Brick by Brick — Inside Architect Dillon Kyle’s Mission to Design The Birdsall Residences, Houston’s Very Different High-Rise Homes In a New River Oaks Village

Sitting at a table in his former office conference room, the one that’s been converted into a showroom for The Birdsall’s private residences, Dillon Kyle is surrounded by things he loves. That includes Cedar Bayou brick. “When you see a super classic, old River Oaks house, it’s probably Cedar Bayou brick,” Kyle says. “It’s that kind of a brownish salmony color. Very soft feeling. We use it a lot.”

Kyle gets up from the table to point out the Cedar Bayou bricks displayed on the shelves along the wall, noting the difference between it and the old Texas brick, which is also up there, shown off the way Hermès might display a $9,700 R.M.S. Weekender bag. Kyle encourages a visitor to feel the bricks for themselves, to get the tactile comparison. To say Dillon Kyle is extremely detailed orientated is akin to remarking that Harrison Ford understands the power of dry wit.

One only needs to spend a few minutes with Kyle to deduce this. It’s part of the very essence of this architect, something of a River Oaks favorite, who started his own firm in his beloved hometown Houston in 1995 after stints practicing in San Francisco and New York.

He’s never done a project quite like The Birdsall Residences, the 44-unit private residential component of The RO, a new 17 acre mixed-use development from Transwestern coming to the intersection of West Alabama and Buffalo Speedway with the first Auberge Resorts Collection hotel in Houston.

“I feel like a lot of the condominium towers in Houston are kind of lonely and isolated,” Kyle says. “They all kind of have walls around them and they’re very fortress like.”

Transwestern is pushing to make The RO very different from the imposing towers brigade, to bring more of a village within the city feel and hiring Dillon Kyle to design the interiors of the private residential component is an essential piece of that.

“He knows what a River Oaks homeowner wants,” Transwestern project executive Sean Suffel says. “He understands how they live.”

The directive Kyle received is to imagine he’s building a house for someone who lives in River Oaks, only that house is now in a 28-story high-rise. Almost immediately, Kyle countered that in order to do that, he couldn’t just inherit a floor plate from the building architect. He pushed for what someone designing the interior spaces almost never gets on a high-rise, a chance to truly collaborate with the building architect; Kohn Pedersen Fox (KPF) in this case.

To Kyle’s surprise, Transwestern and KPF both agreed.

“I don’t think that happens a lot,” Kyle says. “I think a lot of times, condominiums kind of get put into a resultant building that someone else did. What’s important about that is every time we work on a project, modern or traditional, like center lines, proportions, light, all of those things are essential to the sense of space in a building that feels like it’s thought out. And makes you feel good.

“Things that matter, you don’t see them or notice them necessarily. But you feel them. People have an inherent sense of proportion. They just do. They respond to it.”

Dillon Kyle did his undergrad at Princeton and earned his MArch from Harvard, but he’s always considered himself a product of Houston first. While others marvel over trendier cites or postcard perfect oceanfront scenes, Kyle sees beauty in his town.

Dillon Kyle’s feedback resulted in the terraces being widened and moved (all The Birdsall units now boast at least 500 square feet of outdoor terrace space), the center lines and columns getting altered and even the elevator core being moved around a little bit. It turns out collaborative tweaks, those details Kyle always obsesses over, make a world of difference. As a result of the changes, Birdsall residents will step off their elevator and be centered right on a window, rather than a hallway.

The Power of Small Touches

Kyle also went to work on the private residents-only pool on the 13th floor, partly covering it with ironwork to create something of a sheltered space that is still open to the outside air.

“It’s very much a result of having worked on (John) Staub and (Birdsall) Briscoe houses where ironwork was extremely important,” Kyle says. “. . . This more restrained ironwork that Staub and Briscoe would use is a little more federal feeling and geometric. It’s really common in carports and screen porches.

“So we tried to make the pool relate to that sense, to kind of change the scale of being in a pool on the 13th floor to something that felt a little more backyard-ish.”

This is where that Cedar Bayou brick comes in. The tower that houses The Birdsall hotel and the residences will feature that brick on its lower levels, with the glass of the upper levels giving way to something that’s more traditional River Oaks-like. Dillon Kyle had influence here too, even accompanying Transwestern officials to the brickyards.

“Transwestern was very interested in the brick and really understanding what old brick was, what new brick is,” Dillon Kyle Architects associate principal Parrish Kyle says.

“The reason that I love Houston is it’s about living here. It’s an understated thing. It’s not about advertising. It’s not a tourist city. I think that’s OK.” — Dillon Kyle

Understanding the Power of Houston

For Dillon Kyle himself, The Birdsall represents a rare chance to be part of making something that’s distinctly Houston. Kyle did his undergrad at Princeton and earned his MArch from Harvard, but he’s always considered himself a product of Houston first. While others marvel over trendier cites or postcard perfect oceanfront scenes, Kyle sees beauty in his town.

“I think of Houston sometimes as overlooked in the national psyche of a place with a strong identity,” he says. “It’s not Austin or San Antonio. They have strong identities. But there are things about this (project) that I thought were Houston. That I didn’t really know how to pinpoint. Sort of the modestness of some of the appearance. I don’t think it’s flashy.

“It doesn’t feel brassy and flashy to me. It’s very understated and confident.”

You could say the same about Dillon Kyle. Working on The Birdsall represents a potential breakthrough moment for his firm, one that’s largely done house projects in the past. Still, Dillon Kyle’s never thought of himself that way. He deliberately operates his firm using the methodology commercial firms employ, mining the analytics and working in Revit to design 3D models.

“I’ve always wanted the firm to be more than just a house firm,” Kyle says. “A house firm’s easy to start on your own. But it is not my end intention in life.”

When Transwestern came to Kyle and asked if they could use part of Dillon Kyle Architects’ office space on Alabama Street as a de facto showroom for The Birdsall, he greeted the idea with surprise. But the more he thought about it, the more it made sense. This is where potential Birdsall residents can see the fixtures that will be used, where they can reach out and touch the very bricks being put in.

What better place to illustrate what he is trying to create inside that tower?

The snazzy, expensive video that plays on the big screen in this conference room turned showroom, the one that touts The Birdsall as trying to deliver “Houston’s finest hotel with its finest high-rise residential property” is nice. The images and renderings of The RO certainly pop on that large screen. But Dillon Kyle might tell you those bricks, the feel of the place, mean so much more.

“The reason that I love Houston is it’s about living here,” Kyle says. “It’s an understated thing. It’s not about advertising. It’s not a tourist city. I think that’s OK.”

Dillon Kyle gives a half shrug. Some things you need to feel, rather than explain.

For more information on The Birdsall Residences, you can check out TheBirdsallResidences.com.