Office

What kinds of office buildings does Temelar design?

Most office work around Houston is not a tower. It is a one- to four-story building on a suburban pad, a mid-rise along a freeway corridor, or a flex building where the office sits in front of a warehouse. Each type has its own floor plate, structural logic and tenant.

Medical office is a different animal. Exam rooms, plumbing density, imaging and healthcare-specific code triggers change the building enough that we treat it as its own sector; see medical. Flex buildings that lean more warehouse than office belong with industrial.

What do Class A, B and C office mean?

Building class is a market label, not a code category. No agency certifies it. Brokers and appraisers use it to rank a building against its local competition on location, age, finishes, systems and amenities, so a Class A building in one submarket might rate Class B in another.

For design, class sets expectations: lobby finish, ceiling height, restroom quality, parking and the landlord's contribution to build-outs.

Shell and core versus interiors: who designs what?

An office building is usually designed in two layers, often under separate contracts and sometimes years apart. The shell and core is the landlord's building. The interiors are each tenant's space inside it. Where one stops and the other starts is a negotiated line, written into the lease and the landlord's work letter.

A cold shell is structure and enclosure with little else inside. A warm shell adds base building systems, finished core restrooms and a suite ready for tenant walls and ceilings. Definitions drift between landlords, so we write them down.

What goes in a landlord criteria manual?

A landlord criteria manual is the rulebook every future tenant's design team follows. It keeps a multi-tenant building consistent after the original team has moved on.

How does a tenant improvement work in an office building?

A tenant improvement, or TI, is the build-out of a tenant's suite inside the landlord's shell. It runs on the lease, not the design calendar: rent often starts on a fixed date whether the suite is open or not. More on our tenant improvement page.

The test fit is the step people skip, and it pays back most. A quick layout against the actual suite shows whether the headcount fits and whether the TI allowance is realistic, while there is still leverage to negotiate.

How floor plate, lease depth and column grid decide leasability

Floor plate efficiency is the share of a floor tenants can actually occupy. The core (stairs, elevators, restrooms, shafts, electrical and telecom rooms) is necessary but not private space, so the goal is a core just large enough, placed where it leaves useful depth on every side.

Lease depth is the distance from the core wall to the inside face of the glass. Too shallow, and offices plus a corridor plus open workspace will not fit. Too deep, and the middle of the floor sits far from daylight.

The diagram below shows one rectangular floor plate with a central core, planned three ways side by side. On the left, a single tenant takes the whole floor with no public corridor. In the middle, two tenants split it with a demising wall and a corridor ring around the core. On the right, four tenants share it, with the same corridor ring and demising walls running out to the glass. The core-to-glass lease depth is dimensioned on each, so you can see what the corridor costs in usable depth.

Notice what does not move: the core, the column grid and the exits. If the single-tenant version had restrooms opening only into a private suite, the four-tenant version becomes a renovation instead of a few new walls.

Those are planning ranges, not rules; structure, systems and the local market all move them.

Center core or side core?

A center core gives every tenant a window line and allows the corridor ring shown above, which is why most multi-tenant floors use one. A side core creates a large, unbroken floor for a single user, but forces long corridors once the floor is split. On small low-rise floors, a split core, with stairs at the ends and restrooms in the middle, is often the most efficient answer.

Column grid and bay size

Wider bays mean fewer columns in the way, at the cost of deeper beams and sometimes more building height. The skill is aligning the grid with the planning module, so demising walls land on a column line or window mullion rather than mid-pane. That is architect and structural engineer working together, one reason we keep both under a single architecture contract.

Each of those is fixed early. Aligned, they let a floor split with walls and a few duct runs; misaligned, the landlord pays at every lease turnover.

“Every office floor gets leased more than once.
Design it for the lease after next.”

Rentable versus usable: how office space is measured

Office rent is quoted on rentable square feet, but a tenant occupies usable square feet. Usable area is the space inside the suite that the tenant controls. Rentable area adds the tenant's share of common areas such as the lobby, the public corridor, shared restrooms and building service rooms. The ratio between the two is the load factor, and it shows up in every office lease.

Most US office measurement follows the office standard published by BOMA, the Building Owners and Managers Association, which sets out how common areas are allocated among tenants. The standard has been revised over the years, so the lease names which method applies.

For tenants, load factor is worth comparing between buildings: two suites with identical usable area can carry noticeably different rentable figures.

Restrooms, HVAC zoning and the Houston envelope

How many restrooms does an office floor need?

Plumbing fixture counts come from the plumbing code, tied to an occupant load the building code calculates from floor area and use. So core restrooms should be sized for the full floor, not the first tenant's headcount. We also leave capped water and sanitary stubs where break rooms are likely, because cutting a slab later is disruptive.

