Austin City Hall
Austin City Hall is an Antoine Predock design that features more than 58,000 square feet of Lueders roughback and copper and more than 1,450 tons of veneer limestone. In addition, the landscape surrounding the building includes more than 1,100 tons of Lueders quarry blocks used to promote Austin’s goal to keep the building a casual, welcoming and friendly gathering place. The 450 ton water terraces that spill out of the building into the plaza are made of Lueders quarry ledge. In addition, The Silicon Lab building, which flanks Austin City Hall, includes more than 70,000 cubic feet of Lueders roughback with load bearing, self supporting walls.
The limestone-clad Austin City Hall and public plaza in Austin, TX, opened to the public in the Fall of 2003 as a reflection of the warm informality that characterizes the town.
The winter of 2004 marked the end of a three-phased renovation for the new Austin City Hall and public plaza in Austin, TX. The 118,000-square-foot building encompasses a 750-car parking garage as well as a public plaza featuring Lueders limestone supplied by Mezger Enterprises Ltd. of Lampasas, TX.
According to Wayne Harbin, sales manager for Mezger Enterprises, over 31,300 cubic feet of Lueders limestone was used for the project. Of this amount, 48,000 square feet is a natural finish Lueders Roughback limestone used as a veneer on the exterior and interior of the building. The architectural cut stone portions of the building are comprised of a combination of Buff and Antique Lueders limestone. Harbin added that over 1,180 tons of stone and boulders were used for landscape features as well.
Every piece of stone on the building was drawn and detailed by Mezger Enterprises’ drafting department, approved by the architect, and then each piece was custom cut and finished, according to Harbin. “The design architect’s primary goal from the beginning was to maintain a 12-inch-thick ‘cubic’ design for the wall thickness,” he said. “In areas where this cubic design was not possible because of construction constraints, all corners and returns were cut as 1-foot-thick ‘L’-[shaped] corners, in order to maintain the architect’s intent through-out the building.
“There are very few 90-degree [angles] or square corners,” continued Harbin. “Every door and window opening had a specific angled return, most of which were compound angles or acute angles. Each of these pieces had to be cut precisely as solid one-piece returns, while maintaining the natural face finish.” Because of the large scope of the project, some obstacles were faced regarding the stonework. “There were many challenges trying to coordinate such a large volume of stone onto [an area the size of] one city block, in the middle of the busy state capital city,” said Harbin. “Both the design architect, as well as the landscape architect, made multiple trips to Mezger’s quarries, hand selecting blocks of stone to be used in specific areas of the project.”
Fehlau said that the most difficult part of the project was trying to make the stone look like it was not a veneer. In the end, though, he said that an exceptional job was done to achieve the desired look. “Mezger Enterprises made some very convincing quoins at strange angles,” he said.
