Larry Speck

The Chickasaw Nation Medical Center connects with nature to provide a nurturing healthcare environment for Native Americans living in southeastern Oklahoma. The architecture maximizes access and views to the pristine, 230-acre site while inviting daylight into the buildings. Patient units are directly oriented to the creek and trees, with traditional hospital "front" and "back" elements tucked…

The FBI's recently opened 275,000-square-foot field office integrates concerns for security, sustainability, and appropriate image into a thoroughly synthesized design solution. A lightweight metal frame is hung from powerful concrete walls to carry a “second skin” for the building. Heavily fritted, laminated glass attaches to the lightweight frame with stainless steel clips. The almost opaque…

Site characteristics and the desire to create an unusual merger of landscape and living drive the design of Waterstone, a collection of 71 condominiums on Lake Travis.  Replacing a subdivision originally planned for low-density, single-family homes, the development inhabits the landscape with minimum intrusiveness while offering the privacy and convenience of single-family homes.  The structures…

Master planning East Avenue, a 23-acre, mixed-use development, involved more than 80 meetings with stakeholders over the course of a year. The site, an ideal location for increasing density near Austin’s urban core, became available when a small college relocated. The East Avenue community will re-inhabit the site with moderate-income rental housing, condominiums, retail, medical offices, a…

Discovery Green returns 12 acres of mostly paved lots to a natural green space in the heart of downtown Houston. A core of outdoor activity near the convention center, ballpark and arena, the park also provides a central focus for new development. Larry Speck led the design of the park's architecture, creating a model of sustainability. Two restaurants and a park administration building feature…

The Grove is set prominently within Discovery Green park, Houston's new 12-acre urban oasis.  The restaurant architecture takes inspiration from a magnificent, double row of live oak trees that have long inhabited the site.  Indoor and outdoor dining spaces are strung long and thin, just to the south of the oak alley.  Each room has a slightly different vista into the tree canopy, through huge…

AMLI's first urban high-rise is a vital force in downtown Austin's rapidly developing 2nd Street Retail District. The 18-story, three-star-green building integrates 17 floors of apartments, 35,000 square feet of ground level retail, a spacious amenity deck and 4 1/2 levels of above-ground parking. The building image is contemporary, clean, and responsive to its urban context. Anodized aluminum…

The Alpine Federal Courthouse is a simple, solid response to the extraordinary qualities of the local Texas landscape, the West Texas climate and the specific mission of its occupants. The powerful Trans-Pecos terrain dominates the experience of this locale. The building's materials―primarily russet-colored, dry-stacked West Texas sandstone―link the building to the larger landscape as well as…

The expansion of the Christ Church Cathedral campus solidifies the congregation’s vision as the “church for downtown” while responding to its neighborhood. Four diverse program elements are carefully arranged on a full city block adjacent to the historic sanctuary. Central offices for the the Bishop and Diocese occupy an elegant, glass, two-story building enclosed in wood trellises. A…

Trinity Episcopal School, a K-6 school, occupies a heavily wooded site in a densely developed, Austin commercial district.  The master plan clusters individual buildings around a well-defined mall and plaza lined by two-story colonnades, allowing much of the beautiful site to remain a nature preserve.  Building B, the first construction under the master plan, initiates the colonnade and anchors…

The expansion of Seton Medical Center creates a new “front door” image for a dated 1970s hospital, adding a day surgery, entry and chapel. Glass and light provide a sense of precision and technological sophistication alongside a certain softness and elusiveness--appropriate for a building where modern medicine deals with both scientific exactness and human frailty. A long volume faced with…

Positioned at the entry to the OSU campus, next to the university's most historic building, the new Alumni Center provides a welcoming hub for visiting alumni.  While the brick exterior makes the building a good neighbor at the heart of a cohesive, red-brick campus, appropriate massing and scale help create a genuine sense of place.  Broad arcades add a unique and active feature to the campus…

The House on Turtle Creek is a thorough renovation and addition to 1970s house originally designed by noted Dallas architect Bud Oglesby. The project became a kind of collaboration with Bud via the bones that he left for the house. Both ends of the structure, which were severely deteriorated, were removed; the house now opens up to extraordinary views of Turtle Creek and the Dallas Country Club.…

Austin City Lofts is an 82-unit, 14-story tower anchoring a new mixed-use district in the southwest quadrant of downtown Austin. Along busy 5th Street, a three-story horizontal stone volume houses the entry lobby, deep stacked porches and a modest retail strip off a shady arcade. Parking for 150 vehicles is tucked behind and below. A generous outdoor living area, including garden, pool and…

The twin CSC buildings on Lady Bird Lake in downtown Austin occupy a critical site in the revitalization of the city’s core. They emphasize the longstanding role of office buildings as “fabric” in the urban environment and draw their architectural character from urban design goals. The buildings each encompass 350,000 square feet, creating an appropriately scaled edge to the lake and parkland,…

Two new signature pediatric facilities in Texas' Rio Grande Valley reinforce the Driscoll Children's Hospital brand while embracing the culture of their communities.  Each features a colorful, porch element that is easy to identify and open to the street.  The main circulation system extends the inviting facade with waiting areas and playscapes for children.    Clinical zones are organized in…

In the Austin Convention Center's 400,000-square-foot expansion, reception halls, meeting rooms, pre-function spaces and circulation towers are expressed as individual elements joined by entries, porches and terraces. The design creates an appropriate scale along pedestrian-oriented street, with larger volumes of the exhibition halls and ballrooms tucked behind. The various concourses culminate…

Located in the shadows of the Texas State Capitol building in central Austin, the Robert E. Johnson Legislative Office Building stands as a symbol of contemporary state government and the agencies that inhabit it.  The design creates a dignified but accessible place, emblematic of open, participatory government and welcoming to constituents and the general public. Conceived as a sustainability…

Local materials and iconography, a sense of openness, and a relaxed, informal character embrace Austin’s unique culture and heritage at the Barbara Jordan Passenger Terminal. The crescent-shaped terminal organization is simple and direct, providing easy orientation and minimal walking distance from curbside to gate. The plan maximizes visibility for concessions by creating a large central…

Positioned on a high ridge with commanding views of a lake, mature live oaks and the rounded peak of Chalk Mountain, Rough Creek Lodge is the focus of an 11,000-acre ranch in the Texas Hill Country. The buildings sit long and low, hugging the contours of the hill and nestling into existing trees to form a continuous mass of natural and manmade forms that rim the brow of the promontory. Public…

Poor soil conditions on a spectacular site required a heroic foundation with few drilled piers and deep foundation beams.  This, combined with the steep slope, gorgeous views, and abundant existing trees, dictated a long, thin rectangular footprint and a simple concrete volume to span between the piers.  All of the major rooms, which look out to the trees or above them to downtown Austin, are…