Workbench

Client: WORKBENCH
Interior Design: Dick Clark + Associates
Location: Austin, TX
Project Type: Workplace

WORKBENCH sits at the corner of East 7th and Pedernales, developed and occupied by six Austin-based AEC firms, Art + Artisans among them. Designed, built, and inhabited by the same local companies, the mass-timber building is a rare case where the developers, builders, and tenants are all one and the same.

Art + Artisans curated the lobby collection to match this homegrown ethos. Six works, commissioned from two local husband-and-wife teams, draw from the people, places, and energy of East Austin.

Aurora, made from 26,980 hand-punched and nailed recycled aluminum discs, is the largest work its creators have made to date. Its reclaimed material echoes the building’s own mass-timber construction, both sustainable by design.

A mural, titled Groover’s Paradise, greets visitors from the parking garage, its crisscrossing stripes mixed and painted entirely by hand. Named for a 1974 record that paid tribute to Austin’s cowboy-and-hippie scene, the mural carries that spirit from the outside in, wrapping the corner and continuing into the lobby.

A companion series of panoramic paintings picks up where the mural leaves off, embedding the signage of East Austin haunts, Uptown Sports Club, Miller Print and Imaging, Cenote, Sahara Lounge, into landscapes of jackrabbits, agaves, and windmills.

Those same signs and native plants return once more in a hand-painted wallpaper, From the Get Go, turning the panoramic series’ landmarks into a collection of small, shared histories.

A walk through the lobby feels a little like East Austin itself: vivid, charming, and alive.