Kohn Pedersen Fox designed the Waterline tower to follow the curve of Waller Creek as it threads through Austin's Rainey Street District, and the resulting 74-story arc — at roughly 1,022 feet, the tallest building in Texas — gives 1 Hotel Austin a structural identity unlike any other property in the brand's portfolio. The hotel fills the tower's first 16 floors, its base articulated by splayed white concrete columns that push through dense plantings of live oak and native shrubs, the whole podium reading less like a hotel entrance than a grove you happen to walk through. HKS Architects served as architect of record, while the facade's curved grid of warm-toned fins and floor-to-ceiling glazing is punctuated by planted balconies that trail greenery down the building's face. Studio MAI translated the brand's biophilic ambitions into 252 rooms through a palette of locally quarried limestone, wide-plank hardwood floors, exposed timber ceiling beams, and leather-upholstered headboards backed by raw wood paneling. Woven rattan pendants — oversized clustered drums in the restaurant, more intimate ribbed forms in the suites — carry the natural material logic from public spaces into private ones. The restaurant itself is lined with rough-cut limestone columns, teak timber screens, and curvaceous tan leather banquettes beneath cascading pothos, the effect closer to a Texas Hill Country pavilion than a hotel dining room. Over 4,000 plants representing more than 30 species are distributed throughout the property, rooting a tower of considerable civic ambition in something genuinely alive.