Fire Rated Glass “Elevates” Safety at the Tallest Tower in Texas
Key Highlights
- Waterline Tower is the tallest building in Texas, reaching 1,025 feet with 74 stories, combining mixed-use functions into a single vertical community.
- The design features a transparent, luminous elevator enclosure that challenges traditional fire safety solutions by using high-performance butt-glazed glass systems.
- SAFTI FIRST’s SuperLite II-XLB 120 glass panels, with Guardian UltraClear low-iron glass, enable maximum clarity and light transmission, creating a crystalline appearance for the enclosure.
- The innovative lobby design integrates interior and exterior spaces through extensive glass use, enhancing daylight and outdoor views while maintaining safety standards.
- Close collaboration between architects, product suppliers, and contractors resulted in a seamless, safety-compliant enclosure that elevates everyday building elements into extraordinary design features.
Waterline Tower, designed by Kohn Pedersen Fox (KPF) with HKS Architects as architect of record, recently topped out as the tallest tower in Texas. Soaring 74 stories above Austin at 1,025 feet, the mixed-use development combines hospitality, residential, and office programs into one vertical community. Yet beyond its scale and skyline presence, Waterline demonstrates how architectural imagination, technical innovation, and material performance can converge to reimagine everyday building elements into extraordinary design features.
One of the most striking examples doesn’t occur on the façade but at the very heart of the podium lobby. Here, the design team defied the convention of a typical fire-rated elevator enclosure by creating a luminous centerpiece that anchors the arrival experience.
Turning Code into Concept
By code, elevator shaft enclosures require a 2-hour fire rating. The conventional solution would have been opaque walls that separated the elevators from the lobby and visually disconnected the building’s vertical core from the surrounding space. Rather than accept this as a design limitation, the architects envisioned an enclosure that could embody transparency, openness, and lightness—values that are central to Waterline’s design philosophy.
“The key concept of the main lobby is the continuation of interior and exterior space. The lobby façade is completely glass with razor thin mullions, allowing the landscape to blend into the lobby space, which is designed with local limestones,” says Hide Furuta, Director at KPF and key designer in this project. “To support this integration, the lift shaft was designed with large panes of clear glass and minimal steel supports. The use of the SAFTI FIRST glass shaft system enabled us to achieve this high level of transparency and unobtrusive detailing.”
By employing a 2-hour fire-resistive butt-glazed glass wall system, the design team created a transparent volume that wraps the elevator banks across three levels of the lobby. Measuring 56 feet wide by 28 feet high and bending around two 90-degree corners, the enclosure is both technically ambitious and visually commanding.
What could have been a hidden service core instead became an architectural statement that reinforces the lobby’s sense of openness, maximizes daylight, and strengthens connections to the outdoors.
SAFTI FIRST’s Role in Realizing the Vision
Delivering this ambitious design required both technical innovation and deep collaboration. Mike Augustine, Director of Architectural Promotion at SAFTI FIRST, worked with the design team on product selection and provided project-specific details. “Mike helped to minimize the impact of the lift shaft in the lobby space,” adds Hide. “He worked with us to increase the size of the glass panels and refine the shaft's mullion details, so the assembly remained as visually light and transparent as possible, aligning with our overall design intent.”
For the 2-hour elevator enclosure, SAFTI FIRST provided SuperLite II-XLB 120 with Guardian UltraClear low-iron glass in GPX Architectural Series Framing. Having the largest tested and listed individual panels sizes of any 2-hour fire resistive glazing, SuperLite II-XLB 120 easily accommodated the expansive panels required for this project. By butt-glazing the SuperLite II-XLB 120 panels to eliminate vertical mullions, the system achieved unobstructed views and a seamless sense of openness. Using low-iron glass for the SuperLite II-XLB 120 units ensure maximum clarity and light transmission, so the core appears as a crystalline object rather than an opaque barrier.
Beyond aesthetics, SAFTI FIRST also addressed elevator fall protection code requirements by using laminated 9/16-inch glass while maintaining the enclosure’s seamless look. To unify the look, SAFTI FIRST also supplied custom 16” fire-rated metal panels that spanned the length of the wall. These panels concealed the structure, blending with overall material palette.
Because the system butted directly to the elevator door frames, SAFTI FIRST’s engineering department coordinated the design with the elevator door supplier to ensure proper interface conditions and seamless integration with all four elevators. Win-Con Enterprises Inc., the glazing contractor, then expertly installed each heavy glass panel with ¼-inch butt joints, elevating the enclosure into an elegant fusion of safety and design.
SAFTI FIRST also supplied full-vision 20 minute GPX Builders Series Fire Protective doors for the elevator lobbies starting at the podium level. In total, 18 single doors and 3 pair doors were supplied with custom hardware and finish that matches the GPX Architectural Series Framing and custom metal panels used in the 2 hour elevator enclosure – creating a seamless, unified look.
A Defining Feature of Waterline
The fire rated elevator enclosure at Waterline demonstrates how architectural vision and material technology can merge to elevate the everyday into the exceptional. By embracing fire rated as a design opportunity, the project team created a lobby centerpiece that embodies transparency, safety, and modernity.
Project Name: Waterline Tower in Austin, TX
Architect: KPF (design architect); HKS Architects (architect of record)
General Contractor: DPR Construction
Glazing Contractor: Win-Con Enterprises, Inc.
Products: Butt-Glazed SuperLite II-XLB 120 with Guardian UltraClear low-iron in GPX Architectural Series Perimeter Framing; Custom fire rated metal panels; Full-vision GPX Builders Series Protective Doors