Quote:
Originally Posted by KevinFromTexas
Actually, I think San Antonio would look better with some glass. I don't say that because of a bias since Austin does have tons of it now, but rather because I'd rather not see a bunch of modern buildings pretending to be old and trying to fit in San Antonio and only ending up upstaging San Antonio's old stock. To me, that's more disrespectful to that era than glass is. There's also the bonus of glass reflecting those old facades and making for some cool sightlines, even giving you a view of it in reflection before you walk around the corner and see it. One city that I think of in this instance is Kansas City where they have a lot of old skyscrapers and also new glass towers.
If any place needs some that look old like the one above in Chicago, it's Austin, since we have so few of them. We only have two buildings taller than 300 feet that were built before the 1940s. The Texas Capitol and the University of Texas Tower. And we have no 200 footers that were built before the 1960s.
The Floodgate is a really unique design, definitely modern, and definitely not an homage to anything even resembling "old". It reminds me more of The Independent in Austin than it it reminds me of anything else in San Antonio. I do think it fits in, and it's not without its nod to say, the Tower Life Building.
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For sure, I definitely agree SA needs some glass. The beige/brown theme definitely needs to be offset a lot. Didn't mean that to be a diss towards Austin either, I just mean since there's a relative lack of height downtown right now, I'd hate to see the good buildings get swamped by generic yet tall apartment towers.
The Independent, Indeed Tower and The Republic are good examples I can think of that are glass towers with character. 6x is good too. I can't think of many good modern apt towers that aren't all glass off the top of my head, but I'd definitely like to see some architectural variety here if they're gonna start building taller. SA could very easily start to look like a mini Vancouver if they start plopping those towers all over the perimeter of downtown since we seem to be hovering on that 350-400 ft plateau.