Skylawn at POST Houston featured in Living Architecture Monitor

The Barbara Jordan Post Office is an iconic industrial building in downtown Houston, Texas which served as the city’s primary postal distribution center from 1934 to its closure in 2015. The building was sold to a local developer, who, in 2018, proposed an ambitious plan to repurpose it into a mixed-use development to honor the building’s history and serve as a cultural hub for downtown Houston. Capping this new cultural hub is Skylawn, a five acre intensive green roof which now serves as one of Houston’s most dynamic and unique outdoor settings. It is the largest rooftop park in Texas, and hosts an array of functions, event spaces, recreational areas, gardens, and even a one-acre rooftop farm known as Skyfarm.

On top of a community recreational area Skylawn is a high-performance sustainable landscape – managing stormwater, mitigating the urban heat island, and enhancing local biodiversity. Skylawn’s gardens replicate the various landscapes and ecologies native to Southwest Texas - an arid garden, a woodland, and a tropical water garden. These act as a connection for people and plants to the flora and fauna that originally inhabited the region, and support pollinators through habitat and food sources. The replacement of the building’s roof-based hardscape also transformed the space into a giant sponge, managing the stormwater on the roof and reducing runoff into the nearby watershed through the retention and treatment of over one million gallons of rainfall annually.

“The vision for POST Houston was to transform the long-abandoned USPS headquarters into a dynamic mixed-use complex, turning the rooftop into an immersive green space that not only celebrates Houston’s vibrant urban landscape but also offers a haven where people can pause, connect, and engage with nature in meaningful ways. We wanted every detail—from the plant selections to the pathways and gathering spaces—to invite people in and make them feel at home. Receiving this special recognition is truly an honor, as it acknowledges the dedication, creativity, and passion that our team and partners poured into bringing Skylawn to life. We’re thrilled to see it become a cherished space for the Houston community.”

— Hoerr Schaudt Project Team

Congratulations to the full team on this transformative project!

Contractor: Harvey Builders
Executive Architect: Powers Brown Architecture
Historic Advisor: MacRostie
Identity and Signage: MTWTF and Formation
Irrigation: FRS Design Group
Landscape Architect: Hoerr Schaudt Landscape Architects (Award Winner)
Landscape Contractor: Ruppert
Lead Architect: OMA
Lighting: DotDash
MEP: DBR Engineering
Structural Engineer: Cardno (now Stantec)
Water Feature: Waterline Studios