Houston Skyline

Houston is the largest American city without conventional zoning, and the consequence is visible from any distance: instead of one downtown cluster, the skyline is a series of separate groupings. Downtown is the largest, but Uptown around the Galleria has its own cluster of towers several miles away, anchored by Williams Tower standing almost alone at 901 feet.

Most Houston models quietly ignore this and render Downtown only. We include the relationship, because the scattered quality is the thing that makes Houston look like Houston rather than like Dallas.

JPMorgan Chase Tower is the tallest building in Texas at 1,002 feet, and it is not a rectangle. I.M. Pei's firm gave it a five-sided plan with one face sheared away, so it presents a wide flat front from one direction and a narrow angled edge from another.

A five-sided tower is genuinely harder to print than a box, and it is the detail that separates an accurate Houston from an approximate one. Alongside it, Wells Fargo Plaza's uninterrupted dark glass curve gives the cluster its second identifiable shape.

Downtown leads with the JPMorgan Chase Tower, 1,002 feet, five-sided with one face sheared away. Wells Fargo Plaza stands beside it as twin curved walls of dark glass, and Pennzoil Place — two trapezoidal towers separated by a ten-foot slot — is the one architects travel to see.

Heritage Plaza carries a Mayan-inspired crown at its top. Several miles west and entirely separate, Williams Tower rises almost alone in Uptown, which is the detail that makes a Houston model honest: this is a city with more than one skyline, and showing only downtown misrepresents it.