Issue link: http://papercitymagazine.uberflip.com/i/1525828
The Birdsall Hotel and Residences, Auberge Resorts' First Foray into Houston The A u b e r g e R e s o r t s Collection is known for such high- flying hotels as the Auberge du Soleil in Napa; Hotel Jerome in Aspen; Commodore Perry in Austin; Mayflower Inn & Spa in Washington, Connecticut; and The Vanderbilt in Newport, Rhode Island, as well as resorts throughout Mexico, the Caribbean and Europe. Auberge is owned by Houston- based Friedkin Group, whose owner and CEO, Dan Friedkin, has long wanted an Auberge hotel and residences in his home city. But it wasn't until a dream parcel of land became available that the ideal match was made — one where influential architects work together, creating a greater whole. The new 17-acre luxury lifestyle development, called The RO — which includes The Birdsall residences and the first Auberge Resorts Collection hotel in Houston — sits across from the St. John's School on the former home of ExxonMobil's upstream research campus, which the oil company had owned since the 1940s before selling it in 2017. Having such a large site in the heart of the River Oaks area is a developer's version of finding the holy grail, wrote Chris Baldwin in a June 2024 PaperCity feature. To create the new development, a dream team of architects was paramount. "We could have done this with one or two architects," Transwestern Development Company president Carleton Riser says of the project. "We wanted different architects because we wanted the buildings to have their own personalities. Cities weren't designed by one architect." Transwestern's star a r c h i t e c t u r e t e a m includes Roman and Williams (The Birdsall hotel interiors and its 105 rooms), Dillon Kyle Architects (responsible for the interiors of The Birdsall's 44 private r e s i d e n c e s ) , K o h n Pedersen Fox (The Birdsall architecture), Michael Hsu Office of Architecture (RO retail architecture) and OJB (landscape architecture). Master planning of the RO goes to Connecticut- based Pickard Chilton. This roster of architects and designers pays homage to a prominent Houston figure and namesake of the hotel and residences: Birdsall Parmenas Briscoe (1876 - 1971), whose 50-year architecture career from the 1920s through the '50s, helped shape River Oaks. The Dream Architecture Team Michael Hsu Office of Architecture will design retail at the RO, and OJB will design the landscape. The Birdsall hotel interiors and rooms are designed by Roman and Williams. Dillon Kyle Architects will design the residences. Exterior architecture design Kohn Pedersen Fox. 45