Houston’s Brava Tower Blends Newspaper History with Modern Luxury

Residential high-rises tend to look similar. Step into a gleaming white-stone lobby, and you could be anywhere from Philadelphia to Phoenix. But Brava, a 46-story building in downtown Houston, by MaRS Culture and Munoz + Albin Architecture & Planning, bucks the trend. It has something most contemporary towers lack: a sense of place.

Kelie Mayfield, MaRS principal and the interiors lead, believes that a concept only resonates if there’s a story behind it. “It has to do with the site, the context, and the nature of the location,” she says. “If it doesn’t have a soul or purpose, then it’s just a pretty space.” Mayfield starts each project by creating a narrative that informs all design decisions. For Brava, she and her team focused on the history of the location, which was once owned by The Houston Chronicle, thus formulated interiors that tip a hat to both the physical newspaper and the stories within it.

Located in the heart of the arts district, Brava stands out with its shape, a slim rectangle diagonal to the street. Munoz + Albin, the building architect, rotated the structure 45 degrees to maximize views for the 373 rental units and gave it a dynamic exterior. The developer, Hines, has its headquarters across the street, so Brava had to be a showpiece with distinctive offerings. On the podium, housing retail and parking, a white aluminum frame projects in front of a dark perforated screen, mimicking a proscenium in a theater. Above it, Munoz + Albin devoted level 10 to such amenities as an outdoor pool, entertaining kitchen, a fitness room, and coworking space, and installed a sky lounge with a terrace on the 46th floor.

Designing a Residential High-Rise That Reflects Its Surroundings 

“We made some innovative moves,” principal Jorge Munoz notes. “It’s a unique assembly of pieces that resulted from the geometry of the site.” The confines of the parcel required Munoz and co-principal Enrique Albin to round off the corners of the rectangle, resulting in a boatlike shape. They also created a curtain wall with a bowed vertical edge that resembles a glass sail. The mix of curved and straight lines continues inside. “The interior and exterior work together well,” Albin adds. “When you walk into the building, it feels like a whole composition.”

Read All About It: How Newspapers Shaped the Interior Design 

MaRS, which was responsible for the two model apartments and all public areas, totaling 20,00 square feet, aimed to make the interiors feel fluid. This was a challenge given the unusual geometry and hulking structural columns. The designers embedded the latter in undulating plaster walls inspired by the folds of a newspaper. “This helped us integrate the structure while creating something seamless,” Mayfield explains. The folds also draw you through and impart a sense of movement, which she thinks of as a kind of choreography that references the dancers that perform in the neighborhood’s surrounding theaters.

Columns that remain visible are still on theme: They’re embossed with front-page headlines from the Chronicle dating to 1908. The earliest headlines are in the lobby and more recent ones appear upstairs on the amenity floor; they range from “Thousands Out to Greet President Taft in Houston” (1909) to “Thousands Jam the Streets to Celebrate With Astros” (2017). A local muralist applied the text on hand-troweled concrete using a custom stencil.

Local Art Enlivens Public Spaces in the Luxury Building 

Inside The Brava Tower in Houston 

munoz + albin architecture & planning: erick ragni; rachel grady; daniela gonzalez; linnea wingo; zoe pittman; alisha gaubert: mars culture. jeff schmidt; taylor currell; richard rodgers; michael cox.

kirksey: architect of record.

tbg partners: landscape architect.

kpk lighting design: lighting consultant.

weingarten art group: art consultant.

natural graphics: custom graphics.

magnusson klemencic associates: structural engineer.

schmidt and stacy: mep.

