University of Houston Student Housing

O'Connell Robertson designs institutional spaces, schools, healthcare, and civic buildings, for a living. When their University of Houston student housing was finished, they needed photography that did the architecture justice.

I shot the interiors across two days, working with the light rather than against it. The long study lounges in the afternoon. The common areas and kitchens once the sun stopped fighting the glass. Every frame is squared to the building's geometry, because the architect drew straight lines and the photographs should keep them.

The delivered set gives the firm a library it can use for years: award submissions, the website, proposals to the next institutional client. The brief was simple. Make the space look the way it felt to stand in.