Tate at Tanglewood, Silver Award, Multifamily

Tate at Tanglewood

Houston

Entrant/Architect: Looney Ricks Kiss

Builder: Stanford Construction

Interior Designer: RD Jones & Associates

Developer: ZOM Development

Photographer: Whitney Cox Photography

Size: 431 Units

Hard cost, excluding land: $63/sf

Completion: February 2017

Just west of downtown Houston, the neighborhood is older, mixed-use, low-density, and undervalued, says Tom Gorney of Looney Ricks Kiss (LRK). With Tate at Tanglewood, a community of studio and one-, two-, and three-bedroom rentals, LRK helped Greg West of ZOM Development realize his vision of creating a residential feel with a fairly large building. “We wanted this to fit the scale of this residential area,” Gorney says. To that end, LRK broke up building elevations into smaller components.

There were two big challenges: the site itself, which had poor soil conditions for a building of this size, and finding labor. The project took a bit longer than expected, but Gorney says, “We got to the finish line, and it’s been really well received. This is a positive place that people want to live in, not just for its location but also because of the unique building and high-quality finishes and amenities. It’s leading the local market as far as offerings.”

The judges agreed, recognizing that “this project worked super hard at its community spaces, creating a sense of place.” They thought the loft plan was a nice feature and that the “unit kitchens rival the best compact residential kitchens.”