Cisco Exterior Sign
A 30-foot, 8,000-pound illuminated Cisco sign, cantilevered near the crown of a 309-foot downtown Austin tower: engineered through every stakeholder's requirements and installed without a single change.
Eddie Olivier
Architect, Development 2000
JLL brought us in as Cisco's signage partner while the sign was still a concept: a mockup on a rendering and an approximate square footage. Our job was to make it real.
Cisco engaged JLL to manage a new exterior identity on their 309-foot downtown Austin tower, and JLL brought Impossible in as their signage partner. We joined early, when the sign existed as a concept image and an approximate square footage, which is exactly the stage where we do our best work.
We started at the beginning: surveyed the building, then worked with Cisco, the general contractor, and the project architect, Perkins&Will, to turn the concept into real, buildable shop drawings.
Challenge
Fabricating the sign was the straightforward part. Engineering a mount every stakeholder could stand behind was the real project.
The tower's owner is also its principal occupant, with a private suite one floor below where the sign would hang. Understandably, their tolerance for impact on the building was effectively zero, and the first mounting concepts did not clear that bar.
So we worked directly with the building owner and the owner's own architect to engineer a solution that honored both sides at once: Cisco's vision, and the owner's protection of the building. The answer was a cantilevered mount that touches the building as little as physically possible. It was the right engineering answer, and every stakeholder signed off on it.
Solution
One team carrying the whole chain: drawings, permits, street closures, and the crane.
We carried the sign through three rounds of engineered drawings and every structural revision without losing the schedule, and we managed the parts of an exterior sign most people never see: City of Austin planning approvals, street closures, overhead protection and security, and the crane operation itself.
On install day, it went exactly as drawn. Working hand in hand with property management, the building owner's team, and the electricians, we set a 30-foot-wide, 8,000-pound illuminated Cisco sign onto its cantilever, high above a live downtown street, with no changes and no hiccups.
Result
30 feet. 8,000 pounds. On time. Zero changes.
The finished sign reads as effortless: a clean, lit Cisco identity crowning the tower, exactly where the original mockup imagined it. Underneath that calm is everything it took: a concept developed into stamped drawings, a mounting solution engineered to respect an occupied building, three rounds of structural engineering, and a full city permitting and street-closure program.
We designed it, engineered it, produced it, and installed it, start to finish, and it went in without a hiccup. That is what one accountable team is for.
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