Immix Mountains
Craig Babe Studio_605_Fall 02009 Texas A&M University College of Architecture
Immix Mountains/College Station, Texas
introduction/Academic sustainable urbanism studio project which involved the entire studio collaborating to plan an urban center near Texas A&M University and existing urban infrastructure. Once the plan was devised, each student took a site within the plan and developed a mixed use urban building. Immix Mountians combines retail, office, residential, public library, and park into one sustainable urban block.
title/im•mix: a blend, mix together of different elements
program/The urban context of the site, as well as the variety of programs called for a very sensitive evaluation of the building’s organization. A distinction was made between fixed and fluid elements. Parking, retail, public library, and services were positioned at or below grade in order to have a direct connection to the street and promote urban life at the ground level. The fixed elements conform to the site and provide a base on which the more fluid and changeable programmatic elements can rest. The fluid elements have greater need for daylighting, open space, and views, and thus have been positioned above street level.
mountains/The retail, parking, and library that form the fixed base on which the residences and offices sit form a continuous façade along the street. Above the street, however, there is a shift in materiality and form. Rising up in two towers (or mountains) the residential and office spaces create a rooftop park in the void (or valley) between them. The towers are of a modular design that allows each floor to be slightly different from the one above or below it. Each unit is a 15’x15’ module with 10’ ceiling heights and the ability to convert its roof into a garden (where appropriate according to the plan and needs of the user. The office tower is eight floors of typical open floor office space, however, each floor is of different size and shape. Every floor has varying distances from corridor to window, allowing both large and small businesses to occupy the same floor, providing interaction between users that would not normally take place, as well as meeting the unique needs of college station and the site’s proximity to Texas A&M University.
Residences were designed to attract and accommodate families of varying sizes and needs. 49 residences make up the residential tower, each one being unique in plan. The parameters that organized the design of the apartments were: Every residence must have a terrace or courtyard with the capability of becoming a garden, every residence must have between two and four bedrooms, every residence must attach to a corridor and 450 ft2 of exterior wall. Residences with direct access to the rooftop park (or valley) tended to be three and four bedroom apartments, and every apartment positioned itself to have a unique view overlooking the valley, campus, plaza, or streetscape.
valley/In between the mountains is a valley. This valley is a park with a very unique setting. Direct connection to the library below and the residential and office towers bring a public feel to the park. Children from the residences can run and play while their parents look on from above, or an office worker or librarian can have lunch in the park. The valley maintains a since of security by surrounding itself with buildings of multiple uses, just like a city street.
negative/Careful attention was paid to how the various programmatic elements interacted, joined, and shifted each other. These interactions created an opportunity to carve out interconnecting voids of space. Instances where the towers reach down through the library and retail to connect with the street are utilized to open up space between the offices and the library, bringing natural light deeper into the library. Above this open space is a six storey high void that cuts into the middle of the office tower to allow light to penetrate into the interior offices as well as create a courtyard like space inside the mountain that also connects to the exterior terraces.
sustainability/From the very beginning the studio focused on creating and cultivating an urban vitality within this new center, replacing a dead strip mall and connecting the streets to form a grid. Immix Mountains is located directly across the street from Texas A&M University and already has very high pedestrian and bicycle commuters. Immix promotes the urban life by combining uses, and providing street-level retail of varying sizes according to the character of the street it supports.
Immix also encourages sustainability by providing large amounts of both public and private green space. The office space is easily convertible to residential space, and vice versa, allowing for changeability over time to meet the needs of the future. The modular design of the mountains also lends itself to future convertibility, deconstruction, and recycling of parts.
