view from. The middle part of campus is hilly and from Speedway down the East Mall to the east part of campus going down to the stadium the hill slops very steeply down to Waller Creek. It is a bit of a valley there that is hard to see out of except for the stadium, which is HUGE! lol. So there are no views of anything to protect from directly north of the Capitol.

I don't mind this, I don't think. I just hope this doesn't develop into something resembling an Atlanta-like layout of a skyline. This rendering sort of makes me, for the first time, agree that this tower might be better suited for the Downtown core. I will still be excited if this is built as designed and as located, but I hope that the bulk of future high-rises will be concentrated downtown, with dense groups of mid-rises in other nodes throughout the city. Austin's downtown still has the ability to absorb many more high-rises, and I hope developers continue to direct most of their focus on that core.

That being said, I think that this is almost like an exclamation on the skyline indicating the growing museum district, and that is definitely alright by me, especially when the design is so edgy and unique.

Also, I think that it must be noted that Bevo has probably exaggerated the size just a little bit. The tower should also be probably half and inch maybe even and inch closer to campus.

I tried to make the size right. About the same size as the Austonian since it is at a higher elevation. But its location on my picture should be spot on. That building that looks like the base of where I put it is the Cambridge Condo tower at Lavaca and MLK. The Planetarium will be two blocks to the east of that tower. It is actually a little south too because Austin DT is not at a perfect N-S/E-W grid, but at an angle with the river. That is why I put it on the right tip of the Cambridge Condo tower.

If you look in my second picture in the post a few up, you can see the Cambridge about halfway between the Dobie and Moon Tower. It will be just behind that on the right tip.

Edit: nevermind. You're right.

The tower will still be within downtown, although on its northern edge for sure. Downtown Austin is officially bordered by Lamar Boulevard (west) - Cesar Chavez (south along the river) - I-35 to the east, and MLK Boulevard (19th Street to the north). This building will stand at Congress Avenue & 19th Street (MLK Blvd). By the way, that site is now occupied by a parking lot that takes up the whole block. That area of downtown is in need of a development boost. It's probably the most dead area of downtown Austin. It's mostly sprinkled with large blocky state office buildings and huge state parking garages, sprawling parking lots and some restaurants, commercial office and even residential thrown in. But this will help the area tremendously in encouraging development there. Most of the land is now owned by the state. The state has said they want to sell off or lease part of the land to developers for highrise development. The sell of the land would help the state financially of course.

Everything north of 19th Street is outside of downtown, including the UT Campus which runs for about another 12 blocks to the north. And then there is West Campus, which is one of the densest neighborhoods in Austin with lowrise blocks of student housing and several highrises. The tallest dorm is the Dobie Center, (the blue tower in the photo below).

In this photo of BevoLJ's, the tower will rise directly behind that white rectangular building in the center of the photo. It'll be two blocks east of it.
http://farm7.staticflickr.com/6128/5...b801e440_b.jpg