2stone designer concrete: concretework.

harvey cleary: general contractor.

meyda lighting: custom light fixture (lobby).

arhaus: chairs.

four hands: bench (lobby), chairs (resident kitchen).

rove concepts: chairs (leasing lounge).

abbey: custom rug.

echo-wood: paneling (elevator lobby).

minotti: sectional (resident lounge).

rh: cocktail table.

through branch: custom rug.

thorntree slate: island top (resident kitchen).

neri&hu: pendant fixture.

innovations: wallcovering (nook, penthouse lounge).

sunpan: table (nook).

ledge: chaise lounges, side tables (pool).

mitchell gold + bob williams: chair (pool lounge).

jaime young co.: table lamp (bedroom).

area environments: wallcovering (hall).

protec: flooring (gym).

astek: wallcovering.

dcw editions: pendant fixtures (penthouse lounge).

living divani: sofa.

porcelanosa: floor tile.

ppg paints: paint.

A Residential Complex Soars Over the Waterfront in Brooklyn

As the East River snakes between the shores of four of New York’s five boroughs, it shapes islets, tributaries, and peninsulas along its way. These surprisingly saltwater banks that have historically been ports for the domestic and international shipping routes docking in the Big Apple today are prime real estate—so long as the buildings meet 100-year flood-plain requirements. Manhattan’s were the first to be developed, with a close stock of steel-and-glass skyscrapers, brick public housing, and seawall-protected esplanade parks. Queens followed suit with a focus on residential towers, their unobstructed views of the Manhattan skyline affording enviable urban sunsets.

But it’s Brooklyn, the city’s second-priciest and most populous borough, that is making big waves in luxury waterfront living—its in­no­vative buildings giving residents a skyline of their own to boast. Since the 2005 residential rezoning of the Greenpoint and Williamsburg shores, towers, parks, and even some beaches have made northern Brooklyn one of the hottest markets for young professionals, generationally wealthy coeds, and even the odd celebrity (Adam Driver, Patrick Wilson). Now, on the bulbous landmass where it meets Queens at Newtown Creek is Eagle + West, a ground-up, 860,700-square-foot complex of high-end, market-rate, and affordable rental apartments by OMA (architecture), Marmol Radziner (public and amenity spaces), and Beyer Blinder Belle Architects and Planners (apartment interiors) is helping contribute a renewed relationship to its misnomer estuary.

Eagle + West Offers Luxury Waterfront Living in Greenpoint 

The project’s site, the 22-acre Greenpoint Landing, has naturally sweeping vistas of its surrounding skylines and waterways, so its architectural challenge came in arranging its massive program—745 apartments across two towers and a low-rise, plus two retail spaces, a parking garage, and 42,000 square feet of indoor/outdoor amenities, including two pools, coworking spaces, a podcast studio, and a playground—to respect its neighboring town houses, which top out at seven stories. Zoning allowed for both a 400- and a 300-foot-tall tower set 40 feet apart. OMA New York partner Jason Long increased that distance to 60 and imagined their profiles as “fraternal twins,” stepping back and toward each other in seven- to eight-story terraced and cantilevered blocks like puzzle pieces that don’t quite fit. These 40- and 30-floor siblings are connected by a two-story, 210-foot-long Vierendeel truss-and-glass bridge that houses the indoor pool, a lounge for the outdoor pool, a fitness center, and a double-height reservable room for resident functions, all topped by a 1,000-square-foot green roof.

“We created a composition that changes as you move around it,” Long says of Eagle + West’s monumental massing, “because it opens and closes in a series of different gateways as you look through the building, either toward the Manhattan skyline or out over Brooklyn.” To mitigate the scale of the towers, fronting the lower density streetside is a seven-story structure of affordable-housing units with its own gym and event spaces. And where there is an entrance to a residential lobby (there are three), the facade is notched inward, like the triangular cantilevers overhead and the shadows cast by their facades, shingled in white precast concrete.

Ample Amenities and Private Balconies

To complement the incredible waterway views, an indoor-outdoor living experience at Eagle + West was important. Beyer Blinder Belle, also the project’s executive architect, conceived 150 unique apartment layouts for the range of studios to three-bedrooms, with oak flooring, concretelike countertops, porcelain-tile backsplashes, and two color palettes—dawn and dusk—to take advantage of their 8-foot-square picture windows. The diversity of options is “about not pigeonholing prospective tenants,” BBB senior associate Kimberly Cornell explains, “because everyone has a different sensibility.”

