In the landscape for a new taqueria, Ten Eyck Landscape Architects preserves a slice of Austin?s history.
BY TIMOTHY A. SCHULER 
A concept plan sketch of the Cosmic Saltillo site in East Austin, Texas. Courtesy Ten Eyck Landscape Architects.
Austin, Texas, has been the country?s fastest-growing metropolitan area for 12 years running. The steady growth, driven by a booming tech and venture capital sector, has utterly changed the fabric of the city?and not without consequences. According to one news outlet?s analysis of city data, at least 800 historic structures have been demolished since 2000. ?I?ve seen, one by one, these beloved places torn down,? says Christy Ten Eyck, FASLA, the founding principal of Austin?s Ten Eyck Landscape Architects. ?It makes these little jewels that much more important and rewarding to work on.? Cosmic Saltillo is an anomaly in the city?s contemporary real estate gold rush. Designed by Ten Eyck and the architecture firm Clayton Korte, the roughly 18,000-square-foot restaurant space is the second outpost of Cosmic Coffee, whose stylishly ramshackle South Austin location opened in 2019. The new space, accessible from Austin?s Red Line commuter rail and the Red Line Trail that follows it, revives a pair of graffiti-covered, historically significant metal buildings in East Austin. First used by Texaco as a storage depot and later by artists and musicians as a venue, the property is among the last vestiges of the former railyard that is now the Salt...