Herzog & de Meuron has updated its plans for the forthcoming Sixth&Blanco mixed-use development in Austin, Texas.

The mass timber design will be realized as the firm’s first-ever completed work in Texas. The plan calls for a full city block construction with a hotel, office spaces, a residential component, and retail.

Updated renderings provided by the firm a year removed from the project’s initial announcement show a more concise linear volume with added greenery and recesses minus many original facade elements in whose place a new open-air terrace has been created on the structure’s third level. 

New colorful reflective awnings were added at the drop-off point for shoppers and hotel guests. A total of 50,000 square feet of retail space is planned, along with ten apartment units totaling 4,600 square feet and located on the two uppermost floors. The design is organized around a central courtyard and sandwiched between century-old historic buildings on the eastern and western edges of the site, which runs adjacent to the Colorado River.

Natural materials from Texas, Mexico, and the Southwest region will be used throughout the project. Speaking at the announcement, the firm said, “The project brings a human scale and a sense of domestic comfort to all — instead of a singular uniform gesture, the project is a complex sum of its many individual parts.”

Construction will begin sometime in Q1 of next year. The Austin office of Page is serving as the project’s executive architect. No completion date for Sixth&Blanco has been reported at this time.