Native Plants Create a Biophilic Haven

Radziner’s firm took a similar approach to the project’s landscape design, which he describes as “not too buttoned-up.” Wind-resistant plants like prairie dropseed, little bluestem, and purple coneflower along with deciduous, native trees like red maple and pagoda dogwood create a varied, seasonal tapestry within their hardscape bounds and at the ground level. Along the waterfront, Eagle + West adds a new landscaped plaza to Greenpoint’s public esplanade. On a late-summer day, as new residents were just settling in, many of its tables and chairs were already occupied by neighbors.

Inside Eagle + West, Greenpoint’s Newest Residential Development

beyer blinder belle architects and planners: carlos cardoso; cassie walker; andrew jacobs; james sullivan.

marmol radziner: leo marmol; ashley nath; aista sobouti; matt jackson; morgane manoha; abby rutherford; martina roth.

oma: yusef ali dennis; christine yoon; remy bertin; jingyi bi; sam biroscak; titouan chapouly; ken chongsuwat; marie-claude fares; yashar ghasemkhani; anders grinde; wesley leforce; chong ying pai; nathan petty; andres rabano; laylee salek; alan song; wo hong wu; soojung yoo; steven young; juan pablo zepeda.

thornton tomasetti: facade.

focus lighting: light­ing consultant.

mtwtf: custom signage.

lolita cros; picture room: art consultants.

desimone consulting engineers: structural engineer.

cosentini associates: mep.

langan engineering & environmental services: civil engineer.

scanga innovative woodworking: millwork.

new line structures: general contractor.

de sede: sectionals (lobby 1), tan lounge chairs (lobby 2).

allied maker: wood floor lamp (lounge 1).

emmanuelle simon: gray barrel chair.

adam otlewski: shaded floor lamps (lobby 1, lobby 2, reserve room).

stahl + band: cocktail table (lobby 2).

pulpo: round side table.

suite ny: dining chairs (reserve room).

abra lighting: custom cantilever light.

&tradition: green sectionals.

juniper design group: ceiling fixtures (mailroom), table lamps (great room).

ahrend: chairs (coworking lounge).

filzfelt: wallcovering.

serge mouille: sconces.

stone source: floor tile.

maharam: rug.

gordon: chairs (great room).

caesarstone: counter­top (kitchen).

treefrog veneer: cabinetry veneer.

florim: backsplash tile.

kährs: flooring (kitchen, living area).

rustico tile: decking (pool).

artless: bench.

walker zanger: pool tile.

sto: ceiling surfacing.

heath ceramics: mantel tile (great room).

abc stone: mantel stone.

netzero: fireplace.

moroso: chairs, sofas.

made by choice: round side table.

amara rugs: custom rugs.

hakwood: wood flooring.

anthology woods; shinnoki: oak paneling.

dunn-edwards; ppg industries; sherwin-williams company: paint.

bpdl: concrete facade panels.

interpane: facade glass.

NC Design & Architecture Goes Into the Woods to Envision a Residential Tower in Hong Kong

Forest huts and woodland lodges are the inspiration behind the interiors of Timber House, a residential tower in Hong Kong by NC Design & Architecture.

Hong Kong is among the last places on earth where you might expect to find a tree house. Yet there, in the middle of the Kowloon neighborhood, straddling the end of a congested, tower-lined alley, you’ll find just that: a wood cabin with a simple gabled outline that a child might draw, suspended 12 feet above street level amidst tropical foliage. Conceived by NC Design & Architecture, the abstracted cabin marks the entrance to Timber House, a new 30-story residential complex by property conglomerate New World Development and architecture firm AGC Design. It’s also an invitation into a world of curiosity and childlike wonder where, NCDA principal Nelson Chow says, “People should feel that anything is possible.”

