Tower Life Building Houston, TX | June 2021
The tower’s project manager & NxtWall
The historic Tower Life Building in downtown San Antonio overlooks the Riverwalk and holds a variety of different businesses. The Transwestern office building welcomes thousands of employees, teams, and customers in and out of its doors every day.
The project manager for the commercial tower, Ben Zachary, began searching for movable, demountable wall systems to bring privacy to his office space. One of his biggest goals was to sufficiently separate the space, without losing the open-concept and stunning viewpoints from the building’s massive windows.
And of course, he needed them on a very fast timeline.
As Zachary searched for flexible, demountable wall systems, a product made from durable materials and customized to his liking — only one solution he came across fit his needs and specs — NxtWall.
He reached out to them directly and requested a custom quote with his preferred materials and finish options. The NxtWall factory team worked with Zachary throughout the project, with quick turnarounds on sample questions and specifications. They worked together to design several semi-enclosed spaces with see-through, demountable glass walls in floor-to-ceiling track systems.
The project’s unique challenges & client comments
The Tower Life Building serves as a historical monument of sorts in downtown San Antonio, and it was important to the designer and project manager to modernize the feel of the space inside the historic building — without taking away from its architectural views.
“The Tower Life Building is a historic building in downtown San Antonio, built in 1929. The building provided an open plan on each floor with beautiful, open windows.
The owner wanted to allow each tenant to customize the layout of [their] floor without blocking the windows and natural light.”
— Ben Zachary, Tower Life Building Project Manager
When it came time to draw up the designs and specify the wall needs, the custom-fit of the project became clear.
“The angles from structural walls [were] weird, and [we were designing with] non-exact lengths from floor-to-floor. This required a very custom fit and in-field measurements of the site. The project couldn’t have come from a stock product or catalog.”
— Ben Zachary, Tower Life Building Project Manager
Once the measurements were made, and NxtWall began to specify a few different options for the demountable panel system — the building owner and project manager stressed, again, the importance of flexibility:
“It was critical for us to be able to make adjustments on site, even after install, as our tenants and needs change. The target market [to occupy the space] was small to mid-sized clients [with full-time to hybrid, semi-remote occupants].”
— Ben Zachary, Tower Life Building Project Manager
Easily cleanable, semi-transparent glass panels create the demountable walls for the space. With opaque graphics designed into the walls, sight lines are protected and people on both sides gain visual privacy. The design preserves the natural light streaming in from the hot Texas sun — a coveted and inviting biophilic element to this modern office space.
Cronan Representative for the Tower of Life project
Marianne Prarat
Manufacturer Representative — San Antonio
