The Mirabeau B. condos in Hyde Park take a lot from the city: The sales center, for example, comprised a pair of recycled shipping containers that were powered by the sun. And now atop the building at 2410 Waugh a photovoltaic canopy is hoarding juice for each of the 14 units; cisterns are stealing rainwater that’s then used on the landscaping and rooftop greenery. Even the development’s moniker has been plagiarized. And so it makes a lot of sense that one of the building’s interior features is inspired by something just as local: a transformer box and a snarl of wires. Houston artist Randy Twaddle, for whom power lines have become something of a muse, installed 65 of these gypsum cement tiles in a 7 ft. by 25 ft. wall at the building’s entrance inside its parking garage. Each 40-pound tile, fabricated by Dallas firm Topocast at a lab at UT Arlington, features a 3D reproduction of one of the particularly twisted scenes that Twaddle can’t seem to help noticing.
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Developer Joey Romano says that the Rhode Partners-designed building at Hyde Park and 2410 Waugh, just up the street from Blacksmith, was completed in the fall, and the 14 condos have been all leased up since April. So you can’t live here — at least not for now — but you can see how it turned out:
- Mirabeau B. at Hyde Park [Harvest Moon Development]
- Mirabeau B. [Topocast Lab]
- An interest in the overlooked [Randy Twaddle]
- Twaddle and Topocast Make Houston Textural [A/N Blog]
- Randy Twaddle finds beauty where most would just see power lines [Houston Chronicle ($)]
- Previously on Swamplot: Mirabeau B. Condos in Montrose Don’t Owe Anything to Anybody, Solar-Powered Shipping Containers Flee; It’s Apartments for the Mirabeau B., The Solar Powered Shipping Container Sales Center for the Mirabeau B., Cisterns and Balcony Bikes: What You’ll See at the Mirabeau B.
Photos: Paul Hester and Joey Romano