Born in Hong Kong and raised between there and Toronto, Chow received a master’s in architecture from Ontario’s University of Waterloo before earning a certificate in men’s tailoring at New York’s Fashion Institute of Technology in 2005. He had always wanted to study fashion but the instability of a career in that industry made it a hard sell to his family. So he spent the first years of his professional life as an architect at AvroKO, a Manhattan firm specializing in hospitality projects. There he worked on designing everything from restaurant-staff uniforms to custom furniture, a holistic approach he took with him when he moved back to Hong Kong in 2009.

Chow founded his firm two years later, working on prominent restaurant and bar projects, including his breakthrough design for Foxglove, a slick speakeasy behind a 19th-century umbrella shop in downtown Hong Kong. “I like to think of my designs as stage sets that engage with emotional experience,” Chow says. “Architects like to look down on interior designers, and interior designers like to look down on people who work at a smaller scale than they do. But I think really everything, every detail, is equally important.”

That meticulous, experiential ethos made Chow the perfect designer to head up New World Development’s Timber House project. “I’m always looking for avant-garde ways to help strengthen the important relationship between society and our planet,” says CEO and executive vice chairman Adrian Cheng, the driving force behind the complex. “It’s very important to us that we make an impact with each property we produce, and I believe Timber House does this in a fun and creative new way.” Backing onto Ho Man Tin hill, a sliver of greenery that has made its eponymous neighborhood one of the city’s most sought-after residential districts, Timber House generates wonder and surprise precisely by restoring the connection between people and nature otherwise lost in the teeming metropolis. Comprising 240 apartments ranging in size from 222 to 526 square feet, the building is conceived principally for young families who move to the area for its top-notch schools.

The tree house, which floats in a three-story cutout at the building’s entrance, is just the first suggestion of the witty, mysterious, kid-friendly world inside. Powder-coated corrugated steel doors with brass handles and fluted glass panels are a portal between the sun-blasted concrete maze of the neighborhood and the lobby—a cool, forest lodge of a space, its walls painted deep olive—centered on a custom blackened-steel reception desk that resembles a woodburning stove, complete with smokestack. Each of the two elevators across the lobby has a backlit blackened-steel ladder running up its rear wall; reflected in the cab’s mirror ceiling, the rungs appear to offer infinite ascent toward an unseen destination. “We like to create a sense of whimsy wherever we can,” Chow says, “especially in this project, which is really for kids.”

Communal amenities span the second floor. A lounge, dining area, and kitchen occupy a terraced corner space overlooking the adjacent forested hillside—a shock of green that’s echoed in the pine lacquer finish on the custom kitchen cabinetry. A third of the floor is dedicated to a play area that includes a cluster of suspended cabins similar to the one down on the street. The little structures, which float above a ball pit, padded activity zone, and reading nook, are connected by tubes, like a miniature cloud-borne city built for and governed by children.

That singular combination of sophistication and play continues into the residential quarters on the higher floors. At the entrance to each unit, brass fixtures Chow calls “curiosity lights” use magnifying glasses to highlight apartment numbers. Inside, hand-picked finishes, from back painted–glass kitchen backsplashes to custom brass hardware, lend a sense of understated luxury, while a carefully chosen palette of pale grays, deep greens, and black is a far cry from the harsh, blank white of many residential-development interiors.

Black and gray ceramic tile clads the building’s facade, which is dotted with lushly planted balconies that provide privacy for city-facing apartments. The verdure extends to a rooftop garden-farm that commands impressive views of Hong Kong’s jagged skyline and gives clear outward expression to the developer’s commitment to sustainability. “Every city is addressing the idea of sustainability in its own way,” Chow notes, “so bringing greenery into a building, that’s not just happening in Hong Kong. But in a place this built-up, every inch counts.”

So, too, does every door handle, every surface, every point of connection between spaces and people—all the details that, taken together, make Chow’s work so engaging. Ultimately, Timber House suggests precisely what the designer hoped: If you can live in a cabin in the heart of Hong Kong, then maybe anything truly is possible.

