Katy Ranch Crossing is the first phase of a two-building office development located west of downtown Houston. This six-story, load-bearing tilt-up office building was constructed with a lower four-story panel and a two-story panel stacked on top, with a total height of 92 feet.
The 158,000-square-foot office is vertical in its proportions, which differentiates it from many tilt-up projects. To camouflage the regularity of the 25-foot panel joint at the building’s prominent northwest corner, the bottom four-story panel uses a jogged panel leg at the first two floors. To further reinforce this prominent northwest corner, cut limestone was applied to these panels and a metal eyebrow feature protrudes from the face of the panels, wraps the corner, and terminates at the six-story curtain wall entry feature. A ribbed finish, large amounts of glass at the corners and entryway, and sunshade elements add to the architectural appeal of this Class A office building. The interior finish is highlighted by a two-story clerestory and cantilevered second floor with glass railing.
Adjacent to the office building is a five-story precast concrete parking structure designed with more than 800 parking spaces. The team designed the foundations and prepared the performance specifications for the plant-cast precast as a design-build system. The garage is designed to expand in plan to accommodate the tenants of the future building.
At the 2016 Tilt-Up Achievement Awards, the Tilt-Up Concrete Association named Katy Ranch Crossing an Excellence in Achievement winner—that is, a project that scored highest in architectural and engineering creativity and construction ingenuity.