Modernist Architecture: A Lasting Presence in Houston

With each passing year, more glass-and-steel skyscrapers glisten under the sun, while architects plan homes that meet ever-changing needs and city planners work to avoid problems from our past. Embracing modernism isn’t just liking modern style, whether it’s a flat-roofed home or softly curved sofas. It’s about that, yes, but so much more.

Houston is now full of gorgeous skyscrapers, humble but innovative office buildings, neighborhoods with parks that double as flood mitigation, places that package resilience into spaces where we can all play, and preservation projects that still look to the future. Here are 10 great examples across the city.

Munoz + Albin designed the multiuse Brava (left) in a slender silhouette and staggered balconies that make it appear to have a twisted shape. The building was placed diagonally on the site to improve views and natural light. Texas Tower (right), designed by Pelli Clarke & Partners, is a shining beacon of modernism in downtown Houston.

Image: Courtesy of Hines

Texas Tower and Brava

Not long ago, you could stand on top of just about any downtown building and see construction cranes in every direction. Two of those sites on Texas Avenue and Milam, former addresses of the Houston Chronicle and its kitty-corner parking lot, are now home to Texas Tower and Brava. They were overlapping construction projects for Hines, the Houston developer that has helped define our downtown skyline with nearly 30 buildings that date back to One Shell Plaza, which opened in 1971.

These two buildings are the grandest statement of Houston’s shift to modern architecture downtown. Unveiled in 2021, the glass-clad Texas Tower—T2, as Hines folks call it—was designed by Pelli Clarke & Partners and appears as a 47-story, sparkling high-luster diamond that sprang from the ground.

The 46-story Brava opened a year later, its twisting shape created by balconies staggered around a slender silhouette. The work of Houston-based Munoz + Albin Architecture & Planning, the tower made it clear that the bar had been raised in residential high-rise style.

This artist’s rendering shows the tiered gardens that will front the Ismaili Center at Allen Parkway and Montrose.

Image: Courtesy of Imara Houston Inc.

Ismaili Center Houston

When the Ismaili Center Houston opens later this year, it will be the most beautiful building in the city, boasting 10 acres of lush gardens that draw from 1,000 years of Islamic garden history. Renowned architect Farshid Moussavi—an Iranian-born Brit who teaches at Harvard University—and landscape architect Thomas Woltz, known for his work throughout Memorial Park, are the dream team behind the 11-acre project at Montrose Boulevard and Allen Parkway.

The project was funded by the Aga Khan Foundation and will serve as a “Jamatkhana,” or house of worship and prayer for Ismaili Muslims, but will also be a cultural center for all visitors. Moussavi’s striking building will be covered in soft, silvery-beige Turkish marble with glass that allows light to escape at night, like a beacon drawing us in.

“We’re taking ancient traditions from other parts of the world, translating them into the twenty-first century and using native Texas plants to create a unique hybrid,” Woltz says of his plans for the gardens. “There’s a large Ismaili group in Houston and this is their story: They are flourishing in Texas. That’s what we try to do with the gardens.”

Bronze and granite on the exterior of the Glenwood Cemetery visitor’s center tap into the language of the cemetery itself, says its architect, Dillon Kyle.

Image: Courtesy of Luker Photography

Glenwood Cemetery

Some might think of a cemetery as an unexpected place to find great architecture. When architect Dillon Kyle considered a new visitor’s center structure for the 144-year-old Glenwood Cemetery—his ancestors are buried there—he did not think about the small Victorian cottage that has housed the cemetery’s staff for years. Instead, he thought about what it should be right now. He used materials to represent what you see throughout the cemetery in its markers, gravestones, and familial tributes—the “language” of the cemetery. Its exterior is covered with sheets of bronze, large panels of glass, and granite columns.

“Glenwood Cemetery is a very special place, one of Houston’s hidden assets,” Kyle says.

The Houston Endowment moved from its longtime downtown office space to its own building in 2022. Architect Kevin Daly envisioned the building—spare in detail and using environmentally friendly materials—as part of the landscape of the nearby Buffalo Bayou.

Image: Iwan Baan, Courtesy of Houston Endowment

Houston Endowment

After years of leasing 16,000 square feet in the JPMorgan Chase Tower downtown, the Houston Endowment, which distributes $100 million annually to area nonprofits, decided to stop paying rent and become a property owner. Endowment CEO Ann Stern says her staff works differently today than it used to, needing more collaboration space and fewer private offices, a trend common in workplaces elsewhere.

Visually, the endowment’s new building is dramatically different from others in a city where traditional masonry, stone, and stucco dominate. Wrapped in curved panels of aluminum and topped with trellis fins, its aesthetic takes the shape of slender white egrets that take flight from the waters of the nearby Buffalo Bayou.

The $20 million building designed by Los Angeles–based Kevin Daly Architects and Mexico City–based Productura is modest in comparison to the endowment’s former address—Stern calls it “visible but not showy”—but is as playful as Spotts Park, the green space it overlooks.

Stern and her team also wanted to reduce the building’s carbon footprint, covering 80 percent of the roof with solar panels, installing a geothermal HVAC unit, and using cross-laminated timber beams and wood throughout.

Hermann Park recently unveiled the Commons, a state-of-the-art playground complete with a giant rocket ship.

Image: Anthony Rathbun

Parks

When Discovery Green opened in 2008, its immediate popularity signaled to planners and philanthropists that investing in parks was a smart move. Every great modern city must address the quality of life of its residents, including outdoor recreation that’s accessible to all.