How is HVAC zoned for multiple tenants?

In a low-rise suburban office, cooling usually comes from packaged rooftop units, or RTUs, the self-contained units you see on the roof. Larger buildings may use a central system feeding variable air volume boxes, or VAV boxes, which throttle air to each zone. Either way the question is the same: can each future suite get its own thermostat, its own after-hours control and, where the lease calls for it, its own meter?

• Place rooftop units so each likely suite is served without ducts crossing another tenant's space.
• Lay out zones along likely demising lines, with separate zones per perimeter exposure.
• Provide submetering where tenants will pay their own utilities.
• Reserve roof area and structure for supplemental cooling, such as server rooms.

Ceiling heights and floor-to-floor

Tenants read ceiling height as quality. A clean ceiling means stacking structure, ductwork, sprinkler piping and lights inside the floor-to-floor height. Losing a few inches there is common and avoidable if structure and mechanical are coordinated before the building height is locked.

Envelope, glazing and Houston heat

Houston's sun and humidity shape the skin. West-facing glass drives cooling load and glare, so we tune glass, shading and window-to-wall ratio by orientation. Humidity control matters as much as temperature: an oversized system that cools fast and cycles off leaves a clammy office. Roofing is detailed for wind and heavy rain, and floor elevation and drainage are set with flood exposure in mind.

Codes, parking and approvals for an office building

Most offices fall under the building code's business occupancy, known as Group B. It is a relatively forgiving classification, but a handful of items still shape the plan.

• Sprinklers. The building code does not require sprinklers in every low-rise office, and local amendments differ. Most spec buildings are sprinklered anyway, because it allows larger floor areas, longer travel distances and relief on corridor ratings.
• Egress. Exit count, travel distance and dead-end corridor limits govern how corridors run. The corridor ring exists partly so no suite sits at a dead end.
• Accessibility. Texas projects with an estimated construction cost of $50,000 or more are registered with the Texas Department of Licensing and Regulation, reviewed and inspected by a Registered Accessibility Specialist under the Texas Accessibility Standards. The base building and each later TI can trigger it separately; our article on TDLR accessibility review explains the process.
• Energy. Envelope, lighting and mechanical compliance documentation are part of the permit submission.

Parking ratios for office

Office parking is expressed as spaces per 1,000 square feet of building area. The code minimum is a floor, not a leasing target: suburban tenants often expect more, and dense users such as call centers expect more still. We plan parking against the tenant market, then confirm the site can hold it alongside stormwater detention and fire lanes.

Approvals around Houston

The City of Houston has no conventional zoning, but it does have Chapter 42 development rules for lots and setbacks, parking requirements, stormwater detention requirements and enforceable private deed restrictions. Sugar Land, Katy, Pearland, The Woodlands area and unincorporated Harris and Fort Bend counties each run their own review path, and several of those cities have zoning. A typical office permit runs through city plan review, fire marshal review, TDLR accessibility and energy compliance.

We set the permit path during a feasibility study, before design starts, so the schedule reflects the jurisdiction the site actually sits in.

How long does it take to design and permit an office building?

For a shell-and-core office building in the 20,000 to 80,000 square foot range, design through permit typically runs five to seven months. Tenant improvement packages usually follow, often while the shell is under construction.

Planning ranges, not a project quote. Timing varies with owner decisions, project complexity, and jurisdiction workload.

The biggest swings are permitting and decision time in schematic design. Drawing speed is rarely the constraint.

Second-generation space, spec suites and what tenants want now

What is second-generation office space?

Second-generation space is a suite already built out by a previous tenant. It can be a bargain, with walls, ceilings and HVAC zoning in place, or a trap, when the old layout fights the new tenant. We check it against a test fit before anyone signs.

Spec suites

A spec suite is a small suite a landlord builds out in advance, without a tenant, using a standard finish package so it leases and opens quickly. They work best planned so two can combine into one without demolition.

What are office tenants asking for now?

Since hybrid work became common, many tenants want less area but better area: more meeting rooms, fewer assigned desks, good daylight and shared amenities. That has pushed landlords toward building-wide space, such as a shared conference center or fitness room, which we plan so it can be carved back into leasable area if the market turns.

Office-to-other conversions

Older office buildings are sometimes converted to medical, education or multifamily use. A conversion is a change of occupancy, and floor depth, plumbing access and window layout decide whether it works; a deep office floor is hard to turn into apartments, because every unit needs windows.

Frequently asked questions

Plan the floor before you lease it

If you are weighing a site, a shell building or a lease, send the address, the use and the rough square footage through the contact page and we will tell you plainly what governs it and how long it takes. If your design team is already hired and you want independent review, see owner's representation, or browse the other sectors we design for.