Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat Comes to Texas

Q&A with Irma Reiner

Why tall buildings?

Tall buildings facilitate thoughtful, purposeful urban density which provides the opportunity for more sustainable, healthier cities. CTBUH believes there a vital relationship between urban habitats — including buildings, public spaces, and infrastructure — policy, and people. As populations grow and the effects of climate change increase, the need for sustainable, resilient design will become greater. There is also the fact that as city populations grow, the most efficient, sustainable designs are those that go vertical. Consequently, that city center real estate becomes more valuable and building upward isn’t just about sustainability but also makes better business sense.

In a more everyday sense, there are a lot of attractors to high-rise buildings. We’ve all been fascinated by them since the early ages – this idea of reaching for the heights. If you think about the Empire State Building, which had been the world’s tallest building for fifty years, it’s still something we hear about today. For me, I began my career as a technical architect then went in to project management. Now as a specifier and quality control expert, I am able to bring thought leadership on best practices that help shape commercial and multifamily high-rise projects.  

CTBUH is an organization that focuses on “the future of cities.” What does that look like on a practical level for members?

For members, it’s completely about learning from each other and supporting each other: the more case studies that you are exposed to, the better equipped you are when you are doing your own work. When I attended the CTBUH Regional Conference in Miami, an architect and developer team showcased their latest project, a luxury, 80-story multifamily development on an island. They wanted to talk through the challenges they had to make it a buildable site — demolishing the existing building, turning the rubble into shoring, and so on. They discussed solutions that were considered, the thought process, and what was ultimately selected. By articulating the thought process of the everyday issues we face in designing and building tall buildings, the challenge is appreciated and we can all learn from it.

At Corgan, we share our challenges and solutions, saying, “We worked through this problem with the city and owner – here are the solutions we looked, here’s the rationale behind those options, and here’s what worked in the end.”

So, the idea is that the future of our cities is a collaborative process, and that it is everyone's concern.

The council was founded more than five decades ago and has chapters across the globe. What made Texas a good candidate for its newest chapter?

Historically, we’ve seen Texas as a generally flat, very large, open land state with almost limitless resources; however, that perspective is becoming obsolete. Changes in resources and energy have shifted the paradigm. As a chapter, our goal is to explore the next generation of vertical urbanism by sharing sustainable solutions, emerging trends in AEC, and the unique culmination of culture and climate in Texas. The speed of growth in our state is pretty phenomenal, and we are excited to get Texas on the CTBUH map. In particular, Austin at this moment is the center of a lot of discussions about development and urban habitats. The next CTBUH Americas Regional Conference will be in Austin, partly because of the new chapter, but largely because all eyes are on Austin in terms of innovation, development, and technology.

The key challenge is that the city’s infrastructure has to find new ways to keep up with the population growth. One piece of the puzzle is Austin’s water use: since it sits on an aquifer with no new sources of water, the city has implemented code changes that require large developments and buildings to use a certain amount of graywater. Water insecurity is something that is becoming more prevalent, especially in the western United States, so lessons learned in Austin will be useful to other cities around the country. Dallas faces a different challenge: commerce is growing, but in a city known for its sprawl, CTBUH hopes to change the mentality from “why not build out since we have room” to “how can we be more mindful with our limited resources.” Shifting that mindset will require finding solutions that are innovative and work for our city, geography, and people.  

As co-chair, you are representing Dallas – what do you hope CTBUH is able to achieve in Dallas? What about Houston and Austin?

Our goal is to increase our membership and interest so that the Texas chapter is able to break into separate chapters for Austin, Dallas and Houston. To get there, our first focus will be leaning on each other for growth. We can recognize our uniqueness but work together and learn from the markets in each city. For example, Dallas’s downtown is growing in two intersecting ways: there are commercial developments like Parkside Tower, 23Springs, and Harwood 14 and 15 that are brand new, loaded with amenities, and are leasing very well — Dallas is still a business-friendly city that draws in corporations. But we are also seeing more vacancies in older office stock, leading to an increased interest in converting those offices to residential buildings. The CTBUH network gives us the opportunity to learn from not just other Texas cities but cities around globe as we navigate these changes.

It's also important for us to help position our future leaders by getting younger architects involved in the organization. We want to bring people up within the board and advisory groups. Having a CTBUH chapter means having the opportunity to get universities involved and getting women and minorities involved early on in their careers.

Looking at the timeline of Dallas’s tall buildings, there was a heavy concentration of building taller in the 1980s — more so than in recent years. Does CTBUH aim to change that trajectory?

There is more to it than simply changing the trajectory of the number of tall buildings being built. It’s about quality of life. That’s why the organization includes “urban habitat” — a lot of members focus on quality of life in a city. It’s not just about the density that tall buildings facilitate; we want to make sure the buildings are also sensitive to what’s happening in the broader environment.

Recently, we are seeing lots of buildings with urban gardens and other spaces, like building lobbies, that are made open to the public. Everything in the commercial high-rise space used to be private, private, private. Now, we are looking at how we can change that to make it an urban habitat that works for everybody — there is an ongoing trend for indoor and outdoor spaces, at all levels, to be more seamlessly connected, whether it is the roof of a parking garage, a terrace, or a ground-level park. The Sky Garden in London is a great example of a building that took a formerly private space, opened it up to the public. Here in Dallas, the Klyde Warren Park stitched together disparate neighborhoods that were formerly severed by the highways and really enhanced connectivity and quality of life for people living and working in that area. The CTBUH network is helpful because we have people that really care about what’s going on in other cities, seeing what works for those cites, and learning what might work in their region. It provides those key resources and connects people to make better cities of the future.