NC Design & Architecture: john liu; rain ho; rafael pardo; jasmine kong; eddie wong

agc design: building architect

adrian l norman: land­scaping consultant

spectrum design & associates (asia): lighting consultant

hip seng builders: General Contractor

kettal: sofa, table, ottomans, cushions (terrace)

pierre frey: curtain fabric (play area, lounge)

koziel: wallpaper

Hay: chairs (dining area)

kvadrat: sofa fabric (lounge)

kohler co.: toilet, sink, sink fittings (bathroom)

ceramica vogue: tile

dulux: paint

Jorge Pérez’s Private Collection on Display at One Park Grove in Miami by OMA and Meyer Davis

“Let’s build sculpture.” That’s how Will Meyer, principal of Meyer Davis, recalls the design team of One Park Grove—the last of three towers to be built in a Coconut Grove, Miami, waterfront residential complex—being rallied by Jorge Pérez, chairman of Related Group, which co-developed the project with Terra Group. “Jorge didn’t say, ‘Let’s build a box and decorate it,’” Meyer notes. “It’s a totally different approach to design.”

Pérez, one of Miami’s preeminent art collectors (his name graces the Pérez Art Museum Miami by Herzog & de Meuron) assembled an all-star lineup to bring One Park Grove to life. OMA, led by partner Shohei Shigematsu, envisioned the tower’s undulating architecture of exterior concrete columns that swell and contract like the trunks of royal palm trees. Studio Sofield designed the understated kitchens and bathrooms in the residences.

Landscape architect Enzo Enea laid out the parklike grounds, which cover 5 acres and include an outdoor amphitheater, a ribbon of swimming pools, and a sculpture park. And celebrity event planner Colin Cowie programmed services and experiences from music playlists to poolside towel and sunscreen selections.

Meyer Davis’s charge was designing the tower’s lobby, amenity spaces (more than 50,000 square feet of them, including a screening room, spa, and wine room), and other public areas, incorporating artwork from Pérez’s extensive private collection. “There are a lot of branded towers in Miami, but this one has a real personality,” co-principal Gray Davis says. “It touches on all the sensory points that make an enjoyable experience and give the project a real soul.”

Meyer Davis senior project manager Sonya Cheng calls One Park Grove’s interiors “bohemia on the bay.” That’s a reference to Coconut Grove’s long history—it’s the city’s oldest neighborhood—and reputation as Miami’s free-spirited artistic and intellectual hub. Onetime abode of John Singer Sargent, Tennesse Williams, and Joni Mitchell, the Grove, as it’s known, is home to the city’s top private schools and the former Coconut Grove Playhouse. The neighborhood also happens to be one of the city’s leafiest, with a dense tree canopy that stretches to the shores of Biscayne Bay. “I thought we should provide something of the essence of Coconut Grove, immersed in nature and maximizing exposure to light and air,” Shigematsu says of the 23-story tower’s 68 residences, which he likens to “stacked villas.”

Shigematsu cites another influence on OMA’s architecture: Christo and Jeanne-Claude’s 1983 Surrounded Islands, where they wrapped an archipelago of tiny islets in nearby Biscayne Bay in sheets of hot-pink polypropylene. Cheng also mentions the installation as influencing how the lobby interiors negotiate the tower’s unique peanut-shape footprint—pinched at the center with two elevator cores—and multiple grade changes. Similar to the way the islands were encircled with concentric bands of pink fabric, the designers layered ribbons of stone flooring that radiate outward from the core. “Where all those lines converge and intersect, we created ‘islands’ of seating groups,” Cheng explains. Patterned rugs ground those sitting areas—Meyer describes them as “moments of serenity, the residual between waves”—as they float between the core and the lobby’s curved glass exterior. The language of undulating forms continues vertically, with core walls clad in slats of white oak and others hosting a palisade of backlit white panels. “It’s not a traditional layout—it’s organic and really out there,” Meyer acknowledges. “It was hard to describe to people who weren’t on the team exactly what we were doing. It’s really a new language with its own logic, rules, and geometry, but it creates its own sense of space.”

