Construction is under way on SXSW Center, the new headquarters of South by Southwest, the Austin-based company that produces the annual SXSW music, film, and interactive festival. Designed by the architectural firm Pei Cobb Freed & Partners, the 13-story, 280,000-square-foot complex will consolidate the company’s various campuses and promote creative collaboration between SXSW and its partner organizations.

The new building’s distinctive serpentine form will frame an iconic view of Austin’s Capitol dome while embracing and preserving a grove of heritage live oaks. Curving away from the street, the glass-clad facade will shape a generous public plaza at the corner of Lavaca and 14th Streets, with rain gardens, seating, and pedestrian pathways. This open and inviting landscape will serve as an approach to the building entry and lobby, featuring a spacious café and flexible, informal coworking space. Other amenities include a green roof with covered patio, retail and dining on the ground floor, and a parking garage for 300 cars.

Lead designer Yvonne Szeto, a partner of Pei Cobb Freed & Partners, calls the project a unique challenge involving close collaboration with SXSW’s founders. “Their special vision led to a transformation of the typical office building paradigm,” she says. “The lobby was reimagined not as a traditional circulation space but as a relaxed and welcoming living room that fosters interaction between tenants as well as with the neighboring community.” Incorporating ideas from contemporary hospitality architecture, the design represents a new office typology responsive to the needs of the labor force of the digital age.

Data Sheet

SXSW Center

Site
1400 Lavaca Street, in downtown Austin

Use
Mixed-use office building; South by Southwest headquarters with investment office space

Area
gross area: 280,000 ft² / 26,000 m²
office and retail: 145,000 ft² / 13,500 m²
parking garage: 135,000 ft² / 12,500 m²

Sustainability

Designed for LEED Gold and Austin Energy Green Building Program 2-Star Rating

Status
Construction began: November 2017
Projected completion: 2019

Client
CZ Properties

Lead Designer
Yvonne Szeto of Pei Cobb Freed & Partners

Project Team
Architect: Pei Cobb Freed & Partners
Landscape Architect: dwg.
Architect of Record: Gensler
Sustainability Consultant: Center for Maximum Potential Building Systems

Renderings
Pei Cobb Freed & Partners
CZ Properties

About Pei Cobb Freed & Partners

With projects in progress in North America, Europe, the Middle East, Asia, and Australia, Pei Cobb Freed & Partners is a leader in architectural design and sustainability. Across six decades of exceptionally diverse practice, the firm has completed building and planning projects in more than 100 cities around the world. Based in New York, the firm’s eight partners and approximately 80 colleagues approach each project on its own terms, drawing inspiration less from formal or theoretical preconceptions than from particularities of place and program. Consistently recognized for excellence in design, the firm’s projects have received more than 250 major awards, including 24 AIA Institute Honor Awards and three AIA Twenty-five Year Awards.