The Houston Endowment headquarters has been thoughtfully designed to be the center of a network, equally a meeting place for members of the community and for the distribution of resources and expertise back to the community at large. The headquarters was imagined to have an anchoring quality in a transient city, a measure against the significant urban transformation that has followed the restoration of the Buffalo Bayou and the surrounding neighborhood.

The nearly 32,000-square-foot, $21 million building serves as the Foundation’s first purpose-built headquarters. The organization’s relocation from an office tower in Downtown Houston to an engaging, sustainable, and accessible new headquarters in Spotts Park reflects its on-the-ground ethic as a vital source of support and collaboration within the city. The building provides the Foundation with a new way of working with its partners across the public, private, and nonprofit sectors and will support the mission of advancing equity of opportunity for the people of Greater Houston and enhancing the vibrancy of the region.

The challenge of the project addressed by kdA and the design team was to create a building that is simultaneously a front door and a back porch for the organization. The front door is the public representation of the Foundation, formal enough to greet institutional partners while remaining approachable for any member of the community to feel welcome, with a strong sense of belonging for collaborators and first-time visitors alike.

The building’s signature design element is an airy, elegant superstructure generously shaded by a large canopy within a grove of oak trees. The design is strongly connected to the site and context: the landscape and history of Spotts Park on the banks of Houston’s Buffalo Bayou. The intricate lattice of the sculptural roof canopy offers a sense of shelter to both the organization and the local community, encouraging the use of outdoor terraces, maximizing use of daylight within the building, and minimizing solar gain. Interior spaces are conceived within public and private zones and are highly flexible, linked to the park through a series of exterior terraces, shaded by the canopy. The design promotes healthy working and offers welcoming engagement spaces that provide zones for convening and collaborating with the community. The dynamic setting of the new headquarters allows the Houston Endowment unprecedented engagement with its many partners.