Positioning large sculptures from Pérez’s collection also directed Meyer, Davis, and Cheng’s choreography of the lobby’s interior. At times, circulation took a backseat to art placement, in which Pérez played an enthusiastically active role. “Sometimes, we’d pick a spot and Jorge would say, ‘No, this piece works better over there,’” Cheng recalls. Sometimes the team accompanied Pérez to his private storage facility to preview artworks, other times to the art museum in downtown Miami. “We turned the typical design process upside down to achieve a different result,” Meyer notes.

An early recommendation was South African artist Ledelle Moe’s ensemble work Memorial Collapse, a trio of monumental heads, laid on their sides, with rebar emerging through the concrete. “When Jorge suggested those, our response was a resounding ‘Hell, yeah!’” Meyer recalls. “He gets really excited about art. When he sees the direction a designer or architect is going in, he wants them to take it as far as they can. If you lean in on his spirit, you get results.”

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Other works populating One Park Grove’s public spaces run a gamut of styles and media. Outside in the gardens, Jaume Plensa’s The Poets in Bordeaux (Body Soul God, Country, Water Fire), which comprises three 35-foot poles topped by illuminated resin busts, changes appearance as the lights cycle through different colors. Interior amenity spaces feature more subtle works, including delicate vellum drawings by Miami-based artist Michele Oka Doner and a Richard Serra etching.

One Park Grove’s well-orchestrated blend of architecture, design, and art bears an ultimate stamp of approval: Earlier this year, Pérez, who has lived on the Coconut Grove waterfront for decades, decided to trade in his Venetian palazzo-style mansion for a penthouse at One Park Grove. He donated the $33 million proceeds from the sale of his house to The Miami Foundation.

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meyer davis: scott abrahams; matthew haseltine; cass nakashima; nils sanderson; daeho lee; matthew edgardo davis; jeremy kim; gonzalo lopez; pantea tehrani; sumit sahdev; jun shimada; andrew mack; miguel darcy; betty fan; carly dean; ahmadreza schricker; britt johnson; shida salehi-esmati; jackie woon bae; ian watchorn; filippo nanni; esin erez; luke willis: oma. mei lau; drew tucker; marianne mordhorst

arquitectonica: architect of record.

arredoluce; enea garden design; plant the future: landscaping consultant

south dade lighting: lighting consultant

desimone consulting engineers: structural engineer

feller engineering: mep

vsn engineering: civil engineer

allegheny millwork; miles of wood: woodwork

excellence in stone: stonework

american upholstery: custom upholstered-goods workshop.

moriarty: general contractor

stripe vintage modern: blue armchairs (lobby)

Stellar Works: nesting tables

f&r general interiors: custom console (lobby), table (wine room)

apparatus studio: pendant fixtures (reception)

steel monkey dream shop: custom shelving (reception, lobby)

gabriel scott: pendant fixtures (lobby)

tacchini: round side tables

liaigre: floor lamp

the future perfect: modular coffee tables

phillips collection: side table

bec brittain: pendant fixture

harbour: sofa, chairs, coffee table (cabana)

marset: floor lamp

metalarte: table lamp

berhardt design: console (spa), pendant fixture (playroom)

usona: chaise longues (spa)

hbf textiles: wallcovering (screening room)

ludwig & larsen: sconces

sacco carpet: custom carpet

kravet: chair fabric

jab anstoetz: pillow fabric

opuzen: drapery fabric

tri-kes: custom wallcovering (playroom)

tommy bahama: pillows

wine cellar innovations: custom lockers (wine room)

le lampade: ceiling fixture

tailor-made textiles: custom rugs

benjamin moore & co.; scuffmaster: paint