2024 Texas & Louisiana Best Projects
Award of Merit, Residential/Hospitality — The Mark Austin
Photo by Johnny Stevens, CPP
THE MARK AUSTIN
Austin
Award of Merit
Submitted by: Landmark Properties
OWNER Landmark Properties
LEAD DESIGN FIRM Humphreys & Partners Urban Architecture LP
GENERAL CONTRACTOR Landmark Construction
CIVIL ENGINEER Jones Carter Civil Engineering (Quiddity Engineering LLC)
STRUCTURAL ENGINEER PK Associates LLC
MEP ENGINEER Jordan Skala Engineers
INTERIOR DESIGN Design Environments
Located on a 1.2-acre site in the west campus area of Bloomington, this student housing community features 265 units in a mix of studio to six-bedroom apartments across 17 stories and two subgrade levels. Five of the floors are also host to a range of amenities.
Before construction, the team had to demolish an existing 12-story building. This January 2020 demolition was the largest implosion in Austin history, requiring precise and creative engineering. Radial concrete walls tie into existing columns on the first two podium levels, then once the explosives were detonated, the building rocked safely into the property.
To comply with zoning codes, the building needed to follow a sloped, graduated plane on the north side, requiring transfer beams for the structure, and a rooftop pool carried a heavy load. The team worked to keep the transfer beams to a minimum while maximizing leasable square footage within the 175-ft height limit, carefully placing every column and designing floor plans around it. Prefabrication accelerated the schedule. Exterior framing and skin were prefabricated off site. Panels were loaded onto a floor after removing shoring, then placed within a week. This efficiency allowed the team to start framing priority walls, run sprinkler mains, continue with plumbing risers and dry each level earlier than planned. These efforts helped the project team deliver the structure under budget and ahead of schedule in July 2023.