Since then, Buffalo Bayou Partnership has worked to reach the East End and Fifth Ward with its Buffalo Bayou East project currently underway, Hermann Park finished its $52 million Commons project, and Memorial Park is nearing the end of its master plan that has revamped the entire urban park.

Nancy and Rich Kinder and their Kinder Foundation are major benefactors of local parks, from a $100 million catalyst gift for Buffalo Bayou East to a $4 million gift to Willow Waterhole, a green space that can hold 600 million gallons of water in future flooding events. Exploration Green in Clear Lake, a $43 million, 200-acre park carved from a defunct golf course, has man-made lakes that can hold 500 million gallons during heavy rains.

Trees for Houston opened a new building in Garden Oaks in 2022. Its environmentally friendly plan includes brick, ponderosa pine, a solar array, and a 6,000-gallon cistern.

Image: Courtesy of Aker Imaging

Trees for Houston

The new Trees for Houston headquarters tells passersby exactly what it is all about. Its slightly angled roof holds an array of solar panels that power the building, a 6,000-gallon cistern sits in the front yard by a major entrance gate, and modest materials of masonry and blackened pine all speak of environmental stewardship.

Some 40 years ago, three groups merged to form a stronger Trees for Houston with the simple plan to plant, promote, and care for trees. The largest regional tree planting group in North America, the organization has planted hundreds of thousands of trees throughout Greater Houston. In a climate that leans hot and humid much of the year, a strong canopy of trees provides shade and helps clean the air.

The nonprofit’s new, $9 million building was designed by Kirksey Architecture with the group’s humble beginnings and mission in mind, conscious that every dollar spent on the project was a donated dollar.

One of the hottest trends in real estate development is creating neighborhoods with an intentional sense of community. The Grand Prairie project aims to connect its residents through a shared love of nature.

Image: Courtesy of Ember Real Estate Investment & Development

The Grand Prairie

New housing developments are springing from the ground on every side of Houston, but Ember, developer of the Grand Prairie in Hockley, has taken a cue from one of the area’s worst weather events, Hurricane Harvey in 2017, for something dramatically different.

Everyone is concerned about better drainage and flood mitigation, and many neighborhoods are designed with small water features that amp up scenery around walking trails or at entrances. The Grand Prairie, though, with 1,700 acres to eventually support up to 6,000 homes, takes flood control to another level by partnering with Harris County Flood Control District to create a 70-acre lake that provides recreation for residents and visitors, and in the event of heavy rains would alleviate pressure on Cypress Creek. The district kicked in $10 million for their share of the lake.

Glossy arches and directional rings are just some of the street “jewelry” in the tony Galleria area.

Image: Courtesy of Uptown Houston

Uptown Houston

When Alexander Garvin, author, urban planner, and Yale professor published What Makes a Great City, it was no fluke that he devoted several pages to Houston’s Uptown and Galleria area, calling Post Oak Boulevard “one of the finest boulevards in the country.”

Some 50 years ago, that area was rural land with fields of crops and grazing cattle, but today it’s one of the most upscale shopping and dining areas in Houston. Residential and business towers boast “starchitect” credentials, too, from the likes of Philip Johnson, César Pelli, and I. M. Pei.

In the past couple of years, the Uptown Development Authority has replaced its silver directional rings with updated 40-foot versions, the final touch of a seven-year, $200 million project that rebuilt streets, created bus lanes, and widened sidewalks while adding the rings, arches, custom street lights, and even shelter benches that are part art, part architecture.

A nearly $10 million project restored the original 10,000 square feet of the Eldorado Ballroom in Third Ward which includes a 5,000-square-foot addition with an elevator and restrooms.

Image: Courtesy of Project Row Houses / Andrea Greer

Eldorado Ballroom

A conversation about installing an elevator for visitors to the second floor of the Eldorado Ballroom turned into a $9.7 million project that breathed new life into a building that was once a part of the bustling business scene in Houston’s Third Ward.

Built in 1939 by Black entrepreneurs Anna and Charles Dupree and designed in Modernist style by architect Lenard Gabert Sr., the Eldorado also created space for small businesses. Retail sales, a barber, and a tailor were among its early tenants, and the second floor was a social venue for Black people during segregation. Ballroom acts included Ray Charles, Etta James, James Brown, and Chuck Berry, and it launched careers for locals such as Milton Larkin and Jewel Brown, who later sang with Louis Armstrong’s band.

The Eldorado fell into decline in the 1960s and ’70s; eventually, the building was acquired by Project Row Houses. The restoration brought the building back to its original beauty and made first-floor space available for a restaurant, retail, and a nonprofit art gallery. Work included cleaning up damage from two fires and restoring a ribbon of second floor windows that were meant to convey the sleek style of an ocean liner.

The building’s 10,000 square feet got a full facelift and a 5,000-square-foot addition gave it the elevator long hoped for, plus meeting space, new restrooms, a green room and places for brides and grooms to get ready before weddings.

University of Houston Roy Gustav Cullen Memorial Building

No city can consider itself modern if it doesn’t understand and embrace its past. At the University of Houston, the restoration of the Roy G. Cullen building was an investment in both the origins of the university and the role of its early benefactors, the Hugh Roy Cullen family.

Arguably the most important art deco–style building in Houston, this structure was the first on campus, opening in 1939 with something no other American college campus had: air-conditioning.

Campus planners recently restored the building’s exterior, while renovating classrooms inside for twenty-first century learning. The Roy G. Cullen building was designed by architects Lamar Cato and Alfred Finn, who was one of Houston’s most prominent architects of the first half of the twentieth century and a proponent of art deco style, an early form of modernism.