Urban Echoes: Redefining the Civic Core

Urban Echoes explores strategies for designing a contextualized new building within an existing urban environment, using the San Antonio City Hall as a case study. The project responds to the historical trend of demolishing monumental civic buildings, many of which were classically styled and built in the 19th or early 20th century, and replacing them with modern, glass-box structures that, while symbolizing governmental transparency, often lack connection to local history and urban texture.

Recognizing the symbolic and civic importance of city halls, the project proposes a design approach that preserves the historical structure while reimagining its spatial and functional roles. The existing city hall, previously inaccessible and fortress-like, is emptied and transformed into a large public atrium. Four new wings are added, opening at the corners to welcome the public and redistribute governmental functions in a more accessible and democratic layout.

To create a façade that reflects both the original building and its urban surroundings, the design maps the windows of adjacent buildings and the old city hall, connecting them with lines that intersect the boundary of the new volume. These intersections generate hybridized window forms that echo the historical context while forming a new architectural language. Many of these connecting lines materialize as "tubes", structural and spatial elements that shape the building’s façade, circulation, and communal spaces.

The resulting architecture invites transparency not only through materiality but through spatial experience. Visitors move along platforms beside the old façade, view overlapping historical windows, and navigate through double-height common areas formed by intersecting geometries. The vertical structure is integrated into the side walls and tubes, reinforcing the idea of continuity between old and new.

Through this proposal, Urban Echoes offers a critical alternative to both preservation and replacement, demonstrating how contextual strategies can create meaningful civic architecture that bridges history, transparency, and public engagement.