Austin Community College Highland Graphics/Signage/Sculpture

Location: Highland, TX

Architects: BGK Architects

Branding: Perkins & Will

Photography: Austin Community College

Project Description: Phase II of the Highland redevelopment comprises of more than 415,000 square feet. The design concept puts the community college on display, highlighting the departments that will benefit most from public foot traffic. These include the Culinary Department Restaurant, the Multi-media Art Gallery, a 150-seat Black Box Theater, a Music Performance Hall and a Dance Performance Studio. To tie this experience together and make these amenities as accessible as possible, the building has been “opened up” to the sky by removing exterior walls and a roof that had enclosed the mall in its previous life.

Austin Community College Highland Phase 2 is a collaborative effort between Perkins+Will and BGK Architects. My role was to integrate ACC’s new Riverbat brand identity into the entry ‘Paseo’, in addition to telling the history of land. The solution, in part, was to feature large ACC dimensional letters into an existing seat wall, in addition to articulating the Riverbat into the existing grid canopy above.

The History Wall reflects the story of a historically African American Baptist congregation that purchased 306 acres of land to establish an orphan home and school in 1909. During the Great Depression, the school began to decline and eventually closed in 1942. The land was sold to developers and became the Highland Mall in 1971. ACC purchased the property in 2011.