Explore the Construction and design of this artwork.
The design-build team that realized the project was Overland Partners and Linbeck Group.
The structure is clad with 1,569 limestone panels from Alicante, Spain. The interior stone flooring and plaza flooring is granite from Georgia, United States. The entry door is made from a native Texas live oak tree from the site of the Dell Medical School. Austin has thirty-three mouth blown glass windows fabricated by Franz Mayer & Co. of Munich, Germany installed on three walls in "color grid", "starburst" and "tumbling squares" motifs.There are fourteen black and white marble panels on the interior walls of Austin that each measure 40" x 40". The black marble is from Belgium, and the white marble is from Carrara, Italy. Kelly experimented with a variety of composition for these simple panels, inspired by the Stations of the Cross. There is also an 18 foot tall totem in Austin's interior, which is salvaged redwood. Though it was inspired by church art and architecture,Kelly was a lifelong atheist. When he set out to create his own version of a chapel, he omitted explicit religious imagery and chose not to have it consecrated. In the end, Kelly’s Austin—the prosaic title he gave the work—is a chapel-like form stripped of any holy narrative.
Carrara Franz Mayer & Co. totem Dell Medical School live oak marble Georgia Stations of the Cross Munich limestone redwood Alicante